Is she dead?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. He must get away, run, hide. Get to Jerusalem.
His foot hurts. He can feel it broken, bleeding, swelling inside his boot.
He can’t run. The streets are full. Everyone looks the other way. A bleeding brute is par for the course in the Hasan Arfa neighborhood.
The pain.
That worthless, whoring bitch.
How could he be so stupid? How could he let it slip like that?
Mahmud will be cross when he finds out. If he finds out. He won’t find out. There’s no need for him to find out, at least not before tomorrow.
After tomorrow he won’t care. He’ll be happy. He’ll be proud. He’ll call him son.
Tomorrow he’ll press a button and blow up the world as it is now.
Yes. Yes.
Tomorrow the Zionist Oppressors will tremble in dread. They will taste fear in their mouth. They will know there’s no one safe from Allah and His wrath, His messengers. His Fist.
Tomorrow he will fulfill his destiny.
He pats down his gray mackintosh. He has the white envelope the bitch brought for him. New identity papers. New passport. Money. Her gun and phone too.
Ezra Cohen will burn today instead of tomorrow, but tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, he will burn the Oppressors’ president and the American president. They will know the fear he’s known since before and since forever.
It hurts. His fucking foot hurts.
He shoves his hands inside his pockets.
Fuck. It’s not there. He left the hashish in the apartment. He also left his rosary beads, the wooden ones Mahmud sent him at the Sand Castle, the ones that have sustained him ever since.
He pulls on his face.
He can replace the hash, not the beads. Well, not those beads, anyway. He’s heading for Jerusalem. Rosary beads are for sale in every corner stall, but those beads were the link between Mahmud and him, between the boy who walked inside the Sand Castle and the giant who walked out from there.
Aaaarrg. That bitch. That fucking Jewish cunt.
His foot.
He shivers. He’s sweating. He feels the fever rising, his teeth clattering.
He must get to Jerusalem. He must find shelter. He must find hash and a rosary.
He limps to the bus station.