The Covenant

by Ragen, Naomi

  Had he seen something that tipped him off? Was he going to create an incident in order to cover his tracks and hide his secrets? Or was there simply a pebble in his sandal, which he was bending down to remove?

  The decision was split-second: the Israelis opened fire. Bullets ripped through the head and groin and stomach of Marwan Bahama, turning him from an instrument of torture into the kind of corpse he had delighted in leaving behind.

  Hearing the gunfire, the soldiers inside the house opened fire, killing the guards upstairs. They ran down the stairs.

  “Don’t shoot—the door!” Ismael screamed, standing in front of the red door, his hands outspread.

  “Allah is great,” Bahama’s second in command answered him, getting off a single shot before the Israelis took him out.

  Ismael never even felt the wound that pierced his shoulder, ricocheting off the door. The explosion threw up a fireball that made the Israelis outside drop to the ground. Sitting in the second car, Colonel Amos covered his head as the earth shook beneath them. Black ashes fell like falling snow.

  Around the Sabbath table, Elise and Leah sang:

  “Peace be upon you, angels of peace,

  Angels of the most high Who come from the King, King of all Kings,

  The Holy One, blessed be He.

  Come in peace, angels of peace,

  Angels of the most high

  Who come from the King, King of all Kings,

  The Holy One, blessed be He.

  Bless me in peace, angels of peace,

  Angels of the most high

  Who come from the King, King of all Kings,

  The Holy One, blessed be He.

  Go in peace, angels of peace,

  Angels of the most high

  Who come from the King, King of all Kings,

  The Holy One, blessed be He.”

  Esther and Ariana and Maria looked on.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  El Khadav, Southern Hebron Hills

  Saturday, May 11, 2002

  8:30 A.M.

  THE SOUND OF birds woke Dr. Jonathan Margulies. For a brief moment, he forgot where he was, a smile stretching his dry, swollen lips. “Elise?” he whispered, stretching out his hand. The cold, stone floor sent a chill through his fingertips that made his body shudder The nightmare . . . he thought. The nightmare. “liana!” he called out in panic, but then he remembered: he’d been transferred to a new hiding place. And liana?

  Where was she?

  A better place, he prayed, his eyes filling with tears.

  When Bahama realized she was missing, he’d gone wild. But as the beating went on, and the tortures began, Jon realized that Bahama was being very careful not to cross the line that would result in his sure death. Bahama didn’t want him dead. At least, Jon thought, not yet.

  And when it was over, he remembered how he’d been almost grateful for the blindfold tied over his bleeding eyes that had acted like a bandage, and for the cool, pine-scented air that had washed over his aching body like a compress as they smuggled him outside and stuffed his half-conscious body into the confines of a small space, probably the trunk of a car.

  He must have, thankfully, lost consciousness, he realized, otherwise the rough ride that jostled his sore, broken body would have been unbearable. He lifted his head, examining his surroundings in the light for the first time.

  It was a bedroom with a normal bed, a window—barred, but not covered in any way. He heard the shouts of young children playing, the voices of women talking to each other over the clatter of pans and the clicking of spoons and knives. His blindfold had been removed, and his mouth untaped. He touched his damp face. It had been washed, and beside him sat a plate of pita bread and a glass of water. His hands had been tied in front of him to allow him to eat and drink.

  Yes, orders had been given to keep him alive, he thought. At least for now.

  The blood from the wounds on his face and hands had congealed. The place where his fingernails had been torn out, festered with pus. The pain from his broken thumbs was constant, and the wounds in his stomach and back continued to throb. With professional detachment, he tried to analyze if his injuries were life-threatening. He thought about it in the way he would have considered the prospects of any patient under his care, trying not to let his personal feelings cloud his judgment.

  It wasn’t easy. As a matter of fact, he finally admitted to himself, it was downright impossible. One’s own life was always a very special story, and he couldn’t help but consider himself a very special patient, one he cared very much about. It pained him that he had nothing with which to treat himself. And so he tried, as best he could, to do the things that under the circumstances were possible to do.

