by Paul Sussman
The detective had a head full of questions he wanted to ask, and a few choice comments to make to boot about the way he had been treated. He wasn't about to make them in front of someone as powerful as his country's foreign minister, however, and just mumbled a simple 'Yes, sir'. Gulami held him in his eyes, the worry beads processing through his fingers with a soft clicking sound, then, with a nod, sat back and crossed his legs.
'Sa'eb Marsoudi, I believe, needs no introduction.'
He indicated the man with the keffiyeh slung over his shoulder, who tipped his head at Khalifa. His hands, the detective noticed, were clasped so tightly together the knuckles looked like they would burst through the skin.
'Major-General Yehuda Milan,' Gulami went on, nodding towards the cigar smoker, 'was one of his country's foremost soldiers, now one of its most respected politicians. One of its most enlightened and courageous politicians as well, I might add.'
Milan also tipped his head towards Khalifa, taking a slow puff on his cigar.
'Detective-Inspector Arieh Ben-Roi' – Gulami gave a flick of his worry beads towards the figure standing in the corner – 'I believe you already know.'
Out of politeness, Khalifa half-raised a hand in greeting, annoyed with himself for not having guessed the man's identity sooner. Ben-Roi made no effort to reciprocate the gesture, just stared at him out of the shadows, his expression distinctly hostile.
'Let me repeat, inspector,' Gulami continued, 'what you hear tonight is to go no further than these four walls and the inside of your head. There is a very great deal at stake, more than you can possibly realize, and I will not have it jeopardized with loose talk. Is this understood?'
Khalifa mumbled another 'Yes, sir', desperate to know what all this was about but sensing that it was not his place to ask, that whatever the reason for his presence out here it would be revealed to Gulami's timetable, not his own. The foreign minister peered at him through his heavy, black-framed glasses, then turned to Milan and Marsoudi, both of whom gave the faintest inclination of the head, as if to say, 'OK, tell him.'
'Very well.' Gulami sat back in his chair and stared down at his beads. When he spoke again the level of his voice had dropped, as if even out here in the middle of nowhere he was still worried about being overheard. 'For the past fourteen months the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt has made this building available to sais Marsoudi and Major-General Milan as a secure and neutral environment in which they can meet and talk, away from the media spotlight and the pressures of their domestic political situations. Both have spent their lives fighting for their respective peoples, both have suffered great personal losses in the name of those peoples' – Milan shifted in his seat, throwing a half-glance back towards Ben-Roi – 'and both have, independently, reached the conclusion that those same peoples are doomed to catastrophe unless they can find some wholly new way of engaging with each other, some different path to tread. Their purpose out here: to try to forge that different path; to develop proposals for a viable and, insha-allah, lasting settlement to the conflict that has blighted their land for so long.'
Whatever Khalifa had been expecting, it wasn't this. He bit his lip, eyes sliding from Gulami to Marsoudi to Milan and back to Gulami, a vague sense of dread marshalling itself behind his ribs, like a swimmer who, already aware that he is too far from shore, starts to realize he is even further out of his depth than he had previously imagined.
There was a pause, Gulami's words seeming to hover in the air like an echo lingering at the furthest extremity of a deep cavern, then the foreign minister opened a hand towards Marsoudi, inviting him to speak. The Palestinian shuffled forward on his stool.
'I won't waste your time with details, inspector,' he began, his brown eyes glinting in the glow of the kerosene lamps. 'All you need to know for current purposes is that in our meetings here over the last fourteen months we have, and not without some bitter words I can assure you' – he threw a glance at Milan – 'hammered out a set of proposals that go further in the name of peace, take greater risks, give up more than has ever been contemplated before, by either of our two sides.'
There was a cup of water on the floor beside him and, lifting it, he took a short sip.
'Understand, we are just private individuals. We do not represent our governments, we have no official backing for these talks, we possess no legislative authority to implement the proposals we have developed. What we do have, precisely because, as sais Gulami has explained, we have spent so long fighting for our respective causes' – again he flicked his eyes towards the Israeli – 'is the faith and trust of the majority of our people. Enough faith and trust, I believe, for them to listen to and, please God, support ideas that coming from any other of our countrymen would be dismissed out of hand as at best hopeless idealism, at worst outright treachery.'
Beside him, Milan exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke, the scar on his cheek seeming to glisten in the half-light like a thin vein of crystal.
'We harbour no illusions,' said the Israeli, picking up the discourse, his voice deep, husky and slow, like a series of notes played on the very lowest keys of an oboe. 'The proposals we have formulated are hugely controversial, will require immense sacrifices, on both our parts. Their implementation will be fraught with pain and conflict and suspicion. A generation, two, maybe even three, that's how long it will take for the wounds to start healing. Even then there will be many on both sides who refuse to come with us.'
'Yet despite that,' Marsoudi put in, taking over again, 'it remains our belief that, if we can persuade a majority of our people to accept them, these proposals offer the best, perhaps only chance for a realistic and durable solution to the problems in our land. And it is also our belief that when they see the two of us standing side by side together, bitter enemies for so long, now united in the cause of peace, a majority of our people will be persuaded. Have to be persuaded, frankly. Because as things stand now . . .'
