Beneath the Wall

A rumbling roar fills the skies overhead, vibrating through Eden’s limbs as she shouts her name at the man before her.

“Ma?” he cries in Hebrew, as the thundering of the surveillance jets above gradually fades into the distance. “What?”

“Eden Leff,” she repeats. “English preferred, please. Is this where we’re supposed to be meeting for the flood check?”

“Yes,” he replies, already turning to stride back across the Western Wall Plaza. “I hope the military planes aren’t too scary?”

Eden chuckles, sparing a glance up at the great Wall beneath the darkening sky as they gingerly make their way across the slippery stones. “I remember them from visiting as a kid.”

“My name is Yosef Seteng,” he continues, as they reach the top of a short stairwell to a lower level of the Plaza. “I am from the IDF unit supervising this damage control check.”

Eden nods, descending the steps behind Yosef. “So, how bad is the flood in the residential areas?”

“Worst here around the Wall,” he gestures to behind them at the Wall and Plaza. “The tunnel got hit hard.”

“So much rain for October,” Eden muses, as they approach the entrance to the tunnel. “Is the Palestinian Authority still sending one of theirs?”

“He is late,” Yosef replies, only to be interrupted by a gruff voice.

“He is here.”

Turning from the tunnel’s entrance, Eden finds herself facing a lanky man, hair soaked from the rain. Using her fingers to wring the moisture from her own hair, she acknowledges the newest arrival.

“Mr. Khaldi? Nice to meet you, I’m Eden and this is Yosef.”

“Call me Ahmed.” Grasping his cool hand in hers, Eden doesn’t miss how Ahmed’s gaze fixes warily on Yosef. “Does he need that rifle?”

“Safety,” Yosef deadpans. “Eden, you ready to go?”

Eden nods, starting off down the well-trodden pathway through the tunnel. All around them, yellow light fixtures cast eerie shadows on the stone walls as well as the faces of the three within the depths of the cavern.

“Are you leading us?” Ahmed asks Eden, voice echoing, barely above a whisper.

Eden sets her jaw to stave off the impending wave of nerves. “I am the civil engineer they chose.”

“All the way from America?” Ahmed prods, as they round a bend to start down a slightly narrower passageway.

“Yes,” Eden takes care to keep her tone smooth, “I’m here on behalf of the Ministry of Infrastructure and…the Israel Antiquities Authority.”

“Do we expect to find something?” Yosef asks, boots sloshing through the rising water on the passage floor.

“Something that we can discuss who gets to keep it?” Ahmed follows up, tense words betraying his calm voice.

“With any luck, the Ministry…and the Palestinian Authority will come to an agreement on any discoveries,” Eden chooses her words carefully.

A stretch of silence passes, the gentle dripping of water the only sound to infiltrate the narrow space. Eden blinks against the dim light as her eyes fall upon a massive slab of rock.

“It’s true,” she halts, taking in the sight of a worn away region of stone near where the wall meets the floor. “The flood is starting to corrode the rock.”

“So, this is the famous 517-tonne rock,” Ahmed’s voice bleeds cynicism. “No one has tried to use this for tunneling out of the city?”

Before Eden can reply, Yosef beats her to the chase. “No one from Israel’s side.”

Ahmed ignores the quip. “If we go in there, I’ll be using my camera—”

“No photos,” Yosef gestures before Ahmed can finish withdrawing a camera from his shoulder bag.

Ahmed stares down Yosef. “I have family that died in your air raids of Gaza. You expect me to believe you only go above the ground?”

“Ahmed,” Eden resists the urge to bite her tongue as soon as his name escapes her lips, before steeling her resolve, “you can go last and watch our every move. We pose no threat, I promise.”

Ahmed’s dark eyes flit from Yosef to Eden. “No accidents?”

“Nothing that we’ll cause,” she says, gaze holding his.

“We can’t stay in long,” Yosef says, “Not enough oxygen, it can make you see things.”

Eden nods. “Hypoxia.”

