Almost Dead Page 13

  ‘Why are you looking at your hands like that?’

  ‘What? No reason.’

  ‘Let’s change places. I want to see the street.’

  I rose and waited for her to move past me and when she sat down I touched her on her shoulder–a small but intimate gesture. I moved to the other side of the table. She said–or so I remember–she said:

  ‘I was thinking, Croc. I was sitting in the toilet and I was thinking that life really does go on. Life stays in this world. It doesn’t disappear. Giora’s gone, and you come and sit down at the same table, and life goes on. We’re still breathing. He was a good man, did you see that at all?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I think I could.’

  ‘He was a good man, and it is terrible. It hurts very, very much. I saw him every day. I touched him and talked to him. He had such a pretty voice.’ Her voice, pretty too, was higher than usual and trembling; a little strangulated. ‘But I was sitting there thinking that you just cannot stop this life. It’s like water finding its way over rocks and concrete and tarmac into the earth. You can’t stop it.’ She fell silent and I don’t think I said anything. Her eyes were fixed on some spot on the tabletop; possibly her fingers were stroking her Ice Europa cup. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘I mean, it was a nice kind of thing to think. Maybe the nicest thought I’ve had in a while.’ And she smiled, with her mouth closed, more with one corner than the other, a hopeful, sad, wise sort of smile, and it seemed like the air trembled between us.

  20

  ‘The last thing in the world I need is those people with their Croc signs knowing I take care of you. Is it really true about what you did to him, Fahmi? I’d never have believed it in a million years. You look…’

  O country, O my country, O country of our fathers, I will sacrifice for you eternally, with determination and with fiery vengeance, made strong by my people’s desire for our homeland. I climbed the mountains, I fought, I strove mightily and untied the chains of bondage…

  ‘You look so…’

  But the body won’t move, and the eyes won’t open.

  ‘…I don’t know, good hearted. I can’t imagine you hurting a fly, let alone the Croc.’

  The Croc? What is all this about the Croc?

  ‘You just don’t have a murderer’s eyes. I can tell. Maybe I should try and talk to them…’

  Where is the Croc? Not a bad guy. Five hundred shekels for a day’s work…

  ‘But if they were here instead of me they’d have disconnected you. I could do it in a moment. The tube for your piss and the tube for your air, and then…’

  The Croc on Noah’s Ark with Tommy Musari, and then with me. With me, driving in his little green car along the beach, my apple in my lap…

  The Al-Aqsa mosque was calling us to rise up against our exploiters. For you, my steadfast nation, together we will fight. Call with all your strength: Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar! We will revenge every mother’s tear and every drop of blood, and for every shahid that dies another will rise. For you, my steadfast nation…

  Mahmuzi woke early, read the Koran and prayed. Slept well. I wouldn’t have managed to sleep at all on my last night.

  Bilahl came, in Naji’s Mazda. He wasn’t going to give himself to the cause, but he was giving us his Mazda, for a day.

  One more test for the explosive belt. Bilahl gave Mahmuzi some scented soap and sent him to scrub himself clean for his God. After he’d showered he put on the new clothes Bilahl had brought and we drove to Ramallah in the Mazda. Bilahl parked on a side street, gave Mahmuzi a twenty-shekel note and sent him to the hairdresser’s. I got a hundred shekels to buy a videotape and rent a camera for the day.

  One of the plastic lions in the square in Ramallah was missing its plastic head: above it a huge poster of Arafat told us All you need is willpower. I walked by the butcher’s where the guy got murdered in a robbery–closed up now. There were lots of people on the streets: pretty women from the good Christian neighbourhoods come in for the markets, students on their way to the UNRWA College, seen-it-all old merchants lounging on chairs on the pavements like lizards, trying to soak up some sun.

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ asked the grey-haired old guy in the camera shop, peering above his glasses. ‘If I may ask.’ The air smelled of mint, from his glass of tea.

