Vicious Circle (11 page)

The Doctor grunted. “Being an Islamist in a Zionist-occupied country is hazardous for your health,” he said in Hebrew. “Being
right when everyone around you is wrong is hazardous for your health.” He summoned a cheerless laugh from the depths of his
gut. “In any case the question is academic because, as the holy Qur’an tells us, nobody lives a fraction of a second longer
than God gives him to live.” He reached out and grasped the Rabbi’s bony wrist and felt for his pulse. After a moment, still
talking in Hebrew, he commented, “All things considered, you appear to be in satisfactory health. How old are you?”

“Fifty-three,” the Rabbi responded in Arabic.

“Do you have a family history of high or low blood pressure? Fainting? Heart trouble?”

“
Min fadlikoum
,” the Rabbi said testily in Arabic. “
Please
. Stop this farce of inquiring about the health of someone you are going to put to death.”

Switching to English, the Doctor said, “It is awkward, your talking Arabic, my talking Hebrew. I propose,
ya’ani
, that we meet on the no-man’s land of English.”

Apfulbaum’s tongue flicked nervously over his parched lips. He sensed he had won the first skirmish. “We will talk in English
if it suits you. But let’s not delude ourselves—between us there can be no such thing as a no-man’s land. We both want the
same splinter of Holy Land, and I mean to have it.”

The doctor smiled coldly. “You are what the Isra’ili newspapers call a maximalist,
ya’ani
. For you, there is no question of compromise. All or nothing is your creed. I myself am ready to negotiate an equitable settlement.
I am ready to permit the Jews born in Palestine
before 1948 to remain in the Islamic state I mean to create on the condition they convert to Islam.”

“And the others?”

“They can go to hell,
ya’ani
.”

The Rabbi’s riotous brows danced above his bulging eyes. “Here, at last, is a charter member of the Amalek Liberation Organization,”
he cried excitedly to his secretary. He spun back to his interrogator. “Okay, okay, cards on the table. God promised Abraham
and his descendants, me among them, all the land from the brook of Egypt, which we call the Nile, to the great river Euphrates.
Contrary to published reports I consider myself a minimalist, inasmuch as I am prepared to settle for less than God offered
Abraham; I, too, am willing to negotiate an equitable settlement, one giving the Jews everything between the Mediterranean
and the River Jordan. When we’ve digested that, say in thirty or fifty years, we’ll phone you up and make an appointment and
raise the subject of the Euphrates.”

The Doctor played the game. “What do you propose to do with the Palestinians who already live between the Mediterranean and
the Jordan?”

Apfulbaum snorted contemptuously. “They can emigrate to Syria, which is worse than hell,
ya’ani
. The Jewish people occupy one sixth of one per cent of all Arab land, what Lord Balfour called ‘a small notch’ when he set
it aside in 1917 for a Jewish state. I tell you frankly, the angels will abandon heaven to sell used Egyptian cars in Tel
Aviv; God—blessed be His name—will turn up as a television anchor man before anyone takes a thimbleful of this sacred soil
away from us.”

Leaning against a wall, Azziz watched the two nearly blind men eyeing each other with a wordless fury. He wondered how long
the prisoners would remain alive; he wondered how long he and his brother would remain alive. He had once confided to his
brother that he could feel the temperature of the air rise the instant the Doctor entered a room; his almost sightless eyes
seemed to burn with a fierce anger, which he kept bottled up inside him. He rarely lost his temper, though it would have been
better if he let some of the anger seep out from time to time. Even those, like Azziz, who considered themselves
disciples of the Doctor and suspected he was the long-awaited Renewer were secretly terrified of his anger. They knew from
experience that it could erupt into savage violence at any moment; they knew they as well as the Jews could become its victims
if the Doctor decided their deaths would serve his cause.

In the strained silence, the soft voice of Yussuf reading from the Qur’an could be heard.

Whosoever obeys God, and the Messenger—they are with those whom God has blessed, Prophets, just men, martyrs, the righteous
.

Petra slipped into the room with a cup of green tea and offered it to the Rabbi. Wrapping both hands around the cup, Apfulbaum
brought the tea to his lips, all the while squinting over it at his interrogator. “I seem to have misplaced my eyeglasses.
It probably happened in the excitement of the attack on my car.”

