“So then, did Rose reunite with the man she loved?” Monsieur Haddam asks after a moment. “After the war?”
Alain and I exchange looks. “No,” I say, feeling the weight of the loss pressing against my chest. Monsieur Haddam looks down and shakes his head sadly.
Beside me, Henri clears his throat. I’d become so enraptured by Monsieur Haddam’s story that I’d almost forgotten that he and Simon were still here. “So how did she get out of Paris?” he asks.
Monsieur Haddam shakes his head. “It is impossible to know for sure. Part of the reason that the mosque was able to save many people was that everything was shrouded in secrecy. The Koran teaches us to give to those in need and to do it quietly, for God will know your deeds. For that reason, and because of the danger involved, no one talked of these things, even then. Certainly not to a ten-year-old boy. But from what I have learned since that time, I believe many of the Jews we sheltered were brought through the catacombs to the river Seine. Perhaps she was smuggled onto a barge that took her down the river to Dijon. Or taken with false papers across the line of demarcation.”
“Was that not expensive?” Henri asks. “Getting false papers? Getting across the line?” He turns to me and adds, “My family could not get out, because of the expense.”
“Yes,” Monsieur Haddam replies. “But the mosque helped with papers. That much I know. And the man she loved, Jacob? He left her with money. She sewed it into the lining of one of her dresses. My mother helped her.
“Once she was in the unoccupied zone, it would have been easier for her to get out of the country,” Monsieur Haddam continues. “Here in Paris, she lived as a Muslim with false papers. But in Dijon, or wherever she went, she likely filled out a census form with the gendarmerie. Because she was French, she was likely able to pay a small bribe and obtain papers listing her as Catholic. From there, she could have made it to Spain.”
“She met my grandfather in Spain,” I say.
“Your grandfather is not Jacob?” Monsieur Haddam asks with a frown. “It seems impossible that she loved another so soon.”
“No,” I say softly. “My grandfather’s name was Ted.”
He bows his head. “So she married another.” He pauses. “I always assumed Rose perished,” he says. “So many did in those days. I always believed she would have made contact after the war, if she had lived. But perhaps she wanted only to forget this life.”
I think of what Gavin said about some Holocaust survivors wanting to start over when they believed they’d lost everything.
“But why are there no records of any of this?” I ask after a moment. “It’s so brave and heroic what your family did. What other people at the Grand Mosque did.”
Monsieur Haddam smiles. “At the time, we could not keep any sort of written record,” he says. “We knew we were tying our fate to that of the people we saved. If the Nazis, or the French police, had raided the mosque and found even one piece of evidence, it could have been the end of us all.
“So we helped quietly,” he concludes. “It is the thing I am proudest of in all my life.”
“Thank you,” Alain whispers. “For what you did. For saving my sister.”
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.
He and Monsieur Haddam look at each other for a moment and smile.
“We are not so different, then,” Monsieur Haddam says. He looks at Henri and Simon, then back at Alain. “I never understood the war between our religions, or the war with Christianity. If there is one thing I learned from the time young Rose spent with us, it is that we are all speaking to the same God. It is not religion that divides man. It is good and evil here on earth that divides us.”
The words sink in as we look at one another in silence.
“Your sister,” Monsieur Haddam continues, turning to Alain, “she suffered every day, because she left her family. She never believed she did enough to save you. But you understand, of course, she did what she had to do. She had to save her baby.”
In the silence that follows, you could hear a pin drop. “Her baby?” Alain finally asks, his voice an octave higher than it should be. My mouth is suddenly dry.