by Assaf Gavron
She burst out sobbing again and I stood and watched. I’m sure there was contempt on my face at that moment. That fat, bald, softly spoken snake: I couldn’t believe it. How low could you stoop? But I didn’t say anything. She lifted her face to the ceiling. It was all bent out of shape from crying.
‘Say something,’ she said. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Something,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’ A dozen things were going through my head but what I remember above all is the feeling of enormous relief.
In the end, it turned out that Elvis was a lot of help. He’s a Nigerian, so he didn’t know Flemish or French, but he had a Congolese friend called Clinton who spoke both. The Belgians had given me a list of names and Clinton came into Time’s Arrow one day and read them out for several hours. He was delighted with the five hundred shekels he got in cash and found us a Chinese guy and a Vietnamese girl from his neighbourhood in South Tel Aviv, and once they were done I only had one accent left to test. I’d left it to the end because I thought it’d be pretty easy to find an Arabic speaker in Kafr Qasim. Maybe even someone from the park itself.
‘Didn’t work out too well the last time you were hanging out with Arabs,’ Guy smirked at our weekly meeting. Guy’s a hard-line religious nationalist. ‘Check whoever it is with seven eyes. ID, everything, I don’t have to tell you, do I?’
Duchi moved out the day after the row with the help of Voovi and her father, who took me aside to tell me how sorry he was. He couldn’t understand what was going on with his daughter lately. Ilan didn’t dare show his face, luckily for him.
Bar decided it would be a good idea to turn the flat into the Guetta investigation headquarters (they were surely missing us in Bar BaraBush) and we spent hours on the sofa, with the TV on mute and the air-con thundering away, going over possible leads.
Tamer Sarsur. America Fruit and Veg, Be’eri.
Physiotherapy. Don’t mix with the brother.
We hadn’t made any progress with the greengrocer’s, so we decided to focus on ‘physiotherapy’. It took us a whole evening, on the Internet, going through reference books and the Yellow Pages, checking all the physiotherapists around Be’eri Street and Yehuda Maccabi Street, where the meeting between Warshawski and Guetta took place. The next day Bar called every name on our list and asked whether the name Giora Guetta meant anything to them. One said it sounded familiar, but he couldn’t find it in the client records. It was only when Bar returned to America Fruit and Veg that it hit him. So obvious that he actually slapped himself on the forehead. Right in front of him, crowned with its helipad, was the colossal glass cliff of the Ichilov Hospital. It had to have a physiotherapy department.
He neatened himself up, straightened his baseball cap, and wandered the hospital corridors until he found the physiotherapy department on the ground floor of the main building. The department had a reception desk and, farther down the corridor, a waiting room. It was a little after 9.30 in the morning–in a minute he would have to return to his car and drive to work. He couldn’t see the physiotherapists from the waiting room, and besides, he didn’t know what he was looking for. Another dead end. A physiotherapist’s head appeared and called: ‘Mor Shimon.’ No one answered. Two minutes later the physiotherapist’s head returned: ‘Mor Shimon!’
‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ Bar said. ‘That’s me.’
Three years earlier he’d twisted his knee on a skiing trip and had been in physiotherapy for several months: pretending he’d had a relapse would be easy enough, he thought.
‘No it’s not,’ said the physiotherapist, ‘I know who Mor Shimon is.’
Humiliated, Bar shuffled off, exaggerating his old limp. But when he passed reception, with its list of physiotherapists on the wall, one of the names caught his attention. Tomer Sarsur. No, he wasn’t in today, the receptionist told him. He’d be back tomorrow morning.
We went early. It was my first visit to a hospital since the last time in Hadassah and memories of Shuli were trying to shove their way into my mind. Bar led the way to the physiotherapy department, where we were surprised to encounter the Arabic guy from America Fruit and Veg in a nurse’s uniform.
‘Ahalan–America Fruit and Veg! What’re you doing here?’ said Bar.
