by Hesh Kestin
Flo Spier leans forward to whisper in the president’s ear.
“Your highness,” the president intones. “That’s wonderful, truly in line with the Islamo-Christian tradition of turning the other cheek. But six million folks is one big demographic. They may have to stay where they are a bit longer, until myself and my co-heads of state in the West can work out how many go here, how many there.”
“Delay, my dear Mr. President, could carry with it a resolution less than desirable. We have a proverb: ‘Unwatered, the camel may travel great distance, but not forever.’ As you are aware, these Jews illegitimately occupy Muslim land. Under such circumstances, it may be difficult to restrain other Islamic leaders from dealing, ah, less gently with this, as you call it, demographic.”
“Well, your kingship, if you don’t mind I guess it’s time to deal with the press.” The president has what he came for. As for the Israelis, that can wait.
Photographers move in to snap the two rulers shaking hands, again and again and again. Though the president would have liked to make the announcement in a joint press conference, the House of Saud scotched this from the get-go. The press conference is not an Islamic tradition. Arab democracy must be developed slowly and carefully. Perhaps in a hundred years.
57
IN THE READY ROOM of USMA Forward Attack Squadron Wildcat, the three pilots watch as Damian Smith announces what has just been agreed in the president’s meeting with the Saudi monarch. “According to White House sources,” Smith reads from a teleprompter, “gasoline prices at the pump are expected to fall slowly but steadily, possibly to pre-Mideast war prices, as existing more expensive oil stocks are depleted. In related news, the six-ship aid flotilla chartered by an American church group to bring humanitarian aid to the population of cut-off Tel Aviv continues to steam toward that beleaguered city.”
The screen goes to an aerial shot of an old freighter leading five smaller ships in a long line moving across the Mediterranean, then to a stand-up of a blond woman costumed by Dolce & Gabbana as a French sailor—espadrilles, white linen culottes cut above the knee, horizontally striped blouse, and, just to bring it all home, a sailor hat topped with a red pompom. Past her at the taffrail, the other vessels bob in and out of view.
“CNN’s Connie Blunt, looking very nautical indeed, is on the lead freighter. Connie, what’s it like on board?”
Blunt takes Smith’s tease as a compliment. “Damian, spirits remain high here on board the CV Star of Bethlehem, a former Greek vessel registered in Liberia. That’s CV for Christian Vessel, though I have discovered a surprising fact: Christians are not the only religion represented aboard this vessel of mercy.”
The camera falls back to reveal a group of four individuals arrayed against the rail.
“Hi there!” She offers her mic to a red-haired twenty-five-year-old, who is obviously thrilled with the chance to be on television. “What’s your name, sailor?”
“Taylor C. Briggs, ma’am.”
“And where are you from, Taylor?”
“Kansas City, ma’am. Just outside.”
“Taylor, you may have heard this before, but you’re not in Kansas anymore, are you? Care to tell us why you’re here?”
“Well, ma’am, in church my pastor called out to volunteers for a Christian mission. I’m a diesel mechanic back home, tractors mostly. This here’s a diesel ship. I got chose.”
“Very good. And you, madam?”
The woman is about fifty and wearing a flowered kerchief against the wind, which she immediately removes. “Mary Beth Shostak—with a K? Lovelock, Nevada. A lot of people never heard of it.”
“I can’t say I have, Mary Beth. Where about is Lovelock, near Las Vegas?”
“Oh, my, no. That would be the other side of the state. We’re just about seventy miles due southwest of Winnemucca.”
“I see. Now tell us, Mary Beth, how it is that you’re here, so far from Lovelock and, uh, Winnemucca.”
“Well, I’ve been an ER nurse for twenty years. I guess that’s why I’m aboard. Kind of a just-in-case thing. Never been out of the US ever. We don’t get too many big ships in Nevada.”
“Well, Mary Beth, let’s hope your services are not required. And you, young man. I can see you’re not a churchgoer.”
In the studio, unseen, Damian Smith cringes.
