“Neither do I.”
“Then you and I are going to be friends.”
She told me about herself, that she was a Computer Science master’s student at the Tel Aviv University and had a part-time job at her father’s IBM Software Company in Tel Aviv where Hanan was the Managing Director. She was born, no, they were born, on 14th February 1988, attended the state’s religious school the three of them and on completing their Bagrut matriculation exams in 2007 she decided to do computer science. Her sister Meira chose to be a medical doctor and was a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem while Shirli was doing her MBA at the Tel Aviv University. They were studying together, and Shirli worked part-time as the internal auditor of their father’s businesses.
Exactly ten minutes to the hour, Hanan was there ready to whisk me away from Shifra’s get-to-know-each-other banter.
“I’ve been dying to get you alone all evening,” Shifra said when she saw her brother. “You’ll never guess what I’ve broken through this time round.”
“Another of your inventions,” Hanan replied with a benign smile.
“I developed this program that will render all zombie armies in the whole world incapable of breaching our systems for whatever it takes. No more shutting down of our accounts by the ISP. If it goes through, it would be the program all software companies will be killing each other for, and Microsoft have already send me a junk email requesting my attention. I am going to make you the richest man in the world very soon, brother.”
“You know what lil’ sis, you amaze me. I am a businessman for God’s sake. Your computer language that you speak as though we’re part of your zombie army commandos makes me want to apply for a curia job in Vatican.”
“That’s why you can’t, and you won’t, because you’re the MD Tel Aviv IBM Software Company.”
“Smart,” Hanan said resignedly, but changed the subject. “Are you guys ready for dinner or you gonna keep the others waiting for you.”
Shifra gave me a furtive wink and said, “Let’s go, shall we, brother?”
CHAPTER 90
A small group comprising a man and two women was straggling over from the already filled parking lot, and Hanan and Shifra rushed to greet them. Of all of them but one were strangers to me. Since now I had seen Shifra I couldn’t mistake Shirli for somebody else. Shifra had told me that Meira was a clone of herself, so I expected to see another Shifra and know that the other was Shirli.
I stayed in the background throughout the greetings, and there was the obvious clue that what I was witnessing was a family reunion. Hanan introduced the strangers.
“Ken, meet my brother Shamir. Shamir, Ken, my friend, the one I told you about.”
Shamir stood six-two tall, slightly taller than Hanan, big, broad shoulders, a square jaw, thin beady intelligent looking eyes and a disgusting moustache. Talk of Goliath.
His grasp when he shook my hand was strong, warm and soft. “Nice to meet you, Mister. It’s good having you here. I hope Hanan here has given you a nice welcome.”
“He couldn’t have done any better,” I said. He turned to a thin, almost scrawny to the point of starvation, beautiful woman beside Shifra. My eyes, though trained on Shirli behind her, shifted to the scrawny figure. If she wasn’t of Chinese, Japanese or some other related blood; she was then a perfect resemblance of them.
“Meet my wife, Kim,” Shamir said.
“Pleasure meeting you, ma’am,” I said. She shook my hand noncommittally. Her hand was silky soft. I could easily pull her to me like a rope.
“Let’s go inside, everybody is there,” Hanan said turning away.
I let myself fall to the back of the entourage when I heard a familiar voice say, “How do you do, Best Friend?” It was Shirli.
“How do you do, Miss Hard-to-get-to?”
She ignored me and stepped up to be beside Shifra who was in an ear-to-ear chat with Shamir’s wife. I was left with no one to talk to as Hanan paired with his brother.
I wished I could get an opportunity to talk to Shirli, but I realized that was unlikely and insidious. I knew very well how to treat my hosts with respect and courtesy, and how easy I could lose the respect they had for me. I did not want to be a player in a grotesque game where my odds of winning were depended on how I conducted myself. So, I kept away from sensuous thoughts, but I observed her for the rest of the evening. I was not just observing Shirli alone. I was watching everybody, kind of watching my six o’clock.
