At dinner, my friend says that her favorite game as a child was running away and hiding. She would get the other children to find a place they could be safe. We’d been talking about how old we were when we first learned our family histories. Her family, considering the neighbors, asked, who would hide us?
I’d kept my valuables handy. I rotated my stuffed animals night to night so they wouldn’t know who was my favorite, who’d be left behind when we ran. When fire flared in the kitchen, in moments I was out on the stone stairs with my little go bag and Mr. Merrythought, who had bells in his head. We played abducting witches or abducted princesses, humans taken to live on another planet where we had to serve alien masters. We built magical cities for dolls and horses, cities we knew would have to fall.
I tell you all your nice compassion is a privilege, but we are standing in the middle of privilege, the door locked. Early on, it was the Assyrians, Romans. Egypt, Cyprus. The Synod of Elvira. The massacres of the Byzantine Empire. York. Constantinople. Baghdad. Breslau. Ritual murder. Blood libel. When we caused the Black Death. You are reading about the mechanisms of autocracy. The city council says nothing to the repeated shouting that the Jews killed our own; on the other side of the country, the actress says now we finally have a taste of what it’s like. Our neighbors email the whole list to say that a sick possum has crawled under our car. We didn’t do anything, no one blames us, no reason to feel exposed, this ridiculous impulse to run away and hide.
Some winter nights, we’d sit and stare at the fireplace, the blue and green flames at the center, the wood turning to charcoal, crackling red and orange and then crumbling to ash. People often didn’t believe it mattered, to be Jewish, and I felt unclear on this myself.
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