NO RAPTURE
(ISBN 978-0-557-12632-3)
                 by
  Stephan Zimmermann






                            It is first day of Ramadan in the Islamic world  

                                 It is the first evening of Rosh Hashana  

                      An earthquake shakes the ancient city of Damascus      

                                                    ***



                                      Friday, September 1

                  "Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep,
         but we shall be changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
                                          at the last trumpet.”
                                   (1 Corinthians 15:50-5 (KJV) 

                                                         1.    

London, England, 11:14 a.m. 

     Heathrow Airport was a typical mass of confusion as Cantara Suhayar patiently waited in endless queues of humanity in Terminal Two. Despite the din of thousands of tongues wagging in hundreds of different languages, it was a fairly orderly confusion, with people listlessly awaiting their turn at the primary security checkpoint. Some were chewing gum, listening to some program or another on the headsets perched on their heads. Most were merely looking bored, waiting for the inevitable search of their persons and belongings. Cantara unobtrusively surveyed her fellow travelers and marveled at their easy compliance with government regulations. She understood even less the extensive fear each harbored.
     A large, blonde haired mother unabashedly nursed her child as she shuffled in the line. She must have read the security measures, Cantara thought, so the woman had reverted to nature. Baby bottles with formula were not allowed in carry-on luggage. Just a few weeks ago, a woman had to open all of her infant’s prepared bottles and take a swig from each to convince the guards that there were no explosive components in them. It was so easy to make a bomb these days, she thought. She was glad for the woman for avoiding the aggravation she would have undergone if she had prepared bottles of formula. The government had not yet devised a way to ban nursing breasts, although they might still be using scanners to x-ray people. She could not remember whether the human rights groups had stopped that government practice.            
     Cantara’s attention shifted to an old couple just a few yards down from her place in the slowly moving line. They were speaking quietly to each other, his arm gently around his wife. They were dressed in long, wooly coats, perhaps heading for Eastern Europe. It was entirely too warm for the above average temperatures on this typically overcast London day. Temperatures were still in the upper seventies. Whether anybody liked it or not, global warming was a reality. Perhaps the couple was bound for the north of Russia, Cantara thought.            
     A priest in line silently read from a small, red book, his mind skillfully avoiding the everyday cares of his fellow travelers.            
     A group of English teenagers in green plaid uniform skirts and white blouses chatted eagerly with their chaperone.            
     Cantara had only a small, chic leather handbag to set onto the scanning conveyor when the guard motioned her to come forward. She had her ticket in hand. 
     “And your jacket, please,” the guard said amiably, as he pointed to the conveyor. His Yorkshire accent was heavily pronounced. “Please place all metal items into the tray.”           
     Cantara removed her cell phone from the jacket pocket, retrieved a thin, golden pen from the inside pocket and placed the two items into the tray. She moved forward through the body scanner and instinctively felt relieved that no alarms went off. She gathered up her belongings.            
     “Would you please follow me?” said a trim matron in a blue security uniform.
     Cantara had anticipated the standard inconvenience as she obediently followed the security guard to a discreet door just beyond the security checkpoint. Whether Her Majesty’ government officially acknowledged what the Americans decried as ”racial profiling,” every time she had left or entered London she had gone through the same procedure. The officials would inspect her papers, perform a hand scan with an electronic wand, ask a few more questions about her employment and discreetly and apologetically let her go.
     This day was no different. A pale, dark-haired young man rose courteously as she entered his cubicle and motioned her to the only other vacant chair. They both sat down simultaneously.           
     “May I have your passport, please?’            
     Cantara extricated her Austrian passport and handed it to the young man. He rifled through the pages, filled with visas and official entry and exit stamps from a dozen countries. While many of the stamps were in Arabic, others were from France, Italy, even Sweden. Many, of course, were from the United Kingdom.             
