by Alan Gold
It was all so clinical, so matter-of-fact. As if the imam were giving him instructions to go to a supermarket and buy food for that night. Hassan gripped the wheel, his knuckles white with tension. Fear? Anger? Doubt? He didn’t know; all he knew was that he was about to kill the woman who’d saved the life of his best friend.
Whether she was a Jew or not, his culture, his upbringing—everything he understood about himself as an Arab—told him that he had to revere her for what she’d done for Bilal. As the sun was breasting the Mountains of Moab, his mind was such a maelstrom of emotions that he had to breathe deeply in order to concentrate on the road. He loved the imam, but after what Bilal had told him in prison, what should he do?
He’d never killed anybody before. He’d talked about it many times when he was inside the tightly knit cabal sitting at the feet of the imam, learning about the amorality of the Jews, of their theft of Palestinian land, of their genocide of the Palestinian people, and much more. Everything the imam said explained the misery of Hassan’s life and the way his parents and grandparents had suffered all these years. And his fury had been fed and had grown and grown until he was desperate to avenge the degradation with an act of vengeance.
Bombs, rocket attacks, grenades hurled at checkpoints, were all part of the fantasy. That was killing the enemy at a distance; it was impersonal. But a pistol in the hand, a bullet in the head of a young woman, lining her up in the crosshairs of a high-powered rifle, seeing her head blown off—these were no longer what the young Palestinian could aspire to. He’d now been told that he would be going up to a young woman and looking at the terror in her face as he raised the pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. He realized he would no longer be a freedom fighter but a murderer. Hassan felt sick as he thought of Yael’s blood and brains splattering and watching her fall to the street. Bombs, rockets, and grenades were all impersonal, but using a gun sat heavily and uneasily with Hassan.
The doctor had saved Bilal’s life. And Bilal had begged him to contact her. Yet, now, under orders from the imam, he had to murder this doctor because the imam was certain that Bilal, stupid Bilal, had told her things he shouldn’t have. Was the imam right, or was Bilal telling the truth when he assured him that he’d said nothing? Bilal had always told him the truth, even when they’d been lying to others about their little crimes, even when they were kids together. But this wasn’t kids’ stuff any longer. This was big stuff, adult stuff, matters of life and death, and Hassan felt lost.
And what of Bilal? Had he really seen things that he shouldn’t have seen? The imam swore on the Koran that Bilal had broken the most sacred rule by which the group operated. Who should he believe? His mind was so confused, spinning in all directions as he drove north, ever north, toward his moment of decision with the Jew doctor. Damn Bilal! Damn the Jew doctor! And damn the imam. Life had been hard but uncomplicated in the village. But at least there he knew who he was! Now he was confused, frightened, and alone.
The road ahead was crowded, but he knew that by the time he reached Afula the roads would be a lot less busy, and when he reached the Galilee the traffic would almost disappear. That would make driving easier, but it would also make his car more visible to the Israeli police and others who were constantly monitoring the nation. And Palestinians acting as Israeli spies were everywhere, watching every move of their fellow Palestinians and reporting their whereabouts to the authorities.
It took him four hours of cautious driving well within the speed limit to reach Nahariya. He parked his car on the outskirts of the city and caught a bus to the hospital, where he would spy on the doctor. Trying to appear inconspicuous, he studied the building directory and found the surgical wards on the third floor. He took the stairs, not the elevator, and meandered from corridor to corridor, trying to find the room where the surgeons gathered.
“Can I help you?” a nurse asked him.
“No!” he said. “No, I’m looking for . . .”
“A patient?”
“Yes, a patient. My uncle,” Hassan lied.
“You really shouldn’t be here outside of visiting hours. What’s your uncle’s name?”
Without thinking, he immediately said, “Ali.”
The nurse smiled. At any time there could be twenty Alis in the hospital. “Ali who? What’s his surname? Which ward is he in?”
Hassan looked at her blankly.
“Well, what’s he in the hospital for?” she asked.
Hassan was suddenly frightened and shrugged. Then he turned and walked away quickly. He ran down the flights of stairs and out of the front entrance of the hospital, praying that the nurse wouldn’t call security.
Sleeping in his car in the backstreets of the northern city, Hassan waited for two days before he had the courage to drive up to the hospital’s parking lot. He could see the doors where doctors and nurses, patients and relatives, walked in and out, and he sat there, hour after hour for the entire day, hoping that she’d walk out of the hospital so that he could follow her home.
On the third day he was about to phone the imam and give him the coded message that his mission had failed, when Yael Cohen emerged from the doors of the hospital accompanied by two other people. Instead of a white coat, as he expected, she was dressed in jeans and a blue top with a white scarf. He watched her walk toward her car, parked four rows from his. She was young, fresh, confident, and gorgeous. And soon she would be dead.
