Esther’s hand raced over the paper as if the colored pencils might be snatched from her, the quivering inside her wild, foreign, thrilling. The secrets of the colors had been near her all the time, wrapped around one another like newborn kittens, but she didn’t know that “blue” was actually seven distinct shades, each with its own name—azure, Prussian, cobalt, cerulean, sapphire, indigo, lapis. She pressed the waxy Prussian pencil on the paper, amazed at the emerging hues: the shadow breaking in the arched stone window was cobalt; the ornaments curving on the Armenian vase on the windowsill were lapis; the purplish contours of the Jerusalem mountains were shrouded by indigo evening clouds. In this stolen hour at Mademoiselle Thibaux’s dining room, she could draw and not be scolded for committing the sin of idleness, Yishmor Hashem. 

            A baby lizard popped up on the windowsill and scanned the room with staccato movements until it held Esther’s gaze. Her fingers moving in a frenzy, she drew the lizard’s raised body, its tilted head, its dark orbs focused on her. She studied the translucency of the skin. How did God paint fragility in a valiant creature that kept kitchens free of roaches? She picked up the gray pencil and traced the fine scales. They lay flat, colorless. She tried the lightest brown to bring life to her sketch—

            Her hand froze. What was she thinking? A lizard was an idol, the kind pagans worshipped. God knew, at every second, what every Jew was doing for His name. He observed her now, making this graven image, explicitly forbidden in the Second Commandment. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

            With a jerk of its head, the lizard darted away. Esther stared at the paper, her hand in midair. She had never imagined a sin like this; she couldn't stop it, and she feared what was still to come, as vivid pictures crowded her head: a fierce Turkish policeman with a red fez sitting on his Arabian horse; a barren woman sobbing at the Wailing Wall; the shochet in his blood-stained apron holding the feet of a chicken he was about to slaughter; an Arab shepherd on a rocky hillside playing the flute to his herd. But each image—horse, chicken, rock, sheep—was God’s creation and a graven image. Man had been created in His image and was specifically forbidden to portray by the very First Commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

            Mlle Thibaux walked in from the kitchen nook, smiling. Her skin was smooth, luminous, and her brown hair uncovered, its coquettish ripples pinned by twin tortoiseshell combs. She picked up Esther’s drawing and examined it. “C’est merveillie! Quel talent!”

            Esther blushed. The praise reflected what Mlle Thibaux's eyes had revealed that morning in sixth-grade French class when she caught her doodling. To Esther’s consternation, her teacher must have detected the insects hidden inside the branches and leaves because she turned the page this way and that, and her eyes widened. She then asked her to stay after school, and Esther was certain she would be ordered to conjugate the verb “to be” hundreds of times on the blackboard. Je suis, tu est, il est, elle est—. Instead, Mlle Thibaux invited her to her apartment at the Hospice Saint Vincent de Paul, a palace-like building with arch-fronted wings, carved colonnade verandas and balustrated stairwells. The teacher was a shiksa, a gentile. Newly arrived from Paris, she probably didn’t know that while it wasn’t forbidden in Esther's ultra-Orthodox community to decorate with flourish letters and ornamental shapes, drawing God’s creatures was another matter.

            Now, holding Esther’s drawing, Mlle Thibaux smiled. “Here, try mixing these two colors.” On a separate page, she sketched a few irregular lines with a pink pencil, then scattered some short leaf-green lines in between.

            Esther chewed the end of her braid. Fear of God had been instilled in her with her mother’s milk. Any urge, His Torah pronounced, must be suppressed, and the quickening traveling through her again proved that what she was doing was forbidden. Her mother said that Esther's harshest punishment for sinning would be failure to become betrothed at twelve, as every good Jerusalem maiden should upon entering her mitzvah age. But as Mlle Thibaux handed her the pink and green pencils, Esther silently prayed for God’s forgiveness and recreated the hues inside the lizard’s scales. To her astonishment, they blended as a translucent skin—of an idol! No wonder she had been warned against being contaminated by “others”—gentiles or even Jews who hadn’t made the strictest adherence to God’s six-hundred-and-thirteen decrees their sole purpose in life, as Esther was reminded several times a day.

