Authors: Matthew Dunn
Place des Vosges, Paris
I
srael’s ambassador to France was due to retire in three months, but that wasn’t going to happen because in six minutes, he’d be dead.
He had no inkling of his imminent demise, as he was a healthy fifty-nine-year-old who’d recently undergone a full medical checkup and had told by his doctor that he wasn’t going to die anytime soon. In fairness, his doctor could not be expected to anticipate that his patient’s heart might be targeted by a sniper.
The ambassador was not alone as he walked through Paris’s oldest square. Tourists were ambling nearby, taking photos of the striking and identical seventeenth-century redbrick houses that surrounded the square. Children were playing tag, running through the vaulted arcades. Lovers were strolling arm in arm, admiring the manicured lawns that partly covered the interior of the square and the rows of trees that had turned an autumnal russet.
Walking forty yards behind the ambassador were three men who had pistols secreted under their suit jackets.
The ambassador took a walk through the square every lunchtime, and on each occasion his bodyguards wished they could be closer to their charge. But the ambassador was stubborn and insisted they keep their distance so that he could have space to unclutter his mind from the hundreds of tasks and problems sent his way during the course of the morning.
Today, he was deep in thought on one issue: indications that American and European support for Israel was on the wane.
He reached the fountain in the center of the square and stopped. He’d been here so many times that his eyes barely registered his surroundings nor his ears the sound of running water. His bodyguard detail also stopped, silently wishing the ambassador wouldn’t do things like this and make him an easy target. Their hands were close to their weapons, ready to pull them out and shoot anyone who ran toward the senior diplomat while carrying a knife, bomb, or gun.
The ambassador moved on.
His protectors kept pace with him.
They were good bodyguards—ex–Special Forces who’d been given subsequent training in surveillance, close protection, evasive driving, and rapid takedown of hostile attackers. But the Place des Vosges was a nightmare environment for such men. Too big, too many buildings, windows, people, entrances and exits, and open spaces. They couldn’t be blamed for not spotting the sniper behind one of the top-floor windows of a house that was seventy yards away. That window was one of hundreds that looked onto the square. And the sniper had chosen it because at this time of day the sun reflected off it and made it impossible to see anyone behind the glass.
There was no noise when the bullet left his silenced rifle, penetrated the window, traveled across the square, and entered the ambassador’s heart. But when the diplomat collapsed to the ground, the square became chaotic and loud. Some people were running toward the dead man shouting. Others screamed, remained still, held hands to their mouths and pointed at the body. The bodyguards raced to the ambassador, yelling at everyone to get out of their way, their withdrawn handguns now inducing fear and panic in those in the square.
Many believed the armed men must have shot the man. Some fled the scene; others threw themselves to the ground; mothers grabbed their children and held them close, their expressions filled with horror. The bodyguards ignored them all.
When they reached the body, they rolled it onto its back. They cursed in Hebrew as they saw the bullet entry point in the ambassador’s chest. One of them checked for a pulse though it was obvious the diplomat was dead. The others scoured their surroundings for signs of a man holding a high-velocity rifle.
They saw no one like that.
The sniper had vanished.
T
he Palestinian boy Safa was thirteen years old though he had the head of an older teenager because he’d grown up too fast in Gaza. That had happened because of Israeli artillery shells, everyone he knew being in abject poverty, the constant stench of decay in Gaza’s northern city of Jabalia, and having to worry all of his life about where the next morsel of food and drop of liquid might come from. But underneath his smooth, golden skin, black hair, and blue eyes, he was still a child—one who was encouraged by his parents to read nineteenth-century adventure stories, had a penchant for making model Jewish soldiers and Arab freedom fighters out of bits of broken wood from shacks and scraps of cloth taken from the dead, and drawing paintings that most often contained an imaginary mighty blue river coursing through the center of Gaza, people drinking from it and bathing and smiling at each other because it was a God-given source of life and hope. Though he was wiser than his years, he was, other Jabalia residents lamented, a dreamer. They worried about him.
