Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) (24 page)

The house that Hanan showed me was semi-detached, well-furnished and deluxe with a parlour, two bedrooms, a Georgian kitchen, and a study room in addition to a library and gym. Also, there were servants to serve me. It was a few metres from the main house. There was a lido at the back of the house, just below the terrace overlooking the gardens of gardenias, magnolias, geraniums and frangipani.

It was to be my home for a duration I did not know for sure, and I felt as though I was getting used to being an Israeli.

Israelis speak Hebrew and Arabic. The influx of Jews from Arab land and Ethiopia led to the Arab speaking Jews, while English is taught in schools up to fourth grade thus a good number of them speak English. Moreover, immigrants from other countries to Israel for jobs led to evolution of other languages like Russian that you would never fail to hear on the streets. So, I was not that off the radar.

Hanan had told me that he had a brother who was in the police and lived at his home in Central Tel Aviv and three sisters whom I had not yet met. Most of the times Hanan stayed at the family’s estate in Tel Aviv-Yaffo.

His father, Shalom ben Zeev, was half-Jewish-half-Arab, and his mother was an unadulterated Jew. Their marriage of a pure Jew and half-caste made them have a different view of the traditional Jews, and this saw them as among the secular Jews of Israel. Moreover, they were not just Jews rooted to Jewish customs entirely. They were amongst the minority who were Christians, and making it precise, they were among the less than one per cent of Israel population who were Roman Catholics. Hanan and all his siblings were brought up in the Catholic faith.

Shalom was a political scientist, an alumni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a lawyer by profession. He entered into politics in 1977 under the ticket of the Israeli Labour Party and had served in the opposition Knesset (Israeli Assembly) many times. Once upon a time, he was the second hand man of the slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin Ben Harzav. He was nominated to be the Israeli Prime minister in 1999 but he stepped down for Ehud Barak. He served in the governments of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon before retiring from politics in 2009 when the Knesset favoured Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership voting a no-confidence vote to the present day government where Shalom Ben Zeev was seemingly not decided what he wanted in politics for he had left his Labour Party and joined the new Ariel Sharon’s Kadima.

Shalom ben Zeev left politics since then but occasionally hosted get-togethers with his former political allies albeit he could never go back to the life he had left behind.

One evening, Hanan and I were having a walk in the compound. He had picked me up from the office and told me to take a break and have some fresh air with him. We toured his father’s plantations, some kind of an induction tour.

Dusk was approaching when we got back. As we neared the family house I saw something that stopped me on my tracks. I was sure of what I saw. I hoped my eyes were playing tricks on me, but quite on the contrary they weren’t: a McLaren F7 was pulling up at the garage and my heart literally skipped a beat. I did not wish it to be like this. Not here, not yet.

Hanan did not miss anything. He was watching me.

A debilitating wave of consternation swept over me and my concentration to what Hanan was saying turned to the vehicle.

Then she stepped out; the girl I had seen at the mall. The first thing that struck me as she locked her car with a remote control key and walk away was her beauty and gait once again. She looked as though she were one of the paintings of Caravaggio. She had the eroticism, dramatic beauty, and output of Caravaggio’s paintings you see when you enter the chapel of Cerasi in Maria del Papolo in Rome. Hanging her auburn buckskin reticule over her shoulders she headed to the main house via the narthex. She saw us in time before I could excuse myself from Hanan and head to my house; simply put, before I could run away, and came to where we were standing.

She and Hanan hugged passionately, and when they let go of each other Hanan turned to me to introduce her. “Ken, meet my sister Shirli. Shirli, Ken, my best friend.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Shirli,” I said stretching my hand to shake hers. “Nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure to meet you too, best friend,” she said, and I hated the tinge of sarcasm so much that I prayed to my African gods to strike her dumb. She definitely remembered me. Hanan was watching us. I think he intercepted all the signals and expressions on our faces and the tense pleasantries we exchanged.

“Is there something I am missing here? Shirli? Ken?”

“Not really, Hanan. It’s only that your best friend here is savvy minded.”

