“I never would have guessed that the tray table was there,” Juana said. “The only other time I was on a plane, it was on the back of the seat in front, above the pocket.”
“In business class, the seat in front is too far away, so they put them here.” He handed the glass to Matilde. “Drink in little gulps, slowly.”
“I think you mean ‘sips’ rather than ‘gulps,’” Juana corrected him.
“I’ll try to remember.”
“Really though, Eliah, your Spanish is impeccable. Do you speak any other languages?”
“One or two,” he answered, watching Matilde sip her juice. “Is it sweet?” Matilde nodded. “The sugar will help you to feel better.”
“What other languages? English?”
“Yes, English. Who doesn’t know English these days?”
“What else?”
“Juana, don’t be rude. Stop prying.”
“So you’re trilingual,” she deduced, ignoring her friend.
In fact, Al-Saud was a polyglot. In addition to English, French and Spanish, he was fluent in Arabic, Italian, German and Japanese, and he could get by in Hebrew, Swahili, Russian, Bosnian and Serbian; he was also deeply interested in Greek and Latin. His facility for languages had been a useful trait in L’Agence, a commando group that few knew existed even in the world of espionage. For some reason he was reluctant to mention his linguistic talents. Perhaps, he thought, since she wasn’t interested in expensive perfumes or exclusive watches, Matilde wouldn’t appreciate vanity in people either.
“What languages do you know, Juana?” he inquired as he took the glass from Matilde; it was barely half-finished.
“I know English pretty well,” Juana answered, passing her friend the damp towel. “Mat and I went to a bilingual high school in Córdoba, where the English teaching was very good. It’s called Academia Argüello. We have great memories from there.”
Juana talked about herself freely. In a few seconds, she had provided enough information to fill several pages in a report.
“Except for that Gómez and his impertinent nicknames,” Eliah noted, smiling at Matilde. He saw her blush, with a little half smile. You didn’t often see an adult woman blushing. He was still having trouble associating Matilde’s adolescent appearance with a grown woman who confronted death with a scalpel in her hand. As time passed, what had begun as attraction was becoming an obsession, he could feel it. By now he knew the symptoms that indicated that the Horse of Fire inside him was about to bolt. In the Chinese zodiac it was said that those born under the sign of the Horse of Fire had a heart that was doubly on fire: because fire was the essence of the horse and because, every seventy years, fire became its element. According to his teacher and mentor, Takumi Kaito, people in China sought to prevent births under the sign. “Why?” the young Eliah had asked.
“Because they fear what they don’t understand. A Horse of Fire lives in a state of permanent defiance. It is his driving force, the only thing that gives meaning to life. The more risks he takes, the better. To give up the challenge is to die. And that scares everyone else. Really, it just emphasizes their own limitations, their cowardice. And that bothers them.”
“Gómez was great, but he pestered Mat a little. He was in love with her all through high school.”
I don’t blame him.
“Do you speak French?” he asked, to change the subject from Gómez and his infatuation with Matilde.
“Only a tiny bit. We studied it at school, but Mat and I chose English as our main language, so we only know a little French.”
The flight attendants appeared with their trolleys to serve lunch.
“Juana,” Matilde said, “the smell of the food is making me feel sick again. Hand me my Upa la-lá perfume.”
Juana took the shika from the overhead locker and handed it to her. This time she didn’t squat next to Matilde, but went back to her seat and took out the tray table. Though he liked Juana’s company, Eliah was grateful to her for leaving them alone.
He studied her freely from the cover of his seat while Matilde sprinkled her arms and neck with the baby perfume. How could he avoid staring at a creature whose simplicity fascinated him? Matilde, he repeated to himself. He had enjoyed pronouncing the name during their conversation. She, however, hadn’t called him Eliah, and had spoken to him like a stranger.
Matilde refused all the meals the flight attendant offered her.
“You have to eat something, Matilde,” Eliah urged.
“I couldn’t keep anything down.”
“Not even tea?”
