Meet our Guest Editors for Issue 179, Jul-Sept 2020

(Submissions open January 1 - March 31 at Submittable)

Poems from the First Three Poetry Collections in Press 53’s new Immersion Poetry Series edited by Christopher Forrest

Revelation: An Apocalypse in Fifty-Eight Fights by Andrew Rihn

Revelation: An Apocalypse in Fifty-Eight Fights by Andrew Rihn uses 100-word prose poems to immerse us into the fifty-eight professional fights of Mike Tyson. The voice of an Old Testament prophet shines through the fight commentary, and relates Tyson to a modern-day Elijah—climbing the mountain to do battle, and climbing back down to a world of depression, anxiety, and alienating silence. Rihn’s poems are masterfully crafted, and his language is stunning in its elegance.

Publication date: January 15, 2020

Pre-order here!

Tyson vs. Scaff

Dec 6, 1985

Felt Forum, New York City, New York, U.S.

The ring is a desert on smelted pillars where the devil is both loosed and contained. There is blood on the glove. Mike Tyson, thunderous and poised in the ring, remembers that soon he will have to climb back down again. The mountains of the poets shake and tremble and melt; apocalyptic mountains are spread with flesh. Salt and sulfur and sins like mist. Reflections of demons, echoed voices ricocheting off the backs of teeth. Every demon was once an angel, after all. Blessed opponent, salvage. This is how we think of the descent. This is also how we climb.

Drowning in the Floating World by Meg Eden

Drowning in the Floating World by Meg Eden immerses us into the Japanese natural disaster known as 3/11: the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Relentless as the disaster itself, Eden seizes control of our deepest emotional centers, and, through insightful perspective, holds us in consideration of loss, helplessness, upheaval, and, perhaps most stirring, what to make of, and do with, survival. Her collection is also a cultural education, sure to encourage further reading and research. Drowning in the Floating World is, itself, a tsunami stone—a warning beacon to remind us to learn from disaster and, in doing so, honor all that’s lost.

Publication date: March 11, 2020

Pre-order here

Okinawa Aquarium

Framed & mounted on the wall, a dolphin’s stomach, splayed.
Inside: plastic bags, bottle caps, condoms, broken
coke bottles, tampons, lighters, dentures, toys and bubble
wands. If God cut me open with a scalpel, what
would He find inside me? My beached body,
heavy with human gospel. Removing each piece from me,
God would say: I gave you so many trees to eat from.
I might say: I felt so full—even briefly, I thought I was really filled.

Hope of Stones by Anna Elkins

What might a sixteenth-century Spanish nun and an eighteenth-century French architect have in common? Saint Teresa of Ávila and Charles-Axel Guillaumot both left behind a mostly invisible legacy. Hers was a vision of the interior castle of the spirit within us. His was to save Paris from collapsing back into the quarries beneath it by building a support city belowground. Today, we can read of the realm The Nun built with her words, and we can visit a fraction of the realm The Architect built beneath Paris. Hope of Stones invites you into a cross-century conversation among The Nun, The Architect, and The Poet that explores the desire to create and connect across time and other unseen things.

Publication date: April 2020

The Architect Dines with Bread & Relics

Today, I ate inside the earth. One of the miners,
a former sailor from Brittany, shared his baguette
& oysters. He smiled & pulled a shell from his coat.
He held it out to me. I took it & turned its whorl
toward the lantern. Smiling, I said, “This is older than
the ones you’ve shucked for lunch.” The man nodded,
“From down here. This was once all water & fish.” He
swept his arm in front of us. “& now we bring creatures
of the sea back to what once was sea.” I looked up
at the rough ceiling. “& now a city above we keep
from sinking.” I looked down at my hands: bread
in one, fossil in the other. Given & lent in bones
of holding. I returned the relic & ate the bread.

