‘Sit down, my son,’ she said softly. ‘There is something I must tell you.’
The way she looked at him and spoke the words compelled him to obey. He could not recall ever seeing her this way before.
Abed sat in the only chair in the room and she came over and knelt on the rug in front of him at his feet. She looked like a small, fragile little girl and he looked down on her.
Her lips suddenly began to quiver and when she looked up at him her eyes were filled with guilt. ‘You have never lied to me your entire life.You have been a good son . . . I have not been a good woman. I have lied to you all of your life.’
Abed did not move, his eyes fixed on her. He could not begin to imagine what she was about to tell him.
‘You will never want to see me again once I have told you my secret. But I must tell you. Perhaps it will make you change your mind about this new course you have set yourself. Or perhaps it will only strengthen your will to leave, for you will have nothing to come back to . . . Whatever, I must tell you. I cannot go to my grave with this secret . . . not from you, although it fills me with fear.’
She took a moment to compose herself and then began.
‘When I was a young girl, the camps were different from how they are now. There was not so much violence between our jailors and us. They were not all bad, as they seem to be today. There are good and bad hearts everywhere . . . among them, among us ...The soldiers would come into the camps, but not always to hurt people. They were just soldiers, many of them as young as me. I was on my bicycle one day, coming back from school, and I had an accident. I hurt myself and my bike was broken. Some Israeli soldiers were nearby and they came and helped me. They dressed my wound and one of them walked me to the corner of our street. He was very polite and kind and there was no trace of hatred in his young, innocent heart. He was just a boy, and I was just a girl. The next day, when I left my house for school my bicycle was leaning against the wall outside the house and it had been fixed. A few days later my mother sent me to the shop for something, and on my way back the young soldier was in the street doing his job. He came over to me and said hello. His name was David and he walked me back to the corner of my street. It was dark and no one saw us and so we talked for a while. He hated the conflict between our people and said he dreamed like us for it to end . . . And that was our beginning. I saw him many times after that. In such a hate-filled world where our peoples were killing each other every day, we became friends. Secret friends, of course. He would leave me notes behind a loose brick in a house at the end of my street and we had a secret hiding place where we would meet.’
Abed shifted uneasily in his chair but his eyes, beneath a deeply furrowed brow, never left her lips.
‘We became more than just friends,’ she continued, taking a deep breath, the words becoming more difficult to release. ‘I became pregnant.’
‘No,’ Abed cried as he leapt to his feet and walked to the other side of the room.
Her eyes followed him but she remained on her knees like a slave in front of her master.
‘Don’t tell me any more,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hear.’
‘You must, Abed. I must tell you everything. I told my parents it was a boy from another town. They were horrified and said my life was over. I was nothing more than a whore. Had I been Muslim I would probably have been killed. Had I told them the father was an Israeli soldier nothing would have saved me. But I loved him, Abed. You were not born without love.’
Abed screwed his eyes shut.
‘You are the son of an Israeli soldier,’ she continued, gushing out the truth after holding it prisoner for so long. ‘By the time you were born he had had to leave Gaza. But he did not desert us. He came to see you many times when you were a baby. He held you in his arms and caressed you with love. Every time he came here he risked his life just to see you.’
Abed clenched his fists so tightly they began to shake.
‘We both knew in our hearts it was hopeless. We could never be together. He could not get me out of Gaza and obviously he could not stay. And he could not keep coming to see you. It was more and more dangerous for him each time, and for you too. There are those who would have killed you if they found out. You were two years old the last time he saw you. He brought you some presents and you played together while I kept watch from our secret place. I have never seen him or heard from him since that day . . . He is the one who sent us money all those years. You have no father in England.’
He kept his back to her while she wept, her face in her hands.
After a long silence between them, she looked up at him. ‘Abed?’
He could not answer or look at her.
‘Abed . . .You cannot join the Jihad,’ she cried out in desperation.
Abed spun around to face her, his eyes on fire, and then headed for the door. She lunged forward, throwing herself to the floor to grab his foot but missed. ‘Abed!’ she cried, her face in the dirt, but he was gone. She sobbed uncontrollably, repeating his name.
Abed walked to the front door and paused before opening it, exhausted by what he had heard. He gripped the handle wishing he could rip it off its hinges and throw it aside. A million thoughts were spinning inside his head and he was unable to grasp any one of them. He wanted to beat his head against the wall and knock the memory of what his mother had told him out of it. He unbolted the door, pulled it open and stepped out into the centre of the street facing no-man’s-land as if in hope that a sniper would see him and take his shot. He was breathing as if he had run a mile at full speed. He wanted to tear open his chest and rip out his Israeli heart, for the heart comes from the father. And then he screamed so loud it rocked his feet. It wasn’t a word, just a despairing yell until he was breathless. When Abed was spent he remained panting where he stood. Abed’s mother lay where he had left her, holding her hands tightly over her face.
He did not hear the running footsteps behind that stopped short of him, but he recognised the voice.
‘Abed?’ It was Ibrahim. ‘Abed. What is it?’
Ibrahim came around to face Abed, afraid to touch him, as if he sensed some evil had taken hold of his new friend and might attack him too. ‘Abed?’ he asked once more.
Abed shook his head. Ibrahim looked towards noman’s-land, concerned with their exposure in the middle of the street.
‘We should leave here, Abed. It is dangerous.’
Ibrahim raised his arms to take hold of Abed’s shoulders but Abed knocked them away. He turned from Ibrahim, and walked up the street towards the car. Ibrahim looked at the open gate to Abed’s house, at the light glowing inside, and could only wonder what had gone on between Abed and his mother.
