by Paul Briggs
“Three hundred fifty years,” she said. “My ancestors lived in Amsterdam longer than that, and then… the lucky ones escaped. And there were Jews living in Spain for over a thousand years, but that didn’t matter when the king decided we had to leave.” She shook her head. “No. There’s Israel, and then there’s other people’s countries. Where we live on sufferance. And sooner or later they always turn against us.”
Carrie could think of three different objections to this right from the get-go. The first one was that darn it, the United States of America really was different from all those other countries. The second one was that the worst thing America was likely to do to its Jewish population was assimilate them into being indistinguishable from everyone else, and G Dash D knew there were worse ways to go. The third one was that the future had become such a strange and unimaginable place that Carrie found it easier to picture her descendants a hundred years from now being uploaded into a supercomputer than deported in an act of ethnic cleansing. But none of these arguments seemed likely to persuade Leah—who, to be fair, did have the weight of a lot of very nasty history on her side.
But she had to try. “I’ve lived in the U.S. for almost my whole life,” she said. “We get a little crazy sometimes, but there are things we just won’t do.”
Leah went quiet as they drove into the hills west of Jerusalem. She had the look of somebody who hadn’t changed her mind but saw no way to win the argument.
* * *
When Carrie entered the hotel room, she looked around in confusion.
“Grandma’s taking a nap out on the balcony,” said Thel. “She’s got Nahida watching her.”
“All right.” Neither of her brothers were free right now, but Carrie couldn’t have gone to Israel without her mother. She was the religious one in the family. Or perhaps religious wasn’t quite the right word for it, but she was the one to whom their identity as Jews meant the most.
Roger was watching the big screen. The news was on. Watching the news in a foreign country was always interesting, if you could find an English-language version, and sometimes even if you couldn’t.
“Last night in Mea Shearim, another demonstration against Terna’s proposed tax on seminary exemptions for military service turned violent,” said the newscaster. “Although that tax now appears unlikely to pass, Prime Minister Terna is still not backing down.”
Ruth Terna was about fifty; a small, stern-faced woman with medium-brown skin from her Ethiopian mother. The joke everyone made about her, at least in English, was that her middle name was “Less.” She was taking an even harder line with the Palestinians and the Basra Pact than her predecessors had, and had increased spending on the IDF by 9 percent after inflation. And right now, she was taking a hard line on people who might actually have voted for her.
“I am not compromising on defense,” she was saying. “The security of Israel against all adversaries—foreign powers, terrorists, the climate itself—is paramount. And that security costs money. Those who benefit from it without taking part in it must at least be willing to pay for it.” And if the Foundation wants to do anything to help the Palestinians, thought Carrie, this is the person whose government I’m going to have to convince. Joy.
Soon the show went to foreign news, which for the Cambergs turned out to be not so foreign. “Today in Washington, the political world was stunned when a Republican congressman sharply criticized Israel during a discussion of a proposed aid package to support the building of additional desalinization plants in Haifa and Elat.”
The scene shifted to the floor of the House of Representatives. “A third of the people in my district are still in emergency shelters, and you’re asking for an aid package?” Darling was shouting. “We already give you people 3.8 billion dollars a year! What do you want, tribute maidens? Do you have any idea what else we could be doing with all that money?”
You people. Of course, if anyone asked him, Darling would say he meant Israel, and specifically the government of Israel. Not… anybody closer to home.
“That was… harsh,” said Roger.
“I want a T-shirt that says ‘Tribute Maiden #799,’” said Thel, brushing her hair out of the way of her headcams.
“I want a daughter that has some taste,” said Carrie. “Although I’m somewhat reassured by the implication that you’re still a maiden.”
“Mom!” Thel sat down on the arm of the sofa in a way that she’d really gotten too big for. Everyone else said—if they dared remark on it at all in Carrie’s presence—that China had obviously agreed with the girl. From Carrie’s point of view, her daughter’s body had been inappropriately sexualized by its own hypothalamus, ovaries, and pituitary gland. She wasn’t quite as voluptuous as Carrie had been at that age, but she was close. Combine that with her face, and Carrie was dreading the moment Thel went back to school. The boys would build an altar and start sacrificing livestock to her.
In the meantime, Carrie and Roger had bought her a new wardrobe specifically for travel in the Holy Land. Loose, long-sleeved white cotton shirts. Loose-fitting khakis with belts. Broad-brimmed hats to keep the sun off her face. All of it was designed to eliminate the risk of heatstroke, sunburn, or showing up at the Western Wall in a tight T-shirt and booty shorts, and it did those things. But it couldn’t hide her shape. The only way to do that would have been to carry her around inside a large steamer trunk, and when Carrie saw men and a few women turning to look at her from two blocks away, she was tempted to try this.
Carrie smiled as she turned back to watch the screen. Several Knesset members were denouncing Darling’s remarks.
“Kinda OOP to be making this much fuss over a U.S. congressman,” said Thel, brushing her hair out of the way of her headcams again. They looked like a couple of very short ballpoint pens attached to a headband, pointed forward, resting against her temples. They were switched off, but keeping their field of view clear was a reflex she’d picked up.
