Raphael

“What in God’s name are you doing?” the man shouted. “These people are our friends and neighbours; you know that! We’ve been living in harmony with them for generations. Go home, please; go home to your wives and children and stop this madness. You are behaving like animals. Can’t you see that what you are doing is wrong? God will curse us all if this continues! True Muslims are peaceful, not violent—if you have been listening to men who say otherwise, they are doing the devil’s work!” All the activists in the funeral parlour, and the journalists, held their breaths to see what would happen next. Raphael could see a young woman near him wipe a tear from her eye. “That’s Hassan,” she whispered to him. “He’s a friend of my dad’s, and I’ve known him all my life. He’s a Muslim, but he’s never had any problem doing business with Jews or anyone else. I went to school with his daughter, and she’s always been a good friend of mine. It’s so like him to try to stop the rioters. He’s a real gentleman, and we all love him.” The crowd paused to look at the shopkeeper in the middle of the street, and for a fraction of a moment it seemed as though they might listen to him. But then a lone voice shouted “Kill the Jew!” and then they all joined in, chanting, “Kill the Jew!” over and over again, like an awful battle-cry. Two beefy men, brandishing butcher’s knives, detached themselves from the mob. One of them forced the elderly shopkeeper to his knees while the other held up his huge, shining knife. “Allah Akbar,” the crowd shouted in response to the sight of the flashing blade. “Kill the Jew!” While his friend held the shopkeeper’s head back, exposing his neck as though he were a lamb at the butcher’s, the large man approached him from behind and, with a single expert slash, he cut through his throat and severed his head. The crowd continued to chant and bay for blood as he held the head aloft by the hair, basking in their praise. “God help us all,” muttered Raphael. “We will be fighting not just for our community, but for our lives, if this is the sort of thing that they are capable of!” Raphael heard the dull thud as the murdered shopkeeper’s head hit the ground. He looked out the window again and saw the widening pool of blood around his prostrate body, which twitched for a few moments before becoming slack and still. The crowd was advancing again, marching through the blood, which soaked into the hems of their garments. Raphael kissed his amulet, silently asking it for help. He knew that the people of the Jewish Quarter were looking to him for leadership right now, and he prayed that he would be able to give it. His heart was racing, and he knew that he should be afraid, but from somewhere deep inside himself he sensed the certitude that, whatever happened, he would be all right. “Set the gate on fire!” he ordered. “Quickly, before it’s too late!” Two young men dashed forward with torches and lit the gate, which had been stuffed with all the flammable material that the community had been able to get its hands on. Flames surged immediately, crackling and reaching towards the sky. The mob attempted to breach the barrier, but many of them were wearing loose cotton robes that caught on fire immediately, leaving them flailing and trying to extinguish the flames while their companions scattered, afraid to get too close. Those who managed to escape the flames focused on destroying the gate, and succeeded in opening a hole, through which two men managed to climb. “Use the tyres!” Raphael screamed. “Throw them around their necks; that’s what they’re for!” The activists had prepared hundreds of tyres, stuffed with flammable material. Quickly, the teenage boys under Raphael’s leadership lit them with their torches and threw them over the heads of anyone who managed to make it through the gates. The screams of the victims were unbearable, and so was the stench of their cooking flesh as they fell on the ground and flailed around, trying futilely to get the tyres off from around their necks. It was hard to watch. Within moments, their frantic movements stopped and they lay on the ground, their faces and upper bodies reduced to scraps of burned flesh attached to skeletons, with their teeth still bared in a silent shriek. Raphael knew that, although these men had come here to kill the Jews, they were also just ordinary people, who had somehow allowed themselves to be swept up in the hatred that was engulfing Egypt. Months before, he might have met them in his workshop, or exchanged a smile with them on the street. How could they have allowed themselves to become such monsters? Raphael ordered the activists to keep using the tyres as long as anyone tried to breach the gate. Anyone who attempted to come in was immediately engulfed in devastating flames. Meanwhile, Raphael could hear Levi, who was in charge of the first and second floors of the funeral parlour. “Throw your missiles!” Levi instructed the girls and boys—some as young as twelve or thirteen—who were listening to him intently, pale-faced, but filled with determination to do what they could to save their community. The filled eggs and bottles they flung shattered as they hit their targets, and the sulphuric acid immediately burned away flesh as it dropped down their faces, shoulders, and arms. Within minutes of the first breach of the gate, the air was filled with the horrendous sound of screaming, as the first flank of the mob lay on the ground.