Almost Dead Part 11

'You want to move?'

'No. It's just that this is our old table. How did you choose this table out of all of them? And you talked to him a minute before he died. It's like...' She blinked back the tears that were never far from her surface. 'Don't listen to me, I'm talking c.r.a.p,' she said. 'It's funny, I always sat facing the street, and he always sat opposite me. So now I can see what he used to see. All the people here.'

I stared at her and said, 'There's one thing he could see that you can't,' and the memory of the night before flashed like a bullet train through my mind: the drive to the edge of the desert, her smile, our kiss, and what happened after; her long neck, her dark silky skin, the dark down on her forearms, and how, when I kissed my way down to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she'd held her breath for what seemed like a minute until my lips grazed her nipple and she breathed out. How she'd unb.u.t.toned and pulled down her jeans and how I bent over to her ankle and bit the little crocodile crawling up it, and how I travelled with little b.u.t.terfly kisses over her knee, her thigh, navel, ribcage, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, collarbone, throat, jaw, all the way to the mouth that was patiently waiting for me. How my finger found one of the cotton flowers embroidered on her underwear, began to circle it, wandered with the help of another finger under the stretched elastic where her wonderful skin was softest of all. I touched the soft fluff, the hollow in the tendons of her thigh, and then slipped inside her, and she was kissing my ear by now and whispering to go on and my other hand was everywhere, and she came with her head pressed deeply into the s.p.a.ce between my jaw and shoulder, my left hand bracing her bucking shoulder. Then she was sucking in air, almost sobbing, and my wet fingers were resting on her silver thigh, and, mixed with the smells of s.e.x and coconut air-freshener, a very faint tang of gun oil from Humi's rifleHumi, who only two days before had been sitting where Shuli was now catching her breath. She'd wanted to go home straight after. It was totally fine with me.

'What are you thinking about?'

The bullet train disappeared. I looked up, caught red handed, and saw that she knew what I was thinking about.

'Don't embarra.s.s me,' she said, but she was smiling.

'Well. "We'll see tonight"...'

My phone intervened. Gili from work. I told her I was still in Jerusalem, and she told me that I was going to have some explaining to do to Jimmy. I said I'd explain everything. Shuli said, 'Nike and Nokia. That's who you are.'

'And who are you?'

'I cook for the Nikes and Nokias. Actually, I'm not sure. I never see them. I arrive when they're still asleep, along with the vegetables from the market and the bread from the Angel bakery, in the dark in winter. I come in the rear entrance, with the tahini from Nablus and the pitas from the Old City.'

The sandwich was as good as it always was. Sliced hardboiled egg with tomato and mayo on brown bread. I always add lots of salt and pepper. Waste of time.

'D'you want anything else?'

'I don't know. I want to go to Giora's grave. To be with him a little bit on my own. And then maybe we'll go again to the shiva?'

I reached over to touch her hand. I was prepared to do whatever she said. It wasn't exactly because I'd fallen in love. I mean, something had happened, I'm not denying it. Something started growing there. But as much as anything else I was amazed by what had happened to time. It seemed to have stopped. I wasn't chasing after it, I wasn't running. Jerusalem was somewhere else. I looked at the people eating in the Cafe Europa: who were they? How come they had all this time? Didn't they need to work? A beautiful black-eyed girl smiled at me from the other side of the table and excused herself to go to the Ladies.

