Authors: Hesh Kestin
Except when the various sects, nationalities, and religions that make up Lebanon declare war on each other—this happens every decade or so—clergy of all stripes are respected by the armed militias as a matter of course. Thus the tri-barred cross, representing the unity of the triune God, is as good as any visa, any passport, any armed escort. Even more so when the symbol
is attached to a funerary van. As in any violent society, in Lebanon the dead are respected more than the living.
Within the church, two Maronite priests, one white-bearded, the other younger, clean-shaven, are sprawled in the nave. Neat bullet holes, like stigmata, mark their foreheads. The exit wounds are not so neat.
Al-Masri is a new man. Cleaned up, wearing a bright white jumpsuit with the word
PRISONER
stenciled in red on its back, he sits strapped in his wheelchair with such aplomb it might be a throne.
Once again Dahlia is seated across the table. “Feeling better?”
“Oh, delightful. Now I’m a sanitized prisoner of the Jewish State. They even let me brush my teeth.” He displays them. “See? Kissing-sweet.”
“Except there’s no one here interested in kissing you. Edward, let’s not waste more time. I need to know precisely what you told the Police about the intended use of the money.”
“What I told them was that the money was for my mother, to build a house—”
“She has quite a nice one now.”
“Is that a reason to throw me into a cell?”
“You tell me, Edward.”
“Not a very pleasant cell, either.”
“Why did you make up such a tale?”
“Who says it’s a tale?”
“Those who threw you into the unpleasant cell.”
“The money was planted, then. We’ll say it was planted.”
“Who will?”
“You will, as my attorney.”
“You would wish me to lie in court?”
“I would wish you to say what I tell you to say. The lie will be mine. You will simply transmit it. Let them prove the money is mine. Planted.”
“Was it?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Edward, we were born the same time, in the same hospital, adjacent beds. Your mother is dear to me. I don’t want you to suffer.”
“For my sake? Or for my mother’s?”
“Does it matter? I would like to help, but you must be one hundred percent truthful with me.”
“The money was planted. Full stop.”
Dahlia opens the door. The two constables are smoking in the hall. “We’ll talk again,” she says. “Unless you are honest with me, my hands are tied.”
The constables begin rolling him out.
“
Your
hands are tied? Dahlia, perhaps you are unaware of the difference between reality and metaphor. Look at my hands, my feet. My entire body in this rolling prison.”
“Edward, I can’t help if you persist in telling fables. No judge will believe them.”
He is shouting now. “Just as no one believes seven hundred thousand Arabs were made homeless by your repugnant Jewish State! Do you really think I owe it honesty?” He is at the door.
“Edward, eight hundred and fifty thousand Jews were at the same time booted out of twelve Arab countries. This isn’t CNN. You should consider the truth. The truth is always best.”
A white Subaru sedan with Israel Police markings moves north on the coastal highway. Its driver is one of the one hundred twenty thousand Ethiopian immigrants, or a child of same, who were rescued from Africa and flown to Israel in the final decades of the twentieth century.
“Can I ask a question, chief super?” the Ethiopian driver asks. Like many Ethiopian Jews, even those born and raised in Israel, his demeanor is respectful to the point of timidity.
Dahlia does not look up from her paperwork. “You just asked.”
“Another, then?” The driver is all of twenty-two. He looks even younger.
“Why not, corporal?”
“If you are too busy . . .”
She sighs. “What is the question?”
“Is it true you are the one who defends Arabs? From the newspapers?”
“Do I defend them from the newspapers?”
“I mean the one in the newspapers who defends Arabs.”
She is about to say
I am
. “I was.”
“How can you be on their side and also on ours?”
“There are no two sides. Just people.”
He turns to stare at her.
“Watch the road, corporal.”
“The Arabs desire to kill us.”
“Some.”
“Not all?”
“I don’t know. Some. Probably most.”
“With all respect, chief super. It seems plain.”
“This exit.” She picks up her cell phone as it vibrates in her bag.
“Hello, gorgeous.”
“Not a good time to talk,” she says.
“I’m missing you.”
“You should be.”