The Dutiful Daughter

(1999)

by Julie Zuckerman
(from The Book of Jeremiah)

Hannah’s father spoke in a low voice, as if conveying a sensitive piece of intelligence, but her attention was on the view. They sat in the hotel lobby, where floor-to-ceiling windows offered a dazzling panorama of the Old City, its ancient limestone walls shimmering with the last orange and pink hues of Mediterranean sun. In the square outside Jaffa Gate, street vendors hawked elongated rings of bread coated in sesame seeds and za’atar. Hannah sipped lemonade with nana, the local version of spearmint. The tangy mix of sweet and sour joggled her taste buds, not unlike the entire sensory experience of being in Jerusalem this last week.

Hannah longed to relax after a long day of sightseeing, but Jeremiah, with his one-track mind, insisted on talking about work, rambling on about some colleague’s research on labor economics. They shared genes and a profession, but their similarities ended there.

He leaned over and tapped her knee, snapping her to attention. “I don’t want to worry her, see?”

Her could only mean one person—Hannah’s mother, napping upstairs before dinner. “Sorry, what?”

Jeremiah shook his finger, reprimanding her like a schoolgirl. “You! Stop daydreaming!”

“I wasn’t,” Hannah said, insistent. She hadn’t been thinking of anything in particular, taking in the scene outside Jaffa Gate with a mild sense of wonder and surprise. Surprise that at the age of forty-two, in the course of one week, she could develop feelings of attachment to a place she’d never been to before. She wasn’t a spiritual person or religious in the least—the choice of her non-Jewish spouse no better evidence—but the term that kept flipping over in her mind was metaphysical. Or maybe transcendental?

A shame she hadn’t pushed Tom harder to come. Though her parents had generously offered to bring the whole family to Israel, her husband said he couldn’t get out of teaching his summer session. Her kids cried when she told them that the trip would mean they’d have to miss wilderness camp in Maine, the highlight of their year, so she’d come alone.

“Listen up. She might come down any minute. This is important.” Her father repeated himself: the professor about whom he’d been speaking, a Palestinian political economist, had invited Jeremiah to come to Ramallah while he was here. “Your mother’s against it, but she’s not being rational.” His plan was to play sick on the day they were supposed to visit Molly’s cousins in Haifa later in the week; he’d abscond to Ramallah and then be back in Jerusalem before they were. His wife would be none the wiser. All Hannah had to do, he said, was make sure Molly didn’t cancel the visit on his account. One of the bellhops from East Jerusalem could help him find an Arab taxi to take him the thirty-minute drive to Ramallah; he’d already researched the whole thing.

Hannah was stunned. “Are you crazy?” She sat up, back rigid, and glared. “So not only are you going to lie to Mom, but you want me to lie as well?” Her seventy-two-year-old father could be infuriating, but she’d never thought of him as crafty. Wait until her brother heard this one.

He shrugged. “You don’t have to lie. Just don’t make a face when I mention my sciatica. Reassure her that you should go to Haifa anyway, how much she’s been looking forward to visiting with her cousins, yada, yada, yada.”

“Yada, yada, whatever! You’re crazy!” True, there’d been a few years of relative calm since the Oslo Accords, but tensions were always simmering in the West Bank, with individual stabbings and shootings on occasion. The latest analyses were predicting a second intifada if progress on the peace talks didn’t come soon.

“Listen, I researched it. Since I’m a tourist, I can enter Area A without a problem.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better? That if you were Israeli, it would be illegal, but since you’re a tourist, it’s fine?”

“Come on!” he argued. “Of all people, I thought you’d understand.” Some years ago, her father had been supportive when she’d contemplated traveling to the Somali border for her own research on nation-building. When the UN pulled out, making the interviews she’d planned impossible, she’d been awash with a shameful relief that the decision had been made for her.

“From an academic point of view, of course I get it. It’s just. . .”

“If I thought it was dangerous, I wouldn’t be going. You know as well as I do that the media at home makes things out to be much worse here then they really are.”

The thought of her father traveling alone to the West Bank, with no security, filled her with anxiety. What if. . .? But on the heels of this: a strong dose of liberal guilt at her gut reaction.

“You know your mother. She gets anxious for nothing. Remember how frantic she was when I was visiting Grandma during Hurricane Andrew and she couldn’t reach me because the phone lines were down?”