     “May I see your ticket, please?” he enquired. Cantara wordlessly handed him the first class ticket on Syrianair. The man opened the paper folder with its distinctive logo.           
     “How long is your stay in Damascus?”            
     “Five days,” Cantara replied, totally self-assured.
     “Are you going on holiday?” The young man’s curiosity was clearly aroused.
     “No, I am going to present a series of lectures.”
     “Ah, yes, in what field?”
     “On the Arabic history of science,” Cantara said evenly. She actually had studied the subject and developed a series of lectures. Besides providing an excellent reason for traveling, she did truly enjoy delving into the advances the Middle East had made well before Mohammad.
     “Terribly sorry to trouble you, madam, but could I see your invitation and itinerary? Where are you staying?”
     That was always the toughest question to answer truthfully. Cantara had learned to make several different hotel reservations, check into each, and then make an appearance once or twice, if for no other reason than to mess up the bed sheets as if someone had slept in them.            
     “The Semiramis.” The odds were that the officer, whom she judged to be no more than her own age of thirty, had never been farther than Brighton.
     The officer looked at his computer screen. The young woman sitting in front of him had no police or Interpol record. He gave Cantara her documents and rose.
     "Terribly sorry to inconvenience you, Miss Suhayar. Have a good flight.”
     “Yes, thank you.”            
     Cantara closed her purse and replaced the ticket and invitation in her suit jacket. She meandered back out into the bustling terminal, checked the overhead television screens and set her footsteps in the direction of her flight’s departure lounge. She stopped to buy some honey-flavored cough drops and copies of the latest editions of BIBA and Femme and Arab Week. As a last thought, she added the latest copy of Al Ahram.            
     Her departure lounge was thronged with people waiting for the Syrianair flight which was already more than an hour and a half late. It was now announced for departure at twelve thirty but there was no aircraft at the gate.  Cantara looked about the crowded area and spied one empty seat.  She made an uncharacteristic dash for the seat and settled herself into the blue plastic chair.
     A short, heavy woman with two large moles on her right cheek wore a black shawl over her shapeless dark brown floor length dress. She was watching her brood of children while her husband sat quietly ignoring the three children’s running and playing and bouncing up and down on the seats. He pored over the same issue of Al Ahram that Cantara had just bought as if he had to memorize every article.
     On the other side of her, Cantara barely noticed a young, flaxen-haired man in his late twenties sitting with his eyes shut. His hair was cut in almost military fashion, short at the sides with a crew cut on top. He was wearing a burgundy turtleneck and was otherwise dressed soberly all in black, an onyx crucifix dangling from a chain. The magazines slid off Cantara’s lap and landed with a thud on the floor. The young man awoke with a start. He blinked his eyes as he reached down to retrieve the magazines.
     “Did the plane finally get here?” he asked. His accent was clearly American, with that soft, lazy inflection that Cantara knew to be from the southern states. She had taught several American students who had shared similar accents. She found the accent terribly annoying, making the speaker sound ignorant no matter how bright the contents of the conversation. She had learned, however, not be lulled into complacency by what the Americans called “Southern charm.”
     “No, I’m afraid we don’t even have an aircraft yet. We’re going to be stuck in this god-awful airport all day,” Cantara replied, sounding annoyed with her lot in life."
     "Oh, ye of little faith,” the young man quipped, laughing.
     “Faith? In an airline? I believe in facts. The fact is, they’re awfully late, and we may as well resign ourselves to the fact that we’ll be waiting all day.”
     “Gotta have a little faith,” he continued, grinning a little wider. “By the way, I’m Jason Littrell.” He stuck out his hand.
     “Cantara,” she said coolly. She hated the American fashion of immediately launching into conversation as if a perfect stranger had been a lifelong friend. “No, I don’t believe in something without any proof and with no way of calculating odds.”
     “That’s awfully harsh. And depressing,” Jason said.
     “Am I not correct?”
     “For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re correct. We’ve all got to believe in something. What do you believe in?”
     “What?” Cantara had turned her attention back to her copy of BIBA, perusing the latest in French fashion news. “I said we’ve all got to believe in something.”
