by Ibtisam Azem
Because of the time difference and being occupied with an article about humane torture for a famous British magazine, this was the only time in the last few days that he was able to talk to his daughter, who was studying in New York.
“Yes, Aba. OK. But you know I have problems with you working as a doctor with political prisoners. A torture doctor. We’ve argued a lot about it and I don’t want us to talk now, while you’re driving.”
“Were it not for me, some of them wouldn’t be alive. Do you know that? I try to make prison conditions for these terrorists humane. I told Rafi that that young man will not withstand the shaking and he should stop using that technique, but he won’t. Even if you try it with eight thousand of them, and it works, this one won’t withstand it. Rabin asked once in a radio interview why the Shabak should stop using this method if it worked with so many. This young man won’t survive, even if thousands before him did. I told them so. I always warn them not to use inhumane methods in torture. That’s why my presence there is important. You know that!”
There was only the occasional “hmmm” and some tense breathing on the other side.
“Are you still there, sweetie?”
“Yes, yes. And what did he say when you told him that torture won’t work with that prisoner?”
“We’ll shove a stick up his ass. That’s exactly what Rafi said. Sorry for the language, but I just want you to realize that I have to be there. It would’ve been much worse if I hadn’t been there. This time Rafi sounded like he was dead serious about doing exactly that to number 3. I know you have some Arab friends and you’re against all these measures. I’m with you, but am not sure we have any other option.”
“Ok, Aba.”
“Oh, sweetie. I am there and I have to hang up now. You know the security precautions. I’ll call you from home tomorrow. OK?”
“OK. Bye.”
“Bye. Take care.”
Once he got to the huge black iron gate, Menachem stopped the car engine as was required. He got out and went to the scanner where his face and palm were identified. He went back and turned the ignition again and waited for the black gate to be opened. The building’s courtyard was full of pines and cypresses. There were some rose bushes near the wooden benches, where prison staff sat down to sip coffee or smoke during breaks between torture sessions. Nothing in the courtyard indicated the nature of what took place inside. Everything looked clean and calm from the bench. The building, like the prisoners themselves, had no official existence. Neither the guards nor the prisoners existed. What mattered was extracting information. Whoever is sent to prison 48 must be a dangerous target. Those who make the decisions to send them here know what they’re doing.
Menachem parked his car in the space designated for doctors. As per instructions, he left all electronics inside the car. When he got to the prison clinic he found Rafi lying on a bed waiting for him. He was sweating profusely and screaming of severe stomach pain. Menachem fought a smile and thought, for a moment, that prisoner 3 had assaulted Rafi and injured him.
“What happened?”
“The son of a bitch disappeared. When I catch him I’m going to tear him to pieces. They’ve all disappeared. I’ll tear them to pieces when I catch them. They won’t get away from us!”
8
Hospital
“Get up Habiba! I have to bathe you.”
“Where is the doctor? I’m tired.”
“He hasn’t come yet. Get up so you can bathe before he arrives. Your surgery is in an hour.”
“What time is it now? I feel very tired. Maybe it’s better to postpone the surgery . . .”
“It’s seven. Don’t worry. Dr. Shanneer is the best in all of Sharon. He graduated from America. Come on, let’s go.”
The nurse said the last phrase decisively to convince Habiba to get up before her daughter comes.
Most people calculate their age the way we measure the age of trees. Each ring counts for a year. But Habiba, who was in her seventies, used to say that she was fifteen. The years had left their traces on her face. She had made the long journey from Baghdad to Hatikva in “Tal al-Khirbe,” (The Hill of Ruins) as she insisted on calling Tel Aviv, which she never liked. She hated the humidity and the stinky caravans where those who came from Arab countries were housed. They lived in poor and miserable dwellings. The Tel Aviv municipality refused to incorporate the neighborhood even fifteen years after the establishment of Azrael (that’s what she used to call the state). She kept speaking Arabic to her parents and her children too. But her grandchildren mimic the Ashkenazis in their habits and lifestyle. That broke her heart. They were ashamed of their Arab origin and would insult Arabs a lot. Her mother called European Jews “Polish” and often said they were not real Jews, because their habits and ways were so alien to her. She would mention the wounding looks that inspected her and sprayed her with DDT after their airplane had landed in the airport when they arrived. They sprayed them like cattle being inoculated before being herded to a farm.
Her body aged, but the fifteen-year-old girl stayed inside. Habiba preferred that her daughter bathe her and not the nurse. She didn’t like hospitals. It was at a hospital where she first tasted separation when her husband died of cancer, twenty years after her arrival in Palestine. After that she only went to hospitals to visit mothers who had just given birth. That as a sign of good omen and a new beginning.
