The Sweetness of Forgetting

by Kristin Harmel

“Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year,” Gavin explains. “It’s customary for us to go to a flowing body of water—like the ocean—for a little ceremony called a tashlich.”

I volunteer once a week at the Jewish nursing home in Chelsea.”

“The leader of the Grand Mosque of Paris was, at that time, the most powerful Muslim in Europe,” Henri says. He glances at Alain. “Si Kaddour Beng—Comment s’est-il appelé?” “Benghabrit,” Alain says.

Monsieur Haddam shakes his head. “There is no need to thank me. It was our duty. In our religion, we are taught, ‘Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world.’ ” Alain makes a strange strangled sound. “In the Talmud, it is written, ‘If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world,’” he says softly.

“Yes. There is one God, and he lives in the sky, and he hears all of us. It is just that here on earth, we are confused about how to believe in him. But what does it matter, as long as we trust he is there?”

“After the war, many Shoah survivors married and tried to have babies right

away, even the ones who were malnourished and had no money.”

“To create life when everything around them was death,” he says simply. “To be a part of a family again, after they’d lost everyone they’d ever loved.

“Some kinds of love are more powerful than others,” Alain finally replies. “It doesn’t mean they aren’t all real. Some loves are the kind we try to make fit but are never quite right.”

“I mean that love is all around us,” Alain says. “But the older we get, the more confusing it becomes. The more times we’ve been hurt, the harder it is to see love right in front of us, or to accept love into our hearts and truly believe in it. And if you cannot accept love, or cannot bring yourself to believe in it, you can never really feel it.”

“The night they took my family away, I ran by that restaurant. And the owner, he was outside, watching all the people being marched down the street toward their death. And you

know what? He was smiling. Sometimes, that smile still haunts my nightmares.”

“In our culture, that means I now have the obligation to assist you. It is a code of honor called Besa.”

“It is an Albanian concept that derives from the Koran. It means that if someone comes to you in need, you must not turn them away.