Only when she'd gone did I hear the music: 'Bab al-Wad'. First star's light above Beit Mahsir First star's light above Beit Mahsir. Some people were moving their lips to the lyrics. I turned away and looked outside at the electric pale blue. Jerusalem itself seemed to be sitting under the sky like a growth of mould. It looked coated in fear. 'Gabi told the security guard to get the guy out of the restaurant. The security guard says, "My shift doesn't start for ten minutes."' A group of guys on the next table. 'So Gabi says, "OK. You leave it a minute, then," leaves through the back door and runs a mile. So the guy pushes the b.u.t.ton but he had a problem with the detonator...' The listeners burst out laughing. I looked over the red bar stools, the red and black tables; I smelled the coffee and the tuna; I opened a newspaper and I read that Private Humi Glazer, aged nineteen, had been laid to rest yesterday in the military cemetery in Petach-Tikva. Maybe I ought to visit his family too...I ate the little chocolate cube you got with your coffee, and then I ate Shuli's cube too. I wanted more coffee but didn't have enough energy to go and get it. Though I shouldn't overdo it with the caffeine: everything starts to feel as if it's taking place at some weird distance away from me. I got so worried I looked into it once: the caffeine increases neuronal activity, which fools the pituitary gland into releasing hormones that tell the adrenal gland to get pumping. And then the pupils widen, the trachea dilates, blood vessels shrink, blood pressure rises, the liver releases sugar into your blood to boost energy, the muscles tighten and, oddly enough, your hands cool down.

'Why are you looking at your hands like that?'

'What? No reason.'

'Let's change places. I want to see the street.'

I rose and waited for her to move past me and when she sat down I touched her on her shouldera small but intimate gesture. I moved to the other side of the table. She saidor so I remembershe said: 'I was thinking, Croc. I was sitting in the toilet and I was thinking that life really does go on. Life stays in this world. It doesn't disappear. Giora's gone, and you come and sit down at the same table, and life goes on. We're still breathing. He was a good man, did you see that at all?'

'Yeah. Yeah, I think I could.'

'He was a good man, and it is terrible. It hurts very, very much. I saw him every day. I touched him and talked to him. He had such a pretty voice.' Her voice, pretty too, was higher than usual and trembling; a little strangulated. 'But I was sitting there thinking that you just cannot stop this life. It's like water finding its way over rocks and concrete and tarmac into the earth. You can't stop it.' She fell silent and I don't think I said anything. Her eyes were fixed on some spot on the tabletop; possibly her fingers were stroking her Ice Europa cup. 'Whatever,' she said. 'I mean, it was a nice kind of thing to think. Maybe the nicest thought I've had in a while.' And she smiled, with her mouth closed, more with one corner than the other, a hopeful, sad, wise sort of smile, and it seemed like the air trembled between us.

20

'The last thing in the world I need is those people with their Croc signs knowing I take care of you. Is it really true about what you did to him, Fahmi? I'd never have believed it in a million years. You look...'

O country, O my country, O country of our fathers, I will sacrifice for you eternally, with determination and with fiery vengeance, made strong by my people's desire for our homeland. I climbed the mountains, I fought, I strove mightily and untied the chains of bondage...

'You look so...'

But the body won't move, and the eyes won't open.

'...I don't know, good hearted. I can't imagine you hurting a fly, let alone the Croc.'

The Croc? What is is all this about the Croc? all this about the Croc?

'You just don't have a murderer's eyes. I can tell. Maybe I should try and talk to them...'

Where is the Croc? Not a bad guy. Five hundred shekels for a day's work...

'But if they were here instead of me they'd have disconnected you. I could do it in a moment. The tube for your p.i.s.s and the tube for your air, and then...'

The Croc on Noah's Ark Noah's Ark with Tommy Musari, and then with me. With me, driving in his little green car along the beach, my apple in my lap... with Tommy Musari, and then with me. With me, driving in his little green car along the beach, my apple in my lap...

The Al-Aqsa mosque was calling us to rise up against our exploiters. For you, my steadfast nation, together we will fight. Call with all your strength: Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar! We will revenge every mother's tear and every drop of blood, and for every shahid that dies another will rise. For you, my steadfast nation... We will revenge every mother's tear and every drop of blood, and for every shahid that dies another will rise. For you, my steadfast nation...

Mahmuzi woke early, read the Koran and prayed. Slept well. I wouldn't have managed to sleep at all on my last night.

Bilahl came, in Naji's Mazda. He wasn't going to give himself to the cause, but he was giving us his Mazda, for a day.

