Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  “Why do you defend the Palestinians?” I asked these young men with great curiosity.

  “Because we do not want Israel to lose her moral compass, which is the first thing that gets lost in a war.”

  It was hard for me to understand their ideas, but I decided to trust them. I looked for Brother Agustín and told him to call Isahi Bach.

  “It’s all I can do,” I explained.

  “It’s not much. Wädi wanted you to get his son freed immediately.”

  “Wädi is not a fool, and he must know that there are things that are beyond my capacity when it comes to paying the debt I owe him. I will pay it, or I hope to pay it, but there are certain steps to take.”

  The process lasted six months, but eventually Isahi Bach managed to achieve more than I had expected. They sentenced Latîf to a year in prison and then he was to be expelled to Jordan. As he had been in prison for eight months already, he only needed four more to obtain his liberty.

  I didn’t know Wädi’s son, because Isahi Bach had asked me not even to come to the trial. I went to meet him as he was released from prison. He came through the door accompanied by Isahi. He looked a lot like Anisa: the same pointed face, the same almond eyes, and the same thin frame. I went up to him and held out my hand, but he pretended not to have seen my gesture and I didn’t insist.

  “We’ll take you to the border, your father is waiting for you on the other side,” Brother Agustín said.

  When we got to the Allenby Bridge, the boy got out of the car in a single bound. He wanted to get back to see his family. He didn’t thank me and he barely looked at me. It’s not that I was expecting a great deal of emotional display, but I would at least have liked to have seen him happy.

  After doing all the necessary paperwork at the border and arguing for a while with one of the soldiers, who seemed not to trust us and who read the documents and the safe-conduct pass at least three or four times, Latîf started to cross the bridge toward the other side of the Jordan.

  “He’s not very expressive,” I complained as we saw him trotting away.

  “What do you expect? He’s a little kid who’s having a horrible life in a refugee camp. He has been arrested and interrogated, probably with a certain amount of brutality, and he has been in prison. He has nothing to thank you for. Put yourself in his skin,” Isahi Bach said.

  “If I were in his skin I would be happy to have been set free.”

  “Neither you nor I has set him free, all we have done is make sure that justice was carried out.”

  “You know as well as I do that he came with a message for the operatives in Jerusalem,” I protested.

  “Maybe, but that could not be proven. He put up with his interrogations bravely, no one managed to get out of him more than he wanted to say, and he suffered for it,” Isahi Bach scolded.

  “He is a future terrorist,” I said.

  “Of course, but neither you nor I know that for a fact. Ask yourself what you would be like, what you would do, how you would feel if you were in his skin.”

  “They have to accept that Israel is a reality,” I said angrily.

  “Yes, one day they will, and we will have to accept that they are people, too, with their own rights.”

  Isahi Bach irritated me, but over time he became one of my closest friends.

  Two months later Brother Agustín came to my office once again.

  “I have brought a message from Wädi.”

  I behaved as I had before, I said nothing and waited for the friar to give me the message.

  “He thanks you for what you did for his son.”

  “I owed it to him. Now we are even.”

  “Yes, now you are even, but he wants to ask you a favor.”

  I was set on edge. Wädi was forcing himself into my life and making me feel uneasy. I had paid my debt and was not prepared to do any favors for the enemy, and, like it or not, enemies were what we were.

  “Wädi has another son and doesn’t know where he is. He has no way of finding out, and maybe you do.”

  “If they have arrested another of his sons it is no business of mine. Tell him from me that he should keep them on a tighter leash and not let them dedicate themselves to terrorist activity.”

  “The Fedayeen are not terrorists, but I am not referring to any of Anisa’s children.”

  Brother Agustín’s reply surprised me. I did not know what he could be referring to. I wondered if I should send him away and cut short that strange relationship that was building between Wädi and me after more than twenty years with no news from each other. But I didn’t, and today I rejoice that I made that decision.

  “A few years ago Wädi met a woman. She was Spanish, a Spanish doctor who had come to the country as part of a group of doctors and nurses, all of them volunteers, to help in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Wädi is one of the men who looks after the camp’s organization and so he has to have direct relationships with all the foreign organizations who come to bring food, or medicine, or help of whatever kind. The children need vaccines and food in good condition, and the adults need doctors to look after their health problems, to prescribe them the drugs they need. Wädi suggested that Eloisa examine the children in the school, so that they would be less frightened than if they had to go to the camp dispensary. She accepted. And that was how their relationship began. He fell in love with her the first moment that he saw her. ‘She is like a medieval princess,’ was how Wädi described her. He was right. Eloisa was blonde with blue eyes and a false air of fragility. If I were of an age when I could still pay attention to women, and if I were not a friar, then I would not have been indifferent to her either. The surprising thing is that Eloisa fell in love with Wädi. The scars that were left on his face the day he rescued you from the fire have grown darker with time and have made his face even more altered. Also, he is no longer a boy. Maybe it was his serenity and dignity that won this woman’s heart. When the summer ended and the Spanish volunteers went back to their country, she stayed behind. She had decided to work in the refugee camp; she did not expect anything, all she wanted to do was help, but she especially wanted to be by Wädi’s side.”