  ‘Of course you may, sir. Our friend is getting married. There he is, across the street at the hairdresser’s, getting ready.’ He explained how to use the camera, pushing a tape inside and shooting me as a test. Then I filmed him, framed against all the other framed portraits on his walls. I left my green ID card as a deposit and strolled over the road.

  Mahmuzi was silent but the hairdresser wouldn’t shut his mouth. He talked about the soldiers who’d come to his sister’s house in Al-Birah the week before. They’d gone through the refrigerator and the cupboards and taken a whipped-cream cake. Ibtisam had made it for her daughter’s birthday. They didn’t break anything. But they stayed for hours, told her family where to sit, when to go to the bathroom. ‘And the dogs ate the cake. Is that what you want?’

  He was talking about Mahmuzi’s hair. Clean shaven, with his hair wet and styled, Mahmuzi looked entirely Israeli.

  ‘Everybody wants their beard off and a modern cut these days,’ the hairdresser grumbled. ‘What’s the matter with them? I mean, I don’t have a beard either but I think of myself as traditional. What’s happening with the young…’

  ‘How much?’ said Mahmuzi.

  When we got back to the Mazda, I saw that Bilahl was nervous. The driver he’d wanted to use had lost his nerve and disappeared after Abu-Zeid’s assassination. He had to find a replacement, get an ID card and papers for him, and yellow plates for the Mazda. All the way back to Al-Amari, Mahmuzi looked out of the window in silence.

  I hung both the flags–the green one with its quotation from the Koran, the white one with the drawing of Al-Aqsa, an assault rifle and the legend ‘Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades will free the Holy Land’. Both the rifles we’d used in the Bab al-Wad attack were still in the apartment: I put one beside the prayer mat and made Mahmuzi hold the second, crouching down. Bilahl produced a rusty Kalashnikov and a few landmines that had been dug out of the earth over the years. None of them worked, but they looked good enough for the video. I hit Pause. Mahmuzi prayed, then got to his feet and tied a green ribbon around his head.

  I released the Pause to record again and held up Bilahl’s text in front of Mahmuzi with my free hand. He read:

  ‘I, the living shahid Mahmoud Salam al-Mahmuzi, choose to die a holy death in the name of God, in the footsteps of the shahid Halil Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, a fighter in the name of God, a member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. I will walk the path of the shuhada and revenge the death of the shahid Halil Abu-Zeid at the hands of the occupying army in order to free all the Islamic holy lands and to ascend to the great, the merciful, the compassionate God, to live for ever in his gardens and dwell beside the pools of heaven.’

  He continued staring at the camera and I continued filming. Nobody said a word.

  Svetlana, what the hell are you doing? I’m freezing here. Can we not get some…ah, hot water, that’s just what I need, yeah…that’s really not so bad…

  ‘You like the washing, don’t you?’

  Not as much as you do, Svetlana.

  ‘You respond to the warm water, don’t you? My hands on your body?’

  Not true, you little Jewish whore! Just shut up and tell me about the Croc. Where is he? And where’s Mother? Where’s Grandfather? Why is there nobody here? Why am I stuck here alone with you, Svetlana?

  In this endless dream…

  ‘Now don’t make faces. Don’t get irritated. What did I say? Enough. Enough of this squirming, sweetheart…’

  The driver arrived. It was the woman from Shaar Hagai. Good looking. She was wearing a tight shirt and trousers and lipstick and shades and had her hair back in a ribbon: for the checkpoints. When I smiled at her Bilahl gave me a furious look and sent
me inside. He talked to her quietly about the operation. All that remained was to dress Mahmuzi with the belt. I took out the bulb and the battery, connected the electric circuit and entered the safety-catch nail into place. ‘One–connect battery. Two–pull out safety catch. Three–push the button.’ He wore a shirt over the belt, and a sweater on top of the shirt. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, anointed himself with more perfume, and just before he left, put on a faded denim jacket. I wished him good luck. ‘God willing, we’ll meet again in heaven,’ I said. Bilahl stood close to him and spoke with a quiet intensity.

