Emily now driven to emotion felt the hot tears fall down her face and she knew at that moment that this subterfuge would be difficult, because in her heart of hearts she supported the Palestinian struggle for the return of their land as it was before the 1967 war.
“I give you my word, Leila Khaled. I will do my best and I will fight, but I will not hurt unarmed civilians.”
“You won’t have to. They have other plans for you. We need negotiators, strategic planners. You have political connections and money. You will be trained to defend yourself as necessary. There’s a subtle difference. Come on. You need to know where the cafeteria is. It is small, next to the clinic. There are people you need to meet. Stay away from the Germans. They will soon be asked to leave anyway. They are causing too much trouble. All they can do is get stoned and screw their brains out instead of training. They are of no use to us. But you, Amina Desai, can benefit the cause as well as yourself! If you betray us, you will die and it will not be the noble death of a martyr for you or your family. Your Berber father must have surely explained the principle of the blood feud. Dishonor now means death to the entire family, down to the cousins, so there is no fear of retribution.”
“Leila, we are not fighting this war for the glory of Islam. We are fighting this war because of a hatred of the behavior shown toward all Arabs. It’s a blanket statement across the western world, the natural thought process of the Israelis and the Western superpowers. We are in the same position as the blacks in the United States. Our real motivation is simple, we want our piece of the pie and we’re not getting it. It is not a religious issue but it is being made into one by the very people who have the highest financial interest. As I see this, in twenty years communism will be finished. It has failed. People don’t want equality. They want superiority and money. It’s human nature. What I want, Leila Khaled,” Emily continued, surprising herself her own acceptance of the rhetoric she had memorized in her training, “is that everyone gets a chance to succeed. In every country free education, free hospitalization and an affordable place to live, funded, if necessary, by big business through higher taxes to them, not us. What is happening now is that the working class is becoming poorer, the rich are becoming richer, and the middle class, on whom western economy is based, are disintegrating. The class structure is polarized. And it will explode. We as students have fought to break down the wall in Berlin but look at the chaos it will cause to world economy if that should actually happen. Or even closer to us, what happens if the Communists do win in South-East Asia? Who takes the surplus population, re-houses and re-educates them? The USA and Britain? They don’t want them and can’t afford them either. The only way is to plan a better way in the country, not to force people out of their land. To me it’s the robber baron scenario over and over again. The rich plunder, rape and pillage and the poor serve them without question. The Jews bother me. How did that happen in Germany? Were they asleep? Why didn’t they fight back? Why were they lead like sheep to be slaughtered. How can I respect a people like that?
“You forget, Amina Desai, they thought the world would help them,” she said, lighting another cigarette from the stub of the one she was smoking, “They are not warriors. Like the American Negro, they sing and dance but they don’t fight back.”
“I disagree, and that’s such a prejudiced statement” Emily was in her element now “ Have you read the works of Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Angela Davies, H. Rap Brown, or Eldridge Cleaver? Now even the Irish revolutionaries have modeled their revolution on the Black Civil Rights Movement. That’s what the peace marches were all about. African American marchers knew the score, they know it now. It’s the power of money what it can buy and whom. The Kennedy’s didn’t care about African-Americans in the beginning; they just wanted the power of the Presidency with anyone’s vote. That’s what this is all about. Respectability for the mob. Making dirty money clean. You know old man Kennedy made his money boot-legging whiskey during the American Prohibition. He was a fighter against the system and just as corrupt as the American Mafia.”
“And that, Amina Desai, is precisely why you are here. One day you will work with Yasser Arafat and the others who will follow him. They need your respectability. But first the world has to pay attention and that’s why they have me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The two women left the dorm and walked further into the compound to the cafeteria. An Asian woman dressed entirely in black greeted them in halted Arabic. She was introduced to Emily as Fusako Shigenobu, who was in the middle of a conversation with Gudrun Ensslin. “Ah yes, Amina Desai. We have heard your story already. Is it true that you have been a PFLP courier? It was sad about that Farouq fellow. He was an incredible, how do you say it, coordinator? All those years he had been bringing Islamic groups together to finance the cause. What a diplomat he could have been. That there were more like him!” She turned again to face Ensslin, blowing smoke in her face intentionally.
“As I was saying,” she continued, this time in English not her halting German, “I am neither anti-Israel nor pro-Arab. I can relate to the problem because I have lived in an environment where I was the odd man out. I grew up in Tokyo but in a Korean neighborhood. For me, I looked and sounded different, but the chances to succeed were all the same. It would have been a terrible thing to be academically isolated and uneducated because of something you could not help like the color of your skin or your religious beliefs. It is simply not right. It is not permissible in today’s society to prejudice against someone because of who they are and to deny people who have lived in a country for thousands of years the right to exist. The Palestinians are right. The Israelis are being almost fascist, throwing them out of their own land. No, this is without conscience. How can they, of all people, do this?”
“It is, I think, a good argument for the theory of perpetuation of abuse. Not breaking the cycle. You know, we have been abused thus we become abusers,” Emily answered.
