Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  Outside in the compound, Lucas saw no sign of their van. Dr. Naguib, who had a grid of small scars on his face, continued to walk with them.

  "Years ago we lost many. Dehydration, enteric fever. There was malaria here. Diphtheria. Trachoma was very common."

  "And now?" Lucas asked.

  "And now it is better," the doctor said. "Now the U.S. will pay its dues at the United Nations again and so people say things will improve." He laughed pleasantly.

  "Can that be true?"

  "Of course not. But the U.S. should pay for everything, I think." He gestured toward the sea. "Yes, for everything. Why not?" He was a Christian and a native of Gaza. He had studied in Iowa. "That is my opinion," he told them good-naturedly. "To my mind, the Americans should pay. Now they have the world as they want it."

  Lucas thanked him and congratulated him on the clinic.

  "The maternity clinic belongs to us," he said, "to the United Nations. But the pediatric side is the Children's Foundation's. All Nuala's doing."

  "They're lucky to have her," Sonia said.

  "She is a blessing," said Dr. Naguib as he went off.

  They were standing in the shade of a date palm that was the only green thing left of the British army's hospital garden. Sonia kicked at the ground and hunkered down at its base. Lucas got down beside her.

  "Remind you of Somalia?"

  "Somalia was much worse. Of course there, too, we had bad water. But it was very, very bad water. All the children died."

  "Not all of them, surely."

  "Oh, yes. All of them. Practically every goddam kid. Next thing to it. Slight exaggeration. They hardly had time to be born before they died." She looked at him sidewise. "Like in your poem. They learned to sing before they learned to talk."

  "And that's where you learned to paint your feet."

  She laughed. "Yeah. Because you had to do something far out, understand what I'm saying? Paint your feet like the women there. Had to do something like that."

  Para solidaridad, he thought, though he had the sense not to say it.

  "Sometimes weird, inappropriate food would arrive. Useless shit the kids couldn't eat. Caviar! So we'd open it and gorge and party. Put on the tapes and dance." She shook her head. "We were trying to keep from losing it."

  "I understand," Lucas said.

  "So you really went out to Yad Vashem yesterday."

  "Seems like a long time ago."

  "Well, I told you," she said.

  "Yes, you did. You said don't go there and come here."

  "I said not on the same day."

  "Maybe it's not such a bad idea," Lucas said. "We'll put it on the moral tour."

  "Will there be moral tours?"

  "For the press. And the press will recycle them for everybody's breakfast. Put the folks on buses, show them both sides. That way," he explained, "everybody will understand everything."

  "Believe it'll help?"

  "I think I have to believe it. It's my job."

  "Then why joke about it?"

  "Because what else is there?" Lucas asked. They stood up. "What about Nuala, Sonia? What's she up to?"

  "I guess she's in love."

  "We already know that," he said. "What else?"

  Sonia only turned away.

  "Well," said Lucas, "let's go find her."

  In a tent adjoining Nuala's pediatric clinic, they found a young mullah at work in a white-curtained compartment. He was being assisted by two other men of religion, both considerably older than he. A middle-aged Muslim woman, her eyes closed, reclined on a hospital bed while the mullah's assistant held up a plastic bottle of intravenous solution. The mullah was reading the Koran aloud. More Muslim women sat on benches around the tent, waiting their turn.

  "What's happening?" Lucas wanted to know. "Can we go in?"

  "Better not," said Sonia.

  "What's he doing?"

  "He's an exorcist," she said. "He's casting out devils."

  "With an IV?"

  "I think that's how you do it," Sonia said.

  They found Nuala and Rashid drinking tea in front of a little tin-roofed mud-brick hutch at the edge of the compound. They sat at a huge splintering wooden table that looked as though it had stood in someone's parlor for a hundred years. Nuala hastened to bring them cups and Rashid explained exorcism. He was wearing a newly laundered white coat.

  "In the plasma bottle a hole is made. Through the hole are read verses of the Koran. Then the djinn will depart by way of the big toe."

  "Always?" Lucas asked.

  "Yes," replied Rashid. "If the djinn is a Muslim."

  Lucas laughed politely and realized at once that no one else was smiling.

