Avraham Azrieli - The Jerusalem Assassin

“Wait a minute! Who are you?”

“Our leader is Abu Yusef, the future president of Palestine. We will continue our struggle until Palestine is free again! Long live Palestine!”

The TV screen again filled with red, focusing on a stained sheet over a dead body.

Prince Abusalim felt his knees go soft. This was the reason his father had ordered him into seclusion last night! He kneeled and bowed, his forehead to the carpet. He remained in this position until the plane landed near Mecca.

Two Mercedes sedans waited at the end of the runway. Again the sheik and the hajj went in the first, Prince Abusalim in the second. The sun was high already, the yellow desert surrounded by dark peaks-in the east, Jabel Ajyad and Jabel Qubays, in the northeast, Jabel Hira, where Mohammed had once found seclusion. They drove down the Al-Mudda’ah Avenue, which was crowded with pilgrims. Ancient Mecca had been the oasis on the caravan route connecting the Mediterranean coast with Arabia, Africa, and Asia. But since Mohammed had returned here in 630 AD, it had become a city of religious fervor. How he missed Paris! But not the bloody sights from Abu Yusef’s synagogue attack. What unfortunate timing, just as his father was going to forgive him!

Prince Abusalim knew he must convince his father that the attack was part of a holy jihad. The Jews had brought it upon themselves. Unlike Arafat, Abu Yusef had the stomach to continue fighting. One day the Jews would tire of death and sorrow, leave the Middle East to its rightful Arab owners, and go to America or Canada, where many of them already lived safely among the Christians. And Abu Yusef would rule Palestine, with the power to appoint the new mufti of Jerusalem.

Confident in his grand plan, Prince Abusalim was ready to grovel before his father in this holy place and put on a show of solemn penitence-a small price to pay for the glory awaiting him down the road.

The cars stopped at the gates to the vast courtyard of the el-Harem Mosque. They were greeted by a group of az-Zubayr tribesmen, who led the way across the huge courtyard, through the noise and dust, toward the black Ka’abah.

The sheik stood in front of the giant singed cube. He looked up at the holiest shrine of Islam-the building that Ibrahim and Ishmael, his son by Hagar, had built together as a replica of God’s house in heaven.

Hajj Vahabh Ibn Saroah beckoned Prince Abusalim to his father’s side. The prince knelt in the dust. He prepared to bow for prayers, but paused. Something was wrong.

The sheik nodded at the hajj, closed his eyes, and began whispering verses from the Koran.

The hajj drew his crooked blade. “Extend your hand forward, thief!”

Prince Abusalim froze with fear. He could not comprehend this terrible turn of events. He had expected his father to demand that he prayed, maybe even crawled in the dust to beg forgiveness. But to suffer the fate of a common thief? “Father! I beg you!”

“You stole. You pay.” Hajj Vahabh Ibn Saroah raised his shabriya, its blade pointing to the sky. “Your right hand!”

“ No!” Prince Abusalim tried to rise, but two of the men held him down. “I need my hand,” he cried. “Father! Don’t do this to me!”

The only response from the sheik was more verses, recited in a louder voice.

The hajj reached down, grabbed Prince Abusalim’s wrist, and pulled it forward, holding it tightly.

The prince could barely breathe. He imagined his severed hand dropping to the yellow sand, twitching with remnants of life. “Father! No!”

The sheik’s voice grew even louder, the verses uttered in quick succession, drowning out his son’s pleas.

The sun reflected in the crooked blade as Prince Abusalim felt his wrist pulled forcefully, extended before him, his open palm facing up, pale as a fearful face.

*

Tanya stood at the window while a group of Mossad agents searched the apartment on Rue Buffault. Elie and his two agents must have departed in a hurry, leaving behind food, towels, linen, and a few audio books. The street below was quiet. The synagogue forecourt had been cleaned up, but orange tape still blocked access to the building. A police car parked at the curb with two officers inside.

Tanya touched her forehead, still tender. She had searched her memory repeatedly, but could not remember any suspicious person or unusual behavior prior to the explosions. She had not even seen the grenades fly, because at that moment she was reaching down into a bag of candy. The darkness had lifted only when she woke up in the hospital.

“We’re done here,” one of her agents said. He pointed to the dismantled box of the computer. “They ripped out the hard drive.”

“Pack up everything. I want hair samples, gun residue, prints, anything you can find.”

She was already in the hallway when another agent stopped her. He held up an empty pill bottle. “Found it behind the bed. Pain killers. No patient’s name, though. It’s from a pharmacy near Gare du Nord.”

“ Go see the pharmacist,” Tanya said. “Samples go to doctors who do regular business at the shop. This could be our lead.”

*

The hajj sliced downward with the crooked blade. It sank into the flesh of the open palm. Prince Abusalim flinched and let out a cry. The hajj pulled the shabriya sideways, carving the flesh, and let go of the prince’s wrist. He wiped the blade on his galabiya and slid it into the sheath.

Prince Abusalim pressed his hands together and fell forward, his face in the sand. His hand was on fire, wet with blood, but the pain was mixed with relief. His father could have ordered the hand severed completely, as done to ordinary thieves, but instead his palm was cut symbolically, the wrist unharmed, the fingers working normally.

Sheik az-Zubayr knelt in the sand and bowed before Allah. The men around them did the same, and for a few moments the small group was an island of stillness in the midst of a bustling sea of pilgrims.

The hajj helped Sheik az-Zubayr to his feet. Prince Abusalim remained bowed, more out of feebleness than of devoutness. The kafiya fell from his head, and his unkempt black hair turned gray from the dust. One of the men bandaged the wound while the prince fought back tears of pain and relief.

*

In Zurich, the pastor spoke about gratitude for God’s gift of life on earth. The old church of the Fraumunster, with its towering stained-glass windows, glowed on sunny days, and this Sunday was especially glorious. Lemmy sat in the front row with his wife, son, and father-in-law. The church was almost full, though most were tourists. Every Zurich guidebook recommended the Fraumunster for its Chagall windows, whose incredibly vivid biblical figures dominated the sanctuary in bold colors. Lemmy was tickled by the irony-a Christian place of worship, glorified by the creations of a Jewish artist.

He felt Klaus Junior squeeze his hand as they stood to sing a hymn. Looking up at the impossibly high window depicting Jesus, he wondered what Chagall had been thinking as he painted the man whose life and death had inspired two millennia of Christian anti-Semitism, of bloody crusades, riotous burnings at the stake, a torturous inquisition, deadly pogroms, and a Holocaust perpetrated by Nazis bearing a swastika-a version of Christ’s cross with twisted tips. Illuminated by the unseasonal sun, the face of Jesus glowed as if it had an internal source of energy. The primary colors signaled joy, but on closer inspection Lemmy saw no happiness in the face of Chagall’s Jesus. His expression was severe, almost angry, glaring down at the full church, as if the hymned prayers were nothing but distasteful banter. Had this been Chagall’s private joke-to accept the hefty fee raised by Armande Hoffgeitz and his colleagues back in the sixties for the beautification of the ancient church, only to deliver a towering portrait of their savior as an angry Jew, his face expressing revulsion at their misuse of his name to justify mass murders of his kin?