The Lie: A Novel (12 page)

“One is an Arab, in fact.”

“Bedouin trash. He wears your uniform, ipso facto he is a Jew.” With the same smooth one-handed grace Awad stuffs another Gauloise into the gold cigarette holder and lights up with a motion so fluid it appears simply to occur as a consequence. “The Jews of Israel will demand the return of these two poor soldiers to their parents.”

“Which will only tempt your people to kidnap others.”

“Exactly.” The Arab takes a long drag on his Gauloise. “Did you know, Zalman, that chess is an Islamic invention?”

Zalman seems to be studying the butt as it burns a black hole in the white carpet. He looks up. “Not quite. Invented in India, perfected in Persia, both well before the birth of Mohammed.”

“Another Jewish lie.”

“Believe what you will, Fawaz Awad. Self-deception is an Arab affliction.”

“Nevertheless, we do hold the two soldiers. In this game of chess, you should consider that
check
.”

Arad carefully removes his round-framed sunglasses and proceeds to clean them with his handkerchief. “Nevertheless, Fawaz Awad,
you
should consider Falkbeer, Loewenthal, Steinitz, Tarrasch, Zukertort, Tartakower, and Lasker.”

“Who are these?”

“Also Rubenstein, Nimzowitsch, Breyer, Spielmann, Reti, Botvinnik, Reshevsky, Fine, Horowitz, Boleslavsky, Bronstein.”

“What are these names to me?”

“Jewish chess champions. Grand masters. Did I mention Averbach, Najdorf, Smyslov, Polugaevsky, Tal, Geller, Fisher, Timanov, Korchnoi, Stein?”

“Your point?”

“And of course Kasparov, Polgar, Svidler, Radjabov, Gelfand.
My memory is not what it was. I may have missed one or two. All Jews. Tell me, Fawaz, how many Arab chess masters can you name?” Abruptly, he stands. “The next move, sir, is ours.” He smiles, the ends of his lips curling up but his eyes remaining as they were. “And do take care with your cigarettes,” he says in English. “You could start a fire.”

Outside the Knesset building mounted police restrain two separate crowds.

On one side of the plaza about two dozen demonstrators hold placards that read
BOMB HEZBOLLAH!
and
NEVER AGAIN!
On the other side Erika and Zeinab—with placards that say
JEWISH & ARAB CITIZENS FOR PEACE
and
NO POLICE STATE!
—lead about fifty people chanting the same. These are the famous Citizens in Black, for decades a radical thorn in the side of every Israeli government, whether right, centrist, or insufficiently left. The press is out in force, most—revealing a certain political tendency on the part of the international media—behind the barrier restraining the Citizens in Black.

To the rear of that group Floyd Hooper stands with a stylishly dressed blond woman wearing on her shoulders the red-and-white kaffiyeh identified with the Palestinian cause. On Genevieve Al-Masri the kaffiyeh is as much a fashionable accessory as a statement of political identification. She holds her crying toddler, whom she attempts to comfort. With his back to the demonstrators, who face not the hand-hammered wrought-iron Knesset gates but the opposition, Hooper stands before the Steadicam held by his cameraman and speaks directly into the microphone in his left hand, and thus indirectly to the CNN newsroom in Atlanta. Any other kind of microphone would
pick up too much of the tumult around him and drown him out.

“Wolf, I’m here with Genevieve Al-Masri, wife of missing Palestinian spokesman and frequent CNN contributor Edward Al-Masri, who was last seen detained at Israel Customs when he flew into Jerusalem on Sunday from his home in Canada. According to CNN sources with ties to the Palestinian leadership, Al-Masri, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who holds dual Canadian-Israeli nationality, is being held by Israeli security forces. Israel government officials have declined to comment. Mrs. Al-Masri and the couple’s young son have flown here from their home in Montreal to discover the truth of her husband’s whereabouts.” He turns to her. “Genevieve Al-Masri, what do you think has happened to your husband?”

“I wish I knew,” she says in a French-Canadian accent that would be charming were she not clearly angry. “All we do know is that he’s missing. Israeli officials won’t tell us where he is, whether they have him in custody, or whether he’s even alive.”

“What makes you convinced he’s being held by Israel? Couldn’t your husband be in hiding?”