He shrugged and fell silent. Milan puffed on his cigar; Gulami worked his worry beads; in the corner, Ben-Roi fiddled with his hip-flask, a deep frown concertinaing his forehead, whether from disapproval at what he'd just heard or because of some other thought festering inside his giant head, Khalifa couldn't tell. He took another sip of his tea, which was already starting to go cold, pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. Fifteen seconds ticked past, twenty.
'I don't understand,' he said. His voice sounded weak, overawed, the voice of a child sitting in a room full of adults. 'What's this got to do with al-Hakim?'
For a moment Gulami seemed confused by this comment, then he gave an amused grunt, realizing what was on Khalifa's mind.
'You thought . . . ?' He tutted and shook his head. 'Farouk al-Hakim was a piece of shit. A disgrace to his profession and his country. You have done us all a favour by exposing him for what he was. Rest assured we have not brought you here as punishment for uncovering his sordid little secrets.'
Khalifa took another nervous pull on his cigarette, exhaling the smoke almost before it had had time to penetrate his lungs.
'So why? Why are you telling me all this?'
Gulami held him in his eyes for a moment, then looked across at Milan. The Israeli sat back in his chair, staring at Khalifa. There was an interminable pause.
'What do you know about the Menorah, inspector?' he asked eventually.
Again, this took the detective by surprise. He hesitated, confused, Milan's gaze seeming to burn into him.
'I don't see what that has—'
Gulami's hand came down onto his arm, gentle yet firm, the pressure indicating that he should answer the question. Khalifa shrugged helplessly.
'I don't know. It's . . . it stood in the Temple of Jerusalem; it was lost when the city fell to the Romans . . .'
He mumbled his way through everything he'd found out over the last couple of days, which wasn't very much. Milan listened in silence, eyes never leaving him. When he'd finished, the Israeli got slowly to his feet and, crossing to the thermos f
lask, poured himself a cup of tea, gazing down at the flickering flame of the kerosene lamp, its light tinge-ing his cigar smoke orange so that it looked as if he was enveloped in a shimmering blanket of fire. There was another long pause, then Milan started speaking, his voice, already a low baritone, seeming to become even deeper and more gravelly, barely audible.
'Every faith, inspector, has something – some object, some symbol – that is sacred to it above all others, that more than any other serves to encapsulate the essence of that faith. For Christians it is the True Cross, for Muslims the Ka'ba in Mecca. For the Jewish people, my people, it is the Holy Lamp. "And the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light" – this is what the prophet Isaiah told us, and this, for us, is what the Lamp has always represented: the light of creation, of belief, of being. That is why, of all the objects in the ancient Temple, it was the most venerated and the most beloved; that is why, in our own day, it was chosen as the emblem of the state of Israel. Because there is nothing more precious to us, nothing more holy, no purer symbol of what we are and strive to be as a people. Because, quite simply, in the light of the Holy Menorah is revealed nothing less than the face of the Lord God himself. I absolutely cannot overstate its power and significance.'
He took a long, slow pull on his cigar, allowing this last sentence to linger a moment, his face disappearing behind a heavy curtain of smoke.
'And now, inspector' – he turned to Khalifa, slowly, his shadow looming and shifting on the wall behind him – 'thanks to you, the original Menorah, the first Menorah, the Menorah of Menorahs that Bezalel made way back in the mists of time and that was thought to be lost for ever – now, suddenly, after all these many centuries, it has returned. Again, I cannot overstress the significance of this. Nor, more importantly, the danger.'
His voice rose slightly on this last word, its syllables seeming to swell and resonate, filling the room. The sense of dread that had been gnawing at Khalifa for the last ten minutes, the feeling that, against his will, he was becoming ever more entangled in something that was way beyond his understanding, grew suddenly more intense.
'This isn't my—'
Again Gulami's hand squeezed Khalifa's arm, signalling him to be quiet, to listen. Milan pulled on his cigar, eyes never leaving Khalifa's face.
'It is a curious quirk of the region in which we live, inspector, that symbols have always counted for a lot more than human lives. The death of an individual might be tragic, but in time the sadness fades. The desecration of something sacred, on the other hand, that is never forgotten, nor forgiven. Imagine the reaction of your people if, say, the Holy Ka'ba was to be razed by Israeli jets. It is the same for us with the Menorah. If an object as iconic as that were to fall into the wrong hands, the hands of someone such as al-Mulatham, to be despoiled by him, destroyed – take it from me, the collective wound such a sacrilege would inflict would be deeper than that of a thousand suicide bombings. Ten thousand. Human loss can be redeemed. The loss of something holy, however – the pain would never abate. Not in one generation, two, three. Never. And nor would the fury.'
He tapped the ash off the end of his cigar and, raising a hand, rubbed at his eyes, his face suddenly looking haggard, his shoulders slumping as if something was pressing down on them from above.