“I was worried too,” Hannah said, countering. She was like her mother in this way—like all mothers, everywhere?—her mind galloping to all the dangerous, worst-case scenarios whenever there was the slightest cause for concern.

“Look outside,” he said, arguing. “That’s normal, daily life here.” At dusk the street lights below Jaffa Gate appeared as little glowing orbs. Young tourists with oversized backpacks rested against storefronts advertising money changing. Locals with every manner of head covering interacted in the plaza: kippahs and khaffiyehs, Jewish and Arab women in headscarves, Armenian priests in square hats.

“I know. I get it.” She took a deep breath and tried to let her anxiety abate. Wasn’t the scene outside proof that 99% of the time, there was coexistence?

“Be reasonable, Hannah.” He looked away, tapping his foot and scrunching his cheek to one side. Her father’s persistence, his sheer will to get things done, had served him well in his career. An admirable quality, but there was a fine line between persistence and pigheaded stubbornness. When he got on his soapbox—whether the topic was personal (his mistreatment at the hand of his mother-in-law), communal (the PC police at his university), or political (campaign reform)—they had to endure a tiresome verbal barrage that made her want to shoot him.

“Nu, can I count on your help?”

“I’ll think about it.” He could be such baby at times; if he didn’t get to go to Ramallah, she’d never hear the end of it. She sighed. Why had she come on this trip again? Because living on two meager academic salaries didn’t allow for trips like this? Because she hadn’t explored her Jewish roots since the last time she stepped foot in Hebrew school, back in 8th grade? Nothing was free. Her father seemed to have no problem asking for her help with his scheme.

“Help you with what?” They hadn’t seen Molly emerge from the elevator and cross the lobby, but here she was.

“Oh, just talking shop. I was asking Hannah to help with a little research problem,” Jeremiah said. The deception sounded so natural, Hannah wondered how many other times he’d lied like this to her mother, or to her. His shoulders and hands flinched and his face jutted forward, imploring. Come on Hannah, play along. “Ready? I’m starving,” Jeremiah said.

“Why don’t you go to dinner without me?” Hannah said. She was hungry but said she wasn’t. “I’m just going to curl up with a book in my room. I’ll see you at breakfast.” Before her mother could protest, Hannah gave her a peck on the cheek and started for the elevator.

“What am I, chopped liver?” Jeremiah called.

She flicked a wave in his direction but didn’t glance back. “Laila tov!” The words sounded funny as they left her mouth. She was sure the pronunciation wasn’t quite right, but she was proud of herself for picking up this little bit of basic Hebrew. “See you in the morning.”

*

The next day Molly was on edge due to the heat; no one had cautioned them that a walking tour of the Western Wall excavations in July might be too much for her sixty-seven-year-old mother, who wore no sun hat. Hannah hailed a taxi, intending to ship her parents back to the hotel and carry on sightseeing, but her mother’s peaked face and her father’s crooked gait weighed on her. Filial duty called. With a sigh, she hopped into the front seat.

While her parents rested, she phoned Tom. “A bit exhausting, chaperoning my parents around the country,” she said. She couldn’t reasonably whine too much about her paid-for vacation when he was at home, teaching English composition to a cadre of summer students.

“I’m sure you can handle it.” When she asked him what he thought of her father’s scheme, Tom chuckled. “He’s a grown man, Han. Let him be.”

“God, sorry I asked!”

Dinner that night, at a Persian restaurant downtown, put everyone in better moods. They stuffed themselves with delicious flatbreads and salads, and Jeremiah couldn’t finish his generous portion of schnitzel, fried to golden perfection. They took their time meandering back to the hotel in the balmy night air. Jerusalem swarmed with groups of teenagers on trips from America. Halter-topped girls, shoulders brown from the Mediterranean sun, hugged friends and flirted with Modern Orthodox boys, fringes peeking out from under their Mets and Rangers T-shirts. A Russian émigré earned shekels from the crowd playing klezmer tunes on his violin, while down the block vendors of cheap jewelry and hair weaves competed for the teenagers’ attention. Years ago, Hannah’s parents had tried to interest her in one of these Israel summer tours, but they’d held no appeal then.

