Codename: Jerusalem
Short Story
It is dark save for the many moons that spray out of the mortars over the concrete dwellings. The low-folded hills are packed with human inhabitation and dusty streets that give stilted commerce by truck or by foot to the boroughs of starving families. This is the Gaza Strip in the Levant in 2023. And it is at war for its very soul. And the dead pile up as the assaults continue. This was live not Memorex.
She looked skyward and her face was refracted in the pale orange light that mixed together the clouds the roar upward from the cluttered buildings and the distant booms of the rockets’ red glare.
She was young but not especially pretty, tall but not particularly striking, and her olive skin and black hair were almost undisguisable from all the others. But what did come through was a look of determination coming from her jaw. She was looking for something on the street, something which was close and personal.
Down the yellow-crusted dirt avenue, she finally saw what she was searching for. Half a block away, between the twisted band and smoldering telephone wires, there were four young men knocking at every door to have the inhabitants wake up and join their masquerade. But there were no lights and therefore the ruffians had to wait to see movement before going on to the next one. She focused on one particular with white and black kūfiyya. She knew that this was her son who had just joined Hamas and was moving his way up the ranks. Three of them turned around and saw her but only her son knew who she was and tried to get the other two to rush away from her. She thought to herself: it is good that he recognizes that when al'umu comes there will be the devil to pay. Hamas may not worry about the Israeli Defense Force, but they do have their limits.
With the agility of the cat, she bounced over large chunks of concrete and slags of metal to grab him by first by the kūfiyya and then worming her away down to his right ear.
“I have been worried sick about you and looking for you everywhere.” It was the cry of a hysterical mother which has the same tone in every time zone. She raged in down until his head was level with her torso and proceeded to drag him away from the other two. Now you would think that having weapons, including the AK-47, the four of them would be more than a match for one single mother. But it was one of their mothers and even with the orange globes descending from the heavens, they were not going to question what was happening. Therefore, the three ruffians went back to pounding doors and rattling on the bars that closed in on the windows with frankincense and myrrh.
Then a boom rocked the next street over and gunfire responded.
She dragged into to a hollowed out-once-home - and in the remains of the kitchen, she began to ask him: “Why would Hamas do this? Jabal, why did you not tell your mother? Perhaps the Gaza Strip will earn down to the ground, but I could have escaped had you given me at least one that week.” There was fury beaming at him from her eyes. He could feel it through his skull.
At last, he disentangled himself from his mother and stood up. He was at least 15 centimeters taller than she was and he loomed down from the ruins of the kitchen. Through the window, the orange appeared sinking to oblivion. In the darkness, he replied: “There was to be absolute secrecy about this.”
He could see the shape of her face only dimly.
“I know now that several more highly ranked families got out for the massacre started.”
“I cannot do anything about this.”
“And what were you thinking? Is there no sermon?”
“We will meekly go when we have killed many hundreds of Israelis, that’s what. ”
“And you would think they would not take revenge? As they always have?”
“It is a good death. And that will be our fill.”
“Tell that Allah. You will get your chance very soon.”
“Hamas is full of heart. We are all going to die, the question is merely quick or slow. The Israelis have chunk by chunk removed land from our control and given it to their own settlers. This was inevitable.”
“So, you should have gone with your father to Kuwait, and learned the trade of drilling for oil.”
“The oil will not be so key to trade. Oil too is dying. The only thing that matters is the land. The land on which we can live on. We shall see Allah in this land.”
“And be terrorists for? If there is no hope, then why do you stay here? Why do let me stay here?”
“It is better to die on our land and to live on someone else’s. Do you think our father enjoys the privileges of citizenship? Hardly. Egypt will not take us. Saudi Arabia will not take us. We are foreigners in the Arab lands just as we are foreigners in the Levant.”
“This does not excuse what you in Hamas are doing. There is no victory for us in this place.”
“But there is a glorious pyre, and that is what I took.”
“If there is no hope for us, then you should move the two someplace else. First to Lebanon and then someplace far away where we can make a living, rather than, as you prefer, crash into dying.”
“I speak the only language which the Israelis understand.”
“This is the language of violence.”
“It is the language of men who are poor. I thought you would be proud of the decision that I made.”
The red-orange glow shot in, and he could see that his mother had bunched her shawl into her mouth and was gripping it with her teeth. He used his shoulders back and opened his palms. At this point, his mother ripped into his thobe in simply wept under the skylight.
She cried: “You must pull me from the Gaza strip.”
It was at this point that there was the pushing of the unhinged door. One could see that a thin Palestinian had been listening to the noise and had decided to investigate.
