Limassol (12 page)

He went on and recounted how he had been invited a few years before to a meeting of Jewish and Palestinian artists at Tel Aviv University (the interrogator wrote “Palestinian,” erased it and wrote “Arab,” and erased it again and went back to “Palestinian”). There he met a lot of artists who invited him to stay with them, and then came invitations to other events. There was a nice evening at “Tsavta,” where he read his poems and afterward he came often to Tel Aviv. Some of the stories he wrote were translated for the literary supplement of
Ha-aretz
.

Then they asked him specifically about certain names, they wanted him to talk about the political meetings on Jewish-Arab brotherhood he had attended, and he gave all the details. Daphna's name was also mentioned: Hani said he met her at one of the events and stayed at her house now and then. The interrogator didn't go more deeply than that; she was one of many other names.

“In Gaza I work as a translator for the UN,” Hani said. “I've got a natural talent for languages. I learned Hebrew when I was young, when I worked with Jews on vacation. I joined my older brothers, who did all kinds of jobs, mainly in Ashkelon.” The family was originally from Jaffa. He didn't remember anything from there because he was only a few months old when the war broke out.

When he was interrogated he was thirty-four years old. His face in the picture is pleasant, smooth, not aggressive. Really a good Arab—except for the ironic smile obvious even in the old photo; we don't like smiles like that. It's important to look at a person's face, it's the basic alphabet of the interrogator. And the very next page says he was arrested a few days later for interrogation at the installation in Ashkelon on suspicion of connections with the PLO.

“Why did they arrest him?” I muttered. But I immediately told myself that I wouldn't have acted any different. Something didn't smell right in his story, he sounded like a mole.

The next interrogation was done while he was in detention, and the intensity rose from the page. The sentences were much shorter and written in a barely legible hand. They asked him about trips, once he was in Italy and twice he went to Jordan. In Jordan, he visited relatives; in Italy, he made a tour with his wife. That was the only time they were abroad, they saw Rome and ate macaroni. Perhaps after such an answer, somebody smacked him. They asked about who he knew in Gaza, mentioned forgotten names of junior PLO activists.

A doctor of Arab literature at the Hebrew University put a special expert opinion on Hani's writings in the file, which I found in a shabby plastic bag. He wrote that even though his stories and poems don't preach violence, and the lyrical style is restrained, they throbbed with a sense of injustice and a strong desire to return to the lands that had been taken; that was the leitmotif of his creation, and so may have been a disruptive influence on Arab readers and a demoralizing effect on the Israeli public.

After three days, he was released with no accusation at all, but he was forbidden to re-enter Israel.

They went easy on him, I thought; with such connections he could have easily been arrested for several months. All those associations were exceptional, it smelled bad. The man didn't take care of those bohemians' cars, nor did he serve hummus chips and salad. They forbade him to return to Israel and thus solved the problem. It can plausibly be assumed that they tried to recruit him—that's what they always do—and he didn't agree. That was his punishment.

At the end of the dossier were a few letters from his friends, addressed to politicians, to let him in. They wrote that he was a moderate, a bridge to peace. All of them were filed with brief remarks of refusal written by professionals.

In the afternoon, I took the child to the sea. As we entered the water, the sun was still blinding and strong. His little body floated in a purple inner tube. I taught him to rise above the smooth waves, and after every wave, he shouted with excitement. Hundreds of times. Water sprayed in his eyes, and he heroically refrained from whining. I showed him how I put my whole head into the water and dived without fear.

The water turned purple at sunset, and only when it got dark did he agree to come out. We ate the watermelon Sigi had prepared. The child was shaking under the towel. Go with them, I said to myself, leave the cellars. Not yet, I thought, that won't solve anything. I saw myself sitting on a bench on a foreign street, wrapped in a coat, shaking with cold, under foreign trees dropping their leaves, killing time, growing old. “It was a lot of fun in the sea, Papa,” said the child. I took off his bathing suit and dressed him in shorts and a shirt. “Papa, I got tired,” he said and I picked him up, along with all the beach things. By the time I put him in his safety seat in the car, he was asleep, covered with salt.

