The Wanting (40 page)

And with that, he motioned to Hanadi, and they went together though the door. Again the key turned in the lock.

I
N THE DAYS LEADING TO MY SHAHADAH
, I was immersed in prayer. I bathed my feet and hands in the waters of el-Kas, the well of al-Aqsa, which they told us rises up from the rivers of Eden, and I entered the great mosque and stayed there for hours on end, meditating. Then I would take the bus back to Jabal, to Walid’s place, where we would talk and study late into the night. Only then would I sleep a few hours, lying between Walid and Fayez on the hard floor. In the morning we would wash, pray, and prepare a little hummus and tea. He always had dates and figs, sliced apples, and sweets of various kinds, and at night there was usually maqluba. We were never hungry, even though we fasted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Walid had found us a small room where no one knew us, but this room made Walid despair. He often talked about his real house, which he had never seen. It had been in the village of Umm Kalkha near al-Ramleh. He wore the key around his neck. His father had given it to him, his father who also had never seen this house. Yet Walid could describe it in the most vivid detail, and I, too, felt as if I once had a life within those walls. “Umm Kalkha was abandoned before the war,” he said bitterly. “They were so full of fear, they left it all behind. They thought nothing of it. The idea that they could fight for it never even crossed their minds. They left their fates to the cowardly Nasserites and Hashemites, may Allah have mercy on them, and this is all that is left for me.” He spit on his key and polished it between his fingers. I said to him, “And my father, what will he say to me?” And Walid said to me, “This jihad is fard al-ain. The slave may rebel from his master, the
son from his father. Your father does not have the power to stop you, for your power comes from Allah, praise be to the All Merciful.” Every day I spent many hours alone with Yusuf al-Faruk, my sheikh, who organized the operation, for I had been taken into the Battalions of Qassam. Yusuf al-Faruk trained me day and night, and I, like a falcon on the path of All-Knowing Allah, swooped up his leavings. These were my happiest days. These were my days of light. “For the call!” I repeated after him. “For the Muslim Brotherhood!” I wanted to care only for Islam and for the purity of my soul at the end of days. Paradise was always before my eyes, for the life of this world was worth nothing, and I yearned to yearn for death, saying, as Yusuf al-Faruk instructed me, “Truly there is only one death, so let it be on the path of Allah.”

And so I prepared for my martyrdom, and I did not go home for a very long time.

Oh. A stab into my heart that can no longer feel! A vision through these eyes that have no right to see!

I am standing before the blank wall, with Walid and Sheikh al-Faruk and Ra’id Mashriki and also Hassan Bahar, and we are all pinning up the posters,
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA! ISLAM IS THE ANSWER
!
THE BATTALIONS OF THE MARTYR IZZ AD-DIN AL-QASSAM
,
THE GUARDIAN OF AL-AQSA
! I am wearing a suit, yes, a gray suit and a tie, a blue tie, a white shirt, but around my head is a white headband, and on it the words
GOD IS GREAT
, and around my waist is a holster and in it a pistol, and in my arms is an AK-47, and in a scabbard tied around my left bicep is a khanjar, thirsty for blood. And look! My beard, the one I grew after I was reborn, is gone. I look at myself in my suit and my nice oxford shoes, and I almost feel like laughing. I’m practically the old me. Hassan Bahar steps behind the camera and waves at us, and Walid and Yusuf al-Faruk and Ra’id Mashriki step away, and there I am, alone in front of our artful backdrop of flags and slogans, and I glance down at my necktie and my oxfords, and I rear up to the camera and cry, “I am ready for business!” And I hear Sheikh Yusuf’s voice, “If
Allah wills it!” And I answer him, “If Allah wills it!” And Sheikh Yusuf asks, “And what business are you ready for? For the business of Allah, Lord of the Worlds?” “Yes! For the business of Allah, Most Merciful and Magnificent!” And he says, “Tell us, O Shahid, what are your plans?” And I answer, “God willing, it will not be Jerusalem, it will not be Tel Aviv, but where they believe they can hide from the justice of Allah, Lord of the Worlds, in their suburbs and their enclaves and their safest places.” “Tell us then,” he urges. And I tell him, “Tomorrow, if Allah wills it, I will destroy the Jews on bus line forty-seven, and, Allah permitting, my soul will go to Paradise where I will meet the Prophet and his Companions, peace be upon them, and the souls of the infidels will burn on earth and also in Hell.”