Especially those who resided in the large refugee camp, where he survived alongside his dying mom and dad, a place that was cramped with the hopeless, forgotten by all but Western do-gooders and Israeli undercover soldiers. Here there were tents that were torn and laced with bacteria, decrepit huts that afforded no protection from wind and rats, once fine-looking buildings that were now bombed-out shells, and oil barrels that were torn in half and littered along dusty tracks, some containing burning rags, others brewing insipid broth that was being stirred by women and watched over with eager anticipation by lines of starving people.
Approximately one hundred thousand refugees lived in the camp. Rarely did any of them smile. But not all were like that. There was humor to be found in the camp, and Safa witnessed it as he ran along an alley toward his home.
“Hey, Safa,” called out Jasem, a thirty-nine-year-old seller of anything, a career he’d taken up after realizing his previous vocation of creating tunnels into Israel was unsustainable because of his claustrophobia, “what you running for? Nobody here has anything to run to.”
Safa grinned. “I’m keeping fit.”
“Me too.” Jasem started doing squats, his expression mimicking the exertions of an Olympic weight lifter. “I’m on a high-protein diet. It feeds the muscles.”
Safa ran on, his skinny limbs hurting from malnutrition, his hand clutching a white piece of paper.
“Go, Safa. Go, Safa,” chanted two young Arab girls, clapping in time with each word. They were smiling though some of their teeth were missing.
One of them asked, “Are you playing, Pretend the Israeli Soldier’s Chasing Me?”
“I have a piece of paper,” Safa replied, racing onward.
Safa reached his home—a room in a crumbling building that had decades ago been the residence of a benign judge and his wealthy family. People like his parents. All of the building’s other rooms were three-sided, thanks to Israeli shells that had destroyed their outer walls; only this room was intact. But it was a small room and smelled bad. These days, his father spent most of his life on the rotting mattress in the corner of the room. His mother tried her best to wash their sheets as regularly as she could, but water was scant, and her strength was failing. Safa’s bed was piled-up blankets in another corner of the room. They were crawling with bugs and exuded a scent of overripe cheese. And in the center of the room was a clay pot that cooked everything they ate. Mealtimes, when they could be had, were taken sitting on the floor. To do so hurt his mother’s increasingly skin-and-bones physique, but she insisted on the ritual for the sake of Safa. He had to be taught good manners, she had told him many times, and learn that a meal eaten properly is a meal well deserved. His father, however, could now only be spoon-fed by his mom while he was lying on his back. It broke her heart to see him like this.
“Mama,” Safa said, breathing deeply to catch his breath, “I have a piece of paper!”
“Good.” His mother tried to smile though she was exhausted. “The Israelis are starving Gaza to death, yet you have a piece of paper. Today is a good day.”
She was by her husband, mopping his brow with a rag. His eyes were closed, and he moaned quietly.
“It could be a good day.” Safa thrust the paper at arm’s length in front of him. “A man from the United Nations says he can help me. The UN, he told me, can get me to France, where I can be given food, an education, and maybe even asylum.”
Safa’s mom got awkwardly to her feet, wincing as she did so. She took the paper and read it. The words were in French, but that didn’t matter because everyone in her family spoke and read French like natives of the tongue. “A consent form?”
“Yes, Mama. It needs your signature.”
“Where did you meet this man?”
“At school. He’d brought books and stationery to my teacher. He asked her which of her pupils showed most academic promise.” Safa’s face beamed. “She told him, me.”
“And how would he get you out of here, to France?”
“My teacher asked him the same question. She then told me to wait on the other side of the classroom while she spoke to the man. They were speaking for a long time. Me and the rest of my friends couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then my teacher called me over. She put her arms on me and said that this was a great opportunity to have a new life.”