  “And what about Anisa?” I asked.

  I knew Anisa and was sure that she would never agree to share her husband. She was a strong-willed woman who had suffered and fought and would never accept not being treated as an equal. But maybe time changes us all, so I waited with interest for the friar’s answer.

  “Anisa decided not to see or hear more than she wanted to see or hear. She realized that Wädi could not avoid feeling attracted to Eloisa and that if she interfered then she would most likely lose her husband forever. No man should fall in love after the age of forty, and Wädi was more than fifty. Anisa did what she could to see that her sons were not disgusted by their father’s love affair. She maintained her dignity, kept her distance, and didn’t abandon the little house at which Wädi appeared ever more rarely. No one was surprised when Eloisa fell pregnant. No one asked whose child it was that she was expecting, but it didn’t matter, Wädi’s care and attention was too obvious for there to be any doubts. What neither of the two could imagine was that she would fall ill. Pneumonia was the diagnosis of an Amman doctor. Eloisa was very ill and Wädi decided he should get in touch with her family and explain the situation to them. Eloisa’s mother came from Spain to take charge of her daughter. When she met Wädi she didn’t hide her surprise that her daughter should have fallen in love with a man with a deformed face. I think that surprised her more than finding out he had another family. Eloisa refused to return to Spain; she wanted her child to be born in Jordan, as close as possible to Palestine. But her mother, María de los Ángeles, pretended not to notice her daughter’s protests. She spoke to Wädi: ‘I suppose you must know that I disapprove of my daughter’s relationship with you. It is clear that you have taken advantage of her feelings.
She is a young woman who came here having just finished her degree and with her head full of flighty ideas, only wanting to help. It is her father’s fault and mine for allowing her to come, but what is done is done. You have a wife and children, turn your life over to them, and if you really feel something for Eloisa, help me to take her back to Spain, as she will not recover here.’ Wädi replied that the doctor had said that it would be dangerous to move her. Eloisa’s mother had a fit of rage and her shouting could be heard all over the camp: ‘You are a selfish pig! You want to sacrifice my daughter’s life for your own benefit! Hasn’t she done enough for you people? I will take her whether you want her to go or not, and I swear that I will do whatever it takes to make sure you never see her again.’ This outburst shamed Wädi and he told Eloisa’s mother that he and her daughter were going to have a child together. But this just set the formidable old woman off again: ‘Yes, my daughter is going to have a child and I promise you that the poor little tyke won’t grow up in conditions like these; tell me, why on earth should she?’ Eloisa was in no condition to refuse her mother, and they left on a flight to Madrid two days later. Ever since then, Wädi has heard nothing more from her, and doesn’t even know if the child she was carrying was born.”

  “And what does all this have to do with me?” I asked, astonished not just at the story I had just heard, but at Wädi’s cheek in coming to me for help.

  “Wädi doesn’t have the money or any way of finding out what happened to the girl, and you do.”

  “You’re crazy! Tell him I’m sorry for what has happened, but I can’t do anything for him.”

  “You have money, contacts, the ability to fly to Madrid and find out what has happened to Eloisa.”

  I looked straight at the friar to see if he was serious. Wädi’s request seemed to me to be extremely presumptuous and made me feel very uncomfortable.

  “So you and Wädi think that I will be able to ask for leave to go to Madrid to find out what has happened to a doctor whom I don’t know, but who has had an affair with someone I have not seen since we both were children. Of course, the army, and my wife, will create no problems. Really, you must have a screw loose somewhere if you’re asking me to do something like that!”

  “That’s exactly what we are doing, asking you. I don’t know anyone else who can help us with this matter.”

  Brother Agustín was not to be moved by any argument I could offer him, as if it were normal that a Palestinian in a Jordanian refugee camp should ask an Israeli soldier to drop everything and help him with an affair of the heart.

  Hope Orchard by then was only a memory, as were all the people who had been part of my childhood and youth. I had fought in the Second World War, in the War of Independence, in Suez in 1956, in the conquest of East Jerusalem in 1967, and my life and my interests were all focused on the survival of Israel and on attempting to be happy with Paula and our children. I had paid my debt to Wädi when I had taken an interest in his son Latîf’s case, even though I was more and more sure that he was one of the Fedayeen. I had done more than I ought to have done, so I said to the friar that I would not move a finger to help Wädi now.

  That night I told Paula what had happened and she burst out laughing.

  “Wädi used to be your best friend, when we first met you did nothing but talk about him,” she reminded me.

  “Yes, but now we are on different sides, he wants to destroy Israel and I will do whatever I can to make sure he doesn’t, so there isn’t a great deal we can say to each other.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be so strict. There was a time, from what you’ve told me, when you, too, were convinced that the Palestinians should have their own state.”