“From whom? He was last seen at Ben Gurion Airport. Then he vanished.” Now her voice rises in pitch, as though she is reciting from a prepared text. “It is no secret that the Israelis have been trying to silence Edward from telling the truth about the Palestinian holocaust. I warned him not to go to Israel, but his family is here. He came to write a book documenting the ethnic cleansing of his people. Now the Israelis have him.”

“Mrs. Al-Masri, what’s your next step?”

“I want my husband back. Our son needs his father. Later this evening I expect to meet with the Canadian ambassador to enlist his aid. The Israelis can’t simply pick up a Canadian citizen and hold him incommunicado. Not even the Nazis went so far.”

“Mrs. Al-Masri, according to CNN sources, a possible exchange is being discussed: your husband for the two IDF soldiers captured the very same day he arrived in Israel. As you know, Hezbollah claims the two soldiers were taken in response to his arrest. Has anyone in authority confirmed that a trade is being negotiated, or even envisaged?”

“I hope and pray such a trade is in process, but no one has informed me one way or the other. Failing such an outcome, I will bring this outrage before the High Court of Justice in The Hague. The time has come to put a stop to Israel’s trampling on the human rights of the Palestinian people, whether in the conquered territories or within Israel itself.”

“Thank you, Genevieve Al-Masri, wife of Palestinian spokesman Edward Al-Masri, whose name viewers will recognize as that of a frequent CNN commentator on the subject of Palestine.” The correspondent is in motion, his cameraman following. “I am now walking over to the leadership of today’s protest outside the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.” Abruptly, his way is blocked by a mounted policeman. “Now, if I can get through, perhaps we can have a word with Edward Al-Masri’s mother, Zeinab Al-Masri, one of the leaders of the joint Jewish-Muslim peace movement known as Citizens in Black.”

The mounted policeman holds his ground, the tall sorrel horse a snorting, high-stepping barrier. “You must go back!”

“I’m with CNN. Press.”

“Go back!”

“Look, I just want to—”

The mounted cop is not about to engage in a discussion. He edges his mount sideways so that its advancing flank forces Hooper to edge back.

“You can’t do this!” Hooper shouts into his microphone, addressing his audience of millions as well as the mounted cop. “I’m press!”

At their villa in Caesarea, three members of the Barr family watch the confrontation on CNN. Seated between them, Dahlia takes the hands of her husband and son.

On the television screen, Hooper has taken up a new position at the rear of the left-wing demonstrators. With the aplomb of a seasoned correspondent he gestures broadly behind him. “So that’s the situation from Jerusalem, Wolf. One group calling for justice—in this case, the release of Edward Al-Masri, believed to be held by the Israeli security services—the other side calling for war against Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Palestinian freedom fighters whose militia claims to hold two Israeli soldiers captured on the northern border.” He leans forward, trying to hear what Atlanta is saying.

On the television screen, the unflappable news anchor in Atlanta, whom few viewers know was a longtime correspondent for
The Jerusalem Post
but whose political leanings are now less predictable, picks up the thread without missing a beat. “Hoop, so you’re saying no one knows definitively if Prof. Al-Masri is indeed being held by Israel?”

“That’s right. But generally reliable Palestinian sources we have spoken with do regard this as fact.”

“And the two Israeli soldiers?”

“Wolf, we know almost as little, not even their names, which
have not been released. However, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces confirmed earlier today that the two were most probably taken prisoner by Hezbollah.”

“Thank you, Hoop. That was CNN Mideast bureau chief Floyd Hooper live from Jerusalem. Meanwhile, CNN has obtained a chilling video from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Sources in the Washington security establishment believe it to be genuine. Though CNN has edited this footage for content that is not suited to a general audience, viewers are cautioned that what you are about to see does contain scenes that—”

Dahlia puts down the remote as the screen goes black. “I don’t want it shown. Not in this house.”