One more test for the explosive belt. Bilahl gave Mahmuzi some scented soap and sent him to scrub himself clean for his G.o.d. After he'd showered he put on the new clothes Bilahl had brought and we drove to Ramallah in the Mazda. Bilahl parked on a side street, gave Mahmuzi a twenty-shekel note and sent him to the hairdresser's. I got a hundred shekels to buy a videotape and rent a camera for the day.

One of the plastic lions in the square in Ramallah was missing its plastic head: above it a huge poster of Arafat told us All you need is willpower All you need is willpower. I walked by the butcher's where the guy got murdered in a robberyclosed up now. There were lots of people on the streets: pretty women from the good Christian neighbourhoods come in for the markets, students on their way to the UNRWA College, seen-it-all old merchants lounging on chairs on the pavements like lizards, trying to soak up some sun.

'What's the occasion?' asked the grey-haired old guy in the camera shop, peering above his gla.s.ses. 'If I may ask.' The air smelled of mint, from his gla.s.s of tea.

'Of course you may, sir. Our friend is getting married. There he is, across the street at the hairdresser's, getting ready.' He explained how to use the camera, pushing a tape inside and shooting me as a test. Then I filmed him, framed against all the other framed portraits on his walls. I left my green ID card as a deposit and strolled over the road.

Mahmuzi was silent but the hairdresser wouldn't shut his mouth. He talked about the soldiers who'd come to his sister's house in Al-Birah the week before. They'd gone through the refrigerator and the cupboards and taken a whipped-cream cake. Ibtisam had made it for her daughter's birthday. They didn't break anything. But they stayed for hours, told her family where to sit, when to go to the bathroom. 'And the dogs ate the cake. Is that what you want?'

He was talking about Mahmuzi's hair. Clean shaven, with his hair wet and styled, Mahmuzi looked entirely Israeli.

'Everybody wants their beard off and a modern cut these days,' the hairdresser grumbled. 'What's the matter with them? I mean, I don't have a beard either but I think of myself as traditional. What's happening with the young...'

'How much?' said Mahmuzi.

When we got back to the Mazda, I saw that Bilahl was nervous. The driver he'd wanted to use had lost his nerve and disappeared after Abu-Zeid's a.s.sa.s.sination. He had to find a replacement, get an ID card and papers for him, and yellow plates for the Mazda. All the way back to Al-Amari, Mahmuzi looked out of the window in silence.

I hung both the flagsthe green one with its quotation from the Koran, the white one with the drawing of Al-Aqsa, an a.s.sault rifle and the legend 'Izz ad-Din al-Qa.s.sam Brigades will free the Holy Land'. Both the rifles we'd used in the Bab al-Wad attack were still in the apartment: I put one beside the prayer mat and made Mahmuzi hold the second, crouching down. Bilahl produced a rusty Kalashnikov and a few landmines that had been dug out of the earth over the years. None of them worked, but they looked good enough for the video. I hit Pause. Mahmuzi prayed, then got to his feet and tied a green ribbon around his head.

I released the Pause to record again and held up Bilahl's text in front of Mahmuzi with my free hand. He read: 'I, the living shahid Mahmoud Salam al-Mahmuzi, choose to die a holy death in the name of G.o.d, in the footsteps of the shahid Halil Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, a fighter in the name of G.o.d, a member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qa.s.sam Brigades. I will walk the path of the shuhada shuhada and revenge the death of the shahid Halil Abu-Zeid at the hands of the occupying army in order to free all the Islamic holy lands and to ascend to the great, the merciful, the compa.s.sionate G.o.d, to live for ever in his gardens and dwell beside the pools of heaven.' and revenge the death of the shahid Halil Abu-Zeid at the hands of the occupying army in order to free all the Islamic holy lands and to ascend to the great, the merciful, the compa.s.sionate G.o.d, to live for ever in his gardens and dwell beside the pools of heaven.'