     "Why do I?” she demanded petulantly. She hoped that she did not end up sharing a seat with this obnoxious American. A few years ago, she would simply have dismissed him as an infidel. Now, she knew better how to shut up obnoxious Americans, especially if they started extolling their Christian virtues.
     “Well, we all do,” Jason persisted.
     Cantara decided to continue to humor Jason and crossed her legs.
     “Of course, I believe if a double-decker or a lorry squishes me just right, I’ll be dead.”
     “Jees, you’re depressing!”
     Cantara noticed Jason slyly looking at her shapely legs. She pulled her mid-calf-length skirt down, more as a matter of habit than anything else.
     “No, I’m not. I’m a realist….I will say, it’s a novel approach for trying to get down my knickers!”
     Jason actually blushed.
     “Honestly, I’m not. I’m happily married with two kids. But I’m really interested.”
     Cantara started laughing out loud and shaking her head.
     “You were a more believable liar before.”
     “I wasn’t lying. I like to hear what people believe in, especially when I travel,” Jason said, trying to justify himself. He had never talked to an Arabic woman before, let alone one as attractive as Cantara. 
     “You Americans are so nosy. You sound like a priest. Only priests and Americans immediately want to talk of religious things with perfect strangers. Are you a priest or a minister?”
     Jason ignored her question and blundered right on. 
     “Because you foreigners are so fascinating. Where are you from?”
     "Cambridgeshire.”
     “No, I mean, originally. Saudi?”
     Cantara instantly became wary. Either this American was extremely astute or extremely ignorant. To many Americans, any Arab was either a Saudi or an Iraqi. When her brother had worked in Afghanistan, many of the American troops had called the Afghanis “Arabs.” Since she had not spoken a word of Arabic, he could not have detected her origins by her accent in Arabic. She decided that he was probably ignorant.
     “No, I was born in Amman.”
     If he knew the difference between Amman and Baghdad, he might be dangerous.
     “Your English is excellent. How long have you been at Cambridge?”
     Cantara’s antennae were truly raised now.
     "I didn’t say that I was at Cambridge. I said I was from Cambridgeshire. There is a difference. For someone who says he is not trying to get down my knickers, you’re awfully persistent. Okay, I’ll play your little game. What do I believe in?”
     Jason brightened and eagerly cocked his head in her direction.
     “Yes?”
     “Life. Death.”
     “That’s better.”
     “And I have hope. What is that? It is an irrational belief in something, but with calculated odds of success or failure, like your football games.” 
     “You know about football?”
     God, he was ignorant! she thought. Usually people did not want to talk about philosophical things at an airport. Definitely a different approach for another obnoxious, ignorant American.
     “I know quite a lot about America,” Cantara said, scrunching her lips upwards.   
     "Y’all ever been there?” Jason asked, glad of the modest headway he was making. At least she was keeping the conversation going. 
     It was Cantara’s turn to ignore his question. She did not want him to know just how much she knew about America, or how much she had influenced American events in the last few years. It was fortunate that no more than a handful of people knew just how much she had done.
     “It is terribly simple,” she said in that haughty, superior English upper-class accent that gave so many Americans an inferiority complex, “you can have faith that your team will win. That is what most people do. They have faith, and believe in their team, but they have little knowledge.”
     “Then you’re saying faith and belief are the same thing, aren’t you?”
     Maybe he was a priest, after all, Cantara thought. 
     "No, I’m not. Don’t you see, most people who support their team do so on faith, nothing more. They usually lose against their bookmakers, don’t they?
     “I guess.”
     “Of course. The chaps who win at betting are the ones who understand the odds. They know what each player’s performance has been over time, what the team’s performance has been. They know what the strengths and weaknesses are, and reduce the odds against them, don’t they?”
     “Interesting,” Jason said just as the loudspeaker announced that their flight would be boarding in fifteen minutes. Neither Cantara nor Jason had seen the 747 pull up to the gate. Jason laughed. For a second Cantara thought he was going to slap her knee.
     “Should have had more faith,” he said, pleased with himself.
     “I didn’t have all the facts, so I didn’t believe they were going to show,” Cantara said evenly.
     “Anyway, enjoyed the conversation! See you in Damascus!” Jason said jovially. Cantara gathered her magazines and her purse and waited for the call for first-class passengers to be boarded.
    “Ensh’allah. Bye.” said Cantara Suhayar.                          
 
