38
I fixed his PalmPilot in half an hour. The contacts were a little flimsy, and the batteries dead. That was all. All he’d needed to do was pop into an electrician’s. But he was delighted when I gave it to him the next day. He played around with the buttons for a few seconds and said, ‘Hey, man, you’re a genius!’
I shrugged. ‘I just’ (I mimed the word I was missing in Hebrew. Fiddled around) ‘with the contacts a bit.’
‘The contacts? Really? I tried them myself and nothing happened.’
‘You should have just given it to an electrician. He’d fix it for you, no problem.’
I had to go back to work, so I left him to play with his new toy. But as I walked away I heard him calling me back: ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ I came back and he glanced up from his computer screen and handed over the Palm. ‘Take it, it’s yours.’
‘What do you mean? It’s working now.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, ‘I gave it to you. Well done for fixing it, but it’s still yours.’
On the one hand I thought, I don’t need favours from a Jew who treats me like I scarcely exist and if I manage to close an electric circuit suddenly thinks I’m a genius. That side of me wanted to chuck the thing at the wall. My calmer side knew that the wall was made of plywood and nothing was going to happen even if I did throw it. It was the second side that spoke.
‘You were on Noah’s Ark.’
‘What?’
‘You were on Noah’s Ark, right?’
He looked at me and frowned. ‘You watched it?’
‘Of course I watched it, what do you think? You had a strange name…You were on with that stupid soldier girl.’
‘How’d you remember that? It’s been six months!’
‘How could I forget? You were very much sweating.’
‘You know something? You’re the first person ever to mention that to me. Yeah, I was. But listen, how come…I mean: do you people actually watch Noah’s Ark?’
Samir had said not to speak to anyone. Not to talk to the Jews. It was better like that.
‘Tell me what your name is.’
‘Croc,’ he said, somewhat surprised.
‘The Croc. Right. The Croc of the Attacks! How could I forget? Musari said it about a thousand times. CrocAttack. Timsach, in Arabic.’
He laughed. ‘I’m amazed. I didn’t know you people watched that stuff.’ I said I needed to work, took the Palm and said thank you. In the kitchenette I washed dishes, threw away the garbage and wiped the surfaces. Then I started vacuuming the carpets. The next time I passed Croc’s room, he called me in again.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Fahmi.’
‘Fahmi,’ he repeated. He kept staring at me from under his low lids. His eyes were red. ‘Do you happen to know French?’ I smiled. What was he on about? Of course I didn’t know French. He asked me a few questions about where I lived and what I did and so on. ‘OK, then: do you want to make five hundred shekels for one day’s work?’
‘What work?’
‘Here in the office. You just have to say a few things that I’ll tell you to say. To test our system. Sit down.’
I looked at my watch and saw the time was twelve minutes past seven. Time for a shit. I could feel the sweet pressure building in my bowels. You weren’t supposed to sit down, but I did, keeping a wary eye on the door.
‘The system we’re developing here is supposed to understand people’s voices on the phone. I’m testing to see if it can recognise different accents and I need an Arab. It’s for a Belgian client: they’ve got Arabs there, and Africans, and Chinese and Vietnamese, and I’ve done them already. I’ve only got the Arabic left to do.’
I was silent. It was a lot of money, but…
‘Come on, it’s nothing. You come here for a few hours, I tell you what to say, we record you, test the system, and that’s it: three to four hours, five hundred shekels.’ ‘When?’
‘Whenever you want.’
This was a Wednesday evening. Zahara had almost completely recovered from her operation and was supposed to return after the weekend, when I would be out of a job again. We decided on Sunday morning.
‘We were at Bilahl’s trial, Fahmi. Me and Father…’
Lulu? What about Bilahl?
‘Just a little room. We sat on blue plastic chairs. Bilahl was in a brown prison uniform, but he couldn’t stop smiling. He looked very well. Clean. He was playing with a little length of black thread and reading a small Koran. He said that because Allah was protecting him, he was made of steel. He showed total contempt for the soldiers in court. I’d never seen him in such a good mood. Father’s mobile phone rang and the judge got really angry. But he said he was ashamed of you, Fahmi…’
Ashamed of me?