“You mean because of this little thing on my head? Yeah, there’s a large Jewish contingent, more on the other ships. William J. Hurwitz. Billy. I’m a student at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Can I give a shoutout?”
“Fire away, Billy.”
Billy waves, only his fingers moving. “Just want to say hi to my mom and dad in Albuquerque, my baby sister Simone, and all the crew at JTS, especially my Talmud teacher, Rabbi Wolfe, and my girlfriend, Ruthie. Mom and Dad, this may come as a shock, but before I signed on I...Ruthie said yes!”
Applause and whoops rise from the larger group behind him, which the camera pans.
“Anything else?”
“Ruthie, I love you!”
More applause. Someone lets out a two-finger whistle.
“And why are you here, Billy?”
The young man seems momentarily at a loss. “I guess if you were Jewish, you wouldn’t have to ask.” He suppresses the urge to tear up, then looks around. “Or Christian. Which reminds me. Don’t worry, Mom, Dad—Ruthie’s one hundred percent kosher!”
“Congrats, Billy—and Ruthie. Or should I say mazel tov? Which brings us to a young man you wouldn’t normally think would be on this ship going to the aid of Tel Aviv. Young fella, what’s your name?”
“Mohammed Said. Mo. I’m from Detroit. Dearborn, actually. And I’m here representing the Palestinian community of Michigan, to protest the mistreatment of the Palestinian people by the Arab and Iranian invaders.”
“Fascinating, Mohammed.”
“Mo.”
“Mo it is. I see you’ve got something prepared.”
The kid raises a hand-written sheet, which he holds in front of him with difficulty as the wind pushes it back. “Seventy years after losing our land to the Jewish State, my people has again lost its land, this time to fellow Muslims. As usual the world ignores the suffering of the Palestinian people.” He looks up to see how much he can get away with. “Just another few words?”
“Go ahead, Mo.”
“On behalf of the Palestinian community of Michigan, I have joined this humanitarian effort in hope the Palestinian and Israeli peoples can work together to defeat the foreign invaders so that our two nations can live together in peace.”
He is so relieved to have delivered the message he lets go the paper. It flies up, then back, rising over the bridge, and disappears.
“Wow. Mo, that was impressive. Is there anything you’d like to add?”
“Well, as everybody knows, tomorrow the University of Michigan plays Texas A&M in the Gator Bowl.”
“Yes?” Blunt says.
Mo opens his jacket to reveal a U of M t-shirt.
“Go Wolverines!”
Her cameraman closes tight on Blunt. “En route to Tel Aviv aboard the CV Star of Bethlehem, where spirits are high, I’m Connie Blunt.”
58
ON A MOUNTAIN ROAD in Syrian-occupied territory outside of Jerusalem, an olive-green Cadillac flying the pennant of the Egyptian headquarters staff passes two Bedouin flying little more than donkey stink. If the young colonel driving the staff car could see their faces, which he cannot because he too is going west, he might note their eyes turn suddenly down and their chins tuck into their kaffiyehs as they urge their donkeys further off the road.
Alex checks the gas gauge the way every driver running out of gas does, hoping that somehow the needle will point up. The needle has its own opinion. About five kilometers back, the warning light came on. Since then he passed two Syrian bases, which no doubt have petrol pumps, but the same general staff insignia that permits him to sail through roadblocks would no doubt get him invited to coffee o
r even lunch with the Syrian base commander. Alex’s Arabic is properly inflected, but unfortunately he has the vocabulary of a ten-year-old, his age when his Egyptian-born mother, who raised him speaking Arabic, died. He is considering trying his luck at a Syrian base when a small gas station comes up on the right.
A young Arab mechanic is working on a car when he pulls up. The teenager wipes his hands on his trousers and comes out with a big smile. “Welcome, general.”
“Premium, please,” Alex says with great relief. “Fill it up. And if you have a jerry can, I’ll have that full of gas as well.”
“Regrettably we have no premium, excellency.”
“Regular, then.”
“Nor that, general. We expect a delivery at any moment.”
“And how long have you been expecting a delivery at any moment?”
