Almost Dead Part 3

'Remember the village of Silwad. Wadi Haramiya. The guy found a spot on the ridge with a Karabin and took out ten soldiers one after the other, and got away without being caught. The road to Jerusalemit's the busiest road. It's a symbol. It will shock them. They'll think they're back in '48. And the conditions there...it's no coincidence that my grandfather sniped at convoys from there. The wadi there's just like the one in Silwad.'

'It's not Silwad,' said Abu-Zeid. 'In Silwad there's a village. Fifteen minutes later the sniper was in safe hands.'

Abu-Zeid took the drawing and touched it to the bare orange spirals of the heater. He stood up with the burning page in his hand, opened a window, looked out into the rain, and threw it out. He closed the window and sat back down in his plastic chair, rubbing the ash from his hands.

'There are problems with this plan. It takes too much time. And the evacuation plan isn't good. Again, there'll be no time. In five minutes the area will be full of roadblocks and helicopters. It's not '48 any more.'

Bilahl looked at him quizzically. 'Is there another way?'

Halil Abu-Zeid said, 'Who will do it?'

'Svetlana. How is he?'

What...? What now?

'Normal. A little irritated this morning.'

'You checked his pupils today?'

Oh no.

'Not yet, Dr Hartom.'

'Let's have a look...'

Yaagghh!! f.u.c.k you! You're killing me with that torch...!

'Hmmm...fine. Did we have a bowel movement? How's the urine?'

'No B.M. Urine's in order.'

Go to h.e.l.l, Hartom, I was in the middle of...oh, where was I?

If this is a dream, then it's never-ending and never-changing...If this is a dream then it's a dream of h.e.l.l.

'OK, Fahmi, no reason to be distressed, Svetlana here's taking good care of you. In the afternoon we're going to do an MRI and show you some familiar images and play familiar soundstest your reactions to stimuli. Svetlana, we have the photographs? Music?'

'Yes, Dr Hartom. Everything's ready.'

Children were playing football in the rain. They shouted and kicked the ball against a wall covered in slogans and posters. Bilahl would send the kids out at night...There was a new poster up, of the shahid Shafiq. Shafiq the martyr with the Temple Mount in the background, and puddles, and mud from the dust that the tanks and bulldozers made the last time they were here, and other children playing marbles under a thatch. The rain didn't let up. You could hear the sound of applause coming from TVs in the houses along the way. The wind was trying to blow the sheets of corrugated tin off the roofs, rattling the breeze blocks that held them down. My phone was ringing. Grandfather Fahmi lived in a tent for eight years before he built a house out of scavenged concrete, rocks and tin.

'So you think you're happy now, eh?'

'Father?'

'What will they accomplish, these virtuoso operations of yours?'

'What operations?'

'I'm not a fool, Fahmi.'

'Don't forget what Grandfather did in '48,' I said. 'He scared them, he didn't give up, and he brought pride to our people.'

'Yes. And where exactly did it bring us? To Al-Amari?'

I didn't answer. I watched the kids in the rain: children born here.

'Don't ignore me. Fahmi. You promised me something. Don't forget. You promised me you would not get into trouble. You promised your father. Fahmi. You gave your word of honour to me.'

7

In 1935, two weeks after British police had violently broken up Arab protests in Jerusalem, Izz ad-Din al-Qa.s.sam gathered his people and announced a jihad. He told them to prepare to leave that same evening, said goodbye to his wife and children and went with his followers to the mountains around Jenin.

Every one of his men carried a small Koran in his pocket. During the days, they studied the Koran. At night they were soldiers. One of those nights, a guard named Mahmoud Salam al-Mahmuzi ran into a Jewish patrol. He shot the commander of the patrol and killed him. Another policeman in the patrol ran to report the incident and, having done so, he ran home, to his wife.

The British retaliated fiercely. A large force was mobilised from all round Palestine and sent to Haifa. The next day five hundred British soldiers set out to catch Izz ad-Din al-Qa.s.sam. After a b.l.o.o.d.y battle which lasted all night, Sheikh al-Qa.s.sam was killed and became one of the first of the great martyrs, the shuhada shuhada, in the long struggle. He planted the seeds of revolution against Zionism and imperialism and inspired a generation to follow him.

The policeman who ran to report the incident was Duchi's grandfather. Her mother was born nine months later. My father was born in the same year, 1935, in Maryland, USA.

