Her little body trembled, drenched from head to toe. Shivering in what remained of her rose petaled blue nighty. She might have been 8 or 9 at most with her matted hair stuck to her slight frame all the way to the ground. She resembled the children of “Want” and “Need” from the picture show her parents had allowed her to watch with the adults on the ocean liner. Alistair Simm’s version of “A Christmas Carol”.
It was all so far away. She’d sang “Away in a Manger” in the town of Bethlehem and “Gloria! in Excelsis Deo!” on the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. “Where are they?” she whispered into her knees, attempting to retain any warmth.
A clanging began. Incessant. Almost quiet for a noisy sound. She pinched her eyes even tighter, praying for the wind to silence the heartbeat she’d be sure they’d hear. Her mind’s eye glimpsed scores of helmeted soldiers banging the butts of their weapons on the rickety doors of sleeping families. Then ramming through them if unanswered immediately. Dragging out every half-dressed and sometimes barely dressed person. Throwing them into the street. The older women struggled to fix their beautiful hijab hair covering. If noticed, ripped immediately from their heads. One very old man wore only a wool yamaka and a shirt to his knees. It too was yanked off and trampled. All males from the households were gun butted to the high walls separating their camp from touring caravans. Hands on heads. Noses on the wall. Boys to Men. The scene eerily silent but the grunts and breaths of the faceless army.
She remembered her own breath and pinched her eyes even tighter, attempting to recall another of the beautiful tales her mother would spin before sleep. Instead of what she was witnessing. She had yet to experience nightmares and now she was sure she was living one.
Her father was a statesman, a most famous one. Her mother a humanitarian. They knew things and they knew people. Everything in her short life had been filled with stories of the ancient ones who read stars for the evening news and birdsong as the morning dews effervesced their way into transformed matter.
How had this holiday gone so horribly wrong? How was a girl from Missouri now involved in a war of retribution. This was “The Holy Land”? This place, the mighty Voice of the Earth, where all cultures converge to know and revere life! This is the land of our Holy Mother and our Heavenly Father for all Mankind to listen to the Voice of the Cosmic Mother! It was!
She caught herself breathing quickly again and feared she’d been heard. But the clanging had gone and light was poking its way into the cracks of her hiding place. The sounds of the earth were still again. She didn’t dare open her eyes yet. Her body now in constant tremor from the dampness turned to freezing cold. “Where are you Momma?” again a whispered prayer. She took in as silent a lungful through her pretty little ski jump nose and sighed in her mind. Letting the air out of her lungs through the precious ruby red lips of a little girl as silently as she knew how.
“Why are my eyes frozen shut?” she shuddered. “Why won’t my legs move?” Like a sitting fetus she appeared and then almost as quickly disappeared.
“Constance! Wake up, now! Miss?”, a slender brown hand gently pressed and shook her shoulder still covered by silky satin sheets. “It’s time to ready for the pyramids.” Then she crossed to pull open the large curtains.
The little girl sat up wide eyed. The pretty rose petal embroidery of her diaphanous blue nightgown seemed to sit up with her. “Where is my family?”
With no notice for the changes in her ward’s tremulous voice she turned from the bright sun shining through the massive window and with a broad smile. “You’ll see them again at breakfast. Now hop to it!” and she left the room.