Part 10 (1/2)

Sam was immediately annoyed. ”You said yesterday that Beirut was worse. And the day before that Mogadishu was.”

”They are worse,” Roger confirmed.

”OK, but this place is pretty bad.” Sam couldn't help the slightly hopeful note in his voice as he said this.

”No, my friend,” said Roger. ”This is a picnic. This is Club Med. I come here to relax and eat ice cream. But Gaza is the real thing.”

”I heard that too,” said Lukas. He was a tall lanky college student from Stockholm who hung out with Roger because the other Swedes were actually off doing humanitarian work. Lukas was as it happened eating an ice cream just then; Sam wanted one too, but now he was too angry. He had come a long way to be in Jenin! When he'd asked the other Swedes about helping out, they said there wasn't anything to do; it was enough, they said, that he ”bear witness.” OK, OK, but he was bearing witness to nothing; there weren't any tanks; he was bearing witness to checking his e-mail.

Speaking of which, he thought now, and stood up decisively from his seat-if that's how it was, then that's how it would be. He bought an ice cream to take with him and walked down the main thoroughfare, taking little bites and trying to keep it from getting all over him as he made his way down to the Internet cafe, where he wrote Katie an e-mail of startling, rambling, fabulously discursive length.

When he was done he tried to call Witold from a pay phone, but no one answered.

At night after was.h.i.+ng his sweaty jeans, Sam would lie in his cot, with its damp, unclean sheets, and talk with Akhmed about peace, about the retreat of leftist hopes in the face of a religious revival in the Arab world, about the disastrous collapse at Camp David (”Unacceptable,” Akhmed said of the offer, and Sam argued with him, and lost). They talked of the splintering Palestinian cause: even within Akhmed's family, he said, his uncle and father were still strongly pro-Arafat, but Bashar and Mohammed were visibly impatient. ”I did not tell you,” Akhmed confided of his brothers. ”They fought in Jenin Camp.” Akhmed for his part was still a socialist; his party's leader had been forced to flee to Damascus, and Akhmed kept a photo of him in his notebook, otherwise the place for unfamiliar English words that somewhere or other he'd heard or read. He showed a few of the words to Sam; they were unfamiliar to him, too.

Sam had not told Akhmed that he was Jewish. Roger in the car to Jenin had asked him not to mention it-”You're not Jewish in the sense that they'd understand anyway,” he said. ”Meaning?” ”Meaning Israeli.” And for a while this made sense. What's more, Sam just a.s.sumed that everyone knew. He was dark, and hairy, and his brown eyes sparkled, and upon seeing him Arabs always asked if he was Arab. When he said no, they paused a moment and wondered if he was perhaps Spanish? Italian? Bulgarian? It seemed obvious to Sam that someone in this part of the world with black hair and an olive complexion could be only one of two things. Yet somehow no one seemed to grasp that. And as Sam grew closer to the sweet saintly Akhmed, as Akhmed confided in him, he began to feel he was concealing it.

Still, his heart was pure. There'd been situations in Sam's life- connected with women, usually-where he'd felt that if something terrible happened to him just then, that he deserved it. Not so here. It's true he'd been sentimental about a Jewish army and Jewish guns, and Jewish women carrying guns, but he'd never thought the Palestinians should be driven into the Jordan River. Living in the States, he had never discovered any advantage-any angle, any percentage-to his skepticism toward Israel, and still he had worked four straight full-time weeks formatting Excel sheets at Fidelity to earn the money to come here, and in addition he'd given up his apartment for an entire summer, meaning he'd have to stay with Toby in Somerville, or else, maybe, with Katie, though obviously he wasn't going to be the one to suggest it, he liked her apartment, but there was never any food in the refrigerator and she was careless with her things. In short, he'd gone out of his way to come here and see-for certain-just what his brethren were up to. If he was killed for being Jewish, well that would be one thing; but if someone killed him for supposedly supporting the Occupation, that would be totally unfair.

