A Jewish Girl Saved Me

By Yasir Sulaiman

The novel is inspired by real incidents and events, the anguish that people have lived and are still experiencing due to conflicts, wars, and diaspora. It combines truth and fiction. The novel’s characters connect between them, taking us from the distant traumatic past to the immediate and more traumatic present.

The novel carries many facts for truth-seekers from Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others. It aims to urge the search for truth and answer many questions, some of which will remain open even after the end of the novel. These questions represent part of the doubts that many people have in our present reality.

However, the role of the truth-seeker will be to complete the process of research, which will be the cause of the beginning of the desired intellectual change phase that leads us to achieve freedom, peace, justice, and peaceful coexistence among all nations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886934953

Yasir Sulaiman

Yasir Sulaiman holds a Bachelor's degree from the College of Economics and Political Science, Sultan Qaboos University. He has experience in the field of audit of financial ,administrative and combating corruption since 2014. Before starting his official writing, he spent several years among the corridors of bookstores and bookshelves to self-study the novel, Arabic poetry, Islamic history, and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad. In 2020, he joined the Bachelor of Islamic sharia program at the Islamic University of Madinah, one of the most important universities in the Islamic world, in addition to completing the study of a master's program in accounting and finance at the College of Economics and Political Science  since 2022. He seeks to dedicate literature such as novels and poetry to support common social, economic and ethical issues as a means to convey the voice of truth to the whole world.

Book preview

About the Author

Yasir Sulaiman holds a Bachelor's degree from the College of Economics and Political Science, Sultan Qaboos University. He has experience in the field of audit of financial, administrative and combating corruption since 2014.

Before starting his official writing, he spent several years among the corridors of bookstores and bookshelves to self-study the novel, Arabic poetry, Islamic history, and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad. In 2020, he joined the Bachelor of Islamic sharia program at the Islamic University of Madinah, one of the most important universities in the Islamic world, in addition to completing the study of a master's program in accounting and finance at the College of Economics and Political Science since 2022.

He seeks to dedicate literature such as novels and poetry to support common social, economic and ethical issues as a means to convey the voice of truth to the whole world.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to all the truth and reality seekers.

Author Yasir Sulaiman

Copyright Information ©

Yasir Sulaiman 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Sulaiman, Yasir

A Jewish Girl Saved Me

ISBN 9798886934946 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886934953 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023906555

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

My family, my friend and the publisher

Preface

The novel is inspired by real incidents and events, the anguish that people have lived and are still experiencing due to conflicts, wars, and diaspora. It combines truth and fiction. The novel’s characters connect between them, taking us from the distant traumatic past to the immediate and more traumatic present.

The novel carries many facts for truth-seekers from Jews, Christians, Muslims and others. It aims to urge the search for truth and answer many questions, some of which will remain open even after the end of the novel. These questions represent part of the doubts that many people have in our present reality.

However, the role of the truth-seeker will be to complete the process of research, which will be the cause of the beginning of the desired intellectual change phase that leads us to achieve freedom, peace, justice, and peaceful coexistence among all nations.

Chapter 1

The sun began to set timidly and shyly to announce the end of a day in which the raindrops mixed with its rays, which as soon as they faded and disappeared behind the clouds until they returned carrying with them hope and renewed optimism.

It seemed as if they intended the absence to rise again and appear in their attractive splendor to send warmth and restore hope and lost dreams. However, today, it wanted to set with a beautiful ending; it drew for us while it was gathering its light and moving towards the distant horizon, a panoramic image formed from the city of Aleppo, with its remarkable beauty and high taste, and the picturesque views of its neighborhoods, landmarks and all its historical stature, topped by a rainbow that looks to the viewer from afar as if it is an open gate that calls out to visitors and researchers for the truth.

Zuhoor and Dina stood in front of the door of their friend Balqis’s house, who was not usually late. Darkness will soon descend. They must head before that and reach the house of their friend Yasmine. Today’s turn is at Yasmine’s house. This what the four girls were used to, or how they were used to be called the four pearls of Aleppo, as some parents liked to call them. Every night after sunset, they meet in one’s house and spend an hour or two talking, discussing things and reading. What brought the girls together was more than just fellowship.

