Vicious Circle (5 page)

Yussuf grinned at Petra and he and the Bedouin exchanged high-fives through the open window. The motor coughed into life.
The van, driving without headlights, edged onto the dirt road that skirted the nearby kibbutz before cutting across the fields
in the direction of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Yussuf joined the Doctor at the second Mercedes. The Palestinian who had been wounded by the Rabbi’s driver firing his Uzi
from the asphalt lay slumped across the back seat. An older Arab who had been trying to stem the bleeding climbed out of the
car. “He’s spitting up blood,” he announced.

“That means he was shot in the lungs,” the Doctor said.

“He cannot be allowed to fall alive into the hands of the Jews,” Yussuf warned. “He knows too much.”

“We must get the two Mercedes into Ghazeh before dawn,” one of the Palestinians called nervously.

The Doctor could feel the hot breath of the
khamsin
on his cheek. He said, “Two minutes,” and climbed into the back seat alongside the wounded man. He cradled the boy’s head
in his arms. “Anwar,” he whispered. “It is me, the Doctor.”

Anwar, who was in his early twenties, opened his eyes. He coughed up blood, then gasped for air. With infinite gentleness,
the Doctor’s fingers worked their way under the boy’s turtleneck and probed his chest until they found the entry wound. It
was immediately above the latissimus dorsi and angled up toward the left lung. There was no exit wound, which probably meant
the bullet had struck a rib and caused massive trauma inside the body.

An ugly gurgling sound came from the back of the boy’s throat. “I am going to pull out of this, right?” he whispered.

The Doctor leaned over him until his lips were touching the boy’s ear. “Even better. Tonight you will enjoy the company of
seventy-two virgin brides; tonight you will talk with the Prophet.” In the darkness he brought a hand up to the boy’s skull,
which was damp with perspiration, and began to search with the tips of his fingers for the distinctive knob of bone behind
the ear. “‘
Whosoever fights in the way of God and is slain
,’” he murmured, quoting one of his favorite passages in the Qur’an, “‘
we shall bring him a mighty wage
.’” He slipped the pearl-handled Beretta from his breast pocket and pulled back the slide on the top of the barrel to chamber
the first round, then warmed the tip of the barrel in the palm of his hand before pressing it to the spot immediately under
the knob of bone. Holding the boy’s head against the car’s arm rest, he pulled the trigger. There was a hollow report, something
like a husky cough, as the pistol sent the bullet drilling into the skull. The boy’s body jerked once before collapsing back
into the seat.

Moments later the two Mercedes, with the still warm body of the martyr on the floor in the back of the second car, were speeding
west along Bedouin tracks toward the Gaza Strip. The Suzuki with Israeli
license plates and its two passengers, both carrying forged papers identifying them as Arabs from Abu Tor, a half Palestinian,
half Jewish village outside of Jerusalem, headed north toward the main coastal highway. The Doctor planned to go to ground
in Abu Tor. When things quieted down, he would make his way, tapping a long thin bamboo cane on the pavement before him, past
the Israeli checkpoints to the safe house perched above the maze of streets in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem
and, God willing, begin the interrogation of the Rabbi.

C
ROUCHING BEHIND A PILE OF CINDER BLOCKS, YUSSUF ABU
Saleh waited until the Israeli patrol completed its sweep along the road that separated the Jewish half of Abu Tor from the
Palestinian half. From the Old City of Jerusalem beyond the Hinnom Valley—the
Gehenna
where people burned garbage in the time of the Islamic Messenger Jesus—a bell atop the Church of the Holy Sepulcher tolled
the half hour. As the echo faded, Yussuf scaled the wall and dropped into the garden behind his father-in-law’s villa. A dog
in one of the Jewish houses on the top of the hill bayed at the moon hanging over Mount Scopus. Several dogs in the Arab houses
below barked back. The ancient saluki tied to a tree in the garden stood up and sniffed at the air, but sank back onto the
grass when she recognized the intruder. Making his way across the garden to a trellis, Yussuf climbed through an old rose
bush to the small balcony on the second floor. Inside the villa everything was dark. He scratched at the window. In the room
a match flared, and then the wick of a candle burned brightly. An instant later the window was flung open and Yussuf found
himself in the arms of his wife.

