Martyrs’ Crossing (39 page)

Fiddling with all the hooks and handles on the car door, George finally snapped a little clasp that exposed a red bar of color. Yes, he thought grimly. It helps to unlock it. Philip came forward and pulled the door open. George looked up at him. Philip extended a hand.

“I'm fine,” George said, refusing the hand and lifting himself out of the car in what seemed like slow motion.

•  •  •

“T
HANK YOU,
thanks,
shukran,
” George said, pushing some money into the hand of the bellboy who let them into their suite. The bellboy flipped on the lights, turned on the air-conditioning, motioned to the welcome basket of fruit.

“Have a good day,” he said, bowing backward out the door.

George was exhausted. He sat down heavily on his bed.

“I'm going to order some breakfast,” Philip said. “Do you want something?”

“I'm not hungry,” George said.

Philip looked at him.

“I'll order you some eggs,” Philip said.

“You do what you like, Philip.”

George fell back on the bed. The high, blank white ceiling comforted him. Today or tomorrow, or soon, anyhow, he would go out into Jerusalem, finally, go to the old house, and to the hospital. The doctors at the Friends Clinic had told George what he knew was correct. If he didn't go in and have his tests in the next day or two and certainly this week, he was taking a serious risk. It was the equivalent, they said, of just resigning yourself. And why not? he thought. But he would go in, and hear the bad news. He could take it.

George wanted to go home. He had been meaning to do it before, and now, he felt he needed to. He would tell Philip: Get the car, I want to go home. He was ready, now, to knock on the door of Grandfather's house and go in. This was what it was all about, wasn't it, in the end? History was history, and not as reversible as we might wish, it turned out. It was to be confronted, not denied. Israelis were living in his house, and were likely to go on living there until the house crumbled, which it might never do given its solid construction, which had already withstood two earthquakes and countless wars and skirmishes. Would Israelis be sitting around
his
dining room table? Would they be looking through the same colored glass in the back window? Perhaps they had had it removed. It was so typically
Arab.
Would they walk over the same enormous pink stones in the courtyard? Would it feel like home? To them? To him?

A waiter came to the door with breakfast. George heard the clanking of the rollable, foldout table in the other room, the stir of silverware. Philip was murmuring directions and thanks. George remained motionless on his bed. He did not want eggs. His body felt empty now; that was good. He felt light, unburdened physically. Now if only his mind would go blank.

He clenched and unclenched his fists. He had read that this was good for releasing tension, in some sidebar in a cardiology self-help guide, next to a chart about situations that provoke anxiety and stress. Laymen were obsessed with stress. Divorce was always number one. Death of a loved one, number two. Moving or changing domiciles, number three. He wondered where threatened assassination ranked. Clench, unclench. Betrayal of friendship?

Loss of homeland? Came under “changing domiciles,” probably.

He tried deep breathing, but only felt a terrible, shattering loss of self as he waited to take each next breath, and panic. Was he getting enough air? He breathed deeply again, and held the breath, then released. This was how he fell asleep, or tried to, these days.

He felt the end coming.

Those stirrings, the slip and slide of the heartbeat, the errant syncopation that was beyond control. He did not want to leave so much undone.

George swallowed hard and fiddled absently with the bedclothes. He stared up at the white ceiling. His heart stalled and stopped and then turned over. Forward march, again. He took another deep breath and felt the end coming toward him, aiming at him with impeccable accuracy.

George wondered what he would do if he had a gun. He had wondered this before, often and idly. Usually, it was in an everyday situation. Someone cut him off on the highway. The cashier at the drugstore was stupid or incompetent or rude or all three. A colleague was ignorant. A gas station attendant seemed to harbor anti-Arab sentiment. Now he wondered: If I had a gun, could I use it—on Ahmed? Would I even dream of such a thing? And wouldn't it be wonderful! He wanted to erase Ahmed's contented, self-satisfied expression. In the other room, Philip was dragging chairs across the rug to the table. George imagined a shiny metal revolver, light like a toy. His eyes shut. He was half asleep.

He's handling the gun, a present from his father, polished and shiny. It's Christmastime in Jerusalem, snow on the palm trees. In the conference room at Orient House, George is walking slowly toward Ahmed. Sandra is standing in a thin, deep blue silk dressing gown in the corner. Ahmed strides across the room to meet George with open arms. George smiles, whips out the gun, and fires. Goodbye, you clever dog. Philip is calling him from the other room.

Doctor?

George half awakens. Ahmed falls to the floor. Why not? Half conscious, now, George adds a pool of blood for effect. Good, looks good. A few coffee cups strewn shattered across the floor. Faces aghast.

Doctor?

Why not? After all, Ahmed deserves it. In his grandiose tent on a bluff overlooking the city; ever the sheikh. And George has nothing to lose. He's sick: anyone can see that. Any act is permitted, because George will feel no consequence for very long. Philip can get me a gun, George thought. Would he?

“Doctor, Doctor,” Philip was calling from the other room. “Your food is here.”

I want one, George thought as he began to fall asleep again. I want one.

P
HILIP HAD GONE OUT TO
the hotel lobby to prepare the way. From the top drawer of his dresser, George pulled out the little money bag his father had always carried, a small French leather thing. He opened it and took out the key. No chance the lock it once fitted would still be there, but he put it in his pocket, anyway. His lucky charm. He went out. The courtyard was bright and crowded with warmly dressed guests eating croissants and eggs and drinking coffee in the cold. Ramadan did not seem to be having much effect here.

