Convergence at Two Harbors

by Dennis Herschbach

  As he regained his senses, he could hear the cries of Nadia grow weaker, but the search of the vehicle continued at an exasperatingly slow pace. Eventually, no more sounds came from inside the ambulance. A half hour later the driver was told he could pass, but now there was no need for urgency.

  “Well, that’s one less we’ll have to contend with,” Zaim heard one of the guards say, his face contorted with a sneer as the ambulance drove off with Dania’s body. Then the soldiers turned to him.

  They jerked Zaim to his feet, oblivious to the pain caused by the movement of his broken arm.

  “It’s Friday,” one of the three announced. “We better take care of this one before Sabbath begins,” and they shoved Zaim into a van.

  Chapter Two

  Zaim jostled from side to side as the driver sped through the narrow, winding streets. There were no windows in the back, and there was no way Zaim could tell where he was being taken.

  The van lurched to a stop. Zaim was dragged out and shoved across the walk into a rundown brick building. He was hauled up a flight of stairs and shoved into a dingy bathroom with a shower stall. There, the soldiers looped his handcuffs around the shower head, forcing Zaim to stand, hands stretched above his head.

  “This ought to cool you off,” one of the men said as he turned on a trickle of cold water from the shower head. He laughed at his own joke. “Come, we’ll be late for Sabbath,” and they left Zaim hanging.

  Zaim stood in the shower for as long as his legs would hold, but by midnight he was numb with cold, and his shivering depleted even more of his energy. Eventually, his legs could support him no longer, and his knees buckled. The handcuffs looped over the shower head kept him from crumpling in a heap on the floor. The metal of the cuffs cut into his wrists, and soon his hands were numb.

  As his body’s temperature dropped, Zaim began hallucinating. For a while, he was a fourteen-year-old sitting at Mama’s table, and he felt the warmth of her small clay cooking oven radiating from the corner of the kitchen.

  Zaim’s thoughts switched to both his Mama and Papa, and for an instant he was back home, hearing stories of Grandpa and Great-grandpa and of their homeland. He saw himself sitting on his parents’ porch, enjoying the cooling evening breezes cascading down from the mountains.

  Abruptly, his comfort was disrupted when, in his dream state, an ambulance pulled up, sirens blaring. Zaim saw himself get up from his chair and peer into the back. He saw his Dania, covered in blood and holding a just born baby. Before he could act, the ambulance screamed away, and in his nightmare he panicked, not knowing where she would be taken.

  Zaim regained consciousness long enough for him to realize his plight, but again he slipped off into that other world of horror. Repeatedly, over the next twenty-four hours, he would lose his grasp on reality and would see Dania. Sometimes she was being accosted by soldiers with no faces, sometimes she would be lovely and well, almost always she held a healthy, happy baby in her arms.

  Then he would come to his senses and realize he was not in Honduras. Dania was not with him. She did not and would never have his baby.

  After nearly a full night and day, Zaim completely lost consciousness for a time, how long was impossible for him to know. When he partially regained consciousness and was yet in a dazed state, he saw Dania leaning on the fence around her father’s small plot of land that was filled with three banana trees, a mango tree, and other flowering plants. Squash vines climbed a trellis, and chickens scratched in the dirt. Dania had a gardenia in her hair, and she was gorgeous.

  Zaim saw himself walk over to her, saw her flash her beautiful smile, teeth white against her light-brown skin and highlighted by her black hair. Zaim was in love. In his stupor, he saw himself take her hands and slip a wedding ring on her finger. He held her, and gently kissed her lips. They were warm and soft.

  He regained total consciousness for a few minutes but drifted back into the gray mist where he was haunted by more hallucinations.

  In his troubled dreams, Zaim held Dania in his arms, tried to protect her from danger, but no matter how he tried to shield her, a part of her was constantly exposed, and he frantically tried to cover her with his own body. Finally, too exhausted to be able to respond, Zaim was not able to prevent some unseen force from prying her from his arms, and she was dragged away into the encroaching darkness that closed around him like a camera shutter that never opened.