The intruder was blinded because outside their work rockets and orbs of light and the reflection off of the cement buildings. But inside, even with gaps ripped into the walls and ceiling, there was a dimness that lurked in every part. The intruder spun his head around and that showed al’umu and her son that he too was wearing a kūfiyya, but the son could see that it was all made and did not signify any signifier. The son could also see that in his left hand, he easily handled a knife. The confidence which he switched from up late down blade made the son sure that the intruder was at least a thief. The son stepped in his mother’s way and blocked be left as the intruder was shifting it from up blade to down blade. As he did so he whispered: “Hamas does not like your kind.”
With that, the intruder replied: “And what kind is that?”
“You handle the night quite well and you should be in defense under Hamas.”
“I have seen the Israelis. And they are going to sink their teeth into the sheep who are we here in Gaza.”
“Then they should pay the tithe of Allah.”
“If you want to make them pay that is your affair. I’m just swiping what I can.”
It is bad this moment that the intruder tried to grab a dirk that he could see on the small table near the window. The intruder managed to get it over his shoulder and was coming down. The son, while he was taller was not as quick and immediately tried to defend his face with his right arm. However, what all of the men failed to notice was that al’amu had dropped down and grabbed a frying pan with bits of rice claim to it and immediately jumped up and slammed the pan into the intruder’s face. This meant that while the intruder managed to get the better of the son he was blindsided in the confusion. The dirk dropped downwards and stock with the point forward and to the linoleum-tiled floor.
The intruder came to in just a few seconds, but the dirk was removed. And now it was al’umu who spoke:
“You and my son are going to get them into Israel, and then to someplace else. I don’t wish to huddle in my basement listening to bombs showering down.”
The intruder nodded. “Netanyahu is going to bring every bit of force. Since I’m departing it makes complete sense to me that others will as well.” While he was doing this, he was staring at the knife which he was willing when he came in but which al’umu had tightly clenched in her left hand. He the knife was blunt rather than sharp, but he remembered how forceful she had wielded the frypan and did not want to have another go round. Strength was not the intruder’s strength.
Gradually the mother backs off a bit to allow the intruder to stand up. Then she asked: “What is your name? I assume you have one.”
The intruder shepherd and then said: “They call me Farooq Ajam.”
The son then picked up his AK-47 from behind the sink where it had gone to in the meantime. Ajam suddenly startled not knowing that there was an assault rifle in play. Sweat came off Ajam’s brow.
They crept out of the back of the ruined house onto a dirt alley which was just barely wide enough for one to go out at a time. Ajam went out first, looking ways before he silently made strides towards the east. At every intersection, he looked both ways before going forward. The yellow and orange lights were still opening and closing in the night with the black clouds of ash and soot hanging over everything in every direction. Then they came to a street and one other time stealth past and hoped that no one saw them.
After several streets were passed like this the center opened up and crumbled into a warped concrete and steel that once was a mosque. They could all smell that some people were trying to hide out there. Al’umu looked down into the mosque and saw a small girl plastered against a wall that had fallen. The little girl was crushed and flattened to the point where her face was nearly a mass of sinew with known distinguishing features left at all. The orbs rained down from the sky.
Ajam quickly noticed a shiny bit of metal and walked out of his way to find out what it was. When he sat down a distal gradually emerged from the debris. Ajam pondered for a moment whether he could keep it but he saw that the AK-47 was leveled at him. He flipped the pistol with the handle facing out walked slowly and gave the pistol to the son, who in turn gave it to his mother who promptly had it in the folds of her garb.
Then it was back to the alleyway and the seeking that that entailed. They did this several times until they reached the wall that separated Israel from Hamas-controlled territory. Ajam tried to go to the left, but he was stopped by the son and directed to the right. It was clear to Ajam that there was a secret entrance known only to Hamas which he had not been privileged to.
Near the wall an unbearable stench of human refuse and human bodies could be detected by all of them. It was also clear that the Israelis had not dispatched bulldozers to clean up the mess. They were quiet because the orange orbs and rockets were fired much more sparingly than before and whole minutes were left black.
Then Ajam cited a hand that was waving back and forth, as if from a person who was lying down and trying to stand up. He turned around to the son and pointed to where he thought he saw it.
The son strode forth and when you got to the location he crouched down and plunged his knife repeatedly. The son then reached back and pointed to a place on the wall which seemed solid from looking at it. But when they got there, they could see that two of the plates that made up the wall were fabricated and were dummies. The son inched them apart and motioned them into the bleeding darkness.
It was just shy of pitch black, and they all needed to extend their arms out to feel where the walls were. This is because the making of this passage was done by pick and shovel and therefore it was craggy and waving.
Then they came up and saw the dozen bodies in various states all of undress. Looking around al’umu caught a glimpse of a female body that had drizzling white across her mouth. She turned away and looked for the best road to get out of the net next to the exit, this took a great deal of fumbling around and Ajam was worried that they would attract attention, just as the son had attracted Ajam’s attention.
