But the slaughter of tens of thousands in the Holy City was the least of their crimes.

In the end, the lamentations ceased, for there were none left to lament.įrankish historians would later boast that blood ran down the streets of Jerusalem up to the ankles of their armored soldiers. They gathered all the Jews who remained and locked them in the main synagogue. They killed the Muslims as infidels, and then they killed the other Christians as heretics.

The Franks slaughtered the old and the weak. The rabbi had read the sayings of this Jesus of Nazareth and had not found in them anything to explain the horror of what they did. They sought to regain Jerusalem in the name of their Christ. So it was, until the Franks arrived on the horizon. And, for a time, there was peace and the sons of Isaac began to return home. Then the sons of Ishmael arose from the desert to claim their share in the legacy of Abraham. It beckoned them in their souls, their dreams. His people were banished and scattered to the winds, yet they never forgot the city of David. Jerusalem had been the prize of many conquerors, few who had been friends to the Jews. Yet he knew from his journeys that all paths returned here, to the navel of the world. His gray eyes had filled with tears before the Pyramids, which were ancient even when Moses played in their shadow. His weary feet had traced the Queen of Sheba’s paths through the African desert. He had sought the Divine Countenance in the shadowed gardens of Cordova. Like his people, the old man was a wanderer. Perhaps it was not fair to call God an outright trickster, but He undoubtedly had a sense of humor. The God of irony was an accurate description of the ineffable, unpredictable Being from whom the cosmos derived its essence. Yet these words had proven true, time and again. The old man had learned that much of what he had believed in the morning of his life was incomplete at best. His wedding night was a distant but still tender memory. His desire for adventure had been supplanted by a desperate longing for serenity. He had changed much in the untold years that had passed since then. The rabbi’s father had said that to him once, when he was a restless youth and a virgin. Perhaps that is why His city, named for peace, has known only war and death.”

Shadow of the Swords by Kamran Pasha