by Yitzhak Nir
Meanwhile, in the north of the city Chun Chang loaded his tattered rucksack onto his back and entered the second Passat, whose driver was already impatiently honking his horn. A city inspector was about to move him on, claiming that he was obstructing traffic and parked in a no-parking zone.
Sweating, Chun, dressed in faded jeans a long-sleeved checked shirt and worn sports shoes, got into the car holding his rucksack on his knees. On his nose were still perched the same John Lennon glasses, his pocked face was shiny with perspiration and his greasy hair covered his eyes like in the Beatles era before he was born.
“Let’s get out of here already!” he said angrily to the driver. He was worried and anxious.
In the pocket of his jeans, in his big new Samsung Galaxy’s intestines, he had installed a tiny electronic chip the night before. It contained what he had added after the black dragon’s mission opposite Li-Lan’s balcony in Argaman Towers the previous night was completed. He now had in his possession an abridged and edited seven-minute video that he had labored over secretly, for several weeks without anyone’s knowledge.
Evidence of the economic attaché’s affair with the Mossad director was accompanied by an American rendition of the old Hebrew song “Heveinu Shalom Aleichem”, We have brought peace upon you, translated into Chinese. The voices of those seated on the balcony were amazingly clear, after his electronic labors had cleared away all background noises. Chun was very proud of his creation...
Now, with the ambassador’s blessing, he was on his way to participate in the large exhibition in Beijing as an artist and a diplomat representing the Chinese Embassy in Israel.
His long road to freedom had begun…
* * *
The Air China Boeing 777 stood silently adjacent to the terminal’s Gate B3 like a white whale waiting to swallow a school of tadpoles.
Its left door was open wide facing the air-conditioned passenger sleeve. Outside the temperature was almost ninety degrees Fahrenheit, on their flight’s warm summer night.
Two attractive flight attendants in mahogany-colored official uniforms, wearing red scarves and brown berets with the red dragon symbol on them, stood at both sides of the Boeing’s wide door waiting for the arrivals.
Joe Yang and Li-Lan were in no hurry. They still had half an hour until takeoff.
They strolled tranquilly, presented their passports and expensive flight tickets, returned the smiles of the flight attendants posted by the door and slowly advanced to first class, towards the locked door of the flight deck.
Air China Flight 095 from Ben-Gurion to Beijing was leaving on time. Joe was pleased, as was evident on his face as he stretched out on his well–appointed seat. Soon he was thumbing through the Chinese newspapers and periodicals that were brought to him, while mumbling to himself, “How long has it been since I read any of these?” And like an experienced politician, he began searching for any piece of information about the Beijing congress. How gratified he was to find his name mentioned in so many of them!
Li-Lan sat without saying a word sipping mineral water from the elegant glass that had been served to her. She suddenly seemed cut off from the flight experiences ahead of her, as well as the man seated beside her.
Neither of them noticed the group of Chinese workers that had entered the plane. They strode single-file along the aisle between the seats towards the tail-section of the brand new Boeing cabin. The indifferent-looking, disciplined workers wore ironed overalls and on their heads were caps with the name of the contractor from whom they were bring dollars home to their families. Bringing up the rear of the group strode two men: the group’s foreman in a brown suit and shoulder bag containing their passports and money, and behind him Chun Chang walking with bowed head to the last row of seats. He sat down alone near the rear lavatories and waited nervously and anxiously for takeoff. Chun didn’t hear the loud calls of the porters who were loading the last containers of luggage, among which was a large wooden crate containing fifteen huge abstract acrylic paintings. Only a sharp-eyed observer, if he backed up some ten yards, would discern that they were gigantic enlargements of aerial photographs of Israeli sites captured by the white dragon…
* * *
The flight took off on time from Runway 26.
The plane lazily gained speed, delicately detached itself from the end of the long runway, climbed heavily and performed a wide left turn in the direction of the Kingdom of Jordan. It flew slowly with a muffled roar and with its takeoff lights at maximum intensity above Jerusalem and turned towards Amman. From there it would continue all the way eastbound, through central Asia’s skies, towards home.
