The Last Secret Of The Temple (6 page)

The Old City of Jerusalem, that bewildering labyrinth of streets and squares, shrines and holy places, spice markets and souvenir shops, is by night as silent and empty as a ghost town. The bustling crowds that during the day throng its thoroughfares and passages – especially those of the Muslim quarter, where you can hardly move for shoppers and fruit sellers and scuttling children – swiftly drain away with the setting of the sun, leaving forlorn vistas of shuttered shop-fronts, shadowy and echoing, like stone veins from which all the lifeblood has been drained. The few people who remain seem ill at ease, glancing around nervously, walking faster and more purposefully than they would by day, as if menaced by the dream-like emptiness of the place, and the corrosive orange glow of its street lamps.

It was almost three in the morning when Baruch Har-Zion and his two companions came through Jaffa Gate and made their way down into this dim twilight world, the most deserted hour of the night, when even the stray cats have gone to ground and the sharp quarterly clangs of the city's church bells seem blunted by the enshrouding silence. A short, thick-set man, almost as broad as he was tall, he had greying hair, a bearded, square-jawed face, and carried an Uzi submachine gun in one gloved hand and a leather holdall in the other. His companions were also armed with Uzis, one of them slight and milky-pale, the tassles of a
tallit katan
dangling from beneath his jacket; the other tall and tanned, his hair crew-cut almost down to the scalp, his arms and neck thick with knotted muscle. All three wore black
yarmulkes
on their heads.

'What about the cameras?' asked the pale man as they walked, nodding at the security monitors bolted at regular intervals along the street.

'Forget them,' said Har-Zion, waving a hand dis-missively, a certain stiffness to the movement as though his roll-neck sweater, which came up almost to the level of his jawline, was a little too tight for him. 'I've got friends in the David control centre. They'll turn a blind eye.'

'But what if—'

'Forget them,' repeated Har-Zion, firmer this time. 'Everything's been taken care of.'

He threw the man a glance, his granite-grey eyes narrowed slightly as if to say 'I don't want you here if you're afraid', then looked to the front again.

The three of them strode onwards, following the stepped slope of David Street down towards the Jewish quarter before swinging left into one of the souks that thrust deep into the heart of the Muslim part of the city. Walls of shuttered shop-fronts stretched away to either side of them, grey and uniform, their metal plates scrawled with Arabic graffiti, interspersed here and there with the odd word or phrase in English: FATAH, HAMAS, FUCK OFF JEWS. They passed a Coptic priest hurrying up to prayers in the Holy Sepulchre, and a pair of tourists, male, drunk, struggling to locate their hostel in the maze of narrow streets. Otherwise they were alone.

A bell clanked the hour, the sound echoing dully across the rooftops.

'I hope we
are
fucking seen,' growled the crew-cut man as they went, patting his Uzi. 'It's our city. Screw the Arabs.'

Har-Zion smiled faintly but said nothing, just pointed them down a narrow alley flanked by high stone walls. They passed a courtyard full of rubbish, a wooden door behind which they could hear the faint babble of a television, and the gateway of a small mosque before emerging into an empty cobbled street that ran perpendicular to the one they had just descended. To the right it disappeared beneath a series of low stone arches, running down towards the Western Wall; to the left it inclined upwards in the direction of the Via Dolorosa and the Damascus Gate. A sign in front of them read AL-WAD ROAD.

Har-Zion checked both ways, then dropped to his haunches – again with that tightness of movement, as if something was somehow constricting him – and unzipped his holdall, producing two crowbars, which he handed to his companions, and a canister of spray paint, which he kept for himself.

'Let's get started.'

He led them over to a tall, shabby-looking building – a typical old-city house with chunky stone façade, wooden doorway and arched windows, grilled and shuttered.

'You're sure it's empty?' asked the pale man nervously.

Again Har-Zion gave him that piercing, grey-eyed stare. 'This is no place for a
nebbish,
Schmuely.'

The smaller man blinked and lowered his head, ashamed.

'Let's get to work,' said Har-Zion.

He shook the canister, the clack of ball-bearings echoing down the street, and began to spray, drawing a crude seven-branched menorah onto the walls to either side of the doorway, the paint dripping in places so that in the uncertain light it looked as if a huge claw was scratching into the stone, causing it to bleed. His companions began working their crowbars into the gap between the door and its jamb, easing them in about two inches, levering them back to widen the crack and forcing them in further until the door-bolt gave with a sharp splintering sound. They looked up and down the street, then stepped into the dark interior. Har-Zion finished spraying the second menorah, picked up the leather holdall and followed them in, pushing the door to behind him.

They had heard about the house from a friend in the Jerusalem police. Its Arab owners were away on
'umra
and had left the place empty, a perfect target for occupation. Har-Zion would have preferred something even closer to the Temple Mount, something more confrontational, more hurtful and insulting to the Muslims, but for the moment this was good enough.