‘That’s Amin,’ Tomer Sarsur said. On his chest was a tag with his name, and in smaller letters below, ‘Physiotherapy’. ‘I’m his brother. I work here.’
‘It’s amazing…!’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘why don’t you ask me for a kilo of tomatoes so we can get it over with? Then go and ask Amin for a back rub. It was funny the first thousand times.’
‘No, no, it’s just amazing how similar you look. Are you twins?’
‘No, we’re not. Are you here for physiotherapy? Which one of you? What’s the therapist’s name?’
There was an embarrassing pause. Bar was the first to come to his senses. ‘Listen, do you know a guy called Giora Guetta?’
‘Guetta? Has he been treated here?’
‘Uh…we don’t know.’
‘Never heard of him. Why should I know him? Who are you, anyway?’
‘Just friends of his. We had an idea that you might know him.’
He studied us curiously. ‘Sorry I can’t help. Now, excuse me but I’m going to work.’ He turned and walked away. I stuck my hands in my trouser pockets, and Bar passed an anxious hand over his ginger stubble. If that was Tomer Sarsur, then who was Tamer? We crossed the street to America Fruit and Veg.
Not quite twins but close enough: the same nose, long-lashed black eyes, the same lopsided smile. Amin was in a good mood. It was a hot, quiet morning without many customers and he was happy to talk. Tomer, he explained, was actually Tamer: he’d changed his name to the Israeli to spare his patients the anxiety of dealing with his Arabic name. Everyone thought they were twins, and confused them when they were out together, or when Tamer covered for Amin in the store so he could visit their sick mother. She was dead now, Amin said, but when she’d been ill he’d spent a lot of time with her. Maybe he was compensating for Tamer, who had cut all contact with the family back in Kafr Qasim. The brothers had been living together in a flat on Weizmann Street for four years. But no, he said, he’d never heard of Giora Guetta–and he looked as if he was telling the truth.
We’d found Tamer Sarsur, and we understood ‘don’t mix with the brother’, but we hadn’t found Warshawski, and couldn’t see what connected him and Sarsur. We were stuck. I suggested that we involve Almaz but Bar claimed he would just laugh at our little investigation. So the days began to pass with nothing much happening and Bar stopped coming over in the evenings and it hit me as if for the first time that I was on my own. I wondered where Duchi was and what she was up to. I missed her. One morning I received a cheque from Itzik for five thousand shekels, with a cheery note thanking me for my help: I stuffed it in the back of a drawer and found the wedding ring I’d never given her and sat staring at the wall of the flat for a long time, remembering the way she would laugh and call me an idiot whenever I did something funny. I came to see how much I still loved her; how much I’d lost. I called Muku, but he was busy. Gadgid didn’t have time either. I went to Bar BaraBush and had a Cannibal but there were too many pretty girls there, and it depressed me to be alone with a hamburger. I called Uzi Bracha, my fellow laboratory mouse from therapy, who told me that Naama–beautiful but unshutuppable Naama–had asked about me. She’d broken up with her boyfriend, the mountain climber. So I called her, but the conversation just reminded me of her miserable state of mind, and my own, and everyone’s in that group. It was too depressing. We both said we ought to meet up, but I didn’t call again and neither did she.
And then one evening at work (I’d started staying longer again, because there was nothing to do at home and pretty much everyone else had already left for the day) Bar called in a state of high excitement and told me he had something I might like to look at.
A standard Hotmail screen. ‘Well–Hotmail. So what?�
�
‘Look whose it is,’ said Bar, and I followed his finger to the corner of the screen: [email protected].
‘How the hell?’
Bar smiled with satisfaction. ‘Just luck. I had a bit of time, so I started messing about with it. Actually, I’m an idiot–I tried weeks ago, but with one “t” instead of two. I was trying a few combinations of his name and password today and…what do you think it was?’
‘Shuli?’
‘What else?’
‘How come we didn’t think of this earlier?’
‘That’s exactly what I said.’
