Vicious Circle (22 page)

The Doctor cut him short. “I know everything. If one word of deceit crosses your lips, I will execute the sentence that has
been ordered for all Palestinians who collaborate with the Isra’ilis. Your only hope is to tell the truth and trust me to
exercise the compassion ordained by the Qur’an for those who repent. Do you comprehend what I am telling you?”

Mr. Hajji, his eyes fixed on the bruise disfiguring the Doctor’s forehead, nodded weakly. “Are you the
mujaddid
of whom they speak in the
souk
?”

Petra murmured a verse from the Qur’an. “‘
Their mark is on their faces, the trace of prostration
.’”

“There are those who say I am the Renewer,” the Doctor said. “Only time will tell.”

“It is true I worked for the Jews,” Mr. Hajji cried. “They forced me.”

“When did they recruit you?”

“In the summer of 1997.”

“How?”

The story gushed out. “My son Ahmed was in prison near Tel Aviv. They threatened to charge him with the murder of a Jewish
settler. They said only I could save him from a long prison sentence. They threatened to revoke the authorization of my son
Sufian to cross the green line and work in Isra’il. Sufian’s wages supported him and his wife and his four children and his
wife’s parents and the crippled brother of his wife’s father. The Jews threatened to spread rumors that I had already collaborated
if I did not agree to collaborate.” Mr. Hajji groaned softly. “What was I to do? I have three daughters who require dowry.
I have eleven mouths under my roof to feed. I had no choice.”

The Doctor moved to one side of Mr. Hajji. “We shall feed them for you,” he said. “Do you believe in God?”

“I do. I do. With all my soul.”

“Turn your head toward the Kaaba at the heart of the holy city of Mecca, built by Ibrahim, the father of us all, and pray
with me.”

“I will. I will.”

The Doctor reached out and touched Mr. Hajji lightly behind his left ear as if he were bestowing a blessing. “In the name
of God, the Merciful and Compassionate. Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe. You do we worship and call upon for help—”

“Worship,” Mr. Hajji repeated, his dentures rattling in his jaw. “Help …”

“Guide us along the Straight Path.”

“Guide us—” Mr. Hajji faltered. Tears streamed down his weathered cheeks.

“I assume from your name that you have made pilgrimage to Mecca.”

Mr. Hajji managed a miserable nod.

“Now you will make
hajj
to a better place than Mecca,” the Doctor said, feeling for the distinctive knob of bone behind the ear with the tips of
the fingers of one hand, drawing the small pearl-handled pistol from the inside breast pocket of his jacket with the other.
“As you approach, remember to shout, as the pilgrims to Mecca shout,
I am here, O Lord, I am here!
”

“What place is better than Mecca?” Mr. Hajji almost choked on the question; he was terrified of the answer.

“Paradise is better than Mecca. You have confessed yourself to me. Your confession is written in the Book of Deeds. On the
Day of Reckoning, when the earth is ground to powder and those who have deviated become firewood for Gehenna, it will be recorded
in your favor.” He raised the barrel of the pistol to the knob of bone. “If God knows of any good in your heart, He will give
you better than what has been taken from you; surely God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”

“Surely God—”

The Doctor pulled the trigger. Mr. Hajji’s body jerked as if it had been struck by a bolt of lightning, then sagged into the
ropes binding him to the stanchion.

From the other end of the warehouse, the shrill
yous-yous
of a widow mourning the death of a husband echoed over the crates filled with oranges and apples and carrots and parsley.

An Excerpt from the Harvard “Running History” Project:

I
’m running late. Couldn’t be avoided. The Defense Department’s National Security Agency hawks came over to play at the White
House this morning, after which I had to take an important conference call
.

The folks from NSA, as usual, brought along their favorite toy: dominoes
.

You heard right. Dominoes, as in the famous “domino theory” that provided Lyndon Johnson with the intellectual justification
for upping the ante in his calamitous war in Vietnam. The National Security Agency trots them out when it wants to scare the
trousers off everyone in the White House. I’m here to tell you, ten times out of ten it works
.

