The Body

by Richard Ben Sapir

  He was not yet able to tell them of the humiliation from his son, or the Russians. But he did let them know what he did for the Russians.

  And this, they told him, was never to be mentioned to anyone.

  “This is a good country,” said the eldest cousin. “Hussein is a good king, blessed be his name. He is wise. But this is also a difficult time to be a king in this country.”

  And it was immediately understood that Warris should never mention what he did in Russia. It would only cause difficulties with security forces. That he had been in Russia at all was going to cause a little inquiry, but not much. That could be taken care of. The police were neither unreasonable nor adverse to friendship with a good family. And Warris, said the eldest Abouf, was of a good family.

  At this Warris embraced the old man and wept. But that morning he had some worries. He did not know why, but it could be that instinct, honed on a decade in the Communist system, made him feel something was going to come of him very soon. It might be meaningless residual fear, he told himself. Then again, what one learned in Russia was that one was never hurt by protecting oneself from even the wildest suspicions.

  So he told the eldest Abouf that morning that he still had fears of Abu Silwan, “a killer, a real killer.”

  “He is not the only one who can kill,” said a younger cousin. But the elder lifted a hand, showing this was not what was wanted. The elder, Hossan Abouf, wanted to know more about this Abu Silwan, where he lived, things he said, little details that Warris might not think important.

  The very luxury of the man’s house bespoke power in this part of the world. That he was also, in Warris’ estimate, a form of executioner meant he was a powerful one. The references about traitors and his being Moscow-connected undoubtedly meant the As Saiqua, which was the Syrian faction in the PLO.

  Amman, it was reasoned, would not be the safest place in the world for this Abu Silwan. But it was also agreed that Jordanian forces could do only so much, and probably only after some of the Abouf were dead. Publicly, the Abouf supported all factions aimed at liberating Palestine from the Zionist entity.

  Privately, one took courses of reason, and tried to avoid feuds that could last hundreds of years. Which was why politeness and courtesy were a necessity, since a chance remark or some slight to dignity could lead to decimations of whole clans.

  Much of the killing in Lebanon was the extension of these sorts of feuds, as they had been during the riots in the thirties against Jewish immigration, which quite naturally had Arabs killing more Arabs than Jews.

  The thing the Abouf did not wish to do was create some sort of feud with the powerful Abu Silwan. Even if they should be able to kill Silwan that might be only the beginning and his precious Abouf might pay in blood for decades.

  Yet, it was also a fact that this man living in Lebanon could not come dancing down to Amman and say to the Abouf, you send this Abouf here or that Abouf there. No matter what Russia had for plans. This was not Moscow. It was Amman. And even though they were Christians, they were not without power. This was not Iran, this was Amman, and they were Arab.

  But it was also decided that any future messages to this Abu Silwan of the As Saiqua should be discussed with the family.

  Warris should not act alone anymore, because he was no longer alone.

  And on this morning Warris Abouf was filled with the joy of being home, which meant he was no longer alone.

  But in the late afternoon, as he was struggling with figures, there was a telephone call, and he recognized the silken voice of Abu Silwan. He was told to look under his desk. There was a package there, by his foot. He was told to open it.

  As soon as he saw the clock face and the wires, Warris almost dropped the package.

  “Yes, it is a bomb, but you must act quickly to diffuse it. We do not want another martyr. The red wire must be plucked from its base. Do it quickly, or you will die.”

  Warris’ fingers seemed unable even to close on the very small wire, which seemed so well anchored.

  “Now, be careful. Do not move it, for now is the most dangerous time. Keep it very still. Very still, for it will explode as you put it down. Now, Warris, let us talk.”

  “I have nothing against talk. Why did you do this? I am not a traitor.”

  “I tell that to my people. I say, ‘Warris is an Arab.’ But they say Christians are not really Arab, I am sorry to say. There are fools like that in the world, don’t you think?”