            Her back erect and proud as no woman’s Esther had ever known, Mlle Thibaux returned to the kitchen nook. Outside, slicing off the top of the Tower of David, a navy-blue sky hung low on the horizon like a wedding chupah with a ribbon of magenta underlining it. A flock of sparrows jostled for footing in the date palm tree, then rose in a triangular lace shawl formation before settling again.

            As Esther collected the pencils into their tin box, the warm smell of caramelized sugar made her hungry for tonight’s dinner, a leftover challah dipped in milk, fried in egg, and sprinkled with sugar. Closing the pencil box, her hand traced its scene of a boulevard in Paris, lined with outdoor cafés and their dainty, white, wrought iron chairs. Women wearing elegant hats and carrying parasols looped their arms in men’s holding walking sticks, and the open immodesty of the gesture both shocked and made something inside Esther tingle. In Jerusalem, only Arab men, dressed in their striped pajamas, lazed on low stools in the sook and played backgammon from sunrise to sunset and, their eyes glazed over, sucked the mouthpieces of hoses coiled around boiling tobacco nargilot. Esther would ask Mlle Thibaux about Paris. She’d never known a girl who traveled, but when she had been little, her father, her Aba, apprenticed at a bank in America. It was a disastrous exposure to “others,” her mother, her Ima said, because it filled his head with reprehensible new ideas, almost as bad as the simpleton Hassids’.

            “Chérie, will you light the candles?” Mlle Thibaux walked in and placed a silver tea set on a spindle table covered with a crocheted napkin. The high collar of her blouse was stiff over starched pleats running down the front to a cinched waist, but her long skirt immodestly hinted at legs. Had she ever walked in Paris with a man, daring to loop her arm in his? Mlle Thibaux smiled. “It’s four o’clock—” 

            Four o’clock? Esther's hand rose to her throat. Her mother, her Ima, who expected her to head home right after classes for hours of chores, had been laboring alone while Esther was indolent. “I must go home—”  

            Mlle Thibaux pointed to a plate with slices of cake sprinkled with shaved almond and cinnamon. “It’s kosher.”

            “No, Merci. The neighborhood gates will get locked for the night.” With saliva gathering in Esther's mouth, she gathered her long plaid skirt and backed toward the door. She had never tasted a French cake; it had been ages since she had tasted any cake. But Mlle Thibaux's kitchen was traife, non-kosher. Esther wouldn’t add another sin to her list. “Merci beaucoup!”

            Out of the apartment, down the two flights of steps, and across the stone-paved yard to the street facing the Jaffa Gate that gaped in the Old City wall, she ran. Restless birds chirped in desperation to find shelter for the night. Wind rustled the tops of the tall cypresses and whipped dry leaves into a spin. Maybe it would rain soon, replenishing the cistern under her house.

            Running north, her legs pumped, and her sandals thumped on the cobblestones. At least she wasn’t barefoot; until summer ended a few weeks ago, she only put on her sandals on at the gate to the Evelina de Rothschild school. She leaped over foot-wide sewage channels dug in the center of the alleys. Then there was the open hill with only rocks and scattered dry bushes flanking the dirt path grooved by men, carts and beasts. She listened for sounds beyond the trilling of crickets and the buzzing of mosquitoes. In the descending darkness, a Jewish girl might be murdered by an Arab, or worse, dishonored by a Turkish soldier. Just on the next hill, her grandfather had been assassinated while inspecting land he purchased for the first Jewish neighborhood outside the Old City.

            A scruffy black dog stood on a rock. It growled and exposed yellow-gray teeth. When Esther swerved out of the path, it gave chase. She screamed, running faster, the dog barking behind her. She grabbed the hem of her skirt, and her feet pounded on rocks, twisting, stumbling. The barking grew louder, closer. If she tripped, she’d die. Dogs were despicable creatures; they carried diseases that made people insane. Now that Jerusalemites ate even scraps of food formerly discarded, hungry dogs bit people. The Turkish policemen killed dogs on sight.

            Was that the dog’s breath on her heels? She gulped air. Her wet cheeks were cold in the rush of wind. A blister burned the sole of her foot. Wet. Sticky. The dog must smell her sweat, her fear. She couldn't outrun it. Her punishment for drawing idols came so soon! It never occurred to her that there could be a fate worse than not finding a groom as Ima threatened. Not finding a groom sounded like a blessing.

