Shake Off (5 page)

A
bu Leila and I embraced and kissed cheeks. He held me at arm’s length and appraised me.

“You are looking well,” he said.

I had often wondered whether he had a daughter called Leila or whether “Abu Leila” was simply a
nom de guerre
. It was not the kind of thing I could ask him though. I’d once asked him which town he came from in Palestine and he’d thrown me an irritated glance, even though it was a usual question for any compatriots meeting abroad to ask, particularly Palestinians.

We sat on drab, hard-edged furniture with thin cushions. Abu Leila didn’t look well. He had rings under his eyes that matched his grey stubble. His suit was more creased than usual and he looked shrunken, like an old man. I felt a fleeting swell of fear, fear of what would happen if he were to die.

“I’ve been doing a lot of traveling,” he said, polishing his glasses. “There are many changes going on in the world and few of them are for the better.” He put his glasses on and peered at me through the clean lenses, then smiled, showing me his nicotine-stained teeth. “Did you know that in some places it is no longer acceptable to smoke in public?” he said. He lit up a cigarette and showed it to me as if to demonstrate its innocence. “Every year it gets harder to find these. The KaDeWe in West Berlin is the only place in Germany that stocks them. Harrods in London also has them. So what’s happening with you?”

I told him about my conversation with Ramzi.

“It was only a matter of time,” he said. “This is what women do. They fall in love with what they find, then want to change it.” He should have been more angry at Ramzi instead of empathizing with him. Instead he told me to keep a lookout for someone who might be able to help with the couriering. He smiled. “Perhaps you know of a woman who wants to travel to the Middle East?” he said. Helen came to mind but I shook my head; I was hoping he would suggest someone. The old woman brought tea in small glasses. Abu Leila closed the door after her and sat down.

“I’m not sure how much longer I can stay in the East,” he said. He examined the playing cards on the table. “The East Germans are living in denial for the moment, they do not think what is happening in Moscow has any relevance to them.” I assumed this was a reference to Gorbachev and what was called Glasnost; the Soviet Union had just held elections for the first time and Gorbachev had publicly stated that the Berlin Wall should come down. I hoped Abu Leila wasn’t going to start one of his political diatribes. “What is it they say in English about the writing on the wall?” he asked.

“They can’t see the writing on the wall,” I told him.

“Exactly so,” he chuckled, and we drank our tea. I was trying to absorb the ramifications of him moving from the East when he said, “Let us talk of other things. How are you getting on with finding a venue for my meeting?”

I told him that I thought it best if it was outside London and that Cambridge or Oxford looked good. I explained that they had good access and plenty of tourists and visiting academics. A group of foreigners wouldn’t look out of place. “Also, Cambridge has a small airport and you can fly to it from Amsterdam or Paris easily,” I said. So did Oxford, but Cambridge was easier for me to get to from London.

“OK, I like the sound of Cambridge. I’d like you to rent a house for the summer. Big enough for eight people. Tell them…” He waved his hand.

“Don’t worry, I’ll come up with a story,” I said.

“Of course you will.” He gathered the cards.

I looked around the room and took a breath. “What’s the purpose of the meeting?”

He looked at me, still shuffling the cards.

“OK, you should know, since you are organizing it.” He put the cards back in the pack and sat back. “Palestinians do a lot of lamenting about their plight. Sometimes I think they are too attached to playing the victim. It is true that they are victims, but it is a limited role: you are victimized and pitied and nothing else.” He lit a match and pointed it at me. “The man who thinks he is unlucky will always trip up,” he said. He ignited another cigarette, stood up, walked to the shuttered window, realized he probably shouldn’t open it and turned around. “What this means is that they lack imagination when it comes to dealing with the situation. By ‘they’ I mean the leadership, of course—the people on the ground who live and breathe the occupation know what is needed—the leadership just don’t have the imagination to deliver it for them. Children have taken things into their own hands, literally, using stones and burning tires.” He stubbed out his cigarette and said, almost to himself, “We must think the unthinkable.”

Emboldened by his unusual candor, I asked, “What is the unthinkable?”

He sat down and pushed up his glasses.

“You believe in an independent Palestinian state and,” waving his arms around, “the right to self-determination, blah blah blah?” he said. I nodded, slightly taken aback by his sarcastic tone. “Alongside Israel’s right to exist, blah blah blah?”

“Yes…” I wasn’t sure where he was headed.

“What if I told you that I, and a few others like me, don’t believe in two states?” He smiled, he was enjoying himself.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what if there was just one state?”