Who? Tell him to send me a memorandum. I’ll speak to him when I’ve had a chance to read it
.

Where was I?

Dominoes
.

This morning’s session was held in the cabinet room. The President presided and the Administration’s top guns were present—the
Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the National Security Advisor and
yours truly, Zachary Taylor Sawyer, the President’s Special Assistant for Middle Eastern Affairs. The NSA Director, a holdover
from when Secretary Rumsfeld ran the Defense Department, set up his dominoes and began to knock them down, which is to say
he explained what he thought would happen if the shooting started again in the Middle East. I stole a look at the President
from time to time—she seemed to turn various shades of mauve. Who can blame her?
Her desk is where the last domino stops. She doesn’t particularly like the idea of presiding over the end of the world as
we know it
.

I admit it, I am exaggerating. But not as much as you might think
.

The week’s domino theory, according to the National Security Agency, starts with that Rabbi—I can never remember his name.
Apfulbaum. That’s it. It starts with this Apfulbaum fellow being executed by his kidnappers. Then the ultra right-wing Israelis
exact some sort of vengeance, at which point one of the crazy Palestinian fundamentalist cells that has gone to ground exacts
vengeance for the vengeance. After which both sides cancel their plans to come to Washington and the Mt. Washington peace
treaty goes down the drain
.

That was only the appetizer
.

The NSA analysts estimate there is a ninety percent chance that if the Middle East explodes again, the Saudi monarchy will
not survive and Saudi Arabia will be taken over by Wahhabi fundamentalists, some of whom tend to be slightly to the right
of that fellow who brought down the Twin Towers in 2001, Osama bin Laden. (Yes, I do remember
his
name, don’t I?) One quarter of the world’s oil reserves, the NSA Director reminded us—as if we needed reminding—are buried
under Saudi sand. If Saudi Arabia went, we were told, the rest of the countries in the area would topple like the proverbial
dominoes. Jordan, where the Hashemite Bedouins and their king rule the seventy percent of the population that is Palestinian,
would be the first to go. Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, eventually even Algeria and Morocco, could
follow. Do you realize what it would mean for the free world—for Europe and for us—if these vast reserves of oil and natural
gas were controlled by Islamic fundamentalists? Imagine the resources they could commit to furthering Islamic revolution in
countries with Islamic majorities. On any given day they could decide to pump a couple of million barrels less and the price
would jump higher than it already has, leading to hyper inflation, leading to whole industries going bankrupt, leading to
the collapse of stock markets, leading to panic in the streets
.

There was worse to come. It appears the Kremlin’s Americanologists are telling their counterparts in Washington that all of
Muslim Central Asia would be destabilized if the Middle East question isn’t resolved.
And the Muslim states in Central Asia—some of which still have nuclear-tipped Soviet missiles on their territory—in turn would
destabilize the entire Russian land mass. Think of the possibilities—Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan selling nuclear warheads to
Gulf fundamentalists who are swimming in oil money. My god, September 11th would look like a fender-bender by comparison
.

You don’t have to be an NSA analyst to imagine how this might play out in the rest of the world. Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia,
even Turkey, could go fundamentalist. China, which has a large Muslim minority, especially the Uighurs in Central Asia, could
wind up fighting a civil war with breakaway Islamic provinces. It wouldn’t take long for the Japanese, who import every drop
of oil they use, to know which side their bread was buttered on. Oil producers like Russia and Venezuela and, eventually,
even England, under enormous pressure to increase production to prevent the industrialized nations from becoming prisoners
of the Gulf’s imams, would do so on condition they could hike their prices
.

Bleak? I’d say the picture was more black than bleak
.

