by Rose Fox
Abigail screwed up her eyes and Nadia whispered to her that it was the building with the signpost that read “Ministry of Labor.” She added that it was an open secret that matters dealt with there had nothing to do with labor. Abigail was familiar with the place and knew that the lights were always on there and that it buzzed with activity and she shuddered.
“There, of all places? Have any of you checked out the security measures they have in place there?”
“Listen, we don’t wait until the guard arrives and we don’t care if or when the guards change shifts.”
“Is that so? What if I tell you that you’re playing with fire? Do you think that they are amateurs?!” She was angry. “Allah only knows how you have managed till now without problems.”
“The truth is, we haven’t managed,” Nadia whispered. “Each time we have suffered casualties.”
“But we have caused them damage every time and we’ve never been caught,” someone added.
“That’s enough nonsense and women’s chatter! Let’s arrange the explosives and get on with the job.” Naweel said, “See, the bomb is here.”
This was too much for Abigail and she got up to leave the room but, then thought that she should try a different tack with them, without anger and without snapping or criticizing.
“Just a moment. Does this bomb have a delay mechanism?”
“Why would we want to add one?”
“To have time to get away without being injured.”
“That’s really not a bad idea,” Ibrahim pointed out, but Qassem was aware that no one knew how to attach such a mechanism, so he said:
“It’s a lousy idea there’s no need to add an extra gadget.”
“Wait, are you planning to place the bomb and leave?” she wondered.
“Yes, we always do that.” Qassem declared.
The tone of anger and impatience in his voice made it clear that he was fed up with her remarks.
“I’m surprised you haven’t had problems till now. How did you operate without raising suspicion?”
Now, he shut up and tried to avoid the stares of the people. The last attack in which he had been involved took the life of Mahmoud and caused the mortal injury of Said, who had still not recovered. And, all this was the result of not getting away in time. They stared at him. They all remembered the incident and Qassem protested.
“Wait, why are you looking at me? No one actually discovered us!” When the silence continued, he said:
“In the end we all got back and don’t forget that the damage they suffered was enormous.”
No one made the point that Mahmoud had been killed and Said was still struggling to recover. They all knew that everything was not alright and the attack Qassem referred to resulted in soldiers pursuing them till they saw them in their wheelchairs and presumed that they were mistaken in suspecting them.
“What do you say to the suggestion that Naima prepare the bomb and let her tell us what she needs?” Mullah suggested and Abigail hurried to reply so as not to allow them time to object.
“Okay, I need a watch, a battery, and an electronic igniter.” She took a breath and continued talking without looking at anyone in particular.
“I will also need a detonator and an accelerator and, of course, the bomb itself. I will take care of the rest.”
“Hey, is someone making a list of these things? Kahida asked.
Qassem was in charge of explosives. He stood up, in spite of himself, and returned a short time later with a bag and muttered that only a watch was missing.
“Here, take this,” Naweel offered him her wristwatch.
“You understand that you won’t be getting this back, ha?” Abigail laughed. She took the package and went into an adjacent room. She returned at once to the living room full of people and the conversation stopped as they all stared at her.
”Forgive me. It seems I’ve forgotten about taking precautions.”
“What do you mean?” Mullah asked.
“I thought that if I blew up while preparing the bomb, I would endanger all of you,” She said. “I’ll go to our apartment and return with it when it’s ready.”
She looked at Mullah out of the corner of her eye, knowing this was an announcement to everyone that they were now a couple and living together.
She spent half an hour assembling the bomb and set it to explode at 10:59. It was an estimated time she chose matter of factly. Then she came out of Kahida’s house and placed it in the yard, under a palm. On second thought, she covered it with a cloth and went into the house. The seat beside Mullah was vacant and awaited her.
“What do you suggest we do now?” Qassem asked in a restrained voice.
“You should go out there now, observe the security arrangements and look for the best place to plant the bomb and when you bring back the results…”
“Just a minute, so are you also against attacking today?” asked Miriam from where she sat in a wheelchair, near Mullah.
“Of course, we may even have to cancel or make changes in the plan, depending on the answers they come back with,” Abigail replied.
“So what have we achieved? You cancel and change plans at a flick of a finger and without a thought!” Miriam gazed around at the rest of the group, seeking support for her remarks.
“Miriam, earlier you were against the attack. What’s changed?”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“And, what if they return with results that forecast danger or impenetrable security measures?”
“We can always change the time or the location,” she said. “The main thing is to cause damage, don’t you think?”
From the silence that reigned, Abigail could tell that her ideas did not have their support.
“Listen, I have no problem if you go back to operating the way you have up till now; I just wanted you to return safe and sound and not suffer casualties every time you attack.”
She leaned back and was silent.
“Who is going to check it out?” Mullah asked, but no one replied.
“I understand,” Abigail said. “Do as you wish.”
“Where did you leave the bomb?” Miriam asked in with strained reserve and even Abigail noticed her hostility.