Everybody, I mean every body, in the house. I was the only alien and I did not rub shoulders with the Israeli political might. The old seemed to be congregated around Ben Shalom, while the rest, mostly the women, were with Jonina Daliah.
Hanan engaged me in a never ending narration of his life in Kenya, the nostalgia of the places we went all the way from Nakuru to Turkana, Mombasa, Lake Victoria, and all of the tourist spots that made him keep on going back to Kenya.
Shamir was in an I-don’t-like-jokes conversation with Shifra, while whom by now I knew for fact was Meira was with his wife.
Hanan’s phone rang and he strutted out to answer the call, and eager to hear something from Shamir, I made my way to where he was.
When he saw me going to where he was he placed his heavyset hand on Shifra’s shoulders.
I stopped beside him and before I could say what I wanted, he said, “You haven’t met my sister. Meira, this is our friend, Ken.”
“I’ve heard of you,” Meira said. “I’ve heard a great deal about you. Nice meeting you.” I was not surprised. She was truly a clone of Shifra except she did not have Shifra’s bindi on her face.
It was as though Shamir was waiting for a chance to get rid of his sister for he excused himself and made his way to his father.
Meira and I engrossed ourselves in conversation – she asking more about me and my country, I asking more about herself and her choice of career, what really made her tick, what made me go to Israel and why I was in their home. As we continued to talk, she noticed my expression had changed and she followed my gaze behind her. Shirli stood close behind her. She dropped one hand languidly over Meira’s shoulder and leaned one hip against her, akimbo. She too was watching me. Gracious me! She was driving me crazy.
“M, I’m going to bed, see you ‘morrow. Night,” she told Meira and turned to go after giving her sister the custom girls’ kiss on the cheek.
Why don’t you sit down and bring sunlight, no, moonlight, to my drab existence, Shirli?
“Do you spend your time ogling at women?” Meira asked me, bringing me back to earth.
Ouch! That was pretty direct.
I inclined my head and said, “Not always, Meira. May I have the pleasure of enjoying this time with you?”
“There’s time and place for everything.”
“Don’t get dirty M, you little gorgeous hunk of beauty.”
CHAPTER 91
It was long after midnight when I made my way to my house. It had been a nice evening, had met many people; men and women I’d not have thought I’ll ever be near to in my lifetime.
I was feeling a little tired, worn out and drained, and one thing that I madly needed was not some brandy or vodka. I’d had enough during the dinner. Anyone who could give me plenty of fresh air I could wash their feet. That’s what I needed.
I went upstairs and instead of going to the bedroom to succumb to slumber-bog, I threw off the dinner jacket and loosened the tie and went to the terrace.
The terrace was spacious, overlooked the lido and the flower gardens and the impeccably mown leas that surrounded Shalom’s estate.
At that very moment, a strange kind of feeling engulfed me. I felt as though I was beginning to enjoy the little liberties that life was offering me, thanks to Hanan and his family.
The night was dark, cloudless and starry. The cool breeze of the night carried all my worries with it to wherever they were stowed away. Numerous constellations in the cloudless azure night sky twinkled just for me; meteors lit
and shot occasionally across the sky. In the eerie darkness of the Tel Aviv night my fret and vexation seemed to vanish in to the darkness in invisible dark sinuous smoke strings.
I thought of nature. Nature sucks, nature is unfathomable. Any single star and constellation I looked at seemed to communicate some strange message, not to me only but to the whole world. If only we could take time and listen. I marvelled at its existence, not the magnificence of the Milky Way staring at me at this hour of the night – God’s wonderful work summarized in a teeny-looking thick drapery of dust and stars hanging above me and never falling.
I was in some kind of a weird and wonderful state, my mind wandering in God’s wonderland. I started to pace the loggia. I went to the balustrade overlooking the gardenias and frangipani; and the aroma of the frangipani filled my nose.
