by Paul Sussman
'You didn't enjoy tonight, did you?' she said sleepily.
'Yes I did,' he protested. 'It was . . .'
'Boring,' she said. 'I could see it in your eyes. I know you too well, Yusuf.'
He stroked her hair.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I've got things on my mind.'
'Work?'
He nodded, enjoying the feel of her breast against his arm.
'Do you want to talk?'
He shrugged, but said nothing. The silken ribbon of Umm Kulthoum's voice curled around them.
You are worth more to me than my days, You are worth more to me than my dreams. Take me to your goodness, Far away from this world, Far away, far away, just me and you Far away, far away, just us alone.
'You know what this reminds me of?' Zenab said, stroking his hand, running her finger back and forth along a small scar on his wrist where he had been bitten by a dog as a child. 'That day we went to Gebel el-Silsilla. When you caught that catfish for our lunch, and we went swimming in the Nile. Do you remember?'
Khalifa smiled. 'How could I forget? You snagged your foot on a piece of weed and thought you were being attacked by a crocodile.'
'And you slipped over in the mud and spoilt your new trousers. I've never heard such swearing!'
He laughed and kissed her on the cheek. She pushed herself closer to him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
'What's wrong, Yusuf? You were so distant tonight. And last night too. What's troubling you?'
He sighed and stroked her hair.
'It's nothing. Just office stuff.'
'Tell me,' she said. 'Maybe I can help.'
He was silent for a long moment, staring at the glittering droplets of the fountain, then laid his head back against the wall, eyes moving back and forth along a crack in the ceiling above.
'I've done something terrible, Zenab,' he said quietly. 'And I don't know how to put it right. Or at least I do, but I'm afraid.'
'Nothing you do is bad, Yusuf,' she whispered, unwrapping her arms and lifting a hand to stroke his face. 'You are a good man. I know this, our children know this, God knows this.'
'I'm not, Zenab. I am weak and scared and have let you down. Have let myself down.'
He reached up his hands and rubbed his temples. There was another long silence, broken by the sound of the tape and the soft bubble of water from the fountain, and then he started to talk, slowly at first, then faster, spilling out the whole story: Piet Jansen, Hannah Schlegel, Mohammed Gemal, the meeting at Karnak, everything. Zenab sat and listened, saying nothing, her hands stroking his face and neck, her soft breath caressing his shoulder.
'I was too afraid to say anything at the time, you see,' he said when he had finished. 'I was young, I was new at the station, I didn't want to rock the boat. I allowed them to convict an innocent man because I didn't have the guts to speak out. And now . . . I'm still afraid. Afraid of what will happen if I start digging, if I go back into the case. There are bad things here, Zenab. I can feel it. And I don't know if it's worth risking my job for a . . .'
He broke off, shaking his head.
'For a what? A man like Mohammed Gemal?'
'That, yes, and . . . well, like Chief Hassani says, Jansen is dead. It won't make any practical difference what we find out.'
She looked into his eyes, holding them with hers.
'There's something else,' she said. 'I can see it inside you. I can feel it. What are you thinking, Yusuf?'
'Nothing, Zenab. Nothing. It's just . . .'
He brought his legs up to his chest and leant forward, resting his forehead on his knees.
'She was an Israeli,' he whispered. 'A Jew. Look what they're doing, Zenab. Is it worth it, I ask myself? Is it worth all the trouble for someone like that?'
The words just spilled out of him, without him really thinking about them. Yet once he had said them it struck him that deep down this was what had really been bothering him all along; not just now, but fifteen years ago too, as he had sat watching Mohammed Gemal being taken apart by Hassani and Chief Mahfouz. That to speak out would mean not simply putting his career on the line for a low-life criminal, but also – and it was this that had given him more pause for thought, both then and now – for someone from a country and a faith he had been brought up to despise. It shamed him, this bigotry, shamed him deeply, for he tried in all things to be a tolerant man, judging each person for themselves rather than their background or nationality or creed. Yet it was hard. From his earliest years he had been taught that Israel was evil, that the Jews were trying to take over the world, that they were a cruel, arrogant, greedy people who had committed unspeakable atrocities against his Muslim brothers.
'They are wicked,' his father used to tell him when he was a child, 'all of them. They drive people off their land and steal it from them. They kill women and children. They wish to destroy the Ummah. Be careful of them, Yusuf. Always be careful of the Jews.'
As he had grown and his circle of experience widened he had come to see that things were not, of course, as black and white as he had been told. Not all Jews supported the oppression of the Palestinians; being Israeli did not automatically make you a monster; the Jews themselves had suffered terribly as a people. Yet despite this mellowing of his outlook he could not completely scour away the things that had been ingrained in him from his earliest years.
