One:

The clicking of my boots was the only thing keeping me sane. It acted as a metronome counting the steps until all of the anticipation flashed before me. The concrete had been freshly paved, and yet I felt bumps in my path. My shoulders ached and became full of anxiety as I approached the door. I held the book under my right arm; it was my dominant and lucky one.

I knew that realistically nothing would happen to it, but the past ten years have caused me to grow some intense superstitions. Splitting the pole and avoiding cracks never mattered to me when I was younger, though once I had the edge of my life within decent reach, the little things quadrupled in size.

I’m not sure why I was so nervous for them to read it. My nerves for meeting them in general seemed redundant to explain to myself, but why did my nerves for them to read my book outweigh everything else? I didn’t know them, yet their approval was the most important thing in the world to me. And so did a part of them that they didn’t know about.

I craved crying. But I had spent over two hours delicately putting on my makeup to look flawless. In addition to that, my outfit was a two-and-a half-day affair. I had no clue what kind of clothes to wear for this, so I roamed around the biggest mall in my town for about four hours.

The days leading up to this were filled with precision and nothing else. Everything was a second and third decision. From what I was including in my greeting to where we would meet, I became hyper-aware of every little detail.

The cafe was taking up only half of the building. When I swung the doors open, it felt massive. The bell on the door startled me, as did the projective voice of a barista acknowledging my entrance. The smell of fresh bread morphing into pastries and brewing coffee was grabbed straight from Paris and plastered in front of my nose.

I knew I was the second to arrive. I could feel that they were there. My body led me straight to their table, without even having to be brought to them by a hostess. When I saw him in their faces, not a single part of me hesitated.

“Rebecca, it’s nice to finally meet you. You can never get a full gauge of a person through emails and texts.” Jacob introduced himself to me with a firm handshake. I couldn’t think of any other response than to laugh nervously. And to blink away tears. As I did, Sarah eyed me up and down with emotion, almost approval. It was a comforting feeling for the moment and current circumstances. I cleared my throat and remembered my mantra: spread his heart.

“Let’s sit. We have a lot to discuss.”

Ambuscade

Chapter One:

The morning welcomed itself into existence with the sound of gunshots singing together in perfect harmony. I tore the invisible glue sticking my body to my bed off like a bandage covering a wound not yet ready to be exposed, and my feet shuffled aimlessly next to each other. The sun clashed with bullets, and it felt as if all light was fried. My nose ignored the smoke fumes from outside seeping into my room as I headed towards the stairs.

“בוקר טוב (good morning), Mama,” I projected through the railing and over the sounds of screaming terrorists. I descended down the staircase and made my way over to the table to say המזון (blessing over food) and eat breakfast. While Mama finished preparing the meal, my father walked into the kitchen with a fresh copy of that day’s newspaper. Desperately trying to shield myself from staring at the gory front-page image of lifeless Israeli bodies piled on top of one another, I attempted to direct my attention elsewhere.

As Mama plopped the full plate of bagels in front of me on the table, I cleared my throat to diminish the awkward silence. Grabbing the cream cheese and egg salad out of the fridge before taking a seat, Mama began reciting המזון to herself, signaling Papa and me to join in. He tossed his newspaper in the trash; something he never used to do but now had become a daily occurrence. The harsh fling of the metal garbage can lid startled me, not because it was a loud noise, but because it was a noise. And noise nowadays never meant anything hopeful.

“Rebecca, you need to eat,” Mama ordered as she inched the plate of bagels towards me and proceeded to spread cream cheese on one for me. I know she was just being my mother. I shoved a bagel down my throat of some variety, in which case I wasn’t certain since I didn’t really care to pay attention to small details like that anymore, and I tried tremendously to not form a grimace on my face from how uncomfortable forcing myself to eat felt.

After making three left turns down the block from my house, we scurried like mice down a narrow alleyway towards my bus stop, though about forty yards to the right of it was a hideout for gunmen. Mama waited with me until the bus showed up.

Never once had she left before it got there; a teenager in normal circumstances would be highly embarrassed, but in this case, I grabbed onto her waist like a two-year-old at the doctor’s office, and simultaneously all of my other classmates waiting for the bus with us were doing the same thing to their mothers. Not their fathers. Because they had to go to work. In this. With their own game of dodgeball to play. All of the hairs on my arms stood up when the bus finally arrived at the curb.

The doors of the bus opened with great agitation, and each student slowly made their way on. The doors were made of a maxi-glass, a material that is designed to be resistant to bullets. With more cracks and scratches on the glass than a shattered plate, the bus doors have now remained a cautionary tale. I chose my regular seat towards the middle. That way I wasn’t too visible to outsiders but was close enough to the door if we needed to evacuate. The bus driver did his first mirror check, something that would be followed with others frequently throughout the ride, and mumbled a prayer to himself before putting the bus in gear and driving off.

The streets of Jerusalem were nurtured generously with countless craters and bumps, lots of times confusing passengers of running over a body. Paper clips held my papers together, although if the holes were too great, everyone’s supplies would go flying. On I believe his fifth mirror check, I, as I did every day, gave the bus driver a smile when we made eye contact. I’m one of the only few who actually liked him. Many of my classmates viewed him as weak, and no more than a small sliver of a man. This being the case most likely because we’ve all seen him cry. Not with every fire, but occasionally, a gun would sound, and he’d silently sob to himself while looking down at his wedding ring.

When we arrived at my school, I looked out the window to see caution tape from months prior still hung on the brick walls, with the wind dragging it through the air, as if it had become the new Israeli flag. Which it had.

The school grounds looked like a paint palette, with different shades of red. Children’s shoes and clothing were abandoned in piles and all clumped together in corners. Our bus parked right behind the others, and we waited there for about thirty minutes before it was our turn.

Each bus had to let students off one by one, because if all passengers were to walk off at the same time, it would be too large of a target group. The drivers of every bus had to make sure the coast was clear for all of the kids, which made drop-off even longer. I felt a nudge on my arm and looked up to see all of the seats in front of me empty. The girl next to me gestured her hands to the front of the bus, where the driver was looking at me through the rear-view mirror. I quickly wiped the tear that had streamed about halfway down my left cheek and rose from my seat.

Hunching down low in the aisle waiting for my bus driver to give me the all-clear, my body went through a chill, despite it being seventy-five degrees outside. I saw him give a slight nod, and his eyes darted from me to the doors as a way of letting me know to go. I never really understood why he didn’t just talk out loud, but then again, no one else talked either. With the doors being my portal to outside, I hustled into the school building. I then walked precariously to my first period, paying close attention to the tiles on the ground while attempting to control my breathing in order to prevent a panic attack, which had become a daily habit of mine. On rare occasions I would forget to look down at the floor, and my breathing would quicken.

Screams of pain and the smell of blood would sing a duet so loudly that I  couldn’t hear anything else. Almost losing consciousness, I was rushed to the health room where they let me rest for my first two periods. Class didn’t really consist of much learning. More like waiting. Waiting for the announcement to come over the broken intercom that classes will be “dismissed” for various “safety reasons.” After the first period ended, and the routine rush of surprise that we were all still in the building passed through the bodies of students, bags were grabbed quickly.

In a rare occurrence, I happened to catch a glimpse of the clock. It wasn’t even nine in the morning. On that particular day, which happened to be the eve of Simchat Torah, we prayed at sundown trying to hold on to any and all available essences of normality. Then, the sun lowered itself into oblivion, and the night walked out into view.

