Damascus Gate (62 page)

The next checkpoint she had to pass was in the tunnel that led from the Western Wall plaza to the bazaar of El-Wad. It had been strongly reinforced with busloads of soldiers; a line of armored personnel carriers were pulled up against one wall of the tunnel.

A middle-aged bearded reservist who looked like a rabbi quickly checked her card and directed her into the deserted labyrinth. Its length was full of echoing, threatening noises, and when she emerged from it, she saw flames. For no reason she could imagine, someone concealed in the shadows of the burning building threw a fist-sized chunk of metal at her; it hit a wall, ricocheted and rolled over the cobblestones. Perhaps because she was a lone woman, coming from the Jewish Quarter.

El-Wad in the Muslim Quarter was crowded, lit by flashlights and camp lanterns. She heard unpleasant laughter and the frightened boastfulness of young men. A helicopter appeared overhead, its beam illuminating the pale, contorted faces of the youthful rioters, taking them by surprise. A whirl of curses like winged insects flew up toward where it had passed, as though drawn by the rotors.

The wooden street door of the building where she had lived with Berger was bolted. Some time before, the place had been taken over by Israeli militants, who had connected it by a series of walkways with a street off Jewish Quarter Lane, and as far as she knew the militants still occupied it. A Star of David had flown from one of the interior balconies, visible from the street. Now it was gone.

There seemed a deserted quality to the place, which made her wonder whether anyone at all had found a purpose for it. She tried sounding the ornate Ottoman-style knocker on the carriage gate. When she had knocked for a minute or so, she heard the bolt sliding free.

The door opened and a tall, thin young man of Christlike aspect stood before her. It was not likely that the young man would soon come in glory to judge the quick and the dead; rather, his slack smile and purple mantle suggested contemporary, vulgar notions of the Christian savior. His mantle appeared to have been appropriated from the window of a no-star hotel, its curtain rings still in place. His smile, though genuinely welcoming, gave evidence of lax oral hygiene.

"Praise Jesus," he told Sonia.

"Right," she said, and passed inside. There was no sign of the Sudanese children who lived in the madrasah before. It seemed to have become a refuge for the homeless: all along the courtyard, pallets and bindles were stashed, sometimes attended by their owners, who variously wept, prayed or slept. It seemed an odd use for the militants to find for their Muslim Quarter property.

"What happened to the young Israelis who took the building over?" she asked him.

They had gone, the youth said. Scientists excavating the ancient foundations of the buildings across the street had replaced them. Now these savants too were gone.

"What are you people doing here?"

The young transcendentalist explained that his friends were being paid to watch the tunnel entrances until such time as the scientists might want to use them again.

"Tunnel entrances?" Sonia asked.

The young man led her to the foyer she had passed a hundred times when Berger was in residence. Three narrow rising steps followed the base of one of the building's columns, forming a little alcove the local children had used in games of hide-and-seek. But now there was a rectangle of burlap over the opening. When Sonia brushed it aside she saw that the aboveground steps were only the top of a flight that curved down into the damp darkness beneath the quarter's streets.

Ten steps down was another wooden door, and it was locked fast. Any number of attempts on her part, assisted by the young pseudo-Christus, failed to shake it. Finally, with more assistance from the young man and his friends, she succeeded in forcing it open. An intoxicating smell of ancient stone ascended from the spiral passage.

The street that led to the Bab al-Ghawanima was about fifty yards away. She shone her flashlight on the diagram and saw that any tunnels branching out from the old madrasah might well lead to the foundation of one or another of the Haram's bordering buildings.

The property had belonged to al-Husseini during the British mandate; there was every reason to think he had found a network of passageways useful during the strife of that period. And if the militants who had seized the madrasah had finished their work, it made sense to conceal their access to the Haram in what appeared to be a derelict gathering place for the religiously deluded, behind a series of locked doors.

Following the beam of her light, she set out. After a dozen steps or so, she realized that the squatters of the madrasah intended to follow her down.

