All The Sad Young Literary Men Part 10

Sam was immediately annoyed. "You said yesterday that Beirut was worse. And the day before that Mogadishu was."

"They are worse," Roger confirmed.

"OK, but this place is pretty bad." Sam couldn't help the slightly hopeful note in his voice as he said this.

"No, my friend," said Roger. "This is a picnic. This is Club Med. I come here to relax and eat ice cream. But Gaza is the real thing."

"I heard that too," said Lukas. He was a tall lanky college student from Stockholm who hung out with Roger because the other Swedes were actually off doing humanitarian work. Lukas was as it happened eating an ice cream just then; Sam wanted one too, but now he was too angry. He had come a long way to be in Jenin! When he'd asked the other Swedes about helping out, they said there wasn't anything to do; it was enough, they said, that he "bear witness." OK, OK, but he was bearing witness to nothing; there weren't any tanks; he was bearing witness to checking his e-mail.

Speaking of which, he thought now, and stood up decisively from his seat-if that's how it was, then that's how it would be. He bought an ice cream to take with him and walked down the main thoroughfare, taking little bites and trying to keep it from getting all over him as he made his way down to the Internet cafe, where he wrote Katie an e-mail of startling, rambling, fabulously discursive length.

When he was done he tried to call Witold from a pay phone, but no one answered.

At night after was.h.i.+ng his sweaty jeans, Sam would lie in his cot, with its damp, unclean sheets, and talk with Akhmed about peace, about the retreat of leftist hopes in the face of a religious revival in the Arab world, about the disastrous collapse at Camp David ("Unacceptable," Akhmed said of the offer, and Sam argued with him, and lost). They talked of the splintering Palestinian cause: even within Akhmed's family, he said, his uncle and father were still strongly pro-Arafat, but Bashar and Mohammed were visibly impatient. "I did not tell you," Akhmed confided of his brothers. "They fought in Jenin Camp." Akhmed for his part was still a socialist; his party's leader had been forced to flee to Damascus, and Akhmed kept a photo of him in his notebook, otherwise the place for unfamiliar English words that somewhere or other he'd heard or read. He showed a few of the words to Sam; they were unfamiliar to him, too.

Sam had not told Akhmed that he was Jewish. Roger in the car to Jenin had asked him not to mention it-"You're not Jewish in the sense that they'd understand anyway," he said. "Meaning?" "Meaning Israeli." And for a while this made sense. What's more, Sam just a.s.sumed that everyone knew. He was dark, and hairy, and his brown eyes sparkled, and upon seeing him Arabs always asked if he was Arab. When he said no, they paused a moment and wondered if he was perhaps Spanish? Italian? Bulgarian? It seemed obvious to Sam that someone in this part of the world with black hair and an olive complexion could be only one of two things. Yet somehow no one seemed to grasp that. And as Sam grew closer to the sweet saintly Akhmed, as Akhmed confided in him, he began to feel he was concealing it.

Still, his heart was pure. There'd been situations in Sam's life- connected with women, usually-where he'd felt that if something terrible happened to him just then, that he deserved it. Not so here. It's true he'd been sentimental about a Jewish army and Jewish guns, and Jewish women carrying guns, but he'd never thought the Palestinians should be driven into the Jordan River. Living in the States, he had never discovered any advantage-any angle, any percentage-to his skepticism toward Israel, and still he had worked four straight full-time weeks formatting Excel sheets at Fidelity to earn the money to come here, and in addition he'd given up his apartment for an entire summer, meaning he'd have to stay with Toby in Somerville, or else, maybe, with Katie, though obviously he wasn't going to be the one to suggest it, he liked her apartment, but there was never any food in the refrigerator and she was careless with her things. In short, he'd gone out of his way to come here and see-for certain-just what his brethren were up to. If he was killed for being Jewish, well that would be one thing; but if someone killed him for supposedly supporting the Occupation, that would be totally unfair.