  “I am most Arab. I am Palestinian like you, Abu Silwan,” said Warris, the bomb right in the middle of his lap, over his sexual organs. He imagined everything of him being blown out, along with the pelvis.

  “But, I say anyone who wrongly accuses someone of being a traitor is a traitor himself.”

  “Yes,” said Warris, who already knew where this conversation would end. His messages of delay because of traitors were no longer acceptable. He had to find something else. Warris tried to think, but all he could do was imagine what a bomb in his lap would do.

  He said “yes” many times. He said “no” many times, such as when Muhammad Silwan said there were those in the movement who said that now Warris Abouf felt safe because he was with his family, his rich family, rich as Christians, because they were Christian businessmen who hadn’t fought the Jews.

  But Muhammad did not feel that way about Christians. “Some of our best fighters are Christians. Yes?”

  “Yes,” said Warris.

  “I told them you are ready to move.”

  “Yes,” said Warris.

  “I told them let the Abouf live.”

  “You would kill an entire family?”

  “Me? I am your compassionate brother, Warris. I am the one taking the bombs away. But forgive me, I am sorry to say, they must kill all the Abouf, and why?”

  “Yes, why?” asked Warris.

  “Because the Abouf are a proud family. Why wait to be killed in turn! End it now. I see only deep, abiding peace with the Abouf. But the Abouf must not be intransigent. You must do what you have been sworn to do, and then if the worst should befall you, you would be a hero martyr, and the Abouf would be received among their natural organic allies instead of set against them.”

  “I see,” said Warris.

  And then, of course, the purpose of the bomb and the conversation came down to a man he was to meet at dusk near the public gardens.

  “Now, remove the blue wire,” said Muhammad Silwan.

  “Blue? I thought you said red.”

  “The blue is even more dangerous, Warris, my brother,” and then the phone was dead and the operator came on asking if the party calling from Damascus was through, as Warris fumbled the blue wire off the bomb.

  Warris did not tell the elder, Hossan Abouf, and he certainly did not tell the younger Abouf, who would want to fight. To tell them would require they defend him for his honor. And he knew a single family could not stand up against the As Saiqua.

  If families fought families, such as in the olden days, the Abouf could make alliances and survive. But not now, not against this thing of governments and movements.

  If the Abouf stood against the As Saiqua, it would be doomed, and by honor and ties they were bound to defend Warris. And so that day Warris Abouf, whose lifelong occupation had been staying alive, housed, and fed, gave up these very things for what he suddenly found he valued more. His family.

  He, himself, could not believe he was doing these things, but the incredible part of this giving up everything was a release beyond imagining. The great momentary fear suddenly disappeared when he went to shake its hand.

  Warris wrote a note to the elder, Hossan Abouf, explaining that he took it upon himself to do this thing for the As Saiqua. If he were successful, he would return to the family in Amman. If not, he knew he went with the prayers of the Abouf.

  “Better to live a month with my own than to rule a lifetime among strangers,” he finished. Hossan, he knew, would understand what he was saving the family from.
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br />   Hossan might not even tell the younger ones, for fear of what they might do. Even the imagined anger of his family made Warris’ eyes tear. And he gave the note to the wife of a cousin of Hossan, knowing she would not be aware of what was happening, and would take a while to give it to her husband, who would not immediately give it to Hossan.

  By then it would be too late for anyone to do anything about it.

  The decision was not the hard part. It was accepting that the good life had been one month, and might well be over.

  The contact he met at the public gardens made him feel as though he had never left Moscow. There was so much suspicion, so many tricky little cross-questions. Warris guarded every word.

  The contact gave him Israeli identity papers and took his Syrian passport. He gave Warris Israeli shekels and a telephone number in Tel Aviv that was to be called at 2 P.M. on weekdays for contact.

  He also gave Warris a pointed knife, very much like an ice pick. He was to use it on the man who sailed him across the Dead Sea.

  “I can’t kill anyone. I have never killed anyone. I was sent for my mind, not my strength.”