“A tea, yes.”
Eliah ordered one from the flight attendant in French.
“A tea for the young lady with some water crackers. No, no,” he said, waving away a lobster salad with his hand. “Bring me a coffee and some crackers as well.”
“You’re not going to eat?” Matilde asked worriedly.
“The sight and smell of the food will bring back your nausea. I ordered a coffee.”
“That’s not fair, sir. You…”
“Please, don’t call me sir.”
“Fine.”
The position he had placed her in made her feel uncomfortable, but she also appreciated his gesture. It was strange, but she was enjoying this man’s attention. Usually she would have been much colder.
“It’s not fair for you to go hungry just for me.”
“It’s a pleasure.”
Their eyes met for a couple of seconds, after which Matilde sought refuge in her book. The letters swam across the page, replaced by the man’s face. Every one of his features exuded a rough virility, from the wide forehead to the dimple on his chin. He had a thick neck, which gave him the look of a troublemaker, and a prominent Adam’s apple; she had noticed it while he chatted with Juana. She wasn’t used to fixating on the characteristics of a man’s neck or Adam’s apple, or the cut of his jaw or any of the other bones in his face. Usually she took note of a person’s personality, smile and mannerisms, but in this case she’d been unable to resist the sheer magnetism of his body.
Al-Saud got up from his seat and walked down the aisle toward the bathroom. Matilde watched him go in spite of herself. She was thrilled by the grace of his gait and the strength of his limbs; though long and slender, his legs looked strong and sinewy under the blue silk pants, as did his arms under his white shirt; they belonged to a flexible sportsman’s body.
Juana stuck her head out into the aisle and whistled. “Great ass!”
“Yes.”
“Do my ears deceive me, Matilde Martínez?”
“Well, Juana Folicuré, I’m not going to deny that he has a good body.”
“So you’ll admit that he has the best ass we’ve seen in the last…let’s say…twenty-six years? Girl, you can’t tell me that he’s not an Adonis. And I think he likes you. What is it about him that made you notice him? You never look twice at a guy, especially if he’s good-looking.”
“He helped me when I felt ill and now he’s refusing food so that I won’t feel sick again.”
“God gives bread to those with no teeth! If I were in your place, I’d be planning the wedding. Listen, tarantula, if the stud invites you out…”
“Juana, you know me better than anybody. Nobody knows what I’ve been through as well as you. You can’t ask any more of me.”
“I can ask and I will. Didn’t your psychologist tell you that you have to try to get over your fears?”
“Shh. Here he comes.”
“Mat, he’s more than good-looking. He’s perfect. Plus, he’s a gentleman, and judging by the clothes he wears and the watch he has—which, I’m telling you is worth about ten thousand dollars—he’s rich.”
Matilde saw that Eliah was returning in the company of a flight attendant, who was carrying the tea and coffee. Why did it bother her that the flight attendant smiled at him like an idiot? She intentionally brushed against Eliah with her hips. He happily received her adulation. He’s just like all the rest, Mati
lde thought, deflated.
She noticed that, over his white shirt, Eliah was wearing a fitted jacket made from the same fabric as his pants that showed off his solid shoulders. She quickly opened Rendezvous in Paris after her eyes had strayed to the bulge behind his fly.
Matilde’s silence bothered Eliah. He could also be reading right now; he had the report on Blahetter. But he couldn’t concentrate, and it bothered him that she could focus on the pages of Rendezvous in Paris when he was sitting right next to her. It was an enthralling novel, he had to admit, but he didn’t find it any more enthralling than him. He wanted to be the center of this woman with the face of a teenager’s world.
Leaning to the left of his seat so he could see her better, he noticed a tear form at the corner of her eye before rolling down her cheek. Without thinking he sat up and wiped the tear away with his index finger. She gave a start and the look of panic that shot across her face disturbed him. She looked more terrified than upset. “Forgive me!” he said quickly. “I saw you were crying. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He handed her his silk handkerchief.