“
Ahlan wa sahlan
,” Maali murmured into his neck, her lips pressed to his skin. “My house is your house.”

“This is not the sentiment of your father,” Yussuf noted.

“My father is a lawyer,” she whispered back. “He sees only the legal aspects of what you do. He has lost sight of who is right
and who is wrong.” She discovered blood in the palm of his hand where a thorn had nicked the skin and kissed it away. Shrugging
the thin straps of
her night dress off her shoulders, she drew the turtleneck over his head and pressed herself against his body. “My heart,
my husband, welcome home to your bridal chamber, welcome to your marriage bed.”

“You are wonderfully beautiful,” Yussuf declared. “Two weeks is a long time for lovers,”

Maali led him to the brass bed and pulled him down on top of her. “It has been sixteen days and sixteen nights, my love, my
heart. Where have you been to?”

Yussuf ran his fingers through her jet black hair and looked down to see if the fire was still smoldering in the eyes he loved.
“There are questions a wife does not ask,” he instructed her. He kissed her shoulder and her breast and her mouth. Then he
sat up. “We have been married six months tonight. I have an anniversary gift for you.”

“You are my gift,” she insisted, but she smiled with delight.

He produced a ring from his pocket. She raised the candle to inspect it. She could make out the words “Erasmus Hall” and the
date 1998 inscribed on the inside of the ring, and some sort of crest on the stone in its center. “Never before have I seen
such a ring,” Maali said. “Where did you get it?”

“From a Jew named Erasmus Hall.”

“You would have me wear a ring bought from a Jew?”

Yussuf smiled. “I took it from him. He did not object because he was dead.”

“Who made the Jew Erasmus Hall dead?”

“I and my friends did. I noticed the ring on his small finger. When I could not remove it, I took out my pocket knife and
cut off his finger.”

Yussuf tried to put the ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, which was believed to be directly connected to the heart.
When it wouldn’t fit, he took her finger into his mouth and sucked it. He removed her wedding band and worked the Jew’s ring
over the joint and onto her finger, and then replaced the gold wedding band. “The ring of the late Erasmus Hall is so tight
you would not be able to remove it even if you wanted to.”

Maali held up her hand and inspected the ring. “You actually took it from a dead Jew!” she whispered.

“I hate them. Killing them is not enough after what they did to me, to my family, to my people, to my religion.” He tightened
his grip on her shoulders. “I cut off the finger and threw it to a dog in Abu Tor.”

Maali declared with emotion, “I will wear this trophy of your victory over the Jews with pride.”

Yussuf stripped and stood on a small Bedouin carpet as Maali sponged his body, and the healed bullet wound in the flesh of
his shoulder, with orange blossom water from an enamel bowl. She fed him dates and wedges of apple to break the Ramadan fast.
Then she took his hand and led him to the brass bed to break the marriage fast.

J
UST AFTER MIDNIGHT, A TALL, LEAN MAN DRESSED IN A
pinstriped suit hovered over the wounded boy on the gurney as he was being rushed toward surgery through the scrubbed, harshly
lit corridors of Hadassah Hospital. A male nurse trotted along on the other side holding high a plastic container of glucose,
which dripped through a tube into the boy’s forearm. The hair on the boy’s head was matted with blood; a piece of his scalp
hung loose like a flap, exposing a section of skull the color of sidewalk. On the stretcher, the boy’s jaw worked, as if he
were chewing on words but having trouble swallowing them. “… short … heavy-set … short cropped hair …” The man in the pinstriped
suit leaned closer to catch the rest. A orderly materialized at the double door of the surgical theater. “The police are not
permitted past this point,” he announced.

Straightening, the tall, lean man backed away and turned to watch through a window as half a dozen doctors in pale green smocks
and surgical masks, moving with the languid grace of people underwater, bent over the wounded man. Then a nurse inside the
operating theater tugged closed the curtains, blocking the view into the room.

A
S THE FIRST STREAKS OF DAWN STAINED THE SKY IN THE EAST,
Maali came awake with a start to discover the candle sizzling at the end of its wick and Yussuf’s dark eyes fixed on her
as if he never expected to see his wife again; as if the memory of her was all he could take with him. “You must be gone before
it grows light,” she warned with a shudder. “The Jews come around every day or two asking about you.”

“What do you tell them?”