  Chapter Three

  On Sunday, two Israelis walked into the room where Zaim was still shackled to the running shower head. “You’re still with us. Good. We need to talk.”

  When they unshackled Zaim, his knees buckled, and he fell to the floor, his damaged arm beneath him. He moaned in pain, but they grabbed his arms and led him down the hall to a bare room with a table and three chairs. Then the interrogation began.

  The questioners worked in teams until Zaim was too exhausted to respond. Then they would let him sleep for what seemed only minutes, and the ordeal would begin again.

  “What is the name of your father, your mother?”

  “Why were you at the checkpoint?”

  “Where are your papers?”

  “You say you are Honduran. Why are you here?”

  “Where are your papers?”

  The same questions were repeated over and over until Zaim didn’t know the answer to even the simplest. Finally, after days of torture and as Zaim slumped over the table too spent to raise his head, an Israeli officer entered the interrogation room. With no explanation, no apology, he said to Zaim, “You are free to go,” and he and the others turned on their heels and left the room.

  “Free to go?” Zaim thought. “I don’t even know where I am in this hellish place.”

  He managed to grope his way to the hallway and from there he located a stairwell. With his right hand on the banister and his shoulder pressed against the wall, Zaim dragged and stumbled his way down to the first landing. Through his blurred vision he detected light and assumed it must be the doorway. When he opened it, fresh air rushed passed him, and he inhaled as best he could.

  Most people on the street wouldn’t talk with him. They only stared at the disheveled specimen of a man and moved away. Finally, one bearded person stopped and offered to help.

  “My son,” the man addressed him with a gentle voice. “You look like you could use someone to lean on.”

  Zaim’s left eye was completely swollen shut, and his right eye was so puffed that he had to tilt his head back to see who spoke. His Samaritan had a short-cut, graying beard, and wore a bisht, a short sleeved traditional jacket. Zaim could see through his partial vision that the man wore a white laffeh, a kind of turban usually worn by older Palestinian men.

  “Come with me,” the older man offered, and took Zaim by the arm.

  “I am Asem,” the man introduced himself. “I won’t ask you to explain your appearance. I have a good idea of what happened to you.”

  Zaim began to respond, but before he could form the words through his swollen lips, Asem shushed him. “No need to talk now. We’ll have plenty of time as you heal. I’m taking you to a safe place where we can find help.”

  Asem led Zaim down a narrow street and through an even narrower alley. They stopped outside a solid wooden door that looked almost like a barricade, and Asem knocked loudly with his fist. Zaim heard someone slide back a dead bolt, and he heard, more than saw, the door swing inward. Asem led him inside and helped him into the cradle of a lounger. Zaim settled back with a sigh. He would have closed his eyes had they not already been swollen shut.

  He heard another person moving nearby, but Zaim could see nothing, could not make out the dimensions of the room or see that there was a large table with many chairs around it in the center of the room. Where he was smelled of good things: some kind of fresh fruit, a mixture of spices, and freshly baked bread. For the first time in many days he felt as though his life was not in danger, and he struggled to make sense of his surroundings.

  “Ib
rahim, get some cold compresses for his face while I seek help. Keep our friend calm while I am gone. He’s hardly in any condition to cause trouble, but help him rest.”

  With those words, Asem left through another door that opened to an alley on the opposite side of the building. He returned in a few minutes with a man who was carrying a leather bag.

  “My friend,” Asem said to Zaim, “this man is a doctor. He’ll treat you, and soon you’ll be back on your feet.”

  Turning to the other man in the room Asem asked, “Did he say anything while I was gone?”

  “Nothing I could recognize. He seemed to be mumbling something about Dania. At least that’s what I think he tried to say.”

  Zaim felt the doctor probe at his ribs, and he winced when the man’s fingers touched the places where he had been struck with clubs. When the doctor palpated Zaim’s abdomen, a sharp pain made him draw up his legs into the fetal position, but when the doctor moved his arm, Zaim couldn’t control himself, and he cried out in pain.