            Cold pain sliced Esther's rib cage, and her breathing labored. This was her end. She could run no more. She stopped. Whirling, she faced the dog, exposed her teeth and snarled. Once, twice. She arched her back and waved her arms like the mad girl she’d become if it bit her. Her eyes wide, she snarled louder.

            To her amazement, the beast halted. Its rheumy eyes homed in on her from under a groveling brow. As in Joseph’s dream, the star bowed down to her, the sun. Another snarl rose from Esther’s chest, tearing her throat, and the animal backed off. It regarded her from a distance. She flailed her arms, and the dog tucked its tail and slunk away.

            Her heart still struggling to escape its confinement, Esther whispered a prayer of thanks and then fumbled for the amulet in her pocket to stave off the evil eye. Her pulse drummed in her ears. She broke into a trot. Five more minutes to Me’ah She’arim. Her thighs chafed at the top of her belted socks. She could barely get another breath in, but stopping wasn’t an option. Wicked winds—worse than dogs—gusted in search of a soul deserving punishment, one that had defied God, whom she couldn’t stare down.   

CHAPTER 2          

            About to enter the tiny kitchen yard of her home, she was startled by a movement in the shadow. It was common knowledge that Lilith the ghost stalked the night. Or it could be the robbers Ima fretted about, or the Turks raiding the Jewish streets to kidnap boys for lifelong military service as Aba feared. A screech sounded far behind Esther as the rusty neighborhood iron gate was swung shut, when a figure stepped into the patch of yard illuminated by the last light of dusk. Her friend Ruthi.

            “You scared me,” Esther said in Yiddish, grabbing Ruthi's hand. “What happened?” She scanned the large rectangle of communal space created by rows of identical one- and two-room houses clinging together like a frightened herd of goats. Their back walls bordered the thoroughfare to form an impenetrable blockade. In the center, the yeshiva, the mikveh, the oven, the well, the laundry shed, and the outhouses were all dark and silent. Only the synagogue’s windows shone, where the silhouettes of praying men would continue to sway until the wee hours as they mourned the destruction of the Temple nineteen hundred years earlier. “Did someone die?” Esther asked. After the recent Day of Atonement, God might have struck a nursing mother—or a wicked man.

            “Did you take a ride in Elijah’s chariot?” A smile broke on Ruthi's face. “Guess what? I am going to be betrothed! Blessed be He.”

            “And I’m the rabbi marrying you,” Esther said in a ponderous tone and stroked an imaginary beard. Resuming her own posture, she motioned toward her kitchen yard and said, “Come in. I have work to do—”

            “Well?” Ruthi asked.

            “Well what? I’ll beat you at hopscotch tomorrow.” They kept a running tally, and that morning Ruthi had taken first place.

            “I can’t play. Not now that I’m an adult.”

            Esther watched the illumination of the rising moon on the delicate line of Ruthi's thin nose and heart-shaped mouth. Nothing would ever be just one tone anymore. Not even Ruthi’s clear skin, which Esther would highlight with lavender—

            “Well?” Ruthi demanded.

            No! The fact suddenly penetrated Esther’s head with clattering of neighbors’ pots and pans, cries of babies, scratching of furniture being dragged to make room for cots, and the angry thumping of Ima’s wooden clogs on the chiseled kitchen floor. “But, but… Miss Landau says we shouldn’t get married before fourteen, or even sixteen—”

            “That’s ridiculous. Name one girl in school who’s waited that long?”

            “I will.” By then she’d be old enough to fight any marriage Aba arranged.

            “My groom is a yeshiva boocher,” Ruthi gushed in a whisper.

            “All these religious scholars are afflicted with hemorrhoids from sitting on wooden benches all day and all night.”

            “I’m serious,” Ruthi said. “Marriage is important; I will hasten the Messiah’s arrival.”  

            The amulet in Esther's pocket felt cold. “You’ll work your fingers to the bone from dawn to midnight, you and the children starving, barefoot, and living off charity, while he studies—”

            Ruthi's eyes widened in shock. Esther knew that her utterings were blasphemy; Aba often explained that marriage was the community’s building block, especially in Jerusalem, the holiest of all cities, where a girl carried the promise of perpetuity for all Jews in the entire universe. But the subject of betrothal had never hit this close before. “I don’t want to be responsible for the future of all Jews,” Esther whispered.