  He tried not to move unnecessarily. If something was broken, movement could be fatal. He drained the cup and called out for more water. It was important to keep hydrated.

  A boy of no more than ten or eleven came in.

  “Water, please,” he begged, holding out the pitcher.

  The child looked at him curiously, taking the empty pitcher from his hands and returning with a full one.

  “Shukran”, he said hoarsely, trying a faint smile.

  The boy smiled back, surprised and pleased, the way a child would view a rare animal in a zoo doing tricks. His face lit up with curiosity and interest.

  “Mohammad!” a woman’s voice called urgently. Still, the child lingered, testing Jon’s knowledge of Arabic, delighted when Jon answered him.

  A young man burst into the room. “What are you doing in here?” He cuffed the boy. He was about sixteen, Jon estimated, with an AK-47 flung over his shoulder. It was shocking to see the child’s features hardened and set into an implacable expression of unrelenting hatred in the older boy’s face. It was only then Jon understood where he was.

  These were Bahama’s brothers.

  The terrorist had taken him home.

  He looked at the young man’s closed face and the words of another doctor came to him: “All the evils that men cause to each other because of certain desires, or opinions or religious principles, are rooted in ignorance,” wrote Moses Maimonides. All hatred would come to an end “when the earth was flooded with the knowledge of God.” He was glad then that liana was somewhere else. He tried to comfort himself that although he had no idea what had happened to his daughter, she was at least no longer in Bahama’s hands. What these beastly men were capable of doing to a small child, a Jewish child, a little girl . . . He shuddered, praying to God to send His angels to watch over her. He was totally dependent on the goodness of his fellow man, or—to be more exact—woman.

  He listened to the birds, remembering those lovely mornings a thousand years ago when it seemed as if he was covered with an abundance of blessings. For the first time he thought: I might never wake up again.

  I don’t want to die! I don’t! Something inside of him panicked. It’s too soon . . . I’m so young, the father of a young child—children! The husband of a young wife! I have my patients . . . Who will care for my patients . . .? His heart raged.

  But slowly the anger left him, the panic. He breathed deeply, feeling a strange, inexplicable calm. He thought about his life, as he would a story in a book, something that had happened to someone else.

  It had been such a wonderful life. So few people in the world were free to make their own choices the way he had, to follow their hearts. And he’d been one of them. He’d lived out his dreams, and instead of the hardships he’d expected—been reconciled to—in moving to a new country far from his birthplace, he’d had a life filled with so many blessings. In many ways, it had been such an easy life. His heart, body and soul had been at peace, nourished, satisfied. If he was afraid of anything, it was meeting God and being found unworthy of all the good that had been his portion, the abundance that he had enjoyed. I have no complaints, he realized with surprise. None.

  He thought about Elise—that first walk they’d taken along the Promenade, the wind at their b
acks, the beauty of the city of Jerusalem spread out at their feet. He thought of how her hair had blown in the wind, curls dipping over her eyes, and how she had smoothed it back, tucking it behind her small, tender ears; and then how she’d reached out and smoothed his hair out of his eyes, her small hand warm on his forehead, despite the cold. How kind her eyes had been as she looked into his; how they’d sparkled and danced with humor.

  “You are going to make a good girlfriend,” he’d whispered boldly, shocking himself, as he reached out to hold her hand, the touch of her fingertips still making his forehead tingle. She’d made no move to pull away, a slow, reciprocal smile spreading across her face.

  That was the moment, he thought, that I stopped being alone in the world. The moment his “I” had become a “we.” Even now, he thought. Even now.