Abed spoke to no one for a long time, not even Ibrahim, other than when necessary. In the early hours of the morning, before first light, they passed through the tunnels of Rafah into Egypt and several days later arrived in Lebanon by boat and then on to a secret base camp in the desert where they spent the next three months training with fifty other Arabs from around the world before moving to another secret camp in Syria. He not only learned about weapons and explosives, but land and sea navigation, computers and other technologies, and how to drive a car, truck, tank and various kinds of boats. Some of the teaching was in classes, but most was by computer using CDs.Abed immersed himself in the work, pushing to learn all he could as well as testing his physical limits. It was a way of dealing with his secret curse. In the eyes of the others, he was a serious fellow and obsessed with the Jihad, and his promotion was swift and uncontested. He spoke only when he needed to and his temper was short, especially with those who made mistakes. He did not demand perfection, only that those who could not achieve it kept away from him. Ibrahim often spoke in Abed’s favour when men talked ill of him, assuring them that he was a fine man, and for those more difficult to convince he would explain that something had happened with his mother the night they left Gaza which made him unhappy. But Ibrahim was privately saddened. Abed was not the same man he had met in the safe house in Gaza. That first day in the apartment he was sure he had made a bond with Abed and had met a friend for life, but he did not know the man he left Rafah with.
By the time they were ready for the final phase of training in the Persian Gulf just twenty of the men were selected to go forward, and Abed was to be their leader, which they accepted without question.Whatever they feared or disliked about Abed, it was agreed he was an exceptional warrior. Besides, not one of them would have wanted the position of leading Abed.
‘It comes, Abed,’ said Ibrahim.
Abed slipped out of his thoughts and looked to the horizon. He knew exactly where it would be as soon as he heard the words.
The ship was brightly lit and matched the signature of the photographs they had studied; however these were the busiest waters in the world and many ships of similar design sailed in them. Abed would not be certain it was their target until they were close enough to read the name on the side, and by then they would be well into their boarding procedures. They would also be in danger of a crewmember seeing them and Abed did not want to take that risk with the wrong ship as there was a chance a warning might be sent to the coastguard about two unidentified small boats in the area. Crews were more aware these days as piracy was on the increase, and also because of the new United Nations-led international ship security codes implemented since the September Eleven attack. But then again it was extremely rare in these waters and part of the reason Abed and his men were here. They were going to carry out a waterborne version of the 9/11 attack by bringing the fight into the enemy’s front yard.
The men came out from under their ponchos, all dressed in the same black one-piece combat suits, each with a dagger attached to a belt at his waist and a scimitar strapped across his back. Everyone looked towards the vessel as it drew closer, and the bright yellow-and-white blur, like a fat, sparkling Christmas tree, began to take shape as individual lights became discernible. It was clearly a supertanker. The largest mass of lights was in the stern; this was the five-storey tall superstructure containing accommodation, galleys, messes, hospital, control rooms and bridge. A thin line of lights from the superstructure outlined the long uninterrupted deck, as wide as a runway, and led to smaller clusters of lights in the bows which were the anchor and cable winch houses and entrance to the bosun’s locker.
‘Start the engines,’Abed said.‘Head towards its track.’
The men responded like a well-oiled machine and took their positions along the gunwales as the engines clattered into life.The lines connecting the two boats were untied and the coxswains gradually increased power and picked up speed. As they headed into the swell, the boats rose over the peaks and dropped down into the troughs in a big-dipper fashion with the occasional larger wave breaking over the bows to drench the men. At no time were they concerned about capsizing because they had practised the procedure many times, at night and in harsher conditions in preparation for these notorious waters. Abed was grateful for the heavy seas because it would be almost impossible for the tanker’s radar scanner to pick out the small wooden boats. Furthermore, a tanker’s primary fear in the English Channel was running into another ship large enough to cause damage, so all attention on the bridge would be focused on that major concern. The harsh weather would also deter crewmembers from stepping outside where they might look out at the water, though even if they did, it would be near impossible to see anything in the blackness from within the glow of the bright lights that enveloped the ship.
‘Stay on this heading,’ Abed said to the coxswain sitting astride his saddle-seat beside him, one hand on the steering wheel, the other gripping the throttle.The other boat maintained a parallel course metres away.
Abed looked through his binoculars and could now make out the funnel markings, a white star on a blue background. The superstructure was white and the body of the ship was grey, the colours he was expecting.
‘More to the right and speed up a little,’ Abed said. Timing was essential and once in position they would have only minutes to make any adjustments before the next phase.
The coxswains obeyed and the boats speeded up, loping over the waves as the men crouched, hanging on to the sides. Each man rehearsed his individual tasks in his mind, things they had practised endlessly until they had become instinctive. No one considered the tanker’s crew to be a serious threat since the carriage of arms on board was not permitted. The captain was English, the chief engineer Russian, the first officer Egyptian, the other seven officers a mixture of Croatian, English and Scandinavian and the seventeen-man crew Philippine. These men were not a threat physically: a handful might use the limited workout facilities on board the tanker but would be nothing compared to the combat readiness of Abed’s men. The chief concern was getting on to the main deck and moving into position to carry out the assault without being seen. If this was not achieved, surprise would be lost, and the crew was not entirely without some forms of defence. The ship had high-pressure fire hoses which crews had used in the past to repel would-be boarders. During normal ship’s routine few of the doors on the deck and superstructure were locked because of the fire risk since the greatest concern for an oil tanker’s crew was its ability to escape quickly in case of such an event. However, if the crew suspected an attack was imminent they could batten down the hatches, making it very difficult to gain entry, and Abed’s men had not brought any special equipment with them for forcing steel doors.
Abed’s eyes never left the tanker, gauging the distance and angle to its bows. As they drew closer to the ship’s projected track, the lights on the superstructure narrowed and it took on a broader and more uniform shape as it squared to Abed’s position.