  “And I still think they should, but don’t you remember that their leaders have sworn not to stop until we are pushed into the sea? No, I am not going to do more for him than I have already done, I even feel regret for having helped his son Latîf. He is a Fedayeen.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, that’s what Isahi Bach his defense lawyer used as the basis for his case, the idea that what you cannot prove does not exist; but he and you and I all know that no Palestinian crosses the border illegally simply to visit his aunt and his cousins.”

  “Who knows . . .”

  “Please, Paula, how can you say that, when you work in the Ministry of Defense!”

  “It’s precisely because of where I work that I need to bear in mind all the variables, even the most absurd and unlikely ones. In any case, Wädi didn’t lie to you.”

  I heard nothing more from Wädi or Brother Agustín until much later. By that time I had lost my son Yuval in the 1973 war. Paula and I were distraught, no one is prepared for the death of a child. Wädi, for his part, had not just lost his oldest son, but his second son had been killed during an attack carried out by a group of Fedayeen on a battalion of Israeli soldiers patrolling the banks of the Jordan.

  I was no longer in the army. I was giving classes at the university, and I remember that when I was speaking to another teacher about the war he said something that made me shudder: “I have three children, and I know I will lose one of them. It happens to everyone else, why not to me?” This is exactly what happened to Paula and me, we had lost the child we were destined to lose.

  Yuval was a young soldier of barely twenty, at the age when you should be studying instead of walking around with a submachine gun in your hands.

  It was Paula’s idea that we should go on a trip.

  “It would be good for us to get out of Israel.”

  I protested, and said that even if we traveled a thousand kilometers I would still not be able to forget my son. Paula got angry with me.

  “Do you think that I’m going to forget my son? All I want to do is leave so I don’t suffocate here. I need to walk on ground where the war is not present in every step I take. Just that, I don’t want anything else.”

  Our children Aaron and Gideon suggested that we go to Madrid. I had told them about the journey that my parents and I had taken to Spain when I was a child, and it seemed like a good idea to them that we visit the country.

  Paula was packing her suitcase when she remembered Wädi’s request to look for this woman named Eloisa.

  “Now that we are going to Madrid anyway, maybe we could try to find something out,” Paula suggested.

  “Definitely not! How could you think of something like that? Do you think I care that Wädi fell in love with a Spanish doctor and had a child with her? Let him take care of his life, we’ve got enough with ours.”

  I think I never really learned to understand Paula. If I had been surprised that she worked as an analyst in the Ministry of Defense, I was now equally surprised at her lack of prejudice when it came to dealing with any topic. She had an ability far beyond normal to, as she put it, get herself into another person’s skin, whoever they were. Perhaps this was what made her such a good analyst.

  “It would be fun to look for this girl, what’s wrong with that?”

  I resisted as much as I could, but in the end I went to find Brother Agustín without telling her that this was what I was doing. I found him in the old school where he used to give classes alongside Wädi. He didn’t seem to be surprised to see me.

  “So, have you finally decided to help your old friend?” he asked me without even saying hello.

  I was irritated by the way he received me, he assumed that I was there about Wädi, but in fact, what other cause could there have been?

  I told him that I had to go to Madrid, and that if I could I would try to find out some more information about this Eloisa, but I insisted that I couldn’t promise anything.

  Brother Agustín could barely give me any information; just an address, where Wädi sent letters that were returned with a stamp saying that the addressee was unknown.

  Paula was right, it was good to get out of Israel. We
didn’t forget about our son—how could we?—but at least we started to be able to sleep for a few hours every night. It wasn’t until a week had gone by that Paula reminded me that we should go to find out about Eloisa. By then we had been to Toledo, Aranjuez, and El Escorial, as well as the Prado Museum.

  To my surprise, Paula refused to come with me to the address Brother Agustín had given me.

  “I’ll go and walk for a while, and try to find something to get for the boys as a present.”

  My wife was surprising like that, she had convinced me to look for Eloisa, but now she made it clear that this was a personal matter for me, from my past.

  The house was in a wealthy area, not far from the Palace Hotel, which was where we were staying.

  “The Barrio de Salamanca is the best part of Madrid,” the taxi driver assured me when I gave him the address, happy not to have forgotten Ladino, my mother’s native tongue, in which she had spoke to Dalida and to me when we were children.

  A friendly porter told me there was no Eloisa Ramírez living there, although she had only been on the job a couple of years. There was a Ramírez family on the fifth floor. She let me go up in the elevator without causing any problems. I was nervous, thinking that I might meet a family that had nothing to do with Wädi or Eloisa.

  A maid opened the door to me and told me that there was no Eloisa living here. I don’t know why, but I asked her to ask the lady of the house. She paused for an instant, then led me into a little office and asked me to wait. Suddenly an elderly woman stood in front of me, well dressed and with her grey hair pulled up in a chignon.

  “So, you say that . . .”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, I’m looking for Eloisa Ramírez.”

  She looked at me for a few seconds and I could see how uncertainty clouded her vision.

  “I’m sorry, but I am Señora Ramírez and there is no Eloisa here.”