Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “Something big has happened,” the friar said to Wädi.

  “I’ll go out and see what happened.”

  “Don’t think of doing anything so foolish! We’ll stay with the children until we are sure there is no danger,” the friar replied.

  It didn’t take long for a group of women to come to the school looking for their children. They were terrified, and one of them explained that the King David Hotel had blown up.

  Brother Agustín smiled, and made a gesture to Wädi that he shouldn’t take what the woman said entirely seriously. Wädi could not help but be worried, though. The British governed Palestine from one of the wings of that hotel, and Wädi did not dare think that the explosion could have been an attack, an “eye for an eye” from some Jewish organization taking revenge for “Black Saturday,” the day when Operation Agatha saw hundreds of Jews arrested.

  When there was no longer a single child left in the school, Wädi went to the hotel, which was nearby.

  The British soldiers were stopping curious bystanders from approaching the hotel, but he could see that the south wing had been turned into a pile of rubble. Later on he found out that the tragedy had killed ninety-one people and wounded more than a hundred others.

  Wädi thought he could see Omar Salem among the wounded people receiving medical attention, and insisted to a soldier that he be allowed to approach.

  Omar Salem was in shock, but had not been seriously wounded. He had been in the hotel’s garden when the explosion took place, and this had saved his life.

  “Yusuf!” Omar Salem said when he saw Wädi leaning over him.

  “Was he with you?” Wädi grew worried to think that his Aunt Aya’s husband could be somewhere in the rubble.

  “No . . . no . . . I was waiting for him . . . He had to bring me some papers for a meeting . . . I . . . don’t know . . . but I didn’t see him.”

  Wädi wondered whether he should stay with Omar Salem or go look for Yusuf, but the nurse made the decision for him.

  “Go look for the person you’re worried about, this one will be fine,” she said, pointing at Omar Salem.

  He didn’t take long to find Yusuf, and they hugged and comforted each other.

  “Omar Salem was waiting for me, I was late, and when I got here . . .” Yusuf held back his tears. He couldn’t stop thinking that he might have been among the dead.

  When Omar Salem saw Yusuf he couldn’t stop himself from growing emotional. “You’re safe,” he said and hugged him close. Then they decided that the best thing to do would be to leave.

  When they got to Omar’s house, his wife was waiting for them in the doorway, nervous because she knew about the explosion and feared for her husband: He had gone to a meeting at the King David Hotel that very morning.

  The woman insisted they call a doctor to examine Omar, but he refused.

  His wife continued to insist, and he finally gave in. His head hurt and it was difficult for him to understand what was being said to him. The explosion had left him deaf.

  Yusuf took charge of the situation, followed Omar’s wife’s instructions and went off to find a doctor.

  Wädi could not do much at that moment, so he went off to the print shop, just in case the Moores had some idea about what might have happened.

  Mr. Moore seemed to have lost his stiff upper lip. He was walking from one side of the room to the other, showing all the signs of being agitated. His wife Elizabeth was asking him to calm down.

  “They said that just before the explosion some soldiers stopped a group of men, but they took them for hotel employees . . . It was they who set off the explosion . . . I don’t want to think what sort of people they must have been to carry out such an atrocity!” Mr. Moore cried.

  “Perhaps we can help,” Wädi said.

  “The most important thing to do now is to find the people responsible and hang them. May God forgive me, but that is all the people responsible for such a tragedy deserve,” Moore replied.

  “We’re worried, because some of our friends might be among the victims,” Elizabeth Moore admitted.

  This could no longer be a day like any other, so the Moores said goodbye to Wädi and sent him home until tomorrow.

  “We have to visit some people . . . ,” Elizabeth said apologetically.

  It was a relief for Wädi not to have to stay. He wanted to go home, to see that his father was alright. It was not likely that Mohammed would have been at the King David Hotel at midday, there was no reason for him to be, but even so, he needed to make sure, and also to check that Hassan, his father’s old uncle, and his son Jaled were well. Jaled was a wealthy merchant and like everyone of that sort who passed through Jerusalem, it was not unlikely that he would go to the King David Hotel to seal a business deal.

  As soon as she saw Wädi opening the gate in the fence that led to their farm, Salma came running toward him.

  “Allah be praised! Your father is looking for you in the Old City, we were worried about you.”

  “I’m alright, Mother, I was with the children when the explosion happened, but where is father looking for me?”

  “He said he would go to the print shop.”

  “I’m coming from there, I hope he gets there before the Moores leave, so they can tell him that I am well and that I came back home. I should go and look for him . . .”

  “No, it’s better if you stay here. It wouldn’t make any sense for you to go out looking for each other.”

  “And Uncle Hassan? And Jaled?” Wädi asked without hiding his anxiety.

  “Hassan is well, you know that he barely goes out anymore, but Jaled . . . Your father is worried about him as well.”

  Wädi said that he had met Yusuf and Omar Salem and that both of them were alright.

  “Allah wanted to protect them. Tell me, what actually happened?”