Ensslin cut in, “We should just kill them all off. Hitler failed miserably. He should have just gassed them all. Stupid bastard.”
“Regular little angel of peace aren’t you Gudrun? Kill them all off?” Emily continued, “No negotiation. Isn’t that simply continuing the process that brought us all here in the first place?”
“We are here because we are committed to the PFLP,” Ensslin responded.
“You are here because to want to brag to your bourgeoisie friends that you hang out with the PFLP. You’re worse than a groupie. You can’t even get out of bed to train,” said Khaled lighting another Rothman cigarette.
“That’s because she can’t remember whose bed she slept in,” Shigenobu said malevolently, “or perhaps she’s chasing around after Andreas. He’s providing an exercise class of his own. Maybe he’s Pashtun not German,” she added as an afterthought.
Emily laughed out loud at the inference. The Pashtun Afghanis were well known for their penchant for young boys. She recalled Ghulam had told her it was quite a legitimate cultural pastime in some areas for a respectable married man to have a “beloved” or ashna, a young boy specially groomed for sex. It held quite a social status for the men involved but sadly enforced a sexual bondage for the boy. The idea of Andreas Baader with kohl lined eyes and surrounding dark eye shadow as his symbol of servitude had proved too much for her to bear and by now her guffaws were more than she could control.
Ensslin rose quickly from the table with her fist balled ready to strike, and instantaneously Emily’s left arm warded off the blow while her right hand grabbed Ensslin’s wrist pinning her to the table. “Do not ever try that again or I’ll break your fucking arm.”
“Bitch!” spat Ensslin.
“Correction, that’s fast bitch,” Emily responded, and wishing everyone who remained a pleasant afternoon, she quietly and with much dignity exited the cafeteria, knowing all eyes were on her as she left the room.
Back in the dorm, Emily headed for the shower, a clean t-shirt and boxer sh
orts in her hand. She quickly locked the door behind her and threw up in the sink, turning on the shower to hide the sounds of the accompanying tears. She asked herself what the hell she was doing in bloody Lebanon with a group of sociopaths. I could be at home with my son. I want out of here. I must be bloody soft in the head. She was determined that the following day she would contact Mustafa and tell Tony Shallal to get her home. Anywhere, she thought to herself, Chester, Heidelberg, anywhere, just as long as it was miles away from here.
By the time she finished her shower, her face was back to normal. Her eyes were no longer red and she had stopped shaking. When she opened the door she noticed the green tray on her bed, holding a bottle of pomegranate juice and pita bread stuffed with lamb as well as some grapes and cheese, underneath the food was what looked like a paper towel or folded napkin. When she opened it she read what looked like a hastily written note which said simply, “Nice job, Mina.” Shallal? she asked herself. It had better be you. Her heart pounded again. “Oh Christ, please let him get me out of this awful place.”
When the door opened Leila Khaled and Fusako Shigenobu came inside. “You got the food he sent up here?”
“Who sent it?” Emily asked, wiping her mouth with the napkin.
“He is called, ‘Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud’ after the Palestinian poet. Not his real name, but one that inspires trainees. Surely you have heard of Palestine’s greatest poet?” Khaled started towards her, arms outstretched. “He leads the commando training but he doesn’t live here on the camp. We think he has a government position outside. This is maybe some sort of subversive activity for him. He’s good. Handsome too,” she giggled. “But he was watching the whole thing in the cafeteria. Next thing he got up and told one of the workers in the cafeteria to send some food to you. That Mustafa, the one who knew your husband, he volunteered instead. For some reason they get along rather well. So there you have it. Food delivered to your bedside in a terrorist training camp. Beats scratching body crabs out of your private parts after a night with some freedom fighter in Latin America.”
“And you should know, my dear,” chimed in Fusako
“And I do. Believe me, I do.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Emily was awakened at daybreak by the sound of the azan, the call to the faithful for prayer over the loudspeakers. She showered, making herself ready for morning prayers, these being the first of five throughout the day. When she had completed the Salaatul fajr, she left with the others to eat and then headed with them to begin her first training session. She noted the layout of the camp, paying attention to the control towers and the guards at the checkpoint, trying to focus on when they changed positions and establish their work shift pattern. Running through her mind as she walked the two miles to the actual training ground and makeshift classrooms were quotes from Carlos Marighella, the inspiration of all terrorists, and once more his “Handbook of Urban Guerilla Warfare”. Marighella had often stated that one could only become a good fighter by learning the art of the fight. Emily now understood that the principles of terrorism were deeply embedded in theatre. Making the most show for the least amount of money without using military force was cheaper by far than a full scale combat effort.