George looked fixedly down at the path and the shrubbery in order not to have to talk to anyone who might consider accosting him. He gave a small nod hello to his friend the upside-down goldfish. It was another very sunny day: two in a row might mean the rains were ending. He hoped so. The rains had depressed him, they seemed to carry everything away with them, rubble, stones, litter, people, places, history. In the lobby, he found Philip standing with a cup of coffee.

“No necktie?” he said to Philip.

“My concession to Israeli informality,” Philip said.

“I wouldn't grant them even that,” George said. “Make 'em squirm! You're too well brought up, Philip.”

Philip laughed. He put his cup down on an empty brass table.

In the hotel's driveway stood several minivans and Jeeps.

“Taking subjects and dignitaries to Gaza to offer tithes to the Chairman, I suppose?” George said, gesturing at the vehicles.

“Something like that,” Philip said. “Amr just left.”

George nodded.

Philip looked at him.

“Come on, then,” Philip said. “We're over here.”

George walked at his side to the Uno. He was feeling virtually spry, keeping pace with Philip footstep for footstep. He felt like sprinting. He wished suddenly that he had a woman here at his side and not his dutiful Philip. A woman in a very tight skirt and fashionable silk blouse, and high heels; or failing that, barefoot, in jeans and a skimpy tee shirt.

A small man buzzing like a mosquito came running up to them, and when he came near enough, George realized the buzzing sound was French. The little fellow identified himself as a reporter for Agence France-Presse. He pulled a notebook out of his pocket, looking at George expectantly.

“Alors?”
the man said.

“
Alors,
what?” George replied.

“Alors, Docteur Raad, que dites-vous de la campagne ‘trouvez le soldat'?”
he asked. What do you think of the Find the Soldier campaign?

“
Je dis
that I do not give interviews,” George said. “So go away. Come on, Philip, please, let's get out of here.”

•  •  •

T
HE GRILLE AT THE TOP
of the door was the one his father had put up, an intricate lacework of deer and trees, but it seemed lower and smaller, somehow. There were three shiny newish locks on the door. Even at home, the Israelis were security obsessed. On the other hand, in such a situation, who wouldn't change the lock? He nodded at Philip with his chin, and Philip rang the bell. On the right-hand side of the doorjamb a mezuzah had been affixed. George shook his head at it. The huge cypress cast its remembered shadow across the front of the house. On the second floor, an unshaded window reflected the cold sky. They waited.

Philip rang again, and just as he lifted his finger from the button, the door opened. A young woman in jeans stood in the doorway, looking at them curiously. We must be an odd apparition, George thought to himself: this formal-looking old Arab man, and the younger one, foreign-seeming as well. She had a dishtowel in her hand.

“Can I help you?” she asked in Hebrew, looking at him curiously.
“Efshar la'azor lecha?”

“I'm George Raad,” George said in English.

She certainly recognized the name, George thought, watching her shocked eyes. She wound a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

“Oh,” she said, switching to slightly accented English. She paused. She looked over her shoulder down the long dark hallway into the house, and then back at the unbidden visitors. “Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm supposed to do in this situation.”

“Me neither,” George said. He smiled.

“Oh well, why don't you come in?” She moved out of their way.

The first room was the grandest room, with a domed ceiling. George felt the past surround him. The house felt smaller—he was bigger, that was all. He felt dizzy with the past, as if it were suddenly physical, after all the years of dreaming and remembering and invoking. Here was that wall, these old tiles, that door out to the terrace—and through that window, the suddenly and specifically remembered patch of sun and sky and neighbor's arching roof. His throat caught with a terrible sadness and love. Philip and the girl were watching him. He tried to keep his features arranged. Probably he was not entirely successful, he felt.

The girl walked ahead of them, and George saw his father in a three-piece suit marching up the hallway.

“I think my mother's out in the garden,” the girl said.

George knew that his father would be coming into the room to welcome his suppliers, who had traveled in from the countryside for their annual gathering in Jerusalem. George watched them all standing politely in a corner of the big front room. Masri from the Nablus area was biting his nails, and Qawasmi from Hebron was shifting from foot to foot. Like them, the others were important landowners and clan leaders and cultivators in their own regions, and yet there they stood, these tall, grown men, on the elaborate tile floor, the same tile floor, now slightly chipped here and there, but probably slightly chipped back then (yes, there was the jug-shaped chip near the door, oh, familiar chip!). There they stood shifting and nervous in their heavy robes, waiting silently for an audience with the worldly city merchant as if they were illiterate nomads. They looked like shepherds from Bible pictures. And here came his father now, crossing the Israeli girl's path and flinging noisily into the room on a flow of formal but effusive greetings, wrapping one arm around Masri, and the other around some other old robed shadow. The sound of their Arabic, the
kif halak
s and
marhaba
s and the
inshallah
s of course, and then the endless outpourings of numbers and figures and sums. And the eating.

George and Philip followed the girl down the hallway. A long red Shirvan runner used to keep this corridor warm, George remembered. Where was it now? Sold by this girl's family or stored in some musty Israeli bomb shelter, probably. Or carted to Amman by his father and left behind. It didn't matter, he told himself. Things do not matter, houses, rugs, chairs, keys: they are all just symbols of times past and people lost. He missed that rug very badly, just now.

The girl slipped through a door to the right and his mother swept out of a bedroom in her fur coat, with lipstick on—the transformation of his mother from everyday lady to beautiful, mysterious, desirable being, all wrought by a silk dress, and fur and lipstick—and leaned down to kiss him goodbye. The memory of her perfume enveloped him. He held on to to Philip's arm. At the end of the hallway, the tall French doors had been covered in insulating plastic.