            Ruthi stamped her foot. “Just say mazal tov.”

            A mosquito buzzed near Esther's head. “Who’s your groom?”

            “Yossel.” Ruthi’s tone turned dreamy. “I hear he’s handsome.”

            Yossel? Esther remembered a short boy with buckteeth. Ruthi was tall, as gentle as a reed by the Jordan River. Esther sometimes made her balance a jug on her head so she would move as gracefully as Rachel had when Jacob spotted her at the well.

            “Well? A thief stole your tongue?” Ruthi’s hands rested on her hips.

            In the kitchen yard several feet away, the snapping of sheets shaken off the line before the night mist would dampen them told Esther that her sister Hanna, a year younger than she, was taking over her neglected task. “His Ima owns a Judaica shop.” Esther shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Once, they came to see my Aba about money American relatives sent them.”

            “Nu?”

            “His teeth are like a shelf. You can dry garlic cloves on them—”

            Ruthi leaned into Esther’s face. “Jealousy is a sin! How can you speak such awful lies to me?”

            On top of the bookcase in the school library, Esther had found a book of Chekhov’s stories, a forbidden book permitted only to the secular girls. The knowledge that in Russia, male and female cousins played together, that men and women talked, fired her imagination. Men and women even “loved,” which meant that they walked with their arms touching, as she now knew they also did in Paris. “Let’s stroll on Shabbat between the Armenian monastery and Zion Gate,” Esther said. “Yossel might be there also, wanting to take a peek—”

            “It’s forbidden!”

            “Other betrothed couples take one little ankuken—”

            “—and ruin the brides’ reputations. Only grooms might sneak a peek.”

            “You must see him.” Perhaps the repulsive boy wasn't Yossel, but rather one of his brothers. Esther’s tone heated. “Maybe even talk to him.”

            Ruthi sniffed with the air of someone chosen for a great destiny. “That’s breaking the tzni’us decree. Immodest and unbefitting a virgin.”

            Ima's voice cut the air. “The night is as black as the Egyptian plague. Esther Kaminsky, is that you?”

            “I’m coming!” Esther gathered her skirt and ran inside.

            “Who were you talking to?” Ima asked. “A ghost? And where have you been? Who’s to do all your work around here? You want to kill me?”

            “Sorry. I’ll do all the mending tonight—” She was about to explain that the French teacher went over a lesson with her, but halted. The sin of lying was almost as bad as the sin she was covering up.

            “A day that passes without a misfortune is a miracle in heaven.” Ima batted down Esther's flyaway hair. Her body odor, of wine gone sour, mingled with the fumes of fried garlic and onion and the boiling compote of apricots, dates and figs. “Who would marry a wild girl who runs around in the streets? Go take care of the little ones. Make yourself useful until your wedding day.”

            Esther groaned.

            “What am I asking of you? To build the pyramids?” Ima muttered.

            Esther stepped to the parlor, where at the far end of the table her two older brothers bent over their holy books. Behind them, the top of the mahogany rolltop desk that served as Aba’s bank was lowered, his business locked for the evening. Now that God had revealed to Esther the wonders of His mysterious shapes and colors, she wanted to draw the cast of the six-armed kerosene lamp on the table and on her six siblings in the room. Forever she’d want to put on paper what her eyes saw. Except that Ruthi’s betrothal rang as a warning bell: it was only a prelude to her own. Both of them were destined to follow the path of Jerusalem maidens. Every week, the matchmaker spied by the lines behind the communal laundry shed, where the women hung their washed rags used for their monthly flow, for a sign that Esther was ready.

            “Are you idling again?” Ima called from the kitchen. “Hashem, why did You curse me with such a lazy daughter?”

            The four-year-old Gershon tugged on Ima’s apron. “Esther is good.” 

            She curled his reddish sidelocks. “We have a rabbi in the family!”

