The Book of Names

“Amit asks those who wish to support his family to pray, have faith, and speak the name—”
—Interview with the brother of a hostage, July 2024

This story honors the October Seventh hostages thought to be alive as of 8/26/24 by speaking their names, or synonymous English words.

She found the book in a dream of the ocean, nestled in the carbonate arms of a red coral. Roughly the size of a dictionary, it caught her attention because, in contrast to the crimson of the coral and the dark of the ocean floor, it glowed deep gold. She lifted the book from its watery bed and carried it home through waves of alexandrite green and blue. When she awoke, it was perched on her night table, barnacles still clinging to its surface. She wiped it clean with the edge of her tee shirt to reveal two lions etched in gold on its cover, rearing up on powerful legs. One had mighty teeth and a flowing mane, and one was just a cub. It was a prayer book, she thought, or maybe a song book. But when she opened it, she saw it was a book of names, each written in a different hand, with two neat columns on every page.

She was ten years old, and her name was Eden. She was not surprised that a real book had been produced by a dream, because she understood that the line between our world and that of dreams is not a solid one. She had fine long hair, brushed by her mother into a ponytail each morning, and lived in a sprawling house where the doors banged open and shut with the comings and goings of her brothers and sisters.

The first thing to do with this gift from the sea was show it to Daniel. They met each Saturday after dinner, and today her father gave her permission to go early, skipping dinner. “Be careful,” he said, his broad shoulders stooped in the late-day light, and her mother said, “Have fun, I love you.”

She hurried along the curving path through the woods, skirting the clear waters of a lake, and climbed down through the camellia to their meeting place, an abandoned playground in a valley halfway between their homes. She always walked, and Dan took his bicycle through a field of clover and grain stacked in neat bundles to meet her. The slide was rusted, the rocking horses rigid on their springs, but the swings were intact, the geodesic climber sturdy and tall. In the peace of that place, they would speak of all things from violin to bread to the ways of ghosts.

When the light faltered, she judged that dinner was long over; Dan was late. She scaled the rusted slide. It was the highest point in the playground, and she could see past the empty fields with their stacks of grain, to the place where the slope of the valley met the sky. A mountain rose there in the deepening dark, majestic with limestone and dolomite. In the middle distance, a deer ambled through the liriope with her fawn, grazing on the bromegrass and lobelia. Daniel was nowhere to be seen.

She climbed back down and stood looking towards home. It would be filled with the smells of her mother’s baking and the lift of music.

“I will wait for you,” she said aloud.

Come morning he would appear, she was certain. Her beloved friend would walk into the clearing and tell her, as always, what he had seen and lived. So she lay down to sleep and the stars came out in the heavens: the warrior Orion, Zosma the lion, and many she could not name.

While she slept, the night mist gathered and the seeds on the forest floor searched the earth. They found purchase, leaned back, yawned, gaped, and flung their arms out in delight. A forest grew up around her: strong-limbed oak, great cedar and ash, tall orchards of orange and lemon.

A bird sang in the darkness. She opened her eyes to the trees and cried out in fear.

When they heard her cry, her grandparents, who were long dead, rolled over in their graves. They came up dripping earth from their teeth and their hair and bones. “Why are you crying?” they asked.

“My friend is missing,” she said. “And I have slept and dreamed, and a forest has grown around me and still he has not come.” She was not surprised by their appearing, understanding as she did that the line between our world and that of the dead is not a solid one.

The grandparents beat their chests. They tore their matted hair and ripped their tattered clothing. They said, “We knew this would happen.” They knelt and prayed. They gave counsel: “Have faith child, your friend will turn up.” They said, “Where is your jacket?” and “Why have you slept here under the stars?”

So she showed them the book, and they understood, nodding their heads.

Then the grandfathers climbed up the slide to keep watch, and the grandmothers eased themselves onto the swings. Eden sat between them with the book on the ground beside her. They pumped their legs in the dark.

“I will not doubt,” she said. And even when she did, she said into the air, “I will not doubt.”

Daniel was her greatest friend. Slight and smart, an avid sketcher of birds, he was the first-born son of her parents’ old schoolmates. He biked each Saturday to meet her, red locks streaming behind him, speaking before he even dismounted, to ask what she had read or seen or overheard that week. He would praise her stories, and between peals of laughter she would praise his humor.

“Come and find me, okay?” she said out loud. She held his name in her heart and belly, between her fingers and under her tongue; in the cave of her lungs and the labyrinth of her blood, she held each syllable of his beloved name.

Now she lost hope. “Daniel!” she screamed.

And the stars wept for her.

“Daniel! Daniel! Daniel!” Three times.

The stars blinked back in the gloaming.

“Daniel!” she screamed. Then louder, twice more.

And there he was, standing suddenly before her. “Here I am,” he said. “Don’t cry.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “You worry too much.”

“Time stopped for me,” she said, leaping off the swing. She flung her arms around him. “While I waited, I did not live. I lived in my dreams.” She picked up the book and held it out to him. “Finally, you are here. I can inscribe you in the book of life.”

