The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption (11 page)

After Abu Yousef told me of the new mission, Abu Ibrahim arranged such a feast. I went around the neighborhood inviting the children to come. “It will be like a camping trip,” Abu Ibrahim told the boys as we munched on the
shiska
—hamburger cooked with mint and red onion, served in a pita with cucumber and tomato. “We will camp at the River Litani.”

I sat next to Abu Ibrahim as he told the glorious tale of the other mission, my first. Only a couple of the boys in the room had been with us then, but all had heard how we dressed like Bedouin shepherd boys and tricked the enemy, carrying destruction into their midst right under their noses!

“This trip will be even more successful,” Abu Ibrahim concluded. “You have joined our brotherhood at an exciting time!”

7

In my neighborhood lived a round-faced boy named Mohammed. Although at eight he was a year older, Mohammed was just gaga over me. Now that I was with the Muslim Brotherhood, he roamed the streets looking for me as though he were a lost puppy and I his master. I did not see him that way, though. I loved Mohammed and knew that he only wanted to be in my presence. To do what I was doing.

“I begged my mother to go with you to Sabra,” he told me one day. Mohammed burned to join the Brotherhood. “I am strong in Allah! I can fight like you, I know I can!”

We sat on the curb outside a gelato shop. Now that I had money whether I worked or not, I had plenty to buy my favorite pistachio cones for myself and my friends. I licked one carefully while Mohammed, between bites, told me about his stubborn mother.

“She said I cannot go with you. That it is too dangerous.”

His mother’s name was Salma. His father, Omar, was a thin, weak man who hung about outside the tailor shop, smoking cigarettes with a klatch of old men.

“I will go and speak with your mother,” I said.

After we finished our cones, I walked with Mohammed to his home, a makeshift add-on on the ground floor of an apartment building in West Beirut. I had visited often, and Salma loved me. Now, though, I approached the front door as confidently as if I were a
sheikh
, learned in Islam, come to direct Salma on some spiritual matter.

Mohammed sprinted past me to open the door. “Mama, Kamal is here!” he called, his voice echoing off the high ceiling and cream-colored tile. “He wants to speak with you!”

Salma was a proper Muslim, very conservative like my mother. She entered the front room, her
hijab
covering the lower half of her face.

“Welcome, Kamal!” she said. “What brings you to visit,
yah ibny
?” That was what she always called me—“my son.”

But I was not interested in her usual endearments. Instead, I was brash and conceited, puffed up from my association with the
fedayeen
.

“Your son is a warrior and you do not even know it!” I said. “Let him come with me. He will be a hero!”

Salma regarded me with a look that I later understood as bemused. Looking back, I do not think she really believed Mohammed’s stories about what I was doing in the camps.

“Whatever you do with him, go ahead and do,” she said, smiling. “But bring him back alive to me.”

“I will,
em Mohammed
. He will be safe with me.”

8

A week passed. On a Thursday, all of us met at Sabra dressed in our fatigues. We numbered about twenty boys and eight adult
fedayeen
, including Abu Yousef. After loading into a militant-looking caravan of pickup trucks, Jeeps, and technicals—pickups with machine guns mounted in the beds—we journeyed through Lebanon to the Syrian border, an easy trip. I rode in the rear of a Jeep next to Abu Ibrahim.

At the border, the highway ended abruptly, with only desert beyond. Two kinds of Syrian soldiers stood watch that day. One group of about a dozen men wore gray, white, and green camouflage with green berets. A smaller group wore the same clothing, but their berets were the color of blood.

To me, those men looked as tall as mountains, serious and disciplined with their fit frames and freshly trimmed moustaches. Abu Ibrahim saw me staring and leaned over to me. “Elite Syrian army,” he said.

I listened as the blood-beret Syrians spoke with Abu Yousef in clipped tones. I was used to seeing others defer to him. These men did not. Instead, I thought I smelled anger in their sweat.

