The Glory (70 page)

We lunched with General Sharon at his field headquarters in an Egyptian orchard, and afterward his deputy, Brigadier General
Nitzan, took me by jeep to the Canal. At a paratroop battalion camp in a melon field he stopped, summoned the men into a big
semicircle, and talked in Hebrew. Looking at those unshaven haggard frontline troops, I almost felt myself back in Vietnam.
They broke into applause when he said that I was an American Air Force general. We crossed the Canal on a giant prefabricated
steel structure floating on rollers, and Nitzan told me how its construction was forced on Israel because they couldn’t buy
mobile bridges from us or anyone else. This bizarre Jewish improvisation may well have saved the Sharon attack. Nitzan spread
a map on his jeep hood to argue that if the Third Army were set free to fight again, the Israeli forces now in Egypt could
find themselves trapped in turn. That was pretty much General Elazar’s contention, but out there in the field it made hard
sense.

When the helicopter got back to Tel Aviv, Barak had not yet mentioned the airlift to the Third Army, so I put the question
to him again. “I’ve answered you,” he said, “as well as I can.”

Now for my own view. Operationally the airlift will be simple. Landing rights in Europe will of course be no problem. It will
certainly sour our relationship with the Jews, and this is something to think about. I opposed the airlift to Israel, yet
I have to say we’re getting value received. We now have access to the entire spectrum of captured Russian war matériel, of
which they showed me vast arrays. They are compiling and offering us vital data about all that booty, and a serious study
mission should come here as soon as possible.

Mr. Secretary, one can sit in Washington and hold to George Marshall’s judgment that the Jewish State is a historical mistake
and anomaly, but on the ground here this view seems overtaken by events. I was sobered by seeing those two battlefields and
those paratroopers. I remain an advocate of the proposed airlift as a major gesture to Arab pride and welfare, and a probable
end to the oil embargo, which threatens the security of NATO. As De Gaulle said, nations are cold monsters, and the United
States must act in its own national interest. Yet writing from Jerusalem, to be quite frank, it becomes a close call. These
people won’t shoot down our C-5As, but I doubt Mrs. Meir will bend.

My wife is leaving for Paris this morning, and she will deliver this report to the embassy there (possibly more secure than
the one in Tel Aviv) for the diplomatic pouch.

Respectfully,

Bradford Halliday

W
hen Barak and Emily emerge from the hotel into a breezy sunny morning, she exclaims, “God, two whole hours with you. Am I
dreaming? Look, we don’t have to walk to the Wall, I just said the first thing that came into my head.”

“Emily, why the delay?”

“I don’t ask Bud questions. When I woke up he was changing my reservation.”

“Have you ever seen the Wall?”

“No, but I’m not in a wailing mood. Except at parting from you. But that’s our thing, isn’t it, sweetie? Snatched hours and
hurried farewells.”

“Nobody wails at the Wall anymore, Queenie. We call it the Western Wall. It’s a nice walk. Come.”

“Say, Zev, who is this Don Quixote?” They are passing the old windmill at the head of a steep stone staircase to the valley.

“Eh? Oh, that’s Sharon’s deputy. Hang on, Queenie!”

She is stumbling on the rough stones, going down. “Wow! I sure will. Why Quixote? Is he a little nuts?”

“Far from it. Nicknames just catch on sometimes. Why do you ask about him?”

“He intrigued Bud.”

“Understandable. He’s a brigadier general, very able.” He makes her laugh, describing how Yossi at sixteen showed up at Latrun
on a mule, a long skinny figure in a tin hat with a broomstick, and went galloping onto the battlefield. Then he asks abruptly,
“Em, did you tell Nakhama that I had stopped writing?” He glances at her and Emily says nothing. “I gather you and Nakhama
had quite a talk.”

“We yatted a bit, yes.”

“What about?”

“Oh, girl stuff.” Crossing the valley bridge they have to dart through the heavy traffic grinding up and down the Jaffa Gate
road. “Ye gods, last time I was here this was all no-man’s-land, Wolf. Barbed wire, sandbags, machine-gun nests, and the road
was deserted, quiet as death.”

“Never again. Now let’s see. The short way is through Zion Gate, but let’s do Jaffa Gate. Arab market, more colorful.”

“Lead on. No problems with the Arabs?”

“Not now.”

They trudge up the steep hill, where busses, trucks, and cars go by in a great racket, belching fumes. “You know,” he raises
his voice, “if King Hussein hadn’t attacked us in the Six-Day War, all this would still be quiet as death. Two weeks ago,
when we were in very deep trouble, he could have walked in and taken back all he lost. But he sat on his hands.”