The seventh day of the tenth month started as any other, with fear, but somewhat becoming manageable. Breakfast was being served throughout many households, prayers being recited and families savoring each other. Yet at this very moment, the world was prepared for a massacre. The grape juice in the Kiddush cup sat still from last night’s dinner. Papa never liked to pour it down the drain. Our family’s ritualistic morning started with the humming of the fridge wide open while Mama made everyone’s lunches. Nothing with loud wrappers, of course. Nothing that could draw attention.

My Hebrew books being shoved into my bookbag–knowing they’d most likely get scuffed up anyway, somehow–my body shook with a form of sensed fear. Suddenly the grape juice began to rattle in the cup until it eventually fell over after a two-second fight with booming marching resulting in a quick surrender. My boots were on my feet, my feet were moving like they’ve never moved before, and I felt my Mama and I protected underneath the strong presence of my Papa’s arms. He lifted lots of rocks as a boy to help his father build a house. I’m now grateful for that labor-intensive experience.

The grounds hallowed, the sun hid, the wind blew. Everything was warned. Except for us. Boom. The last breath. Every head jolted up. But not in surprise. In acceptance. We all knew. Or so we thought. Bang. Another. Final words were probably entangled with screams. Gone. I heard a faint voice commanding us to find shelter.

“Take cover! Remain on guard!” Fear became every breath I took, and my eyes turned solely into water. The sound of deathly marches spread violently across the sky. My thoughts of terror couldn’t hear themselves over other people’s vocalizations of terror. I saw rockets soaring across the sky like birds of ruin landing on a surface before blowing it up.

The roads were now bumpy clumps of pavement covered in mashed concrete graciously bestowed on it by the elaborate weapons being used to silence every voice in my neighborhood. My shoelaces untied, a given, I made it my new mission to not only focus on running, but also to focus on making sure that I did not collide with the ground and its rocky, unwelcoming nature. My hyperfixation might have saved me a bit of colossal pain, but it did not save me. I looked behind me to discover that a muscular arm was no longer shielding my head from falling debris, and a warm hand was not caressing mine.

I had to attempt to process this while also continuing to run, two things that don’t mix well. I listened closely for the sound of my name through a screeching voice; essentially, the voice belonging to the woman who cleaned my sheets every month. But it never came. My eyes soon created enough water to formulate a tsunami, and the tears obstructed my vision.

Losing the total sight of my parents, and also beginning to lose sight overall, I sprinted through the scattered chaos in an attempt to find them. I had no luck. Though I thought I ran far enough away from the infliction to be unseen, I felt a violent pull at my arm. The blurry image I saw next appeared to be a blob of a person with something in his hand. The thing was then used on my head. It was painful. It was sorrowful. Then it was nothing at all. I saw only black. When I woke up, I was in chains with men I didn’t know standing above me and their eyes looked at me with a Nazi aura.

Two:

“Miss, what can I get for you?” I heard a muffled voice say to me after I alarmingly stopped myself from staring into their eyes in order to see his.

“Oh, um. I’ll have a–a cup of your roasted blend with some cream please.” I blurted out with a panic following a fumbling with the menu to make a choice on my drink. My state of catastrophe must have been evident, because within the same minute she was gone. She cleared the menus so quickly that I thought it gave me whiplash. My fingers instinctively tapped on the table out of nervousness. Maybe they’d fall off and we could focus on that instead.  I doubt it.

I wasn’t sure where to begin. My face contorted into something resembling a monstrous being and I couldn’t speak. I noticed the rings on each of their wedding hands. They looked sautered there. Not even a giant crane could pry them off. For some reason this comforted my heart and blew warm air into it.

Their relationship spoke volumes; they obviously had multiple conversations prior to today’s date and settled on eventually agreeing to meet me. The back and forth. The compromise. The good cop-bad cop routine. I could already tell who was which. In some essence, sitting across from them in the amount of silence you hear while praying opened a door that had been locked and kept me out. I picked up the key and slid it into the lock until it clicked.

Ambuscade

Chapter Five:

I remember the room vividly. It was dark and small; I think it was intended to be a storage closet. It was fulfilling its job. It was storing children. I remember I was one of the oldest ones there. Most of the others were quite young; probably between the ages of four and eight. Though I wouldn’t know precisely, since many of them were looking down in a timid manner. Their little and undeveloped knees shaking against their chins. I took in the surrounding atmosphere in blurry snapshots. I caught a glimpse of a soldier standing above me. A fair-sized tattoo on his inner left arm. “Hamas” it read. The name I’ve seen in hundreds of headlines. Looking at me in the face. I didn’t know evil had a name. Until now.

I knew I couldn’t cry. So, I didn’t make a sound. But I’m not sure I would have regardless. I couldn’t feel anything except for the cold pavement I was sitting on. And I couldn’t hear anything except for the fierce blows of whistles and shouting. I glanced down at my feet and grazed my fingers over the heavy chains wrapped tightly around them. I began to study each of the soldiers individually. I could tell almost instantly the ambitions unique to every man. Which were unlike their duplicated uniforms by the thousands. Camouflage print covered their bodies from head to toe with no inch of skin showing. My eyes went down the line and gave them all the “up and down.”

The feet of the soldier that stood across from me were moving ever so slightly. It was obvious there was something he wasn’t agreeing with. Another next to him just kept balling up his fists and then releasing them briefly before doing it again. Every one of them looked the same; tall, buff, dark uniform with splotches of blood making for a diverse accent to the fabric.

I heard a bang. A shriek. A gasp. A fall. A death. The room went totally silent. Not to say that people were having abundant conversations prior to this moment, but it was as if after this little girl was shot that we all forgot how to breathe.

I caught sight of a fearsome miracle. A small boy. With emaciation written all over him. He was the only child who ever looked me in the eyes. Fright was consuming him no doubt, but still, there was some fighting force in him that wanted to seek solace in something. In someone. I was his someone. Without saying anything, he grabbed my arm and squeezed it tightly. I wasn’t alarmed like one might think. I was maternal. His clothes were a solidified representation of the current circumstance; torn, scarce, ragged, barely holding together. He had on a blue tee shirt, which I’m sure was more vibrant in the prefacing hours, ripped jean shorts that I don’t think were intended to be as ripped as they were, and I’d assumed he was wearing shoes but they were taken from him.

We slept next to each other. He had his head tucked on my shoulder blade, his eyes blinked against my shirt. I closed my eyes even though I wasn’t sleeping, but I could feel my sleeve start to get wet. Without moving too much so the chains wouldn’t rattle anyone awake, especially the guards, I lifted my arm carefully and started to rub his cheek with my finger. His face then rose up from off of my shoulder and his eyes met with mine. He was still crying, silently, and his tear droplets began to share space with mine.

My body fought off my insistence to avoid crying when I registered his glittery and shuddering being. He grabbed my hand and held it with force, and we gave each other a look. A sensation we both needed from a total stranger. Ever since I had met him, he did not speak to me. He only talked through his eyes. However, one night, after an entire family was beaten to death within our full range of view, a slight clattering of chains alerted me to his soft mouth moving.

“I don’t want to die,” he uttered silently somehow as a tear trickled down each eye of his. My eyes copied the act, and I grabbed his left hand as he continued.

“But I just feel like I will,” he said with a sniffle that created cracks all over my barely beating heart.

“No, don’t say that. You and I are strong. We’re gonna get out of here and tell our story of what these bad people have done to us. I promise.” I swiped a little bang away from his eye that kept falling down as he fidgeted on the concrete.

