Devil's Island by John Hagee

seemed to last longer. They were crunchy—like seeds or nuts, he told himself.
    The specter of starvation hung over the city; he saw it everywhere he looked. Gaunt men gnawed shoe leather in their hunger; others made a meal of straw. When he saw a woman digging in the dust of the street for a crumb, Abraham’s first impulse was to pity her and his second was to fight her for it. It was a fleeting thought and he resisted it, but he was no longer amazed that such desperation occurred to him.
    He walked the streets aimlessly and finally grasped the fact that he had meandered too close to the fighting when he found himself stepping over a body in the street. A large stone whistled by his head, then another. They came from a Roman catapult. The Temple Mount, straight ahead of him, seemed to be where the battle was raging. The rebels are making their last stand, he realized, fighting for their holiest shrine.
    Preoccupied, Abraham did not hear the sounds of an approaching party of revolutionaries until it was almost too late. He ducked into a narrow crevice between two stone buildings. It was a tiny space in the tightly packed quarter of the city, a space he could never have squeezed into when he first arrived in Jerusalem. If I lose any more weight, he thought with an untimely touch of amusement , maybe I’ll become completely invisible.
    He had definitely not achieved invisibility yet. One of the soldiers had seen him and now reached into his hiding place and grabbed a handful of Abraham’s tunic, bringing his face halfway out of the shadows.
    Tobias! Abraham’s mouth fell open, but he caught himself before he spoke the name aloud.
    â€œRivka? The baby?” Tobias asked in a hoarse, anguished whisper. His eyelids were purple and heavy, and his face was lined with exhaustion. “Alive, but barely.”
    â€œWhat have you found?” one of the soldiers shouted in their direction.
    â€œNothing!” Tobias shoved Abraham roughly against the stone wall. “This one has no food, and he’s too weak to fight.”
    Abraham crumpled to the ground. Blood trickled down his face from a gash in his scalp. He looked up at Tobias and nodded almost imperceptibly when he saw the unspoken apology in his cousin’s eyes.
    â€œThen let’s go!” another soldier called, anxious to move on.
    Tobias knelt over Abraham and reached for his belt, pretending to search for a wallet. “I’ll never make it out of this alive,” Tobias murmured. “Save them . . . if you can.”
    Abraham saw the silent pleading in Tobias’s eyes, which filled with tears at the reference to his family.
    â€œAnd if you can’t,” he added, “then save yourself.” His voice choked with emotion, he stammered, “F-f-find a way out.”
    â€œTobias, what are you doing?” The soldier’s voice was angry, and a scowl twisted his face.
    â€œI thought he might be carrying money.”
    â€œAnd what would there be to spend it on?” the other man asked bitterly.
    â€œFreedom,” Tobias whispered, giving Abraham a final look that held the significance of a shared understanding. “God be with you, Abraham.”
    â€œAnd with you,” Abraham replied softly. There was so much he wanted to say that his heart ached more than his head, and as Tobias turned and left, Abraham knew with a certainty that it would be the last time he ever saw his cousin. He also knew that Tobias had spoken the truth: he would never survive the final battle for the heart and soul of Jerusalem; Tobias would die a reluctant martyr to the cause.
    Abraham remained motionless on the ground as the soldiers departed. He watched them step over several bodies heaped in the street, casualties who’d been allowed to die where they lay. When the group was finally out of sight, he sat up and touched his head gingerly. The wound was not deep and the bleeding had stopped. A large lump was rising and