As she got in, he turned the key and prepared to follow her. They left the hospital grounds and she drove northeast, away from the sea and in the direction of the Lebanese border. But what surprised him was that as she drove out of the center of the city, instead of heading for residential areas, she turned east and headed toward the hills. Her car was far more modern and powerful than his, and as she gunned her machine up the steep hills, she almost left him behind. Only when he came over the crown of a hill by pure luck did he see her far in the distance, on a road to the right and heading south. If he hadn’t spotted her, he would have continued along the same road. Hassan turned in the new direction and followed as best he could. Theirs were the only cars on this road. After many miles, up hills and down into valleys, he saw a road sign. And in the distance he realized that she’d suddenly pulled over in the middle of a village. The sign told him that the village was Peki’in. It was his second time here; this time his goal was very different.
He parked in a lane, behind a badly battered and dusty forty-year-old Toyota truck. He took out the sports bag the imam had given him and hurried back to the main street that ran through the village. Hassan looked for her, hoping that she hadn’t gone into any of the buildings. But she was nowhere to be seen. So, for the second time in less than a week, Hassan walked in the shadows of buildings on the periphery of the central square where the village’s famous and constantly running spring had been dammed and flowed into the wide tiled reservoir. She could have gone in any direction, so he decided to stand in the shadows and wait for her. Though it was late in the afternoon, the heat was oppressive, and as the sun descended into the distant sea, it cast long shadows. Being a tiny village miles from nowhere, there were few cars and even fewer people.
As he waited on the periphery of the village square, he looked around for a tree or a building that would shield him from being observed. He would need such shade if he was going to point the rifle toward her. He would kill her as she emerged from a building into the empty street. He’d drop her when she was walking toward her car. He’d aim the bullet directly at her chest so that it exploded in her heart and she would die painlessly and instantly. He hoped.
It so much depended on whether or not she was alone, or in his sights, or if the setting sun wasn’t in his eyes. For any of these reasons he’d quickly pack up the rifle and kill her with his revolver the moment she arrived at the door to her car. Hassan knew this was what he must do, for if he didn’t, then the repercussions by the imam against him and possibly his family would be severe. But he silently prayed it would
not come to this.
He’d squeeze the trigger carefully as he’d done in the hills above his village of Bayt al Gizah when he shot tin cans: narrow his eyes so that the target was more focused and then fire the gun. He might not even watch her die. He might just avert his eyes, squeeze the trigger, feel its recoil, then put the rifle away and escape.
He planned it in his head but couldn’t help but see Yael fall to the ground, screaming in terror, blood spurting from the wound. Could he do it? Shooting bottles and tin cans for target practice was a lot easier than shooting a woman in the heart.
Bilal’s words from the prison rang in his ears. Had his brother really told the doctor about the imam, about the group which was to bring liberty to Palestine? Because if so, then his finger had to squeeze the trigger.
As he took out the rifle, checking that nobody was looking, he realized that his hands were shaking.
* * *
YAEL EMERGED from the village’s central records repository half an hour later carrying a sheaf of papers. They’d been photocopied for her by the friendly young clerk, and now she had to determine what path of action to follow. In her hands were the records of families like that of Bilal, going back to the late 1800s.
But since she’d been in Nahariya, the urgency of finding out why her blood and Bilal’s were linked seemed to have diminished. It had become secondary to her daily routine, and this time away from Jerusalem was a pleasant break. Although she’d conducted a number of surgeries, she found herself trying to justify this time off.
The pressure of her work in the hospital in Jerusalem, the speed and incoherence of the city, all lost their urgency to a calmness that seemed to have descended on her as she traveled north toward Galilee. Perhaps it was the rugged grandeur of the hills and valleys, or the individualism of the inhabitants, or the feeling of being so far from the cosmopolitanism of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that did it. It was as though she were in a quieter, more laid-back world—a biblical world.
As she walked back to her car, the feeling of always needing to get somewhere, of always having to do something, simply wasn’t there. She didn’t have to rush back; she could take her time. She could sit in a café and have a cup of coffee. The one she’d been in the other day, the one with the awning, was close by, and so she sat down at a table and ordered a drink.
There were two other people seated beneath the awning at different tables. They were elderly men, and from their dress they were obviously senior members of the Druze community. They looked at her with indifference, quite used to Israeli tourists coming to the village and visiting the ancient synagogue.
* * *
THROUGH THE SCOPE of the rifle, Hassan could see her clearly, sitting and talking to the café owner about what she’d have to drink. He felt the wheel of the rifle’s sights and twisted it to the left in order to make the image of her as sharp as a needle. The crosshairs of the rifle’s sights blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again until his sweating fingers fixed them precisely on her head. He looked at the four quadrants through the sights: her forehead was high and she had a fringe of black hair that fell over her cheek before cascading down to caress her neck; her lips and cheeks felt so close, he could have kissed her. She was smiling at the café owner. Her neck was long and slender, and if he looked closely, he could see the delicate lines of her throat above the collar of her blouse. He put the rifle down to wipe the sweat from his eyes.
Hassan reached into the sports bag and took out the bottle of water, which he gulped down. He was thirsty, yet the cold water didn’t relieve him. About to pick up the rifle to take the shot, he was disturbed by the sound of a car driving toward him. He immediately hid the rifle with his body and waited for it to go past. He looked at the passengers, who weren’t interested in him as they drove toward the center of the village.
