50

 

Beersheba, Israel

Dr. Thompson rarely got a chance to get out of the refugee camps when she was on the road. So when she had breaks of an hour or so—a real luxury—she took advantage of them.

It had been an especially long morning already at one of the makeshift Beersheba refugee camps already overflowing with new families from Jordan and elsewhere while the peace talks were underway.

She needed the break. Some of the families told her they had no access whatsoever to any healthcare. She was the first doctor many of them had seen in months, if not years. The list of maladies was long and troubling. Elizabeth did her best to triage and move on, but it wasn’t easy.

It amazed her that governments did not realize that, when they made promises, ordinary people believed them and acted on those promises. So when powers like the United States and Israel said they would create a new Palestinian state carved out of the wilderness, people actually started to wander across and into that wilderness haven.

This was hardly surprising. Once, in the early years of a nascent American government confined to just the states of the Eastern seaboard of the continental United States, a government had offered plots of land to any settlers willing to cross the wilderness lands in covered wagons.

A flood of people responded and settled nearly every corner of the US territories. Promises made—and occasionally kept—were a powerful thing.

Today, she’d decided to walk into the areas of construction underway in the new settlements rising like magic near Beersheba.

She’d heard about a new coffee shop that served Arabic coffee flavored with mocha. That had been all she’d been able to think about on her walk to the shop.

The aroma was nearly overwhelming as she ordered her mocha coffee. Then she began to look for a seat within the small shop.

The place was completely full. There wasn’t a single open table to be found. Elizabeth grabbed her coffee and was beginning to despair when a quiet voice called to her.

“Please,” said an older gentleman seated at a two-person table off to the side of the shop. “You are welcome to sit here with me.”

“Are you sure?” Elizabeth asked.

“Certainly,” said the older man. “You look like you could use the break, and that cup of coffee in your hands is calling out to you.”

“Is it that obvious?” Elizabeth pulled the chair back from the small table and sat down. She was grateful for the offer and the company.

“You’re holding on to that cup like it contains the water of life.” The man laughed. “So yes, it’s that obvious.”

Elizabeth took a long, careful sip of the mocha coffee. It was everything she’d heard about and more. She could feel her troubles easing, if only for a moment. She eyed the stranger who’d given her a seat at his table. There was something about him that gave her comfort. He had the look of a genuinely nice man.

“Wow, that’s a good cup of coffee,” Elizabeth said.

The man scanned the crowded shop. “Yes, and it looks like the word is getting around. This is the third time I’ve been here recently, and it gets busier every time.”

“My first time,” Elizabeth said. “But I’ve heard so many good things.”

“So what brings you here?”

Elizabeth reached inside the folds of her jacket and pulled out her badge. She unclipped the badge from the chain and handed it across the table so the man could read the ID. “I’m here with World Without Borders, working with the new refugee camps.”

The man nodded. “World Without Borders does great work.” He handed the badge back to her. “But you’re not just with them, Dr. Thompson. You run the organization. You started it. I’ve heard of you. You’re famous.”

Elizabeth blushed. She didn’t think of herself that way. In fact, she rarely read newspapers or watched television. When camera crews showed up at a refugee camp or at a hospital and interviewed her, she was always gracious. She answered their questions directly, though always modestly. She had no idea what any of them did with their interviews or where the stories were seen.

“Oh, not really…”

“Dr. Thompson, that’s not true. I just read about you in Ha’aretz. They speculated that you might be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize because of your work in the refugee camps. The story was on the front page. It was about the hospital being built in Beersheba for the new Palestinian refugees streaming into the country. There was a picture—of you—on the front page.”

“I didn’t see that story,” Elizabeth said. “I rarely pay attention to those sorts of things. I just do my work. Reporters show up occasionally. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“And the BBC ran a big story about the Beersheba camps as well. There was a long section about you and the work of World Without Borders there. Like I said…”

“Really, I never pay attention to those things.” She laughed. “I couldn’t even tell you when the BBC interviewed me, or why. It’s not something I care about all that much. The work is what matters, and there is lots and lots of work to be done in the camps.”

The man laughed. “I’m with you, Dr. Thompson. The work is the thing. Pay attention to that, and other things fall in to line. So what does your organization think of the planned settlements at Beersheba? Is there hope? Can it survive?”

“Yes, there is most definitely hope,” Elizabeth said, glad to be given the opportunity to move away from media attention about her and the work that her organization did. “It’s chaotic right now. There is a lot of confusion. Families don’t know where to turn for basic information, so they camp outside the US military headquarters and wait for scraps of information.”

