by Rose Fox
Abigail arrived at six thirty and Karma also came a little early. He nodded to Emir and she noticed that his mood was somber. He sat and fidgeted with his phone.
“What is happening, Karma? Why did you call me?” she asked and didn’t know whether he heard what she said because when he spoke, he did not answer her question.
“From tomorrow, you should keep your eyes and ears open and record details in your memory. It is important that you continue being cautious all the time.”
Abigail looked into his eyes, trying to understand what he was saying now. She asked quietly:
“Is this why you asked me to meet you?”
“I’m going away tomorrow.”
Abigail did not understand what was unusual about this and why he was informing her of it.
“Okay.”
“I’m going away for a month, perhaps a month and a half, or even longer.”
She wanted to ask where he was going to and whether she could keep in touch with him, but his tone did not invite a continuation of the conversation, so she kept silent. She almost blurted out that she would miss him. She wanted to tell him how he gave meaning to her life here and made her feel safe. She even believed that she would not be able to manage without him, but she could not get the words out of her mouth.
When he stood up, tall and solemn, she looked into his wondrous eyes and smiled. It seemed to her that he was about to say something, but he simply turned around and left. Only now, as the beads in the curtain moved behind him at the entrance, did she understand that she was hopelessly in love with him. She remained sitting like this and when she felt that Emir was staring at her from behind the counter, she hurried to her room. Immediately, she took the rolled canvas out of her bag and spread it out on the bed so that the figures in the painting looked at her. She ran her fingers over them, touching the images of her mother and sister and kissed her little daughter, Arlene.
That night, she left them lying beside her in bed, rested her arm on them and gently caressed the rough surface of the canvas, back and forth and that was how she fell asleep. She did not weep but felt she had almost come to terms with the fact that she had been abandoned by everyone she loved and that was apparently the story of her life.
Karma boarded a plane the following day.
He flew to his family in the USA, to his wife, Salima, and his two small daughters. Kahit was five years old and Naziah, according to his estimate, must be a year old, or a little more. He presumed that the little one would not recognize him, at all.
But, his longing for them, did not prevent him from spending the whole flight thinking of the woman he had taken leave of the day before.
For many days, Karma had done everything possible to ignore Abigail’s tantalizing beauty and unique character. The truth was that he never thought he would meet someone like her. He tried with all his might to prevent a relationship from developing between them. He kept their conversations short, was not pleasant to her in his manner and took care to keep his distance from her as much as he possibly could. But, he was unable to prevent himself from falling in love with her.
Now, he recalled how he would like awake at night for hours. He fantasized making love to her, imagining that she was his wife and the mother of his children and that she only gave birth to sons. He smiled as he recalled how he used the pillow, folding it hard and kissing and hugging it as if it were Abigail.
Every time he saw her his heart swelled. He remembered how amazed he was when he heard about the attack she carried out in the Persian Gulf. He also remembered how he had questioned her ability to carry it out alone.
Now, he thought of her question.
“Karma, can I talk to you and reach you on your telephone?”
He had answered her unkindly:
“Absolutely not! Never call me. Remember they can trace us and discover everything through the phones.”
“Yes, I know,” she replied in her throaty voice and then smiled. Dimples deepened in her cheeks and he clenched his fists at his sides.
He remembered resisting and not reaching out to pull her close to his chest and gaze into her strangely beautiful eyes. He just stared at the little green tendrils that surrounded her irises and thought how much he wanted to cover her face with kisses. It never occurred to him that she might desire that, too.
Karma was careful to hide from her the fact that he was married and had two little daughters because he feared that it would put her off and turn her away from him.
Abigail went to her room and tossed and turned in her bed all night. Now she recalled the feelings of jealousy that tore at her when she overheard him on the phone:
‘My sweetheart’ or ‘Yes, I love you very much.’
She didn’t know that he was talking to his little daughter Kahit, and she could not have known that she, Abigail, had already replaced Salima, his wife, in his heart. On another occasion, she heard him blowing a whistling kiss in the air and it was clear that there was someone he loved very much on the phone with him.
She got up in the morning with a firm decision to accept that this was her life and that there was no point in bemoaning her fate.
The weeks that followed went by uneventfully. She hardened her heart and refused to pay attention to the pain that always accompanied her. As the days passed, she began to wonder what would happen if she tried to call him and, perhaps, tried to find out where he had gone and why he had left. Each time, she resisted and in the end, she gave up.
*
Village without a Name
The days came and went and lost significance for her. Everything seemed uninteresting and even superfluous. Thoughts of resentment and anger flooded her. She blamed the ‘Mossad’ for her situation and began to wonder, how she had permitted the people from that organization to make her abandon her daughter and her family. How had she agreed to change her identity? And even now, how had they permitted themselves to move the man she loved away to another location?
At night, she thought that all she felt was the desire to just disappear.