The Subaru turns toward the setting sun down a street of villas.
“When can I see you?”
“Not soon. I’m just arriving home.”
In the driveway, Dudik’s red BMW is parked alongside an older white Volvo with Army plates. She tries to recall whom Dudik still might know who is regular Army.
Why would Dudik be here with an Army officer? In fact, why would Dudik be here at all?
“Just arriving home. Sounds so-o-o familiar. Why do I get the feeling you don’t want to talk to me?”
“Because I don’t. Now is just not a good time.”
“Edward Al-Masri.”
“What?”
“You know who he is, Dahlia. Atlanta is on my ass. He’s a CNN contributor. And he’s missing.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about it.” She snaps the phone shut and exits the car, then turns to the driver. “Tomorrow morning. Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.” As she walks down the path between flowering plants and small decorative palms, she realizes she does not know his name.
As usual, the front door is unlocked. Even before she steps across the threshold, she senses it: everything in its place, the furniture where it should be, no sign of breakage or disorder. But it is there, so clearly there in the way her husband and son stand as she enters, each of them rising as though pulled upward by invisible strings. “What’s going on?”
For once her husband is at a loss for words. “Dahlia . . .”
“What . . . is . . . going . . . on?”
“Mom,” Uri says.
“Why is a military car here?” Then she sees them: two officers, a man and a woman, standing by the pool, smoking intensely, their eyes down.
“Mom, it’ll be okay.”
Later, attempting to recall exactly what happened, she will remember nothing but finding herself in Dudik’s arms, a strange feeling. She has not been this close to her husband in five years, maybe longer. After so long, the smell of him is both foreign and comforting: maleness, aftershave, tobacco. He smokes a cigar a day, a big fat Dominican—the name Fuente comes to her suddenly. He smokes Chateau Fuente. But when he travels to the U.S. he always carries a couple of boxes of Havanas. They can’t be purchased in the U.S. but are widely available here. The Americans are crazy for Havanas. Abruptly she hears him say, a quote out of better days, “Dominican cigars are better. The Americans are fooling themselves. They desire what they cannot have.” She is coming to. He has said nothing of the kind. Not in years. Not now. She is coming to in her own home, and a voice is screaming.
It is hers.
In the commercial street below, the chaotic stream of Beirut traffic plunges ahead like a river flowing down from the Litani mountains, now a rapids, now obstructed, now a broad pool. On the sidewalks, women walk holding the hands of children in school uniforms, rucksacks bouncing against their shoulder blades. Shop owners stand still as monuments outside open-fronted stores that will soon be sealed with roll-down steel grates from two to four
P.M
. and then for the night after seven; none of the shops is fronted with glass. Glass has not worked out all that well in central Beirut. If the glass is not intentionally broken by looters from one militia or another, accidents happen with regularity even in the most placid of neighborhoods, especially accidents involving weaponry. Because Lebanon is only nominally governed, assassination is the traditional method for settling disagreements. Assassinations incite a predictable trail of vengeance killings, which themselves result in an endless chain of reprisals. Even unintentionally, grenades have a way of going off like toxic church bells on their own anarchic schedule. No matter their denomination or agenda, the militias are full of trigger-happy young men with tenuous egos who smoke entirely too much hashish. In these circumstances, even the thickest window glass is not a solution but a problem.
But now the street is peaceful. Older men stop to chat with
shopkeepers they have known for decades, perusing the merchandise, eternal in its lack of variety, that has spilled out amoeba-like onto the sidewalks. The sidewalks are thus narrowed, slowing pedestrian traffic in almost surreal contrast to the manic vehicular traffic only inches away. In the Arab world men do the shopping. Women normally stay home, leaving only to bring their children to school and pick them up, or to socialize with friends, almost always in private homes.
