In Ziva's earliest memory, she is standing on the roof with her mother. She cannot remember if they came here often, or if this was a special time; if she was invited or had just followed her mother up. When she thinks about it, she thinks it must have been the latter, because what mother does that to her own child? But that is no longer important and even if it were there isn't a soul she could ask about it because there wasn't a soul there to remember. (Not that she could have asked, had she not been alone that day).
What she does remember is that the lesson that day had been about the Americans and their rights. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," her mother had told her, and then proceeded to explain what each one meant. They did not mention that in America, a husband would not get away with drinking so much he was barely sane and then raping and beating his wife every night. They did not mention that in America, little girls did not hide in the closets of their brother's rooms to escape their father's wrath at an unfaithful wife, because in America wives did not have little sisters with other men. Neither of them said it, but Ziva sure did think it. (Though years later she travels to the land and finds out she was wrong, bad things happen in America too).
"Ima, what are you doing?" she remembers asking in her curious child-voice.
"Don't you try to stop me Tatelah," her mother responds, and there is something in her voice, a certain desperation that Ziva has not heard before. It would not occur to a five year old to disobey her mother, especially not when the mother's voice sounded so stern.
"Okay Ima, I won't. But what are you doing up here on the roof?" she asks again, for some reason feeling uneasy now. She wishes she could bring her sister out because Tali always makes Ima smile. But for some reason it suddenly seems very important not to leave just yet.
Her mother is silent for a long time before she turns around to face her daughter. "Pursuing happiness," she whispers, her eyes as blank and empty as a bottle of vodka after her father has worked a long day.
Afterwards, Ziva would say that she looked like a bird as she jumped, with her white dress billowing out behind her. But her mother's bones must not have been as hollow as her eyes, because she flew for barely a second before she crashed straight to the ground, landing in a heap of broken wings and imagined feathers.
It doesn't occur to Ziva until years later that when her mother pleaded with her not to stop her, she might really have been begging her for just the opposite. But it doesn't take her nearly as long to figure out what her mother meant when she said she was pursuing happiness. That is a lesson that comes swiftly and painfully, in the form of broken bones and silver scars, until Ziva wishes she too could fly away like her mother did. But she's waited too long. Her own wings are already broken.