20

NAHALAL, ISRAEL

NATALIE FOLLOWED HER ACROSS the shadowed garden and through a pair of French doors that led into the sitting room of the bungalow. It was sparsely furnished, more office than home, and upon its whitewashed walls hung several outsize black-and-white photographs of Palestinian suffering—the long dusty walk into exile, the wretched camps, the weathered faces of the old ones dreaming of paradise lost.

“This is where we would have trained you,” explained Dina. “This is where we would have turned you into one of them.”

“Where are my things?”

“Upstairs.” Then Dina added, “In your room.”

More photos lined the staircase and on the bedside table of a tidy little room rested a volume of verse by Mahmoud Darwish, the semi-official poet of Palestinian nationalism. Natalie’s suitcase lay at the foot of the bed, empty.

“We took the liberty of unpacking for you,” explained Dina.

“I guess no one ever turns him down.”

“You’re the first.”

Natalie watched her limp across the room and open the top drawer of a wicker dresser.

You see, Natalie, Dina is grieving, too. And she is very serious about her work . . .

“What happened?” asked Natalie quietly.

“You said no, and now you’re leaving.”

“To your leg.”

“It’s not important.”

“It is to me.”

“Because you’re a doctor?” Dina removed a handful of clothing from the drawer and placed it in the suitcase. “I am an employee of the secret intelligence service of the State of Israel. You don’t get to know what happened to my leg. You aren’t allowed to know. It’s classified. I’m classified.”

Natalie sat on the edge of the bed while Dina removed the rest of the clothing from the dresser.

“It was a bombing,” said Dina finally. “Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv. The Number Five bus.” She closed the dresser drawer with more force than necessary. “Do you know this attack?”

Natalie nodded. The date was October 1994, long before she and her family had moved to Israel, but she had seen the small gray memorial at the base of a chinaberry tree along the pavement and, by chance, had once eaten in the quaint café directly adjacent.

“Were you on the bus?”

“No. I was standing on the pavement. But my mother and two of my sisters were. And I saw him before the bomb exploded.”

“Who?”

“Abdel Rahim al-Souwi,” Dina replied, as though reading the name from one of her thick files. “He was sitting on the left side behind the driver. There was a bag at his feet. It contained twenty kilos of military-grade TNT and bolts and nails soaked in rat poison. It was built by Yahya Ayyash, the one they called the Engineer. It was one of his best, or so he said. I didn’t know that then, of course. I didn’t know anything. I was just a girl. I was innocent.”

“And when the bomb exploded?”

“The bus rose several feet into the air and then crashed to the street again. I was knocked to the ground. I could see people screaming all around me, but I couldn’t hear anything—the blast wave had damaged my eardrums. I noticed a human leg lying next to me. I assumed it was mine, but then I saw that both my legs were still attached. The blood and the smell of burning flesh sickened the first police officers who arrived on the scene. There were limbs in the cafés and strips of flesh hanging from the trees. Blood dripped on me as I lay helpless on the pavement. It rained blood that morning on Dizengoff Street.”

“And your mother and sisters?”

“They were killed instantly. I watched while the rabbis collected their remains with tweezers and placed them in plastic bags. That’s what we buried. Scraps. Remnants.”

Natalie said nothing, for there was nothing to say.

“And so you will forgive me,” Dina continued after a moment, “if I find your behavior today puzzling. We don’t do this because we want to. We do it because we have to. We do it because we have no other choice. It’s the only way we’re going to survive in this land.”

“I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”

“Too bad,” said Dina, “because you’re perfect. And, yes,” she added, “I would do anything to be in your place right now. I’ve listened to them, I’ve watched them, I’ve interrogated them. I know more about them than they know about themselves. But I’ve never been in the room with them when they plot and plan. It would be like being in the eye of a storm. I’d give anything for that one chance.”

“You would go to Syria?”

“In an instant.”

“What about your life? Would you give up your life for that chance?”

“We don’t do suicide missions. We’re not like them.”

“But you can’t guarantee I’ll be safe.”

“The only thing I can guarantee,” said Dina pointedly, “is that Saladin is planning more attacks, and that more innocent people are going to die.”

She dropped the last of the clothing into the suitcase and handed Natalie a flat, rectangular gift box. The lid was embossed with Arabic writing.

“A going-away present?”

“A tool to help with your transformation. Open it.”

Natalie hesitantly removed the lid. Inside was a swath of silk, royal blue, about one meter by one meter. After a moment she realized it was a hijab.

“Arab clothing is very effective at altering appearances,” explained Dina. “I’ll show you.” She took the hijab from Natalie’s grasp, folded it into a triangle, and swiftly wrapped it around her own head and neck. “What do I look like?”

“Like an Ashkenazi girl wearing a Muslim headscarf.”

Frowning, Dina removed the hijab and offered it to Natalie. “Now you.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Let me help you.”

Before Natalie could move away, the triangle of royal blue had been placed over her hair. Dina gathered the fabric beneath Natalie’s chin and secured it with a safety pin. Then she took the two loose ends of fabric, one slightly longer than the other, and tied them at the base of Natalie’s neck.

“There,” said Dina, making a few final adjustments. “See for yourself.”

Above the dresser hung an oval-shaped mirror. Natalie stared at her reflection for a long moment, entranced. At last, she asked, “What’s my name?”

“Natalie,” answered Dina. “Your name is Natalie.”