“You will kill many offspring of pigs and monkeys!”

“The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, said, You will indeed fight against the Jews and you will kill them to the point where the rock and the tree will say:
O Muslim! O Abdullah! There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him
.”

And the voice, which of course is Sheikh Yusuf’s, cries, “Ever since the first hour, the Jews hated the Muslims and their Prophet. In fact, our Prophet, Muhammad, may he find favor always, was never safe from these Jews. They tried to kill him three times. One time, they tried to kill him by putting a heavy rock on his head. Another time was when they placed poison in the forearm of a goat for him to eat. And a third case was when the Jewish boy, Lubaid bin al-A’asam, may Allah’s curse be upon him, put a magic spell on him.”

And now another voice, this time Walid’s, “Wasn’t it the Jews who set fire to our precious al-Aqsa?”

And then Hassan Bahar from behind the camera, “Weren’t they the ones who killed our Muslim brothers while they prayed in the holy month of Ramadan in Masjid al-Khaleel?”

I answer, “Yes! They cut open the stomachs of pregnant women and murdered our Muslim babies, they tore down our houses and uprooted our olive trees, they burned our villages and slaughtered our young men!”

And now Ra’id Mashriki calls to me, “Wasn’t it the Jews who transformed the mosques of Palestine into bars for alcohol and gambling? Did they not turn them into compounds for animals and garbage dumps?”

“Allahu Akhbar!” we all cry as one. “Allahu Akhbar!” And Sheikh Yusuf al-Faruk says, “Show us then, how you plan to execute your mission!”

Now, finally, I can tear open my shirt and show them! But I must be extremely careful not to pull off any buttons or rip the material in any way, or even wrinkle it too much, and this takes quite a long time to accomplish, so it does not make quite the impression I had hoped, but at last my shirt is open and I can fully display the neatly packed tubes of explosives wrapped around my waist in the explosive belt that had been so cleverly hidden beneath the three-piece suit I am wearing.

In the camera you can probably see Sheikh Yusuf’s hand, because he gets so excited he forgets to stay out of the picture. “Such a blessing from Allah, magnificent in his mercy! Such a weapon, who has seen such a weapon before?”

“And I will have other weapons as well,” I tell him, “a great quantity of weapons. This pistol, this knife, and these grenades. I ask Allah, Eternal and All Knowing, only for this, to bestow martyrdom upon me and victory also, not one or the other, but victory in martyrdom!”

“Yet we rely not on weapons but on Allah, Lord of the Worlds.”

“My living and my dying belong to Allah!”

“And what do you say, O Shahid, to the Cubs of Hamas?”

“Oh, young boys and girls! Remember, soldiering is not the way for all, but if, Allah permitting, you are called, you must answer with all the blood in your veins. Do not spare a drop! Mujahideen of Palestine! Tomorrow the storm of revenge will rain down on the occupiers of your land!”

“How sweet is death for the homeland! May the prayers of Allah be upon you!”

“The blood of the martyrs is calling me.”

And then very calmly, Sheikh Yusuf asks, “O Shahid, tell us, is there someone you would like to greet?”

And I answer him, “Yes! This is my greeting: Peace upon you, Fadi bin-Rashid al Husseini al-Hijaz! I say to you, my friend, my brother Fadi, with whom I share but one heart, one heart in Islam, to you, Fadi, I say, today is the day of your happiness!”

“And where is Fadi al-Hijaz?”

“In Paradise, drinking from streams of purple wine.”

“Fadi al-Hijaz, martyr of Jabal! He killed two soldiers with one stone! And what else do you have to say to Fadi al-Hijaz?”

“That this operation is under the banner
IN HONOR OF FADI AL-HIJAZ
, for whenever I think of Fadi, whenever I see his image on his martyr card or on his poster, I always say,
O Allah, Most Magnanimous, make me like him!
”

“God willing, you will depart for Paradise tomorrow! A bridegroom going to his wedding! Full of love! Full of hope! And what is your name, O Shahid?”

I hold up my Kalashnikov in my left hand and my Qur’an in my right hand, and I say, “My name is abu-Fadi! For truly now, I am father to him who delivered me here.”

From behind the camera I hear Hassan Bahar say, “I think that’s enough.” But I say, “I want to say something to my mother.” And he turns the camera back on.