She bathed and went back to her room with the nurse to find her daughter waiting with a smile. The nurse helped her put on a blue robe. Her daughter combed her long hair and braided it. Habiba often told her how her hair used to be long and thicker than wool, but today it’s like a silk thread. She waited calmly for the doctor. The nurse disappeared and returned half an hour later to say that he hadn’t come. Habiba was anxious, especially that she hated surgeries. Were it not that Dr. Aziz Shanneer had come himself and reassured her, explaining in detail what he was going to do to her cartilage, she wouldn’t have agreed to have surgery at this age. She was on the threshold of her grave, as she used to say. He asked her how she knew that she wouldn’t live another twenty years? So why live them in pain when she can have a surgery with a very high rate of success. He made sure to look her in the eye as he said, in Arabic, “You’ll be as good as a new bride. Not like today’s spoiled girls.”
She laughed to overcome her embarrassment. She told her daughter that he looked like her father: tall with honey-colored eyes that change their color. Aziz laughed and said in Arabic, “Hopefully, everything will be fine, Hajja.” She liked “Hajja,” which she hadn’t heard in a long time. She smiled, because Arabic was the language of the heart and of sweet memories.
Habiba lied down waiting in her bed looking at the clear morning sky through the window. Her hair smelled like apples. She used to take her own shampoo along wherever she went. She feared that after all these years she couldn’t remember exactly what her late husband’s eyes looked like. So she asked her daughter to hand her his photograph from the inlaid wooden box. She’d put her most cherished items there. Some she had brought from Baghdad, others she collected here in Palestine. There were many family photographs, including one of her as a bride of eighteen next to her husband. Everyone in those photographs, except her, had died. There was a braid of her mother’s hair and a small pouch containing dirt from the garden of their Baghdad house. Her wedding ring, which became too tight after she gave birth to her second child, was in it too.
She opened the box and took her husband’s photograph out. It was taken one year before his death. She touched his face and eyes with her fingertips and placed her hand on her hair as if retracing his own touch. Then she asked her daughter to call the nurse to see what was going on.
“I don’t know why the doctor is late. He’s not answering his phone. Just wait. We’ll see what we can do. I will come back later.”
The nurse said, and sighed indicating her impatience with these repeated inquiries. Then she added:
“There is news that t
he Arabs in Israel, and Judea and Samaria, are on strike, but it is yet to be confirmed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What is not clear about what I said?”
“Are the doctors on strike?
“No, just the Arabs, it seems.”
Habiba heard her stomach growling. She was told to fast before the surgery. She went back to gaze at the clear sky outside her window. The nurse came back later to tell them that the surgery was postponed, and they would be informed later of the new date. Habiba looked at her daughter and said, in a shaky voice tinged with disappointment, “Let’s eat.”
9
A Building
Rothschild Boulevard bounced back to life and its commotion began to seep into the apartments in building 5A. They responded in kind. The sounds of radios and TV screens escaped from under the doors, or through open windows, and sank into the noise on the street.
The man with fluffy white hair was wearing a black undershirt and a white pair of boxers. He started listening to music on his radio with excessive joy, as if for the first time. He picked up a bag of Italian coffee and smelled its aroma. He filled one big spoon and fed it to the espresso machine. After adding water, he stood there waiting and admiring the machine. His wife used to mock him whenever she saw him in this state. “It’s as if you’re looking at a Mercedes,” she used to mumble. But she wasn’t there this morning. She had left the day before to visit her family in Jerusalem. He didn’t like her family or Jerusalem. They were religious and kept Shabbat and he doesn’t. His wife stopped observing Shabbat, but she only cooks and eats kosher and her family keeps pressuring him to pray and keep kosher.
This morning he doesn’t have to answer her questions, or engage in meaningless conversations about her relatives and friends. He won’t hear her calling him from the kitchen telling him to answer the phone, something he doesn’t like to. Why else was the answering machine invented? Whoever wants to talk to him can leave him a message and he’ll get back to them later. He refused to buy a cell phone despite all the fights they had about the subject.
He stretched out lazily on the bamboo rocking chair in the living room. Sipping his coffee and listening to the radio in peace reminds him of his mornings back when he was single and lived alone. He sipped his espresso as he listened to the news.
Meanwhile, the woman who lived right above him was wiping away her tears. Following a long night, agonizing over a recent breakup, she got out of bed and took off the clothes she’d had slept in. She turned on the TV so as not to feel lonely, and stood naked in front of the mirror, looking for the ghost of a wrinkle on her face. She walked to the kitchen to quench her thirst, looking at every mirror she passed by, the apartment was full them, as if to console herself with her young body, which so many men told her was so dazzling.
A few drops of the water she was drinking trickled down all the way to her breasts. She went back to her bedroom and raised the TV’s volume. She looked into the mirror again and touched her face. She wasn’t paying attention to the chatter on “Good Morning Israel” at first. But she ignored her reflection in the mirror and sat on the edge of her bed gazing at the TV screen in disbelief.
At that exact moment, another neighbor of hers, on the second floor, was cursing Haaretz, because the delivery person was late. It wasn’t the first time the bastard was late and, without the paper, his morning will not be the same. He sat in his balcony, just as he did at that time every morning. A plate with three pieces of whole wheat bread and another with butter cubes and the apple jam he made himself, and a cup of American coffee, sat on the table. He usually ate his breakfast while reading the newspaper. Classical music, mostly Chopin, but sometimes Rachmaninoff, could be heard in the background.