 

Haim was stuck in his orthopedic chair, behind the long Formica table, his eyes red with the great effort of following the information on the screen. “When's the meeting with the son?” he asked. “Is that organized? Is there a date yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “There's a problem on the way.” I told him about the issue with Yotam.

“Splendid family, a scion of great rabbis, philosophers, physicians, how did such a degenerate boy come from that,” said Haim angrily.

“Drop it now, Haim, come on,” I said impatiently. I knew where the conversation was going, his usual tirade about the loss of values. “I want to get moving on this.”

I wanted his advice about how to deal with the drug dealer Nukhi Azariya. Haim suggested I talk with the police, let them take care of it, why should I mess around with that. “The police won't do anything,” I said. “I've already talked with them. They know him, they're following him, playing a double game with him. He's also a source of intelligence for them. Five minutes with the intelligence gatherer of the elite central police unit and I understood how deep they're into him. He buys safe documents from them and they can't touch him. How long have you been following him? I asked them. Three or four years. Meanwhile, he's gotten very rich and can hire a battery of lawyers who get him out of any trouble. He's very careful, doesn't get his own hands dirty, only his name hovers overhead.”

“What does he want from the boy?” asked Haim.

“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” I said. “That's the value of the drugs the kid stole from him, or lost for him, depending what you believe.”

I asked Haim for permission to arrest Nukhi Azariya, to scare him so he wouldn't touch the boy again.

“The opposite,” said Haim and his finger pressed the keyboard. He never missed anything that appeared on his computer screen, from the synopsis of
Al-Jezeera
editorials to the most sensitive reports from agents. “Do exactly the opposite. You won't manage to scare him. He knows you can't keep him in detention more than twenty-four hours. The Jews have basic laws that guarantee respect for human lives, they were born free to sell drugs. After two hours, you'll have to bring in his defense lawyer. The moment he's released, he'll go looking for your boy to cut off his balls for denouncing him. Don't scare him. Recruit him,” said Haim. “Make him a patriot.”

Haim is six or seven years older than me, but a hundred times smarter. He's got five children, and a wife who's a social worker with a head scarf, and a lot of peace of mind. He looks like a sweaty post office clerk, but he's a brilliant intelligence officer. Every morning he wakes up at five and manages to study a page of Talmud with a group, and once a week, he gives a lesson in the synagogue.

“When does the wife go?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“You mustn't leave her. Finish that business and go,” he decreed and went back to looking at the screen.

“You wouldn't let your wife go.” I said.

“We cleave to each other,” he said. “And my eyes are buried in the ground when a woman approaches. It's a lot harder for you guys. No anchor. I never forbade my wife anything and she didn't forbid me anything. There was no need.” In Haim's case, I believed every word that came out of his mouth. The man was a limping and harsh saint. Now and then I was assailed by a burst of love for him. Maybe I needed a father, maybe I needed pity.

I asked Haim if he had an idea of how to get Yotam off drugs. “You won't like what I tell you.” His red eyes groped for mine, he squinted slightly. “You know what my answer is.”

“Opium for the masses,” I said.

“Exactly. The only drug mankind has found to ease its oppression. Faith in the Creator of the World. When he has the courage to shout to heaven and ask for pity and forgiveness, then he'll be cured. That boy has a deep wound in his heart. The pollution of generations, a sediment built up in him, he's a victim, he's not guilty, the poor kid.”

“Haim, come on,” I said. “His father tried your trick. It didn't help him, he cursed Heaven from the wheelchair in Meah Shearim, imprisoned in his hell.”

“He came too late,” said Haim. “I remember they wrote about him in the newspapers.” The man was a walking trove of knowledge. “He came after Uri Zohar. All of them exaggerate too much.”