And then on his fourth day at Akhmed's, after another hummus-filled breakfast-Sam loved this stuff and if he was getting a little pudgy, so be it, it was a war zone-Akhmed announced that his uncle would be going into Jenin and could take Sam to the refugee camp, if Sam liked. If Sam liked! What a question. If he couldn't have tanks, he'd at least have the camp where the tanks and bulldozers had been. And he was eager to spend time with an older man. Akhmed's uncle had been educated in Cairo, was active in Fatah, had been briefly jailed, Akhmed told Sam, for organizing marches during the First Intifada. A man of the world, he'd be able to tell right away that Sam was Jewish, and Sam would welcome it. They would get it out in the open, and then come what may.

They set off after breakfast, Sam and the three brothers and their uncle, five men across, on a field trip to see what the Israelis had done to the Palestinians. The Palestinians called it the Jenin ma.s.sacre. The Portuguese writer Jose Saramago had compared it to Auschwitz. Sam had been to Auschwitz twice. Now he'd see Jenin Camp.

Sam imagined it would be a series of tents, or even just one enormous tent, but Jenin Camp turned out to be nothing more than a very crowded neighborhood, with concrete houses and kids running around in the street. Akhmed's uncle regaled them with stories as they walked. Like Akhmed's father, he was a short man with a mustache; but where Akhmed's father was quiet, thin, even a little sickly, Akhmed's uncle was plump, voluble, and his huge bushy eyebrows moved up and down expressively when he talked. They covered the mile to the camp in no time, in fact moving perhaps too quickly, and Sam sweated profusely into the jeans he wore to keep his knees away from the eyes of Muslim women. He was so unbearably hot, in fact, that he ducked into a little corner grocery and bought an ice cream sandwich. The others declined.

And then they climbed a few more steps and arrived suddenly at a clearing. The clearing had been, once, a city block of square concrete houses; now it was just a series of little rubble piles. Some of the houses, it's true, remained basically recognizable, where the front walls had been collapsed by the bulldozers, so they were like dollhouses you could open so as to watch the people inside. But there were no people of course, and some of the houses had simply crumpled. After sending in highly trained light infantry-mostly older men, reservists like Witold who would not necessarily or not immediately lose their tempers-against a highly motivated group of urban guerrillas armed with Kalashnikovs, some hand grenades, and a good number of homemade bombs, and losing more men in a week (twenty-three) than in any single battle since the IDF took Beirut in 1982, the Israelis, exhausted, demoralized, had sent in the helicopter guns.h.i.+ps and the armored bulldozers, and the tanks. The bulldozers climbed these streets and came to these buildings and took them down, some of them with people still inside.

Sam stood there, with his ice cream sandwich half eaten, wondering what to say. Oh, the Palestinians had asked for it, all right. In this camp they'd manufactured the explosives that they then strapped around the waists of young men, sending them to Israeli cities to kill people who were eating lunch. How disingenuous, how grotesque, to call this a ma.s.sacre-like the pundits who after September 11 argued that the Pentagon was not a legitimate military target. And the final body count, as things were settling down, looked to be twenty-three Israeli dead against perhaps sixty Palestinian dead. Considering the extreme imbalance in firepower, this was some distance away from a ma.s.sacre.

But standing here you also knew this: these were people's homes. The Israelis had to defend themselves; in the battle for the camp, especially in its first phase, they acted with significantly more discipline and restraint than any other armed force in the world (the American Rangers and Delta fighters in Mogadishu had lost eighteen men-and killed perhaps a thousand); once here, once given an order to take the camp, they did what they had to do. But these were people's homes. The Israelis had no business being in Jenin to begin with. The Israelis had no business being in Jenin to begin with.

Akhmed's uncle pointed now to one of the wrecked houses, collapsed, twisted, with mangled metal supports still protruding, and even some crushed furniture visible inside under the white wreckage of the walls. "Here," he said, pointing. "I went here to dig. My friend said his father disappeared. I did not think so. People turned up every time-they had escaped or left town. At first they said four hundred dead! Now it is sixty, maybe seventy. So I did not think he was dead. But we began to dig and then suddenly there is a terrible smell. I have never smelled this." He looked at Sam, whose ice cream sandwich, which he'd not touched since they reached the clearing, was melting into his palm. He was going to confront him now, Sam thought, he would tell the Jew what his people had done. But he did not. "I was sick," said Akhmed's uncle. "I went off and was sick. My friend, I saw him, he was mad. He was crazy. 'My father,' he said. 'My father, my father.'" Fah-der, Fah-der, Akhmed's uncle p.r.o.nounced it. Akhmed's uncle p.r.o.nounced it. My fah-der. My fah-der. "He was pulling him out piece by piece. 'My father. My father.' It was-" Akhmed's uncle stopped, shrugged, looked away from the group. "He was pulling him out piece by piece. 'My father. My father.' It was-" Akhmed's uncle stopped, shrugged, looked away from the group.

