Vicious Circle (24 page)

As the blindfold was pulled away from his face, Sweeney found himself gazing into the bloodshot eyes of a short, heavy-set
Arab wearing a shiny gray double-breasted suit jacket over a long white robe with a soiled hem. On his forehead was the purple
bruise that Sweeney had seen once before in a Gaza mosque—on an ultra-religious Muslim who beat his head against the floor
when he prostrated himself in prayer. The Arab squinted at the visitor through round, windowpane-thick, wire-rimmed spectacles.
“I am Abu Bakr,” he announced, holding out a hand. “You must excuse all these precautions—my people are paranoid about my
safety. Please, please, sit. My house is your house.”

Abu Bakr settled cross-legged onto a Bedouin cushion at a low round table and invited Sweeney, with a wave of the hand, to
sit across from him. Petra, modestly avoiding eye contact with the two men, set a plate of sweet biscuits, two glasses and
a pitcher of fruit juice on the table, then returned to the Army radio and pulled on the earphones. The Doctor, who could
make out shadowy shapes and enjoyed fooling people into thinking his vision was perfectly normal, poured juice into both glasses—he
could tell from the sound when it was time to stop—and pushed one glass toward his guest. Hefting a paperweight filled with
snow flakes falling on a pastoral landscape, Sweeney took in the armored door with the bars across it, the Kalashnikovs stacked
in a corner, the young woman monitoring the Army radio, the large map of Palestine on the wall. He took in the second door,
reinforced with steel plating, which led to … where? “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what city I am in,” he remarked.

The Doctor grunted. “We went to a lot of trouble so you would not know.”

“Turning around the traffic circle was very effective.”

The Doctor sipped his juice. “I tell you frankly,
ya’ani
, this is the first time in my life I have granted an interview to a representative of the press. I have long been intrigued
by the rapport between a journalist and his subject, with each one, in effect, trying to use the other
for his own ends. You, for instance, will try to seduce me into thinking you are extremely sympathetic to my point of view
in order to lure me into making revelations that may, in the end, undermine my point of view and embarrass my side. I, for
my part, will try to convince you that I am being extremely open and candid in order to get you to write admiringly about
my point of view and my side. From both our perspectives, it is an extremely dishonest relationship, yet even as I point this
out, you will surely suspect that I am trying to beguile you into thinking I am different.”

Sweeney smiled. “There is no danger of your beguiling me. I am an experienced journalist.”

The Doctor squinted at Sweeney, trying to imagine what he looked like from the sound of his voice. “I am aware that you are
an experienced journalist. You wear a memento of one of your experiences in your left ear.”

Sweeney brought a finger up to the hearing aid. “I got too close to an incoming round in Beirut.”

The Doctor seemed interested. “From a medical point of view, what happened to you?”

“I suffered a concussion and damage to the middle ear of my left ear—there was some kind of injury to a membrane, the name
of which escapes me.”

“Was it the tympanic membrane?”

“That rings a bell.”

“What were your symptoms at the time?”

“Dizziness, bleeding, a slight and temporary facial paralysis, not to mention the loss of hearing in my left ear.”

“What type of hearing device do you wear?”

“Analogue.”

“Do you have more difficulty hearing high-pitched or low-pitched sounds?”

“It’s the low intensity, high-pitched sounds—the
s
or
sh
or
ch
—that give me trouble.” Sweeney laughed uncomfortably. “Did you think I invented the explosion in Beirut? Do you suspect my
hearing aid is a secret transmitter broadcasting this conversation to the Israelis?”

“The thought crossed our minds. The young woman who brought you here is a genius with radios. After you were blindfolded,
she used a meter to see if your hearing aid was transmitting a signal.” The Doctor spread his hands in embarrassment. “Someone
in my position must be prudent. Let us move on. Why did you become a journalist?”

“What is this, a psychoanalytic session? How much do you charge an hour?”

“I am trying, in my clumsy way, to figure out who you are.”

“In college I had my heart set on becoming an actor. My first big role was Vanya in Chekhov’s
Uncle Vanya
. I stumbled over the love scenes and was heckled. The review in the college newspaper didn’t mince words. Do you understand
the expression, mince words? I decided it was safer to review plays than act in them, and went to work for the newspaper.
One thing led to another. Which is how I became Mr. journalist Sweeney.”

