The Covenant

by Ragen, Naomi

  Prime Minister’s Office, Jerusalem

  Wednesday, May 8, 2002

  9:00 P.M.

  THE AREA AROUND the prime minister’s office, a large complex full of tall, nondescript office buildings near the Israel Museum and Hebrew University, was packed. Police and army vehicles patrolled the roads, cordoning off streets and checking ID for blocks around. Milos had no choice but to park on the sidewalk and hope that the traffic tickets wouldn’t catch up with him until he was safely back in Krakow.

  He found Julia almost immediately. She was interviewing a woman who was part of a dozen or so people holding up hand-lettered signs that read: STOP THE OCCUPATION NOW! THE IDF ARE WAR CRIMINALS, JUSTICE FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, and SETTLERS=OBSTACLES TO PEACE. They wore sandals and the cotton rags favored by backpackers who stock up on clothes in the street markets of Goa.

  He shook his head. “Why aren’t they protesting the terrorist attacks? Don’t they understand that their country is at war? And why are you filming them? Twelve people is hardly international news . . .?”

  “Even if there was only one, I’d interview him and report it. I’m telling you, they are the only ones in this country that give me any hope.”

  “They aren’t doves, Julia. They’re ostriches.”

  “Excuse me, Milos, I’ve got work to do,” she said coolly, turning her attention to her cameraman, her face suddenly closed.

  He suddenly regretted ever having touched her. “See you later.”

  She nodded, pursing her lips, not bothering to turn around and look at him. Enough was enough, she thought, annoyed. He wasn’t exactly a boyfriend, now, was he? She was the sailor, and he was just the equivalent of the proverbial girl in every port. But his criticism still rankled. It fed into the guilt she felt about callously producing the goods she knew her network wanted. One day, she comforted herself, I’ll be Christiane Amanpour. I’ll be the one who sets the agenda for the network. I’ll have presidents on the phone apologizing to me. I’ll start righteous wars against oppressors. I’ll save the weak, champion the poor Third World against the fat cats of corporate America and Europe. But not if I get fired. First and foremost, I have to keep my job.

  “No, don’t pull back,” she told the cameraman. “Get in as close as you can. We don’t need to show how many of them there are. I’ll give you the voice-over in a minute.” She picked up her microphone and looked into the camera: “Here in the government complex that houses the prime minister’s office, Israelis demonstrate against the brutal tactics of their own government. Some would call them traitors. Others, remarkable young people who are the voice of dissent that is so seldom acknowledged in a country that sees the daily destruction of Palestinian homes and hopes . . .”

  She felt a tap on her shoulder. “Julia?”

  “Sean. What is it? I’m in the middle here.”

  “They are starting the news conference now. You’d better head inside.”

  Reluctantly, she turned off her microphone. She’d finish the voice-over later.

  The room was filled with expectant reporters, heavy cameras, and microphones of various sizes and shapes. A low buzz of excitement rippled through the crowd. There were hundreds of journalists, only a handful local. Security was extremely tight, with armed soldiers lining the walls, wearing headsets and carrying automatic weapons. Suddenly, the prime minister entered the room, a portly, silver-haired former general. He looked alert and serious.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We have called you together to issue an official statement: We, the government of the State of Israel, have done everything in our power to investigate the brutal kidnapping of Dr. Jonathan Margulies and his five-year-old daughter, liana. According to military intelligence, they are being held by terrorists, members of the military wing of the terrorist organization Hamas, who call themselves Izzedine al-Qassam. The brutality and ruthlessness of these men are well known. Our sources tell us that the doctor and his daughter are being held in Palestinian-controlled areas, which are, according to the Oslo Accords signed by President Arafat, under the full security control of the Palestinian Authority.

  “Therefore, the government of Israel will hold Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority entirely responsible for the fate of Dr. Margulies and his daughter. We ask that President Arafat fulfill his obligations.”

  He put down the paper and took off his glasses. “I will answer a few questions.”