  ‘Give yourself to God. Free the holy lands of Islam. And when you are in heaven don’t forget us. Help us to become shuhada as well. Speak well of us, that we might enter too. Inshallah, soon. This whole world is worth less than a fly’s wing in comparison to being with God in heaven. There you will be the most glorious of kings. It is the will of God.’

  Outside, the Mazda was already breathing clouds of white exhaust smoke into the cold air. Mahmuzi kissed his Koran, got into the back seat and closed the door. The Mazda pulled away, and that was all.

  The driver dropped Mahmuzi about a kilometre before the Kalandia checkpoint and made it through without any trouble, smiling at the soldiers and flourishing her blue ID card. Usually it’s enough. She drove two kilometres past the checkpoint and stopped shortly after the turning to Bir Naballah. Mahmuzi took a bypass route used by construction workers which the army hadn’t figured out yet. To be safe he was carrying a fake work permit from the Hebrew University. She picked him up again and, on entering Jerusalem, bought a large bouquet of flowers which she laid on the dashboard. The sky was incredibly clear; perfect and pale. She drove on Route 1 until she saw the walls of the old city to her left, continued down towards the city centre, turned left into King David Street and drove to the end of it, and then on down the hill via the road adjoining the Bell Garden. She entered Emek Refaim Street.

  Mahmuzi was quiet all the way, only peeking from time to time at his Koran and mumbling, ‘Allah chose me.’ She knew the Café Europa because she’d been there on a previous visit to Jerusalem. There was good coffee and always plenty of people. An older, bald man in a green shabby coat had made a pass at her. He’d asked what such a pretty girl was doing on her own in a place like that. Then he asked whether he could pay for her. She’d turned her back on him.

  ‘Look to the right,’ she said. ‘That’s the place. Quite full.’

  As they went past, Mahmuzi turned his head. ‘The security guard doesn’t look too serious.’

  ‘Good. If you’re not sure, there are more places along the road.’ Mahmuzi shook his head and she pulled up. Her stomach was aching with tension. She sighed. ‘All these Arab houses. The thieves took everything. Without shame.’ Later, when I learned about all of this, Bilahl told me that she was Halil’s cousin. Mahmuzi connected the battery to the explosive belt.

  ‘Take the bouquet. If you can, wait five minutes, until I’m far enough away. Good luck.’

  He got out and she drove off, and in her mirror she saw him get closer to the target, a bouquet of yellow flowers in his hand, and it seemed to her as if he walked in without the security guard checking him. At one of the red lights on the way to Talpiot she looked in her mirror at the line of cars behind her and heard what could have been a faint explosion. She drove into the car park of a mall and went in to walk around. In the electronics shops there were radios and TV sets showing various channels. Although she couldn’t hear what was being said, she stopped outside one and watched–she would be able to tell. A live interruption at that time of day would be enough. The solemn angle of Danny Ronen’s eyebrows would be enough.

  According to Channel 2’s report later that evening, the guard (only lightly injured) would probably just have glanced at the bouquet and indicated with his eyes to Mahmuzi that he could go in. Haaretz described what the shahid would have seen: a lot of glass everywhere, those round red-and-black tables, a long wooden bar with round bar stools. He would have smelled the coffee and tuna. Perhaps, Yediot Achronot speculated, somebody (now dead) had spoken to him, and he would have smiled back and whispered in his heart, Shut your fucking mouth, you’re going to die. He would have gone to the bar and waited in line and ordered something simple in pantomime, something easy to order, something fitting for his last drink on earth. Water, possibly, or a coffee. He would have sipped it and looked at his watch and pulled the safety-catch nail. And, perhaps, at the very end, he spat on the floor and looked up into the shocked face of the girl behind the bar (now dead) as she opened her mouth to protest. ‘Don’t…’ she may have said, who knows, and that’s when he would have pressed the button.