Jerusalem pulsed with energy, a vitality she’d never felt within the staid boundaries of her American Jewish experience. In college, Hannah had met students who talked about their Jewish summer camps as if they were holy places, the shining light of their lives. Would her life have followed a different trajectory if she’d been one of those campers? Being Jewish to her meant holiday family gatherings, chicken soup, and chopped liver on Manischewitz crackers. A predilection for liberal politics and causes. She’d never felt the richness that others seemed to attribute to their heritage: Judaism as a religion, as a tradition of learning, as a tether to something larger than oneself.

They passed groups of Israeli soldiers waiting in line for shwarma or pizza and young ultra-Orthodox couples with five, six, seven children in tow. “If you had to describe Jerusalem in one word, what would it be?” Hannah asked her parents. It was a game she and Tom played when they traveled: D.C. was “power,” New York was “energy,” New Orleans was “festive.”

“One word?” Jeremiah repeated. “Ooh, I don’t know. Divided? Traditional?”

“Timeless?” Molly suggested. They nodded: yes, that was the perfect word!

“This trip has been great,” Hannah said. “Thank you again.” Even the controversial parts of Israel were refreshing in the way they challenged and stimulated her brain. She reserved her highest praise for things—books, concepts, places, and people—that caused her to wonder, to lie in bed at night and really think. While many of the places they’d visited offered the melded charm of ancient and modern, the real highlights were the meetings set up for them by their tour guide with representatives of a Jewish and Palestinian women’s dialogue group, a young army spokesman, a settler. In this small country, everyone seemed to exude real warmth; everyone had a fascinating story.

Her parents smiled. “Our pleasure,” Molly said, for once refraining from putting on her it’s-too-bad-Tom-and-the-kids-didn’t-come face.

“Let me ask you something,” Hannah said. “Why didn’t you give us more of a religious education? I mean, your mothers always lit candles on Friday nights. Your fathers went to temple most Saturdays. Why didn’t you?”

“First of all,” her father said, “temple is a Reform Movement construct. Your grandfathers, when they went, went to shul.”

“Okay, semantics! Whatever!” She waited for his second-of-all but it didn’t come.

“Oh Han,” Molly said. “I did light candles sometimes. . .”

“Only when they came to visit.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Her mother’s defenses were up. “We were busy. We always had cultural engagements and concerts and such on Friday nights. I don’t seem to recall you ever having a problem with it.”

“I was a kid!” It bothered her, though she couldn’t say why. Her life was full: a solid marriage, a fulfilling career, and two kids who were developing into fine human beings. “I guess I’m just realizing how much I don’t know.”

“Never too late to learn,” her father said.

Her paternal grandparents—quintessential immigrants—had been gone for many years, but Hannah felt a sudden longing for the warmth of Grandma Rikki’s embrace and the smell of her kitchen. For Papa Abe’s hopelessly incorrect English spellings and the resonance of his voice. Despite sixty years in America her grandfather never lost his thick Galician accent. Her parents seemed so different.

“By the way, are you going to do a bat mitzvah for Pam?” her father asked.

The question caught her off-guard. Her daughter would be thirteen in less than a year. “I don’t know.” If Pam wanted one, Tom would probably go along. But in contrast to her parents, Hannah hadn’t even invested in the most basic of watered-down Hebrew school educations. A speck of guilt began to sprout. “Maybe it’s time.”

Her mother clasped her hand, reading her mind. “It would be our pleasure to help. I mean if the tuition is too steep.”

“They’ll be starting from zero.”

“Nonsense.” Molly was an expert optimist. “They know a thing or two from us. They come to our seder every year and celebrate Chanukah and Rosh Hashana.”

Hannah nodded in appreciation. Well. Something to think about. “Maybe. Thanks. I’ll have to speak to Tom about it.”