                                                        *

Damascus, Syria, 6:42 p.m.    

     The sky was turning pastel shades ranging from a light, wispy pink to a deep magenta as the sun rushed behind Mount Kassioun. In a last show of bravado it touched the spires of the minarets of the mosques and the steeples of the churches pointing their man-made extensions to the firmament.            
     Shelomo ben Shuraqui labored his way through the colorful crowd as the evening call rose from the throat of the first muezzin on the western minaret of the Ummayed Mosque ahead of him, announcing the break of the fast of the first day of Ramadan. Within moments, the thin, reedy voice and its call to the faithful was echoed and repeated from every quarter of the ancient city.            
     “Allahu akbar,” the voice intoned. "God is great." A momentary silence ensued, then the joint rising of the chorus of muezzins, amplified by modern microphones to spread the message across the four and a half million people within earshot, told of the voice’s authority.               
     “Ash-hadu an la ilaaha illa-Allah,” the voices sang across the rooftops. "I bear witness that there is no god but God.” For over eleven hundred years, the call to prayer had been heard five times a day across the ancient city, in war and peace, feast and famine, through drought, or when the fields and trees bore a cornucopia of fruit.            
     Shuraqui bore the faithful no malice as he walked under the skies of Damascus, hearing the voices of the muezzins above the ancient Jewish quarter.  He had returned to the city of his birth only three years earlier after his family had squired him as a youth to the strange environs of Brooklyn, New York as a teenager. He had learned a strange new language and customs. He also learned too readily that he could not compete in a land where his dark skin and red hair and strange accent seemed to be an instant invitation to harassment and ridicule.             
     Shelomo had been sixteen years of age when they had left their homeland. Only later had he learned of the bravery of his parents as they escaped the Syrian totalitarian regime. They had made their way to Beirut and then to the United States.             
     Twenty years later, despite interminable arguments and disagreements from his wife and his own family he had accepted the task of maintaining one of the remaining open synagogues in Damascus and ministering to the needs of the few faithful to his religion. When the Syrian regime had relaxed some of its restrictions against Jews most had left immediately to go to America. In contrast, he had opted to return to his native country.             
     In minutes, as the Muslim worshippers gathered in the mosques, the setting sun would also mark the beginning of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year Shelomo thought joyfully. He would sound the shofar and guide his small congregation through the holy ceremonies. The holiday period lasted for ten days, culminating in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.              
     “L’shana tovah,” Shelomo said cheerfully to an elderly couple preceding him to the door of the small synagogue as he passed through the tiny courtyard with its planter boxes filled with vegetation and its small, octagonal, tiled fountain. The couple repeated the New Year’s greeting formally, as they shyly looked at the young man who had left America to return to Damascus. Surely he must be filled with faith and wisdom beyond his years, they marveled as they held open the door for their rabbi.             
     Despite the modest and nondescript exterior of the building, the interior of the synagogue bespoke the painstaking love that Shelomo ben Shuraqui and his tiny congregation had expended in both labor and money. The octagonal teva from which the Torah was read had been totally rebuilt of fine, polished wood. Its four steps and the thin columns supporting the covering had been hand-carved and shaped and polished, as had the small railing surrounding it. The hechal where the holy scrolls of the Torah were kept was equally hand carved.             
     Shelomo estimated that virtually all of the fifty members of his congregation were seated in the sanctuary as he ducked into a small anteroom, shed his jacket, and donned the tallis, or prayer shawl and checked the little skullcap perched on back of his flaming red hair. He noticed the two unfamiliar faces sitting against the eastern wall. In his mind he shrugged. The president’s secret police sent one or two agents to virtually every service. Perhaps the ruler was afraid that major plots to overthrow him were being concocted by the aging remnants of what had been a population of more than thirty thousand Jews in the city of Damascus.  The small synagogue could easily accommodate the few men, women and children who comprised the congregation and the Jewish population of the ancient capital city.            
     “And the Lord said unto Moses…” he began the familiar chant.  

                                                       *