It was a sweet night. I liked it. Despite all my worries I felt free of everything, free of any responsibility. I was alone.
And I liked it, being alone.
CHAPTER 92
They were being followed.
The sleek Mercedes Benz S350 Aut drove smoothly on the Ayalon Highway slickly. The driver noticed the crème BMW that had been following them since they left the Shalom Ben Zeev’s residence in the rear view mirror. The BMW accelerated and indicated that it was going to overtake. The driver gave the BMW’s driver hands-up signal that he could overtake, but as it inched past the Merc it slowed down.
Even in the dark cloudless night the black cold steel being pushed out of the tinted windows of the BMW could not be mistaken for a cigar butt. Shamir did not even cringe. He knew better than that. The Merc was bullet proof. The tubeless tyres could go up to one hundred kilometres on being punctured, and his car had been spiced up and fitted with automated hydraulics and duly upgraded engine with a maximum speed of 480kph. There was no way the BMW could keep up with the Merc. It was one of the privileges of being in the police.
Shamir Ben Shalom was one of the youngest Nitzav Mishnehs (Commanders) in the Mishteret Yisrael (Israeli Police), not because of his father’s influence, but because of his dedication to the job, a kind of rare devotion that was not in his peers.
Upon graduation from the police training college he was posted to MAGAV, the Border Police, where he did all he could in the West Bank region and the rural countryside. In his early years as an officer he trained on special operations, anti-terrorism and counter terrorism, intelligence and espionage, and explosives and dirty bomb technology. Moreover, he was a professional sniper, the best the Mishteret Yisrael had ever had, and will ever have.
He served in the Yamam, the elite Special Police Unit for counter terror hostage rescue, one of the most experienced and specialized in the world. He took part in hundreds of operations and clandestine missions both in and outside the borders of Israel. While in the Yamam, he combated the Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Fatah’s Tanzim whose terrorist activities included kidnapping of police officers and other government officials.
Al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups, Hamas and Fatah’s Tanzim, launched war against Shamir the dragon slayer. He was on a mission in Somalia to assassinate Noor Ahmed Gabow, Al-Shabab terrorist group leader in Somalia that’s directly linked to Hamas when the call had come. He aborted his mission on orders thus Ahmed Gabow had another day in paradise.
It did not come as a surprise when his senior officer, Sgan Nitzav Yehuda Shlomo, told him that he had been transferred to the headquarters of Mishteret Yisrael in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem.
Taking up his new posting a week later, he was promoted to Sgan Nitzak – Chief Superintendent. He was barely ten years in the service when he was promoted to Nitzak Mishnehs, and Tat Nitzav (Brigadier General) was in the offing. His ceiling was to be Rav Nitzav (Commissioner), and then make his entry into politics and pick up from where his father had left. At least that’s what he had planned and his route for life was set and his feet were firmly set upon it.
But it was not going to be that easy with some people having some scores to settle with him. As his Merc, his official chauffeur driven car, sped off he knew that he would deal with those troubling him within no time. He was the dragon slayer after all. Nevertheless, he had to be careful. He had seen the heinous murders committed by the terrorists and could not imagine him being a victim, or anyone close and dear to him.
But first things first.
He reached for his petrified Vietnamese wife and inveigled her. She always panicked when faced with the tumult of the monstrous face of danger.
CHAPTER 93
It was exactly one year since Kennedy Maina had left Kenya. He was now part of the Shalom Ben Zeev’s family, a former prominent Israeli politician. He was eight months in the family, being treated like one of them, as a son, as a brother. But to Kennedy, his brother was long dead and gone, and his sisters were many miles away.
Kennedy was having a deadly schoolboy crush on Shirli, his host’s triplet daughter, a Zion of a beauty. She drove him crazy from the he first day he saw her at the Aleana Holdings shopping mall, her father’s business, where he was the manager, courtesy of her brother, Hanan.
