In a tent, that his mother had nearly died of pneumonia after his birth.
The recruit came out of the latrine. The smell billowed with him, as if released from behind the screen.
He took a deep breath, hurried inside. He squatted over the pit. He held his breath. He clutched the roll of soft yellow paper.
The first memories were of the refugee camp. Of the fierce heat of the summers when the sun spread down from clear skies onto the dust and the rock of the hillside, the chill and rain and winds of winter when the pathways of the camp were river races and the cesspool drains overflowed, and there was no school for the kids and no place for them outside the wire on the edges of the camp. There was a memory that was clear, of the fighting on the hills above the camp when he was seven years old, and the sight of the Jordanian troops in retreat, and the billowing dust clouds of the Israeli tanks and half tracks in pursuit. Sharp memories now of his grandfather leading his tribe a further step away from the house that was now an Italian restaurant. They had joined the refugee swarm - his feet blistered and his belly swollen in hunger - that had crossed the Allenby bridge over the river Jordan, under the guns of the Israelis, and climbed to new tents in a new camp, on the outskirts of the city of Amman.
There was the gleam of two pin heads of brightness.
Two ruby red lights beaming at him. The lights were in the shadow fold of the screen where it reached the ground around the pit. He knew what he saw but he peered with fascination, compulsion, down at the lights until he saw the yellowed stumps of the bared teeth and the grey needles of the whiskers. A rat. The breath burned out of his body. He had to gulp again for air, foul air within the screen. He watched the rat, he prayed the rat would not go behind him where he would not be able to see whether it came closer to the dropped trousers at his ankles.
He picked at the scar well on his face. He was afraid of the beady eyes of the rat. With his trousers at his ankles he did not have the freedom to kick out at the rat.
He remembered the school in the camp called Wahdat. He could remember the encouragement of the blond haired teacher from Switzerland, and the care of the lady from France who ran a clinic in Wahdat. He could remember the day that the tanks of Hussein had battered into Wahdat. He was ten years old, his memory was quite clear. He could picture in his mind the tortoise shapes of the tanks grinding into Wahdat, blasting at the school house which was built of concrete and therefore defended by the Palestinian fighters, hammering at the clinic because that too was defended as a fortress. They were Palestinians, they were Arabs, they were the citizen families of Wahdat. Their enemy was not the Israelis, their enemy was the army of an Arab king.
He moved slowly. He thought that a sudden movement might startle the rat, provoke it.
They were memories that had denied him rest when he had slept in his tent. Ten years old, and a refugee again. His grandfather did not lead the tribe out of the Wahdat camp, his grandfather was buried in a shallow grave on the edge of the camp, one amongst many. His father led the exodus of the family away from Amman.
The ten year old boy was of an age to know the glory of the struggle as fought by the Popular Front of Doctor George Habbash. The Popular Front had brought the aircraft of the imperialist enemies to the desert landing strip at Ga'khanna, they had brought to Jordan the airliners of the Americans and the British and the Swiss.
A boy of ten years could understand the success of the Popular Front in capturing airliners of enemies, but a boy of ten years did not understand that such a capture could be regarded as a legitimate provocation by the king of Jordan, justification for terminating the state within a state, the Palestinian autonomy inside the kingdom. His grandfather was dead, his grandmother was blinded, the family tribe was again destitute, again uprooted.
Abu Hamid was pale faced when he emerged from the latrine. He left the rat to eye the next man. He walked away towards the perimeter fence, sucking in the clean air. And it was the same each morning. Each morning he thought he would be sick, throw up in front of the recruits, when he came out of the latrine.
Memories of the family settling in another tent on the edge of the Rachadiye camp outside the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre. The family tribe was a rolling stone, tumbling from a tent at Jericho to a tent at Amman to a tent at Tyre. By the time he was aged 15, by the time-that Abu Hamid took the oath of the Popular Front, his unseeing grandmother had died. It was the end of 1975.