What was it? It was horrible, that's what. It was just horrible. Sam's ice cream sandwich was gone now, all melted. Akhmed's uncle did not know that he was a Jew. Otherwise he would have said the obvious thing. The fearsome Israeli artillery against the besieged Palestinians, who had armed themselves with whatever they could find; the slow tightening of the noose around them; the final operation to liquidate a city block where the resistance was most fierce, and now, around them, lay in rubble: it was not Auschwitz, not at all. Jesus. It was the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. The liquidation and the resistance. Sam wiped his hand, covered in ice cream, on his jeans.

On his way to meet Roger and Lukas for Ping-Pong, Sam ducked into the Internet shop (it closed at six). There was an e-mail from Katie. Somehow the warmth that had suffused their correspondence since he'd arrived in Israel was leaking from it again. Sam was beginning to suspect that Katie suspected that he wasn't seeing any tanks. "Take care," she signed off now, a bit automatically, as if Sam was just in Watertown, or New Hamps.h.i.+re, that a man who produced e-mails the length of the e-mails Sam was producing in the many Internet places of Jenin had not, perhaps, really left the country at all.

He found himself mildly annoyed. She had stopped writing her s.e.x column a while ago and taken a job at the Globe; Globe; she wanted to be a real journalist, she said. Well and here was Sam in Jenin! So maybe there were no tanks, but still, but still. He continued to feel strongly for Katie-her voice on the phone, her messages on the phone, she'd once called him after a big dinner at a friend's house and left a ten-minute voice mail describing all the dishes she'd had, she was some kind of genius-but for the first time in a long time he felt a little off her side. she wanted to be a real journalist, she said. Well and here was Sam in Jenin! So maybe there were no tanks, but still, but still. He continued to feel strongly for Katie-her voice on the phone, her messages on the phone, she'd once called him after a big dinner at a friend's house and left a ten-minute voice mail describing all the dishes she'd had, she was some kind of genius-but for the first time in a long time he felt a little off her side.

The Ping-Pong was in the little backyard cafe that Roger had dubbed the gentlemen's club.

In the gentlemen's club, Lukas and Roger and Mohammed and Sam waited for the tanks. The other Swedes were out with Palestinian ambulances so that these would not be hara.s.sed by Israeli troops. (The IDF claimed that Palestinians carried weapons in them. The Palestinians denied it, waving their arms; the Swedes were appalled that such an accusation could be made. To Sam it seemed pretty obvious that Palestinians would carry weapons in their Red Cross ambulances-why not? But often they carried sick people too, since their public health system had broken down, and since Israelis occasionally shot them.) Some of the other Swedes, while Sam sat in the gentlemen's club, drinking orange Fanta, escorted farmers to their fields, and some other Swedes did other things. For his part Roger had already sketched out the oppressive cartography of Jenin and the surrounding areas; at this point he really needed to see some tanks, and people moving in the presence of tanks-so he, too, waited for them. He justified the waiting thusly: People were happy to see them; kids ran up in the street to play with the foreigners. "Psycho-topographically?" Roger said. "It a.s.sures them there's a world on the other side of the Israeli tanks. It's important." Sam was happy to hear this, it's true; but if they'd been utterly indifferent to him, the Palestinians, that too would have been fine. He'd come to work some Sam things out, here.

And on this sixth day of his vigil in Jenin he played, for the sixth time, some Ping-Pong. He had never lost at Ping-Pong, and he saw no reason to lose now. After yesterday's brutal dispatching of poor Akhmed, his brother Mohammed had come, in the Arab way, to seek revenge-but Sam did not lose at Ping-Pong in Jenin. At the end of the game Mohammed threw his racket into the gra.s.s and cursed in Arabic.