And then on his fourth day at Akhmed's, after another hummus-filled breakfast-Sam loved this stuff and if he was getting a little pudgy, so be it, it was a war zone-Akhmed announced that his uncle would be going into Jenin and could take Sam to the refugee camp, if Sam liked. If Sam liked! What a question. If he couldn't have tanks, he'd at least have the camp where the tanks and bulldozers had been. And he was eager to spend time with an older man. Akhmed's uncle had been educated in Cairo, was active in Fatah, had been briefly jailed, Akhmed told Sam, for organizing marches during the First Intifada. A man of the world, he'd be able to tell right away that Sam was Jewish, and Sam would welcome it. They would get it out in the open, and then come what may.

They set off after breakfast, Sam and the three brothers and their uncle, five men across, on a field trip to see what the Israelis had done to the Palestinians. The Palestinians called it the Jenin ma.s.sacre. The Portuguese writer Jose Saramago had compared it to Auschwitz. Sam had been to Auschwitz twice. Now he'd see Jenin Camp.

Sam imagined it would be a series of tents, or even just one enormous tent, but Jenin Camp turned out to be nothing more than a very crowded neighborhood, with concrete houses and kids running around in the street. Akhmed's uncle regaled them with stories as they walked. Like Akhmed's father, he was a short man with a mustache; but where Akhmed's father was quiet, thin, even a little sickly, Akhmed's uncle was plump, voluble, and his huge bushy eyebrows moved up and down expressively when he talked. They covered the mile to the camp in no time, in fact moving perhaps too quickly, and Sam sweated profusely into the jeans he wore to keep his knees away from the eyes of Muslim women. He was so unbearably hot, in fact, that he ducked into a little corner grocery and bought an ice cream sandwich. The others declined.

And then they climbed a few more steps and arrived suddenly at a clearing. The clearing had been, once, a city block of square concrete houses; now it was just a series of little rubble piles. Some of the houses, it's true, remained basically recognizable, where the front walls had been collapsed by the bulldozers, so they were like dollhouses you could open so as to watch the people inside. But there were no people of course, and some of the houses had simply crumpled. After sending in highly trained light infantry-mostly older men, reservists like Witold who would not necessarily or not immediately lose their tempers-against a highly motivated group of urban guerrillas armed with Kalashnikovs, some hand grenades, and a good number of homemade bombs, and losing more men in a week (twenty-three) than in any single battle since the IDF took Beirut in 1982, the Israelis, exhausted, demoralized, had sent in the helicopter guns.h.i.+ps and the armored bulldozers, and the tanks. The bulldozers climbed these streets and came to these buildings and took them down, some of them with people still inside.

Sam stood there, with his ice cream sandwich half eaten, wondering what to say. Oh, the Palestinians had asked for it, all right. In this camp they'd manufactured the explosives that they then strapped around the waists of young men, sending them to Israeli cities to kill people who were eating lunch. How disingenuous, how grotesque, to call this a ma.s.sacre-like the pundits who after September 11 argued that the Pentagon was not a legitimate military target. And the final body count, as things were settling down, looked to be twenty-three Israeli dead against perhaps sixty Palestinian dead. Considering the extreme imbalance in firepower, this was some distance away from a ma.s.sacre.

But standing here you also knew this: these were people's homes. The Israelis had to defend themselves; in the battle for the camp, especially in its first phase, they acted with significantly more discipline and restraint than any other armed force in the world (the American Rangers and Delta fighters in Mogadishu had lost eighteen men-and killed perhaps a thousand); once here, once given an order to take the camp, they did what they had to do. But these were people's homes. The Israelis had no business being in Jenin to begin with. The Israelis had no business being in Jenin to begin with.