"Beat it," she told them. "Fuck off. Not you," she told the Jesus look-alike when, chastened, he started back with the rest. "You come with me."

The steps, their well narrowing, descended for what seemed a hundred feet, deep enough for Sonia to feel the pressure in her ears. A utility lantern was burning at the mouth of a passage that seemed to descend gradually from the foot of the stairs. From somewhere not far away, but distorted by the hollows and vaults, came a sound like the cries of a crowd and what might be gunfire.

Sonia entered the passageway, humming "Makin' Whoopie" as she went. She had not gone thirty feet when the passage divided again. She had a look left and right in the flashlight beams, but it was little help. To follow the line of the Bab al-Ghawanima, it seemed that she ought to bear right.

"What's your name, sir?" she asked the imitation of Christ behind her.

His name turned out to be George.

"Would you stay right here, George? See, you're just in the light of that lantern, so if I find you, I can find my way out of here. Will that be cool?"

George hastened to accept this assignment.

Soon the passage divided again, and again she bore right. Then it triplicated, and after few more paces doubled again. This time the right-hand passage led to what at first looked like a false chamber. But there was, she saw, an aperture low on the wall that seemed to lead back to the enclosure from which she had just come. Probing it with her beam, she saw that it was on an incline that subvented the adjoining chamber. The whole surface had a slight downward tilt, so anyone advancing along the system of corridors moved gradually deeper beneath the street.

Getting prone on the floor, Sonia began to elbow her way into the passage she had found. In a short time she was aware that it contracted around her, growing narrower as she went along. There was something organic about its structure, as though it replicated a kind of living creature.

After a while the narrowing was too much for her claustrophobic instincts; she started backtracking, digging in her knees for leverage, wiggling her behind, shoving backward with the palms of her hands. Back in the chamber from which she had started crawling, she breathed dust that savored of centuries. But when she shined her light on the floor, she saw that there were fresh footprints in it, the tracks of walking shoes or army boots, but also those of plain street shoes.

She found no one at the dimly lighted intersection where she thought she had left her assistant. The passageways were an intentional maze. She hesitated a moment before calling out to him; she did not relish hearing the sound of her own voice in that buried place.

"George?"

His answer, when it came, seemed so distant and atremble with echoes that it chilled her heart. It was an acoustical trick of the place.

"Can you turn up the light?" she called.

She could not make out what he said in reply, but the light burned no brighter. Her flashlight was losing its power, the beam fading and yellowing before her eyes. And in the passageways, the ones through which she thought—but was no longer sure—she had come, she could not find her way at all.

T
WO GUERRILLAS
took hold of Lestrade and thrust him toward the door.

"See here," Lestrade said, "what about my luggage?"

"His luggage," the North American who led the squad repeated tonelessly. "What about my grandfather's luggage, you prick," he said. "Worried about your luggage? It'll be held for you. We're like your German friends. Very honest."

"Bring a toothbrush," one of the other English-speaking men said. "And warm clothes. And we'll give you a postcard. You can write home."

"Look, I'm a reporter," Lucas said. He nearly said, I'm Jewish. He had been very close to saying it, trying to remember the Shema.

The leader looked at Fotheringill.

"Take them both," Fotheringill told the man in charge. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Being shoved down the wooden stairs inside the ancient stone tower, Lucas had a picture of himself as he might be somewhere in Europe, circa 1942, being shoved down an old flight of stairs by soldiers.

I'm not Jewish, he would be saying. They would pay no attention.

Lestrade had an exculpatory formula as well.

"Listen here," he told everyone. His inflection now was humorous, as though he were inviting everyone to join him in merry laughter at the absurdity of it all. "I don't know a thing about any bomb, you know."

The street, which before had been crowded with young fighters shouting out for martyrdom, was deserted. But close by there was more shooting and the noise of sirens, chanting soldiers, chanting rioters. A holy war, Lucas thought. And he had gotten himself in it.

All at once, Dr. Lestrade began to shout in Arabic. Two young men holding lanterns appeared at the mouth of an alley. And suddenly Boutros, who had seemed so put upon and sleepy moments before, came charging out of the hospice at them, wild-eyed, beside himself.

