The Covenant (31 page)

He stopped walking and faced her. “Go on.”

“The Hamas have kidnapped a member of her family… actually, not a blood relative, but someone even closer in many ways…”

“Where? In California?”

“No.” She paused. “In Israel.”

He dropped her hands and put his fists into his pockets. “Elizabeth…”

“I know, I know. But this is… There were four women. My grandmother was one of them. They survived Auschwitz together. The child is the great-granddaughter of one of them. And the man—her father—a cancer specialist…”

“Ana marid!”

“I know. It’s sickening. They were abducted from their car. Terrorists just opened fire, then took them. If the terrorists’ demands aren’t met, in twelve hours they are going to kill them.”

“What is it they are demanding?”

“Release of Hamas prisoners. Dismantling settlements. Right of return for Palestinians who ran away in ‘forty-eight…”

“Idiots. Why not ask all the Jews to jump into the sea?” he murmured. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Whally, you and I both know who is funding Hamas here…”

“You want me to call them up on the phone and ask for the Israelis to be released? And they’ll listen to me, because…?”

”Give me some credit!”

He sighed. “Well, what, then?”

“I have a name. Musa el Khalil. He lives in Paris. All I need is his address and phone number”

He turned around and looked up at the sky, his hands gripped behind his back. Suddenly, he turned to face her. His face was red, the veins in his temples bulging. He was as angry as she had ever seen him.

“I will get the name and address. And then, when the Mossad picks him up, my brothers and cousins will come here and give me—us—a medal. Is that the plan?”

Involuntarily, almost instinctively, her body wanted to move a step backward. Instead, she forced herself to move even closer. She gripped his shoulders with both her hands. “What about ‘
Adl
,’ justice? Did I not learn that Allah is just, that his prophet Mohammed was just and perfect in all his ways? How can the murder of a doctor and his small child be just? I ask you to help stop this terrible thing, this crime. I ask you to be a true Muslim, to bring honor to Allah and to his Prophet…”

“You don’t know what you’re asking of me! We are in terrible danger, all of us. Our own children…”

She dropped her arms, looking up at him. She felt frightened. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there are forces in this country that are working against us. You refuse to wear the
abaya.
You refuse to stay in the country. You give parties for westerners. You hold classes for women…”

“I haven’t done anything wrong according to Islamic law. I have been a good Muslim. I believe in one God. In His Prophet. I pray, I fast, I have gone on Haj. Twice. I give charity…”

“Stop it! You know exactly what I’m talking about. You are not submissive. You are not obedient to the words of the Imams, Allah’s representatives on earth…”

“They are wrong in what they are doing. They misinterpret all the good, turning it into evil. You cannot justify the kidnapping and murder of an unarmed innocent and a child. This is absolutely against everything the Koran teaches, and you know it…”

“What does it matter what I know?”

“It matters to me! I’m your wife. I’m part of yuo…”

”I’m trying to protect you!”

She looked into his eyes. “What is your answer, Whally?”

“It would be suicide for me to make such inquiries. Suicide.”

“But what if you said you wanted to make a donation?”

“A donation?”

“To the Hamas. You know that your cousins are some of the biggest contributors. And your brother, Faisal, is head of the Benevolent Charity Fund. You know where that money goes. The
Zakat
we are required to give to the poor according to the faith. He takes that money and it goes to terrorists.”

“It’s protection money. We Saudis are adept at keeping Palestinian thugs, Syrian terror operatives, Iraqi hit squads and other psychopaths off our backs. It’s a Mafia extortion racket called ‘Arab solidarity.’ We never met a problem we didn’t try to solve by throwing money at it. We keep the Americans happy by buying billions of dollars’ worth of weapons we don’t know how to use, airliners we don’t need, and goods we could live without. In exchange, the Americans and other western countries understand they’ll have to protect us to keep the oil and dollars flowing,” he said tonelessly. “It’s the way we live. Everyone is proud of it.”

“What if you called your brother and said as part of your
Khums
and
Zakat
, you wanted to give your obligatory charity money to this person directly? That you didn’t want it to be traced because of the Americans and their war on terror and our frequent travel to America? That you wanted to hand it to him in cash at his house in Paris…?”

“Don’t be stupid. My brother knows how I feel about these low-lifes. He’d never be fooled. If anything happened, he’d know it was me. Do you want to have Hamas target us? They are all over Europe and America. If they ever found out…”

“But Faisal is your brother! Surely, he wouldn’t tell. Look, Whally, every day, just being married, we are risking our lives here! You know I love you. I converted to Islam for you. Brought my children up in your faith. But that faith has changed…”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Yes. You do.”

He turned away. “Don’t push me, Elizabeth. I can’t…”

“The Wahabis have been at the root of all that’s evil in Islam. They’ve made the adoption of anti-Semitism part of the religion, which it never
was. They’ve made it a respectable religious obligation of Jihad to join terror cells. Wife-beating, the murder of daughters, is not the exception, it’s the rule, and you know it, all over the Muslim world. And now, they are insisting on spreading this backwardness to the west…”

He sat down and held his head in his hands. “I’m only one man.”

“You can make this one phone call. Get this one address. Save these two people. For your own soul. For us. For me. Because if we sit back and they die, I couldn’t go on living with myself.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “I couldn’t go on living with you.”

His face went pale as he stared up at her. “Elizabeth…”

She reached down and kissed his lips, pressing her body against his. And then she turned. Slowly, alone, she walked back into the house, closing the door behind her.