I sat down next to him, shaking my head. We may have been a pair of idiots but Bar was also a bit of a genius. ‘Well?’ I asked eventually. My heart was racing. ‘Anything interesting there?’
‘Emails from Binyamin Warshawski. One before the attack, setting the details of the meeting. The other the morning after, asking Giora where he’s gone and why he’s not answering the phone. It says he’s beginning to worry and tells him to get in touch urgently. Says he hopes Giora’s not planning on disappearing with the money.’
‘Disappearing with the money?’ I stared at Bar.
‘That’s all. Nothing interesting in the other emails. Even these two don’t tell us that much…’ He removed his cap and scratched his dome. ‘But at least we know who Binyamin Warshawski is now.’ He showed me the details at the foot of the email:
Prof. Binyamin-Moshe Warshawski
Nuclear Medicine Department
Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Centre
And below that, the address, phone number, fax number.
‘What’s the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Centre?’
‘Wake up, Croc,’ he said. ‘It’s Ichilov.’
38
I fixed his PalmPilot in half an hour. The contacts were a little flimsy, and the batteries dead. That was all. All he’d needed to do was pop into an electrician’s. But he was delighted when I gave it to him the next day. He played around with the buttons for a few seconds and said, ‘Hey, man, you’re a genius!’
I shrugged. ‘I just’ (I mimed the word I was missing in Hebrew. Fiddled around) ‘with the contacts a bit.’
‘The contacts? Really? I tried them myself and nothing happened.’
‘You should have just given it to an electrician. He’d fix it for you, no problem.’
I had to go back to work, so I left him to play with his new toy. But as I walked away I heard him calling me back: ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ I came back and he glanced up from his computer screen and handed over the Palm. ‘Take it, it’s yours.’
‘What do you mean? It’s working now.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, ‘I gave it to you. Well done for fixing it, but it’s still yours.’
On the one hand I thought, I don’t need favours from a Jew who treats me like I scarcely exist and if I manage to close an electric circuit suddenly thinks I’m a genius. That side of me wanted to chuck the thing at the wall. My calmer side knew that the wall was made of plywood and nothing was going to happen even if I did throw it. It was the second side that spoke.
‘You were on Noah’s Ark.’
‘What?’
‘You were on Noah’s Ark, right?’
He looked at me and frowned. ‘You watched it?’
‘Of course I watched it, what do you think? You had a strange name…You were on with that stupid soldier girl.’
‘How’d you remember that? It’s been six months!’
‘How could I forget? You were very much sweating.’
‘You know something? You’re the first person ever to mention that to me. Yeah, I was. But listen, how come…I mean: do you people actually watch Noah’s Ark?’
Samir had said not to speak to anyone. Not to talk to the Jews. It was better like that.
‘Tell me what your name is.’
‘Croc,’ he said, somewhat surprised.
‘The Croc. Right. The Croc of the Attacks! How could I forget? Musari said it about a thousand times. CrocAttack. Timsach, in Arabic.’
He laughed. ‘I’m amazed. I didn’t know you people watched that stuff.’ I said I needed to work, took the Palm and said thank you. In the kitchenette I washed dishes, threw away the garbage and wiped the surfaces. Then I started vacuuming the carpets. The next time I passed Croc’s room, he called me in again.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Fahmi.’
‘Fahmi,’ he repeated. He kept staring at me from under his low lids. His eyes were red. ‘Do you happen to know French?’ I smiled. What was he on about? Of course I didn’t know French. He asked me a few questions about where I lived and what I did and so on. ‘OK, then: do you want to make five hundred shekels for one day’s work?’
‘What work?’
‘Here in the office. You just have to say a few things that I’ll tell you to say. To test our system. Sit down.’
I looked at my watch and saw the time was twelve minutes past seven. Time for a shit. I could feel the sweet pressure building in my bowels. You weren’t supposed to sit down, but I did, keeping a wary eye on the door.