“I left it under the palm tree, there in the yard at the back. It’s covered with some gray fabric.” She said and suddenly remembered that the bomb had been set to explode at one minute before eleven o’clock that night and she spoke out loud:
“With regard to the time of the explosion, the timer is set to…”
“Yes, leave it like that.” Ibrahim stopped her, “don’t change a thing.”
“Hey, but it’s likely to explode while you…”
“You fixed it correctly, don‘t change the appointed time.”
Abigail stared at him, finding it difficult to understand why, but Ibrahim insisted that she leave it as she had set it. She continued looking at him and wondered whether she shouldn’t go and change it without his agreement. The people around them got up to leave and Abigail signaled to Mullah. He turned his wheelchair towards the door and she pushed it along the way to their apartment. She realized she hadn’t succeeded in endearing herself to the people of the village today.
When everyone had left, Tommy glanced at Ibrahim. He tapped his watch in a signal to Bassam and raised his right fist and three fingers on his left hand. This was to say: ‘the meeting will be at eight o’clock in the usual place.' Tommy signaled for nine because he wanted to arrive closer to the time of the explosion.
When Mullah and Abigail entered their apartment, she curled up into the armchair and feared to tell him how anxious she was. In her opinion, every possible mistake had been made. Had she known of the meeting between the three, she may possibly have intervened and prevented the inevitable disaster.
The three met at their usual place, close to the waterfall at the entrance to the village.
Ibrahim arrived first. He was supported by a metal crutch he had practiced using t
ill he could almost run. He had even adopted and quick and quiet way of walking. In one hand, he held a package wrapped in cloth, exactly as Abigail had left it under the palm tree in the yard. The other two arrived a few minutes behind him, moving at a fast limp.
“I called for a cab. It will be waiting for us below in twenty-five minutes.” Reneh, the youngest of the three, announced.
Reneh had been shot in his knee and he no longer had use of it as a joint. It remained stiffly straightened out even when he walked. Very often, especially when he was in a hurry, he preferred to hop on his healthy leg instead of dragging the stiff one.
“Let’s plan on catching the last cable car that comes back here at eleven o’clock.”
“Otherwise, we can stay below all night and wait till six in the morning to return with the first cars,” Ibrahim suggested.
“Wait, it’s five minutes to nine now. Is there any chance we can arrive before the cable car closes?” Reneh asked, but Tommy was more realistic.
“No, I don’t believe we can make it. We will have to get there, plant the bomb and rush back in less than two hours.”
At this point, no one remembered that the timer attached to the detonator was set at for 10:59, about two hours ahead.
“Why not? Come, let’s be optimistic because we only have to plant the bomb and get away, right?” Ibrahim remarked. “If we hurry and we’re lucky, the cable car will be waiting at the upper station now.”
The walk to the cable car station took ten minutes but the station was empty when they got there and the three of them looked at the deserted rails that descended down the steep incline of the mountain.
“Oh hell! That’s all we needed,” Reneh stormed. “Can we make it?”
He limped restlessly in all directions, muttering to himself in anger. Four minutes later an empty car arrived and the three of them hurriedly climbed in and sighed with relief when they saw the taxi awaiting them with its engine idling.
“What timing,” the driver remarked, “I just arrived.”
“At 9:35 they drew up in front of the building with the “Ministry of Labor” signpost.
“Wait for us here and don’t turn the engine off. We promise to return in a few minutes.” Tommy announced and the driver nodded in agreement and pocketed the bill he had just received.
The cab driver crossed his hands and put them behind his head, as he relaxed and made himself comfortable. If he had known the purpose of the mission or what the three were planning to do, he would have been horrified and would have escaped with lightning speed.
In a minute and a half, Ibrahim reached the entrance and waited for his friends, who were limping towards him from behind. A sleepy guard looked at them and yawned. Nothing was going on in the building at this time of day and the sidewalk was deserted. A lone car drove down the road and disappeared round the bend. A lamp post shed a hazy light that lent a somber atmosphere to the street. It was cold and Tommy wrapped his coat tightly around his body.
“Go and chat with the guard and distract him,” Ibrahim whispered to Tommy, who took a deep breath and approached the guard. He made an effort to make his limp more pronounced and the guard turned his gaze to him and stared at him questioningly.
“Listen, I think someone behind the building is trying to climb in through a window. Come, let’s go there together.”
The guard stood up immediately and joined him but after a few steps stopped and stared at him.
“How? That’s impossible. This building doesn’t have windows in the back, just flat walls.”
“Ah,” Tommy did not get confused, “if so, let’s go and check out what the man is up to.”
At that moment, the guard noticed the two entering the door he had just moved away from and shouted at them:
“Hey, you there, you can’t come in! Where do you think you’re going?!”
