by Rose Fox
Adnan and Leila’s husband, Yosef, entered the weapons cache, selected arms and returned to the tents. They dismantled the rifles and revolvers, oiled the parts, reassembled them and loaded them with ammunition cartridges, going through the motions in calm silence. The young men and the youths sat cross-legged on the mats and watched what the men were doing and getting a practical lesson in self-defense.
In the distance, behind the range of dunes and shifting sands, two masked men unrolled the painted canvas and compared it to the landscape that lay before them.
“Yah' Habibi, (my friend) I know that this is the place. There is no doubt of it,” Abdul claimed, “and do you know what convinces me? Look and see for yourself.”
Mahmoud looked at the painting, raised his gaze to compare the tented landscape and the sand facing him. He saw the herds in their enclosure, the three horses grazing in the area and heard a donkey braying. He shrugged. Nothing he saw matched the painting.
“Do you want a hint? Look at the animals wandering around there,” but Mahmoud shrugged his shoulders again and said:
“I looked.”
“Did you see all of them, the horses, the camels, and the sheep?”
Then, Mahmoud noticed the white camel cow, tethered to the dark tent. He had seen many camels in his lifetime but, they were all orange-colored or yellow. He could not remember ever having seen a snow white camel like the one crouching beside the tent. A white camel also appeared in the painting they had and, at once, he realized what made Abdul so confident that this was the place the artist had immortalized on the canvas.
The two men had not been sent to kill or injure anyone and they had been discovered by the girl in the middle of their surveillance assignment to gather information. The plan was to send their findings to Fereydoun, the Head of Iranian Intelligence.
They had already covered other deserts and encampments in the Middle East. They drank coffee with tribesmen, making comparisons between them and the figures in the painting and found no similarity to the painted landscape at the places they visited. Today, the landscape before them was very much like that in the painting, especially that same white camel cow and the enormous palm that had been planted beside the dark tent.
“Let’s get closer and have a look at the women of this tribe to make a final comparison,” Mahmoud said. When he saw Abdul squinting into the distance, he understood that he suspected something.
“I don’t like this,” Abdul muttered, “something very strange is going on here.”
Mahmoud tried to grasp what was troubling his partner to the assignment and suddenly got it.
“Wait! There were sheep here a couple of minutes ago. Where have they disappeared to? I don‘t hear the shepherd’s flute now. Has he fallen asleep?
Exactly! It’s strange how everything is silent and nothing is moving,” Abdul muttered. He looked at the sun, high up in the sky and knew it was noon.
“What’s going on? Aren’t they eating here, today? Where are the people and where are the children?
“It really is strange, it looks abandoned.”
Abdul rose slowly from where he was lying, raised his rifle high over his head to shake off the sand that had stuck to his sweaty hands and at that moment a shot rang out. He froze momentarily on the spot, then fell down and lay there.
Terrified, Mahmoud looked at his friend lying on the sand, suddenly came to his senses and began to flee. He dropped his gun and the canvas on the sand while another shot sprayed sand around him and he remained fixed to the spot, with his back to the gunmen. He raised his arms above his head in a sign of surrender then, turned around slowly. He saw two men coming closer, then pushed his hand into his shirt, pulled out a revolver and fired at both of them.
Yosef swayed, held his shoulder but remained upright. He raised his rifle with great effort and shot one round into the forehead of the man holding the smoking revolver. He managed to see him sink to the ground and only then, did he also fall on the sand. Adnan grabbed his throat and streams of blood burst out between his fingers. His eyes stared ahead, he tottered on his feet and sank to the sand as he gurgled and fell silent.
The shots echoed had reached the encampment. Two youths, Bijan, and Sultan came out of the tents and ran to the dune hills, carrying rifles. They stopped a short way before the dunes, raised the rifles, pressing the butts against their shoulders as they prepared to fire, there was dead silence. They closed in on the dunes slowly, taking a wide berth around them and discovered four people lying silently on the sand.
The streams of blood that had reddened the sand near Adnan’s neck left no doubt regarding his condition but, Yosef sat up and groaned. Bijan approached the two strangers lying on the sand and Yosef shouted across to him:
“Be careful, he shot us with a revolver he pulled out of their shirt!” The boys halted.
The fourteen-year-old, Sultan, kicked one of them and then the other and yelled:
“They’re both dead!”
He bent down and removed the kefiya that covered the face of one of them. But then, a single shot was heard. The boy straightened up, then collapsed face down on the sand like a log of wood.
He didn’t know that Abdul, who had fallen first, had been lying there, playing dead, the whole time.
Bijan stood beside him and began shooting Abdul without aiming or thinking. He screamed like a lunatic:
“You son of a bitch, may you burn in hell!” He repeatedly fired until the emptied cartridge clicked. Sinking down on his knees, he held Sultan close, turned his body towards him and wept.
The painted canvas was laid out on the sand in front of him. It was partly covered with grains of yellow sand. Bijan shook the dirt off and showed it to Yosef, who was sitting on the ground. Yosef’s mouth dropped wide open as he realized why the two men had reached them.