With smiling contentment Joe surveyed the scene below him, observing the strings of diamonds illuminating the controversial city, gradually retreating beneath the Boeing’s huge engine.
Li-Lan pretended to be asleep. With yellow sponges plugged into her shell-like ears and dark sunglasses on her nose, she held an empty water glass in her hand.
In the stern of the plane Chun Chang waited impatiently for the evening meal that was about to be served. The cart bearing trays of food to tourist class was approaching, but it was almost empty. A plastic tray was pushed in his direction by a scowling flight attendant dressed in a red uniform. The more he consumed of the Chinese food floating in soy sauce in the aluminum pan before him, the more his anxiety and the tension in his body lessened.
“I did it,” he told himself in Mandarin, an imperceptible smile appearing on his pock-marked face.
* * *
Gershon was having difficulty falling asleep. Even going to the bathroom and drinking a full glass of tap water hadn’t helped. The events of the previous night and his conversation with Joe Yang did not cease to preoccupy him. He went out onto the lawn behind his house, gazing at the thin crescent moon rising in the east.
“The month is coming to an end,” he hummed to himself. Afterwards he gave a long look in the direction of the brightly twinkling Pole Star. Ursa Major had already sunk beneath the horizon, the lawn was wet with dew and all the crickets had fallen asleep.
He strode to the end of the lawn and opened the heavy metal door of his tool shed. He felt for the light switch, found it and turned on the white neon light in the shelter room that had served him as an improvised workshop, in the days when he had still repaired intractable taps by himself.
He pulled his reading glasses from his shirt pocket and placed them on his nose. Then he placed the black disc-on-key with the red dragon in the bench-vise’s palms and tightened it gently on the device’s shining hollow metal protrusion. He took a small electric drill off the wall, and fixed a five-mm. drill in it. Then he stopped for a long moment, trying to decide what to do.
What a crazy idea! To lease ourselves to the Chinese and be handed a brand new state straight from the wrapper …
He moved the tip of the drill over the black surface, stopped and fixed it in the center of the small plastic object, glancing at the clock on the wall: there were still four hours before the program erased itself. He breathed deeply and hesitated once more.
Then with prolonged, purposeful pressure he drilled a perfect round hole in the electronic device. A blue cloud of smoke spiraled up and a faint smell of burned plastic stood in the air. The dragon’s stomach was separated from its neck, but its mouth continued to smile.
Afterwards he gently removed the lid of the small box containing Li-Lan’s gift, putting in his pocket the purple ribbon and her business card. Out of the box he pulled a delicate gold chain from its light blue silk cushion, and slowly threaded it through the still warm hole in the drilled plastic device. Satisfied, he hung what he had created around his neck and burned the business card.
Upon returning home, he studied his image in the guest bathroom mirror. “Not bad. I’ve still got what it takes,” he chuckled out loud, “There was a time…”
Later, after he had retur
ned home and night had fallen on his neighborhood, a dull but definitive headache crept once more above his right temple, while a thin crescent moon rose in the gloomy, dark eastern skies.
He returned to contemplating his approaching death.
The immense anger that had bottled up inside him since his meeting with Dr. Zimmerman had almost evaporated that night, together with his fear of the unknown. He also felt alone opposite a blind system that even if he wanted to, he didn’t have the power to bring to it the light revealed to him. His burning desire for change found him unprepared and anxious about his personal fate.
“So that’s it? The whole business is pointless…” he informed himself. He felt that the time had come, earlier than he had ever imagined, to plan his departure from this life. “Exactly as Motta Gur, the liberator of the Wailing Wall in 1967, had done,” he slowly reminded himself.
In his mind he had already begun organizing the headings of his final plan: “Last will and testament, location, transfer of responsibilities, method of implementation, time and what to wear.”