  “Ata be emet choshave sh’Arafat yanif eztbah? Kavod Rosh HaMemshala,Ata to choshav sh’e MedinatYisrael mafkira et baneha?”

  “What was that? What was the question?” Julia asked in a panic. They wouldn’t let Ismael in, and so she was without a translator. A local reporter took pity on her: “He asked: ‘Do you really think that Arafat will lift a finger? Don’t you think that the State of Israel is simply abandoning its citizens?’ “ the reporter whispered.

  “What the hell does that mean?” she muttered.

  “It means the politicians are holding back the army from doing its job. You foreign reporters just don’t get it, do you? If the IRA was kidnapping little British kids and doctors, and Tony Blair said that the British government wasn’t responsible for them; that the head of the Sinn Fein was responsible . . .”

  “It’s not the same thing at all,” Julia hissed, moving away. Her luck. Probably some right-wing fanatic from the ferusalem Post . . . She took her compact and looked into the mirror, running her fingers through her hair. She was up next.

  The reporter from the Guardian cleared his throat: “Mr. Prime Minister, by your own words you admit that Mr. Arafat isn’t involved in the kidnapping. Yet you are holding him responsible. Will the Israeli government use this as an excuse to invade Palestinian territory and break the Oslo Accords if you are unhappy with Mr. Arafat’s response?”

  Damn! That was exactly what she was going to ask . . . She didn’t listen to the answer, trying desperately to come up with something original.

  She moved up to the microphone.

  ”Julia Greenberg, BCN News. Mr. Prime Minister, I’d like to ask you if you’ve considered meeting the demands of the Hamas for the release of Dr. Margulies and his daughter, and if not, isn’t it really the Israeli government that is responsible for endangering their safety?”

  She saw the face of the prime minister of Israel color. Gotcha! she thought, repressing a smile. She didn’t bother listening to that answer either, looking around the room for Milos. But he was nowhere to be found.

  Milos stood in the street, holding the cell phone to his ear. He hoped Julia hadn’t seen him answer it. She’d no doubt wonder at its sudden resurrection. The simple truth was, despite the press credentials from Zycie, arranged by a friend who worked there, he wasn’t actually working for anyone. He could have told her he was a freelancer, but they were bottom-feeders in the journalistic food chain, completely lacking in any prestige.

  “Hello?”

  “Milos-cha, wnuk!”

  “Babcia?”

  “How are you?”

  “Don’t ask. It isn’t good, Babcia.”

  “Listen to me. I got a call from Leah. Her granddaughter, Elise . . .”

  His heart sank. “Tell me.”

  “They had to deliver her baby.”

  “What?! When?”

  “An hour ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Her placenta detached. There was hemorrhaging. They had to deliver by emergency cesarean.”

  “My God! Do they know why?”

  “It happened right after she watched that story on BCN . . . We saw it here in Poland. It was terrible, how they twisted everything . . . terrible . . .”

  “I know, I know,” he whispered. “I told the reporter.”

  “No—! She’s the girl? That one?”

  He felt his jaw tighten, and his fingers curl into a ball. “Yes. Babcia, is it a boy or a girl?”

  “A little boy . . . They don’t know if this baby . . . he’s so tiny. She had six weeks to g
o. If something happens to her little girl now . . . For the love of God, Milos, you’ve got to do something! It never ends, it never ends . . .”

  “I’m on the track of some important information about the tapes. Maybe it will have something to do with where the doctor is being held. I’ll go see Elise.” He stopped, listening helplessly, his breathing labored, thinking: unforgivable. “Don’t cry, Babcia . . .! I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.”

  He felt his insides churn with a sickening feeling of having overeaten something foul-tasting and full of harmful bacteria. He looked toward the lighted windows of the prime minister’s office, where the press conference was still going on: preening, self-important western journalists who’d given up their sacred trust to become cheerleaders for trendy causes, the way communist journalists had once been cheerleaders for the government. He could not forgive them. They were depriving the free world of its most valuable weapon in condemning and exposing the worst human scourge since Nazism: the targeting and murder of civilians to achieve political and religious ends. He threw down his cigarette and crushed it under his heel in disgust.