Sweaty Sam retreated to the plastic table at which Lukas and Roger lounged. "Will the tanks be here today?" he said.

"Let's hope not." This was Roger. "They shoot at people."

"So you say."

Imperceptibly, by degrees, but pretty definitely, his relations.h.i.+p with Roger had deteriorated.

Roger turned to Lukas. "He doesn't believe me that the tanks shoot at people."

"Perhaps they are in Palestine to get some sun?" Lukas said.

"I hope," Roger concluded solemnly, "that you never have to see a tank."

"Yeah, OK," said Sam. "I'm not holding my breath."

Sullen Sam wandered over to the pay phone in the corner of the yard. He'd tried Witold the past few days and never received any response. Perhaps the army had finally taken him, perhaps he was even now manning some tank, riding through the desert toward Jenin?

The answering machine picked up. "Witold!" Sam cried. "Hey, pick up, it's me, Sam! I'm calling from Jenin! I'm not your commanding officer!"

And then Witold did pick up. "Where have you been?" he said. "I've been worried about you. Your father would kill me if you got killed."

"I didn't get killed. I've been calling but you don't pick up."

"Oh, sorry. You know I screen the calls. So what's it like? What money do they use? Is there shooting? Is there Hamas? How much does a falafel cost?"

"It's fine," said Sam. "They use shekels. A falafel costs five shekels. It's pretty hot. There's no shooting, and you don't see Hamas. I haven't even seen a tank yet."

"What do you want to see a tank for? Come back and I'll show you a dozen tanks."

"That's typical Occupationist thinking, Witold. Of course you don't care about the tanks, because they're on your side. But in Jenin they're pretty important."

"OK, OK. What do you want me to say to your parents?"

"Nothing. They know I'm here. I e-mailed."

"E-mail? They have e-mail?"

"Yes. I'll write you one."

"OK. Be careful. And forget about the tanks. Lots of tanks here."

"Easy for you to say."

Just then, as they were hanging up, excited Arabic voices came on the radio, which had been playing the news and music softly in the background. Someone turned it up. The men in the gentlemen's club all looked suddenly on fire, listening intently. The radio was practically shouting.

"What's going on?" Sam asked his friends. Each of them shrugged. Sam turned to Mohammed, who was sitting at the same plastic table. "Mohammed, what's on the radio? What's going on?"

Mohammed spoke no English, supposedly. But Sam was fairly sure Mohammed knew what he was being asked, because he looked down at the ground and said nothing.

"AL-QUDS!" the radio blared. The Holy One. Jerusalem. the radio blared. The Holy One. Jerusalem.

Sam turned to a group of men at another of the plastic tables. One of them was smiling at Sam, as if he wanted to say something, share the good news. Sam smiled back, because he wanted to share the good news, too. The man held up his hand with the fingers spread out: five. And then he made a throat-slitting motion. And then held up his hand again. Five dead. In Jerusalem. Oh Jesus. That's why he was smiling. Some a.s.shole had blown himself up.

Sam's stomach turned over inside him, it was full of Fanta, and he felt sick. The smile left his lips and he held the man's gaze long enough that the man could know Sam didn't think this was such good news. Eventually the man looked away, embarra.s.sed.

Sam turned to Roger. "How long have you lived in Cairo?" he asked.

"Five years."

"And you can't understand the radio?"

"The dialects are a lot more different than you'd think," Roger said, carefully. "But if you're asking if I understood the gist of that, just now? Yes, I did."

Well: Witold could not have been in that bus or restaurant, because Witold was on the phone with Sam. And he, Sam, was in Jenin, so it couldn't have been Sam among the dead. But as the man he'd stared down now recovered and glared at him, angrily, the whole trip looked suddenly like not such a great idea. He got up from the table without returning the man's stare, and walked purposefully out into the main street. He was angry with Roger, though Roger and he had spoken about the suicide bombings and Roger was clear on their foolishness, simply as strategy, and also on their barbarity. But Roger did not have relatives there, and Sam did not want to be around him just now. Mohammed, you could tell, didn't like what had happened, but what could Mohammed say.

