The Siege of Tel Aviv

by Hesh Kestin

  Rather than be seen visiting world leaders like a traveling salesman or bringing them together for an emergency conference whose indeterminate results or outright failure might be attributed to the president himself, not a great idea just ahead of an election, the leader of the free world prefers to work behind the scenes. For this he employs the video conference call in dealing with the individuals he terms his “co-world leaders.” (Flo Spier has given up trying to get the man to say “world co-leaders”—the president would rather be taken for a smart hick than a dumb Harvard grad.) His security people assure him these calls are as private as if all the participants were locked into a lead-lined closet in the White House sub-basement. The stakes are too high to risk public failure. Few nations are just itching to welcome even a small fraction of an estimated six million penniless Jews.

  “So what I got here so far, gentlemen—and ladies, of course, mustn’t forget the ladies—is a grand total of, let’s see now, give or take, carry the two, about a million five. Here’s the bottom line. I know the last thing you folks want is a flood of dyspeptic Hebrews in your country. But I got to say, I mean, a great nation like France, offering to take just two hundred thousand, that’s chicken feed. The UK, I see you’re down for half that. Italy and Holland, half that again. Folks, we got us six million starving refugees here, and believe me, these people, they get back on their feet and put their biblical heads together, they gonna spark your industries, your sciences, your technologies, your entire economies. Yeah, I know every one of y’all only wants the smarties, the doctors and researchers and so on, and there’s quite a few requests I got for air force pilots and top-drawer soldiers. But come on, the cream gets spread around with the milk.

  “Anyhoo, first I got to get numbers I can live with. Even my good neighbor to the south, Mexico, not the richest country in the universe, is willing to take two hundred thousand. That’s not, you know, the kind of commitment comes easy because my amigos down there are still boot-strapping their nation into the ranks of developed countries. So why are they accepting so many Jews? Because they expect these Jews to help ’em do it. You Scandinavian guys, learn from this. You South American countries, learn from this. Even some of you Asian tigers, think about how a whole lot of Jews can turbo-charge your already impressive success. And my good Russian friend, we got over a million people in Israel just come from your great country twenty years ago. They speak the language, for Pete’s sake—it’s a natural fit. I got you down for fifty thousand? You gotta be yankin’ my chain.

  “So looky here. I gonna make you a one-time only offer. Everyone doubles his quota and the US of A will match it, so that means we’ll have this problem settled in a New York minute. And, speaking of that city, if you agree right now, for a limited time only, I’ll throw in getting the NYPD to cancel every one of your people’s parking tickets, I don’t care going back how long. No more hassles. That’s by way of being a joke, guys, but I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do: if you don’t have it already, you get most favored nation status for five whole years. That means zero customs duty on most imports to the US of A, which ought to mean quite a lot if your economy is in the toilet, which most of y’all’s is. Also, any of you want to meet a special movie star on your next visit to our fine country, I can fix that—just so you keep my role in it on the QT. What do you say, guys? Let’s start from the top. Albania, a hundred people—you wanna go to two hundred? What’s two hundred people?”

  Albania goes to two hundred, Argentina doubles to three thousand, Australia to a hundred thousand, and so on right down the line to Zambia, which agrees to fifty Jews. China and Russia are left for last. Because Taiwan has now agreed to accept four thousand, Beijing signs on for ten times that. Russia, however, isn’t budging. Never mind that so many Israelis were until recently Russian engineers, doctors, and scientists trained in Russian schools and familiar with Russian ways. “Russia,” its prime minister tells the president, “has too many Jews already. And always will.”

  With the problem mostly solved, the president needs only to consult with Flo Spier on the best timing for the announcement. She believes it will very helpful to get the new Israeli PM to Washington for a joint statement. Trouble is, communication with what the press is calling the “interim” or “ad hoc” government of Israel is proving difficult.

  Less so for an Israeli agent deep in the national security apparatus, who communicates the results of the teleconference—code, shmode—to Yigal Lev via a radio link with CV Star of Bethlehem.