            “Let’s play Pharaoh’s daughter,” Esther told him, and assumed an Egyptian pose, with her elbows raised sideways, her head held rigidly to the right, and her wrists angled out. The toes of both feet facing right, she walked sideways, her six- and seven-year-old siblings imitating her, giggling. Her two older brothers stuck their fingers in their ears, not to be distracted from heavenly studies by earthly concerns. Their lips moved with their reading. Prancing by the sofa, Esther grabbed Ima’s silk shawl, the one worn on special occasions—indoors only so as not to defile modesty with vanity—and tied it around her chest, letting its tassels drag on the floor. “I’m the Princess of Egypt,” she chanted, circling the dining table. “Hanna, you’re Moses’ sister, who defies the mighty Pharaoh to save her baby brother from death.”

            “You’re disturbing your brothers’ studies with this racket,” Ima said, poking her head through the door. “Go do the ironing.”

            Flinging her braid in defiance, Esther dropped the shawl and grabbed a lantern and her school notebook. She went to the outhouse. The stench assaulted her nostrils. Blue-bellied flies flew in and out of the open hole, and thumb-size cockroaches scampered about. In the semidarkness, her feet dancing to keep the cockroaches from climbing up, she used her school pencil to transfer the family scene to paper. If only she owned colored pencils, she could capture the details of God’s magic. She had saved the grushim her aunts and uncles had given her for Chanukah; perhaps she could chance an after-school detour to the Old City sook to purchase a few colored pencils.

            When the custodian’s bell rang the end of the day, Esther ran up the hill across from school. The wind made her shiver, but this was only the start of winter; those who got accustomed to the cold early bore it better when it turned brutal. She surveyed the horizon, from Augusta Victoria pilgrim hospice on Mount Olive to Damascus Gate in the Old City Wall. Inside, adjacent to the Jewish Quarter, branched out the Byzantine Cardo, the ancient covered bazaar—a world of “others” filled with temptations unsuitable for the mind of a virgin.

            Yet, fifteen minutes later, she entered it amidst braying goats with ropes tied around their necks; trachoma-blinded beggars extending their open palms; squawking chickens hanging by their feet; and women in Levantine, ground-length dark dresses with rich embroidery, who balanced huge baskets on their heads. The merchandise in the small stores spilled onto the sidewalk, and the merchants announced their wares at the top of their lungs. Colors and movements and noise and flies and waves of smells both pleasing and foul filled the market. Esther skipped over the droppings of animals and wound her way around donkeys laden with sacks of vegetables and handcarts weighed down with earthenware jugs.

            In the alley leading to Plaza Kishlay, the location of the Ottoman police station, a rumble went through the crowd. Squeezing her way, Esther moved toward the action. Soon, the mass of people pressing forward carried her in its stream. She crossed her arms to reduce contact with bodies. There were more people now, all larger than she, all closing in on her. Sour odors of men and beasts permeated the air.

            Luckily, she managed to disentangle from the crowd at a store front lined with open sacks of colorful, aromatic spices. With no fresh food, fewer flies hovered about. She climbed on a barrel, and the view in the square opened up to her.

            Two Turkish policemen were flogging a man in a light blue shirt. Each time the end of a braided leather whip cut into his back, the man screamed and a gasp rose from the crowd. “Pity your hearts,” the man cried in Arabic. “Pity your hearts for a destitute man.” Blood streaked his sweat-stained shirt.

            “Poor man.” Esther covered her mouth in horror.

            “A thief. Better than chopping off his hand for a first offense,” the spice merchant said in Arabic, and she glanced at him. A wild look flickered in his eyes. “Second offense, not so lucky. Two hands.” The merchant’s fingers made a chopping gesture over his other wrist.

            Her expression must have shown her shock, because he chortled. “Third offense, hanging.”

            At another collective gasp from the crowd, she peeked through the gaps between her fingers. The dark-red stains on the thief’s shirt covered most of the blue. He sprawled on the ground, writhing, and his begging turned to a monotonous wail.

            Esther’s stomach tightened as a lemon.

            “Hey, you, girl! Don’t faint in here.” The spice merchant offered her taffy, but she shook her head. The candy had surely been cooked in a traife kitchen.

