And so he also learned the battle for the Old City: the weary fighters of the Harel Brigade (and Menahem, he thought then, was one of them) bombarded Mount Zion every night from Yemin Moshe whose residents had previously been evacuated. And the mountain was captured. Menahem was in the armored car that climbed the mountain from the Valley of Hinnom. The fighters met in the Dormition Monastery, next to King David's Tomb, near the place of the seder the Christians call the Last Supper. After a short rest, the fighters were assembled in Bishop Gubat's school next to the monastery, and in the shadow of Byzantine acacias, they ate grape leaves stuffed with dry bread. From the other side of the narrow path separating the mountain from the Old City, on the splendid Tower of Suleiman sat the fighters of the Arab Legion commanded by British Colonel Wood. Colonel Wood, who graduated with honors from Eton and had a degree from Cambridge, had previously served in Europe, was one of those who liberated Hathausen concentration camp, fought in the Pacific, and then volunteered to help his old friend Glubb Pasha organize the army of the grandson of the Sharif of Mecca. Now he held a stick in his hand, which once, when liberating the camp, he refused to hold.
In the besieged Jewish Quarter, a handful of Jews remained, whose ammunition and food were running out. By order of Ben-Gurion, the governor of Jewish Jerusalem refused the offer of the rescue battle made by the members of the Harel Brigade. The governor claimed he didn't have reinforcements that the fighters of the Harel Brigade were exhausted and a considerable part of their fighters were killed or wounded. The commander of the Harel force decided to carry out the operation despite the governor's refusal, and that was a historical moment, thought Henkin excitedly. Ben-Gurion, who feared the rage of the fighters, approved the operation but at the same time he ordered the governor not to assist it. We need a historian, said Henkin, who will come and arrange the data, so that battle can be summarized properly. The commander said: We have to strike the enemy while he's stunned from the battle on the mountain. The night before, a hole was made in the roof of the Dormition Church by a Davidka shell that tried to hit a target far away from there and missed. The enemy had tanks, armored cars, and artillery. Colonel Wood relied on his weapons and his loyal soldiers. At dawn, an armored car approached the wall of the Old City and poured fire on the nearby Jaffa Gate. Seven Iraqi and British officers were taken prisoner. On Mount Zion sat Menahem along with Boaz. He wasn't thinking of the international conspiracies, of Ben-Gurion writhing in the torments of his decision, of the governor and his struggle with the commander of Harel, he was waiting to finish the war, go back home, live, then he got a cone of explosives and crawled toward Zion Gate. Over the gate were two heavy machine guns, whose range covered the narrow path and you had to slip under it. The explosive was connected to a wire and to the cone, and you could push it with a pole under the coil of the barbed war fence stretched there. At three twenty AM, on the twentieth of May nineteen forty-eight, the cone burst the fences, a mighty explosion was heard, shots were fired feverishly, and Zion Gate was breached. In the smoke of shooting and explosions, Menahem and his comrades burst into the city that previously, in a brief and laconic but emotional ceremony, the commander had called the Eternal City. In the short ceremony, the commander said in a restrained tone: One thousand eight hundred seventy-seven years ago we were exiled from here, you are the first to climb the wall of the Eternal City, hold on and embrace it. When Henkin will tell his wife about that, she will say to him: Is your pain less because of that?
Ra'anana ran first, followed by the rest of the fighters. A soldier who had laid explosives at the gate with Menahem lay wounded; later on they would pick him up. Menahem ran behind Boaz, shooting at the wall on which Colonel Wood's terrified officers and soldiers were fighting boldly. The Armenians, in the winding street to the Jewish Quarter, watch in awe, the fighters hold explosives, rifles, submachine guns, and food. The commander says on the walkie-talkie: They're losing control, complete surprise, send fighters to replace us, we're bleeding, if you send them fast, the Old City will be in our hands by nightfall, over and out. From the other end, there was no answer. Bearded, weary fighters burst out of the besieged Jewish Quarter. A brief but joyous encounter. Shells land on all sides. White flags start flying over the houses of the Old City. The Arab fighters are losing control and starting to flee, Colonel Wood can't hold his fighters. They're fleeing. Havaja Wood, they yell at him, nothing to be done, and he, stunned, waves the stick he's holding. You have to learn from the enemy, he'll say later on, and he doesn't mean Kramer, but Menahem Henkin.
Complete chaos. Menahem attacks, says Boaz, and then, during the battle, he's wounded by a stray bullet. His brain is pierced and he dies on the spot. If I had caught the bullet, it wouldn't have been a stray! Menahem didn't suffer, Henkin… The governor didn't heed the request for help, the besieged people went back to the Jewish Quarter with food and a little bit of ammunition. They found out that new fighters were coming to relieve Boaz and his companions. They pulled out with the dead and wounded. The new ones who came were old men from the corps of elderly who weren't fit to fight and didn't know why they were sent. The retreating Arabs saw the wheel turn, girded their loins, and drove out the old men. The exhausted inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter surrendered by waving a white flag. At the same time, Henkin discovered later, in the headquarters on Schneller sat a hundred armed fighters who weren't sent. Menahem fell for nothing, said Henkin to Hasha Masha. The liberation of the Old City was postponed for nineteen years. Meanwhile, Menahem came back and was killed in another battle, a battle that didn't get into the history book.
Did my son fall for nothing? Henkin will ask.
Did he fall in an unknown battle there, or in the Old City?
He fell, says Hasha Masha, even if he died in a traffic accident, he didn't return.
The merchants on Ben-Yehuda Street set their watches by Henkin. They're building a new city around him, and only the sea remains stuck to itself. And he doesn't know, they say. Henkin took down the mezuzah on the second day of the Six-Day War, when the Chief Rabbi said that the Israel Defense Forces won because of the will of God. Hasha Masha thinks: Why did fate connect two such different people as Menahem and his father? Menahem was impetuous, friendly, loved the sea, didn't believe especially, didn't not believe, tied cats' tails, smoked in shelters, a simple boy, I loved him, but Henkin needs a hero and a poet.
He searches for his son on Ben-Yehuda Street as if Menahem is no more on Shenkin Street than on Ben-Yehuda Street. The Committee of Bereaved Parents, what a feast they make there with the plastic vegetables. What does Jordana who loves my son want from me? What an insane nation…
Noga understands, knows, and only he, Obadiah, sets the watches of those miserable merchants. Your devotion, Noga, is a noble trouble. I understand, know that you stopped loving Menahem and stayed with us, I don't bear a grudge against you, but to love you for that I can't and you know that. Let Henkin think what he wants, ponders Hasha Masha.