  “Well, that’s settled,” Yigal tells Misha. “Where do you prefer, Albania or Zambia?”

  “I like it here,” Misha says.

  “So do I,” Yigal says. “The State of Israel isn’t going anywhere, not in whole, not in parts.”

  “Except forward.”

  “Except forward,” Yigal says.

  “And then I’ll have my favorite cigars again,” Misha says.

  95

  THE THREE IMPOSTERS ARE now close enough to Tel Aviv to imagine the sound of early morning traffic and the sight of exhaust smoke rising over the city. But the morning is silent and the air is clear.

  Abed drives slowly; the last thing they need is to come upon an Israeli patrol at speed.

  A shout in Arabic from somewhere ahead splits the predawn silence. “Hands in the air!”

  Each of the three thinks the same thing at the same time: shit. There is no knowing the uniform of whoever is speaking.

  “Slowly exit the vehicle, carefully put down your weapons, then move to the front of the vehicle, one man at a time.”

  When they do, there is a further command.

  “Place your hands on your heads.”

  A half dozen soldiers appear before them out of the morning mists.

  Cobi laughs. “Don’t shoot,” he says in Hebrew. “We’re playing for the same team.”

  “Shut up—not a word!” An IDF captain comes up from behind them, his Tavor leveled at their heads. At this distance, a single burst will decapitate all of them in the time it takes to complete one word of explanation.

  A sergeant motions to two soldiers behind him. “Check to the rear, a hundred meters.”

  “There’s an Egyptian forward checkpoint about a kilom—”

  The lieutenant swings his rifle butt. Abed goes down. “Your mother’s cunt! I said shut up.”

  The sun is fully up now. One of the squad lights the butt of a cigarette. That is what it has come to: saving butts, relighting them for a last puff. Another squats in the dirt. Time passes with immeasurable slowness, like a clock whose hands have been weighted.

  Abed’s head is bleeding, staining through the black-and-white-checked cotton of his kaffiyeh. But he stays down.

  Cobi tries to read the captain’s insignia: Golani Infantry, but no other identifying marks. He wears brown parachutist boots. The two do not go together. Even Golani who graduate jump school do not wear brown boots. Golani troopers and paratroopers get into fist-fights over who is tougher. Or they did. Cobi busies himself with solving this puzzle, thinking maybe this is a borrowed uniform, or borrowed boots. Or maybe it is all simply a bad dream. He had enough of them in the cave waiting for Abed to return.

  Abed is like the brown boots. A Bedouin, even one who hides his own IDF uniform, should have turned him in for bounty—that was the rap on Bedouin. Why is this one different? Who was to say as soon he got Cobi out of the cave he wouldn’t shoot him in the back? But he didn’t. Cobi thinks: good Bedouin, bad Bedouin. Just like Jews.

  Meanwhile, the captain searches the Cadillac.

  “An Egyptian officer’s uniform,” he says, with no hint of surprise. “Which one of you belongs to it?”

  Alex wiggles a finger at the top of his head: permission to speak? She does not wish want to get hit in the face with a rifle butt. Such a pretty face when it is all fixed up.

  The lieutenant nods.

  “Liberated from the enemy, captain.”

  “Sure.”

  It
is clear to all three what the captain is thinking: a decision must be made. In Ghetto Tel Aviv there is no room for prisoners, nor anything to feed them. Every calorie that goes to them will not be available to his soldiers. And it is growing light. A reconnaissance patrol on open ground in full daylight might be picked off at any moment. Enemy helicopters are everywhere.

  The two soldiers return.

  One of them, an Ethiopian whose European face seems to have been soaked in coffee, spits to his side. “Clear to the rear,” he announces. “But that’s just a hundred meters. For all we know they could be in front of us.”

  The squatting soldier stands. He knows this much: either they go back with prisoners or they go back without them, but they need to go back now. As though magnetized, the others in the squad take a few steps closer to the three, Alex and Cobi standing, Abed still on the ground.