That same day, they carried Adnan, Abigail’s brother, and Sultan, Miriam’s son, bearing them up high and mourning bitterly, to the tribe’s burial place.
At sundown, Israeli soldiers and border police came to the encampment. They came to investigate and understand the incident that left four people dead.
"Why did they shoot you?" asked the israeli soldier, ranks of officers were on his shoulders, and looked at the distraught boy. Bijan raised and dropped his shoulders, indicating that he didn’t know and also he didn’t care.
“Let’s go to the scene of the incident,” said the officer and escorted Bijan to the site, where there were still reddened grains of sand. The soldiers measured distances, photographed signs of movement that were visible in the sand and searched for reasons for the short, bloody struggle that had occurred at noon that day.
The painted canvas found by Yosef and Bijan beside the bodies of the two men had been brought to the women’s tent and they did not show it to the soldiers.
When they brought the canvas to Leila, the mother of the tribe, they saw how she held it, unrolled it and turned it over to look at the other side in front of them. Suddenly, her hands trembled and she groaned. Her daughters crowded round her on cushions in the tent.
Those figures are us,” she mumbled, “it’s me, all of you, as well as our Arlene.”
“You’re right,” Liraz said, “Who painted it?”
Leila stared at them and everyone heard her whisper:
“Naima.”
Both Liraz and Miriam understood that she was expressing her longing for her daughter, who had been murdered two years earlier, but neither attributed great importance to the words she now spoke:
She said: “Naima is alive!”
Leila stared at them. Then, she turned her gaze to three younger women, the wives of her sons, who never knew Abigail, but had heard tales of her and her heroic exploits. Now they heard her repeat:
“She is alive.”
Liraz moved to sit on a different cushion:
“Mother, think about what you’re saying? All of us, including Arlene, were at her funeral and saw her being buried.”
�
��Look here, on the corner of the canvas,” She said.
Miriam looked, and her eyes widened. Words, written finely on the back were like a signature. She murmured them aloud.
Abigail Ben Nun
31st August 2014
“Oh, she was buried in May 2014. So how, in Allah’s name…” and she fell silent in fear.
* * *
The session at the Intelligence Committee was stormier than ever.
Six bearded men, senior members of the Republican Guards and leaders of the Iranian regime, heard this morning about the killing of Abdul and Mahmoud, their two intelligence agents, in Israel’s Negev desert. The two had been selected from a list of dozens of operatives and that fact added to their anger and astonishment.
The people were so upset that they called for action:
“Hang the members of the committee, who selected Abdul and Mahmoud!
Fereydoun spoke:
“Oh, what a disgrace, a little girl led her parents and cousins to our people.”
“And we, naively, thought we were sending our best men,” Mustafa added.
Fereydoun’s voice choked up with anger. He regarded it as his personal failure because, as the Head of Intelligence, he had the last word and had approved the two men for the assignment.
They all knew that the painting that was discovered in the darkness of the tunnel underneath the ‘Imam’s Mosque’ was a treasure and the only lead they had. When they had brought it to Fereydoun, he muttered:
“At long last, they’ve made their first mistake.”
He planned to get permission today from the other leaders to retaliate in a manner that would make a profound impression on the enemy.
“I turn to you, Rulam, because you are our man of ideas. I can not forget your excellent handling of that double traitor, Razeh, when you saved our honor.”
Rulam smiled and nodded and Tommy, the youngest member of the group, who was in his forties, allowed himself to answer in his stead.
“Our enemy is having too many successes. He is hitting us hard, putting reactors out of action, sabotaging oil derricks and equipment and even, computers. What’s going on here?” Fereydoun shrank back in his seat.
“I didn’t understand you,” he said. “Make yourself clear and don’t just throw accusations in the air.”
Tommy didn’t seem to hear him and continued reciting the recent successful hits.
“For example, how did that island with that whole drilling tower on it, sink in the Straits of Hormuz? How did that bastard know that the computer cables, which had only recently been laid, are located under the Imam Mosque in Tabriz?”
“I don’t think it’s necessarily the work of one person,” Mustafa remarked. “If I remember correctly, on the same day that the drilling island was sabotaged, there was also a hit on the reactor at Bushehr. You will surely agree with me that it is unlikely that one person pulled off all this. In my opinion, several people are in this together.”
“But, how did they know that all the cables of the central computer of all our nuclear installations pass through the tunnel?” Tommy asked.
“And how are we to explain the explosion of the “El Cabo” with its cargo of our ‘Shihab 3’ missiles, remember?” Yusuf added.
There was an uncomfortable silence as Yusuf examined the painted canvas and spoke in a loud voice.
“Let’s be practical. This painted rag is all we have. It may belong to someone, who is always attacking us. I suggest we focus on it, see what information we can glean from it and stop throwing out accusations and assumptions.”
Rulam said:
“Come on, Yusuf! It’s just a painting. Three women and a little girl.
“But, it’s also a painting of the place where Mahmoud and Abdul were murdered,” Yusuf replied.
Five pairs of eyes stared at him as the people understood the logic of his remarks.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Mustafa asked Fereydoun.
