Hope and love grows in a place that lacks both – 01

“My brother-in-law Hashim has grown bold of late,” she said at last.

“Bold, but not stupid,” Emilia observed.

“No, not yet, but he is almost there. The fire of the fanatic burns in his eyes. There was a time when he deferred to me in all things, but he has grown to like playing the leader, and the whispers have begun to rankle. Soon he will do something very rash on his own, possibly to the detriment of us all.”

“You are The Jackal,” Emilia said. It was a statement, not a question.

“For a while longer, yes.”

“All this time we have been searching and laying traps for a man. This is how you have made so many escapes!” Emilia marveled.

The small woman laughed bitterly. She turned from the window and moved to a chair within Emilia’s limited field of vision.

“You are too intelligent for your own good.”

“You had to know I would realize it. Why keep me alive? It makes no sense.”

“That is what my brother-in-law thinks. That we should kill you, as a warning, but only after hours of rape and torture.”

Emilia blanched at the words and at the prospect. She was ready to die for her country, if need be, but she wanted very much to live.

“Fool. He is ignorant of your SOP, but I am not. Should you not report in, a host of agents would descend upon us, and being in Egypt would not stop them from killing us all. I planned to keep you alive and reporting until we could melt away, but he will have none of it. Idiot. He looks to God to rectify his stupidity.”

“You don’t think your God will see you through?” Emilia asked, regretting the words immediately.

“My God?” she practically spat. “Where was He when your military shot my father for nothing more than being on the wrong street? Where was He when my mother was burned to death in a rocket attack on Gaza? Where was He when my sisters and I found ourselves on the streets with no parents, no money and no food? God doesn’t live in the camps, any more than He sits on your side of the wire with a sniper rifle. He has turned His back on us and the evil we do to each other in His name.”

Emilia was taken aback. The depth of despair she heard in those words was heart-wrenching. The hopelessness behind them was even more frightening.

“If you know it’s evil, why do you do it?”

“Because it’s the only response to your terrorism that you recognize.”

“Terrorism! We aren’t the ones blowing ourselves up on buses filled with innocents!”

“No, you kill on a far grander scale.”

“You’re the terrorist here! Even now, you are plotting to set off a bomb in a nightclub. Don’t bother denying it. We will stop you and the animals that carry out your orders this time. The noose is already tightening around you! I hope he makes that mistake.”

The woman rose and whipped the blanket off Emilia’s body, and her hand came back across her body as she prepared to deliver a back handed blow, but then that hand hesitated. The woman undid the yasmak that covered her face and let it fall away.

Her eyes were large and expressive, showing the wild emotions she felt. Her face was strong, with a firm chin and high cheekbones. Her lips were soft and full, the kind that just seemed to be begging someone to kiss them. She was the most beautiful woman Emilia had ever encountered in her life. Stunning beauty, the kind you expected to see in fashion magazines, not in terrorist hideouts.

“Oh, so self-righteous. So sure of who is an animal and who isn’t. Shall I tell you about losing my virginity?” she asked in a deathly quiet voice as she sat on the bed.

“Would it shatter your rosy little world to know I was gang-raped by a group of settlers after a rocket attack killed one of them? Would it shame you to know IDF troops stood by and let it happen? How about if I told you I was thirteen at the time?”

Emilia didn’t want to believe it, but the honesty and pain in the words were beyond any doubt.

“No? How about if I told you of all the times I sold my body for a meal or fresh water? A place to sleep, where I didn’t have to worry about roving gangs of angry youths with time on their hands because they have no jobs or education? Should I tell you the depths of degradation I have seen?

The lengths to which a young mother will go to feed her child? The cruelty of men? How does that know no race, religion or creed? Perhaps you would like to hear about my brother, strapping explosives around his waist and going off to end his young life. What can you, who have lived among the oppressors, know about despair that is so deep it makes death seem preferable to life?”

The woman reached out and gently began to knead Emilia’s left breast. Emilia tried to twist in her bonds, but she couldn’t escape the soft, gentle hand.

“You have a beautiful body. How many meals did you miss growing up? Do you know what hunger is? Not the tiny thing most think of, but true hunger, that gnawing pain in your stomach that never goes away. I doubt it very much, my pretty Jews.”

“Stop,” Emilia gasped when the woman’s soft hand cupped her breast and gently squeezed, brushing her now hard nipple.

“This is how it feels to be helpless. At someone else’s mercy. How do you like it? While you are enjoying it, try to imagine it as a way of life, and not just a sudden inconvenience. This is how we live, from day to day and minute to minute, helpless and without even the hope of succor. Shall I go on?”

Emilia’s mind was racing. The juxtaposition was so stark, the soft ripples of pleasure making her body respond, while the dark words ripped at the very assumptions she had based her life on.

“This is just a small taste of what your people have done to mine, just the tip of the iceberg, and still you wonder why we fight.”

A loud banging noise, a car door slamming, sounded from somewhere and the woman was gone, flying to the window and out of Emilia’s field of vision. Emilia heard an engine startup and the tires of several vehicles squealing. The woman ran to the door and disappeared.

Emilia was alone for several minutes, but her bonds defeated her attempts to shake free. She stopped struggling as the woman came back into the room and sat heavily on the bed. Her beautiful face was drawn, and Emilia saw an armed figure pull the door closed.

“Well, you have been granted your wish,” she said in a voice drained of all emotion.

“What do you mean?” Emilia asked. She was trying hard to study the woman’s face, but her eyes were continually drawn to the gentle swelling of her breasts.

“How long have you been pursuing me?” she asked, apparently ignoring Emilia’s question.

“Personally?”

“Yes.”

“More than two years. I was put on your trail after you escaped the assassination attempt in France,” the tall woman said, marveling at her own honesty.

“I organized my first group of freedom-fighters after your government killed my husband, five… six years ago.”

“You’ve been active that long? We only became aware of you after the bombing of the Sea Breeze nightclub,” Emilia said.