  The captain approaches, peering closely at Alex, whose eyes still bear traces of makeup, his lips a bit too plummy. “Why do you look like a girl?”

  “My late mother asked the same question,” Alex says. The joke falls flat. “Look, under the seat is my IDF ID.”

  “Easily forged,” the captain says. “Is that eye shadow?”

  “Liner,” Alex says. “Estée Lauder.”

  “But you’re not a girl.”

  Cobi can take no more of this. If something doesn’t happen, they are all going to be executed by their own forces two kilometers from Tel Aviv. “He’s not a girl—he’s a fucking cross-dresser, and a damn fine one at that. Look, Captain, isn’t there any way to prove who we are?”

  “You mean prove you’re not Hebrew-speaking enemy agents attempting to cross into Tel Aviv? Let me think. No, I don’t reckon you can.”

  Oddly, it begins with Abed.

  “Jerusalem of Gold,” he sings from the ground. “And of bronze and...”

  Alex and Cobi pick it up immediately.

  ...of light.

  Am I not a lyre for all your songs?

  The mountain air, clear as wine,

  And the perfume of the pines

  Carried on the breeze at twilight

  Along with the sound of bells.

  And in the sleep of tree and stone,

  Captured as in a dream,

  The city stands alone,

  And at its heart—a wall.

  Jerusalem of gold

  And of bronze and of -—

  “Fuck,” the captain says. “Why didn’t you do that right away?”

  Cobi puts his hands down, a relief in itself. “Because we were pissing in our pants you would kill us on the spot, that’s why.”

  “A likely outcome too,” the captain says. “You got room for seven more in this boat?”

  “Walk in the park,” Alex says, grinning. “It’s a fucking Cadillac.”

  96

  FOR TWENTY YEARS, SINCE the arrival of General Tawfik Ali, the former Twyford Oliver, uniformly known to his tank crews as Ticky Pasha, the command structure of the armored forces of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has flourished as an independent military fiefdom. While the infantry and air force answer to the minister of defense, Royal Jordanian Armored Command reports directly to the monarch. The relationship between the king and General Ali is considered so unshakeable that only a year earlier a cable to Whitehall from MI6’s resident in Amman summarized it succinctly: “Were General Ali to resign, the king would fall—and he knows it.”

  Like intelligence agencies the world over, MI6 totally gets the past, sometimes comprehends the present, but never even remotely foretells the future. Washington, London, Moscow, and Beijing would be better off hiring fortune tellers. Always and inevitably, the future is complicated—and nowhere is this more true than in the Middle East.

  In a desert encampment twenty kilometers outside Amman, the capital, the king is on a visit to the sheikhs of the Bedouin tribes that make up his principal support, the backbone of his army. They are his shield against the growing Palestinian threat within Jordan. Until recently, 70% of the country’s population; now, with their numbers swollen by refugees from the pan-Arab campaign to wipe out the Palestinians of the West Bank, the monarch has little choice but to enforce his rule with the sword if he is not to add his name to the list of fallen Arab monarchs. Just as in 1970, when his father ordered the slaughter of Palestinians in Jordan, the current king is determined to do what he must to survive. Of course, if there were some way to deport them all, the task would be easier. But the Palestinians have nowhere to go, certainly not in the Arab world, where they are considered troublemakers. Either they are dealt with now or by sheer numbers they will soon enough depose the monarchy and declare a Palestinian state.

  While the British-educated king sits drinking Turkish coffee on a tennis-court-size oriental rug in the vast royal tent, an aide enters to inform him that Ticky Pasha has arrived, presumably to discuss solving Jordan’s Palestinian problem for all time.

  Within an hour, the two meet in one of seven smaller tents in which the king will sleep that night. Three of the tents are occupied by royal lookalikes. The Jordanian monarch is determined to die of old age.