“It’s okay. Thank you,” she said, drying her eyes.
The sweetness of her voice disarmed him; he could have kissed her right at that moment. How many times, in just a few hours, had he felt the urge to kiss her?
“It was just that I was reading a really sad part.”
“Which part?” Al-Saud tilted his head, pretending to be interested in the book while he inhaled deeply to fill his nostrils with her scent.
“The part in which Salem describes the massacre of Sabra and Chatila.”
Al-Saud remembered that chapter. It had made him feel impotent rather than sad. If he had been at one of the Palestine refugee camps in Lebanon, he might have been able to deal with a few members of the Christian group known as the Lebanese Falange. But in September 1982, he’d been only fifteen years old.
“Is this the first book by Sabir Al-Muzara that you’ve read?” he asked, to take her mind off the genocide at Sabra and Chatila.
“No. I’ve read all his work. I started to follow him three years ago when I found a copy of one of his books in a used bookstore on Avenida Corrientes. Do you know Avenida Corrientes?” Eliah nodded. “I admire him greatly. I was so happy when I found out he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. He deserves it! He’s not just talented, he’s a genius.” Her silver eyes shone with excitement; it was clear that, though delicate and timid, Matilde had a passionate side. “I loved the speech he gave when he received the Nobel.”
Actually, Al-Saud thought, Sabir didn’t read the speech during the ceremony but afterward, during the banquet. It felt as though months had passed since the event, but it had only been a few weeks since the tenth of December, Alfred Nobel’s birthday. As was traditional, the ceremony had taken place in Stockholm. Though he had been unable to attend because he was in Sri Lanka, negotiating with the Tamil rebels, his parents, siblings and Shiloah Moses had accompanied Sabir. The speech in Stockholm would have caused a political uproar if it had come from anyone else’s lips. Al-Muzara was one of the few people respected and admired equally by both the Palestinians and the Israelis, and he was allowed to speak truths that others would have been too afraid to utter. This hadn’t always been the case; Sabir had earned his position in one of the most conflicted regions on the planet. His message of peace and love had won him various nicknames, including the Palestinian Nelson Mandela, Gandhi in Gaza, the white Martin Luther King Jr. (Sabir’s pale face stood out) and the Arabic Jesus, which displeased the Catholics, although Pope John Paul II said that if Jesus were to meet Al-Muzara in Jordan, they would have become friends. For his part, Yitzhak Rabin declared that every few decades a Palestinian with good judgment was born, while a director of Mossad admired him for his leadership qualities: he was clever, charismatic and brave.
“One day he’ll win the Nobel Peace Prize,” insisted Matilde.
“Which part of Sabir’s speech did you like?”
“Right at the start I was moved when he dedicated the prize to his Palestinian brothers and Israeli friends and neighbors. It’s a sign of forgiveness, don’t you think? Because he was kept prisoner by the Israelis for years.”
Few people knew as much about Al-Muzara’s captivity as Eliah Al-Saud. One night in August 1991, two agents from Shabak, the internal Israeli intelligence service, showed up at his apartment in Gaza and arrested him; it was a form of “administrative detention,” a legal phrase that allowed a subject’s incarceration for “security reasons” for an indefinite period without recourse to legal aid. Sabir spent five years in Ansar Tres, as the Palestinians call the prison on the Ketziot military base, in the Néguev desert. On several occasions, he was tortured in an attempt to learn the location of his older brother, Anuar Al-Muzara, who was the leader of the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas.
In response to Yitzhak Rabin’s statement, “If only the Gaza strip would sink into the sea,” Anuar Al-Muzara had declared, “The practical thing about all the Jews gathering in Israel is that it saves us from having to go all over the world looking for them.” Finally the Shabak agents were persuaded that Sabir didn’t know Anuar’s whereabouts. They were wrong; Al-Muzara knew where his brother was hiding, but despite the rift between them—one advocated passive resistance, the other armed struggle—he hadn’t betrayed him.
