by Alan Gold
Rather than drive and try to find parking, she took a cab to the Mamilla and walked down the flight of steps and along its length, passing Jews and Arabs, Orthodox and secular, young and old, until she entered the restaurant. She was seated and then waited ten minutes for Yaniv to arrive.
He apologized for being late. “The reason I was delayed was because I was interviewing the foreign minister and he insisted on reframing my questions so he gave the answers he wanted. I told him I’d dump the interview unless he was willing to answer the questions. It was a bit of a tussle . . .”
Yael listened and might have taken Yaniv’s story as bragging and name-dropping designed to impress her, but he delivered it with such nonchalance that he might have been speaking of his conversation with a shopkeeper.
“But I won,” he added as he sat down. “You can always get them where you want them, if you know how to be forceful but patient.”
He asked about her day, and she told him briefly about the three operations and saying good-bye to Bilal. The questions he asked her seemed to casually and easily move past friendship into the territory of interviewer and interviewee, and she wondered whether he was using her as a source for a story.
“You sound sorry that he’s in police custody,” said Yaniv.
“He may be a murderer but he’s also a kid who’s fucked up his life. There’s tragedy there as much as anything else. Things should have been different for Bilal . . .”
Yael couldn’t help but remember Bilal’s words to her: “It’s so easy for you, Doctor . . .”
“A different time, different circumstances,” she continued. “Life might have been very different for him and a generation of Palestinians who’ve been raised as victims, and to hate.”
“How was he when he left the hospital? Full of bravado?”
“Of course. But . . .” She thought back to him as he was being wheeled down the corridor. “It was hollow. There’s more going on in that head of his than militant rhetoric.”
“Not surprising when you think about where he’s going.”
“Hmmm . . . not just that . . .” Yael sipped her wine and didn’t elaborate.
When he’d finished a mouthful of lamb, Yaniv said, “Did the Shin Bet guys get tough? Or are they saving that for when he’s out of sight?”
“They’re not stupid; in the hospital it’s just questions. He refused to answer. But he was rattled. That’s for sure.”
“If a group of black-suited Shin Bet officers visited me while I was handcuffed to a bed, I’d probably be rattled too.”
Yael shook her head. “No, there was only one Shin Bet man who actually interviewed him.”
Yaniv raised an eyebrow. “Only one? I know them. They’re usually in pairs.”
“I met him as I was going into Bilal’s room. He was even wearing a yarmulke, which I found odd for a Shin Bet guy.”
“It’s also odd that a Shin Bet officer would question someone alone. Those guys are pretty officious and love their procedure.”
“He had this odd white streak of hair down the middle, graying at the sides. With the yarmulke, it looked almost funny.”
Yaniv suddenly looked up at her.
“What?” she asked.
“Dark gray at the sides, white down the middle. Lean build. Really dark eyes?”
“Maybe. Yes. I think so. Why?”
“I’ve never spoken to him, but if it’s who I think it is, he’s a seriously heavy player. Division head.”
“So?” said Yael.
“Seems a bit heavy for a kid who fucked up his mission. That level, he’d be doing policy or dealing with the heads of Hamas or Hezbollah. Not some failed wannabe.”
Yael shrugged. But Ivan the American wasn’t willing to let it go. “Why would a top-level Shin Bet commander come out of the office for a kid like Bilal? And on his own?”
Yael remained silent. She didn’t see the cause of his sudden interest.
“What did the kid say about this man, Yael?”
“Nothing,” she replied. But she knew from his reaction that there was far more to it than that. “Yaniv, what’s going on?”
He frowned, and shook his head slightly. “Probably nothing.”
“Come on, don’t bullshit me.”
“No, honest,” he said, and tried to concentrate on his meal. But she remained absolutely still, looking at him intently. Knowing that the spotlight was on him, he said softly, “If it’s the guy I think it is, something doesn’t seem kosher. That’s all.”