  He heard the doctor say to Asem, “I don’t think there are any serious internal injuries, only very deep bruises, but his arm is badly broken. It has already begun to heal crooked, and I’m afraid we’ll have to re-break it if we are to set it anywhere near what it should be.”

  Zaim felt the jab of a needle in his upper arm, and an all too familiar veil of darkness engulfed his mind.

  Three weeks later Zaim had begun to regain some of his strength. His arm had been re-broken while he was anesthetized, and it was encased in a heavy cast. The doctor had told him that it would heal but not exactly right, and he would always feel a lump and some discomfort.

  “Good morning, Zaim,” Asem announced before breakfast. “A wonderful day. What do you think?”

  Zaim could only look at him through eyes clouded with pain. Not physical pain. That was pretty much gone. The pain he felt was far worse. It was the pain of loss, the kind of pain that never goes away.

  Asem didn’t seem to be daunted by Zaim’s silence. “You say you are Honduran and that your great-grandfather emigrated from Palestine years ago. We haven’t pushed for more information, but don’t you think we should know where you were staying before this incident? Surely someone must be missing you—your mother, father, a friend? Think of them. They would want to know you are safe. Come, my son. Say something.”

  There was a long silence, and Zaim stared at the food on the table. Finally, in a voice that even he didn’t recognize, he said, “Tareq. Tareq Al ‘Abd. Moslem Quarter.” Then he was silent.

  Asem pressed for more. “A wife? I see you have the marking on your finger where a ring was placed.” Zaim’s eyes flared, and he shook his head.

  Asem continued as if Zaim were interacting with him. “Today, a friend of mine is going to pay a visit. I have told him we have a guest in my house. He would like to meet you.”

  Zaim only sat and stared straight ahead.

  Later that day, just as Asem had foretold, someone knocked at the same door through which he had escorted Zaim two weeks ago. Asem checked through a peephole and opened the door part way. A well-dressed man in traditional Palestinian garb slipped in, and the door was quickly shut and bolted behind him.

  He pulled up a chair alongside Zaim.

  “Asem has told me about you and what happened to you, although I’m sure we don’t know the whole truth. That will come in time, but for now, Zaim is it? I would like to talk and have you listen. Is that all right?”

  Zaim didn’t move, just stared at the opposite wall as if nothing was registering.

  “My name is Aymen Yunus Baroud. I am Palestinian, and I want to be your friend, if you will allow it. Let me tell you about Palestine. We are being strangled by the Israelis. They claim we are terrorists, murderers, and worse. But we are not stealing their land. We are not preventing their men from traveling to work. We do not cut off their electricity but for two hours a day. We do not deprive their people of water.”

  Aymen paused to let his words sink into Zaim’s thoughts.

  “We do not stop ambulances and allow pregnant women to die during childbirth.”

  At those words, a scream erupted from Zaim’s throat, and he jumped to his feet. The nearest object to him was a glass bowl filled with fruit. He grabbed it and threw it against the wall. Then he hoisted the straight-backed chair in which he had been sitting and smashed it over the table. The effort jarred his injured arm, and he sank to the floor, holding it against his chest and rocking back and forth in pain that wasn’t totally physical.

  Aymen slowly rose to his feet and said quietly, “We’ll talk again tomorrow, my son,” and he let himself out the door and disappeared into the alley.

  Chapter Four

  The next day, when Aymen came to Asem’s home, he didn’t go directly to Zaim as he had the day before. He huddled with Asem in another room.

  “Asem, were you able to locate this man, Tareq?” Aymen asked.

  Asem nodded, and then added, “He is a distant cousin of Zaim. They have been worried about him, and his wife. As we suspected, she was the one who died at the checkpoint a little over three weeks ago. Tareq was very cooperative when we told him of Zaim’s condition. He turned over his papers to us so Zaim will have identification. But wouldn’t it be better for Zaim to have Palestinian papers. We could easily arrange that.”