“Do you have an אִמָא (mother) and אַבָּא (father)?” My mouth began to open, but I wondered why he asked me that. I flipped the tables and asked him the same question, to which he replied no.

“I am an יָתוֹם (orphan). I never knew my אִמָא and אַבָּא. I lived on the streets near the Gaza border. That’s where these men found me. Somehow, they knew me and a bunch of the kids living on the streets with me were Israeli and that’s when they took us.”

My silence was a side effect of the shock, the sadness, the breaking out of my numbness and then diving head first back into it. It was everything.

“Rebecca? Can you make me a promise?” I jolted my head up at him and he squeezed my other hand.

“How did you know my name?”

“I saw a card with your name and picture on it fall out of your pockets. I like your name.”

“Thank you, what’s yours?”

“יצחק (Isaac).” I did something I never imagined I’d ever do again. I smiled. Slightly. I guess hearing a little boy’s name had that effect. Or maybe I was a hostage trying to hold onto any sense of normalcy.

“Okay, Isaac, what’s the promise?” With the glint of hope bright enough to light up an entire city in his eyes, he looked into mine and whispered.

“Because I might die, and I might never see anyone ever again, can you tell me that you love me? I’ve never heard it before. And I’ll tell you that I love you if you want.” At this point, I was contemplating death, since it would be the penalty for my piercing sob that was taking every inch of me to hold back. Nevertheless, I had a life shriveled into a dust-covered ball of fear disguised as hope. My eardrums were also in physical pain.

“I will make you that promise. Now, you make me one, okay?” Following a subtle nod, I continued.

“Promise me, that if I don’t make it,” a hard swallow came to the surface, and I had to tell myself over and over: “do not lose it.”

“If I don’t make it,” I repeated.

“You have to promise me that you will tell our story. Your story. Let the world know who you are and what you’ve been through. Deal?” Just like that, our agreement was sealed with a firm handshake, and the two of us blinking away tears. We wiped our eyes and each other’s, before I leaned in and said something he had never heard before.

“I love you, Isaac.” His sweet cries fumbled with his body into mine, and I held onto him tightly. Even if he hadn’t asked me, I would have told him. He was my shooting star that shone brighter than anything else in the sky. I hope he knew that.

Three:

“I want to first say thank you for meeting with me. I bet with your hectic schedules this arrangement was not easy to make, so just know that I really do appreciate your time.” Coffee cups rattled onto their saucers along with my shaky voice. Two small smiles presented themselves across from me at the table, and I took that as a signal to continue. I think they knew I was about to speak for a while.

“I knew your son, Isaac.” My hands fidgeted with the tabs I had to mark the pages he was mentioned in throughout the book. The neon yellow contrasted dramatically with the neutral hues of the bakery and the gloominess I had just created. Shock accompanied with sadness wove into view. Jacob grabbed Sarah’s hand and immediately I got a flashback. She was crying, she wasn’t looking at me. I knew. I predicted her coffee would splatter onto the perfect white tablecloth from her tears landing in it. Directly preceding her sentiment, I slid a copy of Ambuscade across the table.

“So, this is THE book. The one you were telling us about? Congratulations, by the way. This is...uh...quite the accomplishment to say the least.” They both dawned a nervous look, yet somehow, they had different connotations. His was aloof, while hers was more emotionally treacherous.

I could tell she had partly regretted agreeing to this. I allowed her a minute to collect her thoughts while I addressed Jacob’s remark.

“Thank you, Jacob. It was really the only thing I focused on for about three years.” They took note of the several tabs tucked in between the pages and I confirmed their suspicions.

“Open it up to the first page tabbed. Each tab marks a page with him included. And there are some involving the experience as well. Whatever you feel comfortable with. But I think he would have wanted you to read it. And I want, with all my being, for you to know who he was. And what he meant to me. Because I loved him.”

Ambuscade

Chapter Six:

The days felt like centuries laid out on a baking sheet, lathered with flour and rolled into one giant ball of dough. No one knew when it was day or night, it was all doomsday. The ceiling had corners that blocked off every possible crevice that could let light in. We were in an oven. Getting burned alive. The time was never exact, except when it was die o’clock. Being a hostage took away my concept of time, though I will say that my trembling limbs were timeless. Shaking back and forth in my now disgusting school outfit at the same melody of the ticking clock in my head.

And then the arms on the clock began to spin. Time was not only no longer trackable, but also it didn’t seem to exist. I couldn’t process the many little girls becoming women within seconds while suffering psychologically in that tiny room that only had so much airflow. I tried desperately to not think about it. However, the calls of panic and exposure made that difficult. Especially when it was my clothes they were taking off.

I didn’t see his face; actually, I couldn’t see any of their faces since they were covered leaving room only for their eyes. He came up behind me and pulled me to my feet by my hair. Walking me over to the device where I would hear endless creaks caused by thrusting movements in my sleep for many years after, my head was slammed down onto the wooden surface before I experienced their idea of womanhood.

Calling it rough would be incredibly generous. Using my body as almost an extension of the table, my upper torso rocked back and forth as my lower half remained a mummy with his body inside of it. Once he was finished, my clothes were chucked at my face for me to put back on, and I was then marched back over to my spot on the ground where I would sit among the people who just watched the encounter and would watch it again when it was done to someone else. They never got tired. There were no breaks. They treated the sex almost as if it had a due date. And they were falling behind. If a hostage did not provide what the instigator was looking for, they endured another type of punishment. More severe. Physical violence, torture, and/or death. It was suitable for them to have many options of trauma and damage.

I was preparing myself to be hustled over to the table and trying to imagine what I’d think about that time. Watching movies with Mama held me over for the first time, and going to Rosenberg’s Deli with my friends after school was enough for the next three times, but I was struggling to think of a new memory that would allow my soul to exist anywhere but here. I looked up in routine procedure, and I was puzzled, then short of breath.

I saw it being loaded out of the corner of my eye. My eyes darted down towards the being sleeping next to me, his weight was one of the only things keeping me from falling down. Cautious of waking him up, I slowly maneuvered his body in a fashion that sort of married my body with the job of a shield. My worry soon became versatile. It was then that I realized I had two jobs: to keep the big man from shooting and to keep the little boy from dying. I had to attempt to communicate without words. The big force dressed in fighting attire was practicing his aim.

I pictured the bullet puncturing my skull. I pictured the pain. I pictured what they’d do with my body. Which is what they did with the others. Toss them outside for the cameras to show the world. I could feel all three of our heart beats, and somehow, the person holding the gun had the fastest one. I caught a glimmering sliver of hope. Maybe if his heart was beating, he could use it. Looking down at the sleeping child, I brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. Part of me wanted him to have a full range of view. But in hindsight, I should not have done that. The slow-motion pace turned into fast motion.

My fingers released his hair after tucking it behind his ear and in that same millisecond a bullet went straight through his head. He had just barely woken, and the very last thing he ever did was look up at me; unbeknownst to the fact that I’d be the final face he saw. His body fell lifeless against my shoulder, assuming almost the same position he was in before he was awake. My lungs became a giant bruise after his prepubescent body was dragged out by the legs and thrown outside ready to face multiple flashes of light; nothing was keeping me afloat. The only time I opened my eyes was when I heard the sounds of life cease. Other than that, I was asleep yet awake. This explains my monotone charisma as I stood up and walked out of the room with a soldier.

