Free Devil's Island by John Hagee

blind alley after another and then backtracking. He never fully recognized where he was, but he finally reached a street he knew would take him back to the Upper City.
    Walking into the late afternoon sun, he shielded his eyes with his hand, and as he climbed the hill, he prayed he would find Tobias at home with Rivka, entertaining her with a highly colorful but carefully edited version of their adventure.
    Tobias was not at home, however.
    â€œI got lost,” Abraham told Rivka. “I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention and I, uh, got separated from Tobias. It took me a long time to find my way back.” That much was true, but he left out the part about being chased by a pack of Zealots at the time they’d been separated. Rivka’s eyes widened in fear. “But Tobias wouldn’t get lost, so why isn’t he here by now?”
    â€œPerhaps he’s still searching for food.” Abraham averted his head to avoid looking at Rivka as he spoke. “We hadn’t found anything yet when I got lost,” he explained.
    The baby cried weakly in her arms, and Rivka tried to soothe him with a soft “Shhh, shhh, shhh.”
    They sat in the courtyard until nightfall settled around them like a close dark shroud. Rivka tried to comfort her hungry infant as she watched the door anxiously, while Abraham prayed silently and tried valiantly to console her.
    His mind explored dozens of possible scenarios, trying not to think about the brutally murdered man in the streets and trying not to imagine what the soldiers might have done to Tobias when they caught him. The one thing he was sure of was that Tobias had not outrun them; if he had, he would certainly have made it home.
    He would start searching for Tobias at dawn, Abraham decided.

7
    THE NEXT MORNING ABRAHAM RETURNED to the Lower City and attempted to retrace his steps, searching for any sign of Tobias. He had not slept well, tossing and turning all night. Once, when he had dozed off for a few minutes, he dreamed of tripping over Tobias’s mutilated body in the street. He woke up vowing he would not let that happen to his cousin. If Tobias had been killed, he would find his body and give him a proper burial.
    Abraham combed the streets but did not find a body. He looked up and down the alleys for a fresh bloodstain, a lone sandal, a torn bit of cloth—he remembered Tobias had been wearing a faded blue tunic—but he found no clues, no evidence that Tobias might have been beaten or killed. He went all the way back to the opening of the aqueduct, finding the place where he’d last seen his cousin racing behind him. But there was no sign of what had happened to Tobias.
    Of course, the revolutionaries could have killed him and dumped his body in a deserted building. But Abraham focused on another alternative: perhaps Tobias had been forced to join the revolutionaries to fight for the city. He would never have joined their army willingly, but if captured, Abraham thought, Tobias would do it to spare his life, in the hopes he could eventually escape and be reunited with Rivka and Joel. Abraham gradually accepted the fact that he might never know what had happened to Tobias, but he chose to believe his cousin was still alive, and that’s the scenario he painted for Rivka when he returned that evening.
    Over the next few days he scoured the city for food. The most successful strategy, he had discovered, was to look for abandoned houses that appeared to have been ransacked. He would sneak inside to see if the thieves, most likely the rebel forces, had left anything behind in their haste. No morsel of bread was too moldy for him; he treasured every crumb. Occasionally he found a few kernels of wheat. Even if they’d been crushed, he gathered them to take to Rivka and the baby, who were both slowly starving.
    One day he mistakenly entered a home that was still occupied, and the owner, near death, protested feebly and incoherently.