The two of them stopped for a second and looked at the screaming guard. Ibrahim regained his cool and ran forward, entered the building and began climbing the stairs. The guard chased after him, skipping up the stairs, caught and pulled him by his clothes. Ibrahim turned round and hit the guard with his metal crutch and threw the bomb that was wrapped in cloth ahead of him up the stairs. It hit the banister, rolled down the stairs and exploded thunderously just a few feet away from the two antagonists.
Flames broke out, shrapnel flew around and all that remained of the people was a silver metal stick that flew into the wall and stood out like a toothpick in a canapé. The wall split from the force of the explosion and pieces of it fell onto the street and hit the waiting taxi. The impact burst out in waves and rolled the cab across the street. The trunks of trees planted on the sidewalk split to reveal the pale wood inside.
The next minute police car sirens were heard. Cars filled with curious people driving by stopped as they gazed into the crater in the street and the charred remains of the taxi in the hole, left by the blast in the wall of the building.
That same night reports of the explosion reached the village, but it was everyone’s silence that rang in Abigail’s ears.
No one spoke, no one remarked on it and no one criticized. But, Abigail felt as if the lost souls of the three casualties weighed on her shoulders and actually, the glances, which were not directed at her, seemed to blame her for their deaths.
She didn’t even try to remind anyone that she had attempted to persuade them to change the hour of the explosion because she, too, was unable to shake off her sense of guilt. Now she thought that she should not have given in. She should have insisted on changing the time. What she didn’t know was that the explosion took place at 9:38, over an hour before the appointed time, only because Ibrahim had thrown it on his way up the stairs of the building.
Abigail wondered what to do all night and in the early hours of the morning, she slung her bag, in which she had packed her belongings the day before, on her shoulder and quietly left.
Lying in bed, Mullah heard her going to the door, heard it shut behind her and knew that she had gone away. He did not get up to stop her because he couldn’t make up his mind what he thought about the matter.
* * *
The Trap
The days passed, six months went by without Karma, and Abigail also believed that he would not return.
She realized that his activities had moved to another region. In spite of knowing that this was the nature of their work, she found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that they would never meet again. She was plagued with curiosity to know where he was and she wondered who she could turn to without exposing herself to questions.
She lay awake at night, dreaming of him, weaving plans around him but waking up to the reality of his absence in the morning. She soothed herself with the belief that as the days went by, her love would die. There would be an end to her yearning, and the sharp pain in her chest would go away, but that was not what happened.
Almost every day she led groups on tours and on those days, when she returned to her room, exhausted, she would huddle up alone. She thought about the man, who had suddenly appeared in her life one day, made her fall in love with him and then, disappeared. She began losing interest in the tours and found it difficult to get up in the mornings. She started malingering and imagining she was ill and took pity on herself.
A day earlier, she decided that she would stay in her room and not go touring so she went downstairs to call.
“Hello, Naima speaking. I’m tired and I would like to rest and take some time off.”
Abigail heard a sigh on the other end of the line and she didn’t bother to find out whether the response was in agreement or rejected her request and she hung up. She looked at the place as if for the first time and suddenly wondered what she was doing in such a forlorn setting. What she really yearned for was a place where strangers didn’t mill around, somewhere that belonged only to her.
“Madam, your monthly page has arrived,” Emir announced and his mustache trembled above the false smile that he
forced on his lips.
Abigail took the folded page from him and it was the first time she glanced at the numbers recorded on it. It reported her salary for the tours she led.
Sums of money she paid no attention to had accumulated in her bank account. Now, she wondered whether she had enough to purchase an apartment instead of living in a pension, even though someone was financing that.
An unappetizing smell of cooking arose from the dining hall but, her stomach had begun to rumble. Abigail went down the five steps into the dining room and looked around the tables covered with red and white checkered plastic tablecloths. She selected a table by the wall and waited. Two men sat at an adjacent table and held brown food in their fingers. She recognized it as being kibbeh again, the regular dish that their cook specialized in. One of the diners responded to her glance and Abigail immediately lowered her eyes.
She absentmindedly bit into a thick slice of bread from the bread basket and ran her fingers over the plastic cloth. Her fingers left a smooth trail in the layers of fat on it that smelled like a dirty dishrag. Suddenly she changed her mind, got up and left the dining room. She was about to go up to her room, then turned to the desk and called in to say that she had changed her mind and wished to cancel her leave and take out a group tomorrow. The person on the line responded enthusiastically.
“Oh, Naima, you’re saving the day.”
“Really?!” she laughed, suddenly feeling that someone was relating to her personally.
“What happened? Did someone resign or leave you in the lurch?”
“Lutfi can’t lead the tour to the south and…”
“Why Lutfi, of all people?!”
“Look, the man just got married. That’s right; it’s difficult to replace a guide like him but, now that you…”
“Did you say he got married?!”
She recalled the dark-skinned guide she had shared impressions and itineraries with and from whom she had learned so much and asked:
“Tell me the destination of the tour he gave up to get married.”