“Oh-oh-pee?”
“You know… out of proportion.”
“It’s something kids say online these days,” said Roger.
“Why do we give these guys all that money, anyway?” said Thel.
“We don’t,” said Carrie. “We give it to ourselves. It’s… think of it like a gift certificate. You can only spend it in certain places. All that money is earmarked to buy product from U.S. defense contractors. So Israel gets weapons and we get our money back.”
Thel nodded, her eyebrows slightly raised. “Clever.”
The door to the balcony opened. Mama stepped in, a slender woman of average height who had spent much of her life dwarfed by either her husband or her children. At seventy-four, she’d finally made peace with the passage of time, but she’d done it in her own way, dyeing her hair a perfect white and buying a pair of glasses with gilded frames. She was wearing a long-sleeved white blouse and a long black skirt. She’d been well-dressed every day of this trip, as if the whole country were a special occasion.
Right at her elbow was Nahida Junbalat, the other female bodyguard. She was tall, dark, wiry, and hadn’t tried to make conversation with any of them once. Her eyes were pointed at the door.
“I figured you’d be busy today,” said Mama, “so I made dinner reservations at a place within walking distance. We should probably get out the door within the next few minutes.”
“Thank you.” It was nice to not have to be in charge of everything for once.
As they were going through the lobby, Carrie checked an app that followed various friends and former employees of hers to see if there was any news. The only news was that Jerome Ross’s brother was pleading guilty in whatever it was he was on trial for—the details had escaped Carrie’s mind at the moment.
* * *
Defense Minister Avner Shapira was maybe forty, but had already developed the beginnings of a fine set of frown and scowl lines on his forehead and around his mouth. He was looking at Carrie as if she’d come to his office to sell him life insurance and
he didn’t have a family.
“Before you say anything,” said Carrie, “I already spoke with the Palestinian Authority, and they said this kind of construction needed to be cleared with the Israeli Defense Forces. So I went to IDF, and they said to talk to you. If you try telling me to talk to the Palestinian Authority, I’m just going to leave.”
“Don’t worry,” said Shapira. “I’m not going to give you the runaround. I can’t make any promises about what I’m going to decide, but you’re in the right office.”
So Carrie launched into her usual presentation. “The potential is here for a humanitarian disaster like you’ve never imagined,” she said. “I wish we could just take a warehouse, set it up with the water and medicine and whatever else we needed, and call it a day. But an above-ground heat shelter is a perfectly good one right up until the power goes out, and then it’s a death trap. And if there’s one thing this part of the world is known for, it’s terrorism. Not just against Israel—different factions of the Palestinians have been known to use it on each other.” Some of the members of Terna’s government got antsy about the use of the word “Palestinians,” but Shapira seemed okay with it. “If an above-ground shelter was in use, a terrorist wouldn’t need a bomb to ruin everyone’s day. He’d just need to take out the power.
“Now I understand the problem. If a shelter is far enough underground to protect people from the heat without power, it could also be used as a bomb shelter.”
“Or as part of a tunnel for smuggling, if it’s close to the border,” said Shapira.
“True. But here’s the thing—no shelter we know how to build could stand up to a bunker-buster. A conventional bunker-buster, I mean.” After Pyongyang, that was an important distinction. “And you have plenty of those.”
“I’m glad to see you addressing our concerns,” said Shapira. “Let me reassure you that the Foundation will be welcome to help build heat shelters in the… West Bank. However, we’ll have to confine them to a specific set of locations.” He pushed a couple of buttons on a cell phone, feeding the data to Carrie’s tablet.
Carrie glanced at the list. “In the first place, this isn’t close to enough locations for a population this size,” she said. “In the second place…” As she spoke, she fed the list into a mapping program, then, feeling very guilty about it, brought up a second map and clicked on Overlay.
A second later, the guilty feeling was… still there, for some reason, but the rest of her was telling it to shut up. Her tablet had just confirmed the suspicions she’d been ashamed of having.
“In the second place,” she said, “I can’t help noticing that every one of these sites is in the middle of a Jewish settlement.”
“Those are the most secure locations for building.”
“And who’s going to be put in charge of these shelters? You have to let people in according to age and medical need—who’s going to decide who gets in and who doesn’t?”
Shapira crossed his arms. “What exactly are you implying?”
“What do you mean, what am I implying? I’m asking questions here.”
Rather than answering directly, Shapira took out a tablet of his own and looked at the screen. “Three days ago, your daughter went to a Natan Bendayan rally,” he said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” All Carrie knew about Bendayan was that he was some sort of young liberal activist who’d been making a stir in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. This conversation seemed to be going in a strange direction.
“During this rally, Bendayan made the following statement—and this is a direct quote—‘The Terna government is trying to take options away from whoever comes after. Expanding the settlements, saying no to talks—everything the Prime Minister does is meant to make a lasting peace impossible. She wants to force our generation to one day expel or destroy the Palestinians, because she doesn’t have the nerve to do it herself right now.’” While Shapira was going on about this, Carrie touched the query icon on her tablet and typed the words peligro lyrics.
