by Chuck Holton
A picture of his father lying battered in the street flashed before him. His jaw tightened, and a fire ignited behind his dark eyes. Tonight he was in control. Tonight he was full of power. He would strike a blow for his people, for Allah, and for himself. Whatever life came after death had to be better than the one he had been living. With one last resolute look in the mirror, he turned and hurried out of the bathroom.
He cleared the remaining food off of the room service cart and smoothed the white linen tablecloth. He carefully removed all nine water bottles from the refrigerator and placed them on the cart. With one last prayer, he opened the door and carefully backed into the hallway, pulling the cart.
He was halfway out the door when he heard the elevator doors open ten feet to his right. He turned his head and saw—of all things—a large German shepherd, its tongue lolling out the side of its mouth. Jamal froze, terrified of the dog, the fear doubling when he saw who held the leash.
Two soldiers.
They had rifles slung over their shoulders and were coming right for him. His mouth went dry, and his heart crashed against his ribs. He glanced back through the open door of his room and saw the waiter’s unclad legs sticking out from behind the bed. That old powerless feeling blew through him with the force of a desert sandstorm, burying all his new confidence. Then he looked down at the nine clear bottles arranged neatly on the tray in front of him, and he remembered.
Power. Tonight it is mine.
Jamal glanced back at the soldiers and smiled, pulling the cart into the hall and allowing the door to swing shut.
He held his breath and pretended not to notice the dog sniffing the cart with interest as he pushed it past. The soldiers turned and watched him push the cart into the elevator, but they did not stop. He could hear them snickering as the doors closed. Perhaps they were laughing at the dog, perhaps at his ill-fitting uniform, perhaps at him. It didn’t matter.
He allowed himself a weak smile as he realized the magnitude of what just happened. He laid his head back against the burled wood in the elevator and whispered, “Allah ak’bar.” God is great.
Beirut
Julie Assan was charm itself as she bent her head toward the overweight and graying American economist seated across the dinner table from her. She’d never seen him before in her life, but she was the personification of goodwill and friendship. She would be the most perfect, the most charming wife a man could want, even the retro Lebanese who seemed to have lost his confidence in and affection for her.
“Mr. Romano, I’m delighted to meet you. We’re so glad you’ve come to Beirut.”
Paul Romano smiled back. “As am I, Mrs. Assan. We believe in assisting this country’s strong economic recovery and keeping the unfortunate events of late from stopping the tide of progress. We are anxious to meet with your husband and the others of the World Bank stationed here. We want to learn how much of your fiscal health is the result of Lebanon itself—its people and their initiatives—and how much the result of world monetary circumstances.”
In other words, Julie thought, was Lebanon a safe place to invest his bank’s money or not. Khalil would see he decided yes. After all, Beirut had stringent privacy laws that made banking here more than merely attractive.
Julie turned to the young woman across from her. “I hope your visit here will be equally enjoyable, Mrs. Romano. Anything I can do to help arrange visits to some of our historical sites—”
Mrs. Romano held up a hand. “Please call me Brandy. Mrs. Romano sounds so old.”
Mrs. Romano probably sounded like the first wife.
Julie smiled. “Maybe you’d like to work on your tan, Brandy. We will provide you with passes to the best beach clubs.”
Brandy looked uncertain. “I don’t know. I was just going to stay in our room.” She leaned in and hissed, “I mean, terrorists. You’re always reading about them.” She glanced around as if she expected Osama bin Laden himself to be leaning over her shoulder listening. “The Middle East and all.”
Julie forced a smile, though what she wanted to do was roll her eyes. Before she could calm Brandy’s qualms, Khalil spoke, his tone gracious and friendly in spite of the fact that he deeply resented anyone, especially Americans, who lumped all the countries on the eastern Mediterranean into one feared and fearful entity, The Middle East.
“Ah, Mrs. Romano, you need not worry about your safety. Here in Lebanon we are not terrorists. We are a nation that is friendly to your great nation. We are a people who are understanding and accommodating. Unfortunately, that is rarely the side of things shown by your media. I daresay that your Miami is a much more dangerous place than Beirut.”
The rest of the table laughed, but Brandy smiled weakly, clearly unconvinced. Why had she accompanied her husband on this business trip if she was so fearful?
“I don’t mind staying in my room,” she told Khalil earnestly. “I did lots of stuff in London and Paris, so I don’t have to do stuff here.” She looked at Julie, her face full of sudden enthusiasm. “We went shopping at Harrod’s, that store in London that Princess Diana’s dead boyfriend’s father owns.”
Julie, who had shopped at Harrod’s more than a few times herself, merely smiled.
“Though I wouldn’t mind finding another necklace like yours,” Brandy said, staring at the miniature. “She looks just like you, the lady in the painting.”
Julie’s hand went to the ceramic oval. “It is me. My mother painted it.”
“Yeah? My mother painted the living room once.”
The girl had a sense of humor! Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.
“Do you think your mother’d do one of me?” Brandy asked.
Julie thought about Annabelle Fairchild and Brandy Romano together, and she couldn’t hold back a smile. “Annabelle rarely paints anything but modern abstract works these days, but you can always ask her.”