Akhmed's uncle pointed now to one of the wrecked houses, collapsed, twisted, with mangled metal supports still protruding, and even some crushed furniture visible inside under the white wreckage of the walls. ”Here,” he said, pointing. ”I went here to dig. My friend said his father disappeared. I did not think so. People turned up every time-they had escaped or left town. At first they said four hundred dead! Now it is sixty, maybe seventy. So I did not think he was dead. But we began to dig and then suddenly there is a terrible smell. I have never smelled this.” He looked at Sam, whose ice cream sandwich, which he'd not touched since they reached the clearing, was melting into his palm. He was going to confront him now, Sam thought, he would tell the Jew what his people had done. But he did not. ”I was sick,” said Akhmed's uncle. ”I went off and was sick. My friend, I saw him, he was mad. He was crazy. 'My father,' he said. 'My father, my father.'” Fah-der, Fah-der, Akhmed's uncle p.r.o.nounced it. Akhmed's uncle p.r.o.nounced it. My fah-der. My fah-der. ”He was pulling him out piece by piece. 'My father. My father.' It was-” Akhmed's uncle stopped, shrugged, looked away from the group. ”He was pulling him out piece by piece. 'My father. My father.' It was-” Akhmed's uncle stopped, shrugged, looked away from the group.

What was it? It was horrible, that's what. It was just horrible. Sam's ice cream sandwich was gone now, all melted. Akhmed's uncle did not know that he was a Jew. Otherwise he would have said the obvious thing. The fearsome Israeli artillery against the besieged Palestinians, who had armed themselves with whatever they could find; the slow tightening of the noose around them; the final operation to liquidate a city block where the resistance was most fierce, and now, around them, lay in rubble: it was not Auschwitz, not at all. Jesus. It was the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. The liquidation and the resistance. Sam wiped his hand, covered in ice cream, on his jeans.

On his way to meet Roger and Lukas for Ping-Pong, Sam ducked into the Internet shop (it closed at six). There was an e-mail from Katie. Somehow the warmth that had suffused their correspondence since he'd arrived in Israel was leaking from it again. Sam was beginning to suspect that Katie suspected that he wasn't seeing any tanks. ”Take care,” she signed off now, a bit automatically, as if Sam was just in Watertown, or New Hamps.h.i.+re, that a man who produced e-mails the length of the e-mails Sam was producing in the many Internet places of Jenin had not, perhaps, really left the country at all.

He found himself mildly annoyed. She had stopped writing her s.e.x column a while ago and taken a job at the Globe; Globe; she wanted to be a real journalist, she said. Well and here was Sam in Jenin! So maybe there were no tanks, but still, but still. He continued to feel strongly for Katie-her voice on the phone, her messages on the phone, she'd once called him after a big dinner at a friend's house and left a ten-minute voice mail describing all the dishes she'd had, she was some kind of genius-but for the first time in a long time he felt a little off her side. she wanted to be a real journalist, she said. Well and here was Sam in Jenin! So maybe there were no tanks, but still, but still. He continued to feel strongly for Katie-her voice on the phone, her messages on the phone, she'd once called him after a big dinner at a friend's house and left a ten-minute voice mail describing all the dishes she'd had, she was some kind of genius-but for the first time in a long time he felt a little off her side.

The Ping-Pong was in the little backyard cafe that Roger had dubbed the gentlemen's club.

In the gentlemen's club, Lukas and Roger and Mohammed and Sam waited for the tanks. The other Swedes were out with Palestinian ambulances so that these would not be hara.s.sed by Israeli troops. (The IDF claimed that Palestinians carried weapons in them. The Palestinians denied it, waving their arms; the Swedes were appalled that such an accusation could be made. To Sam it seemed pretty obvious that Palestinians would carry weapons in their Red Cross ambulances-why not? But often they carried sick people too, since their public health system had broken down, and since Israelis occasionally shot them.) Some of the other Swedes, while Sam sat in the gentlemen's club, drinking orange Fanta, escorted farmers to their fields, and some other Swedes did other things. For his part Roger had already sketched out the oppressive cartography of Jenin and the surrounding areas; at this point he really needed to see some tanks, and people moving in the presence of tanks-so he, too, waited for them. He justified the waiting thusly: People were happy to see them; kids ran up in the street to play with the foreigners. ”Psycho-topographically?” Roger said. ”It a.s.sures them there's a world on the other side of the Israeli tanks. It's important.” Sam was happy to hear this, it's true; but if they'd been utterly indifferent to him, the Palestinians, that too would have been fine. He'd come to work some Sam things out, here.