He rummaged in the holdall and pulled out a heavy metal flashlight, switching it on and playing the beam around them. They were in a large room, sparsely furnished, with a stone staircase in the far corner and a tang of polish and tobacco smoke in the air. A poster on the wall above one of the sofas carried nine lines of swirling Arabic script, white against a green background, verses from the Koran. Har-Zion held it in the torch-beam, then stepped forward and ripped it down.

'Avi, you check the back. I'll do the upper levels. Schmuely, you come with me.'

He handed a second torch to the crew-cut man, then started up the staircase, taking the holdall with him, glancing into various rooms as he went, the pale-skinned man trailing in his wake. At the top he unbolted a metal door and stepped out onto the building's flat roof, a tangled thicket of washing lines, TV aerials, satellite dishes and solar panels fanning out all around him. Ahead rose the domes of the Holy Sepulchre and the rearing steeple of the Church of St Saviour. Behind stretched the vast paved expanse of the Temple Mount, at its centre, floodlit, the bulbous golden crown of the Dome of the Rock.

'For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left,' murmured Har-Zion, 'and your descendants will possess the nations, and will people the desolate cities.'

How often he had imagined this moment: during the dark days of persecution back in his native Ukraine; in the army hospital, where the burns had been so agonizing he'd felt his very soul was being ripped out of him. They'd taken land elsewhere these last few years – outside Nazareth, down near Hebron, along the Gaza seafront – but it meant nothing if Jerusalem itself could not be theirs. That Mount Moria, the Even Shetiyah, where Abraham had come to sacrifice his only son Isaac; where Jacob had dreamt of a ladder rising all the way to heaven; where Solomon had raised the first Holy Temple . . . that this, of all places, should be in the hands of the Muslims was something that pained him physically, like an open wound.

And now, at last, they were taking it back. Reclaiming what was rightfully theirs. Yerushalyim the Golden, capital of Eretz Israel Ha-Shlema, homeland of the Jewish people. That was all they were asking. That they should have a homeland. But the Arabs and Jew-haters would deny them even that. Scum. All of them. Cockroaches. It was them who should be put in gas chambers.

He turned slowly round, taking in the scene, then he delved into the holdall and removed a large roll of cloth with two pieces of rope attached to it.

'Do it,' he said, handing the roll to his companion.

The man moved forwards to the front edge of the roof where he knelt and began tying the rope-ends to a couple of steel rods protruding from the concrete floor. Har-Zion pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and jabbed a number into the keypad.

'We're in,' he said when it was answered. 'Start sending the others down.'

He rang off and slipped the phone back into his pocket. As he did so his companion finished securing the ropes and dropped the bundle off the side of the building. It unfurled with a muffled whoosh, leaving a long white and blue flag draped down the front of the stonework like a waterfall, a bold Star of David at its centre.

'Praise be to God,' he smiled.

'Hallelujah,' said Har-Zion.

Layla al-Madani ran a hand through her close-cropped black hair and stared at the young man sitting opposite, in his neatly pressed trousers and Dome of the Rock T-shirt.

'The idea of killing women and children doesn't concern you?'

The young man met her gaze.

'Does it concern the Israelis when our women and children are killed? Deir Yassin? Sabra and Chatila? Rafah? This is a war, Miss Madani, and in war bad things happen.'

'So if al-Mulatham approached you—'

'I would consider it an honour. To become a
shaheed,
to martyr myself for my people, my God. I would consider myself lucky.'

He was a handsome man, with large brown eyes and the hands of a piano player, long-fingered and delicate. She was interviewing him for an article about antiquities plunderers – young Palestinians who, because of the Israeli economic stranglehold on the Palestinian territories, had been reduced to stealing and selling ancient artefacts in order to make ends meet. The conversation had, as it always did with these sort of interviews, moved on to a wider discussion of Israeli military oppression, and thence to the subject of suicide bombing.

'Look at me,' he said, shaking his head. 'Look at this.'

He circled his hand, indicating the cheap, three-room cinder-block house, with its couches that doubled as beds and small primus stove in the corner.

'Our family used to own a vineyard down near Bethlehem, two hundred
dunum.
Then the Zionists came and drove us out and all we are left with is this. I have a degree in engineering but cannot find employment because the Israelis have revoked my work permit, so I sell stolen antiquities so we can eat. Do you think this makes me feel good about myself? Do you think I have high hopes for the future? Believe me, if the chance to martyr myself came along I would jump at it. The more of them I kill the better. Women, children, it makes no difference. They are all guilty. I hate them. All of them.'

He smiled, a thin, bitter expression that cracked the lower part of his face, revealing an immensity of fury and despair within. There was a silence, broken by the sound of children playing in the alleyway outside, then Layla closed her notebook and slipped it back into her bag.

'Thank you, Yunis.'

The man shrugged, but said no more.