They were united by pure friendship, mad love and deep sincerity. All that, in addition to the friendship of their families and being neighbors in the neighborhood of Azizyah. Their friendship was never affected regardless of their disagreement of ideas, convictions, beliefs, and religion despite the intensification of controversy, discussions, and divergence of viewpoints in recent days, especially with their discussion of many extreme issues that plague the Middle East region, but this did not create a problem between them but rather was rich material for discussion and debate.

With a look of astonishment and a heavy sigh, Zuhoor looked at Dina as if she was pouring out her anger on her for Balqis’s delay:

What is taking her so long? We have been waiting for more than ten minutes! Let’s knock on the door, and if she doesn’t come out, we will leave without her. Yasmine is waiting for us, and it is getting too late. The night will fall, and we must be there before that.

Why are you so grumpy and mad? We are not used to knocking on the door and disturbing the household. Also, why are you so worried? Yasmine’s house is close, and everyone who lives in this neighborhood knows us, so there is no fear of being late even if it gets dark.

With a fake laugh that conceals a deep fear of the future that doesn’t seem so easy, Zuhoor confessed her fear and panic to her friend for the first time,

Because you are so pure and innocent, and Balqis is just like you. The whole neighborhood is going through a tough time. Do you not hear the news about the conflicts and wars in the region? I have a feeling that Balqis’s delay holds a new catastrophe and a disaster that no one is ready for.

What? What are you talking about? This can’t be true, that’s impossible! Everyone in Aleppo is brothers and friends, and the relationships and bonds that bind them are far greater than fighting each other.

Because you forget quickly, and you see nothing in front of you but friendship and love. Have you forgotten what Yasmine’s father told us about the reason for Balqis’s family coming to Al-Azizyah neighborhood? Wasn’t it because of the attack on the Jewish ghetto?

Zuhoor is right; the people of Aleppo are no longer the same. Many of the people of the city are avoiding sitting and talking with the four girls and their families because of this friendship that is no longer familiar as it was before. How can it be imagined in Al-Azizyah neighborhood of Aleppo in September 1973 that friendship and love could gather between four girls: the Jewish Balqis, Zuhoor, and Dina, who are both Christians, and Yasmine, the Muslim.

This was a common thing in the past, and no one would have noticed the presence of such a combination, but the matter changed after the riots in the city of Aleppo in 1947 AD against the Jews of the city after the United Nations vote on the partition resolution. Many innocent people have lost their lives to its impact, and a number of them fled to other regions in Syria and abroad. As for Balqis’s family, they came to Al-Azizyah neighborhood and built strong ties with its people, and they forgot or pretended that they forgot that black history, but can they withstand all these hurricanes and storms? No one knows.

Balqis sat on the couch in the house’s yard, exhausted by the long debate and screaming at her brother Dawoud. He was still determined to travel and join the Israeli forces. Her tears poured out of her brown eyes, and her round, white, angelic face became drowning as if the Euphrates had flooded it. With her delicate, soft yet trembling hands, she grabbed the strands of her long, silky golden hair and pulled it out from under her quilt as if she is trying to pull it out from the roots. Poor Balqis, how can she bear the separation of her brother, whom she loves? How can she confront her friends after they know her brother’s story? Indeed, how can she face all of the people of Aleppo who will consider Dawoud’s joining of the Israeli forces as high treason that cannot be forgiven? Poor Balqis, how can she endure all this pain when she is still fifteen years old?

After that storm of anger mixed with fear, Zuhoor had drowned into her imaginations, remembering Aleppo and its beauty, seeing the majestic mosques, the spread churches, and the steadfast synagogue that was only a few meters away from each other. Her imagination took her to the old city of Aleppo with its vibrant markets, ornate and engraved gates, and its fortified walls that carry with them a thousand stories and anecdotes about resilience, pride, and reluctance; in her mind, she replied, Was our ancestors stronger than us? How could they coexist and we could not?

The screaming coming from inside the yard cut off the thoughts of Zuhoor, so she ran towards the door of the house and shouted,

It sounds like Balqis’s voice. I knew that there was something wrong. We must go in to make sure she’s okay.

Let’s hope for the better, wait, I’ll knock on the door.

Balqis was screaming in the face of her mother, who had told her not to go with her friends today because they would come with their families shortly to discuss the topic of Dawoud’s leaving.

Dina was busy knocking on the door when she was surprised by the