‘The system we’re developing here is supposed to understand people’s voices on the phone. I’m testing to see if it can recognise different accents and I need an Arab. It’s for a Belgian client: they’ve got Arabs there, and Africans, and Chinese and Vietnamese, and I’ve done them already. I’ve only got the Arabic left to do.’
I was silent. It was a lot of money, but…
‘Come on, it’s nothing. You come here for a few hours, I tell you what to say, we record you, test the system, and that’s it: three to four hours, five hundred shekels.’ ‘When?’
‘Whenever you want.’
This was a Wednesday evening. Zahara had almost completely recovered from her operation and was supposed to return after the weekend, when I would be out of a job again. We decided on Sunday morning.
‘We were at Bilahl’s trial, Fahmi. Me and Father…’
Lulu? What about Bilahl?
‘Just a little room. We sat on blue plastic chairs. Bilahl was in a brown prison uniform, but he couldn’t stop smiling. He looked very well. Clean. He was playing with a little length of black thread and reading a small Koran. He said that because Allah was protecting him, he was made of steel. He showed total contempt for the soldiers in court. I’d never seen him in such a good mood. Father’s mobile phone rang and the judge got really angry. But he said he was ashamed of you, Fahmi…’
Ashamed of me?
‘…because of what happened with the Croc. He said you were never really faithful to the cause…’
I couldn’t shake the feeling that Grandfather Fahmi was somehow guiding my life from heaven. Bilahl hated it when I said that: he said that only Allah was guiding everything. But meeting the Croc made me wonder just who it was who was controlling my destiny. I remembered how Bilahl had said that we needed to kill the Croc because he’d been turned into a symbol for the Jews. He would have said that Allah had placed the Croc in my hands for just that reason. Our poor father would have said that Allah had introduced us so that I could see he was a human being like myself.
Thursday was my last day as a cleaner in the business park. On Friday, the day when everything converged, I woke with a powerful urge to pray. When the first call came I washed my face, hands and legs and went to the mosque, where I stayed longer than usual. I repeated the Surat al-Fatcha dozens or even hundreds of times, and the tears poured down my face. I missed Lulu, Father and Murair; I missed Rana; I missed Bilahl and Al-Amari; I missed Titi, Natzer and limping Rami; I missed Halil Abu-Zeid and I missed my mother…and yet I felt strong. When you live on your own for months, you learn to live within yourself.
As soon as I got back home I called Halil’s cousin, who was pleased to hear from me. They’d been meaning to contact me some time anyway. Now that there was contact with Bilahl again, the big operation was back on.
‘What did you say?’
She coul
dn’t believe I didn’t know. Bilahl had been in contact from his jail. He had confessed to planning the attacks, and would probably get multiple life sentences.
I was unable to breathe for a moment. Air jammed in my throat.
‘What do you mean, confessed? He told them everything?’
‘I don’t know exactly what he said. You can call him, but be careful. They’ve given him this line just so they can monitor his calls.’ She gave me the number and asked how I was doing. I told her about the Croc.
‘The fool who couldn’t die. Well, you must take care of him.’
‘It’s not that simple. I’m on my own here. Where am I going to find a weapon? Where can I escape to?’
‘You’ve done more complicated things than this, Fahmi.’
I was still having trouble getting air into my lungs. The sense of convergence I’d had in the mosque that morning; the feeling that Allah, or Grandfather, was guiding things from above; Bilahl suddenly only a phone call away; and all of this happening when I still had my appointment with the Croc to come…It all felt connected.
I called the number and asked for Bilahl. Two minutes later I heard his ‘Hello?’, and it was like something floating up from the depths of my memory.
‘Bilahl.’
‘Fahmi?’
We were silent for a long time. Strange, to have to think very carefully about every word you spoke to your brother.
‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘How’s the village?’
‘Good. Comfortable. There’s work…a little bit in the packing-house. You know, bits and pieces here and there.’
‘Good. And you’re praying? Continuing to fulfil the six commandments?’
‘Yes.’ He was playing with fire. I understood what he meant at once. There are only five main commandments in Islam. The sixth commandment was: to continue with our operations.