I took a Little No. 5 home. As far as I was concerned, the cooling-off period was over after one morning. The journey was quieter than usual; the drivers swore less over the radio and committed fewer traffic violations. Even the Jumbos seemed to drive with respect for the sorrow of the minibus drivers.

'How did you get home?' asked Duchi.

'Taxi,' I said offhandedly.

'Liar,' she said.

'Liar? What reason do I have to lie?' I said, and really, what reason did I have?

'Honestly in a taxi?' She came and gave me a kiss. I opened the refrigerator, looking for something quick. No, not really in a taxi, Duchi, in a Little No. 5. But do you think I'm going to tell you the truth? You think I fancy an argument now?

'Word of honour.'

Nothing is as it was before September 11th. Everything changed that day, and yet, life went on. The summary: Duchi and I live together for four years, we decide to get married, the date we set is 11 September 2001. Duchi's mother gets a heart attack and snuffs it a day before the wedding, the wedding is cancelled, and since then this word'wedding'is never heard in our vicinity. It's as if there are blockades and checkpoints that this word can't penetrate, as if there's a lock-and-siege on it. As if they'd sent a whole army to hunt it down and it had vanished and holed up in some abysmal cave, not even bothering to send us a 'what's up' from time to time. It seems that we're treating the whole thing as if it were a sign from G.o.dor worse, from Duchi's motherthat we shouldn't have decided to marry. She sacrificed her life on the altar of this message. The medium was her message. I guess that's the reason we don't talk about it. I'm only guessing, though, because we haven't talked about it. She keeled over and it was as if a valve holding back an immense pressure had blown and all the attention leaked away from the wedding to the funeral. And it's not as if any of that other stuff helped.

Duchi's first reaction was to laugh. 'No way,' she told the phone. 'Come on, Dad, you're putting me on.' And then she said, 'OK...OK...OK,' and hung up and said, 'My mother died of a heart attack,' and only then did her eyes well up with tears.

Duchi's younger brother, Voovi, didn't look too broken up about it. Her dad certainly wasn't sorry. Before all of this happened Duchi once made me swear that whatever occurred between useven if it didn't work out eventuallywe would never end up with the hate-hate relations.h.i.+p her parents had.

Duchi's father is called Noam Neeman. That's 'Pleasant Loyal' in Hebrew, by the way: two gags for the price of one. He left Duchi's mother after two kids and six years of marriage and went to Nicaragua with his second wife, whom he dumped after a few more years, kids and arms deals. He returned to Israel at the age of forty-six and married a girl half his age. Duchi was three years younger than her when they got married. She and her brother didn't make it to the wedding. But I like Noam Neeman. A man with b.a.l.l.s. Does what he feels like doing. Half the time he succeeds, half the time he tanks completely. Recently, for instance, he failed miserably with a start-up in which he invested a million dollars. He asked me, 'If you had a million bucks in the bank, what sort of investment would you put it in?' I said, 'I'd put it in the bank.' His seen-it-all eyes looked me over with bottomless disdain and he drew on his cigar till it crackled.

'Duchi!' he shouted. 'Couldn't you have found yourself someone a bit more serious than this?' He punched my shoulder with his large suntanned hand. In the end he stuck his million into a new mobile phone company called Wa-Wa. A year later his million was in the sewer.

In truth, Duchi's parents did not share a hate-hate relations.h.i.+p. Ever since Noam Neeman left her, Duchi's mother had been lost. She loved him in secret until the day she died. Loved? She wors.h.i.+pped the ground he walked on. She was completely obsessed with him, but she didn't have him: all she had instead were his two children. And whatever move they made, whatever direction they set off in, they could be sure that Leah Neeman would be standing there, feet planted, wagging a warning index finger. Because Leah was a fountain of bitterness. She just didn't like life didn't like life. There was nothing she wasn't suspicious of; there wasn't a decision Duchi or Voovi could make, or even think about making, that Leah wouldn't respond to with gloomy prophecy, biblical wrath, stricken horror; not a step they ever took without having to hurdle the leg she would stretch out to trip them up.

I thoughtand I believe many others thought the samethat there was something fitting in her pulling a heart attack on the eve of her daughter's marriage. She deployed the ultimate weapon in her a.r.s.enal, her Judgement Day weapon. And it worked, G.o.d knows how or why. The ring I bought ('Diamonds are for ever,' said Duchi, 'so don't buy me one') is still hunkered down at the back of some drawer, waiting.

Anyway, I was standing there with my head in the refrigerator, lying it off. I tried to move the conversation on.

'So how was your day, Duchki?'