  “All I know is that the King David Hotel has fallen down. Mr. Moore told me that a group of soldiers came across some people who claimed to be hotel employees, and that there was a gunfight . . . But I don’t know if it’s got anything to do with the collapse of the hotel.”

  “And if anyone would have wanted to destroy the King David Hotel . . .” Salma found it difficult even to dare to say what she was thinking.

  “I said as much to myself, but the explosion could have been an accident . . . I don’t know what to think, Mother . . .”

  “Maybe someone decided to give the British what they deserved by attacking their headquarters.” Salma looked at her son, regretting what she had just said.

  “I have thought that as well.”

  Mohammed took another couple of hours to return, and sighed with relief when he saw Wädi, although he already knew that he was safe, as he had seen the Moores before they left the print shop.

  “I went to Omar Salem’s house, Yusuf was there. He told me that he had a meeting at one o’clock with an Egyptian merchant and that this had saved his life. If he had been earlier he would have been caught up in the explosion. Omar Salem paid the price for being punctual—he arrived a few minutes before the designated time and saw the hotel collapse almost on top of him.”

  “He was complaining of a headache and said that he couldn’t hear too well,” Wädi remembered.

  “The doctor said that his loss of hearing was due to the shockwaves from the explosion,” Mohammed explained.

  “Will he be deaf forever?” Salma asked.

  “I don’t know, the doctor said that we’ll need to wait for a while before we can reach a definitive diagnosis. Of course, the person I’m most worried about is my cousin Jaled. I’ve been to the King David Hotel. I went to the hospitals, but no one has been able to give me any news. Omar Salem has promised that he’ll send his men out to look for him. My Uncle Hassan is too old to do anything, and as for his wife Layla, well, you know how she is. She never stops crying. S
alma, I’d like you to come with me to Hassan’s house, you’ll be able to help them. And Wädi, go over to Hope Orchard and see if they’re all alright.”

  Marinna was glad to see him and hugged him like a mother hugs a son. “I could have been her son,” Wädi thought to himself.

  Neither Ezekiel nor Igor were at home. But Marinna knew that both of them were alright. Ezekiel had gone out with Sara first thing in the morning. He wanted her to see the kibbutz where he had lived for a while as an adolescent. As for Igor, he had been at the quarry all day, and was still there.

  “Miriam went into the city, she’s worried about her brother-in-law Yossi and her niece Yasmin. You know that Yasmin never leaves her father, and Yossi has not gone out much in the last few years, but every now and then he likes to meet with his friends to have a chat on the terrace of the King David. As for Mikhail, he was in Tel Aviv this week,” Marinna said.

  “And Louis?” Wädi asked, worried.

  “You know that Louis comes and goes and we never know where he is. But if he were in Jerusalem he would have come to Hope Orchard, so he cannot be here.”

  Jaled had been wounded. They didn’t find out until a day later, such was the confusion that reigned. The doctors were not optimistic about his condition, and Mohammed cursed the people who had nearly taken his cousin’s life.

  “They will have to pay,” Mohammed said, and Salma trembled to hear her husband talk this way, because she knew that he would not rest until he found the people who had damaged so many lives.

  In the following days they found out that the Irgun had been the responsible party. They had put more than three hundred kilos of dynamite in the basement of the hotel. The Irgun claimed that they had called the hotel to tell them that they were going to explode a bomb. But nobody seemed to have received the call. The explosion had taken the lives of British people, Jews, and Arabs.

  For all that the Jewish Agency and Ben-Gurion himself condemned the attack, nobody doubted that the Haganah, Ben-Gurion’s secret militia, was also to some degree to blame, because in the last few years they had smoothed over their differences with the Irgun in order to present a united front to the British.

  “Even if they didn’t plant the explosives, they knew about it. They knew that their friends from the Irgun were going to plant the bomb, and they are equally guilty because of that,” Mohammed said bluntly.

  Salam asked Wädi to speak to Mohammed.

  “If Jaled dies, then your father will want to seek revenge, and you have to stop him from doing that.”

  Wädi asked himself how he could stop his father from doing what his conscience told him to do. Mohammed was a man of firm ideas, honorable, tenacious, loyal to the death to the people he loved, and he thought that if someone hurt the people he loved then he would have to pay. All that Wädi dared remind him was that vengeance, “an eye for an eye,” was what the book of the Jews said.

  “If a man is unable to defend his people, then what kind of a man is he? Who can trust him?” Mohammed replied.

  Father and son could not be more different. Wädi had inherited Salma’s peaceful and conciliatory nature. Just like her, he was a dreamer who hated violence, whereas Mohammed was a warrior of the old school. Even Aya, his sister, would sometimes tell him in jest that he was not like anyone else she knew in the family.

  “Father was not like you, he never let himself be carried away by his emotions.”

  To everyone’s joy, Jaled recovered. But while he was in the hospital his mother, Layla, suffered from a fatal heart attack. She died and her son was not able to accompany her body to the grave.

  Hassan lost the desire to live. Not even the hope that his son would recover helped him escape his apathy. He had lived with Layla for fifty years, they had had two children: Salah, dead for a dream of a greater Arab state, and now Jaled, fighting for his life. He could deal with both these tragedies, but only when he had Layla at his side; without her he couldn’t find the strength to carry on breathing.