When she received the itinerary of the next day’s tour, to the lower Tatra Mountains, a memory was aroused and an idea came to mind. The planned route led to the village located behind the waterfall on the slopes of the Tatra Mountains. It was the village Aisha had told her about and Abigail believed that there, among its people, she would find release and be able to disappear.
Abigail knew that the enchanted lake was on the itinerary but, this time, decided to skip this treasure for now and go back there later, alone.
She gathered all her personal belongings and folded them into her knapsack on the evening before the tour and reminded herself that she had no identity papers with her. Now, she smiled to herself as she thought that, soon, she would also have no address.
She made a special effort this time because she thought it would be her last tour.
When it ended and she accompanied her tourists to the bus and got on to take leave of them, they applauded her, whistled, waved to her and called out:
“Bravo!” and “You’re the best!” The women ran up to hug her and she was in tears and emotionally overwrought as she got off the bus. She gazed after the disappearing bus and thought how much she enjoyed their enthusiastic response. All at once, a feeling of regret entered her heart. Perhaps she should continue her work and not give it all up and disappear.
The ache that nagged at her heart once more reminded her of Karma, but she shook it off and decided to continue with her plan.
Abigail slung her knapsack on her shoulder and returned to the cableway station she had arrived at, a few minutes earlier with her group. This time, she traveled in the car to the last stop, at the peak of the lower Tatra Mountains and waited till it left.
The night began to fall and the forest was almost dark. Abigail stood listening to the sounds. She heard nocturnal animals awakening, the cries of foxes, monkeys screeching and the roar of animals looking for prey and she trembled. She was still standing on the trail
that was familiar to her from hiking with her groups of tourists. She continued down the path, disregarding the warnings about the suspicious nature of the villagers and untroubled that she hadn’t notified anyone of her arrival today.
First, she walked down a sharp decline, then a slighter one began and Abigail was panting when she reached the outlook post over the trapped lake. The sun’s last rays pierced the water and broke up into a spectacular rainbow of colors. Its beauty took her breath away and she stood transfixed by it until she continued on her way.
From here, the trail took a sharp bend to the north, alongside the lake and veered to the right.
She went ahead like this for almost a quarter of an hour, struggling with the creepers and their tendrils that had woven themselves into a big fabric screen she had to force her way through. The waterfall was still hidden from sight, but she could already smell the water and hear the rushing sounds of it falling. Half way round the bend, it was revealed.
The waterfall fell from above with great force and was deafeningly loud. It dropped into the trapped lake as if it was being poured from a giant bucket. On its way down, the water hit a rock that jutted out lower down, which deflected it diagonally away, creating an empty space. She hurried to walk through it, fearing it might close.
She stopped in between the falling water and the entrance and stood and sensed the chill of feeling detached from everything. To her left, the high wall of water that separated her from the outside world dropped down and she noticed with delight that not even a drop of water sprayed out of it.
Suddenly, the stone in her ring scorched her finger and Abigail recoiled in pain. She noticed how its color darkened to a shade of green that was almost black, and she attributed it to the excitement she was feeling and ignored it. She took another step when someone picked her up and threw her down hard on the ground. Following her first instinct, she rolled on the sand rose to her feet between two hefty guys. She waited for them to attack her again and turned round sharply, kicked the one that stood to the right of her but missed the one on her left so she stuck two fingers in his eyes. She bent down immediately to lower herself out of their range to evade their response.
One of them got up from the dust and the other held his face, groaning in pain. She took a step back and stood tense and prepared for their attack.
This was the welcome that awaited her at this village that hated strangers and suspected everyone unfamiliar. A pair of men always stood guard here, but this was the first time they had met with opposition.
Each evening two other men stood behind the walls the inhabitants had built around their village and looked out through a pipe they held over the edge of the wall. They had copied and adapted it from the periscope used on submarines sailing deep down below the surface of the sea. When pushed up just above the surface, the crew could use it to covertly watch the movement of ships above them.
This first couple had apparently been the ones who first saw her when she was climbing the path to their village and notified the pair of guards closer to her. They prepared to oppose her as they tried to guess whether she had lost her way or was intending to enter their village.
Right now, they no longer appeared threatening to her and Abigail walked towards the two guards and extended her hand to them, as she looked at them apologetically and tried to mollify them. Tommy shook her hand while Ibrahim was still rubbing his tearing eyes and then looked at her. He looked angry as he wiped his runny nose and his eyes with his sleeve and seemed to be debating with himself. He looked at her outstretched hand but shook his head because he found it difficult to deal with his failure and forgive her for now.
“My name is Naima, take me to Nadia,” she requested but refrained from mentioning Aisha’s name because she knew that her activities were covert and did not want to expose her.
She heard the clanking of wheels in the distance and saw wheelchairs, operated by electric motors or large pedals, moving forward in silence. She wondered whether there were motorized vehicles in the village because she did not hear the familiar noise of automobiles or smell the usual odor of petroleum that comes with them.