  "It is true," Rashid said. His tone was calm and pleasant and he did not seem offended.

  "And are the afflicted always women?" Sonia asked.

  "Often," Rashid said. "That is usual."

  "And why do you think that is?" Sonia inquired.

  Nuala laughed protectively. Lucas noticed her touch Rashid's wrist for an instant and then take her hand away.

  "That is their way," he said smoothly. Lucas thought there might be irony there for those who fancied it. Or not, if not.

  "The way of women," Sonia asked, "or of djinn?"

  "Maybe of both," Rashid said. "But this is true in the West, is it not? The possessed have usually been women, isn't it so?"

  "What if the djinn isn't a Muslim?" Lucas asked.

  "Then it must be converted."

  "I seem to remember hearing in Somalia," Sonia said, "about possessed women being beaten to death."

  "Not here," Nuala said. "We don't allow that."

  "In Somalia the djinns are beaten," Rashid said. "The women suffer by accident. But we don't beat djinns here because Ms. Rice will not allow it." He pronounced the trendy honorific miz humorously, self-consciously.

  "Would you like to look around our setup?" Nuala asked.

  "Yes," Lucas said. "Certainly."

  "Why don't you go with Rashid?" Sonia said to Lucas. "I'll stay here and gossip with Nuala."

  Rashid took Lucas back to the exorcists' tent and they stood and watched the process for a while. The mullahs and the waiting women ignored them.

  "Usually reporters want pictures," Rashid said. "But you haven't a camera."

  "I don't use one much."

  "Good," said Rashid. "Because you would have to pay the exorcists. And the pictures have been misused in the West." They left the tent and walked out of the compound toward the camp outside. "Words are better, I think."

  "For some things," said Lucas. "Tell me, what other religions are the djinn?"

  "They may be pagans. They may be Christians or Jews. The Israelis send us many Jewish djinn. To bedevil us."

  "What are they like?" Lucas asked.

  "They are as in the novels of Mr. I. B. Singer," Rashid said as they turned into the street. "They are as represented there."

  Back at the grand open-air table, Nuala poured Sonia more tea.

  "It's all quite sanitary," Nuala said. "I hope Rashid makes that clear to him. We get them fresh IVs and antiseptic. It's the popular religion, you see. And the religion of the people—you have to go along with it."

  "Is that what Rashid says?"

  Nuala laughed. "Yes. And it's what Connolly said in 1916. And it's what's happening now, in Latin America."

  "So Rashid is a secularist?"

  "Rashid's like me," Nuala said. "He's a Communist."

  Sonia began to laugh and wiped her eyes. "Jeez," she said, "you're breaking my heart."

  "Does that sound so quaint, then?"

  "It sounds a little quaint, yes. I mean, it makes my heart beat faster. But you know it's not on, don't you?"

  Nuala looked glum.

  "I mean, Jesus Christ, Nuala. You think they're gonna pray five times to the dialectic? You see the vanguard of the working class anywhere?" She looked up and down in a stylized manner. "You see the working class anywhere?"

&nbs
p; "And you're religious yourself," Nuala said bitterly.

  "I always have been," Sonia said.

  "You'll never make much of a Muslim."

  "I guess I'm not exactly a Muslim," Sonia said. "I guess I'm sort of a Jew." She thought she heard Nuala give a little gasp. "What's the matter with that?" she asked. "Don't you like Jews?"

  "I haven't been granted the opportunity to know many socially," Nuala said, "in my field of endeavor."

  "Well, you ought to start with someone other than Stanley," Sonia said. "Don't you think?"

  Nuala said nothing.

  "What are you doing, Nuala?"

  "You mustn't ask me too much," Nuala said.

  "What did you bring down in the van?"

  "I'll have to explain it another time."

  "Just because it's a United Nations van," Sonia told her, "doesn't mean it won't be searched. And whoever gets it for you will land in the shit. Like me."

  "If there was time," Nuala said fiercely, "I'd have explained. And I will."

  "Nuala, there are informers everywhere."

  "Right," said Nuala. "So I have to trust you. Can I?"

  "What was in the van?"

  "Ah," said Nuala, "what do you think?"

  "Guns."

  "Yes, weapons. Weapons of defense for those who are defenseless."

  "Why did you involve us in this?" Sonia asked. "Why did you involve Chris? And why me? I don't support killing no matter who does it."

  "Keep your bloody voice down," Nuala said. Then she asked Sonia softly, "Is it wrong? Is that what you're telling me? We have to protect our children. We have to protect ourselves from fanatics, Muslim and Jewish both."

  "I don't know," Sonia said.

  "Well, bloody decide," Nuala told her. "Decide now and that's an end to it."

  Sonia began to pace back and forth on the sand, numbering her fingers. She was half aware that it was exactly what her mother had done, pondering the purge of the Browderites and the Hungarian Revolt and Khrushchev's secret speech.

  "It was wrong to deceive me. It was wrong to involve Chris."

  "An unstable character," Nuala said.

  "Maybe," Sonia conceded, still pacing. Then she stopped and slapped the back of one hand against her palm. "To get guns for Rashid's militia isn't necessarily wrong. But it could be a mistake."

  "We're all that's left of the Communist movement here," Nuala declared. "If we're unarmed, if we're neutralized, the working class has no voice. With weapons we can police our camps and keep order. Without them we're helpless and the camps will be run by fanatics or the corrupt. This is the bloody Middle East, as your Israeli friends are always saying."

  "I'm not taking part in armed struggle. I'm not saying it's wrong. Once I might have. But now I won't."

  "Trying to be neutral, are you?"

  "I may give it a shot," said Sonia. "Some kind of peace isn't impossible." She stood watching Nuala brush the dark disordered hair from her eyes. The Rebel Girl, she thought. Maybe I envy her. "Tell me this," she said. "If guns come in—what goes out?"

  "Money," Nuala said. "Or dope. The Bedouin sometimes bring it in. Or it lands by boat."

  "And ends up on the streets of Jaffa."

  "Oh, don't give me that," Nuala said. "The Shin Bet connive with the dealers all the time. Here and in Lebanon. And we don't have the Soviet Union anymore."

  "Right," said Sonia. "So what are me and my nice white UN van hauling today? Will there be a couple of kilos of kif under my ass while the boys point those Uzis at me?"

  "Only Stanley's money," Nuala said. "I'll carry it."

  "I won't do it again, Nuala."

  "You won't say anything?"

  "Think I'm a snitch?" She went over and put her arm around Nuala's shoulder. Well, she thought, that's the end of that. "Better be careful, baby."

  "Just a little sedition and regicide," Nuala said, joking uneasily. "Christ, I was raised to it."

  They walked back toward the camp.

  "Know what the slaves used to say in Cuba?" Sonia asked her former friend as they went. " Que tienen hacer, que hacer no morir."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning, What you gotta do is not die."

  "Sound advice," Nuala said.

  When Lucas returned from his tour with Rashid, he and Sonia and Nuala started back. On the way they saw fires burning in Nuseirat and Eshaikh Ijleen. At the UN military beach club they stopped for a beer; both Sonia and Nuala were known there. The Danish officer they had seen in Gaza City the previous day was drinking beer alone at a table, watching the surf. He was boozy, sunburned and blond, and his rosy foreignness glowed like virtue itself. Lucas tried to buy him a beer, but he was too drunk to communicate.

  Afterward they went to the fish restaurant to have dinner with the Palestinian lawyer named Majoub. Ernest Gross of Israeli Human Rights was with him, along with Linda Ericksen, who was still volunteering her time with the IHRC.

  "Christ," Lucas asked Gross, "how the hell did you two get down here?"

  "Usual way. We took a taxi from the checkpoint. Bloke knows me. Always use him."

  "He is welcome," Majoub said. "Everyone knows him."

  But in fact, Majoub was being polite. Ernest, pretty obviously an Israeli to the Palestinian eye, took a considered risk in coming to Gaza, especially late in the day. The lawyer Majoub was at some pains to engineer his comings and goings and his safety depended to some degree on Majoub's own influence in the community. Nor were Ernest's enemies all Palestinians, although any attacker would very likely be one. There were those who would savor the irony of such an attack.

  "I want them to get used to seeing Linda," Ernest said, "so we're introducing her around."