“Oh, several weeks, excellency,” the kid says. He points to the east with a grease-darkened finger. “You must go back one kilometer, then left at the church. At the next building, ask for Abu-Yunis. He may have a small amount.”
59
IN THE CNN NEWSROOM, Damian Smith runs methodically through today’s top stories, none of them happy. In TV news, everyone else’s tragedy is meat and potatoes. On the big screen behind him is a long shot of a red rescue helicopter hovering alongside a snow-covered mountain. “Meanwhile,” Damian reads, “The search for those missing climbers has been called off as fog continues to close in on Mt. McKinley. Efforts are expected to resume as weather permits.” He adjusts his earphone, leaning forward slightly in the atavistic gesture all networks train their anchors to stifle. The effort is futile. When humans don’t hear well, we lean in. “In breaking news, warships of the Egyptian Navy are reportedly moving to intercept that Christian aid flotilla en route to Tel Aviv. Andrew Lagonis is live at the Pentagon. Andy?”
Lagonis, a sixty-five-year-old leftover from the glory days of network news, is doing a hasty stand-up in a Pentagon corridor while behind him uniformed officers cross hurriedly back and forth. Lagonis is breathless with the scoop.
“Damian, that’s right. I’ve just gotten word an Egyptian naval taskforce is indeed moving to head off those six aid ships, many of whose passengers and crew are American. Sources here say US initiatives to convince the Egyptians to turn back have been unsuccessful. So far we don’t know if Egypt aims to intercept the ships or, in the worst case, fire upon them. One thing is certain: the aid flotilla is on a collision course with the biggest guns in the Egyptian Navy.”
60
IN THE MASSAGE CABIN of Air Force One, a navy corpsman works on the president’s back while the leader of the free world, prone on the padded table, becomes increasingly more tense.
“Well, what the fuck does the damn press expect us to do? Go to war with the entire Middle East?”
Flo Spier, out of the burqa and into a red jogging outfit, stands to the side with Felix George, who wears a three-piece suit and his usual look of disdain. “They are American citizens, sir.”
“They’re damn fool American citizens mixing themselves up where they got no beeswax.”
“Mr. President, the simple takeaway is American citizens on a humanitarian mission are about to be attacked. It’s not going to play well on TV. They’re flying the American flag.”
“Illegally on non-US vessels,” St. George says.
“I’m talking optics, Mr. President,” Spier counters.
The president is having none of it. “And I’m talking pissed off. You mean to tell me the US of A is got to send in the Marines every time some lunatic bible-thumper inserts his dick in a foreign war? Isn’t there some law, Felix?”
“Neutrality Act of 1935, Mr. President.”
“Remind me again how that goes.”
“In essence, American citizens on warring ships travel at their own risk.”
“Sir, these are not warring ships.”
“Neutrality Act of 1937,” St. George says. “US ships are forbidden from transporting passengers or articles to belligerents in a foreign war.”
“You just said these are not US ships,” Spier tells him—and the president.
Felix St. George loves to play poker when he has all the cards. “Good one! That specific loophole was closed by the Neutrality Act of 1939. American citizens and ships are barred from entering a war-zone.”
The president grunts as the corpsman leans hard on a nerve. “Flo, I think that’s pretty clear.”
“Mr. President, the American people—”
“Flo, the American people don’t want to keep on spending ten bucks a gallon for regular,” the president says. “Case closed.”
61
IN NUMBER FOUR HANGAR at US Marine Aviation Forward Attack Squadron Wildcat, the installation’s top non-commissioned officer, a sergeant major who in civilian life may have a proper name but here is known only as Sergeant Major, laconically supervises the base’s cook, known only as Cooky, and five fascinated messmen. A Marine hoses fuel into a fifty-gallon drum heating perilously over a propane stove.
“Enough juice,” Sergeant Major announces. “Now johnwayne them cans. All of them.” He refers to the flat, hinged can openers used by the military since World War II—until the nineteen eighties the P-38, since then the larger P-51—though no one is certain why the actor, who never saw combat other than on celluloid, was so honored. By extension, to johnwayne something is to open it.