Enveloped in silence again, he picked up the rifle and looked through the sights at the doctor. The view was blocked by the broad back of the café owner, who was giving her a glass of something. When he left, she was still smiling at him, engaging him in gentle conversation. Now her whole body was visible again, sitting under the awning, drinking orange juice. He pressed the rifle stock against his cheek, put his finger on the trigger, breathed deeply, said a small prayer, and slowly, cautiously, without jerking the gun, began to squeeze the trigger.
There was firm resistance on the spring of the trigger and then a tiny metallic click. For an instant Hassan found himself wondering how small the sound of a gunshot could be until, through the sight, he saw that the doctor was still sipping her orange juice. Reluctantly Hassan pulled the trigger again. The same resistance and metallic click and silence.
He leaned back from the sight, turned the gun in his hands, and pulled at the bolt to open the breech. The mechanism would not shift. He yanked at it with a strange panic rising in him. What was he afraid of? Missing the shot? That the gun might explode? The wrath of the imam? The fate of Bilal, who had also failed?
Hassan yanked again, vigorously trying to dislodge whatever had jammed the rifle, but to no avail. He looked up into the distance to see the doctor still sitting at the far table. She wasn’t leaving—not yet. He stopped pulling on the bolt lever and instead took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He looked at his hands. They were sweating and shaking. He got to his knees and briskly wiped them on his shirt to dry them. And still the doctor sat at the table.
Hassan reached into the sports bag beside him and his fingers closed around the handle of the pistol concealed inside. It was warm to the touch, the sun heating the bag and the metal of the gun’s grip. He drew it out, and stood and stared down at the distant figure of the doctor at the café, the words of Bilal screaming in his ear: “She is the only one who can help me!”
* * *
AS YAEL SAT GAZING over the empty square, with only the occasional car or pedestrian disturbing the silence, she saw a young man carrying an old sports bag walking toward the café.
He sat down three tables away and stared at the menu. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, common to young people throughout the world. But unlike the Druzim who glanced at her indifferently, this young man immediately looked away the moment her eyes met his. He looked up into the enormous carob tree, then at the pool in the middle of the square, then up at the birds perched on top of the buildings.
Yael didn’t give it another thought and slowly sipped the fresh orange juice that the owner had squeezed for her. She read some of the papers, but something drew her to look at the young man again. And the moment she did, she realized that he’d been staring at her. She smiled at him, but he immediately averted his eyes again.
Hassan’s muscles felt like coiled steel. She was right in front of him, although he looked everywhere but at her. He willed himself to be invisible. The pistol was lead in his hand as it threatened to slip from his sweaty fingers and clatter on the ground.
They were not alone. There were others at the café. When he did what must be done, he would have to run, run as far and as fast as he could. He might be caught or he might escape, inshallah. But as he looked anywhere except at the woman he must kill, he thought of Bilal and the fate of one who had failed.
But still the words of his friend would not be silent in his ears.
“She is the only one who can help me.”
Hassan rose to his feet . . .
* * *
YAEL WATCHED as the young man suddenly stood and pushed the chair back. He walked quickly out of the café and into the main square. He’d neither eaten nor drunk anything, and he hadn’t even spoken to the café owner. Odd. But Yael thought nothing of it except that as she looked at him, he suddenly stopped at the edge of the pool, as though deep in thought, as if his reflection in the water were his alter ego. Then he turned and faced her. In embarrassment, Yael glanced back at her papers until she realized, to her profound disquiet, that he was walking straight toward her table.
She could feel him coming closer and closer and something de
ep inside her clenched tight like a knotted rope. She didn’t look up but her peripheral vision saw his shadow, his shape, as he walked to her table. She felt that she should run, that she should have listened to the warnings of her friends not to come here. People like her weren’t welcome here. People like her . . .
The chair opposite scraped backward and the young man sat sharply down on it. Leaning forward across the table, he whispered, “I have a gun. It is in my hand under the table and I will kill you if you speak.”
Yael did not make a sound. Her eyes, too afraid to move, were locked on his, fixed like those of a coma patient.
The young man swallowed and whispered, “You are Dr. Cohen. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Yael’s voice was dry as dust.
“I . . .” Hassan halted and both of them waited what felt like an eternity for him to speak again. He reached over and drank some of her orange juice. Amazingly, this arrogance annoyed her as much as she was shocked by him saying he had a gun. His hand clenched and unclenched the handle of the pistol beneath the table.
“I was sent to kill you . . .”
She so desperately wanted to scream for help, but Yael was suddenly struck mute. And her fear was replaced by confusion when Hassan continued. “You saved my friend, Bilal, didn’t you?”
It wasn’t really a question and Yael had no conscious intention to answer. But she felt her lips move nonetheless. “Yes, I did,” she gasped. And then reason slowly subsumed fear as a strange courage welled up from nowhere. “Who are you?”
Hassan was sweating profusely despite the breeze. He gulped down more orange juice, but this time it didn’t matter to Yael. His next words sounded as though they were forced out of his body. “You must swear to me, swear on the most holy, that you will say nothing to anybody about what I’m going to tell you.”