The Last Secret Of The Temple (21 page)

The summons to martyrdom, when it came, was not at all what Yunis Abu Jish had imagined it would be.

For months now he'd been praying that he would be approached and asked to give himself for his God and his people, picturing in his mind an intensive selection procedure through the course of which his courage and faith would be repeatedly tested and triumphantly proved. As it was, he received a single, brief phone call informing him that he had been chosen by al-Mulatham as a potential
shaheed,
and instructing him to consider carefully whether he felt himself ready for this honour. If he did not, he was to do nothing; he would not be contacted again. If he did, he was to don his Dome of the Rock T-shirt – how on earth did they know he had a T-shirt with a picture of the Qubbat al-Sakhra on the front? – and go at noon the following day to the Kalandia checkpoint on the Jerusalem–Ramallah road where he was to remain for exactly thirty minutes beneath the hoarding with the advertisement for Master Satellite Dishes. Thereafter he was to start preparing himself with prayer and study of the Holy Koran, informing no-one of his situation, not even close family. More detailed instructions would follow.

And that was it. No explanation of how or why or by whom he had been chosen; no indication of what his eventual mission might be. The cold precision of the call, the businesslike manner of the man at the other end, had frightened him, and after the line had gone dead he sat for a long while trembling, his face pale, the receiver still pressed against his ear. Can I do this, he wondered to himself. Am I strong enough? Am I worthy? To imagine, after all, is one thing, to do quite another. Fear and doubt almost overwhelmed him.

Gradually, however, his misgivings eased, giving way first to acceptance, then determination, and finally a swelling sense of euphoria and pride. He had been chosen! He, Yunis Abu Jish Sabah, hero of his people, instrument of God's vengeance. He imagined the honour his family would feel, the joy of every Palestinian. The glory.

With a yelp of delight he slammed down the phone and charged outside to where his mother was sitting peeling potatoes, kneeling in front of her and wrapping his arms around her waist.

'It's all going to be OK,' he said, laughing. 'Everything is going to be OK. God is with us.
Allah-u-akhbar?

It was almost midday before Ben-Roi finally surfaced from his drunken slumber and staggered out of bed, coughing and cursing. He took a cold shower, downed a Goldstar to drive off his hangover, then dressed, dabbed on some aftershave and took a bus over to the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, stopping en route to buy a single white lily.

He visited her at least once a day. More sometimes, if the loneliness became particularly acute. As a kid he remembered thinking it was something only old people did, going to cemeteries. A way of passing the time when you had nothing better to do with your life, when all the joy and hope was behind you. Yet here he was now, not even thirty-four, and the visit was the focal point of his day. Of his entire existence.

He alighted from the bus on the Jericho Road and entered the cemetery through a gate at its bottom left-hand corner, weaving his way upwards through the rows of flat, rectangular tombstones that covered the terraced hillside like a vast fragmented stairway. Away to his left the seven golden cupolas of the Church of St Mary Magdalen gleamed in the afternoon sun; ahead and above, the ugly arched façade of the Intercontinental Hotel loomed on the hill's summit, like a row of hoops graffiti'd onto the clean blue sky. Behind, across the Kidron Valley, sat the Dome of the Rock, the buildings of the Old City stacked up behind it like a jumble of children's play bricks.

Her grave was about halfway up, at the cemetery's southern edge, a simple flat stone bearing her name and dates – born 21 December 1976; died 12 March 2004 – and at the bottom a quotation from the Song of Solomon: 'I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.'

He stood staring down at it, catching his breath after the steep climb, then squatted and laid the flower on top of the quotation, with beside it a small rock he had picked up on his way through the cemetery, as per Jewish custom. He bent and kissed the grave, running his hand over its warm yellow surface, allowing his lips to linger for a moment on the deep chiselled grooves of her name. Then, with a sigh, he straightened again.

Strangely, he'd never been able to cry for her. However intense the pain, however overwhelming, the tears just wouldn't come. He wept at lesser things – crap TV programmes, cheap song lyrics, schmaltzy novels – but for her there was nothing, just emptiness, the tears damming up inside him so that sometimes he struggled even to draw breath, like a drowning man only just able to keep his mouth above the waterline.