Out in the street there were as always kids running, and dust, a despair that clung to everything, like this would never end. And in Jerusalem five Jews were dead. What was he doing here? When I see a worker confronted with his natural enemy, the policeman, said Orwell, I know whose side I'm on. And if Sam were to see a Palestinian confronted with his natural enemy, the tank, well, he'd know too. But there were no tanks! There were bullet holes in all the big metal doors that fronted the houses, and the man in the street with a cistern of Turkish coffee, for which he charged half a shekel. A good deal. What was Sam doing doing? The Palestinians were sweet, and hospitable, he had really liked Akhmed's uncle, but they were not his brothers. And maybe they were not so sweet. Now, Witold was not Sam's brother either, but at least Witold was his cousin. Their fathers, growing up in Poland and the U.S., respectively, were also not brothers, they were cousins. But their their fathers, in Warsaw, were brothers. And now Sam and Witold were cousins, like he'd said. And he and Katie were-what?-soul mates. Or near soul mates. And that-he wanted to explain this to her somehow-that may be all you were going to get, in this life. fathers, in Warsaw, were brothers. And now Sam and Witold were cousins, like he'd said. And he and Katie were-what?-soul mates. Or near soul mates. And that-he wanted to explain this to her somehow-that may be all you were going to get, in this life.

He needed to leave Jenin right away. And having decided this he went over to the Internet cafe and told Katie he was coming back early and he'd like to stay with her. They'd been involved in this dance, this harmful stalemate, for too long. It was now or never, he wrote. Make up your mind.

That night, on the roof, he thought happily of her for the first time in months. She had outsmarted him at every turn; always, whenever a thought occurred to him, he saw too late that she'd already had it. A month ago he'd decided they should stop seeing each other, if seeing each other was even the word for it-and as soon as he opened his mouth to say so, she said the exact same thing. Aha! Bested again! He was always off balance. She acted naturally where he acted unnaturally; she was on the alert while he was lazy. She had such control of tone, tone, in her text messages, she was the Edith Wharton of text messaging. And she believed, after all they'd been through, that she didn't love Sam. "You can't in her text messages, she was the Edith Wharton of text messaging. And she believed, after all they'd been through, that she didn't love Sam. "You can't do do anything about the way you feel," she'd said, excusing herself. But of course you can; of course you can. You have to want to, is all. And maybe he didn't blame her for not loving Sam, who'd done so little, who'd accomplished so few of the things a girl like Katie thought should be accomplished. He thought of the man in the gentlemen's club, glaring angrily, wanting blood. Oh, she could feel what she wanted, if she wanted, if only she wanted to. anything about the way you feel," she'd said, excusing herself. But of course you can; of course you can. You have to want to, is all. And maybe he didn't blame her for not loving Sam, who'd done so little, who'd accomplished so few of the things a girl like Katie thought should be accomplished. He thought of the man in the gentlemen's club, glaring angrily, wanting blood. Oh, she could feel what she wanted, if she wanted, if only she wanted to.

There were no tanks, he thought. Or maybe there were tanks but they were there for a reason. These people wanted to kill and kill; they wanted to simmer in the stew of their hatred, and wipe their hands in Jewish blood. He had forgotten, or repressed, or somehow hadn't thought about, the images they'd shown-he'd never seen anything more horrible-of the two soldiers who'd taken a wrong turn in Ramallah the year before and then been torn to pieces, literally, by a mob of Palestinians, who then-this is what they showed on television-held up their bloodied hands, with the blood of Jews on them, held them out the window where they'd done this, and showed them to the cameras. See?

He and Akhmed lay on their cots, arranged perpendicularly so that their heads were close together, looking up at the stars. "Two forty-two," Akhmed was saying. "Four forty-six. Four seventy-eight. Four ninety-seven." These were U.N. resolutions telling Israel to do one thing or another, withdraw to there or disarm then, which Israel naturally ignored. While Bashar and Mohammed, over in another corner of the roof, whispered to each other in Arabic, guffawed and punched each other, Akhmed p.r.o.nounced the U.N. resolutions with a melancholy precision and finality, the way, on Sam's first night, he'd p.r.o.nounced the number of people who'd died in Israeli actions, Israeli raids. Sam had noticed this about the Palestinians and their body counts-always a precise number, always well remembered, even when it was wrong. He wondered whether this was because, by remembering all the numbers so precisely, they felt they were still in control-a sort of mathematical ritual of the oppressed. Or whether it was simpler: that they believed there to be a finite number of Palestinians in the world, and now, each time some number of them were killed, that there were that many fewer?

