Unholy Land

by Lavie Tidhar

  She leads you to a jeep parked by the leaning wall of a house, on a dirt track. The jeep seems brand-new, spotlessly clean, in marked contrast to the local vehicles. Astrid seems oblivious. On the side of the vehicle is a red swastika.

  “I’ll take you to the clinic,” Astrid says. She hops inside and you follow more cautiously. Astrid starts the jeep and begins navigating her way with confidence, through narrow, twisting dirt tracks. The oppression of the camp settles on you, the way the rickety buildings seem to lean in towards you, how they obscure the skies, where only the sinister moon glows, its light casting shadows everywhere you look. Children shout and wave and old women smile and some men leer and others look defiant, and Astrid talks as she drives, an endless stream of words.

  “We set up about two years ago,” she says. “We had plenty of funding to begin with, but it’s becoming hard to raise the money, the ministry’s redirecting funds to the Chinese colonies, you know what is happening at the moment in Tsingtau . . . It’s terrible, really, but donors have simply given up on work in the Disputed Territories. We do what we can, but I worry. There’s only really me, and Dirk and Hans, and there are so many people in need, and every day there seem to be more. . . .”

  You let her drone on. She is driving you through the camp when the two of you become aware of the sound of gunshots.

  A battle has erupted in a nearby street. You hear the shouted orders of PDF soldiers, doors banging, dogs bark-ing—in all of the worlds, you suddenly think, there is always a dog, barking. Astrid’s mouth becomes a thin line, her lips are pressed, her eyes are focused on the road. In time the sounds recede as you move away, though you notice the sudden tension in the streets, the shut doors, extinguished lights, the sound of fleeting feet beyond your sight, the rising of a pressing silence. It’s eerie, driving through those endless habitats, and you wonder if the children born along these roads will ever know the scent of grass, the touch of an uninhibited sun, the crystal joy that comes with an unexpected spray of foam and salt water. You think, with sadness, that they might never be free.

  The jeep comes to a halt outside a low prefab building surrounded by a fence. Chickens cluck nearby. The building’s painted white, and a red swastika marks the door. Two sleepy men—the clinic’s indifferent security guards—look you up and down without much interest, then turn away as you follow Astrid through the door. Inside it is quiet, a little dirty, with the smell of used nappies, medicinal alcohol, ammonia and iodoform, mixed in with the smell of cooking, garlic and fat, and the hint of cigarette smoke. Astrid looks apologetic, but leads you, anyway, to her office, and sets about making you both a cup of tea. You marvel at this woman, self-assured, so confident of her place in the world, so confident of the world , its tenets, its unshakeable foundations. If only you could tell her how quickly it can all disappear.

  “So tell me,” Astrid says, “what it is you’re after. Abu Ramzi said you are an academic? From the Caliphate.”

  It takes you a moment to realise this is just a name some use, in this world, for Ottoman rule—and that you, the other you, indeed live there. Abu Ramzi was right, you think. In time, it gets easier to remember to forget.

  “I’m researching old stories, really,” you say, “magic systems, odd customs, stories of what might have been . . .”

  “He said you wanted to speak to a . . . one of the, how do you say? Nachtvolk?”

  You mull the word. “Night folk,” you say, curious.

  “Yes.”

  “I was not aware of the term,” you say.

  Astrid shrugs, suddenly uncomfortable. “It just popped into my head.”

  “You work in the local community. You must meet a lot of people. You must hear a lot of talk.”

  “Talk. What of it?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Look,” she says. “I’m not political. I’m here to help the people in the clinic, not to fight this war against the Palestinians.”

  “Still, you must hear stuff.”

  “I’m in a very precarious position. The clinic is here on sufferance of the Protectorate authorities.”

  “Astrid,” you say, gently. “I am not the army or the police. I have no stake in this. Whatever it is you know, you can tell me.”