He clasped his hands together, part of him feeling he ought to recite a
kaddish,
or at least say a prayer of some sort. He dismissed the idea. What the fuck was the point of praying to a God who allowed things like that to happen? Who sat up in His heaven and gazed down dispassionately on so much horror and misery? No, he thought to himself, there's no comfort in belief; it's a hollow thing, empty, tuneless, like a cracked bell. He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away from the grave, gazing across at the Old City, humming an old Jewish folk song his grandfather had taught him about a poor boy who falls in love with a rich rabbi's daughter.

He'd arrested her. That's how they'd met. Corny beyond belief, like something out of a cheap romance novel, but that's the way it had happened. She'd been part of a group protesting against Israeli settlement building on the outskirts of the city; he'd been in the police cordon thrown up to hold the protesters back. There was a mêlée, she kicked him in the shin, he slapped a pair of handcuffs on her and threw her in the back of a police van. It all happened so quickly he didn't have time to notice how beautiful she was. Only later, in the holding cell back at the station, while taking down her details as she held forth on the iniquities of Israel's occupation of the West Bank, did he find his gaze lingering on her unruly tangle of brown hair, her slim, sunbrowned arms, her sparkling grey eyes, angry and passionate yet gentle too, full of wit and laughter, so that somehow he knew she was a good person, a kind person, and that her raised voice and belligerent manner were just a front.

He could have charged her – should have charged her – but in the end he let her off with a caution. The fact that she showed no gratitude for this favour – on the contrary, seemed rather put out by it, as if his leniency somehow diminished the impact of her protest – for some reason attracted him to her even more than her physical appearance.

He had never been especially confident around women, uneasy within his bear-like frame and craggy, big-nosed face, and it took him three days to pluck up the courage to call her. When he finally did she mistook him for a friend playing a joke; then, realizing he was who he said he was, told him to fuck off and slammed down the phone. He called again the next day, and the day after that, and again the day after that, his interest (and humiliation) increasing in direct proportion to the number of rejections he received, until eventually, exasperated, she agreed to have a drink in a local bar 'just to get you off my bloody back'.

Even then it is doubtful anything would have happened between them had it not been for the spaghetti. Up to that point in the meeting they had struggled to make any sort of connection, their conversation stilted and uncomfortable, punctuated with embarrassed silences and occasional raised voices as she harangued him about their government's treatment of the Palestinians while he retorted that the Palestinians deserved everything they fucking got. They were actually in the process of leaving the bar, acknowledging that they had nothing in common, that the evening was going nowhere, when a waiter walked straight into him, depositing a plate of sauce-covered pasta down the front of his white shirt. She burst out laughing; he snapped at her, but then started chuckling too, appreciating the ludicrousness of the situation; and in that moment of shared amusement something finally sparked between them, like a match striking in the darkness, driving back the shadows. The waiter lent him a T-shirt, which lightened their mood further for it was way too tight for him and bore the embarrassingly inappropriate logo GAY AND PROUD. Accepting an offer of compensatory drinks, they returned to their table and started the conversation anew, this time steering away from politics and talking about themselves instead, their backgrounds and interests and families, exploring.

She worked as an editor for a small co-operative publishing house specializing in poetry and children's books, devoting three evenings a week to volunteer work with B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization. The daughter of one of the country's most decorated war heroes, now a Labour Knesset member, she had grown up on a kibbutz on the northern edge of Galilee, the youngest of three sisters. Her two elder siblings were both married with children.

'Perfect Jewish mothers,' she said. 'I'm the black sheep.'

'Me too,' admitted Ben-Roi. 'All the men in my family are farmers. Dad was horrified when I said I wanted to be a policeman. Although not as horrified as he'd be if he could see me now.'

He glanced down at his T-shirt. She laughed.

'So what made you want to become a tool of the fascist regime?' she asked.

'Al Pacino, believe it or not.'

'Al Pacino?'

'Well, a film he made.'

She held up a hand. 'Let me guess.' There was a pause, then,
'Serpico.'

His eyes widened. 'How did you know that?'

'It's one of my favourite movies.'