The Doctor puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette. “Let us move on to the world of politics. What do you understand to be the
essence of the conflict between Arabs and Jews?”

“Are you interviewing me or am I interviewing you?”

“Bear with me, Mr. Sweeney. There is a method to my madness.”

Sweeney pulled his copybook and a pencil from a pocket. “Do you mind if I copy down your questions and my answers?”

The Doctor nodded. “Please.

“To answer your question: the essence of the conflict, Mr. Abu Bakr, in a word, is land.”

“Many people would offer the same response. But not me. Let me begin our conversation by telling you a story. Once I was driven
up to the occupied Golan for a consultation with an important Druze. Coming back, I ordered the driver to pull up at the side
of the road and got out to urinate as the sun was setting in the west. From where I was standing I could make out the shadows
of Lebanon off to my right. Behind me, the snow at the summit of Mount Hermon appeared to glisten with the last rays from
the sun sinking into the sea. Below me, the electric lights in the Jewish
kibbutzim
in the Hula Valley began to come on. Pffffft-pffffft. Pffffft-pffffft. Can you picture
the scene, Mr. Sweeney? There I was, standing in the cold, dark electricity-less Golan as the lights of the Jews flashed on.
Pffffftpffffft. With each flash, I could hear the West saying ‘Fuck-you, fuckyou’ to the Arabs. Please excuse my language.
I use the term for the sake of accuracy. Those are the words I heard. The
kibbutz
lights, billboard advertisements for a secular and material and superficial Western culture, drive home to us our seeming
backwardness and humiliate Islam. Land, of course, is an important element of the problem. But the essence of the conflict
between Arabs and Jews, Mr. Sweeney, is dignity.”

“When you refer to Western culture as secular and material and superficial, I assume you are comparing it to Islamic culture.
But you fall into the trap that many of your co-religionists fall into—you are comparing Western realities like poverty and
crime and sexual promiscuity and drugs and racism with Islamic ideals, as opposed to Islamic reality.”

“Western reality—your culture of drugs and sexual promiscuity—
is
the Western ideal; you live this way, Mr. Sweeney, because you think this is the best way to live. Islamic ideals at least
show that there is a better way. Given the chance to function in an Islamic state guided by the Holy Qur’an, Islamic reality
will move in the direction of Islamic ideals.”

“I know Jews—religious Jews, that is—who would say pretty much the same thing about the Torah.” Sweeney looked at his notes
to get Rabbi Apfulbaum’s words right. “
We must follow God’s commandment to the Jewish people and settle every square inch of the land of the Torah. Without the lava
of the land burning through the soles of our shoes, we are spiritual cripples
.”

The words slipped out before the Doctor realized what he was saying. “I also know such a Jew.”

Sweeney looked sharply at his host. “If you’re not careful, Mr. Bakr, you’ll have me thinking that the person who kidnapped
Rabbi Apfulbaum and his secretary is a pro-Semite.”

“I am more than a pro-Semite—I am a Semite, in as much as I am a descendant of Shem, the oldest son of Noah. If you are using
Semite in its narrower sense to refer to Jews, you would not be
wrong. I am, in my own way, an admirer of Jewish culture and Jewish creativeness and Jewish energy. But somewhere along the
way these past three thousand years the Jews went wrong. I think I know where. It was when they rejected the word of God brought
to them by God’s Prophets and Messengers, and discovered in its place
chutzpah
; when they became convinced that this
chutzpah
was a virtue and not a vice. You surely will be familiar with the classical definition of
chutzpah
, Mr. Sweeney. It is when a boy kills his parents and then asks the judge for leniency because he is an orphan. I will offer
you another definition of the word: to claim all the land God promised to the patriarch Ibrahim when someone else is living
on it is
chutzpah
.”

Sweeney scratched away on his pad. “Can you tell me something of your background, Mr. Bakr.”

