“Have you started?” Orly was as blunt as any Jewish Israeli.
“Some,” Munir said. “The same as the two of you have, unless I’m very wrong.”
Eric and Orly looked at each other. Neither tried to deny it. Their faith and the one Munir found himself inclining toward ever more hadn’t got on with each other lately, but they couldn’t keep from taking it a lot more seriously than they ever had.
Munir lit a new Marlboro while he was still chewing the last bite of his shawarma. He took a drag before he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “We do the best we can. What else is there to do? But when you measure what we can do against what Allah can do…” He didn’t go on, or need to.
“Shalom aleikhem,” Eric said.
“Aleikum salaam.” Munir went back to English: “And to you also peace. Yes, the two languages are cousins. So are the two peoples. But are any fights worse than fights among kin?”
“The way things look, no,” Eric said. Orly’s mouth twisted, but she touched Eric’s arm in a way that showed she didn’t care to quarrel about it.
“You are People of the Book. You are good people. The holy Qur’an does not deny you a hope of heaven,” Munir said, and then once more, “Aleikum salaam.” He raised his hand and the Marlboro in a sort of salute, then walked away from the stand, turned a corner, and disappeared.
* * *
—
“Ibrahim!” Jamal Ashrawi called.
“What do you need, boss?” the bodyguard asked.
“Where is the dog who serves the idiot who bragged of his schemes?” the Grand Mufti demanded.
Ibrahim looked at him. “Careful how you talk, boss. Somebody who doesn’t like you so much is liable to hear.”
“Should I care?” Haji Jamal was in a temper.
“You want to keep breathing, you better,” his bodyguard said.
“Then why do I keep you around?” Ashrawi said.
Ibrahim spread his hands. “We do what we can. You know that—you’d better. But if…somebody wants something to happen to you, we may not get lucky. We don’t work miracles, you know.”
“Neither does that Iraqi maniac,” the Grand Mufti said. “He lets the Jews work them with that Ark! Does he wreck the Temple? Ha! Does he get rid of that boy, the one who might be the Antichrist? Ha! Does he hand the Zionist entity a propaganda coup? On a silver platter!”
“You’re yelling again, boss,” the bodyguard said. “You don’t want to yell, especially not about…him.”
“If he can’t stand the truth…” Haji Jamal shook his head. “He can’t do everything.”
“God has judged the people who tried telling him,” Ibrahim answered. “He has a bigger organization than you, bigger than anybody but the Americans and God.” He named the biggest powers he could think of.
What Ashrawi said about the Americans made what he’d said about the Iraqi sound like love poetry. Ibrahim listened in open-mouthed admiration. “Go get his man,” the Grand Mufti added. “I want to speak to him.”
Ibrahim sighed. “It’s your funeral. I hope it’s not mine, too. It will be as God wills. There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God.” With the shahadah fresh on his lips, he went out to beard the bearded Iraqi’s henchman.
He came back sooner than the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had expected. “Well?” Haji Jamal said.
“Call him whatever you want, boss.” Ibrahim sounded cheerful—almost giddy. “He’s gone.”
“What?” Ashrawi could hardly believe his ears.
“Gone,” Ibrahim repeated. “He took off for…wherever. I heard four different things. Nobody’s got any idea.”
It made more sense than the Grand Mufti wished it did. He’d been surprised the lord of terrorists and his men came out of their Syrian fastness. The Iraqi must have wanted to supervise this in person. Much good that did him. But now he needed to disappear again, because he’d have the Americans and the Zionists hot on his trail.
“All right,” Haji Jamal said. “The Iraqi did some great things, but that was long ago, and what did it get him? Life on the run, forever.”
“He’s still dangerous,” the bodyguard said.
Ashrawi nodded, not wanting to quarrel, and went about his business. He didn’t spend all his time in hiding. Right now, the Zionist entity would be too busy chasing the vanished Iraqi to pay attention to him. His bodyguards thought so, too. And so he wandered through Hebron almost as a free man.
It gave him less satisfaction than it might. Hebron wasn’t a bad town, but it was a town. He missed Jerusalem’s brawling life. Even under enemy occupation, Jerusalem was a more vibrant place than Hebron dreamt of being.
He liked that thought, and turned in an alleyway to share it with his guards. Three large, burly men stepped out the back door of an olive oil merchant’s shop. Haji Jamal didn’t like their looks. He turned around—and found himself facing three more plug-uglies. They moved toward him.
“No!” he said. “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful…”
“You should be careful when you run your mouth,” one said with an Iraqi accent. “You should be, but you’re not.”
“Now you’ll get what’s coming to you,” added a bruiser behind him. “It’s your own fault, too.”
They moved in and started beating him. He fought back at first, but an old man against six young ones made bad odds. He sank to the ground and tried to cover his face and privates. He cried out whenever a punch or kick landed.
Someone must have heard him. He was sure of that. Nobody came to see what was going on, though. Did people know who was doing the beating, and know it was worth their lives to interfere? He wondered later. While it was going on, he just hurt.
One goon kicked him in the head three times. “Careful,” another warned. “We aren’t supposed to kill him.”