Brandy’s eyes shone. “I would be willing to leave my room for something like that.” She eyed the miniature with longing.
Julie picked up her glass of water and glanced around the banquet room filled with World Bank personnel and visiting economists from around the globe. If the number of those attending was any indication, the event was going to be a great success. Khalil could relax and enjoy being a host.
In one of those sudden lapses in conversation, Brandy blurted. “Julie, your name is very American. Did you know that?”
Julie nodded. “I am an American.”
“You are?” Shocked, Brandy looked from Julie to Khalil. “But you’re married to—” Suddenly she saw the faux pas yawning wider than the Grand Canyon. “I mean, Khalil isn’t. You know, American. Is he?”
Can you say xenophobic? Julie turned to her husband. “Are you?”
Khalil smiled with all the charm that had caught Julie’s attention just as his slim, good looks had caught her eye. “You are right, Mrs. Romano. I am not American. I am Lebanese, raised right here in Beirut. My father is a physician, and my mother is a great benefactress.”
Which is what they all wanted Julie to be. It made the family look good, and it was suitable for a woman.
“Then how?” Brandy asked, and Julie saw that the other wives seated at their table were interested, too. Even the husbands looked up from their food. “Where?”
In his perfect British English, Khalil said, “I met my wife at Cambridge. I was taking a master’s degree in economics, and Julie was studying there for a semester.”
“We met at an international students gathering,” Julie said. “Since I had lived for several years in Beirut, I immediately felt at home talking with Khalil.”
“You grew up here?” Brandy looked as if Julie had said she was raised by wolves outside ancient Rome.
“My father teaches at the American University right here in Beirut.”
“But you didn’t meet Khalil until you both went to England.”
“That’s right.”
“I bet it was love at first sight.” Brandy poked her hu
sband with her elbow. “Just like us.”
Julie nodded. At least love of the familiar if not love of the man. As long as they remained in London, they had done very well together, the fault lines in their relationship holding steady. Julie’s independence and individuality didn’t seem to bother him. Nor did the fact that she had started reading her Bible intermittently again, a habit she had originally developed when she was part of the Christian fellowship group at UVA.
Then, after three years in London, came Khalil’s present assignment to Beirut. Back on his home turf, the precariously balanced tectonic plates of their marriage shifted, revealing huge cracks that had previously been hidden.
Julie’s vivacity and opinions suddenly offended him. No matter how many times he said he was a Westernized man, at some fundamental level, he was all Middle Eastern. Though a thoroughly secular Muslim, not celebrating holidays, not praying when the muezzin called, he still had a cultural mindset that was difficult to overcome. He wanted a properly submissive wife, and she now made him nervous, which in turn made him more critical.
Julie sighed. Too late she had come to understand the dangers of a “mixed” marriage all too well. But such thoughts weren’t for Brandy or any of the others at the dinner table. With her hostess smile firmly in place, she kept conversation general for the rest of the meal as others around their table participated. Still, Julie felt on edge, Khalil’s tension becoming hers. She needed to escape for a few minutes.
How am I going to ever manage a lifetime with him if I can’t manage one dinner?
In the lull after the main course but before dessert, Julie excused herself and headed toward the restroom. As she left the dining room, she saw Brandy was following her. She picked up speed, only to be stalled by the line snaking out the ladies’ room door. Too many concurrent events and too few accommodations. Without hesitation she veered toward the escalators, almost tripping over a waiter in an ill-fitting uniform.
“Pardon me,” she said in Arabic as she stepped around him. He nodded and kept moving, pushing his cart of water bottles with great concentration. Julie rode down to the ground floor. With any luck she would both find an under-used facility and lose Brandy. She wasn’t sure she could handle a girl-to-girl chat with her emotions so raw.
Glancing back as she hurried across the lower lobby, she saw Brandy looking for her at the top of the escalator. The young woman frowned and moved on, presumably to stand in the long line.
Julie sighed and slowed, allowing herself to enjoy the hotel’s opulent, Old World lobby with its cedar walls, palm trees in planters, and four-story atrium with skylights that in daytime bathed the lobby in sunshine but which now with night behind them reflected the lobby. She could see herself when she looked up, all flattened and distorted. She was smiling at the absurd image as she opened the door to an elegant and empty ladies room located off to the side of the lobby.
Beirut
JAMAL EMERGED from the elevator into the hotel’s chaotic, crowded second-floor lobby.
Throngs of men and women attending several concurrently scheduled events gathered in knots around the spacious room, smoking and making small talk. More were visible through the doors to the banquet rooms, already being served their dinners. All were glamorously dressed, and many wore formal attire. Jamal suspected that each article of clothing probably cost more than it took to feed his family for a month, and he gritted his teeth at the unfairness of it all.
Here and there, burly security guards dressed in the same manner as the guests stood with heads swiveling as their eyes roved over the crowd. At each banquet room entrance more guards checked and rechecked the invitations of all. If any of these frightening men took notice as Jamal in his ill-fitting suit hastened across the polished marble floor toward one certain event, they gave no sign.