Then, slowly, he removed the antique Sig Sauer from his belt. “For self-defense” was written on the license he carried in his wallet. But now, he mused, self-defense had taken on a different meaning: defense against approaching annihilation, suffering, and the gradual demeaning loss of human dignity that awaited him. He looked at the pistol in his hand and felt the weight of the metal gleaming in the pale moonlight that penetrated into the room.
Gershon Shalit began considering how to pull the trigger: …In the mouth? The center of the forehead? From right to left through the temple? To hold a pillow between throat and head? Maybe through the heart? To lie down? To sit up? And what if I don’t succeed? Will I be forced to live on as a total invalid with no second chance? … And he felt suddenly like crying, but the tears wouldn’t come.
He had always appeared to be a survivor, confident that nothing bad would ever happen to him. Did he really believe that he had conquered death? Or was it the fact that he had been saved from death so many times that had strengthened that belief? What a naïve idiot I was! I don’t want to end up a pensioner in a creative writing group for the elderly or in drawing lessons at the community center, or making wine in green bottles, or waiting anxiously for the next shot of morphine or for a black mushroom cloud to form above the Ministry of Defense, after which we will all be burned in the fires of hell…
With his pistol in his hand, he quietly entered his crowded clothes closet that had been untidy since the days of Nehama and switched on the ceiling lamp that shed a dingy yellow light. He mounted the white footstool and took down from the shelf the ancient map portfolio made of old tarpaulin from his days as a trainer in the youth movement. The portfolio was frayed at the edges and gave off a mildewed, dusty smell. He stared at the movement graduate’s badge that he had pasted to the mildewed tarpaulin when he was seventeen years old, when Papa Dejo was no longer alive. The ancient badge was covered by a greenish patina. Afterwards he removed from the portfolio a reserve pistol magazines, copper ramrods, a soot-covered flannel that smelled of old gun oil, rusty paratrooper’s wings and old canvas pilot’s wings that looked brand new, which he hadn’t worn for thirty years. From there he slowly returned to the living room. In a practiced gesture he pulled out the magazine, checked that there were no bullets in the chamber and rested the cold pistol on the green sofa. Next to him, as at an exhibition, he arranged the portfolio, the magazines, the ramrods and the flannel, his scratched Omega watch and both wings. Then he returned to the wet lawn and stood near the hammock staring for a long time at the Pole Star, as though asking it for advice.
When he had reached a decision, he went up to his workroom and sat down in front of the computer that had colorful soap bubbles floating indifferently in its dark screen.
He extracted an A4 sheet from the printer, pulled out the fountain pen that still had the golden Polish eagle engraved on it from the drawer, and inscribed at the top of the page:
Will
He drew a nice straight line under the convincing word and sank into contemplation, feeling his former determination melting away.
No action film of his life passed before his eyes, only the faded face of Muhammad Barhum that flickered briefly and disappeared. His soul was filled with gray disappointment, sad and angry that this was the sum total of his life: an old graduate’s badge, a scratched Omega watch, paratrooper’s wings, cloth pilot’s wings, a fountain pen, a pistol and the smell of gun oil.
In his heart of hearts he began feeling that the courage that always characterized him might not be serving him this time. “So maybe I’m not Motta Gur after all…” he continued to address himself. Suddenly, his self-pity was transformed into a new crystal clear fury, focused and free of panic, which took over his feelings.
His thoughts wandered to Li-Lan and from there to the Tibetan vision revealed to him on her balcony and to her father’s speech about healing. Then in his mind’s eye he pictured his daughter, Gila, and his only grandson, Shalom. “I must return them to me!” He started talking to himself angrily, and impulsively erased the Will from the top of the page.
“Let them all go to hell!” he shouted. “I want a second opinion and even a third one!” he continued, ignoring his sleeping bodyguards. “Zimmerman and his band don’t know anything that this Chinese guy doesn’t know… I’m not ready! I don’t want an operation and I’m not having one! “He rose from his chair, tore up the sheet, scattered the pieces on the floor and stormed off to the kitchen.