  For a moment she looks miserable. Then she says, “There are factions, you know they’re fighting for independence. There are all the regular ones, but what I keep hearing is about the nachtvolk, the night people. Some new faction, with serious funding, a training camp in the Mau Forest. I heard they were behind that bus attack, and some of the others. It’s strange, because usually someone would claim the credit for an attack, but they didn’t. No one even knows who they really are. The reason I thought of that is, well, they say they’re, you know.” She laughs, self-consciously. “That they have supernatural powers.”

  “I see.”

  And you do. And you sit up straight. And you listen because, really, this is what you came here to do. There is a wrongness in the sephirot, there is a thinning.

  “And you know no one?” you say; and her cheeks flush.

  “There is one man. . . ,” she says.

  Of course there is, you think, but do not say. And she agrees to take you to him, one Ephraim Keino, a local bricklayer.

  You drive again, from the silent clinic, through nighttime streets in which there is no traffic. Perversely, Astrid chooses the ring road, passing by the wall, and for a moment you get a glimpse of the other Nakuru, the one below: the lake, gleaming in the gentle moonlight, the pink flamingos all asleep, and on the shores the settlements, prosperous, green, lit with electric lights behind their windows. So close and yet so far the worlds become, here one sleeps and here another is awake, but which is one, which is the other?

  Astrid says, “He lives right through here,” pointing at a dark alleyway, a fondness in her voice—but you’re uneasy. There is a silence here which isn’t natural, that you have heard before, if silence can be said to be a thing one hears. It is an absence, and not even a dog barks. You try to warn her, but she doesn’t really listen, and the wheels crunch against the dirt as she parks the jeep.

  You climb out cautiously. Every sense you have whispers you should run.

  Astrid, meanwhile, is oblivious. Where are the dogs? you think. She leads you to a ramshackle house, a lean-to with a door of corrugated metal sheet.

  “Ephraim?” she says. “Ephraim, it’s me!”

  She pushes the door. It is unlocked. She frowns.

  “That’s weird,” she says.

  She disappears inside. It’s dark.

  You follow.

  “There should be a lantern somewhere here,” she says. You hear her moving about, knocking things. “Ah, there it is. Hold on.”

  She strikes a match.

  For a moment its brightness flares up in the room, and you see: a Kabbalistic Tree of Life inscribed in charcoal over one whole wall; a map of Palestina, with the wall marked through in red; a face.

  The face stares back at you; the eyes are bright and wild. Then the lantern falls and breaks with the sound of exploding glass, and Astrid screams.

  Suddenly the room is filled with light. You blink back tears. You find yourself in the middle of the room, surrounded by PDF soldiers with blackened faces, all staring back at you.

  Their guns are trained unwaveringly on your chest.

  “What is the meaning of this? What did you do?” Astrid says. The soldiers turn you, cuff you, take you away.

  But you remember what you saw in that room.

  The signs of incursion.

  It is all part of the pattern, you think.

  They take you away. What they do with Astrid, you don’t know.

  They drive you to a rich man’s house and put you in a child’s room.

  They lock the door.

  You wait.

  22.

  There is in Judaism the concept of Tikkun Olam, the healing of the world. Kabbalah teaches that there are many worlds, or olamot,
emanations of light from the infinite, what we call, in Hebrew, the Ein Sof.

  I have been there. There is a place where the lone and level sands stretch far away. . . .

  Meanwhile I was already back on the road. The men who attacked us had escaped but for one who, when questioned with enough persuasive force, revealed a name: Ephraim Keino.

  This Ephraim Keino was not at his address, but what I found within disturbed me. The Tree of Life, the books of Luria, as well as Cordovero, Isaac the Blind, de León and the Baal Shem of Worms. There were objects there, too, historical artefacts, predating settlement: a pith helmet crusted with rust and dirt and age, which must have belonged to Alfred St. Hill Gibbons, the explorer; a train ticket stub from Mombasa, rusted and water-stained, which had somehow yet survived from those long ago days; a brass pot the explorers’ porters must have carried.