Two of our adult
fedayeen
, Ahmed and Qaffin, shepherded us out of the smaller vehicles and into a big Russian truck, its bed covered with a
canvas canopy the color of green olives. Chattering like schoolchildren on a field trip, we crowded in next to each other on benches that ran along the sides of the bed. I saw bullet boxes and a DShK stacked against the back of the cab. Mohammed and I sat down next to each other, near the split where the canopy opened to the outside. After a short wait, Abu Yousef threw open the canopy flaps.

“We are going into the occupied land,” he said to us grandly. “You will carry weapons to our brothers in Palestine. We have done this before and achieved a great victory,” Abu Yousef continued. “This time, we will go farther, to the outskirts of a village beyond the Syrian border. This time, we may engage.”

A shiver charged through me, anticipation mixed with a whisper of fear that skated around the edge of my heart like a spark. I had seen much live fire in the camps, but had never faced a live enemy. However, I did not let my face show any tremor to Abu Yousef, who was beaming at me like a proud uncle. At that moment, I felt I was his trophy:
See?
His eyes said to the young brothers who had not been tested.
Kamal has done this before. There is nothing to worry about, only victory in store.

Looking around in the dusty light of the canopied truck bed, I found all eyes on me and rose to the occasion. “This is going to be powerful!” I said. “We are going to put the Jews under our feet!”

“Allahu akbar!” the little boys shouted. “Allahu akbar!”

Abu Yousef broke into a rare, full grin. He nodded at me, then flipped the canopy flaps closed. I could hear someone securing them from the outside—
snap, snap, snap
. Soon the truck’s diesel engine began its throaty churning and we rumbled into Syria, bouncing along on skinny tires that were as tall as Volkswagens.

During the journey, we were not allowed to look outside. Gradually, the threads of sunlight seeping through the canopy seams turned gold, then pink, then drained away altogether. When it was full dark, I switched on my flashlight, brushing its slim beam across the faces of the boys. Some had already gone to sleep, draped on each other like kittens. Mohammed leaned against my shoulder, his breath soft and even. Soon my eyes grew heavy, too. I snapped off my light and leaned my head against Mohammed’s.

It was morning when the truck driver choked the big truck’s engine
into silence and Abu Yousef threw back the canopy flap. As I blinked against the light, it quickly became clear that we had arrived at a place much different than the mission before.

9

The truck had rolled to a stop at the highest point of a barren valley of rock and scrub. Mohammed and I clambered down from the bed and, standing next to Abu Yousef, looked down over a series of rugged earthen tiers that stepped down into the valley and bristled with military men and equipment. Syrian soldiers roamed among camouflage nets concealing cannons. Truck beds supported full batteries of Katyusha missiles. Gray concrete bunkers hulked against the land like boulders.

Cool mountain air skated up the valley wall, ruffling my fatigues. Glancing up, I noticed thick clouds gathering above, shadowy slabs that slid slowly across the sun. On the plateaus below, the soldiers began to notice us. Some stopped and stared up, shielding their eyes with their hands in the flickering light. As the rest of the young brothers gathered at the valley rim, Abu Yousef leaned down and put his lips next to my ear. “Kamal, keep the brothers together and stay alert.”

Two Syrian soldiers appeared. I heard one of them tell Abu Yousef that our Bedouin disguises waited for us lower in the camp. They led us down the terraces, down ladders and across concrete pads, crissing and crossing our way deeper and deeper. We descended past small knots of soldiers who sat smoking and cleaning their rifles. They looked up and said to us things like, “You are the soldiers of the future! The Jews will pay the price!”

But their eyes glittered, and they sounded to me as if they were reading from a script, as we had done once at school. Suddenly, I wished I were already grown. Love for Allah burned inside me, and I knew he blessed those who waged
jihad.
But here with these cold men who were
not like my
fedayeen
brothers, a shameful whisper blew through my heart:
Do you not wish to be at home again?