But he was in dilemma – to make or not to make the move. It would be a terrible mistake, he thought, and no doubt nobody would welcome it. To start dating his host’s daughters or sisters would be a terrible mistake. They respected him, and he was not the type of men who ate the yoke of the egg and hit their host with the empty of the shell, but there were matters of the heart for which such impediments were futile.
Love, the emotion of fervent joy yet great sorrow, was what was churning in Kennedy’s insides.
He was in love, yes, naturally.
He was in love with Shirli.
CHAPTER 94
Trust!
I knew it was insidiously destructive for the Shaloms to trust me. I had laid down the foundation, showed them that I could be trusted with virtually everything, and they seemed to open themselves up to me, even took the bold step to put their lives in my hands in some way. It came a point I could be trusted with the deepest of their secrets and life, and I was expected to be some kind of a guardian of the little truths and secrets told to me. The bond that existed between us was like a labyrinth. It created a chain that could never be broken, and it became a vortex sucking each of us to the eye of the storm. .
I dreaded the devastation that was to follow when I broke and lost that trust. The hurt inflicted, the damage, the desolation, the wreck – it would happen within. Things would change completely, never to be the same again. The mind would be affected, the psyche, and most grievous of all, the heart. My friendship with them would die a natural death and be buried in the deepest graves, the whole poetry of it all haunting either of us. Our experiences and memories of the time we’d have spent in entirety together would become whistles of reminiscences half heard in the blackness of the night.
I did not want to lose the trust I had built for myself with the Shaloms, but still there was this feeling, desire, within me. Unless the desire, the feeling, was satisfied, I couldn’t rest. I craved what I couldn’t get yet tried to get despite the odds.
I was in love, head over heels, heading for the hill, in LOVE again. The girl was none other than Shirli. Holy-dooly! I loved her from the first day I saw her and I vowed not to rest till her heart whooped for me. It took five months of trying to win her over before she accepted.
Nonetheless, there was a problem. Shifra was more attracted to me and she did not fail to show it, and many times she asked me out when I was free. I would pick her at her work place or at the University and go to places she wanted us to go, but honest to God, she never violated my airspace to be picked by my romantic radar. All along I wanted Shirli.
Meira was a sweet girl, but aloof and distant. I never even felt the remotest feelings for her. They were my sisters, right? However, for Shirli I could slap the devil a good one, if not sell part of my soul to the devil, for some old fashioned incest. You can’t help whom you fall in
love with, even if they are denied to you by consanguinity – so long as everything is consensual.
Shifra liked the jolly side of life, holidaying and partying, and I did my best to ward her off many times from taking me to clubs as late as 10:00p.m. on weekdays. She liked going mostly to small neighbourhood bars for a cool fun night out in a chic area in Tel Aviv that appealed to the artsy and indie crowd like Florentin and Haoman 17 (Florentin quarter); and she was an excellent dancer.
Shirli on the other hand was not too much into life like her sister despite being in the same University where she could influence her. She liked to live life as it was since she won’t live that long to a hundred years. Clubbing and night partying was not part of Shirli, and she made sure that she was always safe in her house before dark.
Meira was just there, floating in the flotsam of whatever went down the drain. She had to be pushed to do anything, but when she took the bold step she would overdo.
The good news was that at last Shirli gave me a chance, but under one condition – not to trifle with it, it was too dangerous even to think of trying. Moreover, I should take one step at a time for if I made a mistake I’d lose everything just like that (she made a snapping of the fingers to show how I’d lose it). I was not going to let anything come in between me and her. Nothing.
My Shirli... my song.
CHAPTER 95
5th October,
Tel Aviv, Israel.
She was dressed in a wishy-washy frilled fine satin dress and stilettos, her long tar black hair pulled into a wind-snared curls-gone-to-frizz ponytail, devoid of makeup but glowing with splendour.
After a ten minute drive, her McLaren F7 Cabriolet pulled up at the Hayarkon Park, the Israel’s Central Park according to my gal. We were to have a “Green Day”.
Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) Page 21