"Six hundred and five," Akhmed said now, naming resolutions. "Six seventy-three. I know you come here to see what it is like, to understand what it is here to be Palestinian. But what is it like there there? Why don't they ever listen? Why?"

"I don't know, Akhmed. I'm leaving tomorrow."

"Yes. OK," said Akhmed. He was not surprised. "You can tell people about us."

"I'll do that."

"Tell them about the resolutions."

"They know about the resolutions."

"Then why don't they do anything?"

All right, thought Sam. This is it. He had never been in this situation before. He had briefly gone through a period-after reading a lot of Philip Roth novels-when he began to detect anti-Semitism in everything, but that wore off. In high school he'd once lost his mind with rage during a football game when he thought a player on the other team had called him a "dirty Jew." Sam had grabbed his face mask and demanded to know if that's what he'd said. The other player looked very surprised and shook his head confusedly. Afterward Sam realized that it was probably much more likely that he had merely said "f.u.c.k you," and Sam felt bad. But this was different.

He got up on an elbow and turned his head to Akhmed. "You want to know why no one does anything to stop Israel, Akhmed? It's because people keep blowing themselves up. In Jerusalem. And they don't care who they kill as long as they're Jews. And that makes it very difficult for people to care very much about the resolutions when there are Jews being killed who probably opposed the Occupation."

Sam had said this forcefully but not too loudy, because he did not want Bashar and Mohammed to hear. Akhmed was surprised however at his vehemence and also now got up on an elbow, to look at him. "How can a Jew be against the Occupation?" he asked quietly. "What does this mean?"

"I'm a Jew, Akhmed! I'm a Jew against the Occupation."

Sam confessed this angrily, and then he quickly regretted it- the anger and the confession both.

"You are joking," said Akhmed.

"No, I'm not joking. Why do you think I'm here? You think I have black hair and brown eyes and I'm interested in Palestinians because I'm Italian? Come on."

Akhmed lay back down on his pillow and was silent for a long time. "Wow," he said, finally, and without looking Sam could sense that he was smiling. "That is incredible."

Once again they were silent for a long time. It was unfair to have been so angry at Akhmed: the suicide bombers came from Hamas, a party of religious zealots, and increasingly from Fatah, the corrupt ruling party-but not from Akhmed's gentle social-democrats. And Akhmed himself would never hurt anyone. In another life he would have been a professor, or a teacher-why, he was a teacher in this this life. Perhaps what Sam meant was that in another life Akhmed would have been a Jewish teacher. life. Perhaps what Sam meant was that in another life Akhmed would have been a Jewish teacher.

"I know a boy who became an este-shadi, este-shadi," Akhmed said now in the dark, not raising his head. A suicide bomber. He sounded very sad. "It was a strange thing. He was from this village, from Birqin. We grew up together, and he was a very quiet boy. Then I did not see him for a few years. And then I heard last year he had become a martyr. It was a very strange feeling, that he had done this thing. Someone I knew. It was a strange and terrible thing."

And lying there, next to Sam-healthy, handsome, and now Jewish Sam, who had come here and become more more healthy, eating hummus, growing more tan, his smile whiter, and possibly even healthy, eating hummus, growing more tan, his smile whiter, and possibly even more more Jewish, and would be going back, the next day or the day after that, to lie on a beach in Tel Aviv before going home to Katie and Cambridge, while Akhmed stayed here, writing English words he didn't know into a little book-Akhmed began to cry. It was very quiet but Sam could hear it. Or maybe he sensed it first, the crying, and then picked up the sounds. Oh, said Akhmed. Oh oh oh. Lying next to Sam, who could do nothing but look up and wait and try not to be shaken from the bedrock conviction he'd reached just a little bit earlier in that day. Said Akhmed, crying: Why why why. Jewish, and would be going back, the next day or the day after that, to lie on a beach in Tel Aviv before going home to Katie and Cambridge, while Akhmed stayed here, writing English words he didn't know into a little book-Akhmed began to cry. It was very quiet but Sam could hear it. Or maybe he sensed it first, the crying, and then picked up the sounds. Oh, said Akhmed. Oh oh oh. Lying next to Sam, who could do nothing but look up and wait and try not to be shaken from the bedrock conviction he'd reached just a little bit earlier in that day. Said Akhmed, crying: Why why why.