'You're the only person I've met who's ever seen it! I love that film. I remember when I first watched it, on TV, when I was fourteen. I thought, "That's what I want to be." Just like Al Pacino. Doing good things. Making a difference. I met him once, you know. After I graduated from police college. We had our photo taken together. He's tiny.'

He took a slug of wine and their eyes met, only momentarily but enough for each to know something was moving within them. Later he would recall that first meeting of gazes, that fleeting, uncertain acknowledgement of shared feeling, as one of the most perfect moments of his life.

They remained in the bar for almost three hours, talking and talking, delving ever deeper into each other, gently stripping back the layers, before, at her suggestion, moving on to a small restaurant she knew in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City where they ate
soujuk
and
khaghoghi derev
and drank a bottle of fragrant, slightly bitter red wine. Afterwards, half-drunk, they wandered through the deserted streets, exchanging the odd embarrassed glance but saying little, passing down into the Jewish Quarter and then doubling back on themselves through the Mauristan and eventually up to the New Gate, where they drank a final coffee at a late-night cafe and he presented her with a white lily he had plucked from a vase on the cafe counter.

'Thank you,' she said, clutching the flower to her chest. 'It's beautiful.'

They went outside and made their farewells, a huge moon bobbing above them like an orange in a pool of deep black water. He had an overwhelming urge to lean down and kiss her, but held back, not wanting to spoil the moment. She had no such qualms, and, brushing aside the hand he had proffered, seized his shoulders, got up on tiptoes and kissed him passionately on the lips.

'I'm sorry,' she said, drawing away, eyes sparkling. 'I couldn't resist. I think it must be that aftershave you're wearing.'

'I didn't think it was for my good looks.'

She kissed him again, gentler this time, slower, pressing herself against him.

'You look great to me.'

'Then maybe it's time for an eye-test.'

She smiled and, reaching up a hand, touched his huge chin, his nose, his cheek. They remained like that for a long moment, staring at each other. Then, with a final hug, they parted, agreeing to meet up again in a couple of nights' time. As he walked away she called after him.

'Open your eyes, Arieh. Look at what's going on in this country. I need you to do that. Because it's poisoning us all. And unless we do something to change it there's no future. Not for Israel, not for us, not for anyone. Open your eyes. Please.'

Over the ensuing weeks and months, as their relationship had grown and deepened, as love for her had filled his soul, he had done as she asked, seeing things he had never wanted to see, asking questions he had never wanted to ask. It had caused him great pain, this awakening, great confusion and uncertainty. Yet he had followed her lead nonetheless, because he loved her, and trusted her, and knew deep down she was helping him to grow, to become a better person.

And then, after all that, despite all that, they had killed her. The very people she had fought so hard to defend, whose cause she had so passionately advocated. Blown away her legs, shattered her face; her beautiful, gentle, laughing face. So that now, standing alone in the cemetery gazing down at her gravestone, it seemed to Ben-Roi that the future of which they had both dreamed, a future of peace and understanding and hope and light, was no more than an empty mirage. And like the thirsty desert traveller who endures the agony of watching a longed-for oasis evaporate before his eyes, no more than a trick of the light, he wished he had simply kept his eyes closed and never fallen for the illusion in the first place.

He finished mumbling his song, fingers fiddling with the silver menorah that hung against his chest, a tiny piece of her that he kept with him always, and then, after bending and kissing the grave one more time, he started back down through the cemetery.

Near the bottom he came upon a solitary figure in a
yarmulke
and
tallit
standing beside a pair of graves set slightly apart from the rest, on their own little plot of land. The man's back was to him, and it was only as he passed that he realized it was Baruch Har-Zion. He turned his head slightly and for a brief instant their eyes met, each nodding fractionally in acknowledgement of the other, before Ben-Roi turned away again and continued downwards to the gate at the bottom of the cemetery, where he found Har-Zion's bodyguard Avi Steiner leaning against a wall. Again, there was the briefest meeting of eyes, the faintest nod of acknowledgement, and then Ben-Roi was out on the road and walking back towards the Old City, wondering where he could get a drink before heading into the station for the start of his shift.