“Too bad,” the first thug said, and kicked him in the ribs instead. Haji Jamal, by then, was too far gone to care. Getting your head treated like a football wasn’t good for thought.
He didn’t know how the musclemen decided they were through, but they walked away and left him lying there. His nose wasn’t broken. He didn’t think he’d lost teeth. But his own bodyguards let this happen to him! What had the Iraqi said that made them back away? Threats to them personally wouldn’t have done the trick. They had courage to spare. But if they thought their families would suffer…
Something stabbed like an ice pick when he struggled to his feet. The curs had cracked a rib, then. He put a hand on a wall for support. They hadn’t stomped his fingers. Thinking about it, that was more luck.
Slowly, limping and wincing, Jamal Ashrawi started back toward his room. He wondered which was worse: the Zionist entity that ruthlessly suppressed everything Palestinian, or the savage Iraqi who punished anyone presuming to disagree with him.
Did it matter? He’d fallen foul of them both.
He came out onto a street with people on it. No one seemed surprised to see him battered and bruised and bleeding. Everyone seemed to have known what would happen if he showed his face outside. Everyone but me, he thought.
Ibrahim popped up out of nowhere. “You all right, boss?”
“No thanks to you,” Ashrawi said, spitting blood.
“I tried to tell you. You didn’t want to listen to me.”
Knowing he was right made the Grand Mufti no happier. “You were supposed to keep these things from happening to me.”
“We did what we could,” Ibrahim answered. “They were going to kill you slow and put it on the Internet, like they do with hostages. We talked them out of that. You ought to thank us.”
“I can protect myself from my enemies,” Ashrawi snarled, “but God deliver me from my friends.”
“That isn’t fair,” Ibrahim said. “We put our lives on the line to keep you br
eathing. You might thank us.”
“I might, yes.” Jamal winced again as that rib stabbed him. Breathing hurt, too. “When I’m sure I want to, maybe I will.”
* * *
—
“I saw it on TV.” Shoshanah’s eyes couldn’t have been wider if Chaim had scored the World Cup-winning goal for the Israeli national team. “You really did that?”
“I guess.” It seemed unreal to Chaim, too—much of it unreal like a bad dream. “God had a lot to do with it, too.”
“Well, sure.” That didn’t make her any less impressed. “Did He tell you so?” She took it for granted that God might want to talk to him. He wished he could.
“It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “I kind of knew I was supposed to get the Ark out of there. After that, stuff just—happened. I thought they were going to shoot me.”
“Wow!” Shoshanah breathed. Chaim admired the breathing. Who would have known anything so ordinary could be so beautiful? She went on, “You saved the Temple.”
“I guess,” Chaim repeated. “Just luck I was even there.” Was anything “just luck” these days? Had anything ever been “just luck”? The more he thought about it, the more he doubted it.
By the way Shoshanah tossed her head, she doubted it was just luck, too. She asked, “How did those”—she said something incandescent that was part Arabic, part Russian—“get onto the Temple Mount in the first place?”
“They jumped the guys who were going to take the bulldozers up there. Some of them spoke Hebrew, so they fooled the real workers,” Chaim answered. “I don’t know how they got past the soldiers so they could jump the dozer crews. I heard this from Army guys, you know, and they don’t want to admit they screwed up.”
“Army guys,” Shoshanah said scornfully, as if she knew more about them than she wanted to. Even before all this started, they would have come to the falafel stand, and she was pretty enough that they were bound to hit on her.
Chaim hadn’t thought much about soldiers till lately. Being ritually pure would have kept him from getting drafted when he turned eighteen. Many ultra-Orthodox refused military service. The government mostly let them get away with it.
“I heard all the shooting,” Shoshanah said, “but I didn’t think you might be there till I saw you on TV. Then…I don’t know what I thought then. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Wow.” Nobody’d ever said anything like that to Chaim before. Bashfully, he went on, “You want to know something? I’m glad I’m okay, too. I was so scared.”
“Why? God would’ve made sure you’d be fine,” Shoshanah said.
“If He wanted to, sure. If He decided he needed to do something else…” Chaim thought about Job’s unlucky relatives one more time. They’d got in God’s way, and He’d run over them like that bulldozer squashing Israeli soldiers. No—it was worse. The soldiers might have dodged, or the bulldozer might have broken down. Nobody dodged God.
“He wouldn’t do that.” Shoshanah sounded very sure.
“Ha!” Chaim said. If you looked at the Bible, God was about being mighty. So many prayers began, Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe….Not Prime Minister or President. King. A king did what he wanted. If his subjects didn’t like it, tough luck.
The way Shoshanah looked at him said she wanted to argue. But how was she going to argue with somebody who knew from experience? You couldn’t. Instead, she asked, “What will you do now?”
“Beats me,” Chaim said. “I feel like a football, you know? Somebody’ll kick me, and I’ll go wherever I roll.”
“No!” Now she sounded mad. “You’re your own person, no matter what. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t like you the way I do.”
That was as thought-provoking as the feeling he ought to run into the Holy of Holies and grab the Ark. All he said was, “I hope so. I wonder how much I’ve got to do with what’s going on, though. I bet the prophets didn’t always want to be prophets, either. They did it anyhow. If God grabs hold of you…”
She came around the counter and put her arms around him. “What happens if I grab hold of you?” she said. Then she kissed him.