“Of course.” To Molly, it was obvious that such a decision should be discussed with one’s spouse. If Hannah was more of her father’s daughter, she might act unilaterally. Jeremiah walked along, seemingly oblivious, whistling and upbeat—his thoughts already on something else?—and Hannah wasn’t about to jinx it by asking him more challenging questions.

*

Despite the heat, they enjoyed excursions to Masada and the Dead Sea. At Latrun, Molly displayed an impressive command of pre-State history and the 1948 siege of Jerusalem. Every so often, Jeremiah would bring up his colleague in Ramallah: “Listen Mol, I don’t think you realize the contributions Fuad’s made to the debate on transculturalism and the Palestinian political economy.”

Molly would reply that she didn’t care if he was the world’s expert, she didn’t want him going. Jeremiah was incapable of easing up and a while later he might say, “Han, tell her how well-respected he is in our field. The man might be the first Palestinian to win the Nobel in economics!”

“You can go visit him in Stockholm, then.”

These were little blips in their conversations, which would always end with Jeremiah saying, “Okay, okay, forget I said anything!”

Thursday morning, Molly appeared at Hannah’s hotel room door looking concerned. “Dad had a bad night. Sciatica. He doesn’t think he should sit in the car so long today.”

Hannah wrinkled her forehead. She resented her father’s audacity, doing what he pleased without guilt. But revealing his plan would cause strife, and she didn’t want to ruin the last few days of the trip.

“We should still go,” Hannah heard herself saying. “You haven’t seen these people in, what, at least a decade?” She had a vague memory of her mother’s older cousin Yitz.

Molly was hesitant. “I don’t know. Of course I want to see Yitz, but I’m not sure I should leave Dad in this state. He’s my first priority.”

Hannah closed her eyes to roll them without her mother seeing. “It’s not like he hasn’t had bouts of sciatica before. He just needs to rest.”

Her mother reluctantly agreed. Hannah peeked into her parents’ room where her father lay in bed. He gave her a wink—infuriating!—and she hurried out of the room without saying anything.

Once they were on the road, Hannah driving the rental car and Molly navigating, her mother relaxed, talking with excitement about seeing her cousins. At various stops over the course of the last week, Molly and Jeremiah had revealed bits and pieces of family history, ties to this country that Hannah had never considered: a cousin who’d helped the fledgling Israeli Air Force in 1948, grandparents active in fundraising for the nascent Jewish State, a meeting with Golda Meir on their first trip to Israel in the ’70s. “Yitz has some stories,” Molly said now. “You should ask him. But I guess anyone his age has stories from that period.”

Hannah nodded. On the coastal road north of Tel Aviv, the Mediterranean Sea danced in and out of view, faraway swirls of bluish-black waves surging towards the shore. Against the backdrop of a cerulean sky, about halfway through the two-and-a-half-hour drive, Hannah felt the weight of her father’s deception lifting.

*

Yitz’s wife Shula, a sturdy, compact woman who’d once helped to found a kibbutz, brought out endless new dishes—little salads, olives, and pickled cabbage, flaky pastries filled with spiced meat, humus, and more.

“Shula, it’s too much,” Molly said each time Shula set out a new dish. “Please stop fussing over us and sit! Jeremiah’s going to be so upset when he hears he’s missed such a feast!”

Hannah tried not to let an irrational panic rise up in her every time her father’s name was mentioned. The smell of tuna salad with pickles made her nauseous. She sipped her water and took polite bites whenever Shula glanced in her direction. She chided herself that she hadn’t thought to work out a signal, a contact plan with Jeremiah ahead of time. He didn’t want Molly to worry, but the fact that Hannah might be worried hadn’t occurred to him, the inconsiderate bum. No, not a bum. He was out there exploring, doing exactly what he desired. She couldn’t decide if she was furious with her father or impressed by his fearlessness. Not too many American Jews made side trips to Ramallah.