  Aymen shook his head. “Zaim will be of great value to us once his hatred has been allowed to fester. Then documentation of his Honduran citizenship will be of far more value than being just another Palestinian.”

  Aymen walked into the adjoining room where Zaim sat silently at the table. This time there was no glass bowl with fruit.

  “You look well, Zaim,” Aymen greeted him. “Will you listen to me today?” Zaim didn’t blink, didn’t register any kind of emotion.

  “I am sorry for what I said yesterday. Evidently my words opened a bitter wound in your soul. I am sorry.”

  He sat for a moment, waiting for a response. This time Zaim turned his head to look at Aymen, and for the first time, Aymen saw a profound sadness in his eyes.

  “What you have suffered has been suffered by countless Palestinians, and we continue to suffer. With no warning everything we have can be taken from us: our homes, our land, our families, even our very lives. And no one is ever called to pay the price for our losses.”

  Once again, Aymen paused long enough for his words to register. Then he continued.

  “The whole world ignores our plight. Some pay lip service to our suffering, condemning the fact that even humanitarian aid does not reach us. The worst is the United States of America. They send seventeen million dollars a day to Israel in the form of guns and planes and bombs, and they deny us even the use of our slings. They condemn our right to defend ourselves. Some of their politicians even declare that we do not exist, that we are not a people.”

  Aymen paused. “We’ll talk again tomorrow. I will be your friend, if you will allow me.”

  The one-way conversation went on day after day, with Aymen quietly, relentlessly, telling stories of suffering and pain, always placing blame where he saw fit. One week, two weeks, three weeks passed, and then one day Zaim spoke before Aymen had hardly sat down.

  “Why did they do this to me?” he asked, his eyes dark with hate and pain.

  “Because you looked Palestinian and had no papers on you.”

  “But why? Why did they allow my Dania to die—and my son?”

  Aymen sat quietly, sensing a turn in the situation.

  “For no reason, Zaim. For no reason.”

  From that day on, Aymen worked at fueling the hatred behind Zaim’s eyes. Increasingly, he grew the idea in Zaim’s mind that although the Israelis had committed the murder of his wife and child, it was really the fault of the United States, and it was they who should pay.

  Chapter Five

  During the weeks after Dania’s death, Aymen stopped by each day.

  “So, my son. It looks like Asem’s food agrees with
you. You’ve gained weight.”

  Zaim only shrugged and looked at Aymen.

  Unfazed, Aymen continued. “I heard that the Israelis set up a road block only a few blocks from here yesterday. Word is another pregnant woman was forced to give birth in an ambulance. She lived, but no one knows if she will become infected.”

  Aymen paused and studied Zaim’s face, waiting for a reaction, but all he observed were eyes so dark they were almost black, staring straight ahead. Zaim hardly blinked.

  “They tell me that in the past year over thirty women have faced the same fate. Some lived, some died.”

  After another pause Aymen stood up from the table and announced he would return tomorrow, and he did. This same ritual was played out with only occasional reaction from Zaim. Finally, one day Aymen stood to leave, and Zaim reached out and grabbed his arm.

  “Is there nothing we can do to stop this from happening? Is there no one who will stand up to those dogs?”

  Aymen slowly sat down. “There is, and there are. All over Palestine, all over the world, we have brothers who will do anything to avenge what is happening. Not only do they seek revenge on the Israelis, but also on their puppeteer, the United States.

  “Yes, there are those who are taking a stand, and, yes, we are avenging the crimes committed against us.

  “We need more men, though. Our army is relatively small in the eyes of the world, and we need brave men to fight, men like you, Zaim. Will you join us? Don’t answer now. I will be back tomorrow, and we can talk then.”

  That night Zaim was more restless than ever. By morning his hatred for what the Western World represented to him was boiling like melted lead in a caldron, and he had made his decision. All he wanted was to make those responsible pay for what he had lost, and he clearly knew who they were: Israel and the Evil Empire that supported them, the United State of America. He vowed they would pay.