There were video games where the lights flashed on and off when you won. That was what Chaim felt like. He’d got pecks on the cheek from his mother, but those had nothing to do with this. They might be called kisses, but so what? This was a kiss.
All the ghosts howled at the same time. Some, the kids, didn’t know what Chaim was doing. He didn’t, either, but he learned more with every astonished thud of his heart. Some who’d died as adults cried out in horror. Others felt the same delight Chaim did.
“What do you think of that?” Shoshanah asked from a distance of maybe two centimeters. She was almost as tall as he was; he could see gold flecks in the dark brown of her irises.
“Can we do it again?” Chaim blurted.
She laughed—not at him, or he would have been crushed. “Sure,” she said. He noticed more this time: how she molded herself against him, how soft she was, and how warm. He felt himself getting hotter by the second, especially in one place. Would that gross her out? It didn’t seem to.
When the kiss ended, he didn’t want to let her go. “Thank you,” he said—he’d always been raised to be polite.
This time, she did laugh at him, but not in a mean way. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “It takes two.”
“I guess,” he said. Did that mean she enjoyed it, too? He sure hoped so. If she did, maybe she’d kiss him some more.
“You’re funny. You know that?” she said.
“I guess,” he said one more time. But funny was way better than he’d felt with all the shooting at the Temple.
Out of the blue, Gabriela Sandoval remembered her first game of D&D. She’d been an eighth-grader; the session was at a middle-school friend’s house. The DM was a nerdy high-school sophomore named Elias Valencia. These days, he was a senior VP at Google. Nerdiness had a way of wearing off, or at least paying off, as you grew up.
That wasn’t why she remembered the game, though. She remembered what he’d said just before they started: “The way this works is, I’m God and you’re not. If I tell you Saturday Night Fever’s broken out, take off your chain mail and boogie.”
In the studio roughing out what they’d do when they went on-camera, she didn’t talk about D&D with Lester Stark. Stark was liable to think it sprang from Satan. But she had Saturday Night Fever, bad. “Do you know what this is?” she said.
Stark poured some bottled water into a plastic cup—a whistle-wetter—before shaking his head. “Tell me.”
“It’s the biggest story in the history of the world, that’s what it is!”
The televangelist sipped from the cup. Then he shook his head again. “I don’t think so.”
“How can you say that?” Gabriela had trouble believing her ears. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Well, you never know.” Stark’s dry sense of humor didn’t fit her mental picture of how a fundie should sound.
“So why isn’t it, then, if you’re so damn smart?” Gabriela tried not to swear around the reverend, but she slipped this time.
It didn’t faze him. “Because it’s bigger than that.”
She stared. “What could be?” Her whistle-wetter was coffee in an insulated plastic cup. She drank some, wishing it had cognac or Irish whiskey in it.
Stark still didn’t bat an eye. “The biggest, the last, story in the history of the universe. They don’t call these the Last Days for nothing, you know.”
“I guess not.” Gabriela flinched from thinking of things like that. If God, the God Who could say I’m God and you’re not so emphatically, was showing His hand for the first time in all these years, something big was cooking. But you went day by day as best you could. You figured tomorrow would be like today, because today was like yesterday.
Sometimes you got a surprise.
How big a surprise could God give you if He felt like it?
“You see what I mean.” Stark didn’t make it a question.
“Maybe I do.” Gabriela thought she had a good poker face. None of the TV execs she dealt with could read her, and those people had dorsal fins and peered through sniper scopes. But the preacher from Alabama saw straight through her, down to the fear she didn’t want to show herself, let alone anyone else.
“Is your soul ready for divine judgment?” Stark asked.
No, Gabriela hadn’t worried about her soul till lately. In the industry, a soul could be a professional liability. She knew dying was likely to be messy and painful, although, like most people, she thought about it as little as she could. But death? She’d figured death was like going under anesthesia and never coming out. Oblivion.
What if she was wrong? What if she’d have to answer eternally for everything she did here? Yeah. What if? She really wished that coffee were spiked.
“Who can say?” she answered after a pause.
Stark beamed, which startled her. “Not being sure is a sign you’re on the right road,” he said. “Have you thought about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”
“Not really. When I thought about it at all, I figured the Pope had a private line upstairs, if you know what I mean.” With a crooked grin, Gabriela added, “And right now, it looks like the Messiah’s a Jewish kid with nothing but peach fuzz. Do you think of talking with Rabbi Kupferman about converting?”
“All the time,” he answered, which left her without a comeback. People didn’t admit such things—except Stark did. He went on, “I still haven’t decided which side Chaim’s playing for. When I make up my mind…I’ll do whatever I do.”
“You think he’s the Antichrist, and Jesus will come along later?” Gabriela said. “Even now?”
“I think he could be.”
“You went to a seminary, not law school.”
“You mean you never heard of canon law?” Sure enough, Stark could take it and dish it out. He grew serious again. “It still seems an open question. It’s in God’s hands—and Satan’s.”
Alpha and Omega Page 37