He sat in the garden for a long time, gazing at the flowers planted through the years that now thrived in tropical abundance. He looked beyond to the running track and the blue tiles of the pool.

Their own little world, a comfortable, delightful place with every luxury. What Elizabeth never realized—because he had protected her from this knowledge—was just how fine a line it was they walked. Like trapeze artists balancing on a thin wire over the shouting crowds, they and their children tipped this way and that, the hard, punishing ground always looming down below, ready to smash them should they lean too far to any side and stumble. And now she was asking him to jump off the line with both feet, to fill it with uncontrollable vibrations that might send them all tumbling down.

He tried to imagine life without her. His family would simply tell him to behave according to the accepted norm regarding failed east-west matches: divorce her and take the children. Have her exiled to America and deny her a visa to visit them. It was actually very simple, and could be accomplished before Elizabeth understood what was happening. There would be nothing she could do. He would find another wife, one suitable to his station. And the black line over his name would be erased, and all opportunities would suddenly open for him.

And he would never see her again, his Elizabeth. Never. And she would mourn for her children, and she would hate him.

He walked back into the house. He picked up the phone and called his brother Faisal.

That afternoon he handed Elizabeth a piece of paper. On it was the name Musa el Khalil and an address and a phone number in Paris.

“Thank you.”

“Memorize it, then destroy it. The car is outside waiting to take you to the children’s school and then on to the airport. Here is the letter of permission from me for you to travel. Tickets are waiting for you at the counter. You have a stopover in Amsterdam. Wait until you get to Europe before you pass on this information. And then go directly to California. Promise me. Make the call from a public phone.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?”

He shook his head. “That would only cause suspicion. Go.”

“Then, when are you coming?” she begged him.

He held her close, kissing her long and hard, with a touch of desperation.

“Inshallah
, soon.” And then he took her to the door and watched her go.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem
Thursday, May 9, 2002
1:00
P.M.

A
FTER THE LONG
confinement in her room, the hospital corridors felt almost like a change of season, Elise thought as she walked slowly and painfully down the airy halls. How strange that feeling of lightness, the absence of all those burdens that her body had grown used to: the swelling abdomen, the soft pressure of the tiny head against her bladder, the rolling elbows and knees that punched out her flesh like a cat in a sack. She brushed her fingers lightly over her stomach, and a sense of loss so sharp, so palpable, brought an ache to the back of her throat. Now his fate was out of her control. She leaned against her grandmother’s shoulder.

“Maybe you should get a wheelchair, like the doctor said?” Leah suggested, worried.

“No. I need to walk. After all these months, it’s a pleasure.”

“Our NICU—Neonatal Intensive Care Unit—is the best in the Middle East,” Dr. Gabbay declared, meaning to be comforting. To Elise, he sounded very much like the guest of honor at a fund-raising luncheon. She wanted to hear something personal, something about her own baby and its personal fate as she walked into the unit where he lay fighting for his fragile life.

“From all over the country, hospitals regularly send their most urgent and complicated cases to Hadassah. A special ambulance is equipped with incubators and portable surgery units to transport them. Your baby is in the best hands, Elise,” he continued.

She hardly heard a word, focusing on the blinking green and red lights of sophisticated and no doubt expensive monitoring equipment, the heavy wump of breathing machines that forced air in and out of tiny lungs. “Hadassah ladies,” people sometimes called them, rolling their eyes, never realizing all those smart, savvy, generous women had—in their spare time—created the finest medical facility in the Middle East in this tiny country, saving the lives of their babies.
Thank you
. . .

And in the midst of all this
Star Wars
technology, she suddenly noticed the tiny bundles of human flesh. Stuck full of needles, bandaged, with eye patches and foot patches, and dressings and tubes coming in and out of every orifice, tiny human beings fighting against relinquishing that gift they had so recently been given: life. Elise felt her chest constrict. They looked like a community of miniature car-crash victims on their last legs. My God! How could any of them survive all this?

“Don’t look so worried! We have a ninety-five percent survival rate among those babies born one kilo or more!” Dr. Gabbay assured her.

“Kilo? How much is that in pounds?” Leah asked.

“About two-point-two pounds.”

“Imagine.” She shook her head in wonder. “Less than a decent
Shabbes
chicken.”

“And even the ones born half that weight still have a fifty-fifty chance of survival. Believe me, most of these infants are going to be perfectly fine. Don’t look at the equipment. Look at the babies.”

Elise examined them. Little faces, tiny hands and legs waving furiously. Alive, surrounded by little stuffed animals, tiny mobiles, and bright pictures placed around them by loving hands. No one had given up hope on any one of them, she suddenly realized, deeply comforted.

“Here he is, Elise, Mrs. Helfgott.”

They looked down at the tiny head, the dark hair peeking out of the fishnet bandage. A whole gamut of emotional extremes washed over Elise: fear verging on terror, thrilling love, tremendous hope, undaunted faith. She felt almost faint. “Can I touch him?”

“Of course.”

She put her hand into the sterile plastic glove that was attached to the clear plastic crib’s side, reaching into the incubator. Gently, she laid her hand on top of the dark hair, trying to imagine its softness. His skin, she
told herself, would feel like warm, slightly gritty soap. She brushed his tiny cheek with the tip of her forefinger. From head to toe, he would reach from the tips of her fingers to the middle of her arm. She felt a sense of slow panic, born of wonderment that the functions of human life could exist in all their complexity in the ridiculously confined space of this tiny, human package. She nudged his palm. With a shock that moved her to tears, he suddenly wrapped his tiny hand around one of her fingers.