During his years in prison, the figure of Sabir Al-Muzara took on unsuspected dimensions. In spite of his confinement and torture, Al-Muzara was able to smuggle out letters to his people, asking them to be calm, and above all, not to respond violently, which would only engender more violence. He asked them not to organize street protests to demand his release because they could be infiltrated by groups with other agendas and cause more trouble; he would cite celebrated quotes from great men and offer chronicles of his days at Ansar Tres, refraining from any mention of the torture and miserable conditions. The letters ended up being published in Israeli newspapers such as the prestigious Ha’aretz and Breaking News, appearing the next day in the morning papers in London, New York and Paris. Eventually, these letters were gathered together and appeared in a best-selling book.
Kamal Al-Saud, Eliah’s father, and Shiloah Moses, son of the multimillionaire Israeli Gérard Moses, who owned the newspaper Breaking News, had campaigned to set Sabir Al-Muzara free. Kamal hired the best lawyers in Israel, while Shiloah, who had excellent connections in both the political world and in the press had tried to work behind the scenes. Eventually, prominent figures including the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (the Argentinean, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980), Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and authorities from institutions including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Peace Now joined forces to demand the release of a man who had never raised his hands in anger.
“I also liked,” Matilde continued, “the part where he quoted Martin Luther King, when he repeated that beautiful phrase: ‘I still have a dream. You’ll think it sounds like a utopia. I promise you that tomorrow it will be a reality. I dream of peace in my land and seeing a nation made up of both Israelis and Palestinians, united in the understanding that we are all creatures of God.’”
Al-Saud thought about how Sabir’s adapted phrase had paved the way that Shiloah Moses would take in a few weeks: the struggle for the creation of a two-nation state. Eliah thought that his friends were crazy, that the idea of a two-nation state was a mirage. Suddenly he remembered that, like him, Sabir and Shiloah had been born in the year of the Horse of Fire; they weren’t ordinary men and they’d never think or act in ordinary ways.
“And I thought it was a magnificent moment when he looked upward, pushing his speech to one side, and declared: ‘I didn’t say Allah and I didn’t say Yahweh, I said God, a universal term that we all know, because there is one God for all of us.’”
Eliah began to understand that he wasn’t going to seduce this girl with expensive watches and French perfumes. He would win her
with enthusiasm and attention to the things she was most interested in—for example, it seemed, the acceptance speech given by the latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. She glowed so beautifully when she was passionate about something. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shone as she delicately waved her long-fingered hands, the same hands that apparently, though it was hard for him to believe, could handle a scalpel. A moment later, as she continued to talk, she was rebraiding her hair, and Al-Saud regarded the mixture of nearly platinum-blonde strands with darker shades. In her fervor for Al-Muzara, Matilde had drawn her legs up into her seat and was sitting cross-legged, facing toward him. She’s small enough to fit sitting like that, he pondered. How would it feel to hold her?
“But my favorite part,” Matilde resumed, “was when he mentioned the children.”
“Mat!” Juana interrupted without turning around, “Don’t say children, for the love of God!”
Al-Saud laughed out loud at the face Matilde made. She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and bit her bottom lip, revealing straight, white teeth; her front teeth were adorable; square, well-proportioned and flawless.
“Juana, it’s not polite to listen to other people’s conversations.”
“I couldn’t help hearing, darling Mat, you’re talking loud enough for the whole plane to hear.”
“Anyway,” Matilde went on, more quietly now, “I loved it when he said that, above all, he dedicated this prize to the Israeli and Palestinian children, the ones who had left and the ones that were still there, because the peace he was fighting for was for them, so that they could walk the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramala with smiles on their faces and without a care in the world. And he was so right to say, ‘Because I abhor the idea of children having their childhoods taken away from them, forced into adulthood at ten years old.’ I was moved to hear that he had donated the prize, which is a lot of money, more than a million dollars, to the Palestine Red Crescent.” She fell silent, her head bowed, as if she was meditating on her last words. “He’s not a wealthy man, is he?”