Yitz brought out the photo albums, a dozen at least, and Molly oohed and aahed over every picture from family celebrations and trips abroad. Hannah tried to occupy her mind by reading the Hebrew words on the spines of the books in Yitz’s living room, but her rudimentary command of the language, acquired at their temple’s once-a-week religious school, was not up to the task. Was it too late to try again? Her undergraduates would get a kick out of her sitting in on an introductory Hebrew class.

She leaned over to get a closer look when Yitz brought out the album from his army days as a medic in ’48, his unit having secured Eilat. A dozen or so pictures of Yitz posing with Egyptian troops, everyone smiling. “Looks to me like you were having a good time,” Hannah said. As soon as the words left her mouth she winced; it had been wartime, how could anyone be enjoying themselves?

“Actually you’re right,” Yitz said, reassuring. “The Egyptians had given up by then, and I treated a few of them. We traded food and cigarettes.”

Molly asked Hannah to phone the hotel to check on Jeremiah, and like a dutiful daughter she went through the motions, dialing the number, asking for room 324, hearing the phone ring and ring until she could think of what to report back to her mother. “No answer. I guess he went out.”

“Well,” her mother said, unconcerned, “I’m sorry he missed this, but I’m relieved he’s feeling better.”

Yitz assured her not to worry and kept saying how wonderful it was that they’d made the trip. These older cousins, with their creased faces and capable hands, seemed to represent every Israeli of their generation. In 1939, Yitz’s shtetl ended up on the Soviet side of divided Poland, allowing the intrepid teenager to make a two-year journey to pre-State Palestine via Moscow, Riga, and Istanbul, forging documents and bribing or begging officials as necessary. His story was so different from the relative comfort of her parents’ youth in America. Yitz and Shula were dreamers. Pioneers. Proud of the roles they’d played in building a modern state. Gratified by its successes, frustrated by its failures. “A work-in-progress,” Yitz said of the tiny country, “but I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

When the afternoon turned to evening, Shula made a care package of almond and halva cookies for Jeremiah and insisted that Hannah accept a few gifts for Pam and Ben: a pen from a bank, a tiny book written in microscopic Hebrew. Yitz gave them a photocopied version of the family tree his granddaughter had prepared for her bat mitzvah; some branches came to a stark end in Europe, a few continued in America, and Yitz’s own—three children, ten grandchildren, and counting—flourishing here. It was a beautiful thing to see.

Again, a stirring in Hannah’s bones: she was part of this. Connected to her people, to the generations of Jews who’d come before her. Her parents felt it, she was sure, and now she needed to teach her children. A Mediterranean breeze rustled through an open window as they said their goodbyes. Their ancestors had prayed for a return to this land for 2,000 years; for the first time, she could understand why.

*

Jeremiah was waiting for them in the lobby, his face rosy and tanned. Hannah’s relief that he was back on the “safe side” of Jerusalem was so intense she worried Molly would notice the deep gasp she took when she spotted him. Again, this instinctive reaction shamed her. Emotions overpowered intellect on this trip. Her father stood, kissed his wife and then her, and professed that he felt “much better, much better!”

“We tried to call a couple times to check on you,” Molly said.

“I don’t need checking on!” Jeremiah’s mood was boisterous, his voice ringing through the lobby. “Once I felt okay, I wasn’t going to stick around in the hotel all day.”

Hannah glowered, trying to suggest with her eyes that now was the time to confess. She flinched her hands and eyebrows to convey, Well?

This caught his attention; his ruddy complexion seemed to lighten for a second, as if he was considering what to say, but then Molly launched into a description of the visit, Shula’s hospitality, and Yitz’s stories about her grandparents.

“Nu, did you learn something, Hannah? How was Haifa?”

“You missed out.” She shook her head in consternation, bothered now not only by his deception but because he, too, would have been touched by Yitz’s stories. She didn’t feel any obligation to answer his attempts to draw her out. “I see you’ve made a miraculous recovery,” she said.

On their floor, Molly let herself into her room and Hannah hung back in the hallway, beckoning to her father. “How was it?” she whispered.

“Fantastic. We had a great meeting. We’re going to co-author an article.”