All the while the President sat there, her high heels tapping on the floor, fiddling with a paperclip, contorting it into
different shapes until it broke, at which point she started in on a new one. When the NSA Director finished, there was one
of those thick silences that you can cut with a knife. Everyone in the cabinet room was staring at their finger nails. I became
aware of the President’s eye on me. “You’re our in-house Middle East guru, Zack,” she said very quietly. “What do you make
of all this?”

I shrugged and said as far as I could see there was nothing new in it. I reminded them of the old proverb that existed long
before the Washington whiz kids invented the domino theory. For the want of a nail the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe
the horse was lost, for the want of a horse the rider was lost, and so on
.

“So you’re saying that the NSA scenario is on the money,” the President remarked
.

I raised my brows and murmured something (paraphrasing Will Rogers) about how an NSA analyst’s guess was as likely to be as
good any anybody else’s
.

That was too much for the NSA Director’s boss, the Secretary of Defense, who leaped to defend his turf. “I assume the Special
Assistant for Middle Eastern Affairs has a better take on the ticklish situation we find ourselves in,” he said
.

The President was gazing at me intently, as if to say:
Do you?

“Figuring out history before it happens,” I said tiredly, “is like trying to predict what route lava will take when it flows
down the side of an erupting volcano.”

The Secretary of State, true to form, attempted to identify the common ground in the discussion; once again the policy makers
were eager to convey the impression that the highest level of government speaks with one voice. “If I’m reading Zack right,”
he said carefully, “he’s telling us that the execution of I. Apfulbaum will bring on the equivalent of a volcanic eruption
in the region. Which way the lava will flow—which is to say, how it will play out—is anybody’s guess.”

I noticed the President’s chief of staff in the doorway tapping the crystal on his wristwatch, so I nodded in vague agreement
and let it go at that
.

I was back in my office visualizing rivulets of lava coursing down the side of an erupting volcano when the urgent conference
call from my counterparts at 10 Downing Street and the Elysée came through. Both of them were extremely agitated. (The timing
of the call led me to suppose their respective intelligence services had circulated the NSA’s domino briefing.) They didn’t
waste time on small talk. Their principals, they explained, which is to say the British Prime Minister and the French President,
both held the view that the peace treaty must be salvaged, whatever the cost. I asked if they had any new ideas to offer on
how this might be accomplished. A reasonably long silence followed, as if each was waiting for his vis-à-vis to deliver the
bad news. The Middle East specialist from 10 Downing finally cleared his throat. “We are of the opinion that the Israelis
should be made to cede to the logic of yielding to the demands of the kidnappers,” he announced. “Paris stands shoulder to
shoulder with London on this analysis,” the Elysée specialist added. “Give them the goddamn prisoners in exchange for that
Rabbi and his secretary, and let us get on with the signing ceremony and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.”

“Why are you telling
me
this?” I asked—as if I didn’t know, but I thought I would get them to spell it out for the record. “Why don’t you guys phone
up the Israeli Prime Minister and tell him yourselves?”

“We are of the opinion that it must be the American President who personally delivers the message,” the 10 Downing Street
man said. “Only Washington has enough clout with the Israelis to make them heed the voice of sweet reason.”

The Frenchman started to say something but I cut him off. “Don’t even go there, my friends. First off, the American President
has climbed as far out on this limb as she plans to; another inch and she risks having popular opinion turn against her, which
would mean an end to her hopes for a second term. More importantly, you can only push the Israelis so far; there are things
they can’t be forced to do and exchange Palestinian prisoners for Jewish hostages is one of them. For the obvious reason that
such exchanges only invite more kidnappings.”

The Frenchman, whom I knew slightly from NATO brainstorming sessions, said, “You could raise the stakes, Zack. You said as
much in your book
Breaking Vicious Circles
. You could threaten the Israelis—”

I interrupted again. “Threaten them with what? Another Security Council resolution condemning Israel?”

“The French would be ready to join an international move to isolate Israel—I’m talking about cutting off their commercial
airline landing rights, I’m talking about freezing their overseas bank accounts, I’m talking about organizing a trade embargo
the way we did years ago with South Africa.”