“Timing is everything in love and war, eh, old White Wolf? And mine’s even lousier than King Hussein’s.”

“Poor, poor Queenie.” He takes her hand and kisses it.

“Yowie, bingo! When in doubt, turn on the self-pity. The men are suckers for it.”

Rifle-toting soldiers in the arch of the Jaffa Gate stare at the brigadier general and the fancy foreign lady in the pantsuit.
At the shops in the arcades, merchants are setting out their wares. Emily gives a huge sniff as they pass a fragrant bakery.
“Know what? I’m absolutely starving. I’ve had one cup of coffee today.”

“Okay, this way.” He leads her into a crooked stone byway. “I have three vices, Queenie. Two you know about, pistachios and
yourself. I’ll now disclose the third.”

Inside the small dark shop, Arabs in work clothes are eating at bare Formica tables, and older men in long robes sit around
a hookah smoking through long coiling tubes, amid pleasant smells of coffee, fresh-baked bread, and aromatic tobacco. A stout
black-mustached shopkeeper welcomes Barak with a gold-toothed smile, and they chat in Arabic. The other customers ignore the
uniformed Israeli officer and the foreign woman.

“Is your Arabic really good?” she asks, over fine thick coffee.

“Well, when I served in Central Command I spent much time with Arabs.”

“You get along with them?”

“I like them.” She raises her eyebrows. “I do, Em. Mind you, theirs is another world, and always will be. They’re bitter,
angry, and miserable — and that’s partly our doing — ah, here we are.” An urchin brings two round pans full of a brownish
pastry. “Try this. It’s rather sweet.”

After one warm mouthful she gasps, “
Rather
sweet? Yikes, what is this stuff? I’ve just swallowed four thousand calories.”

“Klafi. This place is my opium den.”

“Can I have one of those flat breads instead?”

The proprietor himself brings it to her with a courtly bow. “This is more like it,” she says, tearing and eating the bread
with gusto. “My God,
look
at you. How can you choke that gunk down?”

“I sneak over here once in a great while. I’m a klafi fiend.”

Afterward they traverse stone arcades, always going downhill, until the wide plaza comes in sight. Emily halts to scan the
scene below; the wheeling crying birds, the green plants growing high up among the great stones, the soldiers on nearby roofs
standing guard with guns at the ready, while knots of worshippers are at their prayers all along the Wall. “So that’s it,”
she says. “That’s what’s left of your Temple.”

“That’s just the retaining wall. The Temple was on the Mount above, where the mosques are now. So the archaeologists say.”

“My father told me that the Wailing Wall was in a squalid dark blind alley.”

“It was. No more. We’ll taxi back to the hotel. Your time’s short.”

“With you when isn’t it short?”

In the cab she lightly kisses his mouth. “There, old Wolf. For auld lang syne.”

“Queenie, why were you so hesitant to come? I telephoned you the minute I heard Halliday would head the mission. Why did you
just hem and haw?”

“Dearest, how could I know how he’d react? But he was as nice as pie about bringing me. Maybe he’s working off his guilt this
way. Speaking of which —” She has to catch her breath as he seizes her and kisses her hard. “Back off, back off. I’ll be goddamned
if I’ll take on any more guilt about foolery like this. It’s hopeless and futile. Your Nakhama is a world genius at making
me feel like a dog caught stealing a steak.”

“Stealing a bone, you once put it.”

“Whatever.”

“Come on, Emily, what did she say about the letters? What went on between you two?”

“Not a bloody thing you’ll know about, except that it’s okay for you to write. And you’d better, do you hear? Hey, there’s
the hotel across the ravine. Just hold me, darling. We’ll be there in an eye-blink.”

The cab swerves sharply to cross the valley bridge and her body is pressed against his. She murmurs, lifting his hand against
her mouth, her breath warm on his skin, “I’ll tell you one more thing she said. She’s never been to Paris. How’s that possible?”

“Well, somehow it’s never happened.”

“If I find a flat in Paris, you’ll come there, won’t you, every now and then? With her, natch. Just so we’ll see each other,
my love.”

“That’s on, Queenie.”

As the cab nears the hotel he releases her to touch a handkerchief to her wet face. “Holy cats, tears?” she mutters. “I didn’t
even know. Something in the Jerusalem air, no doubt.”

Halliday is waiting in the lobby in uniform with Emily’s luggage. He takes her aside and with a few low cautious words hands
her a thick envelope. She nods slowly, slips it into her leather shoulder bag, zips and locks the bag. “All set, Barak,” Halliday
says.