Once we reached a war cruiser, the guard in front opened the back right door and gestured for me to get inside the vehicle. I climbed in and they slammed the door shut as the man who stood next to me on the way opened the left door and sat in the backseat adjacent to me. I realized I was the only one being released then. No one else was being released with me. Not yet at least. This’ll be fun.

Four:

I had seen and literally been through hell as a hostage, but I don’t think I was nearly as petrified then as I am now that I am watching Sarah and Jacob read my book. Isaac’s voice was next to me the entire time, which stimulated my need for their approval. My eyes darted back and forth between the two of them like I was watching a tennis match; they both had the ball in their hands. My JCPenney pants that I bought specifically for the occasion were getting slowly unraveled due to my pulling strings out from the seam. My head popped up when I heard a little girl scream to her mom that she did not want the food she ordered for her. Instantly, I shut my eyes and remembered.

“No, don’t. Please! I don’t want that! Stop, you can’t pull that down! I’m only sixteen!” Thick and heavy tears pierced through my closed eyelids, and I brought myself back to somewhat of a normal state. I rarely know what those are anymore. In my head I told myself to be quiet, but in reality, I hadn’t spoken a word. Silence seemed ambiguous for a girl in a cafe with screaming thoughts.

The crisp turn of a page sent shock waves throughout me. I gasped inward for air, and it prompted two confused looks to be directed towards my way. I cleared my throat once again, this time with nothing being created other than perhaps some sore vocal chords. A quick smile swept me back into the frivolous pattern. Down into the depths of my words their eyes went. And so began the tennis match once again. Jacob was serving the ball. I was worried it would knock me over. It might. It will. It already has.

Ambuscade

Chapter Nine:

The engine rumbled scruffily, and the machine began to jerk forward then drive. The windows were blacked out, which made sense since they probably estimated that I had a big mouth on me and would tattle on the whereabouts of my chamber. Sensible. The drive had three stops.

We left Gaza first, where a clump of Hamas soldiers stood waiting as I was wrangled into the next tank. At the time I wasn’t fazed enough to comprehend the other person wrapped meticulously in chains that was being handed over at the same time I was. He looked like me. He had my face. Fear was all over him. His eyes sent the message which was similarly compared to mine, as we both used them as our forms of communicating. Even though I wasn’t sure where he had come from and nor had he about me, we somehow both knew the pain passed through our eyes to stare at each other for a slight second. I could have sworn he gave me a nod of acknowledgment before our encounter ended. I was tossed into another vehicle. The windows were so dark that my own reflection would have been so clear had I not been shaking. After that ride, we arrived at the Egypt borderline. The same procedure as before took place, and the final transport ended when we were greeted with the cries of sirens and police shouts. I didn’t say a word throughout the entire trip. They taught me well.

Once the tank jolted us all forcefully, and the engine dimmed out of audio, I knew we were there. I stepped out of the cruiser onto Israeli ground and was met with a swarming selection of firefighters and paramedics as well as thousands of camera flashes and people screaming. The health care workers examined me inch by inch, before they put me on a stretcher, which is when I gained recollection of feeling pain. I noticed that my arms were bleeding from the chains, my head had severed a concussion from repeatedly being smacked onto the hardwood tabletop, and my legs were scraped from being dragged.

Five or six people were speaking to me at once, all different sentences with different questions. I think I was unresponsive, because after about two minutes of their interrogations, I was pushed into the back of an ambulance and the silence was all around me.

I woke up to see a plain white ceiling and hear occasional beeps from a machine I realized I was plugged into via an IV tube in my arm. I moved my finger over the tube when I heard the sound of a chair shuffle. I lifted my head to see my neighbor of considerable advanced age, Leah, who had put down the book that was occupying her while I suppose she was waiting for me to wake up. The sight of her confused me. The sight of “warmest regards” and “well wishes” balloons also confused me. Until I remembered. Oh, right. I was a hostage.

“Rebecca,” she started softly while slowly making her way over to me.

“Hon, I’m so sorry you had to find out this way. I wish there was another way...” Immediately I drowned her out at the sight of two nurses whispering to each other outside of my room. What the fuck?

“Leah, Leah.” I grunted to stop her from rambling.

“What is going on? Where’s אִמָא and אַבָּא?” She paused alarmingly right in her tracks. She looked at me like I had just become an alien. Her face turned a shade of gray that I had never seen before. I wanted to know what it meant, and at the same time I think I did and wanted to know some other reason.

“Leah?” She darted her head up at me with tears streaming down her face. That’s all I needed to see.

“It was shortly after you were taken.” She said breaking the silence and the ice I was frozen with. I shifted my position in my bed to face her, and when I did, my legs became as wet as my eyes.

“They were found behind the destroyed fence surrounding our complex. Based on the shot wounds, the autopsy concluded that their deaths were from excessive loss of blood.” I didn’t know if I wanted to throw her out of my room or ask her a thousand more questions. This contemplation took too much energy out of me, and maybe between a combination of sadness and exhaustion I collapsed like a lifeless mound onto my bed. She stepped over the multiple cords draped over the ground and pulled me in for a hug.

I had talked to her maybe twice before, but it didn’t matter. She was my whole world for the entirety of the hug, which lasted about five minutes. She lifted her frail and wrinkled hand in order to stroke my cheek. This initiated a harder sob coming from me, since she knew my mother well, and also knew that my mother stroked my cheek to settle my crying. She did that ever since I was little.

Over two weeks I stayed at that hospital, regaining my strength and awareness simultaneously. Unlike when I was first handed over to the police from Hamas before they quickly vanished, while I was a patient, things were said to me carefully, softly and slowly. It’s what I needed. I didn’t speak for the first few days, but once I did, the first thing I asked was what happened to my parents. A female nurse with warm eyes told me gently, as possible, that they were both killed by air rockets days after I was abducted by Hamas. My body was too exhausted to cry then.

Following encounters with people who so badly wanted me dead to now countless people who wanted me alive was a massive shift. I spoke to several doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and scientists daily and would tell them bits and pieces, allowing me to stop when it was too difficult to go on.

After being discharged from the hospital, I went with Leah to her car, with her carefully helping me in, making sure I wasn’t in pain. Throughout the ride, I would lightly scratch my scars, even after being advised against it. Leah looked over at me and saw me. She said nothing and instead turned the corner to her house and smiled while remarking on the pretty weather. She took my hand in hers and her thumb ran back and forth over my palm when she took out her keys and unlocked the front door to her house.

Her husband, a sweet guy, gave me his look. Only this time, it wasn’t through a rear- view mirror. It was in his house. The area was clean, not a mess or coffee stain in sight. I smiled softly, I don’t even know how I did, and the two of them sat on the couch with me as I wept for the next three and a half hours.

Five:

As predicted, the tablecloth was essentially ruined from coffee and tears. And wrinkled from Jacob’s furious fists squeezing the fabric. Sarah was inconsolable, as a mother should be. And I was simply a breathing organism seated across from them.

We didn’t really converse until about thirty minutes after they had finished reading the sectioned portions of my book. And I did not blame them. If it were me in their position, I’d need time to collect my thoughts, as well. I waited impatiently and patiently at the same time for someone to speak. Jacob’s fury concerned me partly, the main reason being I wasn’t sure what it was directed at. Or who. I had hoped it wasn’t me. I hadn’t done anything to upset them, except for bringing up their son which could be a dangerous topic to bring up. Their lips must have been glued together with an industrial grizzly glue. My legs ripped themselves apart from the pleather cushion seats again and again while the noise stuffed my brain with sensory overload just enough to release and make room for the sensation again.

