First of Five
Two Page Openings from
The Way We Live
by Burt Kimmelman  

Alhambra Steps Leaving the palace we descend the steep stone stairs arm in arm — you pulling me down, me holding you up.	..	Mikvah,* Warsaw Ghetto 1941 (At a screening of A Film Unfinished, New York City 2010) They wade into the water, naked, in silence, shoulders hunched over, in their fear betraying the lens. There are dark splotches in the celluloid where their groins were and where the soldiers, out of the frame, could aim. In far off Berlin an information officer realized what he was seeing, hid it in a vault. A young girl in the ghetto who, by luck, has become an old woman, is being shown the restored film. Watching the haggard bodies, the clumsy attempts to obey, she sighs, as if she has to be polite. "When the Germans showed up there was always trouble," she says, the fact of the matter unalterable.   * a Jewish ritual bath used for immersion in a purification ceremony.