“No,” she said, staring at the veiled woman in the looking glass. “Not my name. Her name.”

“Her name,” said Dina, “is Leila.”

“Leila,” she repeated. “Leila . . .”

Leaving Nahalal, Dina noticed for the first time that Natalie was beautiful. Earlier, in Jerusalem and at lunch with the others, there had been no time for such an observation. Natalie was merely a target then. Natalie was a means to an end, and the end was Saladin. But now, alone with her in the car again, with the late-afternoon light golden and the warm air rushing through the open windows, Dina was free to contemplate Natalie at her leisure. The line of her jaw, the rich brown eyes, the long slender nose, the small upturned breasts, the bones of her delicate wrists and hands—hands that could save a life, thought Dina, or repair a leg ripped apart by a terrorist’s bomb. Natalie’s beauty was not the sort to turn heads or stop traffic. It was intelligent, dignified, pious even. It could be concealed, downgraded. And perhaps, thought Dina coldly, it could be used.

Not for the first time, she wondered why it was that Natalie was unmarried and without meaningful male attachment. The Office vetters had found nothing to suggest she was unsuited for work as an undercover field operative. She had no vices other than a taste for white wine, and no physical or emotional maladies except insomnia, which was brought on by the irregularity of her hours. Dina suffered the same affliction, though for different reasons. At night, when sleep finally claimed her, she saw blood dripping from chinaberry trees, and her mother, reassembled from her torn remnants, patched and sewn, calling to her from the open doorway of the Number 5 bus. And she saw Abdel Rahim al-Souwi, a bag at his feet, smiling to her from his seat behind the driver. It was one of his best, or so he said . . . Yes, thought Dina again, she would give anything to be in Natalie’s place.

Natalie had taken nothing from the bungalow except for the hijab, which was wrapped around her neck like a scarf. She was gazing at the sun, low over Mount Carmel, and listening intently to the news on the radio. There had been another stabbing, another fatality, this time in the Roman ruins at Caesarea. The perpetrator was an Israeli Arab from a village located inside the heavily Palestinian corner of the country known as the Triangle. He would be receiving no urgent care from the doctors at Hadassah; an Israeli soldier had shot him dead. In Ramallah and Jericho there was jubilation. Another martyr, another dead Jew. God is great. Soon Palestine will be free again.

Ten miles south of Caesarea was Netanya. New apartment towers, white and balconied, rose from the dunes and cliff tops along the edge of the Mediterranean, conferring upon the city an outward air of Rivieran opulence. The interior quarters, however, retained the khaki Bauhaus grit of pioneer Israel. Dina found a space on the street outside the Park Hotel, where a Hamas suicide bomber murdered thirty people during Passover in 2002, and walked with Natalie to Independence Square. A squadron of young boys played a game of tag around the fountain, watched over by women in ankle-length skirts and headscarves. The women, like the children, were speaking French. So were the habitués of the cafés along the edge of the esplanade. Usually, they were overrun in late afternoon, but now, in the fading tawny light, there were plenty of tables to be had. Soldiers and police kept watch. The fear, thought Dina, was palpable.

“Do you see them?”

“There,” replied Natalie, pointing across the square. “They’re at their usual table at Chez Claude.” It was one of several new establishments that catered to Netanya’s growing French-Jewish community. “Would you like to meet them? They’re really quite lovely.”

“You go. I’ll wait here.”

Dina sat on a bench at the edge of the fountain and watched Natalie moving across the esplanade, the ends of the blue hijab dancing like pennants against her white blouse. Blue and white, observed Dina. How wonderfully Israeli. Unconsciously, she rubbed her damaged leg. It pained her at the damnedest times—when she was tired, when she was under stress, or, she thought, watching Natalie, when she regretted her behavior.

Natalie walked a straight line to the café. Her father, lean, gray, and very dark from the sea and the sun, looked up first, surprised to see his daughter coming toward him across the paving stones of the square, dressed as an Israeli flag. He placed a hand on his wife’s arm and nodded in Natalie’s direction, and a smile spread over the old woman’s noble face. It was Natalie’s face, thought Dina, Natalie in thirty years. Would Israel survive another thirty years? Would Natalie?

Natalie swerved from her path, but only to avoid a child, a girl of seven or eight, chasing down a stray ball. Then she kissed her parents in the French fashion, on each cheek, and sat down in one of the two empty chairs. It was the chair that, perhaps not coincidentally, presented Dina with her back. Dina watched the older woman’s face. Her smile evaporated as Natalie recited the words Gabriel had composed for her. I’m going to be away for a while. It’s important you not try to contact me. If anyone asks, say I’m doing some important research and can’t be disturbed. No, I can’t tell you what it’s about, but someone from the government will be coming around to check on you. Yes, I’ll be safe.

The stray ball was now bounding toward Dina. She captured it beneath her foot and with a flick of her ankle sent it back toward the girl of seven or eight, a small act of kindness that sent a stab of pain down her leg. She ignored it, for Natalie was again kissing the cheeks of her parents, this time in farewell. As she crossed the square, the setting sun on her face, the blue scarf fluttering in the breeze, a single tear streaked her face. Natalie was beautiful, observed Dina, even when she was crying. She rose and followed her back to the car, which was parked outside the crumbling hotel where thirty had died on a sacred night. It’s what we do, Dina told herself as she shoved the key into the ignition. It’s who we are. It’s the only way we are going to survive in this land. It is our punishment for having survived.