In discussions with friends and colleagues, whenever the subject turned that way he would try to take the moderate line, as he had done that evening. Deep down, however, in the places that only he knew about, the old bigotry still remained, a dark stain that however hard he tried he could not completely scrub away. It was not something he was proud of. He knew that it diminished him as a person, yet he could no more get rid of it than he could his own marrow. It had dictated his actions fifteen years ago, and it seemed to be doing the same now.
'When Tawfiq asked me tonight if I feel pleasure when a bomb goes off in Israel,' he said quietly, 'if a part of me doesn't think "serves you right"? – well, the truth is that I do, Zenab. I wouldn't have said so, but I do. I can't help myself.'
He shook his head, ashamed to be telling her such things, to be revealing so much of his secret self.
'With this case, I feel like I'm two people. One knows there's been a terrible miscarriage of justice, that a woman was murdered and the wrong man convicted for it, that it's my duty to try and find out the truth. But then there's this other person who just thinks to hell with it. Who cares that an old Jew was battered to death? Why put myself to all the trouble? I hate myself for it, but it's there nonetheless.'
Zenab leant back slightly, staring at him, her almond eyes narrowed, her face wrapped in shadows, as if covered with a thin veil.
'We all have bad thoughts,' she said quietly. 'It is our actions that are important.'
'But that's just the point, Zenab. I don't know if I can act. My thoughts are . . . it's like they're holding me back. It's easier for you. You come from a clever, well-read family. Your parents had travelled, seen something of the world. You didn't grow up with these prejudices. But when you're told from the word go that Jews and Israelis are evil, that it's our duty as Muslims to hate them, that if we don't kill them then they'd kill us – it's hard to move away from that. Up here' – he reached up and tapped his head – 'I know that these things are wrong. And here too.' Now he touched his heart. 'But here' – he moved his hand down to his stomach – 'deep down, I can't help hating them. It's like I can't control my own emotions. It frightens me.'
Zenab reached out and stroked his hair, running her hand down across the back of his neck. He could feel her thigh warm against his. There was a long silence.
'Do you remember my grandmother?' she said eventually, massaging the muscles of his neck and shoulders. 'Grandma Jamila.'
Khalifa smiled. There had been a wide social gap between Zenab's family, well-to-do business people from the posh part of Cairo, and his own, peasant labourers from the poor Giza backstreets. Grandm
a Jamila had been the only one to take the trouble to make him feel welcome, always sitting him beside her when they went round to the family home and asking him all manner of questions about his interest in Egypt's history, a subject on which she was formidably well read. When she had died a few years ago he had felt as much sadness as when he had lost his own mother.
'Of course I remember her.'
'There was something she once said to me, years and years ago, when I was a child. I can't even remember the context, but her words stuck with me. "Always go towards what you fear, Zenab. And always seek out what you don't understand. Because that is how you grow and become a better person." I've never told you what to do in your work, Yusuf, but that is what I think you must do here.'
'But how?' He sighed. 'I can't just carry on an investigation behind Chief Hassani's back.'
She took his hand, brought it to her lips and kissed it.
'I don't know how, Yusuf. All I know is that this case has somehow been sent to test you, and you mustn't back away from it.'
'But it could cause so many problems.'
'We'll get through it together. As we always do.'
He looked across at her. She was so beautiful, so strong.
'No man could want a better wife,' he said.
'And no woman could want a better husband. I love you, Yusuf.'
They gazed at each other and then, bending forward, kissed, gently at first, then more passionately, her breasts pushing against him, her leg curling around his.
'Do you remember what we did that day at Gebel el-Silsilla,' she whispered into his ear, 'after you fell in the mud and had to take off your trousers to wash them?'
He didn't answer, simply got to his feet and, lifting her into his arms, carried his wife back into the bedroom, leaving Umm Kulthoum to play herself out.
JERUSALEM
There are two of them, or at least two that I am aware of. They come at me from behind and take my arms, one of them holding my head so that I cannot look round at their faces. They do not hurt me, they are calm and well spoken. It is clear as they push me into the car, however, and throw a blanket over my head, that they will not tolerate resistance.
We drive for two hours, maybe more – after only a few minutes I have lost track of both time and direction. Early on we climb steeply up, and then down again, which suggests to me we are heading south-east out of Jerusalem towards Jericho and the Dead Sea plain, although it is possible – probable – that they are simply driving around to disorientate me and ensure that we are not being followed.
Half an hour into the journey we pull up and a third person climbs into the front passenger seat. There is a smell of cigarette smoke. Farid, I think, although I can't be sure.
Strangely, I am not frightened. During a lifetime in the region I have been in many situations where my instincts tell me I am going to be harmed, but this is not one of them. Whatever the purpose of my abduction it is not violence. So long as I do as I am told.
For the last twenty minutes we are on a bumpy track, and then in some sort of village or settlement – refugee camp? – for I can hear voices, and occasional music, and the car swerves back and forth as though negotiating a series of narrow alleys.