And on this sixth day of his vigil in Jenin he played, for the sixth time, some Ping-Pong. He had never lost at Ping-Pong, and he saw no reason to lose now. After yesterday's brutal dispatching of poor Akhmed, his brother Mohammed had come, in the Arab way, to seek revenge-but Sam did not lose at Ping-Pong in Jenin. At the end of the game Mohammed threw his racket into the gra.s.s and cursed in Arabic.

Sweaty Sam retreated to the plastic table at which Lukas and Roger lounged. ”Will the tanks be here today?” he said.

”Let's hope not.” This was Roger. ”They shoot at people.”

”So you say.”

Imperceptibly, by degrees, but pretty definitely, his relations.h.i.+p with Roger had deteriorated.

Roger turned to Lukas. ”He doesn't believe me that the tanks shoot at people.”

”Perhaps they are in Palestine to get some sun?” Lukas said.

”I hope,” Roger concluded solemnly, ”that you never have to see a tank.”

”Yeah, OK,” said Sam. ”I'm not holding my breath.”

Sullen Sam wandered over to the pay phone in the corner of the yard. He'd tried Witold the past few days and never received any response. Perhaps the army had finally taken him, perhaps he was even now manning some tank, riding through the desert toward Jenin?

The answering machine picked up. ”Witold!” Sam cried. ”Hey, pick up, it's me, Sam! I'm calling from Jenin! I'm not your commanding officer!”

And then Witold did pick up. ”Where have you been?” he said. ”I've been worried about you. Your father would kill me if you got killed.”

”I didn't get killed. I've been calling but you don't pick up.”

”Oh, sorry. You know I screen the calls. So what's it like? What money do they use? Is there shooting? Is there Hamas? How much does a falafel cost?”

”It's fine,” said Sam. ”They use shekels. A falafel costs five shekels. It's pretty hot. There's no shooting, and you don't see Hamas. I haven't even seen a tank yet.”

”What do you want to see a tank for? Come back and I'll show you a dozen tanks.”

”That's typical Occupationist thinking, Witold. Of course you don't care about the tanks, because they're on your side. But in Jenin they're pretty important.”

”OK, OK. What do you want me to say to your parents?”

”Nothing. They know I'm here. I e-mailed.”

”E-mail? They have e-mail?”

”Yes. I'll write you one.”

”OK. Be careful. And forget about the tanks. Lots of tanks here.”

”Easy for you to say.”

Just then, as they were hanging up, excited Arabic voices came on the radio, which had been playing the news and music softly in the background. Someone turned it up. The men in the gentlemen's club all looked suddenly on fire, listening intently. The radio was practically shouting.

”What's going on?” Sam asked his friends. Each of them shrugged. Sam turned to Mohammed, who was sitting at the same plastic table. ”Mohammed, what's on the radio? What's going on?”

Mohammed spoke no English, supposedly. But Sam was fairly sure Mohammed knew what he was being asked, because he looked down at the ground and said nothing.

”AL-QUDS!” the radio blared. The Holy One. Jerusalem. the radio blared. The Holy One. Jerusalem.

Sam turned to a group of men at another of the plastic tables. One of them was smiling at Sam, as if he wanted to say something, share the good news. Sam smiled back, because he wanted to share the good news, too. The man held up his hand with the fingers spread out: five. And then he made a throat-slitting motion. And then held up his hand again. Five dead. In Jerusalem. Oh Jesus. That's why he was smiling. Some a.s.shole had blown himself up.

Sam's stomach turned over inside him, it was full of Fanta, and he felt sick. The smile left his lips and he held the man's gaze long enough that the man could know Sam didn't think this was such good news. Eventually the man looked away, embarra.s.sed.