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Back The World That We Knew Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover
  2. Epigraph
  3. PART ONE
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  15. CHAPTER TWELVE
  16. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  17. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  21. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  22. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  23. PART TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  39. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  40. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  41. FURTHER READING
  42. Copyright

Hanni collected the strands of hair littering the floor. Later she would place them on the windowsill for the birds to weave into their nests. But as it turned out, there were no birds in the trees. This was the day when they had all risen into the sky in a shining band of light, abandoning the city. There was nothing here for anyone anymore. Bobeshi could not leave her bed, let alone flee from Berlin, and Hanni intended to honor the fifth commandment. She could not leave her mother. The problem was time. There was so little of it. Each day groups of people were taken to Grosse Hamburger Strasse, where they were kept, without knowledge of their future, in a former old people’s home, and would soon be sent to their deaths on trains that were leaving to resettle Jews in the East.

All Hanni knew was that someone among them must be saved.

Then and there she decided to send her daughter away.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MAGICIAN’S ASSISTANT

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BERLIN, SPRING 1941

TANTE RUTH HAD LIVED FOR over a hundred years. She was so old that everyone she had ever loved had died. Now she wished to join them. Every day she set out a cup of tea for the Angel of Death, but Azriel never appeared, even though sooner or later he must walk through her door. She could not live forever, despite her talents as a seer and a healer. People believed her wisdom was inherited. Her father had been a rabbi in Russia who was so learned he was called The Magician, and her husband, also a rabbi, had been named The Magician’s Assistant. These men studied the Zohar, The Book of Splendour, which delved into the holy mysteries. Since the time of Solomon, sorcery had been attributed to the Jews, although the Torah condemned sorcery, except for a certain type of magic, permitted from the start, which used the mystical names of God and the angels. Access to such studies was denied to women, but Ruth had managed to learn quite a bit as she’d sewn the men’s garments, and cooked their dinners, and listened to their debates.

Ruth covered her hair with a black scarf she had worn ever since she’d lost her husband. His ghost was beside her each night in her small bed, but every time she reached for him, he disappeared. This was how life was, tragic and unexplainable. When you were young you were afraid of ghosts, and when you were aged you called them to you. She knew it was impossible to completely understand the world God had created, but she had lived with two men who knew the seventy-two kinds of wisdom that were contained within God’s seventy-two names. Despite everything she had witnessed and all she had lost, she still believed in miracles.