Had this conversation been held two years ago, his mother might have had the strength to shed a tear and been utterly conflicted as to what to do. But the death of Safa’s younger sister from an undiagnosed disease and of her and her husband’s rapid decline in health made her emotions numb and her decision inevitable. She knew Safa’s father would pass away at any time. His eyes were jaundiced, his skin color ashen—almost certainly he had lung disease; and if that didn’t kill him, then the fact that his body could no longer absorb nutrients would. She, too, was not long for this world. The once-beautiful woman had caught a glimpse of her image in a broken glass window the other day. She was horrified to see how she now looked. So thin, her face etched and drawn, nothing at all like the pretty girl who’d daily brushed her long shiny hair in front of a vanity mirror. She’d tried to do everything she could for Safa. But even if she were fully fit, she’d be running out of options. There was nothing left in Gaza. It was a country that was being strangled to death.
She sighed as she reread the paper. “The United Nations man must be breaking rules.”
“That’s what my teacher told me. She said I wasn’t to care and should have no fear. She said he was a good man. Would find me a good home. Would give me a new life.”
His mother went to her son and hugged him. “My Safa. Is this what you want?”
Safa looked at his mom’s face, and tears ran down his face. “I don’t know, Mama. I
am
scared.”
This was her final act of strength. The last opportunity for her to save at least one member of her family. She pointed north. “Over the border are people whose grandparents faced these kinds of situations when they were your age. They came from Russia, Germany, France, other places. They didn’t know what lay ahead. But they knew what lay behind. They had no choice.” She didn’t add that, as a result, their sons and grandsons should have known better than to do what they were doing to this small strip of land and its population. “But it worked out well for them. They became scholars, businessmen, soldiers, had families, and now they have smiles on their faces and bellies that are full. You must go.”
Safa’s voice was wavering as he asked, “What if he’s a bad man?”
His mother stroked a frail finger against her son’s hair. “My experience of people in the United Nations is that they can be naïve but never bad. But if this man turns out to be bad, you run.” She smiled. “And even that won’t be so bad because you’ll be running in a land of fat bellies.” She managed to smile. “When everything else is stripped away, it all comes down to food and water. But only you can decide what to do.”
Safa went to his father’s side. “Papa, Papa? What should I do? Must I leave you?”
His father looked at him, resignation and illness so evident. “
We
must leave
you
, my dear boy.”
“But, Papa . . .”
“You have no choice.”
Safa placed his head on his father’s chest. “How could they do this to you, to us, to everyone here?”
His father stroked his son’s hair. “They didn’t do something. Our neighboring country did nothing. There is a difference.”
“It still makes them bad.”
His father’s voice was soothing as he replied, “No, no. If that were true, then we would all be bad. Charities we ignore, famines elsewhere in the world, disasters, wars, abuse—we can’t solve them all. Does that make us murderers? I think not.”
Safa wept. “The Israelis starve us.”
“And some of us hurt them back. Evil lurks on both sides of the borders. But it isn’t and cannot be pervasive.”
Safa held his hand, it was limp and felt wrong. “Mama—Papa isn’t moving.”
His mother nodded, resignation flowing over her, a feeling that death had exited one body and was drifting across the room to devour her. She had no need to move to her son’s side. This moment had been coming for so long. It was inevitable. There was no heartache; that had happened ages ago. Since then it had just been about managing the situation, and logistics, including disposing of the body in a way that didn’t add to the already disease-ridden melting pot of the Jabalia refugee camp. Burning corpses was usually the only way. Even then, one couldn’t be sure that airborne bacteria and viruses wouldn’t flee charred flesh and attack any nearby mourners.
“He has told you what you should do,” was all she could say. She grabbed a pencil and put her signature on the bottom of the paper. “When do you go?”
“Tomorrow. I must meet him at the school. My teacher also needs to sign some forms. He will then take me to a boat. He told me to pack light.”
“Pack? You have nothing to pack.”
Safa went back to his mother and cuddled her. “Mama, please cook me stewed beef and garbanzo beans tonight.”
His mother didn’t have food. Couldn’t. “We can pretend, okay?”
“Sure, Mama.” He held her. “That will be delicious.” His tears were unstoppable. “Delicious, Mama.”