She looked across the table; he seemed to be a bit distant. This was a new Yaniv, one she hadn’t seen before. Up until now, he’d been the reporter on a mission, somebody who she half knew was just using her to get to a story; but now she thought she could perceive a different man, an investigative reporter, maybe even in the Woodward and Bernstein mold, making agreements with sources in back alleys, having whispered conversations with people known only by their code names.
Suddenly, she saw him not as a reporter out for his own glorification but as a professional journalist who’d bust down doors to get at the truth. And she liked what she saw.
* * *
Central Area D Prison Facility, Dead Sea, Israel
“IS THIS THE ONE?” asked the Israeli admissions clerk as Bilal was wheeled into the prison reception area.
The policeman who was pushing him nodded. “Bilal haMitzri. Just brought down from the Jerusalem Hospital via Police HQ.”
“Why’s he still in a wheelchair? Can’t he walk?”
“His doctors have said he has to be in the wheelchair until your prison doctor says he can get out of it.”
“Bullshit. You!” barked the clerk. “Can you walk?”
Bilal didn’t answer, so the clerk asked again in broken Arabic, “Can you walk?”
Bilal tried to raise his arm, but his left wrist was constrained by the handcuffs. The clerk said to the policeman, “Undo his cuffs and see if the bastard can walk. Just tip him out of the chair.”
Within a moment, Bilal was on his feet, clutching the desk for support. “Sign the paperwork and he’s all yours,” said the policeman.
It took half an hour to strip Bilal, examine his orifices, ask him searching and personal questions about his sexuality and drug dependence, his parentage, relationships, affiliations to organizations, religious inclination, and more. He was given prison clothes to wear, and his personal clothes were put into a cardboard box for storage until he was released. His wallet, phone, bracelet, and watch, which had been taken from him when he was shot, were still in Jerusalem under the watchful eye of the hospital’s security until they were released by Shin Bet.
“Which means, you murdering bastard, that for the rest of what remains of your life, you’ll be living in prison garb, and you’ll never see these clothes again,” taunted the clerk.
Bilal lowered his head, a mixture of fear and anger welling inside him, and shuffled slowly beside the prison guard from the outer reception areas through a series of electrified doors and steel security barriers into the prison compound proper.
The astringent reek of antiseptic tried but failed to mask the reek of urine, vomit, and sweat that pervaded every corner of the prison. It took days, sometimes weeks, for newcomers to acclimatize themselves to the stench, something between rotting meat and decaying vegetables. Three times a day, prisoners with mops and buckets would trundle along corridors, sloshing the acrid disinfectant over the floors and halfway up the walls in an attempt to overcome the damage done by the prisoners the previous night. The game, when the lights were out, was to see how far each prisoner who was in a normal cell, not isolated, could piss across the corridor. Immune to further punishment and increased restrictions on their privileges, the inmates used their arcs of urine as both a demonstration of masculinity and a way of showing their contempt to their Israeli captors.
From dawn until well after lights-out, the prison was a clamor of noise and din. A bizarre combination of yells, catcalls, obscenitie
s, and prayers. The noises of men locked in cages traveled down corridors, and Bilal, petrified but trying to look brave, at first attempted to block it out with his fingers in his ears, but when that proved useless, he tried to determine where the noises were coming from. But they were all around him.
As he walked toward the cell where he would be spending much of his time until he was tried and sent back to this prison or assigned to a different prison, Bilal hesitated at the entryway. The guard had to push him forward. It was typical of first-time prisoners, the sudden and wrenching realization that this, not parks or cafés or the houses of his loved ones, was now where he’d spend his days. It had a steel bed, a steel urinal, and a steel sink, but these didn’t make it much more than the sort of cage where animals spent their lives as captives of a zoo.
Sitting alone on his bunk, Bilal, terrified of the melee of foreign sounds from the prison compound, tried to prevent his head from exploding in panic. It was all part of the insinuation of new and unwelcome experiences he would suffer every minute of every day of his confinement.