The two guards accompanied her to Nadia’s wooden house, keeping a fixed distance from her. Abigail smiled as she thought that the entrance to the village was now abandoned and unguarded because of her.
They reached the house and when the door opened and Nadia looked at her, Abigail announced:
“Right now, I am Hansel’s sister, Gretel and I’ve been lost in the woods for hours.”
“But, a terrifying witch was waiting for them!” Nadia snorted and waved her arms threateningly.
When she entered the house, Abigail complained:
“Did you know what kind of reception awaited me?”
“More or less, what did they do to you?”
“What? Did you know they would attack me at the entrance to the village?”
“Sorry, I thought you remembered my warning. I asked you to let me know when you were coming. We are very cautious and hate surprises.”
Abigail glanced behind her at the two men, who were still standing on the path. She wondered whether she hadn’t acquired two enemies, who hated her. She didn’t know that they had actually become her first two fans in this village after they had seen how alert and capable she was.
That evening people gathered, uninvited, at Nadia’s house. Some limped, supported by walking sticks, others rolled up on wheelchairs and Abigail stared at them wide-eyed.
It was difficult to remain unmoved at the sight of men and women missing an arm or a leg. She flinched when Nadine arrived. Her complexion and arms were scarred and still in the process of healing from burns. She was followed by a lame woman, who was familiar to her and she extended her arms to Abigail.
“Hi, Naima, come here!” she called out and Abigail recognized her as the driver. She stood beside Abigail and noticed her reaction to the people, who were arriving. She spoke to her quietly:
“Relax, we are all injured; almost all of us are survivors who have chosen to live together and, most of us have been persecuted by the authorities.”
“Ah!” Abigail remarked in a depressed voice, “it’s complicated, it’s really awful.”
“Hey, Madam, nothing is that bad and there’s no need to feel upset or sorry for anyone.” It was Samir, who said this and added right away:
“Believe me, my dear lady, who looks like a picture of health. We are a lot better off than the people outside, even those, who aren’t disabled.”
Abigail stared at him. His body twitched from time to time and his skin reminded her of a plucked turkey. She shifted her gaze, finding it difficult to look at him. These disabled and broken people seemed to draw their strength and resilience from one another.
By now, many had come to the house. Apparently, the news of Abigail’s arrival had spread by word of mouth.
The meeting commenced with a reading from a scroll and it was recited with the devoutness of a prayer or a quote from the Holy Scriptures of a sect. The words were recorded on a parchment scroll that was attached to the wall with strips of brown adhesive tape. They all repeated the prayer, which had been recited hundreds of times:
“We vowed to purge our society,
To single out its despicable rulers.
We belong to the city of the physically damaged,
And are the faithful soldiers of Allah,
Hey ho, to the flag, we were called,
Hey ho, hey ho, hey ho!
All who have been persecuted and hurt,
like us -
Are welcome to join our ranks.”
Abigail smiled as she heard the last two lines. She remembered the reception she had received on arrival at the entrance to the village that day. Then, she felt some of the people staring at her. Kahida signaled to Nadia, and she bent down and whispered to Abigail.
“Perhaps you should go out to the yard now and allow us to explain to them why you are here so that they will accept your p
resence.”
Abigail left the house and stood outside the door, where she heard the sound of streaming water. She walked a few steps and reached a beautiful patio garden with two little stone fountains, illuminated by lights submerged under the water. The water that circulated in the fountain provided a soothing background to the voices coming out of the window of the house.
“Who is participating in the attack today?” She heard, but then the voices grew softer and Abigail moved away from the patio. She turned to go to a dark corner of the yard and sat down there. She picked a hollow stalk, chewed on it absentmindedly and spit on the sand. She sat like that and almost fell asleep.
She was roused when she heard the door of the house opening and saw the figure of a woman against the light, beckoning to her. Abigail arose and walked towards her. The moment Abigail entered, Kahida stood beside her, threw her arm around Abigail’s shoulders and nodded to indicate everything was fine. She gestured with her other hand that she was relaxed, and if she were to go by the way people were looking at her, Abigail understood that they had been told something that caused the change. Some of them gazed at her gently, but there was an embarrassing silence. Abigail sat on a chair that was some distance from them and after a few minutes conversations started up and the tension seemed to have passed.
“Do people go out on operations every day?” Abigail whispered in Kahida’s ear.
“No, only when hatred is aroused again or when new people arrive with novel ideas and projects.”
“How do you escape and keep from being discovered?” She continued to whisper, looking at the wheelchairs around them.
”The truth is we don’t have much success. Once, they chased Atraf to the foot of the mountain, but when he got out of the car that brought him there and sat in his wheelchair, they turned around in shame and departed.”
Abigail laughed quietly.
“Sure, how could they have suspected him?” She whispered.
A few minutes later, Abigail overheard conversations between some people and she whispered to Kahida: