Damascus Gate

by Robert Stone

  "You must have come this way before if you went out to the settlements," Sonia said.

  "No," said Linda. "We went by way of the beach."

  "Really? Did you go swimming?"

  "Yes, it was great," said Linda.

  "Where was that?"

  "Oh, I don't know," Linda said. "One of the settlements. Somewhere on the shore."

  "Didn't it smell?"

  "What, the water? The beach?" She thrust out her long jaw and pursed her lips. "No, it was terrific."

  "Didn't you get the feeling that the guy who calls himself Abu Baraka might come from one of those settlements?"

  Linda looked startled. "Absolutely not," she said. "In fact, they have a good understanding with the local people."

  "Is that what one of the settlers told you?"

  "Well, yes. But I didn't see any reason to doubt it."

  "I think you'll find," Sonia explained, "that when the settlers say they have a good understanding with the local people, they mean that they've got the local people terrorized. 'A good understanding' means the Palestinians understand who's boss."

  "Well," Linda said, "the locals do steal sometimes."

  "I hadn't thought of that," Sonia said. "I bet you're right. Sure enough."

  For reasons that Sonia could not quite remember, Argentina camp had a rough reputation. It was set about with IDF checkpoints and surrounded by razor wire searchlights and machine-gun emplacements. From what Sonia could see, it seemed composed of the same gray sheds and littered, pitted roads as the rest of the camps. There was a front gate with IDF soldiers manning a sentry box, and the road into the camp devolved into a spiral of sandbags. A few civilians in sharp khaki tropicals watched as the soldiers gestured to the UN vehicle to stop.

  The soldier checking identification looked at both Sonia's and Linda's. When he saw Linda's he called out, "Human Rights Coalition!" One of the civilians walked over and looked at Linda's card, then at her passport, and then at her.

  "Supposed to be an Israeli organization," he said.

  She shrugged prettily.

  "You got to have an appointment to come out here," the man said. "We're not equipped for surprise visits."

  "I thought we had one."

  "We have no problem with IHRC. When there's an appointment, it's kept. Today there isn't one."

  "What do you suggest we do?" Linda asked.

  "I suggest you go back and make an appointment. Then come."

  With a smile to match his sarcasm, Sonia put the car in reverse while the soldiers on duty looked idly on. A short way down the road, a young man in a white shirt came up to the wire and waved at them. He seemed to be indicating a turnoff.

  "Oh, good," Linda said brightly. "He'll let us in."

  "Linda," Sonia said, "that guy was Shabak. Or something equally heavy. He wasn't fucking around. You don't play games with them."

  But the young man in the white shirt was indeed indicating a turnoff that led to an entrance from which sandbags had been removed. He was opening a gate. Sonia stopped the car.

  "Christ," she said, "I don't like this. Something's weird. You know," she said to Linda, "let's just go back across the line."

  But Linda was filled with passionate intensity. "No, no. Look, this kid is letting us in."

  "I see that," Sonia said. "But I don't like it. I'm not a big fan of the IDF, but I like them to know what I'm up to. I don't believe in sneaking in."

  "It's arranged," Linda insisted. "We arranged it."

  Linda, biting her lip, was not convincing as an arranger.

  "You arranged it? You arranged it without telling the IDF spokes-people?"

  "Yes," Linda said, seeming to seize on the notion. "That was the whole idea."

  A soldier in a watchtower was observing them through binoculars. He shouted something in Hebrew through a megaphone. From a nearby mosque sounded the call to prayer. The young man in the white shirt waved to the soldier in the watchtower and pulled the log-and-wire gate aside. Sonia drove the UN car just inside the arc of the gate and the young man closed it. She was trying to remember what she had heard about Argentina camp.

  "He's an American like us," the young man told Linda. He seemed to be indicating the soldier in the tower. "He's giving us a break. Come on, quick."

  They left the car and the man led them through the camp. Sonia liked this less and less. For the most part, the alleys seemed a bit more squalid than those of other camps in the Strip, although here and there some enterprising soul had transformed his hovel into something like a bungalow. The buildings were not the standard-issue 1948 UN model, and a few of them had television aerials. So there was electricity in the camp, probably a generator. The place seemed to be at once dirtier and better provided for than the others Sonia had seen. Unlike at the beach, Linda began to notice the smell. She crinkled her nose.

  The man, who seemed to want to avoid eye contact, took them to a little square where a few local youths, surly and druggy, looked at them with indifferent hatred. Narcotized hatred always had a special quality, Sonia thought. Impersonal, almost abstract, even philosophical. It appeared superficially less threatening to those whose job it was to contain it and was often preferred by them. The downside was its way of seeming to extend from the dull eyes of the haters into dimensions beyond the context at hand, through the seven spheres, from the corner of Perdido to the bottom of the sea. Infinitely implacable, because there was no reasoning with dead souls. That was what hell was about.

  The camp had a school with the plaque of the Israeli Ministry of Education. It appeared closed, but most state schools had been closed since the intifada began. There was also a small health center. Sonia and Linda followed the young man inside.

  The center also seemed unattended, although the equipment in it was clean and bright and the receiving station orderly. There was a metal chair and table with a kidney-shaped aluminum bucket. Beside the chair was a bed covered with a laundered green sheet. On the wall over the bed was a framed drawing of a stylized Bedouin encampment that looked as though it might have been taken from an American children's Bible.

  Against one wall, cardboard boxes were stacked to the ceiling. Each carton bore a stenciled label of its contents in a Scandinavian language. Touching the stack, Sonia realized the boxes were all empty.

  "Who runs the medical operation?" she asked.

  "Well, we used to," Linda said. "I mean, the House of the Galilean. Now it's part of the camp."

  The young man, who was tall and reddish-haired and on the nervous side, introduced himself to Sonia as Lenny. He did seem North American.

  "Who did you say you were with?" Sonia asked him.

  "Human Rights," Lenny said. "Middle East Watch."

  He kept not looking at her. This, Sonia had come to realize, usually meant something, though it was often difficult to decide what. Shyness, morbid hypersensitivity and homicidal racism could all assume the same aspect. But she did not for a moment believe that he had anything to do with human rights or that he worked for Middle East Watch.

  It turned out that he was supposed to be from California. He said something about Long Beach. All in all, he sounded like a man who had a job to do and people to deal with and just enough goodwill to manage it, with none to spare. Sonia was too anxious to listen. The whole thing was distressing. Lenny did seem fond of Linda, though, and she of him.

  "Lenny works with us in Tel Aviv," Linda explained.

  "That's great," Sonia said. She went to the door and looked out on the little square. The decrepit young Palestinians looked back sidewise. It was an especially scroungy and demoralized place, the generator notwithstanding.

  "Did you say you brought a video camera?" she asked Linda.

  "Yes. It's in the car. I'll get it."

  "Our cars get hit too," Sonia said, "and that parking lot's unprotected."

  "Let me," Lenny hastened to say. "I'll go."

  "I'll get it," Sonia said. "I have to get something of my own."

&
nbsp; She hurried out and down the alley that led to the gate before they could stop her. In one of the hovels, someone was watching CNN. She heard the voice of Bernard Shaw.

  A few kids were already circling the car when Sonia got to it. Linda's video camera was in plain view on the front seat. Sonia climbed in and tried raising UNRWA headquarters at Zaitun, in central Gaza City. She got the Rose of Saskatoon.

  "Rose! Sonia B."

  "Hey, Sonia!"

  "Meet you on three-eleven mike hotel."

  Switching to the peacekeeping force's military frequency was against regulations. Moreover, it was monitored by the IDF. There was a chance, however, that switching over to it might purchase a little time and salutary confusion.

  "This is UNRWA on three-eleven mike hotel," the Rose's voice said.

  Over the line, one of the PKF officers started bitching at them for being on a restricted frequency.

  "Rose," Sonia said, "we're over at Argentina camp. Can you get over here?"

  "Negative," the Rose said. "I'm alone right now." There was a pause. "Maybe I can. Wait."

  Sonia took a deep breath and asked the big hard question. "Was anyone supposed to be taking statements about Abu Baraka today? The beating of juveniles by the security forces? Some kind of meeting in the Argentina camp set up by IHRC?"

  "I don't know anything about it. Better ask Ernest."

  "Ernest is out of the country, Rose."

  "You're not actually in Argentina camp?"

  "Well," Sonia said, "on the edge like."

  "It's nasty over there," the Rose said. "Smelly. Stinky. And they don't let anyone in."

  "I'm hip," said Sonia. "I'm supposed to be waiting for Abu. Or something."

  "Something's screwy, Sonia. Stay out of Argentina camp."

  "Well, I'm with this Linda Ericksen person."

  "Swede?"

  "No, she's American. She's supposed to be arranging an interview with Abu."

  "Fuck that noise. Where are you?"

  "Well, I'm like ocean side of the main gate. At a side gate. I think it's just outside Nuseirat."

  "Oh," said the Rose, "bloody Nuseirat."

  "Something wrong?"

  "Hang on," the Rose said. "I'll be over as soon as I can."

  39

  WHEN SONIA ARRIVED at the dispensary with Linda's camcorder, three crestfallen Palestinians were standing in a row in the examining room. A broad-shouldered smiling man with a fierce mustache and cheap sunglasses was with them.

  "These were beaten," the man with the fierce mustache said humorously. "I am called Saladin. I beat them."

  The beaten Palestinians looked ratty and frightened, without dignity. They seemed to be toeing an invisible mark on the floor. One wore a brown army-style sweater, extensively darned and full of holes. The darning was old and unraveling; it looked as if someone had once cared enough to repair his sweaters and then just given up. He alternately picked at it as though for vermin and grabbed its sleeves to wrap it more warmly about himself. The second junkie seemed to be on the nod and appeared at the point of passing out on his feet. The third had a slack smile. Although it was warm, they wore long-sleeved garments. The man with the sweater had a nasty abscess on the back of his hand.

  Christ, thought Sonia, they're junkies too.

  "What a coup!" said Linda. She was filming it all.

  "Great," said Lenny.

  "When are they coming to town?" Sonia asked. "Because I know Chris Lucas is going to want to talk to them. This is really his story in a way. And there'll probably be television, right? Because the government's been denying this."

  "Oh, we'll never get them to town," Linda said.

  "Never," Lenny added.

  "Yes," said Linda, "this will have to be it."

  "This?" Sonia said. "This is all the Coalition needs? That's impossible."

  "I am Saladin," the grim old mustache repeated. "I beat them."

  "This man was in the Border Police," Lenny explained. "He's a Circassian from Mount Carmel."

  "I thought you were only coming out to make some formal arrangements for interviews," Sonia said, trying to stay calm. "Are you telling me that was it?"

  "Well," said Linda, "this will give us something for a joint statement. The Human Rights Coalition and UNRWA and even Amnesty International."

  "No, it won't," Sonia said. "It isn't anything."

  "Chris can interview them later if he wants," Linda said. "I doubt we can bring them back today."

  It was likely, Sonia thought, that both of them knew perfectly well that Lucas had dropped the Gaza Strip story. Probably, she thought, she should have taken him into her confidence before. But there had been personal considerations, and she had not wanted to be a snitch.

  "Well, Helen Henderson is coming over," Sonia said. "As a witness. We have to wait for her." She looked through the front door and saw the pale, dirty faces of children framed in it, watching them, unafraid. "I thought you were just a volunteer, Linda. I thought you just did, like, typing for the Coalition."

  "Well," Linda said happily, "this is my big chance." A little too happily, Sonia thought. With a little too much force and venom. Something was taking its course, like the song said. Call me Clueless Barnes, she thought.

  "Since when did the UNRWA people get involved?" Lenny asked Linda.

  "They're not involved," Linda said. "She must have called them."

  "Did you call them?" Lenny asked Sonia.

  "Well, yes. I thought we needed witnesses."

  "You're a witness," Lenny said. "Linda and I are witnesses."

  Saladin, the Circassian from Mount Carmel, saluted and marched the three junkie plaintiffs outside into the square. The children lined up to watch them pass. It was a semi-military procession, a parade.

  "We should get out to the car," Sonia said.

  "Yes," said Linda. "As it happens, we're expecting someone too."

  Lenny went along behind them, carrying a cardboard box with a wooden handle. They got to the car in time to catch two children in the act of trying the doors. The children peeled off in no particular hurry.

  The soldier in the watchtower was gesturing at them, pointing to his watch. Lenny gave him the thumbs-up sign and started hauling the gate open again. Linda helped him. Then Lenny climbed in the back seat with his box. They drove the UN car out onto the road and parked it.

  A moment later a heavy UN truck appeared, driven by a tall, dark-skinned soldier with frizzy hair piled under his blue beret.

  "Are you my folks?" he asked. "You have something for me?"

  It developed that they had, and it was Lenny's box. Leaving his motor running, the soldier climbed down from the cab. He had a big smile for Sonia. Perhaps for that reason she helped him take the box out of the back seat. It was very heavy.

  "Where you from, dear?" the soldier asked. "You ain't from here, are you? You ain't an Ethiopian girl?"

  "American," Sonia said, handing over the carton.

  "No fooling? How about that?"

  "How about you?" she asked him.

  "I'm Fijian. Long way from home."

  At the edge of the road, Linda was fiddling with the camera. For all Sonia knew, she was filming them.

  "What do you think of that woman taking your picture there?" Sonia asked the Fijian.

  "Reckon it's all right. She's done it before. Hey, I knew you was from Canada or the U.S. Where you live?"

  "I live in J-town," she said.

  "Come down to Tel Aviv tomorrow. Come to party. We've got Fijian blokes. Canadians. All kinds."

  His name, it turned out, was John Lautoka, a Micronesian rather than an Indo-Fijian, and he was quite handsome.

  The guard in the adjoining tower now addressed them through his bullhorn. He seemed to be growing impatient.

  "I think he's telling us to fuck off," Sonia said.

  "Right," said Lenny, "let's do it."

  From the edges of Nuseirat they could hear the amplified voices of muezzins.

  "
I don't want to be boring," she said, "but what was in the box?"

  "Oh," Linda said airily, "stuff for Ernest. Tapes, videos. Paper."

  Beyond Argentina camp's wire, a Laredo with the white letters UN taped to its sides whizzed past them and made a U-turn to the gate. It was the Rose and Nuala. The Rose climbed out; she still had the STUDY ARSE ME bumper sticker on her jeep but her attire was more modest. Nuala got out the other side.

  Nuala and the Rose looked at Linda briefly. They had all seen each other around.

  "I'm Lenny," said Lenny.

  "What'd you want to come to Argentina camp for, Linda?" The Rose phrased her question in the sort of friendly, cheerful and helpful Canadian manner that brought an accusatory pall over the entire exchange.

  "Well. I work for the Israeli Human Rights Coalition," Linda said. "And there are men in that camp who claim to have been beaten. So we made a tape."

  "Not in there you didn't." Nuala strolled over to her. "Ernest would never send you in there. Aren't you one of those American Christers?" She turned to Lenny. "Who're you, friend? What do you have to do with Argentina camp?"

  It seemed odd, Sonia thought, that Nuala would not know Lenny if he was one of their contacts.

  "Who told you to pick up here?" Nuala asked the Fijian driver, John Lautoka, who had been picking his teeth and comparing the Rose's and Nuala's structural dynamics.

  "I was told what I was told," the man said.

  Three separate covert conversations ensued. While Nuala questioned Lautoka, Sonia took the Rose aside. Lenny and Linda were left looking left and right in the middle of the dirt road, holding their own counsel.

  From the watchtower, the soldier who was supposed to be American whistled between his teeth and pointed at his wrist to indicate a contracting supply of time. Lenny waved him off impatiently. The soldier shouted something.

  "Do you know what this place is, Sonia?" the Rose asked. "This Argentina camp place? It's where they keep their snitches. No one in there is going to talk to a reporter or a rights worker."

  "She filmed these guys," Sonia said. "I thought we were making some kind of preliminary contact. She told me Ernest sent her. And Len had a friend on guard duty."