In the end, Sam had to wait another day: a group of Italian medical students was arriving in Jenin, and he could take their taxi back to Jerusalem. So on his last day in Jenin Sam waited, but really without waiting, for the tanks. At Akhmed's house they watched television-Hezbollah had a cooking show that Akhmed enjoyed, and of course Sam was curious. You could tell it was Hezbollah because occasionally they interrupted the cooking for news flashes of total mayhem-riots in France, flooding in Bangladesh, industrial fires in China. It was always the end of days for Hezbollah. And not for them alone.

Sam was wary of Akhmed after their talk, but Akhmed looked at him with loving eyes. A Jew in his house-now, this was psycho-topography. That morning Sam had said good-bye, coldly, to Roger and the Swedes-those useful dummies, those exploiters of Palestinian suffering, checked his e-mail for a definitive ruling from Katie (nothing, but it was early), and hurried back to Birqin. That day he and Akhmed, joined intermittently by Bashar and Mohammed and even Akhmed's uncle, who'd heard Sam was leaving, walked around the village; Sam bought them a watermelon, they sat down in Birqin's main square-a charming, Old World square, more or less, with a real outdoor cafe-and drank some Turkish coffee. They sat in the square well into the evening, past curfew. It was so hot that Sam's s.h.i.+rt stuck to his chest. In truth he was distracted: what had Katie written? He wouldn't know now until he got back to Jerusalem, late tomorrow, for though they'd leave in the morning and it was a thirty-mile drive it took a good three hours, with all the checkpoints, to actually make it. At the very least, on this last night, and despite the unspoken prohibition against them, Sam had put on shorts. If the Muslim women could not behave themselves at the sight of Sam's naked knees, so much the worse for Muslim women.

At around nine, Akhmed stood up and turned to Sam. It looked like he'd suggest they all go home and sleep. Instead he said something else: "Would you like-to do Internet?"

"Ah!" said Sam. "My brother." He clasped Akhmed by the shoulder, tenderly. "But where?"

It was Bashar who answered. "We go into Jenin," he said. "It's OK. We know how."

So on his last night, he'd have an adventure. And he would learn his fate with Katie; already his heart lurched a little at the thought of it. But it was fitting and just. Together Sam and the three brothers headed off into the curfewed night. The moon shone bright, they walked, and there was so little sound-the tanks were not rumbling through the desert, they were not in Jenin. Where were they hiding? The men turned off the main road outside Jenin, and Mohammed led them through a back lot to the all-night Internet cafe. Curfew or not, the Internet went on. This one was on the second floor, in what looked like a converted language lab, with twenty computers set up along its perimeter. With dignity-and trembling-Sam sat down at the keyboard. As his Muslim friends looked on, his fingers moved along the keyboard with a demonic precision-he was the white typewriting G.o.d. There were seven new messages since he'd last checked: spam, spam, an invitation to a party in New York (Sam was still vestigially on some e-mail lists). And one from Katie.

With great deliberation he deleted his junk mail. He read the party invitation (it was in a week, perhaps he'd make it). Then he opened Katie's. Right away key words registered in his mind before he'd actually read them, and already his face burned, as if the computer had given off a charge of heat. He swallowed hard. Oh, G.o.d. He took a breath and began: "Dear Sam," it went.

i got your note last night before going to bed and i've been up ever since worrying about it and torturing myself. what can i say? i'm so, so sorry. you are so valuable to me. and these last months He stopped again. He wasn't going to read this. There was enough torture going around. The Americans tortured the Arabs; the Israelis tortured the Palestinians. Something Akhmed told him one night while they lay on their cots, the most awful thing he'd heard: Palestinian men who returned from Israeli prisons after being tortured-being forced to sit in a chair, without sleep, without water except the water thrown on their faces to keep them awake, and without the right to use a bathroom, so that they shat themselves, eventually, and without the right to talk-had a psychic compulsion to repeat their experiences exactly as they had happened, except with the roles reversed. That wasn't yet the awful part. The awful part was that the only people they had around with whom to perform these reenactments were their wives.