But instead of reading the newspaper, he was listening to the radio, and looking at the public bus, which had stopped in front of the building. It stood there puffing its black smoke in the face of the morning. The bus driver raised the volume of the radio when the announcer noted that it was the eight o’clock news bulletin. The AC was out of order and most of the windows were open. The news pierced the ears of pedestrians.
“It’s eight in the morning. I am Tamar Netanyahu and this is the news bulletin:
A state of maximum emergency was declared in the country because the Arabs have declared a general strike. Security and police units have recalled reserves. All of the Arab inhabitants of Israel, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza have disappeared. All Arab prisoners in civil and military prisons have disappeared, including those with blood on their hands. Prison authorities and police, as well as the IDF, are investigating the matter and coordinating their efforts. Business owners have reported that their Arab employees did not show up to their jobs. The government is holding an emergency session with the chiefs of military and security to discuss the matter. The prime minister has consulted with regional and western leaders. It is expected that the government spokesperson will hold a press conference in the coming few hours.
Earlier this morning, police summoned the heads of sects, Arab tribes, as well as heads of municipalities and local councils to register at the nearest police stations.
The police have set up mobile checkpoints at the entrances of Arab cities and villages in Israel. Security has been tightened as well on all cross-points with Judea and Samaria. The minister of defense declared the latter closed military areas. Arab areas in mixed cities are under surveillance to ensure no exit or entry. The police instructed citizens to be vigilant and to report any information or suspicious movements they might notice.
It is worth noting that neither the Arab leaders in Israel, nor the Palestinian Authority, had declared their intention to stage a strike. Security officials are scanning and analyzing all the footage from surveillance cameras in public places. No official response from the state has been issued as of now. Finally, here is the weather forecast: Sunny with temperatures reaching 20 degrees Celsius. This was a news summary prepared by Tamar Netanyahu.
We are changing our normal schedule and will have special coverage of the disappearance of the Arabs so as to keep you posted about the latest developments. Our guest in the studio today is Shlomo Ben Gaon, an expert on Arab affairs.”
When the bus started moving, the angry man was relieved. The engine’s noise had disrupted the serenity of his morning hours. He called the public relations office at Haaretz to complain about the newspaper not being delivered, and to ask for a refund. It wasn’t the first time. He then put on a blue shirt, grey pants, and sandals over the soft black socks he always wore, even in summer. He slammed the door behind him and walked to the kiosk near his house to buy the paper.
10
Ariel
Ariel dragged himself out of bed and went to the kitchen. He wanted to sleep some more, but couldn’t. Books and newspapers were scattered everywhere in the living room. He had to tidy up.
It took seven steps to get to the little kitchen. He opened the big silver refrigerator and stood there perplexed, as if he’d forgotten that he came to drink water. He took a bite out of a red apple that sat on one of the shelves. He had brushed his teeth before going to sleep, but the sour taste of wine from the night before lingered. Maybe the apple will change that.
He should take a shower, he thought, as he scratched his head. He put the apple on the tiny kitchen table. He went to the bathroom, jumped under the shower, and thought about his ten-day vacation. He has to buy a few things for his apartment, including a new bath mat. As he scrubbed his body under the hot water, he heard an impulsive door ring. It was rare for anyone to come without calling beforehand. Maybe it’s by mistake, or the mailman. The ringing didn’t stop and it was joined by knocks and banging on the door. He shut the water, took a towel, and wrapped it hastily around his waist. He went and opened the door without even asking who it was, or looking through the peephole.
It was his ex, Zohar, but he didn’t recognize her at first. She had cut her coal-black hair short and died it a light chestnut
color that didn’t suit her.
“Shalom. Why did it take you forever to open the door? And why are you still asleep when there is such a big mess in the country?”
“I didn’t know that you are an investigator now. What are you talking about? What mess? Was there a terrorist attack?”
He asked her to come in. He hadn’t seen her since they broke up. It was strange for her to visit. Maybe it was one of her crazy fits and she wants to get back together. As he closed the door, he heard her weeping. He’d never seen so much fear in her eyes. He took her in his arms.
“We’re finished. They’ll finish us off.”
“Who will be finished?”
“Didn’t you hear the news? The Palestinians have disappeared without a trace. Neither here nor in Judea and Samaria. I don’t know if we did it ourselves, somehow, or if they’re hiding somewhere. Either way, Arab countries will attack us and tear us to pieces.”
Ariel laughed.
“You’re hallucinating. Did you drink something last night, or is it a new kid of hash? I want some too.”
She wiped away her tears and pushed him aside.
“Don’t make light of the situation. It’s not a joke. Didn’t you hear the news?”
He picked up the remote, turned the radio on, and scanned it looking for the Army Radio Station. He turned the TV on, too, but kept it on mute. The announcer was reminding listeners that the Palestinians have disappeared.
Ariel was incredulous.