He knew all the events of that year. He knew of the martyrdom of the Comrades who had captured the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv and given their lives at cost to the enemy. He knew of the heroism of the commando who had killed and wounded nearly a hundred enemy with his bomb in the cafe by Zion Square in Jerusalem.
He knew of the men who had captured the OPEC conference and turned the eyes of the world on the suffering of the Palestinian people.
He gazed out over the quiet hillside beyond the perimeter fence. He watched the stillness. He listened to the silence. So great a stillness, so great a silence, as if the possibility of warfare did not exist.
His memories told him of the dispersal of his family tribe. He did not know where were his uncles and his aunts, his cousins, his nephews and his nieces. He knew that his brother, two years older than himself, had died fighting the Israelis in 1982 at Sidon. He knew that his sister had been wounded at Damour that same bitter summer. He knew that his parents were besieged by the Shi'a militia in the camp at Rachadiye.
He walked slowly along the perimeter fence. He saw the rat holes and the paper rubbish caught on the coiled wire. Since he had joined the Popular Front, twelve years ago, he had suffered the dream. The dream was to walk the street in Jaffa until he came to the house that was now an Italian restaurant. The dream was to put out of his grandfather's house those who had made a home into a restaurant, put them out on the street and there bayonet them. The dream was to take the hands of his father and mother and to lead them from Rachadiye to Jaffa and to take them to the house that had been his grandfather's and to give them the key and to tell them that what was rightfully theirs was theirs once more.
The dream was in his mind as he walked the fence.
When he had the dream he had strength. The girl had given him the strength to dream of the house in Jaffa.
The girl had taken the promise from him, the promise to go to Israel, the promise to kill Jews. As if he had never wavered. Margarethe had fashioned the courage lor him to dream of walking on the street in Jaffa. He saw her in the badly lit dormitory for the orphans.
He was jolted from his thoughts.
He had stumbled against the rail post that marked the entrance to an air raid bunker.
Abu Hamid looked at the filled sleeping bag at the bottom of the steps, he saw the black hair that was the crown of a head peeping from the bag.
His anger flashed. He thought a recruit was hiding in the bunker to avoid duties. He scratched up a handful of small stones, threw them down on the head. He heard the oath, he watched the convulsive movement, he saw Fawzi's face.
He almost laughed, whatever his own instinctive anger had been was nothing set against the disturbed fury of the Syrian officer.
"I thought you were a malingerer," Abu Hamid said.
"I did not think to find our Political Liaison hiding in an air raid bunker."
"That stuffs in my eye."
"You sleep better there than in a bed?"
"Are you a fool or are you still asleep?"
"Are you telling me that if I don't take my sleeping bag into a bunker then I am a fool?"
Fawzi wriggled his shoulders clear of the bag. He was shouting up from the dank dark of the bottom of the steps. "I was back late last night. I walked into this place, like it was a hotel on the Beirut Corniche. Try getting out of your bed in the night, hero, and try checking your sentries. Try counting how many are asleep. I walked in here, if I had been an enemy you would have been dead."
Abu Hamid sneered, "I thought we were under the protection of the om
nipotent forces of the army of the Syrian Arab Republic. Do you think so little of that protection that you sleep in a bunker?"
"When I sleep in this camp, now that I am back with you, I will sleep in a bunker until . . . "
"Until what?"
"Until the air raid."
"What air raid?"
"Then you are a fool, Abu Hamid, you are stupid."
"Give me the breadth of your wisdom."
"Even a fool knows there will be an air raid . . . Six days ago a bomb was exploded at the bus station in Tel Aviv . . . A fool knows that each time there is a major attack inside Israel that they retaliate with their aircraft, or has Abu Hamid forgotten? We have not yet had the air raid, but do not think the Israeli sleeps, he never sleeps. The Israeli will bomb us. The Israeli has to find a target. I do not want to be woken to the sound of you idiots trying to launch Strelas, trying to fire the DShKMs. I want to be able merely to crawl a few metres into the depths of a bunker should they strike our camp. Until they have bombed only an idiot would choose to sleep in a tent."
