Preview

In a Besieged City

“We are guilty.” Ethan's hand shakes as he holds the blade and prepares to cut. The words spill easily from his lips as the shaking spreads up his arm and encompasses his whole body. “We have betrayed; we have stolen...”

He lists his sins, recalling the liturgy from his childhood. He has a good memory; he still remembers clearly the same words recited by his grandfather in beautiful Hebrew, as his family had stood attentive around the table. He had been only four then; his mothers soft arms had held him still, his sister Rachael had pulled faces while he tried to tug on the lock of hair that was hanging down her back, their father had rebuked them both while his mother had only tightened her hold.

“Hush,” she said, “no more fighting.” She had stroked a strand of Ethan's hair between her fingertips. “Don't pull your sister's hair tateleh; Rachael, please don't tease your little brother. We are confessing to God, and He deserves our full attention.”

But he does not want those memories, or the bitterness of knowing they are long gone, and the child who once felt at such ease with God no longer exists. Those memories are a world away. But he gives his confession the attention his mother had demanded of him.

The words he uses are so very right; he proclaims 'we are guilty' and acknowledges the collective responsibility for the sins of his people, but he says it most for himself. I am guilty, he says; I have betrayed, I have stolen. I am the sins of my people.

“We have spoken falsely; we have had evil hearts; we have become violent; we have transgressed; we have been lawless; we have corrupted...”

He corrupts this confession; he is an affront to God for tainting it with dark thoughts, dark actions.

“Ti’avnu, Ta’inu, Ti’ta’nu.” We have committed abominations; we have gone astray; we have been led astray.

He presses the knife blade into his wrist, point down. The pain floods his senses.

“We have sinned,” he intones; for the sin that we have sinned against you through hardness of heart, through inner thoughts, through baseless hating, through insincere confession. “I have sinned through confusion of the heart.”

He cuts deep, until it spurts and an arc of blood is painted across the wall and over the floor. A fine spray splatters the beige paintwork and trickles down into long, ugly, rust coloured streaks. His hand slips from the blood on the knife's handle, but he only grips it tighter and cuts into the other wrist. His hand has stopped shaking.

And he remembers once again his mother's voice.

“Your body is a gift from God tateleh; you must look after it, and make sure others do the same.”

He defiles it by what he does. He betrays her.

Blood soaks into his clothes, each beat of his heart pushing out the warmth from his body, until he shivers so violently he cannot contain it. Thudding footsteps on the metal balcony and faint voices interrupt the stillness, but he does not move. He must finish his confession.

“For this and more,” he says, “God of forgiveness, I ask forgiveness, pardon and atonement.”

His voice wavers, and he knows it is because he dares to ask for forgiveness so readily, as he marks his own flesh. Forgive me this, he thinks, for doing this.

He passes out, and when he comes round someone is pressing rough towels to his wrists, holding them above his heart and telling him not to fucking die.

© Jenny Ellis 2008