  “Then be prepared to spend your life in Israeli prisons. He works for Israel, that is why they let him through. He will guide you to a cave, leave you there, telling you you will be safe, but the ones who come for you will be the Israelis.”

  Warris protested again: “I can’t kill.”

  “It is not a big thing. It is big only because you have never done it. Wasn’t it a big thing before you mounted a woman? Yes. It was a big thing, but after a while it is nothing. It is a cup of coffee. The big thing is not the killing. It is staying alive.”

  Warris was told how to slip the knife between the ribs, and that the reason the knife was like a pick was so that it would not stick in the ribs. Anywhere under the armpit would be fine. But he had to push it all the way. The ribs would guide it. No little scratching, because the traitor had a gun, and he could use it. Warris had to push the blade, really push.

  Warris was shocked to find that the traitor who was to be killed was a fifteen-year-old boy. They set the boat off the shore after a Jordanian patrol had left. The boy made light conversation that Warris tried to avoid.

  There was no light, this night, to travel by from stars in the heavens. It was murky black, and Warris was told the water they now rode through was so salty it could burn sores and ruin motors.

  It was still dark when they touched land in Israel. The boy hid the boat, and then guided Warris inland to a cave. Warris was exhausted by the trek at night.

  The boy left him water and some food and told him not to travel until the next night.

  “Excuse me,” said Warris, and pushed the knife into the boy’s back, all the way, and, kneeling down, kept it there, as the boy collapsed.

  But the boy did not die right away. He gurgled, and moaned.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please die. Please die. Please die,” said Warris.

  But the boy was not dead. Warris climbed out of the cave and waited outside. Perhaps, he thought, he could get help for the boy, and save the boy, and then the boy would be saved, and since he had saved an Israeli spy, he would get time off. And then, having done his duty, he could return to Amman, showing he had been a martyr.

  He knew the tales of Zionist torture were political and not operational. He knew he might not even get many years if the boy lived, and he prayed that the boy would live. He didn’t want to kill him. Of course he didn’t.

  And then there was silence from the cave. Warris went back in. The boy was still. Warris felt for a pulse on the wrist. There was none. He gave the head a little tentative touch with his shoe. Nothing. Dead. Gone. Good.

  There was a pistol in the boy’s hand. Warris took it. He scrambled from the cave over rocks, crossed a stream, and found another cave, where he went in just as the sun rose above the mountains of Moab, bringing light to the world and his crime.

  He heard patrols during the day call out in Hebrew, but none found him, and on the next night he made his way to a road, and there he fell in with an Arab man riding on a donkey, and Warris could see he had peasant clothes, and Warris had the clothes of Amman, a city. So he took off his dark, striped jacket, and opened his shirt, and spent time with the man, who had four sons, and two daughters, and worked for a great family in Nablus who owned land near there.

  The man told him how he could get a ride into Jerusalem merely by facing the traffic, and soon an Arab would pick him up, and, on rare occasions, an Israeli would stop.

  Warris tried this, and soon a businessman in his Mercedes from Deir El Kilt gave him a ride, and asked what a well-dressed person was doing walking through such a barren place with only a few kibbutzim and tourists around.

  Warris said he had a friend who had driven him out here but had to return suddenly to Jerusalem.

  Fortunately this type of man did not like listening, and instead wanted someone to hear about his success, his friends, his opinions on the world, house building, sewer pipes, God, women, the tough Israelis, armies, Galilee Arabs versus Nablus Arabs, the proper way to purchase grapes, cars, and the absolute all-time perfect motion picture, to which there was none really to compare in the world.

  In this way Warris was not asked another question until Jerusalem. On the way he was impressed with the quality and frequency of fine Arab houses, but he did not question too much because that would give him away.

  He asked only the price of such fine houses in this occupied land.

  “Your soul,” said the driver, nodding to a passing Israeli army jeep.