            “This?” He peeled sugarcane, chopped a section, then quartered it. Esther wiped her nose with her sleeve and accepted the stick. She chewed and sucked the juices. As the sweet flavor filled her mouth, the scene in front of her transformed. With the setting sun bathing the square in orange light, the Turkish policemen’s khaki uniforms and red fezzes, the thief’s bloodstained shirt, and the opened sacks of earth-colored spices, Esther lived inside an ochre-toned, movement-filled picture. Everything was so startlingly fresh, it felt as though an outside eye had been added to the two hundred and forty-eight body parts the Bible said she already possessed.

            The beating stopped. The man lay in the dust, motionless, except for an occasional jerking of his left leg. Two nuns in habits approached. If Esther blinked, the wonder of the picture might disappear. Would they carry him to one of their hospitals? Rumors claimed that miracles happened there, except that the Haredi rabbis excommunicated any Jew who accepted Christian charity—

            Suddenly, strong arms pulled Esther backward. She yelped, but a hand clapped her mouth. She was dragged into the darkness of the store. The aroma of spices thickened the condensed air. “No!” she wailed as she was pushed against the shelves of fruit cans, knocking her breathless.

            The spice merchant pinned her to the wall with one hand while the other yanked her cardigan open, popping buttons. She screamed. With one quick sweep, he gripped her neck like a vise, reached and lifted her skirt. His large body choked her. His underarm smothered her face. His pungent odor pervaded her head. He pumped and panted, and in the terror that seized Esther, she couldn’t think.

            “You Jewish whore,” he muttered. “Come on.”

            Fear exploded in her heart. He was strong and seized by some awful dybbuk. His fists pressed everywhere on her body at once: thigh, hip, chest. She gasped for air. Her weak pounding on his sides had no effect. His fingers shoved above her knitted stockings, pinching and bruising her flesh. Massive and smelly,  the beast moved hard against her. Esther tried to kick with legs pinned by its knees. She found her voice, but her scream “Ima,” came out muffled against hairy skin.

            “You’ve asked for it, little Yahud cunt.” The man’s lips, thick and wet, sucked on her neck like leeches.

            He’d suck her blood out! She bit wildly, teeth sinking into his arm. He let out a roar. Her teeth locked; if she let go, he’d kill her. Blood gushed into her mouth. He yanked her braid, nearly breaking her neck. Her jaw clenched tighter. He barked and staggered away. She clung to his arm by her teeth as a leaf to a branch in a storm.

            “Your mother’s cunt!” he screamed in Arabic, trying to shake her off. “You whore!”

            Painfully shut, her jaw was no longer subject to her will. He threw punches at her. Then there was a commotion, shuffling of feet. Fingers forced her jaws apart and her body was hurled onto a sack of ground cumin. The greenish spice flew up in a cloud, assaulting her eyes and nose and burning her lungs. She sneezed and coughed. “Ima—” Her cry was cut as she was tossed through the air, landing in the gutter so hard she could feel the rattling of her bones. A series of groans tore from inside her.

            “This Jewess has made a mockery of you,” one Arab shouted. “Look how she’s destroyed the store,” said another and kicked her.

            At the blow, white pain made her body contract. She would die now, for sure. “Hashem, help me,” she cried.

            The spice merchant continued howling.

            More voices spoke. “You’re bleeding like a slaughtered goat.” “We must teach the Yahud a lesson. The infidels.” Then there were too many voices for her to distinguish words.

            Pain radiated from all of her limbs, and her eyes were on fire. She spat out the merchant’s flesh. Blood coated her tongue and the roof of her mouth. She gagged. Her thighs were exposed in the torn skirt, breaking the tzni’us decree. Something scampered up her arm. A mouse believing her dead! She jerked her hand, but the movement only hurled the creature onto her exposed thigh before it scrambled off. Her skin shrank in disgust, yet she felt something, which meant she was still alive. Her stomach heaved, but nothing came up.

            Her eyes stung, and she couldn’t open them. She was blinded like Zedekiah, the last king of Jerusalem! She tugged the ripped hem to cover her legs. Pushing herself up to her knees, she was surprised that her arms obeyed. Another kick sent her down again, and a white-hot pick seared her rib cage. She could barely breathe. “Ima, Aba, Hashem,” she wept. These men would kill her and no one would know she had ever been here. “Ima, Aba, Hashem—”