The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

A rat-faced little pisser, thought Shmeltzer, recalling the arrest photo. Long stringy hair, a weak chin, a pitiful mustache, rodent eyes. Nineteen years old and no doubt he'd been stealing all his life. Forty-eight hours behind bars wasn't what lowlifes like that needed. A little hard time-getting his ass battered at Ramie-and he would have thought twice about misbehaving. Then maybe they wouldn't be trudging through donkey shit looking for him

All three of them carried Uzis, in addition to the 9 mms. Armed invaders. An army truck was stationed outside the entrance to the camp. Establishing a strong presence, showing who was in charge. But still they had to look over their shoulders as they sloshed through the muck.

He hated going into these places. Not just the poverty and the hopelessness, but the fact that it made no damned sense at all.

All that crap about the Arabs and their strong sense of family, and look how they treated their own.

Fucking King Hussein. In the nineteen years he'd occupied Judea and Samaria, he hadn't done a goddamned thing in the way of social welfare. Too busy building himself that goddamned palace on the Hebron road and knocking up his goddamned American wife-no, back then it was still one of the Arab ones.

Once a year the refugees sent letters to the Welfare and Labor Ministry in Amman, and if they were lucky, each family received a few dinars or nine kilograms of flour three months later. Thank you, King Shit.

But the do-gooders-the private agencies-were all over the place, or at least their offices were. Air-conditioned places on the nicer streets of Bethlehem and East Jerusalem. The Saint Victor's Society, the American Friends Services Committee, the Lutherans, AMIDEAST, UNIPAL, ANERA, with all that American oil money behind it. And the U.N., with its big white sign plastered across the the front of the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp. ADMINISTERED BY THE UNITED NATIONS RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY. Administered. What the hell did that mean?

Not to mention the Saudis and the Kuwaitis. And the fucking PLO, big business with its banks and factories and farms and its airports in Africa-a report he'd just seen estimated the bastards' net worth at 10 billion. Abu Mussa got a hundred grand American each month just for entertainment expenses.

All that money, all the goddamned do-gooders, and the people in the camps still lived like wretches. Where the hell did all of it go? The U.N. guy's Mercedes parked right in front of the camp was a partial answer-they got them subsidized for $4,000 American-but Mercedes alone didn't start to explain it.

A big scam-the kind of theft he would have loved to investigate.

The U.N. guy was a sour-looking Norwegian with a kaffiyah hanging around his neck. Playing Great White Father, with his clipboard and pen on a chain, gazing down on the sixty or seventy people queuing up in front of him for some sort of privilege. When the three of them came in he'd looked down his nose at them, as if they were the bad guys. Gave them a hassle even though he had no legal jurisdiction over anything. But Dani had said not to make waves, so they put up with it for a while, watching the bastard fill out forms, screw around, and give them lemon-sucking looks before coming up with Abdelatifs address. Meanwhile the people in the queue had to wait for whatever morsel the Norwegian was doling out. Typical.

As if it were up to the Jews to solve the problem the Arabs had created-to eat the shit that nobody else had an appetite for. And the goddamned government fell into it, playing the liberal game-putting the refugees on the Israeli welfare rolls, giving them houses, schooling, free medical care. Since '67 their infant mortality had dropped way down. More little pissers to contend with.

Far as he was concerned, the people in the camp were cowards and the descendants of cowards. They'd run away from Jaffa and Lod and Haifa and Jerusalem because the Arab Legion had scared the shit out of them with those hysterical radio broadcasts back in '48. He'd been a wet-eared kid of eighteen, remembered it well. Harsh voices screaming that the Jews ate babies alive, would cut the tits off their women, grind their bones, fuck their eye sockets, and drink their blood.

Jihad had begun, the voices promised. A Holy War to end all wars. The infidels have been attacked and will soon be routed and driven into the Mediterranean. Leave at once and return soon with the victorious forces of the United Arab Armies. Not only will you reclaim your homes, noble brothers, but you will be privileged to confiscate everything the filthy Zionists have accumulated.

Thousands of them listened and believed, falling over one another to escape. Swarming up into Syria and Lebanon and Gaza, pouring into Jordan in such numbers that the Allenby Bridge sagged under their weight. And when they got there, what did their Arab brethren with the strong family ties to do for them? Built camps and locked them up. Just temporary, Ahmed. Wait in your nice little tent. Paradise is coming soon-dead Jews and endless virgins to fuck.

Still waiting, he thought, eyeing a shriveled old woman sitting in the dirt and pounding chickpeas in a bowl. The door to her hovel was open; inside was an equally shriveled old man, lying on a mattress, smoking a narghila. Fucking political footballs.

The educated ones had found jobs, settled all over the world. But the poor ones, the defective and stupid ones, stayed in the camps. Living like barnyard animals-breeding like them too. There were 400,000 of them still penned up in Lebanon and Jordan and Syria, another 300,000 dumped in Israel's lap after '67, with 230,000 in Gaza alone. Far as he was concerned, you build a wall around the Strip, stash them all there, and call it Palestine.

Three hundred thousand wretches. The spoils of victory.

The location the Norwegian had given them was midway through the camp, a mud house that looked as if it were melting. Empty oil drums were stacked along one side. Lizards ran over them, chasing insects.

Maksoud, the brother-in-law, sat at a card table in front of the house in a greasy white shirt and snot-shiny black pants, playing sheshbesh with a kid of about twelve. The firstborn son. Privileged to sit with the old man and piss his life way.

Not that the old man was so old. A sleepy-looking guy, pasty-faced, maybe thirty, with a ratty-looking mustache no better than Abdelatif's, skinny arms, and a potbelly. A livid worm of scar tissue ran the length of his left forearm. Nasty-looking.

He shook the dice, looked at their Uzis, rolled, and said, "He's not here."

"Who's not here?" asked Shmeltzer.

"The pig, the leech."

"Does the pig have a name?"

"Abdelatif, Issa."

A thick-skinned lizard ran up the side of the building, stopped, bobbed its head, and climbed out of sight.

"What makes you think we're looking for him?" asked the Chinaman.

"Who else?" Maksoud moved two backgammon discs. The kid picked up the dice.

"We'd like to look inside your home," said Shmeltzer.

"I have no home."

Always polemics.

"This house," said Shmeltzer, letting him know by the tone of his voice that he was in no mood to take any shit.

Maksoud looked up at him. Shmeltzer looked right back, kicked the side of the house. Maksoud gave a phlegmy cough and yelled, "Aisha!"

A short, thin woman opened the door. In her hand was a grimy dish towel.

"These are police. They're looking for your pig brother."

"He's not here," said the woman, looking scared.

"They're coming in to see bur home."

The boy had rolled double sixes. He moved three discs into his home zone and removed one from the board.

"Ahh," said Maksoud, and he rose from the table. "Put it away, Tawfik. You learn too well."

There was an overtone of threat in his voice, and the boy complied, looking frightened, just like his mother.