I take from my pocket a piece of paper and unfold it. I am seated now on the cushion, and the belt is pressing into me a little painfully. I read.

“Mother, Father, though you have not seen me for several months because I am among the hunted, know that you are in my thoughts, indeed are always in my thoughts. Do not weep for me. In fact, have a party, the wedding party you always wished for me. I am married only to Islam and to the cause of my Muslim Brotherhood and the people of Palestine. Do not cry for me. I will be in Paradise and will be married there to my seventy hur al-ain, they are my brides. Often, in the hovels of the camps and destitution of our village, I have held before my eyes the unbearable beauty of
these maidens. Their skin is like fine silk, through which you can see into another world, a better world, the world to come. Often in the stench and filth of this existence, I have breathed in their ethereal perfume and listened to their heavenly song. Do not cry for me one single tear, but eat sweets and dance. And of the one whose name cannot be mentioned, tell her there is no better end to the bitterness of oppression than this. For her, revenge! For you, the blessing of jihad!”

And then I hear them all shouting with joy, “Allahu Akhbar!

Allahu Akhbar!”

Was I happy then? I must have been, because I was smiling the whole time, and the smile never left my face. But as I fly from this scene, and the whole of it melts into the shoreless sea of God’s mind and becomes for me but the faintest afterglow of a long-exploded star, and I see myself standing at the bus stop in my excellent three-piece suit, my Samsonite briefcase in my left hand, and my right hand clutching the Mercedes-Benz key in my pocket, I have to wonder to myself, what, after all, did I truly believe? Where, in the end, was my happiness? Why did I press the unlock button before I boarded that bus? It was the eyes of that young and beautiful girl. Eyes I recognize, for I have seen them through their closed lids. They belong to Dasha Cohen.

Could I have seen in those eyes my seventy brides calling me, not from Paradise, but from here in the land of the Jews? Or was it merely that I had never trusted in them in the first place and that, underneath it all, I hated Yusuf al-Faruk and Walid Bannoura?

Then what, O Allah, my Protector, was that smile on my face?

Dear You,

For a long time, I was in my
Fushigi Yûgi
stage, which is what I always explained to Pop when he rolled his eyes at me and told me
I better read Pushkin or Lermontov instead, because otherwise I’d end up as just another Israeli ignoramus. It’s a stage, Pop! I’d tell him. But now I see this was basically true.
Fushigi Yûgi
was merely a step in the direction I was going anyway, and I had to take that step in order to arrive where I am, which presently is a grassy area just above the Damascus Gate. I’m sitting here enjoying the shade for a minute because Yohanan needed to use the restroom. He was getting a little panicky because we didn’t know where one was. We’d already passed the hotels and the police station when it hit him. I remembered there’s a tourist place for Christians called the Garden Tomb where some of them think Jesus was buried, and it’s just off the Nablus Road. We saw a sign to it, and Yohanan said, I gotta go, so I told him, go ahead I’ll meet you down here. He hesitated to leave me because he was worried something might happen to me, I’d get hassled by some guys or something—Yohanan is very chivalrous. But what could he do? So off he went to Jesus’s tomb, and I came down here to wait. My pack is very heavy anyway, and it felt good to take it off, plus now I was schlepping his, too, because he didn’t want to go through security with the Christians. So the packs are sitting at my feet right now. (My red high-tops do make my feet look happy!) There are a few trees up here and some old stones sticking up from the ground where people can sit. Some French tourists have taken the one bench that rests against the city wall, and, as for me, I’m sitting on a piece of cardboard an Arab guy gave me when he saw I was looking for a place to put myself. It was so sweet of him. I said,
Shukran!
which is thank you in Arabic, and he was very excited and said,
Tikalimi aravit?
But I had to say, No, I only know a few words, and I had to say this in Hebrew, which was really embarrassing because I’ve been trying to learn Arabic for
years
, or I guess actually I’ve been talking about learning Arabic for years because I never really did anything about it. Anyway, he looked disappointed and walked away, and that made me sad. And this is exactly the kind of thing that would have set off a
Fushigi Yûgi
adventure—finding a stranger, the stranger being kind, but because Miaka comes from another time and place there is a misunderstanding, and then, well,
you know, it gets complicated, and then you have a … well … a
plot
.