“My background is unremarkable. My father was a
fedayeen
fighter, a guerrilla in the war against the Jews. He was killed while trying to cross into Isra’il when I was still a boy.
I remember little about my father’s appearance but I can summon his voice in my ear at will. I can hear him talking quietly
with his sons before the evening meal. Where Muslims do not live under Islamic rule, and on Islamic territory, he would tell
us, they are in what the Qur’an calls the
Dar al-Harb
—the Realm of War; they must follow the example of the Messenger Muhammad and wage
jihad
, or armed struggle against unbelief. Ever since Muhammad led raids on Meccan caravans, Islam has been waging war against
unbelief. I see myself as part of this ancient tradition. In its most recent phase, this war involved the kidnapping of Rabbi
Apfulbaum, himself a fundamentalist associated with the Beit Avram settlement and the Jewish underground known to have its
roots there.”

“Which brings us to the kidnapping of Rabbi Apfulbaum. What do you hope to achieve?”

“You must understand,
ya’ani
, that my reasoning begins with the presumption that there exists a post-colonial plot against Islam. The world’s secularists
and Zionists are all out to destroy us. Salman Rushdie is part of the plot orchestrated by World Jewry and backed by American
imperialism. Over the decades, Mr. Sweeney, we Muslims have tried everything under the sun to thwart that plot—we
have tried Nasserism, Baathism, Ghadhafi-ism, Khomeini-ism, Saddam Hussein-ism, and more recently, Arafat-ism. Nothing turned
the clock back; the Hamas suicide bombings, like the British and American terror bombings of German cities during the Second
World War, only serve to unify the people who are the targets of these attacks. In short, nothing brought us closer to
Dar al-Islam
, the Realm of Islam, where the pure faith of the Prophet prevails. Clearly it was time for a fresh approach.”

Sweeney snapped his copybook shut. “You didn’t bring me here to listen to your ideas on how
chutzpah
ruined the Jewish people, or how Salman Rushdie is part of a Zionist plot to bring down Islam.” He leaned forward. “What
do you want, Mr. Abu Bakr?”

“A witness.”

One of the el-Tel brothers emerged from the back room carrying a tray filled with empty plates. Sweeney watched as he stacked
them in the laundry sink. “A witness to what?” he asked.

“I am convinced that Rabbi Apfulbaum will divulge details of the ruthless anti-Arab campaign waged by the Jewish underground
movement, as well as the identity of its ruthless leader, Ya’ir. If I publish this information, no one will believe it; the
Jews will claim the Rabbi’s confession was coerced, and everyone will accept their word. If a respected American journalist
publishes it, the world, which up to now associates all terrorism with Muslim fundamentalists, will understand, for the first
time, what the Jewish fundamentalists are doing to us. That understanding will undermine international support for Isra’il
and strengthen the hand of Muslim fundamentalists like me.”

At the Army radio, Petra removed her earphones and studied the American. She didn’t speak English but she sensed that the
discussion had reached a turning point; she wasn’t sure what the Doctor wanted from the American but she knew that if he didn’t
get it, the American would never leave here alive.

Sweeney felt his lips go dry. He sipped some fruit juice, then set his glass down and nodded carefully. “You’re handing me
the story of my life on a silver platter. I’d be a fool to turn it down. You wanted a witness, you’ve got a witness.”

I
N THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING
, P
ETRA SAT UP WITH A
start. At first she thought she had been awakened by the sound of Hebrew being spoken on the landing outside the door. Slowly
it dawned on her that she had been dreaming; in her dream, Isra’ili soldiers were taping sticks of dynamite to the outside
of the armor-plated door. Over her field radio, an occasional voice burst through the background static to report, in Hebrew,
that nothing could be seen moving on the roads in the West Bank. Splashing cold water on her face, Petra looked around for
Aown, then remembered that he had tucked an ancient but serviceable British Webley into his belt and had taken Sweeney up
to the attic crawl space over the safe house for the night. She glanced at her wrist watch, then got up to boil water in the
electric kettle. Minutes later she was tiptoeing into the inner sanctum with a cup of steaming tea. Azziz was folded into
a fetal position, sound asleep on the cot. The Doctor was deep in whispered conversation with the prisoner; Petra didn’t understand
a word they were saying, but she could see that the two men were talking almost as if they were old friends. They sat with
their knees touching, their foreheads bent to within centimeters of each other. She tapped the Doctor on the shoulder. When
he turned around, he looked annoyed at the interruption. “What is it?” he asked sharply.