The Dovekeepers

Our mother and I said prayers together, those that are recited when a child is born and a human soul has entered into our world. It was the night when I became a woman, though I kept my name. Aziza, the compassionate, the powerful. Aziza, the woman who knew what it was to be a man.

In the morning a messenger arrived from Masada. He had been made aware of exactly where we would be waiting. He gave us fresh water and food, then told us he was meant to lead us to safety. He looked at me in a way no man had before.

It was the first time in my life that I understood who I was to the rest of the world.

I made certain to lower my eyes.

EVEN NOW I am drawn to the ways of my old life. I spend as little time as possible inside the dovecotes. Doves do not interest me, no women’s work does. I cannot weave or sew without pricking my fingers. When I cook, I burn the flatbread. My stew is tasteless no matter what ingredients I might add to the pot. There is not enough salt or cumin in the world to make my attempts palatable. I am clumsy at tasks my sister could complete with ease when she was a mere eight years old.

I often find myself beside the barracks, pulled there especially on the evenings that mark the new month, Rosh Chodesh, when the women gather to celebrate, for it is not with them I belong but here, alongside the warriors. When I find arrowheads, I hold them in the palm of my hand, talismans from my past. The blades fit perfectly in my grasp. Their cold, flat weight is what I yearn for. Metal alone can reach the center of who I am.

I have been in this fortress for so long, but I still dreamed of that other time, though I told no one, not even Amram, to whom I have pledged myself, despite my mother’s warnings. Some things are meant to be kept secret, I learned that young, and I have kept our secret well. My mother may be flooded with doubts, but she has no proof that I have disobeyed. She’s piled salt outside our threshold, so that I might leave footprints, but I leap over, leaving no trace. She’s tied a strand of her hair across the doorway, but I merely crawl beneath it. I can outwit her at some things; all the same, I think of her prophecy every time I meet Amram. I am his, yet I know I have disgraced myself in keeping the truth from my own mother, the one who gave me life not once but three times.

From the start my sister was my accomplice. We had been here for nearly a year, working beside our mother in the dovecotes, when Amram first arrived. We spent days devoted to toil. The three dovecotes were like a family of goats—the father, built as a tower, then came mother and child, square and squat, small and then smaller yet again. They were my world then, as I avoided our neighbors and kept away from other women, afraid they would somehow see through to the differences between us.

When Amram arrived from Jerusalem at the beginning of the summer in the year the Temple fell, he was merely one more young man running from his enemies, convicted by his bloodline as well as by his actions, an assassin who could be seen as a murderer or a hero depending on who you were and where fate had placed you. I happened to be there, crossing the plaza. I was nearly sixteen, but still I kept to myself. I did not take note of any man until I saw Amram climb the serpent’s path. He did so easily, as though the rugged cliffs were little more than a field. What was steep and difficult for others was for Amram no different than air to the lark. It was clear he could conquer whatever came before him, man or beast, even the land itself.

Watching him, I was almost ashamed of how handsome I found him. He was the warrior I wished I had become, fluid and lean, sure of himself. I envied him and wanted to possess him and all that he had. I remembered the way the dusk fell on the other side of the Salt Sea in waves of deep blue on the day my mother warned me of the prophecy that I should avoid love at all costs. But I was born to disobey her. I knew this when I found I could not look away from Amram. I tried and failed, though I was iron and stronger than most in such matters. Aziza, the powerful, was somehow undone. Was there some angel or demon who remembered what my name had once been and now called me Rebekah from the reaches of heaven? I stood there like any other woman at the Snake Gate alongside all the rest who gathered there, charmed and seduced by Amram even before he reached us.

Perhaps the moment might have passed and I would have turned away and resumed my duties, if only he hadn’t seen me as well, if we hadn’t been transformed by a single glance that passed between us. I realized I had been caught from the moment I’d given in to my impulse to stand upon the wall to cheer him on. My intention was otherwise. Merely to view the sort of man I might have been in my second life. Instead, I became a woman in that instant. I gazed through the shimmering heat, watching his fate and mine twine together as he climbed the serpent path.