At the same moment, Tawfeek Nur-al-Din and Fawaz Awad are also watching CNN, which has become the lens through which either side in any international conflict evaluates its success in convincing the world that it is completely in the right. Fawaz Awad puffs on the Gauloise in his gold cigarette holder, the Hezbollah commander smokes the same Liban brand found in a pile of twenty at the ambush point on the other side of the Israeli border. Butts overflow the large brass ashtray between the two men. From outside the apartment comes the sound of early evening automobile traffic and the occasional hoarse cough of a truck grinding its gears. Militiamen coming on duty at several choke points just to the east have already begun to limit access to the street. When no vehicles pass, the sound of dominoes being slapped down can be heard from the café across the street.

“What did I promise?” Fawaz Awad says. “Even according to the CNN, it is check.”

“Not every check leads to mate.”

“This one is guaranteed. In Nicosia I saw the old man’s face. He is tired. They are all tired.”

“But you say yourself he is not the decider, only the adviser. The Jews’ internal politics will cast the final vote.”

“That is as I have told you. If it were up to the old man, we could capture his own son and no exchange would be made.”

“He lost this son years ago, so this is simply an unprovable theorem.”

“Regardless, the internal politics of the Jews works against him. He is not only tired but helpless. It is the weakness of democracy. The Jews are sentimental for their children. And in the war room of public opinion, sentiment will always win out. It is all over but the Jewish disappointment. This check will be mate.”

“You think it is over?”

“I know it.”

“With the Jews, it is never over.”

“Damn the CNN—they have edited out the best parts.”

“They are in league with the Jews. The Jews control everything.”

At the same moment, on the damp cement floor of a basement in a bombed-out building only minutes away, Ari rocks the tracker cradled in his arms. The Bedouin is delirious, muttering incomprehensibly, though from time to time Ari makes out the word
mare
in Arabic and the phrase
no more
.

“What color is the mare, Salim?” Ari keeps asking as he rocks him in his arms. “Tell me, what color is the mare?”

Dahlia does not want to leave Uri but Dudik is there in the home he had only days before left for good. Uri is not going to school. His father is not going to the office. Neither of them is able to do anything but wait. Dahlia cannot wait.

Speeding through and around the early morning traffic on the coastal road, Elias drives with his teeth clenched, riding the horn when the siren alone is insufficient to clear the highway. In the front passenger seat Dahlia concentrates on nothing but the road, and then shuts her eyes so as not to see it at all.
Elias has his job
, she thinks.
And I have mine
.

She has moved into an almost unconscious state, a state of rest in preparation for the battle ahead, when she hears the cell phone buzzing in her bag. She does not bother to read who the caller is. She knows. “Yes?”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

She thinks,
So the names have not been made public
. “Wait one minute.” She has Elias pull over. Who knows how much English the driver knows. She steps away from the car. The noise of traffic is like an assault. “Floyd . . .”

“How is it going with Al-Masri?”

“I don’t have a clue,” she says. “And if I did, I wouldn’t say. Darling, I’m not a source for information on this. Anything you
need to know about your colleague Al-Masri will have to come from somewhere else.”

“I never met the man,” he says. “Look, I need to see you.”

“Please don’t be offended, Floyd, but I’m not able to see you, not now.”

“I was thinking maybe I can help about . . . a related matter.”

She is silent.

“Something you might be able to pass on. I’ve been talking to our guy in a certain city north of here. Begins with a
B
.” No response. “Dahlia?”

“I’m listening.”

“This isn’t something for the phone.”

“I understand.”

“If you can’t come to Jerusalem, I can be in Tel Aviv.”

“Five o’clock. Jaffa. You know where.”

“I’ll be there.”

“One thing,” she says.

“I’m listening.”

“If this is just a ploy to see me, you’ll never see me again.”

“Five o’clock is a long time off,” he says. “It would be good to know who the soldiers are. I can be way out ahead on this. It’ll be helpful.”

“I can’t give you this information,” she says. “Is that all you want?”

“I told you. I had a word with our guy in . . . that place. It might be useful.”

“And you want something in return.”

“It’s not quid pro quo. I just thought, if you could get the names . . .”

“Floyd, go fuck yourself.”

“It’s so much more fun with you.”

She softens.
He doesn’t know. I can’t blame him for that
. Often
when they arranged to meet, they went through this same small burlesque. She would say,
But how will I know you?
And he would say,
Extremely attractive, black T-shirt, safari jacket, hard-on
. And she would reply,
I’ll see what I can do about that
. It was just what they did. “At five, then.”