Bilal continued to stare at the same spot on the wall, wondering why he was here and what sin he’d committed against Allah for his god to let him live and be treated in such a cruel and vindictive way. Every hour, guards would slide away the hinged plate from the spyhole of his isolation door, look at the inhabitant, and ensure that he was still alive and breathing.
They’d seen a thousand prisoners like him come and go: shocked, angry, vengeful, and swearing retribution. But the ones they worried about were the quiet ones, those who held everything inside until something, some minuscule incident like a dirty plate or the doors opening later than normal, would drive them over the edge. Then they’d either try to harm themselves or they’d suddenly lash out unexpectedly and could be very dangerous.
After a full day of observation, some of the guards began to think that this one was different. This kid wasn’t coming out of his shell at all. He remained almost catatonic and must have felt totally dissociated within his new and unaccustomed surroundings. And so he was put on suicide watch, and the guards reported back to the prison governor that Bilal seemed to be spending every minute of his time inside his cell, mumbling prayers from the Koran.
A week later they were increasingly worried. Initially he’d been examined by the prison doctor, who looked at the wounds he’d suffered and the way that the surgeon in the Jerusalem Hospital had repaired his body. It was an excellent job and he’d recovered well.
But because of who he was—somebody who’d attacked the holiest place of Judaism—his isolation had been ordered by the governor so that he didn’t become a local hero and a rallying point for the other prisoners. Not that there was much chance of that, according to his guards. He was utterly featureless, uncharismatic, and everyday—hardly the stuff of heroes.
In his second week of incarceration, he received a visit from his imam. Normally, when a holy man came to visit a prisoner, the mood picked up. But when he was told of his imam’s visit, the Israeli guard was surprised at the consternation on Bilal’s face.
Still, he appeared to be growing more resilient day by day. Though he was still on suicide watch, there was less concern for Bilal’s welfare. He was no longer as morose but was now talking to fellow prisoners in the exercise yards, occasionally being impertinent to the guards, and once or twice managing to smile.
The imam had been to the prison before, several times, leaving his home in Bayt al Gizah and traveling down the steep road that descended into the lowest region on earth, the Dead Sea. The prison, designated as Central Area D, was hidden behind a wall of palm and date trees, in the afternoon shade of the massive white cliffs. Farther south along the road that led down the rift valley toward the Gulf of Eilat were the oasis at Ein Gedi, the ancient Essene settlement of Qumran, and the Herodian fortress at Masada. Not that the imam had visited those archaeological areas.
Since leaving the Al-Azhar University and mosque in Cairo and coming to Bayt al Gizah to be the imam to his beloved Palestinian people, he had made fools of the Israeli security services, had gathered around him a young coterie of eager shahids—all prepared for martyrdom—and was about to unleash a furious assault against the Jews and their arrogance. But first he had to take care of a little disappointment called Bilal.
He’d hoped that Bilal, the most anxious of all the young men within the imam’s group to prove his love of Allah, would have brought some small measure of destruction to Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter. Of course it was absurd to think that he could have done much damage, despite what the imam had told him: the security services were hypervigilant around the Wailing Wall. But the whole purpose of sending Bilal to his death was to breach the Jews’ security, even for a few minutes, perhaps to explode a bomb, and thus to show the Jews that they were vulnerable. Yet, he had failed in his mission, no bomb had gone off, there was no shahid, and another Palestinian freedom fighter was made to look like a buffoon in the world’s media. Instead of bringing down the Jews’ Holy Wall, he’d singed his hair and discovered a priceless Jewish treasure!
But it got worse, for now there was even the possibility that instead of dying as he should, he’d told this doctor about the Bayt al Gizah group. And worse, a thousand times worse, Bilal indicated that he’d somehow seen him with the Jew from Shin Bet whom he’d met with the old rabbi from Neturei Karta.
The boy had to die, for he was a captive and the Jews would no doubt torture him and extract the information. Fortunately, because of his injuries, he hadn’t yet been questioned, but it would only be a matter of time.