The fight was gone from Abu Hamid. He asked quietly, "Why our camp? They died both of them, they were not interrogated."
"I am just careful, because I am careful I will live to be an old man. It is my intention to die in my bed, Abu Hamid."
He saw the surprise cloud fast across the face of the old man on the steps of the Oreanda Hotel. He saw the shock spread into the eyes of the girl who walked in front of him. He could not know whether he was marked, whether he was identified. He trembled.
"If we hide in holes in the ground we show them our fear."
Fawzi rolled his bag, climbed the steps, belched.
"And that to me is a small matter."
"Then you are a coward."
"Then I am a survivor."
Abu Hamid gazed into the clearness of the skies. He saw an eagle wheel, high on a thermal draft. He saw the peace of the valley.
The telephone rang.
Rebecca reached for the receiver.
She wrote on her notepad. She never spoke. She put down the telephone.
"The Chief of the Air Staff will see you in his office, immediately," she said. "And for love's sake, tidy yourself."
"So they both died, brave boys."
"They died in the cause of freedom."
The Arab traveller shrugged. He leaned against the wall of sandbags. The marijuana had been passed, a package hidden in rolled newspaper, for circulation amongst the NORBAT platoon.
The traveller and Hendrik Olaffson talked quietly.
The other troops manning the UNIFIL post were engaged in searching vehicles. They talked without being overheard.
"From our positien we were able to see the girl who came with the bomb on her donkey, yesterday. She had not come through our check, she must have skirted us and gone across country, but we could see her getting towards the SLA and Israeli block. I tell you this, friend, they were waiting for her. That is certain. Even before she came within sight they had moved their people back behind the fortifications, as soon as she appeared, when she was hundreds of metres away, they were all behind cover. For certain they were waiting for her, ready for her."
"A sweet child of courage."
Hendrik Olaffson murmured, "They had a marksman in position. We worked it out afterwards. They shot her at a range of at least one thousand metres. One bullet, one firing, she went down. Then one more shot to detonate the donkey. It was incredible shooting."
"You are observant, friend."
"More, I have more to tell you."
"Tell me."
"Last night, just after dusk the Israelis fired many flares to the west of our OPs. There was no artillery, just flares. Now that is not usual for them. Yes, often it is flares and then artillery, but this time only the flares."
The traveller gestured with his hands. "I am just a humble traveller of the road while you, friend, are a trained and educated soldier. What does the firing of the flares tell you?"
The young Norwegian leaned forward. He did not say that the explanation offered for the firing of the flares was the opinion of his company commander, a regular officer with the rank of captain and fourteen years in the military. He gave it as his own. "They blinded our equipment. If they believe there is an incursion of the Palestinians or the Hezbollah then they would also have fired shells. They made useless our night viewing. My assumption, they acted to prevent us seeing what they were doing. Why should they do that?
My assumption again, they were passing through the NORBAT area. I offer you something else. During the night no transport left the checkpoint for Israel, so there is no indication that men coming from Lebanon were awaited and then taken back to Israel. I believe that the Israelis were inserting a squad into Lebanon."
"You believe that?"
"I am certain of that."
"Friend, you are a great help to the cause of freedom."
After he had drank the dregs of a mug of thick, sweetened tea, the traveller waved his farewell.
The marijuana was dispersed among the NORBAT
men at the checkpoint, hungrily broken down for sale onwards amongst those men of the battalion who needed the treated weed to make bearable service with UNIFIL.
Hendrik Olaffson was becoming by the standards of a private soldier in the Norwegian army a wealthy young man. There was money in excess flowing inside NORBAT, there were only occasional four day visits to Tel Aviv and more frequent evening visits to northern Israel for the soldiers to spend their wages. He kept his money, Norwegian bank notes, hidden in a slit in the base of his kitbag.