She joined her driver Kamel outside and together they bumped their way out of the camp, the car slaloming down a potholed road and onto the main Ramallah-Jerusalem highway where they joined a queue of traffic stacked up behind the Kalandia checkpoint. To their left the drab camp buildings spread away across a hillside, grey and ramshackle, like a bed of decaying coral; to their right the runway of Atarot airport lay flat and lifeless, as if someone had slashed a line of dirty yellow paint across the landscape. Ahead, four lanes of stationary traffic stretched off up the road like dusty ribbons, tapering to a single lane at the Israeli roadblock two hundred metres further on, where documents were being checked and vehicles searched. It was a pointless exercise – anybody who didn't have the requisite papers could simply skirt the checkpoint on foot and pick up a lift on the far side – but the Israelis insisted on doing it, less for security reasons than to humiliate the Palestinians, show them who was boss. No-one fucks with us, that was the message. We're in control.

'Kosominumhum kul il-Israelieen,'
muttered Layla, dropping her head back and staring up at the car ceiling. 'Fucking Israelis.'

Twenty minutes passed, the queue remaining exactly as it was, and eventually, throwing open the car door, she got out. She walked up and down, stretching her legs, then reached back into the car and pulled out her camera, a Nikkon D1X digital, removing it from its case and switching it on, fiddling with the lens.

'Watch it,' said Kamel, his head leant forward on the steering wheel in anticipation of the long wait to come. 'You know what happened the last time you took photos at a checkpoint.'

How could she forget? The Israelis had confiscated her camera, spent an hour taking apart Kamel's car and, just for good measure, given her a strip-search as well.

'I'll be careful,' she said. 'Trust me.'

A large brown eye swivelled towards her.

'Miss Madani, you are the least trustworthy person I know. With your face you say one thing, but—'

'Yes, yes, always there is something different in my eyes.'

She threw him an annoyed glance and, draping the camera around her neck, turned and wandered off between the rows of vehicles towards the checkpoint.

They'd left Jerusalem early the previous afternoon, driving out to Ramallah to cover a story about a Palestinian collaborator whose mutilated body had been found floating in the fountain at the centre of town, the perfect hook for a wider feature on collaborators she was doing for the
Guardian.
It had only taken a couple of hours to research. While they'd been there, however, there'd been another al-Mulatham suicide bombing, at a wedding in Tel Aviv, and the Israelis had closed off the entire West Bank, leaving her no choice but to bed down with an old university friend while American-built Apache AH-64 helicopter gunships hovered overhead, blowing the shit out of various Palestinian Authority buildings that were still half-ruined from the last time they'd had the shit blown out of them.

It hadn't been a completely wasted stay. She'd picked up the antiquities plundering story, and had managed to wangle an interview with Sa'eb Marsoudi, one of the leaders of the First Intifada and a rising star of Palestinian politics. He was a charismatic man – young, passionate, handsome, with a mop of jet-black hair and a checked
keffiyeh
slung around his neck – and, as always, had given her some good quotes. Now, however, she was anxious to get back to Jerusalem. Chayalei David, the Warriors of David, had apparently seized a building in the Old City, which sounded like a good feature; and she was already a week overdue with an
al-Ahram
piece she was doing about malnutrition among Palestinian children. More than anything she just wanted to get back to her flat and take a shower – the IDF had cut the Ramallah water supply and she hadn't washed properly since the previous morning. A faintly sour smell wafted from her shirt and cords.

She came to within twenty metres of the checkpoint and stopped. A pick-up truck piled high with watermelons was being ordered to turn round, the driver shouting and gesticulating at one of the soldiers who just stared at him through mirror shades, uninterested, occasionally mouthing the word
'Ijmia'
– go back. Vehicles were queuing from the opposite direction as well, coming out of Jerusalem, although not as many as on this side. To her left, a Red Crescent ambulance sat gridlocked, its red light rotating helplessly.

She'd been writing about scenes like this for over a decade now, publishing in both Arabic and English, writing for everything from the
Guardian
to
al-Ahram,
the
Palestinian Times
to the
New Internationalist.
After what had happened to her father it hadn't been easy establishing herself, especially in the early days after her return from England when she'd had to put up with all manner of shit. She'd worked hard to gain people's trust, however, to prove herself, to show she was a true Palestinian, and although there would always be those such as Kamel who would never be entirely convinced, the majority had, in the end, accepted her, won over by her outspokenness in the name of the Palestinian cause. 'Assadiqa' they now called her – the truth teller. The Israelis were somewhat less enthusiastic. 'Liar', 'Jew-hater', 'Terrorist' and 'Interfering Bitch' were just a few of the titles she had amassed over the years. And those were the nice ones.

She pulled a tab of chewing gum from her pocket and popped it into her mouth, wondering if she should go forward to the checkpoint and flash her press ID, try to speed things up a bit. She'd just be wasting her time, though – press card or no press card, it didn't change the fact she was a Palestinian. She gazed at the scene a while longer, then turned away and started back the way she had come, shaking her head wearily, the ground beneath her feet trembling as a pair of Merkava tanks rumbled past on the opposite side of the road, blue and white Israeli flags fluttering from their turrets.

'
Kosominumhum kul il-Israelieen,'
she muttered.