Jeez, the little imp of an angel has nerves.

“I am sorry,” I said. “Forgive my manners.”

She excused herself and as she walked away I fixed my eyes on her little butt. Hanan’s voice brought me back to Earth, and on Hanan’s face was that keep-away-from-her look.

Keep away from her? Not really.

At last Hanan let out whatever was bottled inside him about his sister. He blankly told me to keep away from her.

No Hanan, I can’t, even if it costs our friendship.

Shalom ben Zeev had businesses, estates, premises, and landed property in Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Haifa, and Jerusalem. In Tel Aviv was the Aleana Holdings, a private investigation agency, a hyper-salon and a five hundred acre coppice where his home, vineyard and orchards were. His family of seven – five kids and wife – lived in Tel Aviv. His children managed his businesses in Tel Aviv-Yaffo and Tel Aviv.

The first born was Hanan followed by Shamir who was in the police force then the triplets, Shifra, Meira and Shirli, in the order of their birth. Shifra and Meira kept their hair short, mostly bob
-ish
that reached at the shoulder blades while Shirli kept hers long. She habitually pulled it into a do-it-yourself tress. Shifra had a facial birthmark, a fade
bindi
that made her look like an Indian. That’s how they could be differentiated from each other.

His father, Zeev Herzl Ben Shalom, was a member of a clandestine movement known as
Aliyah Bet
that was organized to bring Jews to Palestine. Shalom Ben Zeev was born on 14
th
May 1936 shortly after the Arab revolt which was agitated by the rise of Nazism which led to the fifth Aliyah where his parents were among the quarter million Jews fleeing Nazism holocaust. His parents called him Shalom, peace in Hebrew. His brother who was sick by the time he was born died shortly afterwards of some tropical disease, making Shalom the firstborn in a family of three – his sisters, Adina and Ranit, came six years later at the dawn of World War II. 

On May 14, 1948, the family was celebrating Shalom’s twelfth birthday when the Jewish Agency proclaimed independence, naming the country Israel. The following day the armies of five Arab countries — Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq — attacked Israel, launching the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Sudan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia also sent troops to assist the Arab contingent. After a year of fighting, an armistice was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were established. These acts of aggression towards Israel angered Ben Shalom very much and he vowed to one day retaliate. He was inspired by the then leader of the Labour Zionist Movement and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion who welcomed the Holocaust survivors and the Jews who were fleeing from Arab Land pogrom.

On culminating his education with Bagrut matriculation exams in 1953 he joined the present day Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he studied political science and later law. Since he had schooled in a state religious school, Shalom had learnt the Bible and Christianity. His father, half-Jewish-half Arab, let him decide for himself what was best for him, and this not only brought Christian faith to the family in Neve Tzedek but also shaped his future life.

He was in his third year when he met his teenage love who was later to be his wife. Daliah Jonina was an adulterated Jew living in the
ma’abarots,
the temporary camps that housed the Jewish immigrants fleeing to Israel from the Nazism holocaust and persecution in Arab land.

She had a soft ovate Jewish face, wine-black hair, sparkling black eyes and a smile like a blessing. It was this smile that caught him during his research for his thesis that made him go back to the
ma’abarots
to
look for Daliah. Within no time they were lovers and she taught him the other side of life he had ignored all along because he wanted to see that he someday was the Israel prime minister.

With her surprisingly lovely body, firm young perky breasts, impeccably rounded hips, a small waist and long shapely legs she taught him practical biology and anatomy of the female body; and he taught her the legal jurisdiction of such passion and the consequences of being a political prisoner to his fervour.

On 13
th
May, 1980 they wedded and a year later they were blessed with a bundle of joy – Hanan. Eight years later his family was to be full – two sons, three daughters.

In 1977 he entered politics under the ticket of the Labour Party. Though the Labour Party was defeated, he was on the opposition Knesset and in 1984, together with the former prime minister, friend and schoolmate, Yitzhak Ben Harzav, was on the Foreign Affairs committee. By the end of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s term, Shalom was appointed the Minister for Justice where he continued to serve under Prime Minister Shimon Perez up to 1992.