He had neither a sense of guilt, nor any fear of discovery.
"That's him."
"You are certain?"
"It is the one against the sandbags."
"No doubts."
"I am certain."
For three days the two men from Shin Bet had escorted the tall Arab teenager, Ibrahim, from vantage point to vantage point on the extremes and slightly into the U N I F I L sector controlled by NORBAT. The Shin Bet men were both fluent Arab speakers, both armed with Uzi submachine guns. All the time one of them was linked by handcuffs to Ibrahim.
They were a kilometre and a half from the NORBAT
checkpoint, on rough raised ground, and across a valley from the sandbagged position.
It was of no surprise to the Shin Bet men that the teenager was eager to co-operate in their investigation.
It was their experience that the fervour of an attacking commando was quickly dissipated by the despair brought on by capture. The interrogators who had beaten, kicked, punched the initial information out of Ibrahim had been replaced days before. They had done their work, they were not a part of the new scene around the teenager. In his early statements, between the screams, of course, Ibrahim had told the interrogators how he and Mohammed had reached Israel, had told them of the U N I F I L lorry. For the last three days, aided by high powered Zeiss binoculars, the two Shin Bet men and their prisoner had scoured through the magnifying lenses for the driver of the U N I F I L lorry.
The binoculars showed a well built and pleasant faced young soldier, with a shock of fair hair streaming from below a jauntily worn blue beret.
"Absolutely certain?"
"That is the one who drove the lorry to Tel Aviv."
They praised the teenager. They made him believe they were his friends. They made a pretence to him that his future might lie other than in a maximum security wing of the Ramla gaol.
They led him back into the security zone. They drove him into Israel with his head masked by a blanket. When they had returned to their base, reported their findings, a second team was infiltrated forward to maintain surveillance from a distance on the Norwegian soldier.
* * *
' I gather that last night, Dan, you went barging into Air Operations, demanding that a mission be cancelled."
"Correct, sir."
The Chief of Air Staff looked coolly at Major Zvi Dan. "I assume this was
not a flippant request."
"It is critical that the mission be cancelled."
"They fly in ten minutes . . . "
"Criminal."
" . . . unless I am given reason for cancellation. You have one minute, Dan."
Major Zvi Dan looked at the face of his watch. He waited for the second hand to climb to the vertical.
"First, a raid on the camp from which the bus station bombers were launched will tell the Popular Front military command that at least one of their men has been raptured and successfully interrogated, which would lead to the dispersal of the camp. Second, such a dispersal would mean the disappearance of Abu Hamid, the Popular Front commander at the camp. Third, last night a two-man team left Israel to walk into the Beqa'a with the specific and only task of sniping Abu Hamid who was the murderer, with Syrian connivance, of the British ambassador in the Soviet Union. Fourth, the team is British, and our country needs
friends where it can find them. If we foul that mission we hardly have Great Britain in our palm. Fifth, a planned snipe offers a greater guarantee of taking out a known and effective terrorist whereas an air-strike may kill some second-grade recruits but offers no certainty of success. Sixth, I would hate two very brave men, one a Jew, to walk into that danger for nothing . . . "
He paused. The second hand of his watch crawled again to the vertical.
He breathed in deeply.
The Chief of the Air Staff reached for his telephone, lifted it, waited for a moment for it to be answered. He glanced at the major, his smile wintry.
"The tasking of callsign Sierra Delta 6, the target should be the second option."
The telephone was replaced.
"Thank you, sir."
"You should not thank me, you should thank your own major general. Last week I attended a briefing given by our head of Intelligence. In his address he referred back to what he had said at the time of the synagogue massacre in Istanbul, where 22 Jewish lives were taken by the Abu Nidal group. At the time he said, and he repeated it for us, 'You cannot lash out blindly.
At Close Quarters Page 25