Her gesture said, leave it, don't even go there. Another crazy day. In the last few months she'd been coming back home whacked from a case of insider dealing and fraud that was dragging on and on. She would curse the other lawyer, the fool Gvirzman, and the ill-tempered and exhausted judge and her salary and her boss Boaz, who after years of her working her soul out for him was still ignoring her hints about being made a partner.

I ate cold pasta salad for a few minutes without speaking while she watched TV from the sofa. 'Well?' I pressed. She made a face and muttered, 'That son of a b.i.t.c.h.' 'Who, Boaz? Gvirzman? The judge? Who now?' She shrugged. 'Yes. No. All three of them are huge sons of b.i.t.c.hes, for sure. I don't know; I don't know what I'm doing doing. Why am I killing myself like this? Gvirzman asked to postpone again without consulting me and when I tell him out of court that it's out of order, the son of a b.i.t.c.h tells me I'm an overgrown baby.'

'Oh, come on.' Sometimes I think Gvirzman's right, but I don't say so.

'What does that mean, "oh, come on"?' She was sharpening her claws for combat. I like her instincts.

'You're in a good company, on a good salary, you work with prestigious clients, handle big cases...'

'That's not the point, Croc. I've been stuck in the same place for a year. Even if you you think it's a good placeand it isn'tI still haven't made any progress for a year. This case...' think it's a good placeand it isn'tI still haven't made any progress for a year. This case...'

I shook my head. How much can you moan? How much can you be unhappy with what you have when you have so much?

'Don't make that face. You're not going to convince me I'm having a wonderful time at workthough you're making this great effort to convince yourself. You could just be a tiny bit understanding and supportive, couldn't you? I deserve a little support from my boyfriend after a day like this.'

A day like this. Wow. They asked to postpone without consulting her and called her an overgrown baby. Dear oh dear oh dear. She deserves support. She always deserves it. She's so pitiable sometimes her tone can really flip my switch.

'You know, I did take the Little No. 5, not a taxi.'

Why did I say that? Maybe I needed to have a row.

'Liar.'

'Liar? What reason do I have to lie?' Apart from the obvious.

'Croc.'

'What?'

'You're having me on, right?'

This was the point of no return. I could have hushed it all up and lied my way out of it, or remained loyal to the truthnot something I insist on day to dayand start the world war that was dying to be declared between us.

I gave her a heavy-lidded look (my crocodilian look) and said: 'Not right. I am not having you on. I went on a Little No. 5.'

Duchi's hair is brown and her skin is a colour I used to call caffe latte in the days when we still found the time to lie side by side, stroking each other for hours. The coffee is from her Yemeni grandmotherthe one from the night of the incident in '35. The milk comes from her grandfather and father. When Duchi is on the brink of explosion, the skin on her face grows visibly darker and her luminous eyes cloud over, but it's not the colour so much as her expression, like a child's in the second before it criesonly with her it's not tears but fury.

'Why the h.e.l.l didn't you take a taxi like I asked you to?'

'Because I had this weird premonition that I wasn't going to get blown up. And you know something? I wasn't blown up! And you know something else? I didn't hear on the news that any other Little No. 5 was blown up today either.'

'Not the point.'

'So what is? You wanted me to ride in a taxi for a specific reason. I thought you were wrong. I was proved correct. And now I don't understand what we're arguing about.'

'I don't believe what I'm hearing. You really, truly, honestly travelled on a Little No. 5?'

'Of course! Why take a taxi?'

'Maybe because I asked I asked? That's not a reason?'

'Not if there's no sense behind it.'

'I don't believe this.'

I took a chair from the dining table and sat in front of her. She lowered the volume on the TV, which was on Channel 2: Danny Ronen rambling on and on, his eyebrows conspiring together like a couple of sidekicks pretending to be shrewd.

'What reason do I have to lie?'

'I don't believe this,' she repeated. 'Tell me, is there nothing left between us? Not a little appreciation? A little consideration? A little trust?'

'What's that got to do with it?'

'What it's got to do with it?' She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. She said, 'I should have listened to Uri a long time ago.'

Oh, here we go: Uri. I was beginning to wonder when his name would crop up. Her therapist. Duchi told me a long time ago that he thought she shouldn't stay in our relations.h.i.+p, although he would never come out and say it directly. I argued with her then. She quit therapy and we decided to get married. A few weeks after the wedding that never happened, though, she went back to him. And now he's telling her the same thing once again.

'Uri doesn't know anything.'

'He knows more than you think he does.'