When, in 1992, Yitzhak Ben Harzav was elected the Chairman of the Labour Party and won over the Likud of the incumbent Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Ben Harzav and Ben Shalom fused as two armies joining forces in forming the first Labour-led government in fifteen years, supported by a coalition with Meretz, a left wing party, and Shas, a Mizrahi ultra-orthodox religious party.

The 1976 religion-related party crisis that had led to the resignation of Ben Harzav as the Prime Minister and the defeat of the Labour party had not influenced Ben Harzav in his vision. With Ben Shalom as the Vice Chairman Labour Party who was a Christian, worse still an RC, Ben Harzav thought that his dream of a peaceful state where nothing divided the people was almost fulfilled. This led to the signing of the Oslo Accords which created the Palestinian National Authority and granted it partial control over parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

This divided the country into two factions. With some seeing Ben Harzav as a hero for advancing the cause of peace and some seeing him as a traitor for giving away land they viewed as rightfully belonging to Israel, many Israelis on the right wing opposition often blamed him for Jewish deaths in terror attacks, attributing them to the Oslo agreements.

At the same time Ben Shalom was getting monumental popularity by being an ardent supporter and defender of Ben Harzav. It was evident that he was the one to succeed Ben Harzav once Ben Harzav’s term ended. In what came to be known as the Ben Shalom belief of ‘One Man Can Make a Difference’ attributed to Ben Harzav, the Israel society knew of no one else better to succeed Ben Harzav than Ben Shalom. Little did they know that the opposition Knesset was orchestrating a conspiracy that would sweep them off their feet.

The opposition Knesset became vociferous against Ben Harzav’s government and struggle for a peaceful society where he allowed Palestinian Liberation Organization thirty per cent of West Bank’s Arab population leaving paltry seventy per cent for his country.

Despite promising the Knesset that Israel would continue to have ‘freedom of action’, hostility towards him became leprous. His accommodation of liberal and secular Jews in his government led to him being accused of being alienated from the Jewish traditions and values. His life was under threat.

As fate would have it, on Monday 4
th
December, 1995, Rabin Ben Harzav met his untimely demise outside the Kikar Malchei Yisrael Plaza. He was shot five times in the chest by a right-wing Zionist gunman. The gunman meant to kill both Rabin and Shalom. Shalom sustained serious injuries in the head that put him in a three day coma, the time which he was being operated on at the Ichilov Hospital at the Tel Aviv Medical Centre.

Rabin Ben Harzav never made it; he was pronounced dead on arrival. The Labour Party’s spokesperson announced it to the public an hour later. He was buried three days later with over a hundred heads of state attending his obsequies.

Shalom Ben Zeev, on recovery, was on the opposition Knesset. The new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, formed a predominantly right-wing coalition government publicly committed to pursuing the Oslo Accords, but with an emphasis on security first and reciprocity. Shalom Ben Zeev found himself in the foreign affairs committee, but he joined two other politicians in forming an alliance – One Israel – with his Labour Party where he was the Chairman. He was the alliance’s candidate for the May 1999 elections but he stepped down for Ehud Barak.

In 2001, the Likud won the elections led by Ariel Sharon and Ben Shalom’s Labour Party was in the new government coalition. Due to political differences Ben Shalom differed with the coalition government of Sharon and in 2003 his Labour Party pulled out of the coalition. A year later, two other parties followed suit.

Ben Shalom decided to retire from politics in 2009 when the Likud won the vote of confidence and support for leadership by the Knesset over all other parties. It was then that he decided that he was tired of playing the dirty political game. After all he had a home to go to.

It was evident that he was never going to be the Israel’s prime minister. His first dream of doing something for his country, his people, he told himself, had manifested itself through other people whom he had worked with.

He couldn’t spend the whole of his life pursuing political dreams that seemed elusive. Maybe his son, Shamir, would succeed in where he had failed.