“I’ve heard that,” the man said. “But the American soldiers are generally gracious. They try to answer questions patiently and give out information that they have.”

“They do,” Elizabeth agreed. “And I’ve seen this thing before, in places where conflict and chaos are turning the land upside down. Soldiers get a bad rap. But they are almost always patient, kind, and giving toward ordinary people and families.”

“I couldn’t agree more. As ironic as this is, soldiers can be extraordinary ambassadors and great peacekeepers.”

“The problem, though, is that there’s no real, central authority in Beersheba right now.” Elizabeth sighed. “The American soldiers are doing their best, but this isn’t their country. They don’t speak for the Israeli government. And they certainly can’t do much for the Palestinian refugees who are arriving here in droves. These people are without a country.”

“A good point. It’s difficult when a person has no homeland to serve as a beacon. They have nowhere to turn to for authority, meaning, guidance…”

“Or even basic information,” Elizabeth said. “I spend a great deal of my time each day just answering simple questions from people. Where can I get aspirin? Where can I go to have my baby, and what should I do to get ready for that day? If I fall into an open fire and burn myself, where can I go to get bandages? These are simple things. But it can be extraordinarily frustrating when it’s hard to get easy answers to questions like this.”

“And of course, people also make do with incomplete information,” the man added. “As a result, information is passed along by word of mouth because there’s no other way to receive it.”

“Absolutely. For instance, the leaders of every single Palestinian refugee camp that my organization serves are telling me that they’re convinced the Americans have an ulterior motive for building in Beersheba. They don’t believe, for a moment, that there will be an independent homeland, or that they’ll truly be granted a capital.”

“So what do they believe?”

“They believe that both the Americans and Israelis have another purpose in making Beersheba important. They point to the massive oil refinery that’s been built east of the city as proof.”

“Proof of what?” asked the man.

“Proof that the construction in and around Beersheba is mostly about making the city a nexus for refining and transporting oil and gas to world markets. Israelis build and settle, they will tell you. And then they occupy. And they wouldn’t build a massive, world-class oil-refining center in the desert and then simply walk away from that. The leaders of the Palestinian refugee camps believe that they’re just unwitting pawns in some bigger game that they aren’t able to play in. They believe it’s mostly about oil—and incredible wealth.”

Abe Zeffren leaned forward in his chair ever so slightly. “That’s an astute observation, Dr. Thompson. Truly. There may be something to that thought. It makes you wonder what, exactly, is behind much of this activity we see with our own eyes. I’ve seen interesting developments myself recently in my travels.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“I work for the Ministry of Infrastructures, in Jerusalem,” Abe said. “I’ve been out here a half-dozen times to check on developments. And that oil-refining complex you mentioned is perhaps the finest, most expensive in the world, with state-of-the-art technology.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And it’s being paired, even as we sit here, with a revolutionary new technology that’s allegedly capable of heating shale and rock below the surface, allowing vast stores of trapped oil to rise to the surface, where it can be siphoned and sent down here to this refinery near Beersheba.”

“You said allegedly?”

“I haven’t seen it for myself,” Abe said. “I’ve only had it described to me. The technology belongs to one of the largest private companies in the world.”

“But you said you work for Israel’s government?”

“I’m just a bureaucrat.” Abe smiled. “This company isn’t required to tell me about their technology or their ultimate aims here in Israel and elsewhere in the region. There is only so much I can know or ask about.”

She frowned slightly. “I see. That seems unfortunate. I would think it might be in everyone’s best interests to have their government know, and communicate, things of this sort.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Abe said. “But I’m not in charge. I just do my job, ask questions when I can, and provide a service to those who actually make some of those decisions.”

“What’s that phrase everyone in government always uses?”

“‘Above my pay grade’? That one?”

“That’s the one.” She laughed.

“It’s an apt phrase and describes my working life perfectly,” Abe said. “But I have to say that your speculation about what the refugee camp leaders think has given me new inspiration today and a thread or two that I intend to follow.”

Elizabeth smiled broadly. She couldn’t help herself. She liked this man. He seemed so…nice.

“Well, good for you,” she said. “I’m glad we connected, and that something I said helped you with your own work. I also wanted to thank you for generously offering me a seat at your table in this crowded shop. It’s not often that you get a chance to benefit from the kindness of strangers.”

“It is a curious world, Dr. Thompson, full of random encounters and disconnected circumstances,” he answered. “We are all strangers only because we choose to be so.”