Marighella had been a Brazilian legislator, she remembered. He had been a Communist party leader, like Frantz Fanon, another modern terrorism champion who had seen the effects of colonial exploitation and the resulting war and sided completely with the underclass. Fanon whose works Emily had struggled through was a practicing psychiatrist in a mental hospital treating rebels after the Algerian revolution in the fifties. There was little doubt in his mind what had caused him to side with the rebels. Emily had read both of his books, “A Dying Colonialism” and “The Wretched of the Earth”, in which he called upon all suppressed people to revolt against western powers because they had “dehumanized non-western values and destroyed non-western culture.” He maintained that even when colonials were not present in a country their influence still remained within the native middle-class, who invariably rejected their old ways and all who looked, sounded and acted like the indigenous people. He wrote that “native intellectualism was forgotten by the middle-class and replaced by western tradition.” He called upon all natives to revolt against westerners and destroy them. After the Second World War, throughout the third world this became a rallying cry to revolution.
Emily readily understood Fanon’s objective was to terrorize the middle-class and their servants into submission while Marighella had been more direct. He believed that the theory of terrorism was that all revolution must be based on violence. It was a two phase approach to urban terrorism. One phase brought about incidents of violence while the other gave the violence a meaning. Targets were to have a significant meaning backed by relevant clear logic and so a strong terror campaign could only be successful with an accompanying psychological campaign. Challenge authority, while creating safe houses, logistical stores, and medical units as an infrastructure that could carry out military support functions at a fraction of the cost. In short, use the people against the people. Both of these leaders had believed strongly that public-supported government policies were impressed upon a people who did not fully realize the repressive qualities of their local and state government. The plot then had become a psychological attack, carefully aimed at shattering the people’s confidence in their government. With the authority challenged there would be no other choice than martial law and then the people would become irate. By forcing the government to repress the people, they would cause the people in turn to rush to the protective arms of the terrorist, or “freedom fighter” for support. Subtle propaganda, violent attacks and a “we’ll take care of you, think for you and take control” finale. It was the ticket to success and had been implemented in every poverty stricken nation from 1947 to 1970. Now the process was being applied to West Germany, Japan, the United States, South East Asia, and Great Britain. As long as the general urban army was in position it was feasible to its strategists. Camps like this trained selected people in the art of terrorism and its design, development and implementation.
To Emily’s way of thinking this was exactly the role that she was being trained to accomplish but the logical side of her psyche would never accept terrorism as a sacred truth. She firmly believed all who were involved were users. Some terrorists like Baader, Ensslin and Meinhof had the rhetoric but not the commitment. They just wanted to be heroes. It was pure selfishness. The committed ones like Khaled and Shigenobu were the ones to watch. They had the killer instinct and the commitment, and they could conceivably survive to train and lead. Both charismatic and convincing they lived their beliefs. Sadly, she liked both women very much so far and she knew it would be difficult to betray their trust. Like her, they were warrior women. She would break the rules of the game, no doubt they would understand in the end.
The night before, Leila Khaled had given her a book of poems by Abd Al-Rahim Mahmoud, who died fighting for Palestine. He had written:
I shall carry my soul in the palm of my hand,
And throw it into the cavern of death!
A life must bring joy to the hearts of friends
And a death brings fear to the hearts of foes!
The spirit had two aims:
To achieve victory or to die fighting
Achieve victory or die fighting! His words echoed in her mind as she jogged the last half mile down the road toward the training ground and at least two hundred eager trainees.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
She spent the first part of the early morning at physical training, lifting weights, running in place, doing jumping jacks followed by dragging a 250 lb sack fifty yards. The initial commando training seemed easier than that which she had undergone at the British Embassy where one of her instructors had been a former British Special Air Service Commander. In line with the Marighella theory she would learn to fight in different ways much in the manner of a career soldier. This morning’s session was to pre
pare her for battle fitness.
Her instructor wore a keffiah which partially covered his face, but Emily thought that even in morning shadow he seemed very familiar. He explained the principles of their training which he said would cover at least eight weeks. For the next few days they would build combat readiness and he would expect that the first mile of the initial three mile run around the track would be completed in 18 minutes. He reminded them that the British SAS recruits did their sorting based on 12 minutes for the first mile and a half effort, but as some of the trainees were women they could complete the second portion of the three miles at their own pace. For the next five mornings they would study in-depth map reading and orienteering after each run; in two days they would begin their real routine which would begin with a five mile run. This would, he said, prepare them for week two which would begin with a three mile cross country run over hilly terrain which must be completed in one hour. “This will be completed,” he said with a sardonic laugh, “with backpack and full gear.”
Week three would cover Desert and Jungle Tactics. They would be split into patrols of four and be taught how to build and destroy hideouts and lean-tos. They would cover navigation, wilderness training, canoeing, fishing, hunting and general survival techniques.
Week four would focus on weaponry, including purchasing techniques from identifiable dealers, price negotiation, handling and cleaning submachine guns, automatic rifles, bazookas and other types of weapons. There would be special emphasis on Kalashnikov AK47s, also VZ -58V Assault Rifles, which need extra care because of the potential of explosion in the breech while firing and the Skorpion VZ-61, a popular Czech pistol. Instruction would also cover ammunition and explosives preparation using simple preparations such as fertilizer and diesel fuel or Nitrotex, Nitromite and other plastic explosives, preparation of dynamite or gelignite, the art of detonation using pressure fuses, mechanical fuses, instantaneous fuses or electric signals and the construction of pipe bombs.
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