“Many of us find this deeply offensive,” Shapira said. “What do you have to say?”
If Shapira can bring things up at random, so can I. Carrie checked her tablet. “It’s true,” she said. “Thel did go to that rally. Know where else she’s gone? Back in June, she and some of her friends went to a Rodomontade concert. During this concert, lead singer Jake Villanueva made the following statement, and this is a direct quote…” Carrie read the words off her tablet screen. “‘I’m your wolf and I’m your tiger, and I’m rising like a shark/I’m the fear and the desire that you dream of in the dark/I’m your devil, I’m your demon of determination firm/And I’m here to fill you up with foreign sperm.’ I suppose this is my fault too? Because all sorts of people find it deeply offensive.”
Shapira sputtered for a moment, then said, “That’s completely different.”
“Darn right it is—I paid for the tickets. At least the rally was free. Look, if you’re trying to get me to issue a statement on this Bendayan guy one way or another, it’s not going to work. He’s your problem. Yes, I’m a Jew, but I’m also an American and this is my first visit to Israel and I have no intention of wading into your politics.”
“Then why does every word coming out of your mouth sound like a watered-down version of something he would say?”
Carrie sighed. There wasn’t going to be any way to avoid this issue.
“Here’s what I can tell you,” she said. “There are governments out there—Iraq, Turkey, a few others—that are giving certain ethnic groups, certain religious communities, preferential treatment in where heat shelters go. And meanwhile, other communities aren’t getting shelters at all. Kurds in Turkey, Shi’ites in Saudi Arabia—”
“And Sunnis in northern Iraq,” Shapira interrupted. “Exactly. Many governments are making this sort of decision. You think Nigeria is doing anything right now for the Fulani? The Hausa? The Kanuri?”
“They’re in the middle of a civil war.”
“In a way, so are we. You know those people teach their children out of Protocols of the Elders of Zion? They give money to the families of suicide bombers! Why exactly should we go out of our way to save people who want us all dead? Why are we being held to a higher standard than other countries?”
“You’re not. That’s the problem. The Symcox Foundation has a policy about nations that do this sort of thing—we don’t do business with them. We don’t help them. The question is, are you willing to put Israel on that list?”
“The question is,” said Shapira, “are you willing to put Israel on that list?”
It would have been easy, and truthful, for Carrie to say that it wasn’t her call—that this policy was the work of Sandra Symcox, and it was mostly her money they were playing with. But that wasn’t how you earned respect as a leader. Even if people hated your decision, they had to know it was you making it. Besides, Carrie was confident she could talk Sandy into making an exception for Israel, and Shapira knew it.
She could do that, yes… and what would people say when they heard about it? It was easy to predict what the usual anti-Semites would say, and she was never getting their votes anyway. Other people would be more… understanding. Sure, there are rules, but what do you expect? She’s gotta look out for her own people. If you look at their history, is it really surprising?
That was what decided it. You couldn’t afford to make your voters feel like they had to make excuses for you. Not if there was anybody else in the race who was at all acceptable.
Shapira seemed to see the decision in her eyes. “You wouldn’t,” he said.
“I absolutely will.”
Shapira was momentarily stuck for a response. Then he managed a bitter little sneer.
“Right, I understand,” he said. “There are more Muslim voters than Jewish voters in the U.S. these days. And you wouldn’t want anybody accusing you of… dual loyalty.”
Carrie stood up. “I think we’re done here,” she said. “Ministe
r, I do love Israel, but—at the risk of repeating myself—I am an American. Remember that the next time you’re tempted to act like I owe you a favor.”
* * *
On her way back to the hotel, Carrie did some more reading about Bendayan, just to see exactly what sort of people her daughter was getting herself entangled with, and to give herself something to do besides punch the dashboard of the self-driving car. It was all so stupid. There were countries the Symcox Foundation couldn’t help with shelters because the only contractors the government would allow to do the work were contractors the Foundation couldn’t do business with—or, it might be more accurate to say, Carrie couldn’t do business with—without being accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Foundation was a nonprofit and Carrie never got so much as a souvenir T-shirt from the government or contractor in question, but she didn’t even want the accusation out there.
That wasn’t a problem in Israel. This place had standards. Here the problem was something else entirely.
And it wasn’t as if they needed the Symcox Foundation. Israel, which had done more with its total lack of oil than some of its neighbors had with their abundance of it, could easily foot the bill for whatever it wanted to do. Even if it couldn’t, there were other charities specifically for setting up heat shelters in Israel, which she suspected were also involved with the settlement projects. Carrie knew this because she’d sent one of them a check a month ago.
And tomorrow, when she spoke with the head of the Palestinian Authority, she was going to have to let him know what had happened. That was going to be embarrassing. Today there was something more immediate that needed taking care of.
Just outside the hotel room, she caught up with Thel and Leah. Thel’s mane of hair was still wet from the shower and smelled slightly of sweat, and she looked very pleased with herself.