“Those two, Allah Yerachmu (may Allah have mercy on their souls), reached the family of the saboteur and they killed them, even without provocation.”
Yusuf hurried to speak.
“I don’t understand, Mustafa. Are you planning to take revenge on the whole tribe?”
When he received no response, he asked once more:
“Are we talking about attacking an entire tribe?”
Since his question was met with silence, he sensed that he had understood correctly, and remarked:
“Gentlemen, it seems you misunderstood me. My intention is to use them to reach the scoundrel, a member of their tribe, who is working against us in our territory and not attack all of them.”
Fereydoun’s face was flushed and Yusuf knew that he had led them to think that as a result of his earlier remark, and he hurried to clarify:
“Just a minute, are we getting carried away!?
Feridun hit the table and shouted:
"Had we drifted? No, you’re the one who is confused, Yusuf. If we don’t attack everything that is dear to that bastard, he won’t understand and will continue to hit us and wipe us out. Do you understand that?!”
Rulam suggested:
“Put out an order to dispatch our select unit.”
“Good,” Mustafa said, “I propose that you photograph the painting and throw it over a pile of their dead. It will be like a signature approving the operation, and those who need to understand will understand.”
Yusuf continued studying the painting. He saw the signature in the corner of the painting, then also turned it over onto its other side and noticed the signature and the date marked beside it and remarked quietly:
“We’re dealing with a woman, an agent.”
“What? Is a woman capable of pulling off these attacks?”
“First of all, yes. At any rate, the handwriting proves she’s a woman. I say that she painted a portrait of her family and apparently, she comes from the desert she has illustrated here.”
“So what?” Fereydoun inquired hoarsely.
Yusuf continued and wasn’t listening to what the others were saying.
“I think she is dangerous and I don’t believe that wiping out the members of her tribe will get her back to cooking in the kitchen or hanging out the laundry. On the contrary, she will wreak vengeance on anyone she suspects of attacking her tribe.”
Mahpour, who had been silent till now, snorted in disgust:
“Spoken like a loser.”
“If we want to be efficient we have to seek her out and kill only her, as we did to Razeh.”
“The heart of a woman beats within you and you even think just like one.” Mahpour insulted him and looked at Yusuf with eyes filled with hatred as he said:
“If we listen to him – nothing will get done. We, the men, must preserve our honor.”
* * *
The encampment of the ‘Alheb’ tribe consisted of eight tents. Six of the tents - the smaller ones - surrounded the two parents’ tents. The men’s tent was almost empty now and the women’s tent was bustling with activity, as usual.
Today, the only ones sitting in the men’s tent were thirteen-year-old Hassan and his brother Kabir, aged twelve. Masoud was to join them when the full moon appeared a second time, in other words, in two more months when he would reach the age of ten. It would be time for him to move to the men’s tent and liberate himself from the care of his seven sisters.
Mansour aged five yelled from outside the tent.
“Someone’s coming! Someone’s coming!”
Mansour had never seen cars speeding as fast as these, in the desert sands and he stared curiously but prepared to escape the approaching cloud of dust. He waited courageously until they were facing him and then he fled into the tent, to his mother, Jamilla, where she sat nursing his baby sister who was born a week ago.
His beautiful fifteen-year-old sister, Amana, had taken the family under her wing now. Her thick black braid fell down on her back as she hurried to embrace Mansour an
d she also heard the screech of tires in the desert sand. Her two-year-old brother bawled and raised his arms to be picked up. She swept him up in her right arm, pushed the tent flap aside with her left hand and looked outside through the opening.
“Mother, we have guests,” she called out in a loud voice.
It was the custom that people coming to them would receive hospitality from the tribe since there was not another tent in a radius of dozens of kilometers around. Their closest neighbors were the members of Abigail’s ‘Ka’abiah’ tribe, who lived on the rear side of the yellow dunes, fifteen kilometers from the border with Jordan.
Amana stared at them, astounded by the covered faces of two men. She let the tent flap drop and hesitated whether she should bother her mother, who was preoccupied with the baby or go out alone to face the two men.
“Who are they?” her sister Latifa asked and curiously ran to get a glimpse of the guests. When she drew aside the opening to the tent, a short volley of shots burst out and Latifa dropped to the ground.
Jamilla screamed. She ran with the baby in her arms and knelt beside her daughter. Just then there was another burst of fire and she sank on top of her dead child. The boys and girls in the tent shrieked and ran around like crazy, but when another barrage was fired, nothing happened.
Amana hushed everyone and listened expectantly, her chest rising and falling as she breathed wildly. The braid had come undone and her hair hung down around her face giving her a wild and captivating appearance of a young girl blossoming into womanhood.
The volley heard was directed at the two boys who came out of the men’s tent to satisfy their curiosity and fell on the sand beside the tent. Another figure got out of the car and stepped over the bodies of Latifa and Jamilla on its way into the women’s tent.
All the children surrounded Amana and hugged her. The man cold-bloodedly raised his rifle and released low spurts of fire as he sprayed the tent from its length and breadth. As a background, shots were heard from the second tent like a duet, and they, both, complementing and sounds as music's sounds of Death.