  Salma went to his house every day to clean and take him some of the food that she cooked for Mohammed and Wädi.

  “I’m worried about your Uncle Hassan, he hasn’t wanted to get out of bed for several days now,” Salma said to Mohammed.

  “I will go and see him, and insist that he comes with me to see Jaled, that will cheer him up.”

  The day Jaled left the hospital, everyone went to see him at his house. Salma had outdone herself, making several dishes for the guests.

  “At last I can get married!” said Noor, Aya’s daughter, as she greeted her Aunt Salma.

  “You don’t need to be in such a hurry, marriage lasts for a long time,” Aya said.

  Noor did not answer her mother, to do so would have been to admit that she was in love with the young man her father had chosen for her. Emad was tall and strong and worked with great skill. She was keen to live with him. She had always asked herself if her mother loved her father like she loved Emad. Perhaps it is time that removes all hope from a marriage, and that was why she never saw her mother’s eyes sparkle when she stood near her father.

  Mohammed had convinced his Uncle Hassan to get out of bed and greet his son Jaled.

  “Your son would be sad to see you in this state.”

  Wädi was sent to fetch Jaled from the hospital to take him back to his house, and he was told not to tell him that the whole family was waiting to celebrate his recovery. Jaled was extremely moved when he saw all his relatives waiting for him on the threshold.

  On this occasion, Mohammed had not invited anyone from Hope Orchard. Wädi had suggested it, but Mohammed was inflexible.

  “How could I invite them? It was a Jewish bomb that nearly took Jaled’s life.”

  “But our friends are not responsible for what other Jews do,” Wädi protested.

  “Don’t be naïve, son, you know very well that in the last few months all the armed Jewish groups have joined together to fight against the English. Ben-Gurion condemned the attack against the King David Hotel, but the Haganah knew that something like that might happen. No, they wouldn’t be comfortable and neither would we. Let’s wait a bit for things to calm down.”

  And as they waited, Noor married Emad, and the inhabitants of Hope Orchard did come to the wedding. Aya would not have allowed things to be organized in any other way. Marinna was still like a sister to her. Even so, the two groups were not very comfortable with each other. The groom’s friends looked mistrustfully at this group of Jews whom the Ziads treated as if they were members of the family.

  Omar Salem scolded Yusuf for the presence of Louis, Igor, Marinna, Miriam, her son Ezekiel, and Sara, the strange woman who never left his side. Mikhail and Yasmin came to the wedding as well.

  Marinna told Aya that her husband Igor had thought about not coming, but she had said that not for anything in the world would she miss Noor’s wedding.

  Mohammed knew that Louis’s presence was not simply motivated by any affection he might feel for Noor. He could speak to Omar Salem and the other important figures on the Arab side without arousing too much suspicion. As soon as the ceremony was over, Louis went straight up to Mohammed.

  “I am sorry about what happened to your cousin Jaled,” he said.

  “Tell him that, he was the one who was about to die,” Mohammed said ill-humoredly.

  “I will tell him, but I wanted to tell you as well. The Haganah had nothing to do with what happened at the King David Hotel.”

  “You want me to believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought that there was no room for falsehood in our friendship.”

  “I promise you that we had nothing to do with the attack, and please believe me when I say that we would never have allowed it to go ahead if we had known how many people it would have killed and injured. There were Jews among the victims as well, you will recall.”


  “What do you want, Louis?” Mohammed asked, as he knew this man, who was old enough to be his father, very well.

  “What I have always wanted: to stop there from being a conflict between the Arabs and the Jews. The English will go, and you and we will stay here and we will have to live together.”

  “And how will we do that if you want to create your own state?”

  “I don’t know how we will do it, but we will have to do it, we have to build our future together.”

  Omar Salem joined the conversation, something Louis had been waiting for.

  “The British are going to try to have a meeting in London again,” Omar said, looking straight at Louis.

  “Yes, I know. Palestine is starting to be a burden to them. They want us to find a solution that is acceptable to everyone, them included,” Louis replied.

  “And what is the solution?” Omar asked.

  “I think that the Arabs and the Jews are agreed that the British should leave. That is the first step, then we will have to come to an agreement between ourselves.”

  “An agreement? There’s nothing to agree about. Palestine belongs to us, the Jews can live here if and only if they acknowledge that. Ah! And the boatloads of Jews must stop coming for good.”

  Louis shrugged, and that gesture was his reply. Neither the Jewish Agency nor the Haganah had any interest in stopping the wave of illegal immigration into Palestine. They were defying the British Empire and its control over the waves in order to bring Jews who had survived the war and the extermination camps over to Palestine, and they would continue to do so.

  “We want to reach an agreement with you,” Louis insisted.

  “And we want to have control over our own country.”

  “We have to understand each other. We are here, and Jews will carry on coming. This is the land of our forefathers.”

  “You think we should give up our land because there were Jews here two thousand years ago?”