I am happy to share my new short story, "The Third Child".It has just been published in Fiction International, the literary magazine of the San Diego University, which previously published original pieces by Marguerite Duras, J. M. Coetzee, Malcom X, Claribel Alegría, and many others.To Simon, Simy, Betty and Yuval.May this list be final for ever and ever.Synopsis: In a traditional family in Morocco, the young Leah is unexpectedly part of a strange secret ceremonial organized by her mother Hnina. She discovers the story of an unknown sibling, and the untold struggles of her family’s women to protect children against an ancestral curse.I can send to you a PDF of the short story, if you send to me your email address in a private message.The pictures are those of my aunt Simy's grave, who died as a young child, in the Jewish cemetery of Casablance, before and after its recent renovation by my mother and her sisters.**The Third Child**by Benjamin Abtan“I had to move to save my other children,” Hnina whispers. “Yaacov, your father, did not want to leave his beloved red city. He said that we had to stay strong for your two brothers, that other children would come, with the help of God. But deep inside, I knew I had to change something. I knew we had to change cities to protect the children we had, and those who might follow.”Leah listens silently to her mother. The small room is dark, lit only by the smooth flame of a half-burned wide white pillar candle placed on the wooden table at which they are sitting. The shutters have been closed to prevent the strong light of the Casablanca afternoon sun from entering. Pause. In the silence, Hnina and Leah can hear only from a distance the lively agitation of the narrow white mellah streets packed with traveling traders, men in European suits on their way to business meetings, and children in light dresses, shorts, and leather sandals coming back from school with their family’s Arab helpers. Leah looks at her mother’s tears invading and disfiguring her face, like a sudden and silent tsunami. This is the only moment of the year when she sees her sad - Hnina is usually so joyful, smiling, carefully listening to the other mothers at the open-air market where they go together! Today is the day for mourning Leah’s brother. Their annual secret memorial day, and the first time she has heard such a story from her mother.Leah never knew this brother - she was born after he passed away - but she often thinks of him. Sometimes, at night, when her brothers Doudou and Jojo have fallen asleep in the bedroom they share, Leah speaks with him: “Where are you now?”, she asks. “What would we do, if you were here with us, with me?” Sometimes, she hears his responses, in a distant and childish voice, and they have a conversation until she falls asleep without noticing it. Sometimes, he does not answer. “He must be playing with his friends there,” she thinks.She discovered his existence, and his disappearance, three years ago, when she was eight. On that April day, she arrived home after being picked up from school by the old Mahmed, in his ample white wool djellaba, his head covered by its qod, the baggy hood, to protect him against the burning sun. Like every day, just after entering the house, she took off her sandals to prevent dust from entering. In her white short dress and barefoot, she was about to run to the kitchen and grab the fresh pastries that Hnina and Fatima, her helper, prepared every day for the children, when her mother suddenly appeared at the front door. She was wearing a traditional dark blue velvet kaftan embroidered with gold, when she usually wore simple long cotton dresses with light colors. Hnina summoned her, very briefly: “Come!”Leah was frustrated. She loved these pastries so much, especially the dates and the figs stuffed with marzipan! But her mother’s tone and attire were unusual. She seemed nervous and in a hurry, when she usually appeared so much in control of her time, of her house, and of herself. Hnina took her energetically by the hand into the parents’ bedroom. Leah was surprised: this room was a forbidden place in the house, like a sacred sanctuary. She had been told on several occasions, when she had wanted to sleep in her parents’ bed to be protected from the djinns that invaded her nightmares, that once children were no longer babies, they had to sleep in their own room, that this place was for parents only.Why, then, were they sitting in her parents’ bedroom now? For some reason, Leah felt she had to keep silent when Hnina, agitated, standing, apparently searched for something among her clothes in the closet.“Here they are!” Hnina took a wide white pillar candle and a few matches out of her heavy winter fur coat. “We are going to light a candle and think of your brother, poor boy, may he be happy where he is,” she added, as if to herself.