Sarah shocked Jacob, me and presumably herself as she reached across the table and grabbed my hand. It was a gentle gesture, yet it was almost done assertively. Her eyes said thank you. We then resumed sitting in silence for an amount of time I am not even entirely sure of; tears between all three of us had been shed by the end. Somehow the touch made her face more decipherable. I still couldn’t read everything, but the surface of her layers was slowly opening itself up to me. For me. Jacob seemed like an unsentimental sentimental man. At times he was gruff, and then something would prompt him to soften. I had a feeling it was Sarah. They made sense. They meshed. They were a perfectly fit puzzle.

I was about to drop a bomb on their masterpiece of a house with a smiling man wearing a suit and holding balloons on a sunny day. I felt guilty. The truth can only be difficult. Never smooth. But I remembered I wasn’t aiming for smoothness. I know that wouldn’t be possible. This entire situation prevents any simplicity from arriving. There can only be dead ends. Only bumps. Only thirteen-point turns.

Sometimes I think my conscience leaps out of my head and humanizes. Both of their faces turned from anger and stone to sympathy. My mother told me my inability to hide any single thing I felt was a gift. I beg to differ. My face is my psyche encyclopedia. That won’t ever change. At the period in time when both of their hands were on mine tightly, Sarah sniffled and cleared her exhausted throat.

“Why now?”

Ambuscade

Chapter Twelve:

Two years later

My school routine as an eighteen-year-old was different from what it was before. Socially, I had no wings. Anxiety still crept in me, and I continued to visit the nurse’s office once every month or so because my paranoia liked to convince me that a man was outside the school with a gun he just shot anytime someone dropped a book on the floor. With a bullet made for me. My whole body was exerted back, as a witness. I was locked outside of every flashback in a glass cage which was sound and vision proof. Or, just a hallucination. I was there, yet another part was already being used. Now just add an “a” and “b” to that.

“Where are my parents??

“No! No! Please, spare him his life!”

Senior year, second day, English class, screaming, kicking, sobbing, great first impression. Once it happened, I apologized to my classmates and told them I fell asleep in class and had a nightmare. Really, the only lie about that was the sleeping part. In fact, I was wide awake.

I came back from the nurse to grab my things from my English class, and I walked into an empty classroom with chairs unoccupied and a period long ended. I apologized again to my teacher, and as I was walking out, Mrs. Roseman grabbed my arm.

“Rebecca, don’t ever be sorry for the way you experience trauma. I can’t even begin to remotely imagine what it was like, and I don’t plan on pretending that I understand. But I do want you to know that I am always here as a pair of listening ears, or a mouth for validation, or eyes for being seen.” My backpack and the classroom’s ragged carpet engaged, and within less than five seconds I was no longer standing but in her arms. I was crying enormously against the one person who was not family that didn’t understand my baggage; she embraced it.

She was also Jewish, and though practically everyone else in my school probed me about what they called my “hostage adventures,” she never did. And yet, I told her all about it. Her nature being the opposite of overbearing made her an intriguing source for emotional recovery. I would go to her classroom and see her when it all felt like too much; like all the atoms that made up the molecules that made up the cells that made up my world were coming for me. I was less than humbly reminded that being a released hostage doesn’t mean you feel free.

I could not get it out of my head. Any of it. The sounds, the gasps, the bangs, the deaths, the pain, the anguish, the fury, the fight, the loss, the hunger, the injustice. The corpse of a small child who hadn't even seen the world past its evil falling against me. I rarely didn’t think about it. When I was “happy,” no I wasn’t. I was distracted, my mind trying its hardest to make room for something else. A task, of which, did not last very long. I kept trying to push thoughts of it away, like it was poison. It was. Consuming me little by little by the hour each day I longed for it to be ignored. The only time I felt halfway out the door was when I wrote. Anything and everything. It didn’t matter. I’d always loved to write before, but now it comes the way a chick comes out of an egg. Like nature. My writing helped me focus, in English especially. I wrote mostly autobiographical work, yet sometimes I’d mix it up and create a character.

Mrs. Roseman told me repeatedly that she loved my writing and that I should submit it somewhere; but I couldn’t find the motive. I spent too much of my time trying to ignore a set of twelve-week circumstances.

“What if you didn’t ignore it?” Mrs. Roseman asked me as she was putting a box of books away in her aesthetically pleasing shelves. I sat back in the vibrant purple bean bag and looked down, shaking my head.

“If I don’t ignore it, I become a hostage again. I let it trap me mentally. My handcuffs will be in my head. The shouting will be my theme song. Every. Thing. Will. Feel. Like. It’s. Happening. Again.” I fired back, stomping my foot after each word. Mrs. Roseman paused her ritualistic organizing of her books in rainbow order and eyed me sharply.

“You’re already the hostage. Right now. It’s trapping you. And as much as it breaks my heart to say this, those days and experiences will always be a part of you. You can’t go through what you did and not be changed by it. A slice of your old self died October 7th, and Hamas sucked a good amount of humanity out of you. Which makes sense. You were under the rule of terrorists, and the things you’ve seen...” She shut her eyes as if to avoid dropping to the ground and sobbing. Walking towards me and handing me a box of tissues along the way, (this woman knew me far too well) she slid a chair next to me and kept talking.

“Rebecca,” she said softly when I started to cry over complete silence. It was too overwhelming. The loudness was too.

“You are resilient. That’s the only word I can think of. Not that you aren’t more things than that, but resilience is so truthful for you that it cancels everything else out. I know your life feels like hell; no one expects anything different. This experience will always be a part of who you are. But, don’t let this become who you are. Allow yourself to feel other things. You can be happy, you can be sad. You can be confused, angry, miserable, hungry, tired, overwhelmed, peaceful, curious, annoyed, doubtful, brave, nervous, ecstatic, wholesome, nothing, everything. You can just be. And that means, letting yourself feel damaged.” Mrs. Roseman adjusted her position in her seat and scooted closer to me, never letting go of my gaze. Eye contact was our main form of communication.

“Don’t try so hard to push it away. What if you channeled your emotions and your trauma and made something beautiful out of it? Something new?” Still crying and sniffling in between her words, I glanced down at our hands; she was holding mine.

“What do you mean?” I questioned her and kept rubbing my runny nose that seemed to be endless.

“Write. Write it all down. That’s your superpower. Use it. Tell your story. Let people know what they need to hear. The world needs the truth, Rebecca. You need to give it to them.” My eyes met with hers, both now crying abrasive tears. I squeezed her hand and my trembling decreased slowly.

My mind filled with adrenaline at the thought of publishing. This. My story. His story. What happened to me. What’s happening to so many others. Right now. What happened to him. As streets are driven on and sidewalks are walked on, and it seems as though nothing has changed. But no. Everything has. Everything will. In a split second, my thoughts shifted and became apprehensive. As if she could read my mind, Mrs. Roseman leaned in and spoke quietly yet boldly.

“There’s gonna be talk. People will not like it. People will love it. People will not understand it. People will understand it. It’s just the reality of the risks. But you need to decide what is more important. Ignorance? Or the truth?” A lightbulb went off in my head. I couldn’t really place it, because it was like an answer to a loaded question. Instead, I listened to it. And I told Mrs. Roseman the one thing I could articulate at that moment.