  "First time in the Strip?" Sonia asked pretty Linda.

  "Well, I've been to some of the settlements," Linda told them. "Interviewing. But this is my first time in Gaza City."

  "A somewhat different perspective," Lucas said.

  "Yes," said Linda. "Of course, they could keep their own streets in better condition."

  No one said anything for a while. Lucas sneaked a look at Majoub, who kept on eating and appeared not to have heard.

  "Linda," Sonia said. "There's a water problem here. Also a military occupation problem. There aren't many sewers. People are living on forty cents a day."

  "I'll bet white people say that in Harlem," Nuala said. "Eh, Sonia."

  "They say something along the same lines," Sonia agreed. "Soweto too, I understand."

  "We were in court today," Ernest said, "Majoub and I. Anyway, before the civil administrator."

  "And as usual," said Majoub, "we lost. We always lose. I personally have never won a case."

  "What was the case?" Nuala asked. She and Sonia had been quiet on the drive.

  "We asked for a hearing on the confiscation of an ID," Ernest said. "A soldier took the man's card from him for whatever reason. No reason, says the man himself. He doesn't know the soldier's name or his unit. So he can't get to his job in Ashkelon."

  "You came all the way down from Jerusalem for a hearing about an ID card?" Lucas asked.

  "We had a lot to talk about," said Majoub. "Our report to Amnesty is due."

  "Is overdue," Ernest said. "See any evidence of Abu Baraka?"

  "Not particularly," said Lucas. "But I believe in him."

  "We must all," Ernest said, "believe in Abu Baraka."

  "Right," Sonia said, watching the port lights come on, an Israeli navy searchlight sweeping the old harbor. "Especially on an evening like this."

  The shrimp was excellent. Everyone said it was a shame about the impossibility of beer or wine.

  "One day," Majoub said, "we'll drive over to Alexandria. There one can still have wine."

  "For the time being," said Sonia.

  "Last ID case I had," Ernest said, "the poor bugger claimed a soldier ate it. Laughed out of court, right? But we asked around and what do you think?"

  "Some smartass kid ate it?"

  "You go
t it. Scarfed the thing, lamination and all. So the bloke loses his job."

  "Funny," Nuala said without humor.

  "Well, it is kind of funny," Lucas said, "in a dreadful sort of way."

  "Funny," said Nuala, "unless it's you."

  Lucas raised his glass in salute. "Someday," he proclaimed somberly, "somewhere, somehow—everything will be funny for everyone."

  32

  ONE DAY, with De Kuff and the others safely sequestered in Ein Kerem, Sonia was cleaning Berger's old apartment in the Muslim Quarter when two young men who claimed to represent the Waqf, the Islamic religious authority, arrived. Sonia offered them coffee, which they sternly declined. Both wore djellabas and white religious caps. One was short and dark-complexioned, the other sallow with a thin fringe of beard that served to frame his face. The pale one had large, expressive eyes and a prominent nose. Taken together, his features had a fey, slightly grotesque fascination. Sonia was immediately reminded of photographs she had seen of the young Frank Sinatra. She thought the man might have learned his antique English in India or Pakistan.

  "Here was a madrasah," he explained to Sonia. "Here also lived al-Husseini, the beloved. And Sheikh Berger al-Tariq, of blessed memory, who was your friend. We thought you were as we are, a believer."

  "We made allowances," said his companion, the dark one.

  "We're here to learn," Sonia said. "To pray and to study. This is why I came. This is why I invited my friends."

  "Which," asked the Sinatra-like man's companion, "is your husband?"

  Before she could improvise a respectable answer, the man spoke again. "If you are here to study and to learn, you, the friend of the beloved Berger al-Tariq, then surely you must know that the study of studies, the end of learning, is Islam."

  Everyone kept silent. The second man uttered a quick blessing.

  "I have no husband," Sonia said. "I live without my family. I also loved Berger al-Tariq, whom I bless, but he was not my husband. I revere Islam and so do my friends."

  The two men watched her for a moment.

  "What is it," the dark man asked, "that the old man tells the Christians? Why do they crowd around him?"

  "They even come here," the pale one said.

  "He has had a vision," Sonia said. "He speaks to everyone. Not only to Christians."