She pushed aside the pang of envy in her gut and pursed her lips. “When are you going to tell Mom?”

“When the timing is right.” He paused. “Sometimes you’ve just got to do what you need to do. Not listen to what anybody else thinks. Take risks. In life, in testing your research theories. Don’t I tell you this all the time?”

“Whatever.” She had no desire to hear a lecture; she slid the electronic key into the lock of her room, waited a beat for the green light.

“Just because you’re jealous doesn’t mean you need to be huffy,” he said, a bit indignant.

His words stung; she let herself in and left him standing in the hallway, mouth open, ready to say more.

*

The final morning of the trip was reserved for last-minute gift shopping. The ceramics store downtown—a co-op of eight local artists, each with his or her own style and colors and designs—featured beautifully crafted bowls and vases as well as seder plates, menorahs, and other ritual items. Hannah and Molly admired the different sets and chatted with the artist on duty while Jeremiah paced. “I’ll leave the shopping to you ladies,” he said, fidgety. “I’ll get the paper and wait outside.”

“Mr. Patience, as usual,” Hannah said.

She helped her mother select apple and honey dishes as gifts for her friends, and then deliberated over whether to purchase a pair of pomegranate-shaped candlesticks. In this small way, she would start to reconnect to the tradition of her grandmothers.

Hannah handed the candlesticks to the saleswoman to bubble-wrap, and Molly murmured her approval. To her mother’s credit, she’d never given her a hard time for marrying a (lapsed) Catholic or raising Pam and Ben without much of any religion, but now Molly seemed pleased. Molly selected two more similar sets—one for her and one for Pam—and then insisted on paying for all of them. For a moment, Hannah hesitated—would this upset the balance she’d created with Tom?—but then she rationalized: it’s a five-minute ritual, once a week. Take the risk.

“I read two entire newspapers while you were in one store!” Jeremiah said when they emerged. “Listen. There’s something I need to start working on. An article. Fuad told me I could get into the National Library. How about I go over there while you ladies keep shopping?”

“Fuad!” Molly said. “When did you talk to him?”

“Yesterday.” He paused for a beat. “While you were in Haifa.”

“Oh! You didn’t mention it!”

Now, Hannah thought. Now.

Jeremiah bent over, possessed by a sudden need to retie his shoelaces. “I met him,” he said, addressing his ankles.

“What?” Molly said, as the meaning of his words sunk in. Her expression went from ungrasping to furious in ten seconds. “Look at me if you have something to say!”

“I went to Ramallah,” Jeremiah said, peering up at his wife.

Molly steadied herself on Hannah’s arm, almost dropping the ceramics. “You didn’t!”

Jeremiah hung his head. “I’m sorry. I do feel bad about not seeing your relatives. But this way you didn’t have to worry about me all day, see?”

Molly’s eyes widened and she sucked in her cheeks. Her face turned scarlet. “So you lied to me for my own benefit. Is that it?”

“I figured I’d tell you once I was back. You know I can’t keep a secret! And you see? I’m fine. I survived. I saw the guy. It was fascinating. We’re going to write an article together.”

Hannah held her breath, waiting to see if he’d implicate her.

“Wait ’til you see what I got you,” he said, patting Molly’s hand, as if a gift could make up for his behavior.

“Oh. My. God. I’d like to wring your neck right now!” She sat down on the bench where Jeremiah had been sitting. He took her hands in his and tried to bend over to kiss them, but she pulled away. She turned her face skyward, as if God himself would reward such fortitude.

Her father shrugged. He wouldn’t admit it, but the slight blush that crept over his cheeks meant a small part of him felt remorse.

“Shameless.” Hannah shook her head.

“We didn’t have to tell you, you know,” Jeremiah said.

In an instant her mother turned on her. “You knew about this? Hannah!”

Hannah pursed her lips and looked down.

“Leave her out of this. It’s my fault.”

Molly jabbed her thumb in Jeremiah’s direction. “From him, I’m sorry to say, I’m not surprised. But Hannah, from you? I’m just. . .speechless!” Her voice caught, and Hannah sensed her mother’s exasperation swelling to full-fledged ire. Perfect.