They crawled fabric to fabric over the dead bodies encountering bullets that had worked their way off to the skin and glasses which were dislodged from the nose and the ears.
And then they all together stopped. And waited. In was the rats plowing in two the bodies to rip out the muscles and gorge their faces on flesh.
When they got over to solid ground, they all looked for people from the ground.
But they saw nothing. Just an eerie silence while the rockets and guns were silent. But then a barrage started up again and the son pointed in a direction a bit South of due West. By then the other two could see that there was a squad hunting the bodies and searching for the living ones. None of them knew if they had then been spotted by the orbs and for a moment a cold perspiration broke out on all three of them.
The mist came up out of all of the congenial mass of the heat and from the reign of the shells from the air.
From out of the club came a soldier with his weapon in hand. The son dropped the AK-47 on the ground. The soldier scanned the three of them with the flashlight on his shoulder.
He looked at all 3, each having their hands raised.
He was about to communicate with someone when Ajam suddenly dropped to his knees and kissed the soldier on the leg. He then uttered to the soldier: “I will sell this then out. I heard the woman call him ‘Jabal’ when I was listening. That means you are probably Jabal Abdallah, a wanted man. You can keep the silver; I just want to go free.”
The soldier then reached for his jacket and started to radio in, but he did not get the chance because as he did so the son flipped the AK-47 with the toe and nestled it and his arms.
And the son shot. And a spray came out of the muzzle.
And the son shot. And a spray came out of the muzzle.
The soldier went down.
The son thought: He should have stayed far back because he could hit me while I could not hit him.
Ajam could be seen sweating. It was clear to the son he was trying to think of a way out of his predicament.
“I was only trying to help. I distracted you and I felt you do the rest.” Ajam’s voice was pleading. “Please, I want another chance.”
“In the house of Hamas, there are no second chances.”
The face of Ajam tried to lead one less time.
And the son shot. And a spray came out of the muzzle.
The two then moved to the North and they hoped that they would descend into the darkness and escape.
It was morning light. The roaring clouds covered the plain and obscured the sun. But the sea rolled in across the beach. They had been walking for many hours, but they knew not to rest. Then to the North, they saw a group of people, but they could see clearly that they were not soldiers. The son tried to see if they could go South again but that way to was blocked by a different group of people. They headed East with the tradewinds.
They plunged directly into the dust and soot which at a distance were like mountains rupturing up through the desert but inside they were in the belly of the beast with winds swirling around them with only the smell of brackish air to guide them. But then in the distance, they heard a solemn liturgy - it was a ritual for the dead. Finally, they could see no more than six that were pushing a cart with the casket. It seemed that they were here to find a final resting place for the dead, to be incarcerated by the sand.
They were drawn to the six because the six were the only solid feature that missed the howling tempest. Then at more than 20 meters apart the escapees stood and stared at the black-shrouded rabbis. The rabbis, for their part, simply stood with be breeze throwing their long black suits and tallit to and fro. Finally, one of the rabbis spoke: “We are here to bury the dead. And give our last words there for the dead person, who in life was called Barabbas. What purpose have you come?” The voice was shaking, and all of the rabbis were rattling in their clothes with perspiration drenched from their hats. However, the dry send had robbed the Palestinians of any voice and they stood there for ages or minutes trying to dry the tears from their eyes.
But from the direction where the six had come, there was a mob built with Israeli settlers. When the mob came into sight, one of the stronger men pointed at the two Palestinians and screamed to get the two. Al’amu and the son tried to turn West, but their pursuers were far more agile because the Palestinians were drained from their long trek.
Rapidly they were disarmed, and the son was stripped of almost all his clothing. The wind died down and to of the Israelis found a large bow and placed it on the shoulders with the arms outstretched. Then they mounted him on a rock that stood out from be plain.
In the distance, the Israeli jets pummel the land plumbing new growths in the mountains of cloud.
They thought they heard the man gasp: “Why have you forsaken me?”
Finally, they took site of his face and blasted out his eyeballs reading do to run down sons cheeks and dry in the sun.
Al’amu rapidly held the pistol which she had hidden. “I am going to leave you.” Her face held a maniacal grin, and she fled West towards the beach. But she did not get very far because more settlers had come down with only one intent which was to beat the woman to utter death.
-
“And this is NBC Nightly News. The Israeli Defense Force, while being slow to mobilize, has now captured almost all the Hamas forces inside of Israel. Netanyahu has sealed off the Gaza Strip from electricity, water, and gas until such time as the war has ended while Hamas threatens to execute the hostages. This war is a code name for Jerusalem the city that to nations want to be their capital.”
There was no mention of individuals because the dead must take care of the dead.