  It was troubling that such objects had been assembled together, and all without my knowledge. Such a thing should not have been possible.

  I was filled with a new fury. I left the soldiers at the place and returned to Eretz Crossing, where I found Barashi awake and complaining, and mostly sober. He wanted to know why I’d left him there. I told him a drunk was no use to me, but an ex-soldier might be. When he learned I meant to return to the Mau Forest he reacted with understandable horror, but soon subsided when he realised that he had no choice. I let him drive this time. As for me, I sat in the passenger seat and brooded.

  There are, nowadays, clear roads leading up into the forest, and even some of the way inside it. There are even picnic areas, where Palestinians like to come on the holidays, when the air fills with coal smoke and the smell of grilled meats. The drive is not long from Nakuru but, after a time, one runs out of road and must venture deeper into the forest on foot. We left the car parked by a parasol tree and ventured into the dark.

  Neither of us wanted to be there.

  We were both armed. I hated the forest, the dark, the call of Hunter’s cisticolas in the trees. There were thick clouds overhead and we could not see the sky. It began to rain, it always rained in the damned forest, and the water ran down the tree trunks and into the mulch. It was a hot, humid, stinking environment to wade through. The trees made our progress slow, and the wet, rotting leaves made every step uncertain. I wasn’t sure exactly where we were going, merely that we had to penetrate deeper into the forest. It is one of those curious places that can be larger on the inside; I have heard there is a forest in England that is much the same, though I must confess I had never desired to enquire further on the subject.

  For what seemed like hours we trudged through the mulch and the rain and the clouds of mosquitoes. Barashi shivered beside me but did not speak. He was a good soldier, and he knew this wood, had seen some of its mysteries.

  We first noticed the shifting of the border when we heard a noise ahead, and both froze.

  Barashi’s hand strayed to his gun, but I halted him with a gesture.

  The sound came again. It was a growl.

  Slowly, slowly, we crept ahead. It was foolish, but I had to see. The clouds parted, and silvery moonlight fell down on a clearing ahead. I watched through the branches of a peacock flower tree.

  The creature that stood there resembled something between a hyena and a bear. It had high front shoulders and a sloping back. It had an elongated skull, and its head turned this way and that, slowly, as it sniffed the air. Then it opened its jaws wide and growled again, and it took all my strength not to bolt.

  How I hated that awful place!

  Once, long ago and in another place, I had visited a museum of natural history and there, behind glass, observed the skeletal remains of a prehistoric creature called a Chalicothere, long before, of course, extinct into oblivion. The creature before me then was of a similar species, perhaps, but this one—I knew only too well—was carnivorous, and deadly.

  The local people called it a kerit. It was better known as the Nandi bear.

  The creature ambled forward. Its odd, sloping gait was nevertheless powerful, commanding of the space it took. Behind it, then, came another, and then another.

  It only lasted a moment, but it felt much longer. The creatures traversed the clearing in the moonlight, a sight not seen on this Earth for millions of years. There was something wild and majestic and free about them, and as much as I hated the sight I could not help but be moved by it, too. Then the clouds returned and the light died, and the creatures were gone.

  We waited, a long moment more. When we pressed cautiously ahead, the clearing was free of any creatures. Had they sensed us? If so, they were wise enough to leave us alone.

  I knew then that we had penetrated deep into the wood. This was the border, and beyond it things shifted, and I was afraid. I had loved this, my adopted home. I did not want to lose it.

  Yet the rebels must be there, I thought. If I were to find what I sought it would be here, in the heart of the Mau Forest, where the sephirot intersect.

  As quietly as we could, we kept going. Deeper and deeper into the wood.

  They found us before we found them.

  There had been no warning.

  One moment we were in the mulch, amidst the trees, crawling forward bone-weary and tired. Then they were upon us.

  Faces in the undergrowth, bright eyes the only clue to their presence. We were grabbed and our hands pressed back and bound before we had a chance to speak. Barashi struggled beside me and was silenced with a blow to the head. He collapsed to the ground. I remained still. They picked him up and dragged him along, easily. They prodded me forward. No one spoke.