He continued staring at the camera and I continued filming. n.o.body said a word.

Svetlana, what the h.e.l.l are you doing? I'm freezing here. Can we not get some...ah, hot hot water, that's just what I need, yeah...that's really not so bad... water, that's just what I need, yeah...that's really not so bad...

'You like the washing, don't you?'

Not as much as you you do, Svetlana. do, Svetlana.

'You respond to the warm water, don't you? My hands on your body?'

Not true, you little Jewish wh.o.r.e! Just shut up and tell me about the Croc. Where is he? And where's Mother? Where's Grandfather? Why is there n.o.body here? Why am I stuck here alone with you, Svetlana?

In this endless dream...

'Now don't make faces. Don't get irritated. What did I say? Enough. Enough of this squirming, sweetheart...'

The driver arrived. It was the woman from Shaar Hagai. Good looking. She was wearing a tight shirt and trousers and lipstick and shades and had her hair back in a ribbon: for the checkpoints. When I smiled at her Bilahl gave me a furious look and sent me inside. He talked to her quietly about the operation. All that remained was to dress Mahmuzi with the belt. I took out the bulb and the battery, connected the electric circuit and entered the safety-catch nail into place. 'Oneconnect battery. Twopull out safety catch. Threepush the b.u.t.ton.' He wore a shirt over the belt, and a sweater on top of the shirt. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, anointed himself with more perfume, and just before he left, put on a faded denim jacket. I wished him good luck. 'G.o.d willing, we'll meet again in heaven,' I said. Bilahl stood close to him and spoke with a quiet intensity.

'Give yourself to G.o.d. Free the holy lands of Islam. And when you are in heaven don't forget us. Help us to become shuhada shuhada as well. Speak well of us, that we might enter too. as well. Speak well of us, that we might enter too. Inshallah Inshallah, soon. This whole world is worth less than a fly's wing in comparison to being with G.o.d in heaven. There you will be the most glorious of kings. It is the will of G.o.d.'

Outside, the Mazda was already breathing clouds of white exhaust smoke into the cold air. Mahmuzi kissed his Koran, got into the back seat and closed the door. The Mazda pulled away, and that was all.

The driver dropped Mahmuzi about a kilometre before the Kalandia checkpoint and made it through without any trouble, smiling at the soldiers and flourishing her blue ID card. Usually it's enough. She drove two kilometres past the checkpoint and stopped shortly after the turning to Bir Naballah. Mahmuzi took a bypa.s.s route used by construction workers which the army hadn't figured out yet. To be safe he was carrying a fake work permit from the Hebrew University. She picked him up again and, on entering Jerusalem, bought a large bouquet of flowers which she laid on the dashboard. The sky was incredibly clear; perfect and pale. She drove on Route 1 until she saw the walls of the old city to her left, continued down towards the city centre, turned left into King David Street and drove to the end of it, and then on down the hill via the road adjoining the Bell Garden. She entered Emek Refaim Street.

Mahmuzi was quiet all the way, only peeking from time to time at his Koran and mumbling, 'Allah chose me.' She knew the Cafe Europa because she'd been there on a previous visit to Jerusalem. There was good coffee and always plenty of people. An older, bald man in a green shabby coat had made a pa.s.s at her. He'd asked what such a pretty girl was doing on her own in a place like that. Then he asked whether he could pay for her. She'd turned her back on him.

'Look to the right,' she said. 'That's the place. Quite full.'

As they went past, Mahmuzi turned his head. 'The security guard doesn't look too serious.'

'Good. If you're not sure, there are more places along the road.' Mahmuzi shook his head and she pulled up. Her stomach was aching with tension. She sighed. 'All these Arab houses. The thieves took everything. Without shame.' Later, when I learned about all of this, Bilahl told me that she was Halil's cousin. Mahmuzi connected the battery to the explosive belt.

'Take the bouquet. If you can, wait five minutes, until I'm far enough away. Good luck.'