‘…because of what happened with the Croc. He said you were never really faithful to the cause…’
I couldn’t shake the feeling that Grandfather Fahmi was somehow guiding my life from heaven. Bilahl hated it when I said that: he said that only Allah was guiding everything. But meeting the Croc made me wonder just who it was who was controlling my destiny. I remembered how Bilahl had said that we needed to kill the Croc because he’d been turned into a symbol for the Jews. He would have said that Allah had placed the Croc in my hands for just that reason. Our poor father would have said that Allah had introduced us so that I could see he was a human being like myself.
Thursday was my last day as a cleaner in the business park. On Friday, the day when everything converged, I woke with a powerful urge to pray. When the first call came I washed my face, hands and legs and went to the mosque, where I stayed longer than usual. I repeated the Surat al-Fatcha dozens or even hundreds of times, and the tears poured down my face. I missed Lulu, Father and Murair; I missed Rana; I missed Bilahl and Al-Amari; I missed Titi, Natzer and limping Rami; I missed Halil Abu-Zeid and I missed my mother…and yet I felt strong. When you live on your own for months, you learn to live within yourself.
As soon as I got back home I called Halil’s cousin, who was pleased to hear from me. They’d been meaning to contact me some time anyway. Now that there was contact with Bilahl again, the big operation was back on.
‘What did you say?’
She couldn’t believe I didn’t know. Bilahl had been in contact from his jail. He had confessed to planning the attacks, and would probably get multiple life sentences.
I was unable to breathe for a moment. Air jammed in my throat.
‘What do you mean, confessed? He told them everything?’
‘I don’t know exactly what he said. You can call him, but be careful. They’ve given him this line just so they can monitor his calls.’ She gave me the number and asked how I was doing. I told her about the Croc.
‘The fool who couldn’t die. Well, you must take care of him.’
‘It’s not that simple. I’m on my own here. Where am I going to find a weapon? Where can I escape to?’
‘You’ve done more complicated things than this, Fahmi.’
I was still having trouble getting air into my lungs. The sense of convergence I’d had in the mosque that morning; the feeling that Allah, or Grandfather, was guiding things from above; Bilahl suddenly only a phone call away; and all of this happening when I still had my appointment with the Croc to come…It all felt connected.
I called the number and asked for Bilahl. Two minutes later I heard his ‘Hello?’, and it was like something floating up from the depths of my memory.
‘Bilahl.’
‘Fahmi?’
We were silent for a long time. Strange, to have to think very carefully about every word you spoke to your brother.
‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘How’s the village?’
‘Good. Comfortable. There’s work…a little bit in the packing-house. You know, bits and pieces here and there.’
‘Good. And you’re praying? Continuing to fulfil the six commandments?’
‘Yes.’ He was playing with fire. I understood what he meant at once. There are only five main commandments in Islam. The sixth commandment was: to continue with our operations.
‘Very important,’ he said. ‘All the commandments, all the time. Make use of every opportunity to be a good Muslim and fulfil all six. Every opportunity.’
‘Yes.’
He meant the Croc. It was as if he knew that an opportunity had presented itself, even if he didn’t know its details. He was my brother. He could sense it in my voice, in the fact of my making the call. He could sense an internal conflict, and he was demanding that I keep going.
‘What about you?’
‘All-powerful Allah will decide. When he wants me, I will be there. Let us hope it will be soon.’
It was a short conversation but it carried a lot of weight with me. My brother’s power over me was always stronger than I was willing to admit to myself. Even over the phone, from a prison, in code, he was telling me something clearer than the sun: God had placed an opportunity in my hands. He had walked me through the mountains, on donkeys, broken my back with boxes of apples, he had burst an appendix and broken a computer and with infinite care brought me to the right place at the right time because he had a mission for me: to kill the Croc.
