In Six Hours ... the world changed

Chapter 6 - Manhattan, New York City, 2014

Aaron Levine – Shaul’s father – accelerated slightly as the red light ahead changed to green. Beside him his wife of forty five years, Leah, was chatting excitedly about their coming holiday in Florida. They preferred to drive there these days – air travel had become much too difficult and uncomfortable.   

They never even saw the truck that hit their car full tilt from the right, running the red light. Leah died instantly. Aaron, already in a deep coma by the time the emergency crew extricated him from the vehicle, died a few hours later in the hospital.

* * *

Shaul meditated on that sad event as he turned the key in the complicated security lock of his parent’s former apartment in the old brownstone building they had owned in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The Army had flown him back in time for the funeral and then given him some leave to recover from the trauma of losing both parents at once. It meant that essentially, his tour of duty in Afghanistan was over. 

He, his brother and other members of their family and friends, had paid their last respects to his parents at the Riverside Memorial Chapel, on West 76th Street, not far from their Manhattan apartment. Shaul now had custody of both their ashes which, he and his brother had agreed, he would soon arrange to have buried in Israel.

Four weeks later, Brandon and Micky had also returned, having finished their tour in Afghanistan and had arranged to meet up with Shaul in New York. They had drunk a few pints and commiserated with him on the loss of his parents, but eventually Brandon had to go back to his family in Raleigh, South Carolina, and the possibility of a job with his friend there. 

Mickey Devlin had stayed on for a few more days but he also had now returned to Boston and his family there. Mickey was insure about his future – thinking maybe of doing a university degree. But as his family owned a large pub in Boston he always had the option of working there in the meantime. Having now left the Army, Shaul had not yet decided what he was going to do next. 

The apartment was dust-free and tidy – courtesy of the cleaning service hired by his brother, Reuben. But there was still a lingering scent of leather, his father’s pipe tobacco and furniture polish.

On the lounge wall hung a photograph of his parents in their forties, looking fresh and suntanned, while on holiday in Florida. He remembered how his father regularly talked of ‘next year in Jerusalem’ – they had always intended to visit Israel – but somehow it had never happened. And now, of course, it was too late.  

Shaul suspected that his parents, like many American Jews, had thought of Israel as some kind of special Jewish museum, an experiment, to prove that such a thing was possible. They certainly had little idea of what day to day life in Israel was like and the idea of making aliyah was totally beyond their understanding. After all, life was too good, too comfortable, in America.

Shaul, brought up in this atmosphere, wondered why he had never considered these things before. His brother was focussed on ‘making a living’ – the business of making money. He himself had joined the military as a means of breaking out of the Jewish stereotype and seeing the world.

Well, he had seen one bit of it, Afghanistan. And what had he learned from it? His mind drifted back to the conversations they’d had with Brandon Thomas. Brandon, a black southerner, seemed to know more about Israel and the Jews than he, a New York Jew, did. Well, his interest had certainly now been awakened.  

Shaul opened up his dad’s Mac laptop and went to Google Maps, looking first at Afghanistan and Pakistan, then Kashmir, then he searched for the Mizoram and Manipur provinces of India. Finally, he scanned across Africa, from Nigeria, to Zimbabwe and South Africa.  Could all these disparate peoples really be fellow Israelites?