Bilal was led, handcuffed to a guard, into a reception room. It was bare with not a touch of humanity to soften its symmetrical gray lines, its imposing steel furniture bolted to the floor, including a single heavy table.
The imam was seated as Bilal was led to the chair. “My son. How are you? Is Allah the Merciful being good to you in this place of punishment and retribution? Have you made friends with your brothers here?”
Bilal smiled at his imam but the priest knew immediately that it was a forced smile. This wasn’t the Bilal who had been his willing acolyte in the mosque. “Imam, I’ve spoken to nobody.”
The imam smiled and nodded, trying to offer the youngster some sympathy in his expression. “My boy, you’re afraid, and fear is to be expected. When you’re removed from the love and wisdom of your father and those consolations that can be offered by your mother, it’s natural for you to feel alone and afraid. But remember this, Bilal: in here, in this very prison with its walls and wire, you have a father . . . In here, Bilal, you have the presence of Allah, of God Himself. In here is the God of Ibrahim and his son Ismail, the very God of Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him. Put your love and faith in Allah, and nothing may harm you.”
Bilal nodded. He’d been trying to find Allah in the prison since he was sent here from the hospital, but the noises, the disruptions, the shouting, the anger, and the threats that reverberated around the walls and filled every space made Allah a distant ghost.
The imam turned around to see how far away the Israeli guard was before he spoke. The last thing he wanted was to be overheard. Fortunately, the guard was at the other end of the room, reading a newspaper.
He whispered, “Tell me, Bilal, to whom have you spoken?”
“I swear, imam, I speak to no one.”
“You must think hard. You were drugged, Bilal. Your mind affected and under the Jew doctor’s knife.”
Bilal looked at the imam and didn’t answer. He didn’t know. The imam smiled and nodded in reassurance. “Don’t worry, my son. Allah will never blame you for falling foul of the Jews’ tricks. But how can I and your brothers in Bayt al Gizah be assured of your silence?”
“I promise you, imam, by all that is holy, in the name of the last and greatest prophet, Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, that I will die before I break my oath.”
Bilal was going to say that he’d never spoken to anybody a
bout the Jew with the white hair, and the rabbi in the room in the village near Bethlehem, but caution made him hold back.
The imam smiled again. “I know that, Bilal, my son. I know that. Now I have to leave you. There are other brothers I have to speak with.”
* * *
539 BCE
Babylon in Mesopotamia
THE BONES OF AHIMAAZ, the former high priest of Israel, were never found. Nor did anybody ask after him. Only his wife and children wondered whether they’d ever see him again and whether he’d found his long-lost brother Azariah.
Yet, strangely, as Ahimaaz’s body decayed and dissolved into the ground after he died of thirst in a distant cave far to the south of Jerusalem, his reputation grew, and the days when Ahimaaz had been high priest of Israel became golden. As Rehoboam ruled after the death of Solomon, the children of Israel looked back on past glories and feared what would happen to their nation and to them as a people.
Through arrogance and stupidity, Rehoboam caused the land of Israel—twelve tribes bonded together into a nation by King David and King Solomon—to split into separate lands in the north and south. Judah and Israel, though not enemies, lived side by side for four hundred years as two separate nations with separate capitals, temples, and kingly families. They even took separate names, the south becoming the Kingdom of Judah, composed of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the northern ten tribes becoming the Kingdom of Samaria.
But other nations grew in size and ferocity, and when the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III, destroyed the northern kingdom, he sent the inhabitants into exile. Two hundred years later, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered Judah.
It had been four centuries from the time when Solomon the Wise laid the first two stones of his temple in Jerusalem until its devastation in the wreckage of Jerusalem left by the invading Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar emptied the land and took the Jewish people into exile to live within the boundaries of the fabulous city of Babylon, where they formed their societies along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. And in those fifty years of exile, Jerusalem became overgrown with weeds and decay, and the Jews in Babylon grew lazy and indolent, removed from the harshness of their land and out of the sight of their god.