  “Your majesty,” General Ali says, speaking the English of Sandhurst and Oxford, of country houses and Whitehall. It is a language they share. Though the British officer is fluent in Arabic, the two always speak English in private. “Your majesty, I ask you to forgive this sudden interruption, but a matter has arisen of great urgency.”

  “Ticky, please. There is no need to apologize for what is always a pleasurable meeting.”

  “This one may not be so pleasurable,” the Englishman says. “Your highness, I have given to you personally and to the kingdom over which you rule almost twenty years of devoted service. I have dedicated my life’s work to the creation and development of the finest armored corps in the Arab world, a force which has permitted you to conquer all of al Kuds.” He uses the Arabic name for Jerusalem: al Kuds, the Holy. “As a Muslim, I have wept with joy to see the Mosque of Omar and the Al-Aksa once more in Hashemite hands.”

  “And as one Muslim to another, I commend your very essential part in causing this to come about. In the annals of Islam, your name will be remembered in glory.”

  “Your highness, I am now apprised that tanks under my command are to be the vanguard in an invasion of the city of Tel Aviv. Sire, these are weapons designed to destroy military targets, other tanks, armed infantry. Aside from a handful of probably inoperable Chariots that may quickly be swept aside, there are no military targets in the city of Tel Aviv. I am instructed that the targets of my armored corps are to be civilians.”

  “Jews.”

  “Your highness, they are unarmed. Women and children.”

  The monarch smiles. “My dear Ticky, surely as a Muslim you are aware that I am now guardian of the holy sites. My family is descended directly from the Prophet. My first responsibility is to Islam.” He nods in affirmation. “First and last.”

  “Your highness, Jews and Christians are protected peoples. They may not be harmed so long as they do not take up arms against Islam. Even should they reject Allah they are dhimmi, who under conditions well defined in Shari’a law may live freely amongst us. The Prophet is himself known to have commanded that women and children and unarmed men must under all circumstances be protected from harm.”

  “The Prophet stated as well, Arabia is Muslim for all time.’”

  “Is this then Arabia, your majesty?”

  “Ticky, is not my lineage that of the first family of Arabia?” General Tawfik Ali is now sixty-two years old, his children grown. One is a professor of Arabic at Yale University in the United States, the other proprietor of a London boutique catering to Middle Eastern women visiting England or living in the West; her designs are both modest, in that they cover the arms and legs, and stylish, adaptations of the current trends out of Paris and New York. Ten years a widower, the former Twyford Oliver, holder of a CBE that was never publically announced, has been dreading this moment since h
e became a Muslim and committed himself to the Hashemites and to their kingdom.

  “Your majesty has many times seen the film Lawrence of Arabia.’”

  “Many times we have seen it together. It is a tribute to the perfect wisdom of my antecedent, King Abdullah.”

  “Indeed. But it describes as well the imperfect Englishman who swore him allegiance.”

  “Only the Prophet is perfect.”

  “Indeed. But the imperfection of Lawrence is not one I wish to emulate. My faults are great, probably countless. You will recall that at a certain point in the film, the Englishman Lawrence, seething with vengeance, instructs his troops: ‘No prisoners.’”

  The king listens but does not speak.

  “Your majesty, though like Lawrence I was born an Englishman, I am not that man.”

  “Ticky, I have one fifth column in my country, the Palestinians. Do you suggest I tolerate another?”

  “Sire, I respectfully suggest your majesty await the outcome of international attempts to resettle elsewhere the residents of Tel Aviv.”

  “Yes, of course, that would be the proper path,” the king says. “But these are Jews. They rise like the phoenix bird. Their air force has been wiped out and suddenly they appear with three Super Hornets and destroy the pride of the Egyptian navy. Their armed forces are in tatters, most of them prisoners in desert camps. Yet they develop the missile capability which takes out not one but five Syrian Sukhois, as formidable a warplane as exists. Give them another month, another week, perhaps only a day, and they will grow an offensive capability neither you nor I can imagine. Ticky, my beloved mentor, my old friend, these are Jews. They must be destroyed.”

  “Civilians, your highness. Civilians.”