44

THE MAIN JERUSALEM OFFICES of Israel Discount Bank were looted on the first day of the war by optimistic Jordanian mechanized cavalry who had seized the center of the city and then, with resistance melting by the minute, moved to seize the cash assets of the bank. This was patently a waste of energy; by the next day, the Islamic Liberation Force had declared the Israel shekel as dead a currency as the eroded Roman coinage Israeli children often found in gardens and excavations at building sites. Only one day before the invasion, the shekel had been trading at a strong three to the US dollar. The next afternoon it was empty of all value other than nostalgia. The Jordanian troopers did somewhat better with the bank’s small supply of foreign currency—like most Israeli bank branches, it did a brisk business in foreign exchange to serve the tourist trade—but there wasn’t that much: the branch’s dollars and euros were transferred every night to Bank Discount’s vaults in Tel Aviv. Frustrated, the Jordanians next blew the vault and pried open one by the one its several hundred safe deposit boxes. These yielded a small pile of jewelry and masses of documents and family memorabilia—photos, ancient passports, brittle papers which ascribed to their namesakes the rights of citizenship in Iraq, Austria, Germany, Poland, Romania, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, and other countries that over the years had voided the same documents. These litter the floor of the bank’s vault like yellowing snow.

In the bank’s second floor conference room, the Coordinating Council of the Islamic Liberation Force is holding its weekly meeting, Iranian Major General Niroomad presiding. Around the table sit Syrian Field Marshal Al-Asadi, Egyptian Field Marshal Haloumi, Jordanian Major General Said. (The Iraqi commander continues to boycott these meetings because Jordan will not permit the Iraqi flag to fly in Jerusalem.)

At the far end, wearing civilian clothes and a studied look of committed amity, is Aleksei Tupikov, blond, chunky, and vigorous, the Jerusalem station chief of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Tupikov is in fact charged with enforcing Moscow’s directives for the entirety of former Israel. In order to preserve the myth that Russia all along has not held the hand of the Iranians who coordinated the conquest, Tupikov is not addressed by his rank, which is major general. His staff of fifty controls an entire floor of the King David Hotel, now bizarrely renamed the King Hotel. The Hashemite royal family thought at first to call it after the current monarch’s father, but even decades in his grave King Hussein remains despised by the Egyptians, Syrians, and Iraqis for staying neutral in the Ramadan (Yom Kippur) War of 1973, thereby contributing to Israel’s victory. Thus the King Hotel, at least for a time, the word David simply blacked out in its arched entranceway.

“If I may?” Tupikov says in impeccable Arabic.

“Please, Mr. Tupikov,” General Niroomad says in his Arabic, which is clearly peccable. Though he takes daily lessons in the future tense of Arabic verbs, as far as the general is concerned the Arabs’ only future is as vassals to Iran. “In Persia a guest is always welcome to speak.”

General Said takes issue. “Is Jerusalem now Persian?”

“Dear distinguished general,” Niroomad says, with the unctuous delicacy of a higher life form being exaggeratingly respectful of a barbarian, “all Islam celebrates in the cleansing of Jerusalem. Let us not quibble.”

“Jerusalem is holy only to the Sunni,” Said retorts. “To the Shia, it means little. Why are the Shia even here?”

Tupikov shifts sufficiently in his chair to call attention to himself. “Who shares an enemy shares a friend,” he says. The Arab proverb carries within it an even more cynical truth: who ceases to share an enemy ceases to share a friend.

Field Marshal Haloumi, always pragmatic and very much aware that in numbers Egypt has provided the war effort with more soldiers and hardware than all the other countries combined, speaks quietly but with authority. His sweetly musical Egyptian Arabic is almost soothing. “My brothers, we have strayed from our topic: the precise delineation of zones of authority. War is chaos. Peace must be orderly.”

General Al-Asadi, whose Syrian death squads have all but wiped out the Palestinian officer class of Hezbollah that Damascus and Tehran have subsidized for twenty years, becomes agitated. “To achieve such orderly peace, brother, how many Hamas have you killed in Gaza?”

“We have dealt with the Palestinian rabble in the south as you have in the north,” General Haloumi replies calmly. “Unlike our Persian brothers, we of Egypt do not accept theocratic rule. The Palestinians are poisoned with godliness. In the name of their God—”

General Niroomad straightens his back. “Their God? Is Allah not God of all?” Though the good general does not have a pious bone in his body, the line from the political leadership in Homs, where the mullahs preside, is paramount: Muslim unity must be emphasized, never Arab unity, otherwise the desert rats will throw off the Persian leadership that united them in victory. As he is aware, Iranian dominance becomes more tenuous every day. “Let us hear from General Ali, who is inscribed for the floor.” Scheduled is the word he would prefer, but he cannot quite recall it. The Arabic language, he thinks, is as difficult as its speakers.

General Said stands, a figure straight as the saber at his side. His uniform, perfectly pressed, is the best in the room, designed and fitted by the same firm of Savile Row tailors who have supplied the British general staff for decades. In matters sartorial, the Jordanian command class follows the lead of their king, a great fan of the film Lawrence of Arabia, in which the king’s great-grandfather is portrayed by Alec Guinness, whose robes—on celluloid at least—are richly ornamented and spotless, spun of the most delicate English tropical wool.

“Brothers, I have the honor to bring you greetings from his royal highness the King of Jordan, who wishes only the blessings of most merciful Allah upon your heads and upon those of your children and your children’s children.”

General Niroomad is so tired of this. Must one hold a gun to an Arab’s head to get him to come to the point? Besides, Russian military intelligence has already informed Niroomad of what Ali is about to say.

“By His Majesty’s decree,” General Said intones, “all of Tel Aviv and its dependencies rightfully now revert to Jordanian rule.”

“Just at the moment,” Niroomad says drily, “Tel Aviv has reverted to the stench of Jews.”

General Said pretends not to recognize the Persian’s tone. “This, matter,” he says, “will be corrected soon enough.”

General Niroomad offers a sigh worthy of a particularly untalented drama student. “Millions of Jews,” he says, sick at the thought but relieved that someone else actually wishes to do this hateful work. “Even the great Hitler did not dream of snuffing out the lives of so many in one day.”