  He had not wanted to come. He was happily making educational videos on French culture for Polish television, drinking wine in little bistros along the Champs Elysees, when the phone call from his babcia came. It was a request from Mrs. Gold, Esther, the woman who had done so much for his family—including paying for his entire education. He could hardly say no. Besides, he had met Elise, years ago. He had come out of courtesy and obligation, without any illusion about really being able to help. He’d expected to spend a few days, politely express regrets he couldn’t have been more helpful, then head back to Paris and saner pastures. Now, suddenly, he understood that by some accident of fate, he had stumbled on some really important information. It was almost frightening.

  He walked along the sidewalk, weaving between the security guards, searching. There it was, across the street, the Honda Accord. Behind the tinted glass, he made out Ismael’s dark head. He tapped on the window. It rolled down.

  “So, stuck waiting out here, eh?” He offered him a pack of cigarettes.

  Ismael smiled, accepting the package and looking it over. “Polish?”

  “No. Lucky Strikes. In Poland, we are experts in blood sausage and bacon.”

  Ismael grimaced and laughed, removing a cigarette, then handing him back the pack.

  Milos put it into his pocket, shaking his head affably. “Yes, I understand. We Poles aren’t exporting much to the Middle East. Muslims and Jews aren’t big blood sausage fans.”

  Ismael came out of the car and leaned against it, lighting the cigarette. “There are many similarities between Islam and Judaism. Both of us believe our forefather was Abraham. Except Ishmael was his firstborn, his heir, the one Abraham tried to sacrifice to God. ‘The Dome of the Rock’ is where the sacrifice happened . . . that is . . . did not happen. God spared Ishmael.”

  “So, both Islam and Judaism value human life?”

  “Of course.”

  “So how do you explain Jihad? Suicide bombers?”

  Ismael took a long drag on his cigarette and watched the smoke curl toward the lovely bright stars over Jerusalem’s hills. “Such a beautiful place, Jerusalem. It’s been invaded so many times. Claimed by everyone: Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Arabs, Jews. People do what they want and find religious justification after. Every religion preaches goodness. But what they wind up doing is another story altogether.”

  “Weren’t the Jews here first?”

  “That all depends on if you see Abraham as the father of Ishmael or Isaac. We think it was Ishmael.”

  “The Bible says different.”

  “We have our own bible. It’s called the Koran.”

  “Why can’t Abraham be father of them both, Ishmael and Isaac?”

  Ismael shrugged. “People believe what they believe.”

  “Where are you from, Ismael?”

  “I was born in Syria. My father was an engineer. He moved to Saudi Arabia to work on the great construction boom from the petrol dollars. He died in a work accident when I was eight years old. My mother remarried, and we moved to Tul Karem to be with her husband’s family. I enrolled at Hebrew University. I got a degree in languages. I went to work in England for a few years, translating articles from Arabic into English. And then about ten years ago, I came back.”

  ”Any reason?”

  He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “What did Dorothy say in The Wizard of Oz? There’s no place like home.”

  “That makes you, what? Forty?”

  “Forty-one.”

  “Married?”

  He smiled. “Yes.”

  “Kids?”

  “Three boys and two girls.”

  “Is your wife English?”

  “No. Lebanese. My family arranged the match. They didn’t want an English daughter-in-law.”

  “And are you still there, in Tul Karem?”

  “Right next door to my parents.”

  “You are a lucky man. And how did you get into the news business?”

  “You sound like you’re interviewing me.”

  “Well, maybe I am. Our news bureau—”

  “Which is?”

  “Zycie, Gazeta Wyborcza—Polish dailies—anyhow, they need a ‘fixer’ in Palestinian Authority land. I’ve been shot at a few times, even with PRESS plastered in masking tape all over my car. It’s the Wild West out there. Would you be able to help us?”

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what, exactly, you need me to do for you, and how much you are willing to pay.”

  “Well, let’s say this. I understand from Julia that you were very helpful in getting the tape . . .”