“Happy now?” Hannah asked her father. She was livid he’d put her in the middle, but she didn’t want to hang around to get a lecture or a guilt trip from Molly either. As maddening as Jeremiah could be, it was equally maddening that her mother put up with his shenanigans. But, incredibly, she’d been doing it for forty-five years. Hannah vacillated between thinking of her mother as someone with tremendous inner strength and someone who was inherently weak. Was this what psychologists called co-dependent?

Stop! The voice in her head roared. Sometimes it was better not to know.

“Go on, get yourself to the library. Go do your important research,” Hannah heard herself saying. “I’ll see you later. Maybe.” She started walking at a brisk pace in the direction of Jaffa Gate. She wanted to lose herself, if only for a few hours, in this vibrant place, in the narrow, windy corridors of the Old City, its pale limestone buildings and walkways beckoning to her.

“Wait!” they called after her. They could find their way back to the hotel without her. And if they were going to work out their issues right there on the pedestrian mall, she wanted no part. “Where are you going?” she heard Molly call, but Hannah ignored her. She didn’t dare turn around but she could picture her mother frantic, wanting to follow her while Jeremiah held her back.

She could make out a dim plea on the part of her father—“for God’s sake, would everyone calm down?”—but by then she was close to the main road, where the rumble of cars and tourists and accordion-players drowned out his calls.

Hannah quickened her stride. She’d been an obedient child, an overachieving teenager, and now a devoted adult daughter who rarely did anything that upset or disappointed her parents. Darting away like this was instinctive, something her father, with his lack of impulse control, might do, but she couldn’t take another minute with them right now.

At Jaffa Gate she bought lemonade with nana from a juice vendor and paused to decide what to do. Straight ahead was the Arab souk, colorful garments hanging high on display and shops filled with olivewood backgammon sets and other wooden trinkets. To the right was a narrow passageway that led past the Armenian compound and eventually to Zion Gate and into the Jewish Quarter, and she turned in this direction, hugging the gray stone wall to avoid the cars going through the tunnel. In the main square of the Jewish Quarter, she sat to rest, hoping to shake the annoyance with her parents out of her mind.

She couldn’t imagine blatantly lying to get around something her husband had vetoed, yet complicity carried its own share of blameworthiness. Was she like her father? On occasion, Tom accused her of getting up on a soapbox, or being oversensitive to the littlest slights. And among students, her candor was interpreted by some as rude, though she wasn’t a quarter as brusque as her father. One thing was certain: her marriage was nothing like her parents’, thank goodness.

In front of her lay the ruins of a synagogue, constructed and destroyed many times over. Despite the rehabilitation of neighboring buildings, the huge, empty arch served as a reminder of the destruction, though—if she recalled correctly—their guide had said something about a proposal being discussed for rejuvenating the structure. Behind it stood the Cardo, a main thoroughfare of ancient Jerusalem, now restored, home to artist galleries and shops with luxury goods. A restaurant in the complex offered an “authentic” Roman culinary experience but the night they’d tried to go it had been fully booked. Next time, they’d said. Much as she longed to get home—ten days away from Tom was wearing on her—she hoped there would be a next time. Hannah knew words and pictures wouldn’t be enough to convey everything she’d seen and felt on this vacation. She’d start saving for a family trip now. Perhaps in a few years, in time for Ben’s bar mitzvah. But she was getting ahead of herself.

Now it came to her, how to describe the country in one word: resilient. Despite wars and destruction, the people here continually moved forward, rebuilding and innovating. Resilience might also be the quality needed for a lasting marriage, the ability to sort through problems and come out stronger. Her parents would be all right.

She consulted her map. Emboldened, she decided she would weave her way back through the Arab souk. But first, she headed towards a narrow corridor that led down to the Western Wall, a few hundred feet away. Facing the holy site, Hannah ignored the tiny voice in her head questioning her sudden desire to pray. She closed her eyes and offered a silent entreaty. For peace. For strength. For resilience.