“You mean getting rid of Israel altogether?” As far as I knew, only a couple of PLO groups still took that approach, and the PLO executive had already accepted that Israel existed and would continue to do so.

Abu Leila shook his head, still smiling. “No, I mean a secular, democratic state for Jews, Christians and Muslims. A country where everyone would have equal rights, regardless of their religion.”

One country, I thought. It was such a simple and appealing idea that I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to someone before—although later I learned that it was mooted as early as 1948, then swept aside by post-Holocaust guilt. Yet it seemed impossible to achieve—I could see obstacles wherever I looked. I said as much.

“Yes, I know, many Israelis would not like it because it does away with the Jewishness of the state. But things are changing in Israel, there are people who are thinking the same, since they realize that the alternative is both inevitable and tragic. Zionism is on a road to nowhere except a cliff edge.” He fiddled with his box of matches. “Also, many Palestinians wouldn’t like the idea, especially those living in the past, before 1948 or 1967. Some exiles still carry their house key with them as if they are going back home. Incidentally, these people would not be going home under any two-state solution deal, let me tell you that for nothing.” I had heard my own father and uncles complaining about how their right to return had been written off by the PLO. “Don’t forget, Michel, that one and a half million Arabs live within Israel. A two-state solution does not even begin to address them.” I hadn’t thought about those still living within 1967 borders. Mama’s village of Lubya was within 1948 Israel, but had been demolished when they fled the Haganah. Abu Leila stood up and removed his glasses. They were smaller than the ones he’d worn when I first met him in Beirut. He started to walk up and down, addressing some invisible crowd in his oddly self-conscious manner, like he sometimes had when visiting me when I was still at school in Beirut.

“Already secret meetings are taking place to discuss having initial talks regarding status negotiations. But the Old Man has certain ideas about how these should work, which limits the capacity for negotiating. He wants to constantly rotate the negotiators and will not choose the right people. One of them can’t even speak English properly!” He shook his head. “I’ve seen the names on the Israeli side and they would easily out-negotiate the Palestinians. They’ll come out feeling pleased that they have been allowed to shit in their own toilets every other Wednesday.”

I had not seen Abu Leila talk so intensely about the internal politics of the struggle before, or known that he was close to the Old Man, the nickname given to Arafat. My head was reeling as I tried to think of a sensible question. He sat down again.

“That is why we must arrange this other session, and draw up a joint proposal before anything comes of these talks they want to have in Norway. We’ll call it the Cambridge Declaration!” We laughed, but I was fired up.

“Are you with me, Michel?” He smiled, knowing my answer already: how could I not be with him? I’d been with him this far without question because he had given me something to live for. I had done everything he’d said because I believed that it was in the interest of the struggle. That the struggle was headed in a slightly different direction made no difference to me. We shook hands across the table. My intention to broach the subject of working with other people was gone. How could I bring up such a self-centered thing as my own loneliness after this?

He picked up the cards. “Let’s play while we wait for lunch. It’s my favorite: lamb tagine with honeyed prunes.”

A
t Tegel Airport later that afternoon I bought a copy of
Le Monde
because I’d noticed a reference on the front page to a piece inside about Sabra and Shatila. I had no time to read it before the flight, so I opened the newspaper on the plane to distract me from the terror of take-off. The article profiled the Phalangist leaders who had led the militia into Sabra and Shatila and what had become of them. Most of them were now respectable politicians in the new Lebanese government. The rest were running large businesses, one had even gone to South America. The whole thing made me sick. I tore the article out and put it in my jacket pocket, to add to my collection.

It occurred to me, as we dropped through the sky to Heathrow, that the meeting Abu Leila was arranging ran counter to the official line. Wouldn’t he get into trouble with the Old Man? I never questioned my lack of contact with other members of PLO security, although I knew they must exist: the letters, the forged documents, the tiny cameras, the telephone scramblers; all things I’d delivered or bought or arranged delivery for. Yet I’d never met anyone who worked for Abu Leila—I knew of nobody that even knew him, except perhaps Ramzi, although he had never met him. I assumed it was just the way things were, a matter of sensible containment. But what if I was known only to Abu Leila and no one else? All my training had been on my own; I’d spent a whole summer in Moscow living in a small apartment with no company except the guy assigned to look after me, the various trainers and the woman who’d come to cook and clean. I didn’t know what was normal, all I knew was Abu Leila and what he told me. It was clear that other points of view existed that I was not aware of, other people with other ideas of how to do things. My reflections were cut short to concentrate on the stress of landing in one piece.