'Our two peoples are teetering on the edge of the abyss, inspector. Sa'eb and I, we believe we can pull them back, even now, even after so much blood has been spilled. But if the true Menorah were to be found by al-Mulatham, or, conversely, by any of the fundamentalist lunatics on our side – of whom there are plenty, I can assure you, all of them just waiting for a banner such as this behind which to rally the forces of fanaticism' – in the corner of the room Ben-Roi shifted uncomfortably, fingers playing with the pendant around his neck – 'if that were to happen, believe me, we would plunge headlong into the void, and no peace process on earth could ever pull us back out again.'
Khalifa's cigarette had burnt itself out in his hand, leaving a tenuous claw of ash dangling from the butt. There was something coming, he could feel it. Something he didn't want to hear.
'Al-Mulatham doesn't know about the Menorah,' he mumbled weakly. 'Hoth died before he could tell him.'
Marsoudi shook his head. 'We can't be certain of that. We know Hoth was doing everything he could to contact al-Mulatham. Maybe he failed; but then again, maybe he didn't. Maybe al-Mulatham is searching for the Menorah even as we speak. Maybe others are searching for it. We just can't take that risk.'
Khalifa's throat was dry, his stomach tight. He was being manoeuvred, he could feel it; cornered, like the time when he was a kid and a gang of older boys used to chase him through the Giza backstreets, always running him down in the end, boxing him in.
'Why are you telling me this?' he repeated.
There was a snort from the far side of the room.
'Why the fuck do you think they're telling you?'
It was the first time Ben-Roi had spoken.
'It was you who started this thing. Now help finish it.'
Khalifa looked around, his forehead throbbing, as though there was something alive inside it, thrashing against the inside of his temples.
'What does he mean, "help finish it"? Why have you brought me here?'
He sounded desperate. Gulami removed his glasses, examined them, put them back on again. Like Milan, his face too suddenly looked weary and pinched.
'The Menorah has to be found, inspector,' he said quietly. 'It has to be found quickly. And it has to be found without any other parties being made aware of its continued existence.'
There was a pause as his words sank in, then Khalifa got to his feet.
'No.'
He practically shouted it, startled by his vehemence yet unable to stop himself, even in front of someone as powerful as Gulami. He didn't want to be part of this. Didn't want to know about Israel, Judaism, menorahs – any of it. Had never wanted to know, not from the very beginning, whatever Zenab might have said about seeking out what you don't understand, growing and becoming a better person. All he wanted, all he had ever wanted, was to lead a small, normal, regular life, to be with his family, to get on with his job, to move on up the ladder. But this – it was too big. It was all just too big for him.
'No,' he repeated, shaking his head.
'What the fuck do you mean, no?'
Ben-Roi had come forward a step, eyes blazing. Khalifa ignored him, addressing himself to Gulami.
'I'm a policeman. This is . . . it's nothing to do with me!'
'It's everything to-fucking-do with you,' hissed Ben-Roi. 'Haven't you been listening?'
Still Khalifa ignored him. 'This isn't my responsibility. I don't want to be a part of it. I don't want to be involved.'
'Who gives a fuck what you want?' snapped Ben-Roi, face reddening. 'There are more important things here.'
'Please, Arieh.' Milan tried to lay a hand on Ben-Roi's shoulder, but it was shrugged away.
'Who the fuck does he think he is!'
'Arieh!'
' "I don't want to be involved." Who does he think he is, the cheeky Muslim cunt!'
Khalifa wheeled, fists clenching. Two, maybe three times in his entire life he had completely lost his temper, uncontrollably lost it, and this was one of them.
'How dare you!' he hissed, no longer caring where he was, who he was with. 'How dare you, you arrogant Jew bastard!'
'Khalifa!'
Both Gulami and Marsoudi were now on their feet as well.
'Ben-Zohna!' bellowed Ben-Roi, surging forward, arms swinging. 'Son of a bitch! I'll fucking kill him!'
Somehow Milan managed to grab his jacket, pulling him back. Marsoudi stepped in front of Khalifa, who was also advancing, seizing his shoulders, holding him.
'Lech tiezdayen, zayin!' spat Ben-Roi, jabbing a finger at the Egyptian. 'Fuck you, prick!'
'Enta ghebee, koos!' retorted Khalifa, also jabbing a finger. 'Fuck you, vagina!'
There were more insults and expletives, both m
en straining towards each other, before eventually Gulami shouted, 'Halas! Enough!' and they both fell silent, breathing heavily. Gulami, Marsoudi and Milan looked at one another tight-lipped, then the foreign minister ordered Khalifa to leave the room, to calm himself down. Throwing a withering glare at Ben-Roi, the detective crossed to the door, yanked it open and stepped out into the night, slamming it shut behind him. He took a couple of deep breaths of air – clean, cool, refreshing – then stomped off towards a row of jagged black rocks looming thirty metres away where he sat down and lit a cigarette.
Several minutes passed, the world silent aside from the faint whisper of the breeze, the sky overhead spattered with an impossible number of stars, like sprays of blue-white paint. Then there was a creak as the door opened again, and the crunch of feet on gravel. Someone came up behind him. Marsoudi.
