Hesh Kestin - The Siege of Tel Aviv

Abed is like the brown boots. A Bedouin, even one who hides his own IDF uniform, should have turned him in for bounty—that was the rap on Bedouin. Why is this one different? Who was to say as soon he got Cobi out of the cave he wouldn’t shoot him in the back? But he didn’t. Cobi thinks: good Bedouin, bad Bedouin. Just like Jews.

Meanwhile, the captain searches the Cadillac.

“An Egyptian officer’s uniform,” he says, with no hint of surprise. “Which one of you belongs to it?”

Alex wiggles a finger at the top of his head: permission to speak? She does not wish want to get hit in the face with a rifle butt. Such a pretty face when it is all fixed up.

The lieutenant nods.

“Liberated from the enemy, captain.”

“Sure.”

It is clear to all three what the captain is thinking: a decision must be made. In Ghetto Tel Aviv there is no room for prisoners, nor anything to feed them. Every calorie that goes to them will not be available to his soldiers. And it is growing light. A reconnaissance patrol on open ground in full daylight might be picked off at any moment. Enemy helicopters are everywhere.

The two soldiers return.

One of them, an Ethiopian whose European face seems to have been soaked in coffee, spits to his side. “Clear to the rear,” he announces. “But that’s just a hundred meters. For all we know they could be in front of us.”

The squatting soldier stands. He knows this much: either they go back with prisoners or they go back without them, but they need to go back now. As though magnetized, the others in the squad take a few steps closer to the three, Alex and Cobi standing, Abed still on the ground.

The captain approaches, peering closely at Alex, whose eyes still bear traces of makeup, his lips a bit too plummy. “Why do you look like a girl?”

“My late mother asked the same question,” Alex says. The joke falls flat. “Look, under the seat is my IDF ID.”

“Easily forged,” the captain says. “Is that eye shadow?”

“Liner,” Alex says. “Estée Lauder.”

“But you’re not a girl.”

Cobi can take no more of this. If something doesn’t happen, they are all going to be executed by their own forces two kilometers from Tel Aviv. “He’s not a girl—he’s a fucking cross-dresser, and a damn fine one at that. Look, Captain, isn’t there any way to prove who we are?”

“You mean prove you’re not Hebrew-speaking enemy agents attempting to cross into Tel Aviv? Let me think. No, I don’t reckon you can.”

Oddly, it begins with Abed.

“Jerusalem of Gold,” he sings from the ground. “And of bronze and…”

Alex and Cobi pick it up immediately.

“Fuck,” the captain says. “Why didn’t you do that right away?”

Cobi puts his hands down, a relief in itself. “Because we were pissing in our pants you would kill us on the spot, that’s why.”

“A likely outcome too,” the captain says. “You got room for seven more in this boat?”

“Walk in the park,” Alex says, grinning. “It’s a fucking Cadillac.”

FOR TWENTY YEARS, SINCE the arrival of General Tawfik Ali, the former Twyford Oliver, uniformly known to his tank crews as Ticky Pasha, the command structure of the armored forces of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has flourished as an independent military fiefdom. While the infantry and air force answer to the minister of defense, Royal Jordanian Armored Command reports directly to the monarch. The relationship between the king and General Ali is considered so unshakeable that only a year earlier a cable to Whitehall from MI6’s resident in Amman summarized it succinctly: “Were General Ali to resign, the king would fall—and he knows it.”

Like intelligence agencies the world over, MI6 totally gets the past, sometimes comprehends the present, but never even remotely foretells the future. Washington, London, Moscow, and Beijing would be better off hiring fortune tellers. Always and inevitably, the future is complicated—and nowhere is this more true than in the Middle East.

In a desert encampment twenty kilometers outside Amman, the capital, the king is on a visit to the sheikhs of the Bedouin tribes that make up his principal support, the backbone of his army. They are his shield against the growing Palestinian threat within Jordan. Until recently, 70% of the country’s population; now, with their numbers swollen by refugees from the pan-Arab campaign to wipe out the Palestinians of the West Bank, the monarch has little choice but to enforce his rule with the sword if he is not to add his name to the list of fallen Arab monarchs. Just as in 1970, when his father ordered the slaughter of Palestinians in Jordan, the current king is determined to do what he must to survive. Of course, if there were some way to deport them all, the task would be easier. But the Palestinians have nowhere to go, certainly not in the Arab world, where they are considered troublemakers. Either they are dealt with now or by sheer numbers they will soon enough depose the monarchy and declare a Palestinian state.

While the British-educated king sits drinking Turkish coffee on a tennis-court-size oriental rug in the vast royal tent, an aide enters to inform him that Ticky Pasha has arrived, presumably to discuss solving Jordan’s Palestinian problem for all time.

Within an hour, the two meet in one of seven smaller tents in which the king will sleep that night. Three of the tents are occupied by royal lookalikes. The Jordanian monarch is determined to die of old age.

“Your majesty,” General Ali says, speaking the English of Sandhurst and Oxford, of country houses and Whitehall. It is a language they share. Though the British officer is fluent in Arabic, the two always speak English in private. “Your majesty, I ask you to forgive this sudden interruption, but a matter has arisen of great urgency.”

“Ticky, please. There is no need to apologize for what is always a pleasurable meeting.”

“This one may not be so pleasurable,” the Englishman says. “Your highness, I have given to you personally and to the kingdom over which you rule almost twenty years of devoted service. I have dedicated my life’s work to the creation and development of the finest armored corps in the Arab world, a force which has permitted you to conquer all of al Kuds.” He uses the Arabic name for Jerusalem: al Kuds , the Holy. “As a Muslim, I have wept with joy to see the Mosque of Omar and the Al-Aksa once more in Hashemite hands.”

“And as one Muslim to another, I commend your very essential part in causing this to come about. In the annals of Islam, your name will be remembered in glory.”

“Your highness, I am now apprised that tanks under my command are to be the vanguard in an invasion of the city of Tel Aviv. Sire, these are weapons designed to destroy military targets, other tanks, armed infantry. Aside from a handful of probably inoperable Chariots that may quickly be swept aside, there are no military targets in the city of Tel Aviv. I am instructed that the targets of my armored corps are to be civilians.”

“Jews.”

“Your highness, they are unarmed. Women and children.”