  21

  I don’t know where I’d be today, or who, if we’d played tennis or gone to the centre of town, or if the day hadn’t dawned so clear that Shuli had had the urge for an Ice Europa, or if such a thing as an Ice Europa had never been invented or if we’d left half an hour earlier or ten minutes later, or if–the biggest if of them all–she hadn’t asked to change places. An infinity of ifs. We stand at a crossroads a hundred times a day and we have to make our choices or we can never progress, and our choices determine who we are. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it was that cold, metallic morning. And yet I can’t get rid of the feeling that, for the third time, it wasn’t me but somebody else who was making the decisions.

  Shuli returned from the toilet and said she had thought the nicest thought, and smiled her hopeful, closed-mouth smile, and then the air trembled.

  It’s impossible to differentiate between what I think are my memories and what I’ve constructed from newspapers, photos, TV footage and the accounts of other people who were there and whose memories may themselves have been constructed from newspapers, photos and TV footage. Maybe nothing of what I am going to relate now is really mine, or maybe it all is. In any case, what I think I remember is that the air trembled and there was darkness. As if we’d been teleported to a different place: water dripping from the ceiling, chunks of concrete and clods of earth, black-and-red tables flipped and shattered; puddles on the floor. A building-site smell, a scorched-meat smell, a tear-gas smell, and the smells of coffee, blood, gunpowder and flowers. I couldn’t stop staring at a mobile phone, half spilled out of a woman’s handbag, and I realised that was because it was ringing. It reeled my gaze in among the chaos of the shouting. If there was shouting. Wasn’t there a sickening silence? Or both–first the silence, then the shouts, and then the crying. I didn’t see Shuli at all. I don’t remember anything of Shuli after what she said and her closed-mouth smile. I do remember a yellow flower–I don’t have a clue how it got there but other people also mentioned seeing these flowers. They said there were three separate explosions, stark white lightning, and an intolerable feeling above all of being trapped. All that I seemed to have missed, like the kick to my head that needed a couple of stitches and left me with a bump and a permanent scar. I don’t remember the kick but I do remember the foot that kicked me. I watched the foot fly towards me, wearing a heavy army boot. I didn’t get it for a moment, and then I got it and I wanted to scream and maybe I did.

  Someone was asking me whether I was all right. I opened my eyes but I couldn’t seem to answer. I was hot, I felt as if my skin was speckled with little burning spots. A voice told the hand that was trying to lift me not to: ‘Check that nothing’s broken first.’ The hand disappeared and came back as fingers gently examining my body. I was turned over and investigated further and I must have passed the test, because at last I was lifted up. ‘Can you walk? We’d better get out of here.’ I leaned on a shoulder and walked. Something was sticking to the heel of my shoe. I tried to clean it off with a piece of metal while I sat on the pavement waiting for an ambulance. I tried to clean the soles of my shoes and looked about me.

  A body in a blue Adidas shirt was lying at an unnatural angle in the shattered glass and ash, its face burned, mouth wide open, eyes staring upwards, a ring on one of
his fingers. People were shouting, ‘Another piece over here,’ and a look passed between me and a guy with scalp-locks who was covering up body parts. We both swallowed smiles. Why? I guess it must have been ‘piece’, meaning ‘chick’ in Hebrew slang. Somebody ordered me to cry and put a chocolate cube in my mouth. A tall girl in a Café Europa T-shirt was dazedly wandering around; another girl was refusing to get in an ambulance. Volunteers from ZAKA, religious types in fluorescent plastic vests, were collecting limbs and viscera and fragments of flesh in plastic bags so that the proper rites could be given over the bodies.

  ‘Are you all right?’ There was a hand on my shoulder. A bespectacled woman with short brown hair and a pleasant pale face. ‘I’m Seelvia,’ she said in a South American kind of accent. ‘I’m from the mental health clinic in Emek Refaim. I heard the explosion and came down to help.’