I asked Haim when he thought I could go back to interrogations. He looked at me, surveyed me, as if he were measuring the structure of my skull. It was a strange moment. And then he said: “I don't know. You still need to go through a process. What you went through was no accident. If you go back now, nothing will happen, the chance will be missed. Aside from that, the psychologist thought you weren't ripe yet.”

Somebody creaked open the door, an interrogator I knew well, and Haim gestured to him to wait outside a moment.

“Don't you need me?” I asked. “What did that charlatan write about me?”

Haim got up, limped over to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and said: “You know how much I love you, but we're getting along without you. Even if an Arab shot you between the eyes, we'd get along, with all our grief. It's a healthy organization. We've got a tradition. Finish this business, be careful not to fall into traps here, go with a commendation to Boston and come back. Live among the goyim a little, it will make you miss us.”

When I left, I felt dizzy. I barely said goodbye to the friend who was glad to see me in the corridor. I should have gone home and said goodbye to my wife and child. In a few hours, they were going.

 

Nukhi Azariya, as the intelligence coordinator of the elite central unit told me, went twice a week to a certain hotel on HaYarkon Street to screw. He gave me the name of the hotel and the time. We sat in a coffee shop on King George Street, one of the last ones that still make
Kremschnitt
, and the policeman devoured three pieces before my eyes. Drunk on sugar and margarine, he came to me and whispered with flashing eyes that they had cameras in the walls. “You won't believe what films we've got from the amazing pussies that shit fucks.”

I sat in the lobby half an hour, looked out the big windows at the sea, listened to the French all around me. No one paid attention to me, I could have spent all day there without being bothered. Ever since I had left the interrogations, the announcements, the briefings, the field trips, the daily pressures had all stopped. I was like an entrepreneur who builds an abstract project. I didn't see a single Arab anywhere.

He entered the hotel right on time. The standard compact look of an Israeli man: bouncy walk, close-shaved face, average height, slightly puffed-up muscles, seems to be in good shape, designer jeans and a Lacoste shirt, three bodyguards surrounding him. He went to the counter and got the key. I quickly got up from the soft sofa and approached him at the elevator. I called him by name. The bodyguards immediately went for their guns in their pants, I said to them: “Calm down. I don't have a weapon. I'm a friend. I want to talk with you,” I said to him. “I've got a proposition for you.”

“I don't know who you are,” said Nukhi Azariya. “And I'm not looking for deals with people I don't know.” One of his security guards, a man without a trace of Judaism in his face, whispered to me: “Get out of here, or else we'll take you up to the twentieth floor with us and send you flying off the balcony like a bird. Then they'll try to find out what was depressing you. Today they've got post-death psychologists in Abu Kabir.”

I hadn't approached him right, I wasn't trained in that line of work. They were usually brought to me packed up and trussed like barbecued chicken; here I had to deal with free people. Azariya was wearing a beautiful delicate gold bracelet. Suddenly I wanted one like that.

“Listen . . . ,” I said. But then the elevator came and the muscular cubes shoved me aside and pushed inside. At the last minute, I put a foot across the electronic sensor and went inside. I assumed they wouldn't slaughter me in an elevator in a hotel in the middle of the city, in front of the security cameras.

The apes isolated me in a corner of the elevator, I saw all our skulls in the big mirror overhead, they crushed me hard, but I managed to say: “I'm from the service, Nukhi, and I want to talk to you. I need your help in an important security matter. I'm not from the police, I don't care what your business is. I'm asking you to sit with me for five minutes.”

“Leave him alone,” said Nukhi. The elevator stopped. They held the door open. “In about two hours, I'll finish freshening up and I'll come down. Then we'll talk.”

He strode slowly down the corridor bathed in a soft, delicate light falling through the big windows. His silhouette was reflected on the deserted lawns of Independence Park and on the statue of the seagull with a broken wing and on the breakers in the wonderful sea. Everything was created for this moment of Nukhi Azariya, and at the end of the cool corridor three terrific, slim, smiling Moldovan whores were waiting for him. Everything in the picture was perfect, except me.