  He remembered the words of Viktor Frankel, a psychiatrist who had been sent to Auschwitz, survived and written a remarkable little book. In one of the most memorable passages, Dr. Frankel recounted being asked by the senior block warden to encourage his despairing fellow inmates. The hopelessness of their situation, he told the dying men, did not detract from its dignity and its meaning. Someone is looking down on you, he’d told them. Someone living or dead, a wife, a child, a friend, or God. “We do not wish to disappoint them. They must find us suffering proudly, and knowing how to die.”

  He rolled this thought over in his head.

  No one knew the day of his death. Men had lived through much worse than this, he thought, looking around. They’d suffered the death of those close to them—parents, wives, children, relatives; they’d been starved and tortured mentally and physically for years—not days—and yet they had still managed to survive, marry, raise a whole new family, enjoy a whole lifetime and die peacefully in their beds. And young men had left soft beds and Cheerios in bowls on the counters of suburban kitchens on Long Island to work in Manhattan only to find themselves leaping to their deaths from the hundredth story of burning skyscrapers.

  Who was to say he wouldn’t live through this? That he wouldn’t return to his family whole? That he wouldn’t get his life back and continue to do deeds and think thoughts, and live the precious life, the one life, that God had granted him on this earth? He also knew there were no guarantees that he, or liana, would live through it either. It was all in the hands of God. And in the freely-made choices of his fellow men.

  Don’t give up hope, he told himself. You have a glass of water. A pita bread. Which is more than they gave the Jews of Auschwitz. And you’ve managed to put your daughter into good, kind hands. He had to believe that. He drank and ate and tried to sleep, trying to keep as still as possible.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine what had turned a ten-year-old’s childish openness into a sixteen-year-old’s fossilized hardness. What had intervened to destroy a child’s natural sympathy toward his fellow man, his instincts toward generosity and goodness? What terrible machine had succeeded in deadening the expression of those eyes, draining them of inquiry, replacing them with the unseeing, blinded eyes of the fanatic?

  He remembered a talk he had once had with Nouara about the education of her children. The schoolbooks rewrote the maps, wiping Israel off the earth, she told him. The incitement was constant and unrelenting.

  What could one do to help good parents like Nouara and Shawan to raise their families with love and tolerance and open-mindedness? What? he thought in despair.

  A child did not become a hate-filled fanatic, a terrorist, without entire, elaborate structures of educational institutions, training camps, expensive weapons and the backing of legitimate national support. It was a gargantuan beast, and it had spread its tentacles throughout the world. Like the ancient Caananite cult of Molech, which sacrificed children to a Satanic god in beastly rituals, this new beast demanded the lives of its children, forcing them to kill and convincing them it was a good thing to die.

  He thought of the young boy, and then he thought of liana. Their lives were inextricably intertwined. What chance would either have to embrace life to its fullest? What chance?

  He thought of his own tiny country, his own small and scattered people. A land so small no map could fit its name in its land mass. A people so small they represented one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population, a few million. A tiny creature, the Jewish people in the land of Israel. And right now, it was facing the beast alone. Just like me, he thought.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem

  Saturday, May 11, 2002

  9:30 A.M.

  “EXCUSE ME, NURSE, but I’ve been waiting since yesterday. Can you tell me if Julia Greenberg is out of the recovery room yet?”

  “Are you family?”

  “No.” Milos shook his head, hesitating before he chose the word that would describe his relationship to Julia Greenberg. “I’m a colleague. A reporter.”

  “The BCN people were here a half hour ago. I told them I’d call them if there was any change.”

  “I’m not with BCN.”

  “No reporters are allowed in, I’m sorry.”

  “No, no . . . you don’t understand. She is my friend . . . my girlfriend.” The nurse looked him over curiously. “She’s very badly injured. I don’t know if she’s up to having visitors . . .”

  “Please! I won’t stay long. But I have to see her. Please. She’s got no one.” He touched her arm. “And can you please tell me what happened to her?”

  The nurse hesitated. “She lost her right arm, from the elbow down. Her hearing is impaired. Her corneas are scratched. And she had some of the nails removed from her kidney and liver . . .”