“What is she talking about? Doudou and Jojo are on their way from school, and they’re not poor, they’re like us,” Leah thought. “Why light a candle for one of them? And for which one? Why?” The mystery, the hurry, and her mother’s unusual behavior surprised Leah, and even made her a little fearful. She instinctively felt that she had to listen, without asking any questions, to avoid bringing more chaos to this moment and to her mother’s heart. The atmosphere of this candle lighting was very different from the other kind she knew.She loved it when, for as long as she could remember, her mother took her in her arms to light the shabbat white taper candles on Friday evening. That was a moment for them, for the girls. She was proud to do it with her mother, like an adult, in the kitchen flooded with light, next to the living room and its large table covered with the scented traditional meal composed of several salads of baba ganush, shakshuka, slow-cooked eggplants, beetroots, and grilled peppers, with spicy fish and beef in red sauce waiting on the hot plate on the side to be served, in an orderly manner, the one after the other.This candle lighting in the bedroom was different. It was as if she and her mother were hiding. Just the two of them, in the dark. They did not loudly say *“Baroukh ata…”* so that everybody in the house could hear the blessing and understand that shabbat had entered and that it was time to come together for dinner. Instead, Hnina slightly bent over the low wooden table, quickly mumbling words that Leah could not hear, as if they were thieves. “Please light the candle, Leah,” Hnina suddenly asked. Leah had never seen her mother like this. She was impressed by the strangeness of the moment. She mechanically lit the matches and the candle. “That’s fine. Let’s go now,” Hnina said right away, already standing, taking Leah’s hand to leave the room. “I’ll explain, but don’t tell anybody. This is only for us, girls.”“But Dad is going to see the candle when he comes back tonight,” Leah remarked, careful to respect the unspoken rule to not ask question, and instinctively willing to support her mother.“He is away for two days, he will come back after the candle has entirely burned out,” Hnina responded. Leah was used to this, her father often left the house for two or three days to sell jewels in the towns surrounding Casablanca and some remote cities. He always returned before shabbat on Friday night, with little gifts for Doudou, Jojo, and herself. “Please go, I’ll be there in a second,” Hnina said, quickly closing the parents’ room door.A minute later, Hnina joyfully welcomed her eldest son, David, and his younger brother, Joseph, at the front door, with a smile, now wearing a long cotton light green dress: “Welcome boys! How was your day? Don’t rush to the kitchen, take your shoes off first! And leave some pastries for your sister!”Leah had already rushed to the kitchen to make sure she could choose the best pastries. After her first bite into the stuffed fig she managed to grasp, the marzipan slowly melting and spreading its sweet taste in her mouth, she thought: “Who is this brother? Why must I not tell anybody?” She was tempted to share these questions with her brothers, to whom she was used to telling her stories of the day, when her eyes crossed the deep gaze of Fatima, who stood in the corner of the kitchen. In those dark, still eyes, Leah saw an unspoken “You have to keep it for yourself!”. She felt an invisible membrane separated her from her brothers.***Three years after this first sudden ceremony with Leah, Hnina decided to tell the story to her daughter. “She’s eleven now, she’s mature enough to understand,” she said to herself. Although the religion sets the majority at thirteen for boys and at twelve for girls, she felt this was the moment.Like every year, she waited for Yaacov to be away for a few days. The Pessah holiday season was good for business, with its large family reunions at which new purchases could be seen by all, although nobody showed them, out of humility. During his trips, Hnina could say prayers for the soul of her beloved third child, Isaac, and light a candle that could burn entirely before her husband came back. For this year’s ceremony, she had thought carefully of what she would tell Leah.When Isaac passed away, after just twenty-two days of life, she remembered what her own mother had told her, once, in a whisper, when she had given birth to Joseph, her second child. “Pay attention to the next child, Hnina. Isaiah, my younger brother, the third child of the family, died when he was eight years old. Suddenly. Like in a flash. I loved him dearly, and I miss him every day of my life. In our family, the third children are at risk. My mother told me so, once. We cannot change it, but our duty as women is to do anything to take care of the children, particularly the fragile third ones.”When she gave birth to Leah, a year and a half after Isaac’s passing, it was clear to her: “She has to know. She is the only girl in the new generation. She has to protect the lives of the children.”Every year, Isaac’s passing anniversary makes Hnina relive the painful memories of this terrible day again, as if it were today: “I am sorry, Hnina, this is meningitis, he had no chance of survival,” Doctor Assor had told her on that day, sitting in the bedroom where Isaac had slept with her and Yaacov since he was born. “My condolences, Hnina, Yaacov. May God provide you with many more children!”Hnina could not believe it. He