“Fine. The navy car is waiting outside.”

The bellboys are busy with a huge tourist group, so they both help Emily into a cab with her luggage. She kisses her husband,
and waves a casual goodbye to Barak.

“I suppose I should see the Wailing Wall, too,” says Halliday, as they get into a waiting navy car, “and the Via Dolorosa,
and so on. There’s more to your country than war, war, war.”

“General, when is your airlift to the Third Army supposed to go?”

For once Halliday’s impassive face shows a flicker of surprise. “Unlike Sharon you do believe it’s serious?”

“I believe the Pentagon gentlemen who are for it are all too serious.”

Halliday regards him for a long moment. “Okay. Next Thursday Dr. Kissinger is scheduled to visit Cairo. First time for an
American Secretary of State since Dulles in 1953. Big breakthrough in American-Arab relations. Unless your people at Kilometer
101 show some flexibility soon, the airlift may well go by Thursday.”

“Flexibility? Sure, when we hear some sense about prisoners and disengagement. Sadat’s counting on a bailout by you without
any of that, so that he can trade our prisoners of war for the whole Sinai Peninsula. About his own prisoners — we’ve got
thousands — he obviously doesn’t give a damn.”

“Sounds like the airlift will fly, Barak.”

“Maybe. On the other hand, your President may have reasons to think twice about it. On our left here, General, is the new
campus of Hebrew University.”

“Handsome buildings.”

On a cold windy noonday late in November, Galia Barak and Daphna Luria stand side by side gripping hands as Dov Luria’s coffin
sinks into a pit of reddish earth in the military burial ground on Mount Herzl, ringed by the sunlit Jerusalem hills. Family,
friends, and Tel Nof aviators cluster around the grave, the mother bowed but dry-eyed, Benny Luria and Danny standing rigid
in black skullcaps. The Ezrakh, thin and frail, conducts a short burial service, then Air Force Chief Peled begins to eulogize
“a fallen eagle from a family of eagles,” his usual forceful voice faltering. Galia breaks into sobs, and Daphna puts an arm
around her.

Across the open pit Daphna can see among the mourners Noah Barak in white uniform beside a plumpish dark girl in a heavy brown
sweater; no doubt his French fiancée, at first glance quite as plain as Daphna has heard. An unworthy thought at her brother’s
open grave, and she tries to pay attention to the air force chief’s words, but he is just spouting straight Zionism, flyboy
style, such as she has heard all her life. Maybe the familiar phrases, like rote prayers, are making her parents feel better.
No words can console poor Galia or herself, brimful as she is of Jericho Café bitterness about the war. Dov died because the
lying old politicians and the puffed-up old generals, now so busy covering their asses, were caught asleep. The kids had to
save Israel, kids like Dov and like pitiful maimed Dzecki, already showing off how he can drive his Porsche with one arm.
She feels guilty about not seeing more of Dzecki, but that stump gives her the horrors. Yet at least he is alive.

Never will Daphna forget those long weeks of waiting for news of her brother, the high hopes for the prisoner exchange, the
agonizing moment when the whole family came with Galia to Lod airport and he failed to appear among the gaunt shaven-headed
figures in pajamas descending from the Red Cross plane; then hard upon that the crushing news from the search team, the shattered
body found in a dense mango grove, miles from the charred wreckage of his Phantom near the Canal. Evidently Dov tried to the
last for a crash landing in Sinai, and ejected too late for the parachute to save him. Her parents have been as stoical as
she expected. Galia has surprised her. After all, Galia is a soldier herself, from an army family, but she is so broken up
that she has been granted hardship leave. She cries all through Peled’s talk while Daphna’s eyes are quite dry.

The ceremony ends. The mourners disperse with few words along the rows of the dead. Daphna does not leave the hillside cemetery
with her family, wandering instead among the terraces, her hands jammed in her pockets, the cold wind blowing her hair. Of
the hundreds of new graves dug here when the war began, nearly all are now filled, with metal name markers stuck in mounds
of fresh dirt; and she comes on one grave after another of friends from school or her scout troop or the army. As she walks,
she hears on the wind an incongruous sound in this place of the fallen. It is a clarinet. Too far off to be recognized, a
soldier stands on a knoll beside a pile of earth, playing a Mozart air. She realizes at once that this has to be Colonel Lauterman’s
son. She heard him play at the Jericho Cafe, she knows his father was killed, and it can be nobody else. She stands listening
to the piercing slow music, and now she starts to cry, warm tears rolling down her cold cheeks. She turns and hurries away
toward the cemetery entrance.