At Ahmed’s begrudging nod, Yosef speaks again. “Stand back. I will see if it moves. If not, this water should clear once the rains stop this week, and we can go home.”

Making sure to give Ahmed a wide birth, Eden stands with her back to the cool, moist wall as she withdraws her flashlight. Several feet away, Ahmed follows suit.

Not risking the backward glance to see if Ahmed will join, Eden takes her stance beside Yosef and begins to push. Planting her feet into the muddy floor, she squeezes her eyes shut and presses with all of her might.

As soon as the first sensation of rock grinding against rock accompanies the sound of a low rumbling creak, Eden steps back.

“A part of the rock is loose,” says the soldier beside her.

Propping open the sliver of space with his rifle, Yosef gives another hearty push, moving away as soon as the great stone slides nearly two feet to the left before jolting back into place on the opposite side.

The inky depths of an uncharted cavern greet them.

Eden licks her lips, eyeing the ebbing flow of water that escapes between her ankles into the blackness before them. “Ready to go?”

Yosef nods, glancing backward at Ahmed who still grips the strap of the camera lying in his open bag. “Stay behind us. If you explode anything in here, you go down with the tunnel. No discoveries for you.”

Eden purses her lips the moment Ahmed steps up to confront the soldier. “Who asked you? Why do they send the army, anyway? Why did they even let you into the army?”

A nervous chill envelopes Eden’s nape at that question.

Yosef wastes no time in replying. “I am Israeli.”

“Not from Europe,” Ahmed bites back, and Eden realizes she wouldn’t blame Yosef for smacking the Palestinian envoy upside the head.

“My family escaped Ethiopia,” Yosef’s voice is icier than the chilled rains above ground. “Israel is not Europe, and I serve my people here. Are you coming with us or not?”

With a fleeting glance back at the way they came, Ahmed lets his gaze fall to the floor before following Yosef and Eden into the cave.

Focusing on her breathing, Eden makes sure not to dwell too much on the searing chafe of the rocks cutting into her sleeveless top and the flesh beneath. She marvels at how the dank, tight space weighs heavier on her nerves than the frustrated envoy behind her.

As soon as they emerge out into a nook where the ceiling allows all three to stand at full height, Eden speaks up. “Thank you, Yosef, I can take it from here.”

Shining her flashlight around the jagged rocks of the cavern overhead, she blinks away a wayward water droplet. No sooner does her vision clear that she registers the tepid water lapping at her ankles.

“Too dark. I can’t take pictures in here, anyway,” Ahmed mumbles behind her, a subtle splash indicating an annoyed kick of the stream.

“Try using your flashlight,” Eden suggests, already trudging through the passageway into another narrow route up ahead.

The warmth of the flow around her shins coupled with the velvet darkness of the cavern begins to envelope her in a strange sense of comfort—

A thundering thud from above shatters her reverie, followed closely by a shout from Ahmed. As soon as the first few pebbles it the floor around them, the envoy turns and sprints back toward the main entrance.

Once his squelching footfalls fade, Yosef speaks. “We can still hear the thunder in here. Do you want to go get him?”

“We can do this without him,” Eden decides, continuing through another narrow squeeze to the right.

“The Palestinians need a voice here, too,” Yosef calls from behind her. “That was the agreement.”

“You can go back and get him, if you like,” Eden’s chest grows tighter from the sudden scare and mounting tension. “I can report back any damage I find when we meet back at the entrance.”

“I am not a messenger boy,” Yosef retorts, and she has to admit the sarcastic tone aggravates her more than she expects. “You don’t know your way around and could get lost.”

Eden whirls around. “So what, I can just go back and get him? Yosef, I’ve investigated dozens of fallen bridges and—”

“In the United States, yes?” Yosef interrupts her. “How many of those bridges were over two thousand years old?”

Another stretch of silence ensues, as Eden breaks his dark gaze. “I may not be particularly religious or raised in Israel, but I can still appreciate the significance of the Wall.”