He peered down at the book, touched the golden lions, and opened it with care to read the names of the fortunate.

Now Eden had nothing to write with, having left her house in such a hurry. But one grandmother had a pencil behind her ear, and the other found a quill in the curve of her rib. So each child wrote the other’s name in the gift from the sea.

“Let’s go home,” said Daniel.

“Yes. I am hungry.”

Their eyes met in the dark of the forest. His lids looked heavy below his lashes. “I am tired,” he said. “I came a long way.”

“Tell me the story as we go,” she said.

Her mother would be glad when she came through the door. She would hold her close and brush her long, shining hair. “My beauty,” she would say, as she did each morning. “My prince,” Daniel’s mother would say, kissing him goodnight.

So they left that place. The trees moved aside for them, the trees protected them and blessed them with prosperity and increased their days on earth. She carried the book and he carried his story and her grandparents walked beside them and encouraged them and sometimes walked before them and led them, gnashing their teeth to ward away evil. Shortly they came upon his bicycle which he’d bound to a fence; he untied it and rolled it alongside.

They went home. They walked through the trees under a carnelian sun and the girl knew the way and was unafraid and they returned just as she’d come—the book secure under her arm, close to her body as she moved and climbed, her shoulder aflame with the heft of her labor, with the weight of the many names she carried. Her grandparents would sustain her if she faltered but she did not falter, and in fact grew stronger as she walked, and they knew the way if she got lost, but she was never lost as she moved over the earth, understanding as she did that the lines between here and there are not truly solid and that she was together always with her friends and family and ancestors even as she traveled and even as she left that forest, crossed the valley, traversed the ocean with its many mysteries and wonders, its secrets and its gifts, and finally went home.

*

List of Names, or Synonymous English Words (in order of appearance in the text)

Almog Sarusi – “Coral.”

Ziv Berman – “Glowed.”

Gali Berman – “Wave.”

Alexander Lobanov – “Alexandrite.”

Yair Horn – “Reveal.”

Ariel Bibas – “Lions.”

Eitan Horn – “Powerful.”

Nimrod Cohen – “Mighty.”

Yarden Bibas – “Flowing.”

Kfir Bibas – “Cub.”

Shiri Bibas – “Song.”

Eden Yerushalmi – “Eden.”

Matan Zengauker – “Gift.”

Avinathan Or – “Father gave.”

Or Levy – “Light.”

Keith Siegel – “Woods.”

Tsachi Idan – “Clear.”

Agam Berger – “Lake.”

Bancha Duchruayawach – “Camellia.”

Guy Gilboa-Dalal – “Valley.”

Omer Wenkert – “Grain stacked in neat bundles.”

Watchara Sriuan – “Sturdy.”

Tamir Nimrod – “Tall.”

Shlomo Mansour – “Peace.”

Sasiwan Pankong – “Ghosts.”

Ori Danino – “Light.”

Daniela Gilboa – “Judged.”

Rom Braslavski – “Highest.”

Omer Neutra – “Stacks of grain.”

Arbel Yehoud – “Mountain.”

Segev Kalfon – “Majestic.”

Hersh Goldberg-Polin – “Deer.”

Ofer Kalderon – “Fawn.”

Eliya Cohen – “Lobelia.”

David Cunio – “Beloved.”

Surasak Lamnau – “Heavens.”

Alexander (Sasha) Trupanov – “Warrior.”

Ariel Cunio – “Lion.”

Tal Shoham – “Night mist.”

Elkana Bohbot – “Purchase.”

Edan Alexander – “Delight.”

Bipin Joshi – “Forest.”

Eitan Abraham Mor – “Strong.”

Alon Ohel – “Oak.”

Sagui Dekel-Chen – “Great.”

Romi Gonen – “Tall.”

Carmel Gat – “Orchards.”

Liri Albag – “Sang.”

Matan Engrest – “Gave.”

Evyatar David – “Counsel.”

Natthaphong Pinta – “Air.”

Maxim Herkin – “Greatest.”

Tu Saelee – “Smart.”

Bar Kupershtein – “Son.”

Ohad Ben Ami – “Praise.”

Itzhk Elgarat – “Laughter.”

Ohad Yahalomi – “Praise.”

Karina Ariev – “Beloved.”

Idan Shtivi – “Time.”

Gadi Moshe Mozes – “Fortunate.”

Doron Steinbrecker – “Gift.”

Naama Levy – “Beauty.”

Pongsak Tanna – “Prosperity.”

Yosef Haim Ohana – “Increased.”

Oded Lifshitz – “Encouraged.”

Caid Farhan Alqadi – “Led.”

Eliya Sharabi – “Carnelian.”

Omer Shem Tov – “Sun.” (Nicknamed “my sunny son,” a song by Orian Shukron)

Hamza Al Zayadni – “Unafraid.”

Sathian Suwankam – “Secure.”

Emily Damari – “Labor.”

Yosef Al Zayadni – “Grew stronger.”

Omri Miran – “Earth.”