“When I was a student at the American University of Beirut a lifetime ago,” the Doctor said, “I picked up some colloquial
Arabic. When a Lebanese Arab conquers an enemy he says, ‘I broke his eye.’” The Doctor felt the cigarette singe his lips and
quickly dropped it on the floor. “I broke your eye,
ya’ani
.” His long fingers played with a loose button on his jacket. “I see now that I am going to enjoy our conversations. I will
admit something that will surprise you: I have never before spoken seriously with a Jew I wasn’t afraid of, which is understandable
since the great majority of the Jews I talked to were my interrogators or my torturers or my judges or my jailers. I spent
twelve years in Jewish prisons.
Twelve years, ya’ani!
Every conversation with a Jew was an ordeal. I was afraid they would take away my spectacles, without which I, too, am virtually
blind; I was afraid they would take away my books or my cigarette ration or my right to one visitor a month. I was afraid
they would kick the chair out from under me and then smile politely and ask me if I had slept well the night before. There
were times, I tell you openly, when I was afraid they would kill me; there were others when I feared they would not.”

The Rabbi couldn’t restrain himself. “One confidence deserves
another. I have never before had a serious conversation with an Arab who wasn’t afraid of me; who wasn’t eager to assist me,
to ingratiate himself with me, to guide me, to agree with me.”

The Doctor pushed himself to his feet. “For too long you Jews have seen every Palestinian, every Muslim, as a terrorist. Now
you have the good fortune to be confronted with a real flesh-and-blood terrorist, someone come to life from your nightmares
to wage holy war for Allah and for Islam. Even without eyeglasses,
ya’ani
, even without
sight
, you can learn from the experience. If you look with your broken eyes you will see something deeper than terrorism: a yearning
to serve God and do His will.”

Apfulbaum had a sudden vision of himself as a
bar mitzva
boy, sitting at the enormous table in the Brooklyn
yeshiva
, his feet barely reaching the floor, delivering outrageous answers to his Rabbi’s Talmudic questions. “Who does he think
he is,” the old Rabbi had complained on more than one occasion, “the Messiah?” Now, face to face with a Muslim terrorist,
Apfulbaum couldn’t resist the urge to shock him. “With my broken eyes I see a crazy follower of a crazy religion.”

Efrayim wheezed for air under his leather hood. Thinking that the young man was suffocating, the Doctor reached over and snatched
the hood off his head. Gasping, the secretary stared in terror at his jailer. Turning back toward Apfulbaum, the Doctor’s
fingers stole toward his breast pocket and settled on the pearl handle of his pistol; he contemplated shooting the Rabbi out
of hand for his blasphemy, but the admonition in the Qur’an came as if by magic into his head. “
Act you according to your station … watch and wait
.” He withdrew his hand. “All religions, even yours,
ya’ani
, appear at first glance to be crazy. Explain how Yahweh could give Moses His instructions at the burning bush one minute,
and then try to murder him for no reason under the sun the next. Explain why your God punishes Adam and Eve for a single transgression
and drowns mankind in a great flood for some vague offense, and then commends the generosity of Joseph for forgiving his brothers
who sold him into slavery. It is this craziness, or put another way, this larger-than-life-ness, this irreducibility to man-measured
logic, that gives to
Islam its intrinsic beauty. We shall talk again tomorrow night after my colleagues and I have broken the Ramadan fast. We
shall talk every night. I will ask you about your community of Beit Avram. I will ask you about the Jewish underground movement,
of which you are said to be the spiritual leader. I will ask you about the Jewish terrorist who signs himself by the name
of Ya’ir when he takes credit for the assassinations of Palestinians.”

“Ask, ask,” Apfulbaum cooed like an owl. “I will play the cards God has dealt me as long as I am able to. I understand that
when you grow bored, you will pull this stinking hood over my head. I understand that when you become fed up with my failure
to provide answers, you will kill me.”

Yussuf’s voice drifted through the partially open door:

Wherever you may be, death will overtake you, though you should be in raised-up towers
.

“You misunderstand the game,
ya’ani
,” the Doctor said, slipping the leather hood back over the Rabbi’s head. “You have reached what the followers of the Messenger
Jesus would call the last station of your cross. I am not offering to exchange answers to my questions f or your life; I am
offering to exchange them for your dignity. You and your friend here will live or die depending on whether your government
meets my demands. You will live or die with or without dignity depending on whether you meet
my
demands.”