“Sergeant Major,” the cook cautions, “we ain’t gonna have no tomato sauce or ketchup for two months. When the colonel gets back, she ain’t gonna like it.”
“Boo fuckin’ hoo. Until she comes back, the responsibility’s mine.”
Having filed notice of this potential problem, for which Cooky will have to pay when base personnel find themselves facing weeks of ketchup-less French fries, to say nothing of unadorned cheeseburgers, Cooky affirms his commitment to the command structure. “Aye, Sergeant Major!” Nobody, including the pilots who outrank him, fucks with Sergeant Major. Cooky shouts to the messmen, “Sergeant Major has spoken!”
After they pour gallon cans of tomato puree and ketchup into the oil drum, the master gunnery sergeant demonstrates the kind of expertise that only a grizzled twenty-year veteran Marine can boast. “Now secret ingredient numero uno.”
The messmen dump in powdered milk and stir. The concoction turns an admirable Pepto-Bismol pink.
Sergeant Major’s craggy face develops the rictus that passes, among Marine non-commissioned officers, for a smile. “Secret ingredient numero dos. Three volunteers. You, you, and you. One step forward, unholster them guns the good Lord give you, and fire at will.”
“In the soup?” Cooky asks. He is not questioning Sergeant Major’s authority, only his recipe. Even for Marine Aviation, this may be over the top.
Sergeant Major allows the rictus again to flash over his face. “Cooky, don’t call it soup. It’s paint, is all.”
The three volunteers piss into the drum.
62
WITH ONE EYE ON the gas gauge and one eye on the road, Alex turns back in the direction from which he came, in doing so nearly hitting the same two Bedouin he passed only moments before. After he just about grazes them, he sees in his rearview mirror that they have stopped to bow. He thinks: if I really were an Egyptian officer, I would check them out.
At the turnoff he parks in front of a neat whitewashed stucco church, marked modestly with a cross over the door but boasting no steeple. Since the eighth century, when Islam swept across the Middle East, Christian Arabs have been careful to moderate public displays of their faith. Even under Israeli rule, when Christians no longer feared government persecution, it remained wise not to affront their Muslim neighbors. But however modest Arab churches appear from without, inside they are decorated like jewelry bazaars.
Alex steps into the smaller building to the right of the church.
It is a barber shop. Immediately, two customers waiting their turn beneath the cross that dominates the room quietly leave. An Eg
yptian officer is not to be made to wait. The territory once known as Israel, where every bastard felt himself a king, has returned to being part of the Middle East, where every king, no matter how small, lords over his bastards without limitation.
The barber is forty, bald, fat, and in need of a shave, practically the official uniform of the Middle East chapter of the barbers’ guild. He nods to Alex as he holds a mirror to the gleaming, freshly shaved head of the customer in the single chair, who takes one look at Alex’s uniform and gathers his things.
“Abu-Yunis welcomes you, excellency,” the barber says in Arabic. “As it happens, you are next. Shave?”
“I was informed there might be petrol,” Alex says in Arabic.
“But surely first a shave?”
Alex feels his face. An Egyptian staff officer would always be clean-shaven. “Why not?”
“Hair as well, Excellency? You will be satisfied. Abu-Yunis works clean.”
Alex glances in the large mirror opposite to see the last customer’s bald pate move out the door. “Just the shave, thank you.” He takes a seat in the chair and immediately his face is covered with a hot towel. The sensation is at the same time one of luxury and paranoia—it feels so very good, but he cannot see.
“You drive west, excellency?”
“Ow mff jmmd o?”
The towel is removed.
“How did you know?”
Abu-Yunis spreads lather over Alex’s face with a brush so soft it might be a caress. “Excellency, here Abu-Yunis is barber, gas station, grocer, also building supplies. Therefore he must know everything.”
“I’m glad someone does.”
The barber begins shaving Alex’s cheek. His touch is light. The straight razor seems barely to graze his face.