Eventually we stop and, the blanket still over my head, I am hurried into a building. I am taken up a set of stairs and into a room where I am made to sit on a wooden chair. From beneath the blanket I glimpse a blue and white tiled floor before what feels like a pair of diving goggles are slipped over my head, the lenses blacked out with tape so that I am to all intents and purposes blind. I can feel someone behind me, a woman to judge by the sound of her breathing, and can hear voices somewhere else within the house, very faint and muffled. I think I catch a couple of words in Egyptian Arabic, which is slightly different from the Palestinian dialect, although I am so disorientated I can't be sure.
I do not hear him enter or sit down. All that alerts me to his arrival is a sudden faint waft of aftershave – Manio (I had a friend who used to wear it). Although I cannot see him I have the sense of a tall, slim man, very self-contained. The woman behind me steps forward and places a pad and pen in my hands. There is a long silence during which I can hear his soft breathing, feel his eyes on me.
'You may commence the interview,' he says eventually, his voice slow and measured, educated, a voice that gives no hint of his age or origin. 'You have thirty minutes.'
'And who exactly am I supposed to be interviewing?'
'My real name I prefer to keep to myself. It would mean nothing to you anyway. My nom de guerre is more appropriate.'
'And that is?'
There is a faint, amused exhalation of breath, as though the man in front of me is smiling.
'You may call me al-Mulatham. You now have twenty-nine and a half minutes.'
Layla yawned and, laying aside the magazine, stood and padded through into her small kitchenette. It was 2.30 a.m. and, aside from the faint rumble of Fathi the caretaker's snores drifting up from deep within the bowels of the building below, the world was wholly silent. She boiled the kettle, made herself some strong black coffee and returned to the living room, slurping at her cup.
She had arrived home half an hour earlier, drunk, having demolished two bottles of wine and several brandies with Nuha. She had taken a cold shower to clear her head, gulped several glasses of water, then gone through into the study and recovered the mysterious letter from the bin, the one she had received earlier in the day, with its heavy script in blood-red ink and attached photocopy.
Miss al-Madani, I have long been an admirer of your journalism, and would like to put to you a proposition. Some while ago you interviewed the leader known as al-Mulatham . . .
She had looked again at the photocopy, then crossed to her filing cabinet and searched through her cuttings for the interview to which the letter referred. It had appeared in the Observer Magazine under the headline THE HIDDEN ONE REVEALED – AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE MOST FEARED MAN IN THE MIDDLE EAST. She had pulled it out, taken it through into the living room and started reading.
He has been described as the new Saladin, the Devil incarnate, the man who makes Hamas and Islamic Jihad look like Israel's best friends. Since Al-Ikhwan al-Filistinioun – the Palestinian Brotherhood – launched its first suicide attack three years ago, killing five people at a hotel in Netanya, he has been responsible for over 400 deaths, the majority of them civilians. While other Palestinian extremist groups have at least shown some willingness to enter into ceasefires and negotiations, al-Mulatham – the name means 'the veiled' or 'the hidden one' – has continued his campaign unabated.
It is a campaign that is polarizing the politics of an already polarized region, scuppering any lingering hopes of a meaningful peace process and driving Israelis and Palestinians inexorably towards all-out war.
Polls show that with each attack Israeli public opinion, already hardened by the activities of other Palestinian extremist groups, is pushed even further to the right, with support for right-wing politicians such as Baruch Har-Zion rising by the day. At the same time the increasing severity and arbitrariness of Israeli retaliatory action has in turn seen an upsurge in support for militant organizations such as the Palestinian Brotherhood. In the words of moderate Palestinian politician Sa'eb Marsoudi, a man whose lifelong involvement in Palestinian activism – not to mention five years in prison for helping smuggle arms into Gaza – lends particular weight to his criticism of al-Mulatham: 'It is a vicious circle. The extremists feed off and encourage each other. When al-Mulatham kills five Israelis, the Israelis kill ten Palestinians, so al-Mulatham kills fifteen Israelis, and so on and so on. We are diving headlong into a lake of blood.'
What has set the Brotherhood apart is not simply the regularity and ferocity of its attacks, but the fact that despite extensive efforts by the security services of Israel and a dozen other countries, including the Palestinian Authority itself, virtually nothing is known about either the organisation itself or the man who l
eads it. Where it is based, who belongs to it, how its 'martyrs' are recruited and its operations funded – all remain a complete mystery. No reliable informers have ever come forward, no member of the group has ever been arrested. It is a level of organization and secrecy unprecedented in the history of Palestinian activism, and one that has led many experts to speculate that an established state security operation must ultimately be behind the attacks. Iran, Libya and Syria have all been mooted as possible background sponsors, as has the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
'The Palestinians simply aren't that good,' one Israeli security expert has commented. 'There are always informers, you can always find an in. The way the Brotherhood operates is way too sophisticated for a renegade Palestinian cell. The impetus has to be external.'