Afraid my doubt might radiate through the back of my head and frighten Mohammed, I glanced back at him. His eyes were wide and uncertain. I dropped back and fell into step with him, our boots now crunching the dirt in time. “You are my shadow,” I told him. “Do what I do and say what I say. If someone asks you a question, I will answer it. If you do not know what to do, look to me and I will show you.”

Mohammed only nodded and turned his eyes to the earth.

At length, we came to one of the concrete bunkers. Abu Yousef stepped aside and our Syrian escorts herded us inside where I nearly collided with the belt buckle of a towering man.

“Change clothes, you little sons of whores!” came a voice from above my head. “Rise up to your deaths!”

My head whipped around to find Abu Yousef, who, I was sure, would cut the throat of this Syrian who had insulted our mothers. But Abu Yousef had not come inside. I then looked up, hoping to challenge this man with my eyes, but the Syrian seemed as tall as a cedar and did not return my glare. I hated him immediately.

The young brothers hurried over to the pile of
dish-dashes
and changed quickly as the Syrian lorded over us, sweeping his ice-blue eyes around the bunker like a king. His wide shoulders seemed to fill the cramped space. He carried a thin, leather-handled stick, like a riding crop, and barked orders.

“Do your jobs well, you mules! There is no room for error!” he thundered. “Your first mistake will be your last!”

I had thought that we were in league with the Syrians, but this man stripped away my illusions. I suddenly understood the subtle mocking of the soldiers outside: to them, al-Asifah was trash. And if we were trash, were we disposable?

10

Coming down the valley wall, Abu Yousef had leaked out more details of the mission. This time, we were going to go deeper inside Israel where we would rendezvous with some
fedayeen
brothers, Palestinians who lived among the Jews in their stolen lands. At that time, many Palestinians lived inside Israel, working in the same villages, eating at the same places, running the same kinds of shops. They did not seem to mind coexisting with the Jews, Abu Yousef told me, grimacing as though tasting rotten meat. But Yasser Arafat wanted to nurse a split, and so we were taking weapons to some Palestinians who had trained underground and were prepared to stir rebellion.

Now, inside the bunker with the hateful Syrian, I slipped a
dish-dash
over my head and went to help Mohammed. When all the boys had dressed, a sheikh, a man formally educated in Islam, entered the little building. He wore an army uniform, except that instead of a beret, he wore a white skullcap. I noticed right away that this man had a beard but no moustache, in the style of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instantly, I felt better. Here was an ally. I smiled at him and he smiled back.

The sheikh looked around at all of us and spread his arms in welcome. “Gather round, sons of Islam,” he said, gesturing that we should kneel together. He then sat down before us, raised both arms high, and looked to the heavens.

“So we build a dam before them and behind,” he chanted, reciting the Sura. “We made them so confused that they became blind.”

We all raised our arms.
“Amin,”
we said in unison.

“Tell the infidels that they do not worship what we worship, and whatever they worship we do not worship,” the sheikh said.

“Amin.”

“Remember
al-shaheed
. Death for Allah is noble! He who gives his life for Allah will redeem seventy of his family.”

Fear wormed into my belly.
We did not pray these prayers last time.

The sheikh continued, his face and arms still lifted high. “If you are to die, say the
shahada
. The gates of paradise will open for you, and you
will enter gloriously to find your
, seventy-two who have never been touched before.”

I flashed to the day I had leaned against the sugar sack in my hiding place and dreamed of dying gloriously for Allah. Now I knew I was not ready. I glanced at Mohammed and saw tear tracks on his face. Suddenly, I wished I had not spoken to his mother.

After the blessing, Abu Yousef met us outside and supervised as the two Syrian escorts passed out to us duffel bags made of thick khaki. As on my first mission, each bag contained weapons and parts of weapons: 7 mm and 9 mm handguns, AK–47 parts, magazines, and boxes of bullets. Some of the bags contained TNT blocks, fused and dressed with ball bearings. We hoisted them on our backs and lined up like a loose platoon. The Syrians took point, and Ahmed and Qaffin followed, leading us down toward the Israeli border.