He got out and she drove off, and in her mirror she saw him get closer to the target, a bouquet of yellow flowers in his hand, and it seemed to her as if he walked in without the security guard checking him. At one of the red lights on the way to Talpiot she looked in her mirror at the line of cars behind her and heard what could have been a faint explosion. She drove into the car park of a mall and went in to walk around. In the electronics shops there were radios and TV sets showing various channels. Although she couldn't hear what was being said, she stopped outside one and watchedshe would be able to tell. A live interruption at that time of day would be enough. The solemn angle of Danny Ronen's eyebrows would be enough.

According to Channel 2's report later that evening, the guard (only lightly injured) would probably just have glanced at the bouquet and indicated with his eyes to Mahmuzi that he could go in. Haaretz Haaretz described what the shahid would have seen: a lot of gla.s.s everywhere, those round red-and-black tables, a long wooden bar with round bar stools. He would have smelled the coffee and tuna. Perhaps, described what the shahid would have seen: a lot of gla.s.s everywhere, those round red-and-black tables, a long wooden bar with round bar stools. He would have smelled the coffee and tuna. Perhaps, Yediot Achronot Yediot Achronot speculated, somebody (now dead) had spoken to him, and he would have smiled back and whispered in his heart, speculated, somebody (now dead) had spoken to him, and he would have smiled back and whispered in his heart, Shut your f.u.c.king mouth, you're going to die. Shut your f.u.c.king mouth, you're going to die. He would have gone to the bar and waited in line and ordered something simple in pantomime, something easy to order, something fitting for his last drink on earth. Water, possibly, or a coffee. He would have sipped it and looked at his watch and pulled the safety-catch nail. And, perhaps, at the very end, he spat on the floor and looked up into the shocked face of the girl behind the bar (now dead) as she opened her mouth to protest. 'Don't...' she may have said, who knows, and that's when he would have pressed the b.u.t.ton. He would have gone to the bar and waited in line and ordered something simple in pantomime, something easy to order, something fitting for his last drink on earth. Water, possibly, or a coffee. He would have sipped it and looked at his watch and pulled the safety-catch nail. And, perhaps, at the very end, he spat on the floor and looked up into the shocked face of the girl behind the bar (now dead) as she opened her mouth to protest. 'Don't...' she may have said, who knows, and that's when he would have pressed the b.u.t.ton.

21

I don't know where I'd be today, or who, if we'd played tennis or gone to the centre of town, or if the day hadn't dawned so clear that Shuli had had the urge for an Ice Europa, or if such a thing as an Ice Europa had never been invented or if we'd left half an hour earlier or ten minutes later, or ifthe biggest if of them allshe hadn't asked to change places. An infinity of ifs. We stand at a crossroads a hundred times a day and we have to make our choices or we can never progress, and our choices determine who we are. That's the way it is, and that's the way it was that cold, metallic morning. And yet I can't get rid of the feeling that, for the third time, it wasn't me but somebody else who was making the decisions.

Shuli returned from the toilet and said she had thought the nicest thought, and smiled her hopeful, closed-mouth smile, and then the air trembled.

It's impossible to differentiate between what I think are my memories and what I've constructed from newspapers, photos, TV footage and the accounts of other people who were there and whose memories may themselves have been constructed from newspapers, photos and TV footage. Maybe nothing of what I am going to relate now is really mine, or maybe it all is. In any case, what I think I remember is that the air trembled and there was darkness. As if we'd been teleported to a different place: water dripping from the ceiling, chunks of concrete and clods of earth, black-and-red tables flipped and shattered; puddles on the floor. A building-site smell, a scorched-meat smell, a tear-gas smell, and the smells of coffee, blood, gunpowder and flowers. I couldn't stop staring at a mobile phone, half spilled out of a woman's handbag, and I realised that was because it was ringing. It reeled my gaze in among the chaos of the shouting. If there was shouting. Wasn't there a sickening silence? Or bothfirst the silence, then the shouts, and then the crying. I didn't see Shuli at all. I don't remember anything of Shuli after what she said and her closed-mouth smile. I do remember a yellow flowerI don't have a clue how it got there but other people also mentioned seeing these flowers. They said there were three separate explosions, stark white lightning, and an intolerable feeling above all of being trapped trapped. All that I seemed to have missed, like the kick to my head that needed a couple of st.i.tches and left me with a b.u.mp and a permanent scar. I don't remember the kick but I do remember the foot that kicked me. I watched the foot fly towards me, wearing a heavy army boot. I didn't get it for a moment, and then I got it and I wanted to scream and maybe I did.