An ear-splitting crash fills the shadowy space from above, and Eden’s stomach lurches. Narrowly salvaging her flashlight from a watery impact, she begins running at Yosef’s next words.

“Run back! The rocks will fall ahead!”

Heart pounding in her chest, Eden forces her feet through the dense water. Several more moments reveal that she has managed to escape any cave-in that may have threatened them further back – further back.

The realization that she has run forward rather than backward as Yosef had instructed settles deep into her gut.

“Yosef!” she calls, willing the hysteria from her voice. Silence.

A cave-in has trapped her here. All alone.

Shining her flashlight around once again, Eden peers around at the jagged stones protruding from the cavern ceiling. At least this section of the tunnel appears structurally sound.

Why had she alienated Yosef? She should have predicted the tensions in the US would parallel the mood here in Israel. To someone like Yosef, Eden’s relatives who both survived and perished to the Romanian Nazi camps of Transnistria don’t matter. He likely views her as no different from how Ahmed sees her as a European colonial settler.

As the dead quiet continues, a creeping sensation overwhelms her – the feeling of eyes on her back. Swiveling around as silently as possible despite the swishing water, she swallows hard as her flashlight lands on blank rockface.

Israel – the land of her ancestors and many relatives today. In her trips as a child, she had fallen in love with the ancient cities, rolling landscapes, exquisite beaches. Never before had she imagined that same land could swallow her alive.

“We can escape, it will be all right.”

Freezing in place, Eden grasps the flashlight so tight her fingers ache. Counting the seconds as the beam of light passes over the rock walls around her, she can’t help but release a sigh of relief at the dusty yet evidently empty space.

Swiveling her flashlight back toward where she entered to examine the extent of the cave-in, Eden just barely manages to choke back a yelp at the sight of her great aunt.

“Tanti Rutie?” Eden blinks once more to clear out any dust. “What -- no, this isn’t possible. The funeral last year…I -- it’s hard to breathe in here.”

“Draga mea, Eden,” the familiar, melodic Romanian reaches her ears. “You can breathe for now. But you must escape.”

“It’s…it’s blocked off,” Eden can feel the panic rising in her chest, as she battles the inexplicable urge to move the flashlight’s brilliance from the pale face of her aunt sitting on a rock before her.

“He told you to run back,” Rutie replies, gaze locked onto Eden’s. “Running forward alone with no direction will go nowhere. Giving meaning to differences is what destroys us. We did not survive terrors the world over just for your generation to battle each other in the homeland. These tunnels know we are all one people. Blind yourself to the differences, or the Wall will consume you.”

Struggling to keep her breathing steady despite the increasing fog clouding her brain, Eden shines her light on the rocks behind her. Sure enough, there above the pile of fallen rocks, a small black sliver stares back at her.

Swiveling around, she finds the cavern behind her empty, the stream of her flashlight revealing that the majority of the loose rocks had fallen up ahead rather than behind her.

“I’m scared, tanti,” Eden hears her own voice crack, as she blinks away the tears that well in her eyes. “They don’t trust me. They think we’re monsters in our own land. Tanti, I can’t move the rocks, the space is too small—”

The moment the light stream hits the face before her, Eden releases a cry at the sharp rocks that all but impale her shoulder blades as she throws herself backward. Her Aunt Rutie’s sweet visage dissolves into a slate of blank flesh. As she watches in utter terror, a toothless mouth opens at the center of that featureless face.

“Climb, Eden.”

Eden turns just soon enough to avoid witnessing whatever terror overtakes the flesh of Rutie’s face, swallowing up those suddenly milky eyes. Hoisting herself onto the jagged rocks, Eden no longer has a care in the world for the hot tears that stream down her cheeks as she wheezes against the stones scratching at her chest, arms and legs.

A wail sounds from deep within the darkness behind her. Forcing herself to ignore what feels like warm breath teasing at her ankles, she drags herself over the top of the fallen rocks, no longer certain whether the beast behind her or the cavern roof above would prove the worse way to go.