Returning to the outer room, the Doctor went immediately to the laundry sink and scrubbed his hands again to purify himself
after the contact with the infidel. Petra, who did the shopping and brought back newspapers every morning, prepared the evening
meal on the electric hot plate and served it on porcelain dishes: there were zucchini stuffed with meat and covered with a
milky sauce, soft cheese and pitta bread, tea and almond biscuits. Yussuf finished his reading of the Qur’an and joined the
Doctor at the low table. “How did it go?” he asked. “Do you think he will talk before the deadline comes and we are obliged
to kill him?”

“I locate his center in an invincible arrogance,” the Doctor said,
thinking out loud, “and his arrogance in the seemingly unshakable conviction that Jews are superior to Muslims, Israelis are
superior to Palestinians and he is superior to me. If, with God’s help, I can shake this conviction—if I can bring him to
respect me, to love me even—his arrogance will abandon him and his center will fall apart, at which point he will tell us
what we want to know; he will rack his brain for details to convince us that he is not inventing answers.” The Doctor smiled
to himself as he recalled some lines from the holy Qur’an. “‘
We will draw them on little by little whence they know not
,’” he murmured. “‘
My guile is sure
.’”

In the back room, it was Azziz’s turn to stretch out on the cot. Yawning, Aown pulled the hood over Efrayim’s head, then shuffled
in his open-backed slippers to the Turkish toilet in the corner, dropped his trousers and squatted above the hole in the floor.

Rocking back and forth in his chair, choking on the foul smells emanating from the leather of the hood, Efrayim moaned to
himself. “Ah, I am condemned to death.”

“Stop sniveling and pull yourself together,” Apfulbaum whispered harshly. “We are all condemned to death. Our friend was right:
Nobody lives a second longer than God gives him to live.”

Efrayim was horrified. “You’re quoting from the Koran, Rabbi.”

“The Koran stole from the Torah, Muhammad plagiarized Moses. Abraham, a patriarch to the Jews, is reincarnated as one of several
Messengers for the Islamists.”

Efrayim barely heard him. Wracking his brain for omens, he found one that caused him to catch his breath. “He permitted me
to
see
him, which means he doesn’t expect me to leave here alive.”

“What does he look like?”

“His face looks as if a smile has never crossed his lips. He is smug, and cock-sure of himself. He thinks that God is on his
side.”

“I could hear that much in his voice. I meant physically.”

“He is a short man with short cropped hair and the delicate fingers of a concert pianist. He wears small round spectacles
which are so thick they magnify the pupils of his eyes.”

“He suffers from tunnel vision,” the Rabbi guessed. He snickered. “God’s metaphor.”

“There is an injury on his forehead, not unlike yours. His skin is bruised, the bone of his skull bulges as if he’s been butting
his head against a wall.”

“You are describing a frustrated Palestinian.”

Efrayim asked, “What does it mean, this word
ya’ani
that he repeats over and over?”

“It is a nervous tic, the equivalent of
well
or
you know
, not a term of endearment.”

“He means to kill us,” the secretary repeated. “It is against government policy to trade Jewish hostages for Arab prisoners.”

“When the time comes to die,” the Rabbi told his young secretary, “we must do so with such dignity that the one who slays
us will understand the Jews are the chosen of God.” And he added: “If the game is dignity, I will be an apt player.”

An Excerpt from the Harvard “Running History” Project:

I
have to hand it to you, you’re asking all the right questions. You need to understand that in the best of times the Middle
East portfolio is a can of worms. The President’s Special Assistant for Middle Eastern Affairs walks a tight rope between
the Jewish lobby in America and the Arab reality in the field; between the Defense Department and the CIA; between the White
House and the State Department; between the Congressional hawks, who are ready to fight to the last drop of Israeli blood,
and the doves, who haven’t learned anything from history about appeasement. Inside any administration the long knives are
always sharpened and out when it comes to Israel and the Arabs. Which explains why you noticed my secretary fitting on the
headset and taking down the conversation I had with the President in shorthand. Henry Kissinger used to do the same thing
when he was sitting in the basement of the White House working for Richard Nixon. Like Kissinger, I want to have a record
of the conversation in case things go from bad to worse and the White House Praetorians decide someone has to fall on his
sword
.