The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

In 1947 tensions between Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs began boiling over. The British lost their taste for empire building and quickly pulled up stakes. Fighting broke out, followed by a cease-fire and a United Nations partition that created a jigsaw solution: The land was divided into six sections, with the southern and northern coastal regions and the heartland, including Jerusalem and most major cities, granted to the Arabs. The Jews received a strip of central coastline, an inland wedge of Galilee, and the barren Negev desert. Though they'd been deeded the lion's share of natural resources, the Arabs were dissatisfied with less than everything and, in 1948, attacked the Jews. Thousands of lives and one armistice later found the Jewish portion, now called Israel, enlarged to include the entire western section of Palestine but still smaller than the Arab portion, now called Jordan, which encompassed both sides of the Jordan River and spread to the east.

Faulty prophecy left Jerusalem bizarrely divided. The Holy City had been carved up hastily on November 30, 1948, during a temporary cease-fire. The process of division was an unceremonious exercise conducted in an abandoned building in the Musrara slum by the Jewish commander, a lieutenant colonel named Moshe Dayan, and the Arab commander, a lieutenant colonel named Abdullah Tal.

Neither Dayan nor Tal thought the truce would last and both considered their efforts temporary. The Jews hoped for a permanent peace treaty with their cousins, and Abdullah Tal still harbored fantasies of conquest, having boasted only days before of riding into Jewish Jerusalem on a white horse.

They went to work, using soft, waxy pencils-Dayan's red, Tal's green-on a 1:20,000 scale map of Jerusalem, drawing crude, arbitrary lines that corresponded to a land width of 50 meters. Lines that expanded as the wax melted, cutting through the centers of homes and backyards, shops and offices, splitting the city like Solomon's baby. Lines that didn't deserve serious attention because they were nothing more than transitory sketches.

But the commanders were sectioning a land that devours its prophets, where the only consistency is surprise. As the days stretched out, cease-fire matured to armistice, sketches became international borders, the space between the wax, a no-man's-land for nineteen years.

Due to its strategic value, Mount Scopus had been divided earlier, turned into a demilitarized zone administered by the United Nations. Israel retained the ruins of Hadassah Hospital and the Hebrew University; the eastern slope, housing the battered Amelia Catherine, was assigned to Jordan. All buildings on both sides of the mountain lay vacant and unused, though minimal patrols were permitted, the weeds were kept trimmed, and Arabs farmers were allowed, illegally, to plough the fields surrounding the Amelia Catherine and grow truck crops.

In 1967 the Arabs attacked again and, once again, lost honor and land. Jerusalem fell under exclusive Jewish rule for the first time in more than three thousand years and Scopus was unified. The Amelia Catherine entered its fifth metamorphosis, as a hospital, operated jointly by the U.N. and a Swiss-based group of Protestant missionaries.

It was a hasty transformation, wholly lacking in sentiment: the compound enclosed by high chain-link fences, grand suites reduced to wards by particle-board partitions, the mansion's large paneled library painted a pale clinical green and apportioned into a warren of offices. Soon the high stone walls resonated with the moans and muffled sobs of human infirmity.

It was this diminished grandeur that Daniel saw as he followed Baldwin under a sweeping marble staircase and down a long, whitewashed corridor. The building seemed empty and, except for a sonata played haltingly on typewriter, silent.

The administrator's office was midway down the hall, a small, light room with a high domed ceiling. Tacked to the back of the door was a schedule of mobile clinics.

The furnishings were cheap and efficient: an imitation Danish modern desk at the center, two matching straight-backed chairs, a striped cotton sofa along the left wall. Above the sofa hung a framed print of "The Last Supper" and two diplomas: a bachelor's degree in business from an agricultural college in San Antonio, Texas, and a master's in sociology from the American University in Beirut. Opposite the sofa was a wall of bracket shelves, half filled with textbooks and spiral-bound U.N. publications. A small electric fan blew air from one of the empty shelves. Next to it sat a cowboy hat with a leather band. Behind the desk, a pair of tall, arched windows exposed a panoramic view of the desert. Between the windows stood a glass display case filled with archaeological relics: coins, small clay urns, strips of parchment. Baldwin saw Daniel looking at them and smiled.

"All legal and proper, Officer Sharavi. Official property of the U.N."

Daniel returned the smile and the American moved behind the desk and reclined in his chair. Taking a seat across from him, Daniel held his note pad in his lap and searched for signs of personal attachment-family snapshots, the little curios that people bring to the workplace to remind them of home. Except for the hat, nothing.

"How many people are on your staff, Mr. Baldwin?"

"Full time only, or part time as well?"

"Everyone, please."

"In that case, I can't answer you other than to say that it's a long list."

"Does this list exist in written form?"

Baldwin shook his head. "It's not that simple, Officer. The Amelia Catherine concentrates on two spheres of activity: mobile outreach clinics to refugees and indigents, and weekly in-house clinics that we run right here-dermatology, eye care, neurology, women's problems, maternal and child health. Many of the local doctors and nurses volunteer their services; some are paid on a part-time basis; still others are full-time employees. What you'd call a dynamic situation."

"I'm interested," said Daniel, "in those who sleep in the building."

"That," drawled Baldwin, "narrows things down considerably." The American held up his hand, ticked off fingers as he spoke. "There are our nurses, Peggy Cassidy and Catherine Hauser-"

"What are their nationalities?"

"Peggy's an American-California, if that means anything to you. Catherine's Swiss."

"And both of them slept here last night?"

"Whoa," said Baldwin, holding out his hands, palms out. "You said 'sleep,' in general terms. As far as last night, specifically, I have no idea."

The man had a way of reacting to simple questions as if they were traps. The wariness, thought Daniel, of a criminal or a politician;

"Go on, please," he said, writing. "Who else?"

"Dr. Carter, Dr. Al Biyadi, possibly Dr. Darousha."

"Possibly?"

"Dr. Darousha lives in Ramallah. He's a very dedicated man, a fine physician. Comes here after seeing his private patients and sometimes works well into the night. We provide him with a room so that he doesn't have to drive home in a state of fatigue. I have no way of knowing if he used it last night."

"The doctors' first names, please."

"Richard Carter, Hassan Al Biyadi, Walid Darousha."

"Thank you. Any others?"

"Ma'ila Khoury, our secretary; Zia-whom you've met; and myself."

Daniel consulted his notes. "Dr. Carter is an American?"

"Canadian. Dr. Al Biyadi is a native of Jerusalem."

Daniel knew an Al Biyadi family. Greengrocers with a stall in the Old City, on the Street of Chains. He wondered about a connection.

"Ma'ila is Lebanese," Baldwin was saying, "Zia's a Palestinian, and I'm from the great Lone Star State of Texas. And that's it."

"What about patients?"

Baldwin cleared his throat.

"There are no clinics today, in honor of Muslim Sabbath."