The sound of rushing drowns out the fearsome wails, just as the skin of her left calf tears on the final ragged stone, as she slides down the opposite side of the rock pile.

“Eden!”

Stopping herself just in time before striking the soldier in the face with her flashlight, Eden registers the familiar face before her. “Yosef?”

“I thought the rocks fell on you!”

“I—” Eden takes in the drenched state of his uniform, as her flashlight trails up to the rivulets of water running from his black hair down both cheeks. “Are you okay? Did you fall in the water?”

Not fully ready to voice what she saw on the other side of that rock pile, Eden takes some consolation in Yosef’s company.

“I…I was so thirsty. I…I had to drink,” he stammers.

Willing away the lump in her throat that aches at the way her muscles and flesh all throb from exertion and abrasion, Eden follows his gaze to the stream shining beneath their flashlights.

“My grandfather talked about the drought they escaped,” Yosef’s voice sounds, barely above a whisper. “I could…feelit. My mouth was so dry. My body was like fire. The pain didn’t stop until I reached this part of the tunnel and heard your voice.”

When the rocks behind her knees shift with a subtle grind, Eden grasps Yosef’s wrist. “Let’s get out of here. Ahmed couldn’t have gone far if he’s not back here with us.”

They manage to round only three corners before Ahmed’s voice shouts. “You’re alive!”

“Yes!” Eden wants to let out yet another sigh of relief, fingers still trembling from the encounter deeper in the cavern. “Are you okay?”

Another crash overhead sets the cue to take off running back toward the sliver of light ahead that promises the man-made light fixtures of approaching civilization.

“Kusemek!” Ahmed swears in Arabic. “I knew it, it’s another air raid!”

Out of the first several boulders that fall, Ahmed narrowly manages to shove Yosef out of the way as they both topple to the ground. Spotting another chunk of earth about to fall from the loosening ceiling, Eden shouts.

“Move to the left!”

Rolling away, the two men barely avoid getting caught beneath a stone larger than Eden.

“The cave is collapsing!” Yosef cries, as they dart to the left, trying desperately to evade the falling rocks.

Dropping to her hands and knees, Eden’s cry of pain at another stinging tear to her knee as she scrambles sideways through the narrow fit between 517-tonne rock and wall gives way to an even louder shout from Ahmed nearly falling into the slosh behind her.

The breath of fresh, humid air that fills Eden’s nostrils as they burst out of the tunnel into the rainy night feels like nothing short of a miracle.

“Do you hear that?” Yosef’s voice brings her back to the present, as she turns to once again face the lit hallway through the entrance before them.

“It’s quiet,” Eden murmurs, heartbeat finally returning to a breathable pace.

“How did the rocks suddenly stop falling?” Ahmed wonders aloud. “Where are the military planes? It was an air attack. I was sure of it. I heard it the whole time we were in there--”

Eden’s eyes fall upon the large puddle a half-step past the threshold of the tunnel, just visible under the shine of three flashlights and the gentle moonlight streaming through parted storm clouds. “There’s no movement except for the rainwater. No cave-in.”

For several moments, the patter of rain remains the only sound to penetrate the silent night.

“Looks like you escaped your attack tonight,” Yosef finally says to the envoy. “I will speak to the commander about letting you take your photos.”

Ahmed shakes his head, wary eyes still fixed on the dark entrance. “I’ve seen everything necessary. Nothing in there for us.”

“We made it out. Best we just leave it alone,” Eden agrees, not daring another glance into the barely lit depths for fear of what might be lurking just beyond the light from the lanterns.

THE END

Bio: Sarah Katz is an author, cybersecurity technical writer, and speculative filmmaker. She has the speculative short stories "Grid" and "To Break a Diamond" published with Aphelion Webzine. Her most recent stories published in other venues are "Savanna Storm" (slipstream) in Scarlet Leaf Review, "Death of a Star" (science fiction) in 365 Tomorrows, and "View from the Tower" (historical drama) in The Globe Review ...

E-mail: Sarah Katz

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