  Warris did not pursue this. He had to assume that every Arab he talked to, other than his contact at the number in Tel Aviv, was an Israeli agent. By now the patrols had probably found the boy by smell.

  So Warris had killed a man. He didn’t have time or space to dwell on it. He was in the land of the enemy, and he was too busy staying alive.

  He slipped the gun under a bag on the floor, in case police or patrols should search the car. He saw armored cars and Israeli soldiers. They looked like such young boys. But it was always young boys. Those were the ones who fought the wars. So were the Palestinian soldiers, so very young. They were all young.

  He hadn’t killed a boy, he had killed a soldier. Did it matter? No, thought Warris, it does not matter. Staying alive matters. Protecting the family matters.

  He did not get off at Haneviim Street, but at the eastern end of the walls of the Old City, at Notre Dame de France. He saw holes in the walls, and assumed this had been the dividing line when Jordan held the Old City and the Israelis held just about all the rest.

  On Haneviim Street, near the Damascus Gate, according to the maps he had gone over back in Moscow, there were Arab businesses, mainly fruit-loading stalls. He strolled over, pretending to buy fruit, and he found out they were mainly suppliers to vendors. They didn’t sell single fruit, but that got the conversation started. And Warris asked where the big building of the Roman Catholic Church was, and they pointed in several directions. He specified Haneviim Street, and they pointed Warris to a convent up the street a good way out of sight.

  “I’ve heard of the convent,” said Warris in his native language of Arabic. “Lots of men go in there.”

  The men who had gathered around him were shocked.

  “Oh, no. Never. No men are ever allowed in there. Never. Never.”

  It was possible, but unlikely, reasoned Warris, that anything of a major diplomatic nature could involve solely women. It was probably not the convent.

  “No, I mean the great building the Roman Catholic Church is going to construct,” said Warris.

  Going to build? They all wanted to know this news, so they too could tell others. There was no building that they knew of. An Arab warehouse was supposed to go up, but that had to be stopped, and, as the visitor could see, next door was only a vast empty lot with a Jew sitting by a hole that, everyone said, would remain forever.

  “You could tell I
am a visitor?” asked Warris. Oh yes, said everyone. He acted just a little bit strange, and talked with just a bit of a strange accent, but not that strange, everyone assured him.

  But it was, Warris knew, enough to single him out. He walked up Haneviim, with its gracious buildings and embassies, until it merged with the shopping district.

  And he realized he had expected something to leap out at him, and nothing had. He walked back on the other side of the street, reading signs on buildings. There was nothing that came to light. He remembered his father saying how, when his father was a little boy, he had gone to Jerusalem for Easter, and he had a Jewish friend who lived there. The friend had come from a nearby village, and he was the only one Warris’ father had known in the city. So he had stayed there that Easter. Warris’ father would talk often about that friend, but not in the refugee camps, for fear of what the others would do.

  When he was almost at the produce market, Warris glanced across the street at a new shed. An Orthodox Jew sat in the shed.

  A hole that would be there forever? That was what the vendors had said. Warris walked over to ask about this hole from the Jew.

  “Shalom,” he said. The man did not answer. He asked if the man were hard of hearing. He asked why the man was not answering him, and the man, obviously reading a Hebrew text, would answer nothing.

  Warris tried Arabic, and the man looked up and smiled, shrugging his shoulders. So there was one language he wouldn’t, and another he couldn’t.

  And this was just too ridiculous, after all, finding a Jew in Jerusalem who would not speak Hebrew.

  “Sukin syn,” Warris cursed in Russian, which meant “son of a bitch.” And the man answered in perfect Russian, asking what was Warris’ problem, and why was he swearing in a holy spot?

  “Because,” answered Warris in Russian, “you do not answer me.”

  “I am answering you here. Look. Don’t blaspheme. You are in a graveyard. There is a body.”

  “Where? Down there?” asked Warris, pointing to the big hole.

  “Yes. It is not to be disturbed or blasphemed.”

  “I see,” said Warris. “May I look?”