Someone was asking me whether I was all right. I opened my eyes but I couldn't seem to answer. I was hot, I felt as if my skin was speckled with little burning spots. A voice told the hand that was trying to lift me not to: 'Check that nothing's broken first.' The hand disappeared and came back as fingers gently examining my body. I was turned over and investigated further and I must have pa.s.sed the test, because at last I was lifted up. 'Can you walk? We'd better get out of here.' I leaned on a shoulder and walked. Something was sticking to the heel of my shoe. I tried to clean it off with a piece of metal while I sat on the pavement waiting for an ambulance. I tried to clean the soles of my shoes and looked about me.

A body in a blue Adidas shirt was lying at an unnatural angle in the shattered gla.s.s and ash, its face burned, mouth wide open, eyes staring upwards, a ring on one of his fingers. People were shouting, 'Another piece over here,' and a look pa.s.sed between me and a guy with scalp-locks who was covering up body parts. We both swallowed smiles. Why? I guess it must have been 'piece', meaning 'chick' in Hebrew slang. Somebody ordered me to cry and put a chocolate cube in my mouth. A tall girl in a Cafe Europa T-shirt was dazedly wandering around; another girl was refusing to get in an ambulance. Volunteers from ZAKA, religious types in fluorescent plastic vests, were collecting limbs and viscera and fragments of flesh in plastic bags so that the proper rites could be given over the bodies.

'Are you all right?' There was a hand on my shoulder. A bespectacled woman with short brown hair and a pleasant pale face. 'I'm Seelvia,' she said in a South American kind of accent. 'I'm from the mental health clinic in Emek Refaim. I heard the explosion and came down to help.'

'No, I'm fine,' I said, though I was shaking from fear. Sylvia moved off towards a fat and sweaty curly-haired man, one hand on his waist, the other touching a bleeding wound on his face. She laid a hesitant hand on his shoulder. 'Are you all right? I'm from the mental health clinic in Emek Refaim. I heard the explosion and came down to help.' The man looked at her in wonder. 'What's your name?'

'Avi.'

'Nice to meet you, Avi, I'm Seelvia. Do you remember what happened?' He looked at her. 'Do you want to tell me?' He continued looking at her, his T-shirt outlining his sizeable paunchhe looked to me like the football manager Shlomo Scharf.

'Avi, we're still in the event occurrence phase. If you open up now and share what happened, it will help later on.'

He continued looking at her for several more seconds.

'What do you mean, what happened?' he said eventually. 'Don't you see what happened?'

'Well, of course...'

'You're asking me what happened? You haven't noticed that some f.u.c.king stinking son of a b.i.t.c.h Arab with dread-locks in his a.s.s blew this whole f.u.c.king place sky high?'

'Yes, Avi. I just want you to try and share...'

'Share!' Now he was properly screaming, like Shlomo Scharf used to, and Sylvia retreated a step. 'Are you f.u.c.king joking? No, tell me seriously, are you all right or what? These f.u.c.king Arabs...f.u.c.k it! f.u.c.k them all, now! What happened? She asks me if I remember what happened!' He was waving his hands around and you could see the deep cut above his cheekbone, and someone approached him and embraced or restrained him, and led him away from the psychologist. She didn't move for several seconds.