“The silence no longer exists.” I projected despite the fact that she was about two feet away from me. My statement prompted her to smile, and for the first time in several years, I felt an emotion I had forgotten was a possibility: courage. 

Six:

“After I was released from captivity, I attempted to start over.” I began while sipping my tea softly.

“Attempted being the key word.” Knowing I was about to relieve intense trauma, I eased my internal panic by swirling the tea around in my mug with a spoon. I think Sarah sensed my apprehension and held my hand tighter. I stared at my reflection in the liquid and spoke again.

“But what I realized is,” my voice cracked loudly, and I could feel the tears trickling down again. I blinked them back and kept going. My hair follicles and the skin around my nails were looking delicious. I couldn’t give in. I know from experience that it is hard to relay a message to someone when you’re covered in blood. I shifted my internal focus to another occasion with blood spilling. The one in the book that they just read.

“I couldn’t run free of it. Any of it. The nightmares, the flashbacks, the psyche damage, none of it was leaving. However, I found myself struggling to get your son out of my head. And I could not figure out why. I knew it had to partly be because he was the only person I spoke to within that period. But his words replayed in my head on a continuous loop and there was nothing I could do to make it go away. That’s when I realized I needed help.”

I then reached down into my purse and pulled out the papers. Crumpled, stemming from time and rushing earlier that morning. Before I proceeded, my hands made sure everything was wrinkled apart from his name. I cleared the inspection by running a finger over it. A thump in my heart caused it to sting.

Ambuscade

Chapter Fifteen:

6 months later

The morning welcomed itself into existence with the shine of the sun, bright and hopeful. I’ve begun to work on finding that hope. I’ve discovered it doesn’t just come to you. I walked down the stairs to experience the insatiable aroma of bagels. Leah was standing by the toaster and watching while Abraham was putting on his tie. Being a school principal looked good on him. Leah felt the same way.

“Rebecca, don’t forget to return Haifa University’s call. Their decision deadline is in a few weeks.” Leah reminded me as she responded to the ding of the toaster by grabbing plates for the bagels. She made sure to buy the same brand that Mama did. She did that a lot. She wanted to get the same things that I had before. It was never the same, but I appreciated it.

When Leah grabbed the cream cheese out of the fridge, I had to remind her that I was eighteen and could spread it myself. That was also something Mama did. We ate breakfast together, the papers in Abraham’s hand not nearly as unappetizing as the Israeli ones. He picked up his copy of The Times of Israel, Haifa’s top newspaper company and began to read it. After we said the blessing, I grabbed a bagel from across the table and sat down in my seat. I kept glancing at the thick stack of papers sitting next to my plate which prompted Leah to ask.

“So, it’s done?” Leah asked inching the manuscript towards me. “I overheard some of the things your publisher was saying in your meeting last night. Two years is a long time to publish. And he said that was the minimum?” I nodded and took a sip of orange juice.

“It’s okay, though. Not many writers under the age of thirty get a big shot at publishing. I’m lucky I did.” I announced casually. Abraham looked up from his paper and proceeded to tell me that my story was incredible and that the whole world is starving without it. Blushing, I thanked him purposely before ending the meal.

We said goodbye to Leah before Abraham and I headed off to school. We arrived and he gave me a kiss on the head and walked into his office as I walked to the homeroom. I heard his voice on the announcements a few minutes later and a smile stretched across my face.

Having him there made things a bit easier. He was protective; he made sure all of my teachers knew to send me to the nurse or his office if I was getting flashbacks. Every so often I pictured the blood, the explicitness, the horror. Not as often as I did. The writing was a band-aid. It healed different parts, for a short period of time, then I would bleed again until I found a new band-aid. A new chapter. A new idea. The wound would be covered again until it wasn’t. It was a draining loop. But I was breathing in and out, I had a functioning body. I was managing.

Overall, I liked Haifa. It was never going to compare to Jerusalem; so much of my heart was there. It still is. Haifa was a shiny new doll, and it felt like it was the toolbox to fix broken toys. Leah and Abraham were truly wonderful; they swooped me in like bears finding their long-lost cubs, but they were always in my life. Being former next-door neighbors I saw them around all the time. They were ingrained in every part of my memory. Being in their care makes sense. Not much in this world makes sense. My new found family does.

They found a therapist for me who specializes in childhood and adolescent trauma disorders. I have no problem admitting my intense doubt surrounding this idea. I just wasn’t sure there was anything in the “How to Be a Trauma Psychologist” textbooks about terrorist abductions and sexual abuse both on you and also others that you were forced to watch. Over and over again. While trapped in a room with no light. I physically could not see other hearts beating. Best believe, I was drowning in hesitation. However, once I began writing I decided to give it a try. I didn’t have much to lose. It was all already lost.

Turns out, my therapist was a ray of sunshine. And no, I don’t just say that because of her obsession and utter fascination with collecting objects that had the sun with a smiley face on them and the color yellow. She really was the child of the sun. Every appointment, her “sunshine”iness got more tolerable. At first, a bubbly, enthusiastic and constant promoter of life was the last person I wanted to be sitting on a couch across from for fifty minutes. But I’d like to think that over time I found her demeanor refreshing. She was living proof of something I had been shielded from. She was good. Aside from Leah and Abraham, my therapist was a weekly reminder that good people still exist. We just have to tend to them. And keep them close. We talked a lot about manifestation. The focus creates the attraction. The ambition creates the result. I had to manifest a positive future ahead and then go make one for myself.

“Here’s what you need to know about trauma,” she began to say during one of our first sessions in her nasally and passionate voice. “It can either be a guide or a reason to hide.” Keeping in tradition with the sun, she smiled and continued when my confusion seemed to be obvious on my face.

“Think about how the Earth rotates around the Sun. The Sun is its guide. It’s the center point for the Earth to know what it has to spin around. Your trauma can be your sun. Let it be the thing that takes you by the hand and leads you forward.”

That all made sense, except for one thing. Him. I would wake up in the middle of the night and could feel my walls screaming ‘Isaac!’ at me. I felt so stuck, so confused, so afraid because I clearly knew nothing about myself. I wasn’t sure why he stuck with me so much. He was just a boy, after all. I had seen millions of other people just like him throughout my life. I’d ask myself over and over again: “why him?”

“Why do you think it’s him?” My therapist asked me, scooting her Rolly chair closer to me. Her skirt with Mandela suns had gotten caught on one of the wheels. And because I didn’t know the answer to the question she had just asked, I decided to focus on that instead.

“Rebecca, you’ve been staring at the floor for two minutes.” I leaned back on the sofa and grabbed my favorite sun pillow to hold in my lap.

“I don’t know why it’s him. I mean, yeah, sure, we got close, I guess.”

“You guess?” I let go of the hair strand I had been fiddling with for the entirety of the appointment and after seeing his youthful and innocent face that I had seen right before he died in my lap appear in thousands around the room, I had my answer.

“No, we were really close. And I was with him when he died, and we both made each other promises and ever since he died, I felt like I was living for the both of us and seeing his death and body being dragged away I felt I had this mission to let his birth parents know who he was because he was an orphan and–”

Suddenly, I looked up, and my therapist was nodding with her fingers on her chin. After a deep inhale in, and some scribbled notes she took in her bright yellow “Sunshine Vibes” notebook, she leaned in.

“I think you just uncovered the truth: you are now living for two people, meaning you have to carry out both of your wishes. Does that seem correct?” I nodded my head rhythmically before she spoke again. Somehow, we both just discovered who I am and consequently that now included Isaac.