“My father says you are an outlaw and not welcome under his roof. I say that I am the bride of a holy warrior fighting a holy
war.”

Yussuf grinned at the spectacle of his wife facing down both her father and the Jews. “How do the Jews react when you tell
them this?”

“The one with eyeglasses and the insignia of an officer on his shoulders laughs. The tall one who wears a ring in his ear
like a woman calls me a whore. He says they will kill you and have sexual intercourse with me. He uses a vulgar expression
for sexual intercourse.” Maali drew her husband closer and lowered her voice. “I do not tell the Jews, I do not permit the
thought to pass my lips when I talk to my father, I barely whisper it to myself: I am the wife of a servant of the
mujaddid
.”

“The Doctor does not say this in so many words.”

“He does not deny it.”

“He acknowledges it as a possibility.” Yussuf pressed his lips against Maali’s ear. “He bears the mark of Allah on his forehead—a
permanent bruise that comes from pounding his head against the floor when he prays. The Doctor is a holy man who talks to
God.”

“Repeat to me the
mujaddid
’s message.”

Yussuf focused on the flame dancing at the end of the candle; the light was suddenly so intense it caused his eyes to smart
and he had to turn away. “He believes in a universal Islam that rises above Sunni-Shii differences. He teaches that Islam has
not failed Muslims; we have failed Islam. He teaches that you are either a true believer or a
kafir
, an infidel who rejects the message of Islam and the Messenger. There is no middle ground. He teaches that Islam united the
tribes under the Prophet Muhammad; that the tribes, acting in the name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate who is closer
than the jugular, routed the Byzantine and Persian armies, conquered Iraq and Syria and Palestine and Persia and Egypt and
Morocco and Libya and Spain. He teaches that the lessons of history are clear for those who wish to learn them: Muslim victory
depends on faithfulness to the word of God and the example of the Prophet. When we suffer defeat, it is to be interpreted
as the price we must pay for our infidelity.”

Maali clung to her husband. “I worry about you—I dream terrible dreams in which you are being tortured to death. I am terrified
you will be betrayed—”

Yussuf kissed his wife’s neck. “That is out of the realm of possibility.” He reached over to retrieve his wallet from a shirt
pocket, and pulled a small folded piece of paper from it. “Take a look. All the members of the Abu Bakr Brigade carry this
in their wallets—it serves as a secret identity card. The copies are numbered. Mine is number seven. The paper is a kind of
coded organizational chart. The Doctor has patterned his Abu Bakr Brigade along the lines of the human nervous system. Each
cell is completely independent from every other cell. Orders originate in the heart of the Doctor’s cell.
Dendrites
branch out from the cell body to carry out these orders. Instructions to other cells are passed along something called the
axon
, which snakes out from the main cell but never actually makes contact with the other cells. The messages from one cell to
another are transmitted at a gap called the
synapse
, where the cells approach each other but do not touch.”

Maali became aware that she could make out the color of Yussuf’s eyes. She moistened her thumb and first finger and snuffed
out the flame of the candle between them. Sighing, she leaped from the bed and began to throw on clothing. “Where are you
off to this time?” she wanted to know.

“I told you there are questions—” He shook his head; the Maali who defied both her father and the Israelis could be trusted.
“To Jerusalem. To the Old City.”

She wound a cotton scarf over her head, covering all of her face except her eyes. “You will attract less attention if you
are accompanied by a woman.”

“There is no question of your going with me.”

Her eyes burned brightly in the folds of the scarf. “There is no question of my not going with you. Besides which, it is too
great a distance to go on foot.”

Yussuf gave in with a grin. “I permit you to accompany me, but only as far as the Damascus Gate.”

“And I,” Maali said with a shrewd laugh, “permit you to permit me.”

She wheeled her scooter out of the tool shed in the back of the garden and walked it downhill until she could no longer see
her father’s villa. Yussuf appeared from an alley, climbed onto the scooter and kicked over the motor. Maali rode sidesaddle
behind him, one hand on his shoulder, the other around his waist, as the scooter bounced down Siloam Road under what the Christians
call the Mount of Olives and onto Jericho Road. Pickup trucks brimming with crates of vegetables and jugs of olive oil and
bamboo cages filled with live chickens converged on the Sultan Suleiman Road heading toward the Damascus Gate, the main Arab
entrance into the old walled city.