  We had seen other things in that forest, that night. Earlier, we had passed a patrol of Wehrmacht soldiers, from another history. At one place we found the bones of a British explorer under a tree, his uniform rotting, a sun helmet still sitting on his bleached white skull. A diary was still clutched in his bony fingers. When I leafed through it I saw the detailed anatomical drawings of impossible creatures, a map showing an entryway in a cave, deep into a hidden world in the centre of the earth. The paper crumbled in my hand. Later still, I saw a bright object in the ground and, bending down to retrieve it, discovered a coin bearing the profile of a Zulu king on one side, the image of a shining rocket ship on the other. It was contemporarily dated. I looked at it for a long moment before I let it drop from my fingers, back to the ground.

  Our captors pushed us along narrow forest trails I would never have found on my own. They formed a complex network between the thick vegetation, and seemed well trodden. Not long after, we emerged into a hidden camp. Semi-permanent structures had been erected amidst the trees, cunningly hidden. Guards stood on the perimeter, young men with rifles slung over their shoulders. They stared at us, expressionless, as we passed.

  The camp expanded around us. It was bigger than I’d thought. The houses stretched on, storage sheds, a firing range, kitchens, latrines. It was well organised. We were led to a round house in the middle of the camp and escorted inside. Barashi, thrown on the floor, began to stir. He groaned and then threw up on the clean ground. The smell of his bile reeked, and I was vindictively glad that he had soiled this place.

  It was dark inside. My eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and yet it still took me long moments to begin to discern features. I heard a match strike a moment before it flared, blinding me. Then it was applied to the wick of a kerosene lamp and a steady white flame began to burn.

  I saw the walls adorned with maps showing the territory of Palestina and the Disputed Zones; a Tree of Life and a more fantastical map, of many intersecting geometries, which must have been an attempt to chart the amorphous borders of the sephirot, emanating from a central point in the Mau Forest.

  “Special Investigator Bloom,” a voice said. I started, for I had not seen him.

  A man rose from the floor where he had been sitting cross-legged, watching us. He was neither tall nor short, old nor young. He was just a man, and I thought that, like all men, he could die.

&
nbsp; “I am the Orkoiyot.”

  “You, sir, are a terrorist,” I said, coolly.

  He smiled. “I fear you will never make a good diplomat, Bloom,” he said.

  “That is not my job.”

  “No,” he agreed; a little sadly, I thought. “You are a weapon, fashioned to a different purpose. In many ways I admire your bluntness. You are like the blade which Alexander used to cut through the Gordian knot. But you are not the wielder of the sword, Bloom. You are the sword.”

  His words, his calm poise, discomforted me. He went to Barashi and gently helped him to sit. He wiped the ground with a cloth, soaking up Barashi’s sick. Then he disposed of it, neatly, and offered the older man a glass of water, which Barashi took without a word. Then the Orkoiyot addressed me again.

  “It is not that you have made refugees of my people,” he said. “It is that you will then deny it. It was not enough to do a bad deed: but you would retell history, so that in the telling, it had never happened. You cast yourselves as the wronged party, and thus we can never progress, can only fight. You have your victories, and we have ours, but . . . we do not see what’s there, only that which is unseen.”

  “We can agree to disagree,” I said, stiffly.

  “You’re in my hands,” he pointed out, with that same patient, gentle tone. “For now, at least, I have the advantage.”

  I looked at him. “Untie me,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “If I am a weapon it is only because I had been fashioned that way,” I said. I hated myself for sounding plaintive. For trying to explain myself to this man, my enemy.

  “I know.”

  “I do what must be done.”

  “I know,” he said again. “I count on that, Special Investigator.”

  He said my title as though it were a mockery.

  “You know why I have come,” I said.

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “These attacks,” I said. “You know who I am. You know what my role is. There is no place for pretence on this score. Not between us.”