“It sounds to me like you need closure for your own personal trauma, and for him. Now, like we talked about, trauma is the sun. But what can your closure be? It has to be something freeing, something that opens new portals and possibilities for you once it’s found.” I glanced up from the pillow’s loose stitches and immediately had my answer.

“He was my shooting star that shone brighter than anything else in the sky.”

“Closure is a shooting star.” A smile emerged onto her face and for the first time, I hadn’t noticed our appointment was over. I went home that evening and opened a new Google document, adjacent to my plethora of drafts that filled the rest of my drive. It loaded up, revealing a blank white page. Canvas, I called them. I clicked the mouse on the document to type.

“Let trauma be the sun.”

Instantaneously, I saw his face. Youthful, doe-eyed, and gone, Part of my journey to closure would have to include him. He was tugging at my heart with a loose rubber band, and until I avenge him the pain will only worsen. I swung my laptop open and let my hands run wild. I snuck back into my body and gazed upon the screen. I created a new window and repeated the process for about fifteen other websites and typed his name into every single search bar. Each form was filled out with meticulous effort.

I then got up from my desk and watched the sunset. I never did that. And it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The array of orange blended ever so closely with a now muted pink formulating a tannish yellow that peered around the sun’s blinding face.

“Hope,” it whispered. “This is hope.”

Seven:

My cheese and crackers’ presence on my plate after having sat there for almost fifty-five minutes showcases the amount that I talked during that time. My mouth was too busy speaking to chew. The thirst in my throat was not a nuisance. I'm glad it was there. It showed that I was being productive. The staples on the packets I brought were more necessary than I predicted them to be. Jacob resorted to ripping measures when he didn’t seem to like what he saw written on the first page.

They passed everything back and forth between the two of them and then repeated it again for it all to sink in, I suppose. There were creases and tears on almost every sheet. I really should have bought sheet protectors. It would have avoided this situation and made me look more professional.

“This was the place that I could find that matched the documents.” I began to kill the sound of crickets. I knew they were skeptical; and I also knew that I was springing this on them unexpectedly. I can understand someone not thinking fondly of a new person digging around their business. So, the disapproving looks glaring at me from a wall with beautiful French paintings and violets in a decorative motif vase was not at all surprising. Although, I could sense some aspect of appreciation. It was small and foreign, but it was there.

Now that I’ve seen their faces, and with that his, the first tackle is done. The second is the present. The one that sticks longer. Honestly, I shouldn’t be as nervous as I am.

I mean after all, we’re family.

Ambuscade

Chapter Twenty:

My right hand was moving the cursor back and forth as it hovered over the “Hativka Families” website and my left hand kept smoothing out the birth certificate even though it had no creases or wrinkles.

Getting it was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. I walked into just about every hospital I could find and asked for an Issac saying that he was my brother. And if they didn’t budge, I played my hostage card. I’d say that’s the one perk. I was so relieved when I finally got it, yet I noticed something very interesting. His last name was the same as mine. I sprinted home and made sure the wind didn’t take the certificate from me. Luckily, around halfway home I was overcome with exhaustion so it didn’t fly away.

I tapped my feet and my fingers back and forth until I finally clicked on their phone number. The call was around two hours and once I hung up, I had arranged three meetings with a board member of the Hatikvah Project. Through each meeting, we’d work together to uncover more about Issac and essentially find his birth parents. I also stressed the importance of figuring out any personal family lineage to him.

Before that, I inquired about an “Issac” to all of the Israeli adoption agencies and orphanages that came up in my Google search. Hearing a “Shalom” over the phone after not hearing it for years was a bit of an awakening experience. Between that, school, my college essay and itching for a writing project, my life was more jam-packed than I could have ever imagined possible again. I had begun a collection of short stories about a character who floated in the back of my mind for some time, but I couldn’t find that sense of release that I desperately wanted and craved. I knew I would have to get autobiographical.

Feeling the safest possible at school, I was thoroughly engaged in Mrs. Roseman’s class and filled with serenity as she closed the class the same way she always did; “The Fancy Schmancy Word of the Day.” Some of my personal favorites were “prodigious,” “cultivation,” “miniscule,” and “fragmentation.” My body filled with anticipation as she marched proudly over to her glittery-bordered whiteboard with the vocabulary segment’s title written in elegant cursive at the very top. She picked up a marker and wrote the word, just as my brain formed a flashback.

“Ambuscade: an old Latin word that loosely translates to a sudden ambush” the board read. My eyes shut violently out of instinct, and immediately the massacre was in front of me.

The grape juice in the Kiddush cup sat still from last night’s dinner. Papa never liked to pour it down the drain. Our family’s ritualistic morning started with the humming of the fridge wide open while Mama made everyone’s lunches. Nothing with loud wrappers, of course. Nothing that could draw attention.

“Get down! Cover your heads! Run! Hide!”

“Rebecca?

“Mom? Dad?

“Who are you? What are you going to do with that pipe–” BANG.

I guess I wasn’t aware of where I was or what I was doing, because when I opened my eyes, I felt Mrs. Roseman’s cold yet soothing metal ring as her hand grazed my shoulder. My throat gave out, and I realized I had been wailing from the memory through the entirety of the flashback. My classmates were all expressing different emotions. Some were staring right at me, others were doing their best to look down and not seem affected, and others might have actually been oblivious. Blotchy verbal comforts and the bell ringing took up the next five minutes before everyone was dismissed. But me.

“Rebecca, I am so sorry. That was insensitive of me. I should have thought through using that word more clearly and it didn’t even cross my mind just how close to home it must have been for you.” Mrs. Roseman was now sitting in front of my desk as her voice echoed in the empty classroom. Her hand was on my knee; in any other situation this might have been considered weird or even inappropriate, but this was her, and this was me. She became a vital source of serenity in my life. I sniffled and reassured her.

“No, no. It’s okay. In fact, I’m kinda glad you did it, weirdly enough.” She eyed me with her most puzzled expression to date.

“I think I have a title.”

...

The email was in front of me. One click, and I’d know who they are. I was at my final meeting with the Hatikvah advisor, who was very helpful and even connected with me. One of his cousins was at the music festival on October 7th and was tragically murdered. He and I discussed it a lot, and I ended up finding so much solace in it. It’s funny how terrorism can create bonds.

At this final meeting, Leah and Abraham were there as well. They wanted to come to the others, but I told them I needed to do this. But since today was the day I’d find out who his parents are, they insisted on coming for my support. I could tell something was bothering Leah; she was acting on edge the entire time. I had shown them the birth certificate, and when she saw our last names matched it did something to her. I tried to ask her, but she deflected. I feared that she knew something I didn’t. And that I was about to find out what it was.

The mouse on the office table only needed to be clicked once in order to be activated, but out of habit and nerves, I clicked it approximately six or seven times while the screen took 483 years to load. The wheel signaling the screen’s impending load stopped with a massive tug on my lungs.

Prospect Name: Isaac Solomon Levenitz Schultzberg

Father: Jacob Samuel Schultzberg

Mother: Sarah Esther Levenitz Schultzberg

My mouth hung open as the four of us stared at the screen with wide eyes. I didn’t even move a muscle but closed my mouth slightly to ask a question.

“Leah, is there anything you wanna tell me?” my hands could not move. Leah stayed completely still while she answered me.

“No, Rebecca. You’ll want to ask your aunt and uncle about that.”