“So I’m starting a new life from now on! What have I got to lose, for heaven’s sake? Eliminate a few more bad people in order to enable Zionism to self-destruct? I won’t allow Tamar Rajuan-Berger and her band of hypocrites to bring the whole business to ruin! There is a solution! He shouted angrily on his way to the kitchen, clutching the unloaded pistol in his hand. “Here goes nothing!” he shouted. “I have a mission and I will put it forward! I won’t allow this crazy, logical, unique suggestion to escape me now…” Then he lowered his voice to an angry whisper, “This time I’ll show them!” but again he was mainly referring to himself. “The Sig Sauer can wait. Maybe I’ll still be forced to use it for its original purpose…” he whispered, aiming it threateningly at the coffee jar.
Afterwards he laid his pistol on the counter, opened the vitamin cabinet, retrieved an Advil painkiller from its wrapping, gargled a half glass of water and swallowed the tablet. Slowly, he concentrated on preparing himself a cup of coffee, adding liquor up to the brim, and went out to the hammock suspended above the lawn wet with morning dew. While slowly sipping from the burning ceramic cup and looking up at the pale eastern sky, he clearly realized that he had no way back.
His headache slowly retreated and he almost smiled when he recalled the final line of the joke, “in future it will be much more worthwhile to commit suicide…”
And when his empty cup fell onto the grass, he sank into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
It was afternoon according to Chinese time when the white Boeing with the red symbol of Air China on its tail landed in the huge, brand new Beijing airport.
While Chun Chang trudged for two and half hours through endless lines and a sluggish passport control, waited for the elevator and shoved his way into the crowded internal railway leading to the taxi stand at the terminal’s exit, Joe Yang and Li-Lan rapidly passed through the elegant VIP lane and were whisked away in a black, air-conditioned limousine to their hotel.
Only then did Li-Lan allow herself to doze off, after not having closed her eyes during the entire flight.
A Hard Day’s Night
March 23rd, 2025
Three days later, early than expected, an angry heat suddenly descended on the earth.
The ‘Sharqia’ wind howled, swept up into the air everything in their way that was not securely anchored to its place. The air was filled with dese
rt sand from Egypt and Arabia. Trees snapped, metal sheets from building sites flew away as though searching for victims, plastic bags floated above fields and roads, and protest tents took off angrily and landed grumbling on streets filled with people breathing heavily.
The embassy flags were hastily lowered from the flagpoles on Argaman Towers, along with the red flag of the People’s Republic of China, and were securely tied to their poles that rattled in the strong easterly wind. Violent waves in the murky sea whipped up swirling clouds of spray and threw them from the empty shore back to the sea. Light aircraft were hurriedly dragged and tied down in their hangars to stop them taking off on their own and crashing onto their backs. The media were filled with fire warnings. The air was hot, brown and choking.
Gershon felt a growing headache. “Shit, it always attacks me during ‘Hamsin’,” he cursed the heat wave quietly, impatiently waiting to finish the matters he still had to deal with.
The smell of Hamsin filled the air and the winds increased. The sun sank behind a gloomy, dark gray horizon and the high waves continued to strike the deserted beaches with their murky foam.
After swallowing three painkillers, he sensed that he was doing himself more harm than good, especially in light of Dr. Zimmerman’s diagnosis. But his headache did not improve. He longed to be at home stretched out on the green sofa with his eyes tightly shut.
The morning news reported a Syrian-Hezbollah commando helicopter raid on Al-Dumayr air base, which was being held hostage by ISIS. He found himself having mixed feelings. On the one hand, the missile threat had been removed and the ISIS force destroyed. But on the other hand, hundreds of civilians and children had been killed and the ISIS fighters had succeeded in forcing Syrian crews to fire five missiles towards Israel. Luckily, three were shot down by the Arrow and two had fallen to earth without exploding, south of IAF’s Ramat David air base.