Edward Whittemore - Jericho Mosaic

So it's become like that for me, and people telephone or just turn up and we sit under my fig tree.

Do you smoke? asked Tajar, meaning hashish.

Rarely, said Yossi. I don't feel the need for it as much as some do.

Women?

Only the ones you know about. Sociable affairs and fairly distant, but regular enough to keep my attention from wandering.

Does it cause any difficulty that you've never married?

None. Some do and some do not, as they say, and a man who's thoroughly dedicated to his work is considered the same as married anyway. When I first arrived friends used to bring along their unmarried sisters and nieces, but now I'm accepted as a man who lives alone and devotes his time to his work. The uncle who can help. Everyone feels easy with that and values it, too.

Finally, then, their conversations came around to Yossi's future and the future of the Runner operation.

In other words, said Tajar, what do you see for yourself now? What do you want? You know everyone at home has nothing but praise for you. The operation has been extraordinarily successful and your contribution is beyond all measure. If you want to come back and begin a new life, it can be done any way you wish.

Something quiet inside, or a different field and a new identity, anything. Or just living, if that appeals. You don't have to work. Dror is ready to go along with anything we come up with. I know you've considered all this, and of course we don't have to decide anything now. In a way the war is a turning point, for all of us and everything, but that doesn't have to be the case for the Runner operation. From everything you say and everything we know, the operation is as secure as ever. So you can also just live quietly in Damascus for a time, if that's what you want, and we can have this conversation again in six months. There's no hurry. We can bring an end to the life of the man known as Halim, now or later, without jeopardizing anything. It all depends on the way you feel.

I realize that, said Yossi, and of course I have thought a great deal about it. There were some hard times in the last few years, but I've gotten beyond the rough spots and what seems to have happened is that I've become Halim. With you I'm still Yossi, but it's more the way a person recalls his childhood, the person he used to be. He's still there inside me and always will be, but I've lived through several other lifetimes since then and in a way Yossi is foreign to me. A while ago you mentioned Anna's brother, David. Anna recalls him and you do, and Assaf must imagine him sometimes, and in that sense David still exists as much as anyone we think about, who may be as near as the next room. But in fact David's also been dead for twenty-five years, safe from harm and suffering, it's true, but also safe from change. Well that's something of the way I feel about Yossi. I miss him sometimes. It makes me sad to think of him sometimes. When you speak of Assaf's smile, for example, and how it reminds Anna of a young man in the desert long ago, slipping away with a wave from a tiny settlement that's now an army outpost . . . that makes me sad. When you said that my heart stumbled. I had to catch myself. For a moment it all came back and I felt lost, afraid. I was in the Negev again and leaving Anna, not knowing whether I'd get back and not knowing whether she'd still be there or still be alive if I did get back. Oh yes, I smiled then because it was all I had to give her. I was on my way to Gaza at night, across the open desert, so I smiled when I left her and our friends, pathetically standing guard duty around those little huts we had. But did she really think I preferred a cold desert night to lying in her arms? It's so strange what we know and don't know. Memory is strange and living through different lifetimes is strange and Bell is probably right. We add new vows to the old and forsake nothing and the soul becomes like the Holy City, the myth which is Jerusalem, a dream of ourselves which is forever unachievable, to be seen only by others, its wonders recounted to us in imaginary tales of distant places.

I understand that, said Tajar. And so?

Yossi smiled. Faced with Tajar and the past, there was still a touch of shyness in his smile, despite the hard years.

And so I'd prefer to live on as Halim in Damascus, said Yossi. I have no desire to see Jerusalem and be disappointed. When I was a child there were two mythical cities in my imagination, Jerusalem and Damascus. Because of circumstances I've come to know one of them, and one imaginary city is enough.

That's where my dream of myself is. As for the rest, I have my work and I'm good at it, it means something and I'm useful in it.

Tajar nodded. And someday? he asked.

Yossi smiled again. Well if someday ever comes around, he replied, then I may become a hermit like Bell.

Who isn't really a hermit, said Tajar.

That's right, added Yossi, and that's his secret. You and I know that, and the shesh-besh players know it, Moses the Arab and Moses the Ethiopian, but it's a well-kept secret all the same. Isn't it so, Tajar?

Yossi covered one eye with his hand and pushed the rest of his face out of shape, pretending to be Bell. Then he dropped his hands and looked deep into Tajar's eyes and laughed because of life and fate, and Tajar couldn't help but laugh with him, marveling all the while at Yossi's strength and determination and above all the immense distance he had traveled in the last two decades.

And so? asked Dror.

And so all together, said Tajar, it's an astonishing experience to sit with the Runner. He's confident and self-assured and knows what he's doing and why he's doing it. Despite the enormous strains of the last two years, he's become even more at ease with himself.

Problems?

I kept looking for them and at first it didn't make any sense to me, replied Tajar. Damascus? An environment as hostile as that for eight whole years? Then suddenly it did make sense to me. At that moment I accepted the fact that he's become a different person from the one I used to know.

Who has he become? asked Dror.

Halim. He has become Halim, said Tajar. It's not a fiction anymore, not a cover, not a role. Halim is real, Yossi has created him. It's uncanny. He's even become something of a mystic, which you'd expect from Halim.

Dror saw that Tajar was looking off into the distance, lost somewhere in thought. Certainly Tajar's comments weren't as startling to Dror as they seemed to be to Tajar, but then Dror often found Tajar himself to be something of a mystic.

You didn't expect this? asked Dror.

Tajar gave a roundabout reply, a little of this and a little of that. Since leaving Yossi in Beirut, he had been trying to answer that same question himself. He still wasn't sure how he felt, but probably he hadn't expected it. It was true that Tajar had never spent so many years in one cover role. Nor had he handled an agent, before Yossi, who had done so. It was a new experience for Tajar and perhaps that was why he felt a little uneasy, a little confused. What did it mean that Halim was real?

But there was no reason for Tajar to go into this with Dror. These were personal questions, part of the endless dialogue Tajar carried on between himself and himself. None of it affected Yossi's integrity as an agent or the Runner operation. If anything, Yossi's transformation improved the operation by making it more secure. The back-up team was something else, a separate matter. But if Halim was just Halim, how could he ever be caught? What was there to uncover?

So the Runner wants to stay on in Damascus, concluded Dror.

Exactly, said Tajar. It's agreed there will be little or no operational activity until the aftermath of the war settles down. In the meantime he'll carry on his legitimate businesses. We also agreed to meet again in six months'