It was close to ten by the time I got back to Tufnell Park, and I was looking forward to some codeine and bed.

Helen was sitting on the stairs again, but this time wrapped in a bath towel.

“Oh God, how embarrassing,” she said. She put her face in her hands and pushed the towel between her thighs.

“Man trouble again?” I asked.

“You could say that. I’m locked out.” She gave a weak smile. She looked as tired as I felt: her eyes were dark and puffy.

I stuck the key in my door. “I don’t hear him crying. Is it the same man as before?” I asked.

She gave me a look and her mouth tensed and I wished I hadn’t said it. “The bastard left while I was in the bath,” she said gesturing at her towel, “and I’m not exactly dressed for travel.”

I opened my door. “You mean he’s not in your room?” I asked.

She shook her head and her hair fell forward. She pushed it back from her face. “There’s no answer. He must have left while I was in the bath.” She combed her hair out with her fingers. “We had a row and I thought a bath would help. I find a bath usually helps.” She sounded better but looked awkward, repeatedly checking that the towel was still wedged between her thighs. I avoided looking at her legs. I didn’t know what to do—then it occurred to me that I
could
do something.

“I can open your door,” I said. “Wait there.” I took out a set of small electrical screwdrivers from the cupboard under the sink in my room. I picked up a paper clip from the chest of drawers that doubled as a desk and went back into the hall. Her lock was the same as mine, a basic Yale, and in training I’d managed to open them within thirty seconds. Not a record, according to the Russian who’d taught me, but good enough for the field. Every day he would send me a new lock and I would practice on it in my Moscow apartment, to kill the long evenings alone. Although I did have a lock-picking set, I didn’t keep it in my room, for obvious reasons; it was hidden in the garden.

“Are you going to pick the lock?” Helen asked. I put my finger to my lips and pointed upstairs. She forgot that she was naked under a towel as she stood beside me at the door. I knelt down and examined the lock more closely. It was well used and the plug (the round bit that turns with the key) was loose in the hull. I decided I would scrub the lock rather than trying to pick each pin. You want to be quick in this field, although I doubted whether opening doors for women dressed only in towels was what my trainers had in mind. I knew it was mad to be doing this, even as I bent the paper clip open and created a small kink in the end. I put it in the keyway and inserted the screwdriver to act as a torque. I was vaguely aware of Helen kneeling beside me on the threadbare carpet, of her newly bathed smell. Soon the pins began to set and I pulled the paper clip in and out more rapidly, increasing the torque with the screwdriver as I did so. The lock gave abruptly and the door was open. Thirty seconds tops. Helen laughed and I stood up. She clapped her hands, jumped up and put her arms around my neck. I didn’t reciprocate.

“That’s fantastic, I’m so impressed!” She stood back and considered me with tilted head. “Where did you learn to do that?” she whispered, then punched me on the shoulder. I grinned idiotically, pleased to have found a happy use for this skill, and she opened the door.

Her room was bigger than mine and better furnished. She had Indian-type throws on an armchair and a screen to cover the cooker and sink area. She also had a naked man lying on his back on the single bed, half a bottle of gin in the crook of his arm. Helen put her face in her hands again. I checked his breathing. He was older, maybe in his late thirties or early forties, and flabby. He wasn’t Caucasian—it was difficult to tell in this light but he could have been Mediterranean. He wasn’t going to die so I pulled him onto his side to stop him choking, in case he vomited. His belly sagged onto the mattress. Helen covered his lower half with a sheet. I took the gin bottle and put it on the table.

“I’ll leave you to…” I struggled to think of what I was leaving her to do.

“OK, yeah. Listen, thanks again for your help,” she said, her tone cooler than her earlier exuberance. I went into the hall and she stuck her head out after me, keeping the door half-closed, as if to hide what was inside. “Goodnight,” she said. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to stay in there.

“Goodnight,” I said.

I took three codeine before getting into bed and felt the effect within minutes. I’d forgotten to eat anything, what with the problems next door. But with codeine it no longer mattered. I remembered the article from
Le Monde
in my jacket pocket. Perhaps I could do something about the people in it, although I wasn’t sure what. Then I thought of Helen and her lover. What was she doing with such an older man? How did they both sleep in that bed? I fell onto the mattress. It was a nice sensation: my whole body was warm and safe and swaying, very slowly, from side to side. I smiled because I was on a warm, soft cloud.