"
Itbah al-Yahud!
" he shouted at the top of his voice.

One of the Israelis fired at him. The burst was high because Fotheringill had knocked the barrel of the rifle upward with his forearm. The spent cartridges rattled on cobblestone. Then Fotheringill swung the butt of his Galil into the porter's jaw. Boutros groaned and sank to the pavement of the Via Dolorosa. Another Israeli began shooting into the alley where the two other Palestinians had appeared. They withdrew, apparently unhit.

The whirl of light that had momentarily filled the street vanished, and the area was now in deep darkness. Lucas saw Fotheringill take an automatic rifle from one of the less coordinated men of the squad.

"I'll fire a burst, then you'll go for the gate." He paused. "I hope you know your bloody way."

"We know," the North American said. "It's not far."

Fotheringill opened up with the Galil, sending ricochets along the narrowly parted walls, breaking glass, shattering flowerpots and trellises, sending stray cats running.

"Move out," he commanded.

Lestrade, disinclined to run, got a rifle butt in the kidneys, which served to jump-start him. Lucas ran out of sheer instinct.

At the first intersection, it was apparent that something had gone wrong. The two streets met in the kind of crazy quilt of light that had accompanied the rioters. An angry crowd had gathered there, and Fotheringill fired over it. Some of the lights disappeared, others withdrew. There were screams and curses in a variety of languages, several of them European and including English. A number of the other Israelis also fired, some high, some not.

Lucas hugged the wall, squatting in the confusion of rifle shots.

"Where are they?" Fotheringill shouted. He meant Lestrade and Lucas. Temporarily, at least, they had slid out of his operational control. Good old fog of battle. Lucas tried to make out Lestrade. Searching for their prisoners, the squad had halted its progress. It was appallingly ready, however, to make do with covering fire.

"Stop!" a woman screamed. An English voice. "We're press." She was answered by a couple of wild rifle bursts.

There was enough light for Lucas to make out what had happened. A press pool had sneaked in behind the army and attached itself to a group of rioters. In the unearthly brilliance of a television lamp, Lucas recognized a seventyish Palestinian man who worked as a guide for foreigners, specializing in the Haram. His name was Ibrahim. He was learned, multilingual and shamelessly greedy. He had undertaken to conduct the foreign press through the opening hours of the holy war.

"Oh, shit," the Englishwoman shouted. "Kill the lights before they shoot the lot of us."

"Halloo!" Lestrade shouted from somewhere in the blackness that descended. "Are you British? I'm British."

Sacred identities were being proffered like so many junk bonds in the ancient darkness. They did not seem to trade for much.

"Yes," said the brave girl at the intersection. "Come over here. You'll be right with us."

When the last light disappeared, Lucas stood up and bolted for the corner. He ran straight into Lestrade, who was strolling triumphantly in the center of the street while Fotheringill and his Israelis apparently kept trying to kill him in the dark. Bullets rattled and whistled in every direction.

Colliding, Lucas put both arms around the professor and dragged him down. Like Jack Kerouac, Lucas had briefly played football for Columbia, although he was not very talented. Dragging the professor by the collar, he crawled over the invisible foul stones.

"Halloo!" Lestrade kept calling. "I'm British!"

"Shut the fuck up," Lucas advised him.

Hands came out of the dark and pulled them forward, and in an instant they were around the corner. There were more lights at the end of the street. He could see Palestinian flags under the lights, but no sign of the army.

"So," said the female reporter, whom Lucas could not see. "Who's British, then?"

"I am," said Lestrade. "I'm a researcher with a valid visa and we've been brutalized and murdered."

Lucas could sense rather than see the other reporters drawing near. It was what George Bush would have called a feeding flurry.

"Look," he said. "We've got to get out of here. Those men are not the IDF. They're killers."

At this intriguing intelligence, the shadowy press corps moved out toward the street Fotheringill was busily shooting to pieces.