Sam deleted Katie's e-mail without finis.h.i.+ng it. She wanted to tell him they were alien creatures, not one, that they were not- this was an expression she'd used numerous times-"peas in the same pod." He knew that. And maybe she was right. Or maybe she was wrong. Either way, that was that. It was over. He felt like a great and miserable explosion had occurred in his head, a burst of fire against a wall, he felt heavy and distraught. But also he was free, and alone, and still alive.

He stood up. Akhmed sat in a far corner, probably reading the Guardian, Guardian, his favorite paper. Sam joined Bashar and Mohammed instead. A little window was open on their screen; it showed a bored American girl in a slinky white unders.h.i.+rt. She might have been eighteen, or twenty-two, or sixteen. The camera took a photo every ten seconds, so that in every picture the girl would be in a slightly different position, which one could examine, and consider, until the next photo. "What are you guys up to?" she asked. Mohammed, of course, knew no English, but was a master of font manipulation. While Bashar leaned over him to type, Mohammed turned the letters pink and green and enormous and shook the dialogue box with tremors. "Sweetie," typed Bashar. "You have very prettie eyes." He looked to Sam, who, offscreen, corrected the spelling; Mohammed pressed Send. The girl wanted to know: "Which one of you is typing?" She could see Mohammed and Bashar, but that was all she knew-they were good-looking kids, in their early twenties, in blue jeans and light polyester s.h.i.+rts, and there were no Koranic verses behind their heads, no Kalashnikovs by their sides. They might have been anyone. "I type," wrote Bashar, and waved at the tiny Webcam mounted atop the monitor. "But he love you," he added, and patted Mohammed on the shoulder. Mohammed grinned. his favorite paper. Sam joined Bashar and Mohammed instead. A little window was open on their screen; it showed a bored American girl in a slinky white unders.h.i.+rt. She might have been eighteen, or twenty-two, or sixteen. The camera took a photo every ten seconds, so that in every picture the girl would be in a slightly different position, which one could examine, and consider, until the next photo. "What are you guys up to?" she asked. Mohammed, of course, knew no English, but was a master of font manipulation. While Bashar leaned over him to type, Mohammed turned the letters pink and green and enormous and shook the dialogue box with tremors. "Sweetie," typed Bashar. "You have very prettie eyes." He looked to Sam, who, offscreen, corrected the spelling; Mohammed pressed Send. The girl wanted to know: "Which one of you is typing?" She could see Mohammed and Bashar, but that was all she knew-they were good-looking kids, in their early twenties, in blue jeans and light polyester s.h.i.+rts, and there were no Koranic verses behind their heads, no Kalashnikovs by their sides. They might have been anyone. "I type," wrote Bashar, and waved at the tiny Webcam mounted atop the monitor. "But he love you," he added, and patted Mohammed on the shoulder. Mohammed grinned.

Sam was indignant. "This is the Intifada?" he demanded. "This is how you fight the Occupation? No wonder the tanks never come-all you guys do is try to pick up girls on the Internet."

The girl in the box had stretched her arms over her head and leaned back, so that the slinky unders.h.i.+rt stretched over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Not that I blame you," added Sam.

"You have such pretty eyes," Bashar typed again. "Will u show me another thing?"

"What?" asked the girl.

"I would like," Bashar typed slowly, "if you do not have sheert." He turned to Sam.

"An i i in s.h.i.+rt," said Sam. in s.h.i.+rt," said Sam.

"Ah," Bashar agreed, and corrected it. He told Mohammed what he was saying and told him to Send. This was Mohammed's most ambitious font project yet. He made the font blue and the letters bubbly, and he caused the text box to whirl around and tremble and bounce. But it had taken too long! The girl had disappeared.

"Ah!" said Mohammed, shoving the keyboard in disgust.

"Akh," said Bashar, then shrugged apologetically at Sam.

As if Sam cared! He knit his brow. "This is how you end the Occupation?" he said again.