was so lively, just two days ago! So lovely, too! She knew him already, she could feel his tenderness, and the fragility of his character. She felt him. Yaacov and she cried a lot, discreetly, alone in the room, sitting on the bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, over the tiny baby basket and the still body of their newborn. David, then four, and Joseph, nearly three, could not hear any sound coming from their parents’ bedroom that afternoon.After two hours, the rabbi arrived. As was usual in Marrakesh in these cases, the Doctor had warned him of a death in the community. “R’bi Moshe”, as he was called, was dressed traditionally, with a large green djellaba, like most of the Jews who lived in the mellah.Mahmed and Fatima opened the door, and Yaacov came to greet R’bi Moshe before they entered together the room where the body had been lying for two hours. Hnina was sitting on the bed, like a statue, in the dark green wool skirt and long-sleeved cream-colored blouse she had been wearing since the morning. Silently crying, she had not been able to stop watching the tiny body of her child.“Slama Hnina, I’m sorry,“ R’bi Moshe said. “Slama,“ Hnina responded, with a low voice, in a breath. Yaacov offered him a chair. He sat in front of Hnina and Yaacov, less than a meter away, with the baby basket between them.“This is very painful, I am terribly sorry… I was so happy for his brit mila, just two weeks ago… God has given, God has taken back, we all need to accept this, even when it is the most painful thing in the world,” he continued. “We need to begin the preparation for burial,” he added. Yaacov and Hnina were not surprised by the hurry: they knew Judaism commands the burial of a dead person as soon as possible, on the same day if that can be arranged. They held their silence out of respect, and of sadness.R'bi Moshe paused.“Yaacov reminded me the baby was twenty-two days old,” he continued. “In that case, the Law is clear: there is no mourning. The parents and siblings don’t have to stop listening to music or eating meat. In fact, it is an obligation for them to not stop doing so.”“Why is that?” Hnina asked, in shock.“This is the Law, Hnina. According to the Wise men, before the age of thirty days, it is as if the child does not have a soul. So not mourning is an obligation,” R’bi Moshe explained.“My dear baby, no soul? How dare you? How dare you, men, what do you know about it?” Hnina wanted to shout with rage. But she was exhausted, and she knew she could not win this battle. She said nothing and could not hear anything else afterwards. Her eyes, usually so full of light, were wide open, still, wet, when R’bi Moshe, accompanied by Yaacov, stood and left.Two hours later, Isaacs’s tiny body was covered by the ocher earth of Morocco’s south.***Now that Leah is eleven years old, Hnina has decided to tell her the story. “One night, a few weeks after God decided to bring your brother Isaac close to him in heaven, I had a dream. That confirmed my intuition that we had to change something. A wise rabbi appeared and gave me an order: ‘Hnina, you have to move. You must leave Marrakesh to save your other children’,” Hnina tells Leah. “I told your father the dream and the wise rabbi’s order. I told him that we had to leave, to change cities, in order to avoid the curse that is upon the family and protect the lives of the children.”This is the first time Leah hears this story. Since their first secret memorial ceremony, three years ago, she has asked her mother questions about this older brother she never met, when nobody, or only Fatima, was in the house with them. She has felt a different connection with her mother than that of her brothers: she can ask questions, freely, like an adult. “And Dad, what did he say then?” she asks.“In the beginning, he was reluctant,” Hnina responds. She wants Leah to know the story and to pass on the secret to the succeeding generations of girls, so she has been glad of her curiosity over the past years, and of these shared moments. “All his business was in fabric, for which Marrakesh is the capital, and it’s never easy to start a new business from scratch. Changing cities was a risky move, which could put the family in a difficult financial situation. But I was convinced that this was the right move to make, and I kept repeating my dream to him. I kept repeating that the rabbi was absolutely certain of himself, and that we had to obey him. ‘We have to leave Marrakesh,’ I repeated to him. ‘God will provide us with what we need.’ “Her mother telling her about this conversation with her father makes Leah feel a little ill-at-ease, as if she has inadvertently entered the intimacy of her parents. It reminds her of that afternoon last year, when she was walking in the corridor to knock at the door of her parents’ room and ask for their permission to play outside with her friends. Less than two meters away, she saw the door ajar, and heard a burst of loud voices coming from within. Discreetly, she came close and had a quick look inside: both Yaacov and Hnina were standing, close to each other, speaking with large gestures. Immediately, she shifted her position and leaned on the white wall, her feet on the floor stones on which Doudou, Jojo and she were used to spraying water before sitting on them to cool down during the stifling summer afternoons. She could not be seen, but could hear everything Yaacov and Hnina were saying.