Eight:

“Aunt Rachel, Uncle Jacob, have you finished reading?” Two sets of wet and emotionally exhausted eyes gazed into mine. This moment felt similar to the one when they first sat down. Only I felt freedom. I felt a little freer each day. I would never fully get back to where I was.

I sat back and carefully watched the realization sweep over their faces. Especially hers. It was incredible. One moment, she was the furthest thing from someone I knew. Now, I saw my mother’s essence throughout every inch of her being.

I then opened the packet to a page with more elaborate details I found from Facebook and other various platforms surrounding my aunt, along with Mama’s diaries that included telling’s of her sister. I opened up to the other set of tabbed pages; these were frail and thin from withering time, and also from my tears splashing onto them while reading for the first time. I had attempted to cover all of the pages in water so they’d at least look the same, but the parchment-like material of the aged paper made that nearly impossible.

“My mother, your sister, admired you so unconditionally. She would tell me stories of you and her running through your parents’ house barefoot and not thinking about any negative outcomes. Or how you guys would cover for the other if one of you got into trouble. She said that you taught each other how to be women because your mother was constantly working. So, when you left, she was just unfathomably devastated.” I saw Aunt Rachel’s head look down with nodding and shaking happening together. She most definitely knew the next thing out of my mouth, so I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to and frankly neither did she.

“I didn’t want to leave. Not even a little bit. I was running away from everything that I knew and everyone that I loved, especially your mother.” Immediately my eyes jolted downward towards the floor. I couldn’t sob until she was at least done with her speech.

“I had a wonderful life. I was a great student and had lots of friends. And I was on a strong career path. Then, things changed.” She put her entwined hand with his on the table.

“We had been seeing each other for a while and were planning on telling our parents. But then, Issac...surprised us. We were terrified when we found out. We were just kids, Rebecca. We knew we couldn’t keep the baby, but if we stayed in Jerusalem, eventually our parents would find out that he was ours. So, we had to leave. We moved to Haifa, and once I gave birth to him, we sent him to a foster care system in Haifa. We were told he would be taken good care of. We hoped we’d get to see him. But we never heard from the orphanage. They promised us that they’d reach out. We didn’t even know if he was alive. That’s why we were so quick to respond when you contacted us. We figured you were affiliated with the orphanage and knew Issac. But now...” a loud sniffle exited her nose just as Jacob’s hand softly stroked her lower back.

“I see her in you,” she cried. I was now embracing my tears, both happy and sad, and looking right into the eyes of my aunt.

“In fact, somehow, I see him as well. I’m not entirely sure how, but I see your love for him in your eyes. Thank you, for showing him something that we never could.” She took her vacant hand and once again wrapped it around my still sweaty palm. It was the only way my body could regulate itself through the diversity of the past hour’s emotions. It was an afternoon full of ambuscades. But the kind that ends in love. I vow to become more familiar with those types. The world should take that vow as well.

Ambuscade

Chapter Thirty-Five:

Five years later

I put on the best dress I could find in my closet. I desperately wanted to steal one of my roommate’s options; her closet was much more extensive than mine, but I was running out of time. Panic started to rise in my volcanic stomach like lava. Stumbling into a pair of cheap heels that were scratched beyond comparison, I hustled out of the door. I wasn’t going to be late to a reading. My reading. The building sang hello to me in a very intimidating way. I paused in front of the door when I saw a poster that was posted on a bulletin board. “Hitler was right all along!” it read with a generous helping of Swastikas drawn on the edges of the paper as a border. How artistic. The pain in my chest was difficult to shove down, but I was too determined for perfection to hear what it had to say.

The doors to the lobby swung open leaving room for me to step inside. I was overcome with an uncomfortably familiar sense of numbness when the students and faculty trickled into the hall and took their seats. I didn’t need to be numb. These people didn’t want to kill me. They wanted to hear the words I wrote. I stood idle in the corner to the left of the podium, rocking back and forth on my feet like a toddler on a seesaw. My body was still tense, I was trying to make my way towards serenity. Then, I saw Mrs. Roseman. She made her way over to me from the other side of the room and pulled me in for a hug. I owed her a lifetime. She gave me the strength to write a book that I’m reading for the rest of my college. Tonight.

“I’m so unbelievably proud of you,” she whispered into my ear that was covered mostly by my half pinned-up hair. If I cried, it would ruin my makeup, and I didn’t have waterproof mascara. That was another thing I wanted to steal from my roommate. I resorted to hugging her for another minute or so, then when she released me, I looked her in the eyes and said

“Thank you.” Her cheeks now puddles, she walked to her seat and took it.  I grabbed the book from my purse and walked up to the podium. My muscles began to tremble as I stepped on the stool and pulled the microphone closer to my mouth. The room became quiet, waiting for me to speak. I took an aerial view of those sitting in front of me, as well as the sun, which I had grown to be very connected and interested in. Then, I registered the sight of what was in my hands. I softly ran my fingers over the glossy cover with a design that I fully crafted.

“Ambuscade’” is spelled across the top.

My body could feel love looking at me, so when I lifted my head to see the front row, Leah and Abraham hove into view. Tears streaming down her face, pride gleaming off of his, while the sunlight shining through heaven as my mother and father reminded me that they were there. I could feel Isaac's soft hair pressed against me, making my arms pulse with memory. I had been in contact with his parents, and through stalking their joint FaceBook page along with going on a deep dive through any and all records I could find of the two, I discovered that not only are they his parents but a lot closer to me than I thought.

When I let it all in, when I felt it all, when I let it become a guide as bright as the sun, I opened the front page and read the dedication. Once I read off my mother’s name, my father’s name, and the little boy’s name, I turned to the next page and read the author’s note.

“To this day, I don't have a lot of words to categorize the past few years. I lost so much and gained so much all around the same time, and writing this almost seemed like a requirement for me to cope. Having gone through the experiences that I have, many of my perceptions have been altered. I’ve learned that evil truly does exist, and evil people are extremely powerful. When I was in the hands of evil, I knew I was because I am Israeli and Jewish. Proudly. But the world is being taught to think that all Jews, worldwide, correlate with, and are responsible for, the actions and perpetrations of Israel. Not that this is anything new, but the circumstances I underwent and still continue to endure even years later further prove that it isn’t very common to be awarded a medal as a Jew. Which is the very mentality I hope to change with this book. When you hear my story, I want you to hear it from an Israeli woman who was captured by terrorists, and yet never heard conversations about them; the men who abducted her; the men who sexually abused her; the men who glorified death for twelve weeks in her ear; the men who built underground tunnels to manipulate the citizens of Gaza; the men who told Palestinians to go to certain places for shelter, knowing they would soon get blown up. Where they’d be sentenced to death. By Hamas. But, no one talks about that. No one puts that in a headline. Innocent people are being killed. I say to all of humankind: that is never okay. Whoever they were or wherever they came from, it’s all the same amount of sickening. My heart and soul goes out to the families suffering from the worst kind of loss there is. Though I have heavy amounts of gratitude for my life and safety, hundreds of thousands of Gazan civilians no longer have the ability to count their blessings. If we advance down this path, it will only lead to humanity’s decline. I urge that you will not stand for language of inequality, or the banishment of those whose indifferences scare the ignorant. I am not the only one. I have been freed, but the celebration is far too ripe to enjoy. Stand with those who want peace. Use your voice for peace. I used mine to tell my story. My wish is that you use your voice to tell yours.”