And yet, and yet…I squirmed restlessly in my chair. I was sorry that I’d ever met the Croc; but I was sure that God had sent him to me. I should never have told anyone that I’d met him, but Bilahl had sensed something without my even saying anything. It was destined; it was random. One minute I wished I was somebody else; the next I felt that I had been chosen by a higher power to complete a mission I had started.
At last the thought came to me, like a balm: it didn’t matter. Whatever was fated to happen would happen.
‘There was a female soldier there in a grey uniform with her hair scraped tightly back, blushing and looking insecure. She had glasses with purple plastic frames and three stripes on her shoulder. A soldier shouted, “All rise for the judge!” and everyone stood up. Except for Bilahl, Fahmi! He said: “This is an illegal court whose authority I do not accept. It is illegal just as your occupation is illegal.” The soldier girl in the grey uniform and the purple glasses and tight hair read the indictment. She talked about the attack on Jerusalem. How Halil Abu-Zeid had planned it before they killed him, how Safi Bari had made the bomb…’
Safi? Well, that’s not…what about me?
‘Both of whom are now dead anyway. She talked about how he’d carried out the Shaar Hagai attack with Safi as well. Then she gave a long speech about everything that had happened in Al-Amari. Meetings in secret flats, details of the planning, the bomb-making, recruiting the bomber. But your name never came up. Father was overjoyed. He said he knew you’d never deal with…’
Bilahl. My brother. My big brother…
‘…every Jew killed in the attacks was an intentional murder. Bilahl would get a life sentence for every person killed. It’s going to be something like four hundred years, the sentence. But he’s happy. He says that Allah…’
Wasime knocked on my door and invited me for dinner. We made tedious small talk about pharmacies, the economy and little Atta’s behaviour–the boy was cranky, crying, throwing his food around the table and smearing his own face yellow and brown with egg and Egozan. When we’d finished and Atta had calmed down sufficiently to be put to bed, we had coffee in the living room and watched Noah’s Ark. I was thinking about Al-Amari, and the first time I ever saw the Croc. Tommy was on good form. One couple consisted of the cover girl of a new men’s magazine called Passion and a brilliant student from a rabbinical college in Jerusalem. The model kept saying that she thought the guy was sexy. He wouldn’t look at her. Again and again the close-ups showed him averting his eyes. ‘Almost!’ Tommy said every time. ‘But not quite…’ and the audience laughed and clapped their delighted little hands.
‘Goodnight, Fahmi…’
Don’t go, Lulu…Tell me more about Bilahl. Where is he? Does he have friends with him in jail? What…
‘I wish I could understand your language. It sounds so pretty…’
‘It’s Arabic, Svetlana. It is beautiful. See you. Keep taking good care of him, yeah?’
‘Yeah, I will. Goodnight, Lulu. Goodnight…I…’
‘Svet?’
‘No, don’t worry. I’m sorry. Don’t mind me. I’ll keep taking care of him.’
Oh, Svetlana.
The lights are blinding, and baking, and sweat is pouring from my forehead and armpits.
‘Fahmi Omar Al-Sabich?’ Tommy asks.
‘Yes. Good evening.’
‘Good evening! So, after three major attacks, Fahmi, you decide it’s time to finish off the Croc, the great CrocAttack, the symbol of our survival, is that right?’
‘That’s correct, Tommy.’
‘I’m sure you know what happens next…’ he says and the audience scream. ‘Two by two! Two by two!’ Among the audience I can see Bilahl, Abu-Zeid, Rana and Grandfather Fahmi. They’re all giving me encouraging smiles and making victory Vs with their fingers.
‘That’s right: two by two! So now, let’s meet Fahmi’s partner on Noah’s Ark this evening…ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm Noah’s Ark welcome to–who else?–the Croc!’
The audience go wild and I go white. I hadn’t been expecting this. My downpour of sweat is becoming a monsoon. The Croc bounds on to the stage, waving to the audience and the cameras, clasps my hand in both of his and sits down.
‘So, Croc,’ says Tommy Musari, ‘tell us what your first thought was when you heard about Fahmi’s exciting new plan…’