“No, I have not told anybody,” Hnina said, apparently infuriated. “Your honor is safe,” she added with a bitter irony.“This is not about my honor, this is about respecting the rules,” Yaacov replied curtly. “Do you think I am happy of it?”“I don’t know, Yaacov, you never tell! For years, you have refused to speak about it with me!” Hnina was obviously exasperated, nearly shouting.“But I think of it every day!” Yaacov screamed. Leah was afraid, it was the first time she heard her father scream. She sweated, her heart pounding in her ears.“He was my son too, Hnina! I loved him deeply, like the others! I think of him every day, and it feels like someone is peeling my skin.” Yaacov’s voice was much lower. The light crunch of their old wooden bed. Someone had sat down on it.“But what can I do?” he said in sobs. “I have to go on, every day, to work, to make the business successful, to provide you and the children with all that you need for a happy life.”Another light crunch of their bed. The other person had also sat down. Silence. Low noises of fabric rubbing. Sobs.“I love you,” Hnina said. Leah had to listen carefully to hear her, because she said it in a very low voice.Silence.“It’s OK if you do it Hnina. I understand you. I deeply feel you. I just don’t want to do it myself, that would destroy me. And that’s against the rules decided by the Wise men. I couldn’t do it and still feel comfortable serving as one of the leaders of the community here,” Yaacov added. “But do it, please. Do it for both of us. But when I’m not here.”Leah was overwhelmed. She had never suspected that her father could have such deep feelings. She had never really thought about it, in fact. She felt sad, and guilty. She wanted to enter the room and hold them in her arms, but that would have revealed that she had spied on them. With a heavy heart, she walked back silently to her room.This year, Hnina goes on telling the story to her eleven-year-old daughter. “A few months after I had the dream, we moved to Casablanca, to this very house where we are now and where you were born, a little more than one year after.” Hnina wants to make sure Leah has learned well the main lessons: “Do you understand, h’bibi? When it’s necessary, you need to change. Changing cities may be hard, but in our case, the move provided protection to your lives. God willing, they will be protected until you are one hundred and twenty years old.” This was a powerful statement, Leah knows that one hundred and twenty years is the maximum a human being can live, it is written in the Bible.“To protect the lives of children, you must be ready to do anything. Especially for the third ones, like your brother, may his soul be in peace. They are particularly fragile,” Hnina adds. She hopes Leah deeply understands despite the fact that she does not tell her everything.What Hnina does not tell Leah, or not yet, is how insane she became when she lost Isaac. How strongly she hated men for imposing such inhumane rules like forbidding to grieve a lost baby. How deeply she was enraged by their lack of understanding and respect for what it is to be a woman, and a mother. The tensions with Yaacov, every day. The nightmares, every night. How she suffered to pretend that everything was fine and smile, outside, out of dignity, when she was falling apart, inside.Hnina does not tell Leah that their Marrakesh house reminded her of Isaac in every moment, that this was unbearable for her, and that Yaacov could not understand it.She does not tell Leah, and she may never tell her, that in fact she invented the whole story of the dream with the rabbi. “These men obey only rabbis and ‘Wise men’,” she had told herself. “They will never listen to me. I have to make up a story, this is the only way for me to be able to move and save my other children from the sadness and craziness of this cursed house.” Hnina does not tell Leah that she decided to violate the Law decided by the Wise men, out of love, to commemorate her beloved son, every year, like all the souls who leave this earth. She does not know that Leah suspects this already, since she overheard the intense conversation with Yaacov last year.Hnina does not tell Leah how she has been suffering, like in a constant and endless exile, for being so far away from Isaac’s burial place, nor does she tell her of the secret nightly last visit she paid to him, on the eve of their departure to Casablanca, with the help of Fatima to climb over the cemetery’s walls.Hnina does not tell Leah all of this, but she has high hopes that her daughter understands the message, and that, in her turn, Leah will do anything to protect the children, especially the fragile third ones.Listening to her mother, to what she says and to what she does not say, Leah strangely feels a light weight on her shoulders. Is it the sense of responsibility toward the children of the next generation, or is it fear for herself, now that she is the third child of the family?