Maybe they asked a nobody like me to do this mission because they knew I would be invisible. For once his powerlessness was an advantage.
The sound of a crowd laughing drifted out of the double doors to his right, adding to the noise level in the foyer. A printed placard on a stand announced, “World Bank/IBRD—Partnering for MENA Development Reform.”
Jamal couldn’t remember what IBRD stood for, but MENA was Middle East Northern Africa. And he knew all too well what the World Bank was up to.
Imam Muhammed had often taught that the World Bank was a part of the international Zionist mafia of banks and financial institutions, heavily connected with organized crime and the drug trade. More than once, Jamal heard him rail, “The Jews put on a face of charity to spread Zionist dominance and oppression over the whole world.”
Jamal took one look at the keen-eyed guards and knew he had to enter the room by way of the serving area. As he pushed his cart through a door that read Staff Only, he swallowed hard, worried that some employee might notice that he didn’t belong. He need not have worried. The bedlam of trying to serve several hundred people at once made the frenzy in the foyer seem as orderly as the row upon row of men at the mosque praying to Mecca.
Waiters and waitresses grabbed dessert plates off the huge carts sent up from the kitchen below, placing them on trays that were then hoisted to shoulders. Others carried silver pitchers full of dark, fragrant coffee.
“Walk!” yelled a man who was clearly the supervisor. “Smile!” The wait staff seemed to ignore him, though they did slow down once they pushed through the curtains that separated the guests from the staging area.
The chaotic scene reminded him a little of the fish market in Sidon on a Thursday afternoon, or the memorial march he had attended two weeks earlier for Imam Muhammed, minus the patriotic slogans and burning Israeli and American flags.
A harried waitress brushed by his cart, nearly knocking over the bottles. “Shuu! Amya!” she yelled. What? Are you blind?
Unnerved by the close call, Jamal reached to steady his cargo. The woman hurried on, oblivious, tray balanced on her shoulder. He hugged the wall with his cart, suddenly seeing the teeming room much as a child might look at a stampeding herd of cattle.
His mouth went dry as he spotted the Lebanese soldiers with their bright green berets tucked into the epaulets of their uniforms. They stood at the curtained entry points to the dining room, keeping a wary if bored vigil over the activities in the staging area.
You cannot go back now. You have the power!
Taking a deep breath, he approached the curtains slowly, just a poor waiter taking water bottles to the head table.
A soldier raised a hand toward him. “Wa’ef.”
The hair stood up on the back of Jamal’s neck as he stopped as ordered. Sweat rolled down his back. The soldier eyed the bottles without interest. Then he lifted the tablecloth draped over the cart to be certain nothing was hidden beneath its pristine fall. His partner fingered an American-made M-16 and eyed Jamal curiously.
Jamal had seen soldiers like these men all of his life. They might be different militia, but their purpose was always the same. Humiliate the Palestinian. He resented all the different soldiers deeply because they seemed to delight in making him and his friends feel less like citizens and more like prisoners.
Before these men as before all the others he’d ever met, he kept his face carefully blank, letting none of his antagonism show.
The first soldier straightened and nodded at Jamal, who managed to smile thinly and began to push through the curtain when the second soldier stopped him again.
“Wait.” The second soldier lifted one of the bottles from his tray. “I’m thirsty.”
Before Jamal could protest, the first soldier replied, “Put that back, Yousef. Do you want to get us assigned to guard the street corner? It’s cold outside!”
The second soldier shrugged and replaced the bottle. Jamal didn’t start breathing again until he was through the curtain and into the banquet hall.
A man was speaking from the podium at one end of the room. “We’d like to thank our distinguished guests for joining us tonight to celebrate the extensi
on of an additional twenty million euros in loans to our Cultural Heritage and Urban Development project.”
Loud applause. The man who spoke looked exactly as Jamal pictured a banker to be. He had perfectly combed black hair and a paunchy midsection covered by an expensive double-breasted tuxedo in which the man looked so comfortable Jamal couldn’t imagine him in any other attire.
“Some of you were here in 2003 when with the support of UNESCO and the American University’s Department of History and Archaeology we launched what has proven to be a wonderfully successful program.”
Listening politely were nearly two hundred people seated in groups of eight at round tables packed into the banquet hall. Jamal worked his way down the wall toward the podium, pushing his tray of water bottles. The lights were low enough that he felt certain no one would notice that his pants were four inches too short.
The waitress who had almost knocked his cart over passed him on her way back to the staging area. He felt her look at him once, twice. He stiffened, but she continued on her way.
“And we can’t forget the member countries that have made generous financial contributions—France, Italy, and Japan. Each country’s finance minister is here this evening, along with representatives from each country in the Middle East/North Africa region. Let’s show them our gratitude.”
Thunderous applause filled the room again as a handful of men stood, some wearing tuxedos, others in traditional Arabic attire, three wearing the black and white kaffiyeh recognized the world over as a sign of the Palestinians, thanks to the late Yasser Arafat. At the sight of these men, a thought hit Jamal with the force of a brick to the stomach.
I cannot do this! Killing Jews is one thing—but many of the people in this room are my own countrymen!