On the opposite side of the street at the rickety wooden tables of a large café, men play dominoes or
shesh besh
, a close relative of backgammon, or read newspapers that only appear to be similar to newspapers published in the West. In the Arab world news is a matter of opinion. Here, newspapers are supported by political parties, each a reflection of the ethnic or ideological makeup of its readership. A few men drink coffee, or mint tea. Most simply sit and converse, or smoke apple- or cherry-flavored Lebanese tobacco through bubbling narghilas. On the rooftops opposite, partly uniformed men in mirrored sunglasses and clothes marked Levi’s, Polo, and Abercrombie & Fitch, their fingers caressing the triggers of automatic weapons whose safeties are disengaged, survey the street and the windows of the buildings that line both sides.
In an apartment in a building on this street, Fawaz Awad, newly arrived from Montreal, steps away from the window and takes a seat on one of two ornate divans that face each other, separated only by a large disk-like tray of damascene copper that holds an open cedar box of loose cigarettes. Like the clothes worn by the armed men on the rooftops, the Marlboros and Kents in the box are made in Lebanon for export to other Arab countries where labels count for more than truth. With the dexterity of the one-armed, Awad draws a Gauloise from the pocket of his elegant suit, fits it into his gold cigarette
holder, then smoothly lights it with a gold lighter that appears seemingly out of nowhere in his right hand. Even in the strong light of the Beirut afternoon, its flare illuminates the disfigured left side of his face and is further reflected in the gold that frames the lenses of his thick glasses, one of which is blacked out. The effect is both overtly dramatic and quietly threatening. “Where are they?”
Tawfeek Nur-al-Din smokes his own brand, indigenous to Lebanon. Distinctly marked with a stylized cedar tree, the Liban brand is not fake anything, authentic all the more when it is packed with the best hashish the country produces. This Lebanon also exports to the Arab world. Oily, potent, and sweet, Lebanese hash is considered world-class. “Not so very far.”
“You won’t tell
me
?” With his only hand, Awad brushes a bit of ash off the folded left sleeve of his jacket. “Not even me?”
“Maybe you are working for the Jews.” It is both insult and jest.
“Inshallah, then I would be rich.”
Tawfeek Nur-al-Din laughs, his richly musical voice making his reply almost a joke. “Then you would be dead.”
“If so, you would have no conduit to the old man.”
“For what you are being paid, we could place full-page ads in all the Israeli papers. Zalman Arad reads the newspapers, does he not? With the Jews it is an obsession.”
“Yes, of course,” Awad says. “Wanted to trade: two Israeli soldiers for one Palestinian patriot. Perhaps on the television as well, with jingles. Do you know why we have not wiped them out?”
“Pray tell me, Fawaz Awad.”
“We hurt them, but we do not touch them. Bigger and better bombs, missiles, suicide martyrs—if this were the French or the Spaniards, they would collapse at once, the Italians even
earlier. But the Jews must be approached differently. If we give them no choice they will fight. However, given choices, they will be compelled to think, to feel. For them the worst situation is moral choice. We must offer them moral choice. Painful choice.”
“We shall.”
Haggard and strung out, Dahlia and Dudik are squeezed into Zalman Arad’s narrow office.
“You ask something I cannot give,” the old man says.
“We want our son back,” Dudik says.
Arad sips tea from his chipped enamel cup. He had offered them tea, but it was declined. He was not insulted. “Welcome to the club of bereaved parents,” he says. “Some come to me knowing their son is dead, but they do not accept it. Or ask only for some scrap of information. All of them in the end wish the same thing, that we return their children, or their remains. I give them all the same reply: How can we rescue them if we do not know where they are?”
“You can find them,” Dudik says.
“They are moved, sometimes daily. Often we receive information. In Lebanon, there is always someone selling information. Sometimes it is real. More often, like everything else in Lebanon, counterfeit. Or if it is real it is out of date. Our golden rule is simple: If we must expend multiple lives to save a single hostage, so be it, but unless we are sure at least of the location of that hostage, we will not gamble. Right now we know nothing other than that the two lads are gone. And that they are probably alive. For now.”
“Can they be bought?”
“This is not Mexico, Dudik. These two boys were not taken for profit. There may be a price, but it will not be money. It will be blood.”
Dahlia begins to weep. She has not really stopped since she came home to find the two Army officers. Sometimes the tears abate, but even then she is weeping—in silence, without tears, without so much as a tremor, a constant.