Vicious Circle (39 page)

What was it about this land, these
wadis
, these blood-tinted stone walls, that stirred, in the people who trod the Judean hills, the brutality lurking immediately
beneath the beauty?

On the fringes of the funerals, mourners drifted away from the graves toward the chain-link fence. No one could say who shouted
the first insult, who hurled the first stone, but within seconds the battle was raging. A group of young religious Jews leaped
onto the fence and tried to scale it to get at the Palestinians, who filled the air with flying stones and beat at the fence
with sticks. Two Jews fell back, bleeding from head wounds. An Arab boy was knocked unconscious, a second clutched a broken
wrist. Cameramen on both sides knelt on the hill and filmed the brawl for the evening news, which only spurred the rioters
on. In an age-old gesture, the young Arabs drew their
kiffiyehs
across their faces, obscuring everything but their eyes, which burned with fierce loathing. Palestinian police and Israeli
soldiers came running up on both sides of the fence to separate the combatants. The wail of sirens filled the air as ambulances
pulled over the slopes to pick up the wounded. Tear gas canisters rolled downhill and exploded. Voices blasted over bullhorns
in Hebrew and Arabic, warning the rioters to disperse.

With the
katsa
and Baruch trailing after him, Sweeney ducked behind one of the television relay trucks. As the tear gas spread like morning
mist over the hill, the Rabbi’s demented cackle echoed in Sweeney’s good ear. “
Let us seek religious asylum together in Paradise
,” he had said. “
You and me, Ishmael, the Renewer and the Messiah, side by side. A real simcha, a real joy
.”

“Do you know Chekhov’s
Uncle Vanya
?” Sweeney called to Elihu as he reached the relay truck. “I acted in it once in a previous incarnation. There’s a scene where
someone asks Vanya what’s new. Nothing’s new, he says. Everything’s old.” Sweeney smothered a raw laugh. “Everything—these
hills, these
wadis
, this blood feud between tribes that worship the same God—is old.” He shook his head in an agony of despair. “If they really
are up there,” he said, “two mad hatters hanging out at the right hand of God, they’ve got to be laughing their deranged heads
off watching their funerals.”

A whiff of tear gas stung Sweeney’s nostrils. Backpedaling to get
away from it, he spotted something that caused him to catch his breath. On the flank of the hill, the austere young Imam in
the white robe, the tall lean Jew in the black overcoat could be seen standing on small knolls behind the melee. Oblivious
to the whorls of tear gas scouring the rock-pitted ground around their feet, they appeared to be taking the measure of each
other over the heads of their disciples. Around them the air filled with the whetted lisp of cicadae and the sky began to
grow dark, almost as if a plague of locusts had blotted out the sun.

And then the dry crack of a rifle shot reverberated through the Judean hills.