  Ismael stubbed out the last embers of the cigarette under his heel with more force than was absolutely necessary. “She’s new. She misunderstood. I had nothing to do with it. I’m just a driver. I go where they send me.”

  “Julia said you were absolutely essential.”

  “Did she?” he said softly, almost to himself.

  “Julia keeps saying that I don’t know anything about the history of this area. That you are a great teacher.”

  “Ah. Yes.” He opened the car door. “Some other time, perhaps? I’m afraid I’ll have to be going. I will think about your offer, Milos. How can I contact you?”

  “Oh, I’m going to be around Julia. She can always find me. And how can I contact you, Ismael?”

  “The same way,” he smiled. “Say, could I ask you for another smoke?”

  “Sure,” Milos said, handing him back the pack.

  “You’re running out,” Ismael noted, returning it. Then he slammed the car door shut and sped off.

  Milos jumped, his heart racing. The car had brushed uncomfortably close to his toes, which suddenly ached. He sat down on a low stone wall and took off his shoe. His sock was soaked with blood. God! he thought as he took it off, wiping the deep scratch on his toe with a lint-filled tissue. What have I gotten myself into?

  But before he had a chance to explore that idea, his phone rang again. This time, it was his benefactor, Esther Gold herself.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Ben Gurion Airport, Lod

  Wednesday, May 8, 2002

  11:43 P.M.

  HIS PLAN, OF course, had always been to become the next Roman Polanski. But until then, filming the Louvre and the Cathedral of Notre Dame for Polish high school students was not the worst thing in the world, he thought, reaching down to massage his sore toe. As he stood in Israel’s international airport holding a cardboard sign with the name of a man he didn’t know and wouldn’t recognize, Milos wondered—not for the first time in the last few days—if gratitude, family loyalty and even idealism had reached their limits. His present casting in Mission: Impossible was not only dangerous, he told himself, but also faintly ludicrous. He just wasn’t the type. He was sincerely looking forward to the day when he could fly out of this nightmare
and back to his scintillating epic: Piotr Visits Paris.

  But as the son of Witold Jankowski and the grandson of Maria and Jozef, it was, perhaps, too much to hope that he’d be allowed to live a quiet, boring life filled with ordinary pleasures.

  He had been brought up with the idea that human rights were worth any sacrifice. His grandmother’s tales of her exploits during the war, his grandfather’s heroic death, his father’s imprisonment, had shaped his childhood. One didn’t live for one’s own comfort; one lived to make a better world, to right wrongs, to rescue the weak and the suffering. This is what it meant to believe in Christ. All of his people were larger than life, cast in a heroic mold that he had being trying to avoid as long as he could remember.

  For years his goal had been to approximate one of those characters on American television shows: long-haired boys who played in rock bands, danced with pretty girls and rode in fast cars. He’d studied film because it gave him the chance to dream about living in places like Hollywood, New York and the South of France. But then, somewhere in his freshman year, he’d found a box in the closet with all those yellowing leaflets his grandfather and father had written and passed around during the Communist era.

  They’d been an eye-opener. He’d spent a weekend holed up in his room, just reading. The call for human rights and human dignity, for justice and freedom to write and think and act, had done something to him. As much as he’d tried to fight it, it had stirred his blood.

  This was not his first trip to Israel. When he was eighteen, his grandmother had been awarded the “Righteous Gentiles Award” by Yad Vashem for risking her life to save Jews during the war. A moving ceremony had been held, and a tree planted in Jerusalem in her honor. Esther had flown them in, along with all of her friends and many of the Jews his grandmother had saved. It was then he’d met Elise.

  Such a pretty, lively girl! He would have fallen in love with her immediately if she hadn’t already been married by then. Besides, as his babcia had admonished him, a Jewish girl needed a Jewish husband. Especially an Orthodox Jewish girl. And what Milos needed was to work hard and to find a nice Polish Catholic girl. (Since then, there had been much hard work, and many, many Catholic girls, although not of the kind his grandmother had had in mind . . . )