  “Some?” he said, reeling in shock from the recitation of injuries. “Why not all?”

  She shook her head. “Some are too dangerous to touch. It was a sixhour operation. She’s just regained consciousness. She’s in terrible pain . . . but she’s on a morphine drip . . .”

  “Oh God!”

  The nurse eyed him sympathetically. “You say you are her boyfriend?” Unlike the other victims, who had been surrounded by family and friends, Julia Greenberg had had no one, aside from a few middle-aged men from her office, who, frankly, seemed anxious to go. “You say you’ve been waiting for hours?”

  He nodded. “Since I heard.”

  “Room three-twenty-four,” she finally relented, “but you can only stay ten minutes.”

  He stood at the threshold, looking through to the bed beyond. Steeling himself, he walked inside. Bandages covered her right arm. Her skull was also bandaged, and several deep gashes trailed across her face. Her eyes were black and blue, her lips cracked and her yellow hair—of which she was so fond, he thought—singed black. It was horrible.

  The most terrible thing about terrorism, the thing that people fond of saying “one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist” didn’t get, was that even siding with the terrorists gave you no immunity. The terrorist never knew his victims, and didn’t give a damn. When you sided with them, you were taking sides against yourself.

  What am I doing here? he asked himself. He had no idea what he had hoped to accomplish. All he knew for certain was that he had no choice. He was a human being, and she was a human being. And she was a victim of the most antihuman act that existed. However briefly they had known each other, their lives were now connected, the way the lives of all good people who hate the shedding of innocent blood are connected to all whose blood is shed without reason. By this act of horror, the terrorist had made their connection permanent.

  “Julia?” he whispered, standing over her. He could see her eyes move back and forth rapidly. “It’s me, Milos.”

  He heard what sounded like a groan rise from her lips, and she tried to lift herself up.

  “No. Don’t.” He touched her shoulder gently.

  She whispered something he couldn’t make out. He brought his ear to her lips.

  ”Where . . .”

  He leaned closer “Where . .
.? Where . . . are you? Is that it? You’re in Hadassah Hospital. You’ve just had an operation . . .”

  She shook her head. He listened again.

  “Where were you?” she whispered.

  He knew exactly what she was talking about. It was time to tell the truth. “I was picking up my grandmother from the airport. She and Elise Margulies’s grandmother Leah are friends. They met in Auschwitz.”

  He saw two large tears roll down her scarred cheeks.

  “Oh Julia, my poor Julia.” He took her left hand in his, caressing the fingers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry . . .”

  She didn’t try to move her hand away.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  El Khadav, Southern Hebron Hills

  Saturday, May 11, 2002

  11:00 A.M.

  THE CHILDREN OF El Khadav moved quickly out of the way as the familiar black Mercedes, known to all as the vehicle of Marwan Bahama, entered the village, followed by an entourage of other Hamas vehicles. The children would never have suspected that the men inside, who now drew their kaffiyehs more closely around their faces, were members of the most elite commando unit in the Israeli Defense Forces: the General Staff Reconnaisance Unit, better known as Sayeret Matkal, meaning “the chief of staff’s boys.”

  Nearby, Israeli air force choppers equipped with sophisticated listening devices hovered in the sky, tracking all telephone conversations and keeping in direct contact with the men of the Sayeret at all times. In one of them sat Colonel Amos. He had had four hours’ sleep after receiving information from a Shin Bet informer in El Khadav about the whereabouts of Dr. Jonathan Margulies.

  Lieutenant Yigael Glickson, the commander, had already been supplied with a complete map of the interior of the Bahama home by Shin Bet informers who included Hamas members, PLO rivals, Bahama’s neighbors and many others who had good reason to hate him.

  The fifteen men jumped out quickly from their cars. Two took positions on the roof of the house, and another four secured all possible exits. It was Glickson himself that broke down the door and entered, his machine gun already cocked, his finger on the trigger.