“If I understand correctly, your father is into a new project now,” said Karni. “On Fridays, he grants audiences at the foreign minister’s office in Tel Aviv. Do you think the prime minister is happy about him sitting in that mysterious house on Arania Street, meeting with his buddies?”
“You know that we’re not really in touch,” I replied, “and everything he does is for the good of the State of Israel and for its glory, so there’s not too much we can doubt.” The mysterious house on Arania Street sounded intriguing, but I preferred to talk about Karni.
“What’s up with you,” I asked, and she gave me a slightly suspicious look.
The last time I had seen her was at Haggay’s funeral. He had been killed by a roadside bomb in Lebanon in a stupid and useless incident. There was no real need for Haggay to even be there. Thousands gathered at Givat Shaul Cemetery, including army generals, government ministers, the prime minister and all those people in positions that Haggay thought he would fill one day, but never got to, because he was killed in such an idiotic manner. In the front row stood his elderly mother, his estranged wife, a high school teacher was there with their shocked three children, and Karni too. She came to bid farewell to the love of her life, paralyzed by the terrible shock and the depth of her sorrow. I tried to comfort her, but I don’t think she even recognized me.
She then disappeared for many months. They said she had gone to India to find herself, while another rumor had it that she was admitted to a mental institution and then had found comfort in a woman’s arms.
“You probably heard the rumors about me too.” She wore a gloomy look.
“I didn’t believe any of it,” I responded quickly.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, but in all honesty part of it was true. I am not as strong and as perfect as you may have thought once when you were young.”
“When I was young, I thought you were very smart and idealistic, not necessarily strong. Most of the strong people I have ever known were actually just aggressive, rude, or cold-hearted.” I started pushing my daiquiri glass back and forth on the table between an ashtray and two empty glasses. “So which part of the rumors was true?” I didn’t even dare repeat them.
“There were no India and no girlfriend,” she said sadly. “I was in Mizra, a kibbutz near Acre. I checked myself into a hospital for three months following a nervous breakdown.” She gave me a quick gaze. “A fascinating city, Acre,” she added ironically.
“We don’t have to talk about it if it makes you uneasy.”
“It’s got nothing to do with unease,” she responded quickly. “It’s more about awareness; how aware I am of my condition and how able I am to cope with unbearable situations and feelings of guilt. Apparently, I could chew much less than I had bitten off.”
“How can you say that?” I exclaimed. “What can you blame yourself for?”
“The usual, like not pressuring him enough to move to a desk job. I could have arranged it easily, but he wasn’t happy about it. He remained a field animal. You know, sleeping bags and rides in open jeeps. Maybe his childishness was what endeared him to me so much.”
“So why didn’t you pressure him to move to a desk job?”
“A little bit because I didn’t want to force his hand, I didn’t want to emasculate him. He was a wild beast and that was part of his charm.”
“Is that all?” I found it hard to believe.
“No.” Karni stuck her hands deep in her jeans pockets as if protecting herself. “I was also afraid of losing him. I was scared that if I put too much pressure, he would disappear. I don’t think he was afraid of dying. You know, from the moment I realized I was really in love with him, I became scared every day that he would die.”
“He didn’t die because of you,” I replied.
“I know, but that fear never left me. Now it’s the fear of finding myself alone. All of a sudden. It’s the first time it’s happened to me. I was afraid of moving from the living room to the kitchen. I was afraid of the walls closing in on me, but the thing that terrified me the most was leaving the house. I couldn’t see people. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. Can you imagine it?”
The feeling or actually the knowledge that I had been in this story before, sent an uneasy chill down my spine. Was I destined to relive the hardest and most depressing episode of my life? “I think I can,” I replied. “I had a pretty similar experience, you know.”
She wasn’t listening. “Imagine,” she went on, “that you finally go out into the street and you can’t understand how people can laugh, how they can find a reason to. I would see people talking and I couldn’t understand where they found the interest to do it. I started dreaming about the calmness of a final nothingness. I found myself longing for that feeling of the end, which is a high point, a certain fulfillment. Do you remember my first boss? The foreign minister General Moshe Dayan and his fascination with tombs? Maybe some of that stuck to me? His idea was to reach death as an exalted summit; maybe it was the idea of his whole generation. I thought about a knife that if used properly would seep all the life out of me quickly and painlessly, or about a gun that required merely one press of the liberating trigger. I dreamed about a prolonged state of hovering in the air, and when I woke up I was terrified at the thought that hovering usually comes after a final leap. In the end, I checked myself into a hospital.”
“Are you OK now?”
“Of course not.” Her thick lips stretched into a sardonic smile. “This whole psychiatry thing is one big scam. They use Middle Ages techniques with electric shocks in order to convince people that it’s worthwhile to be normal. They explained that I was actually hysterical, and then they decided that it’s really a depression and they prescribed medications. After a week of being as high as a kite, I decided that I would not be a slave to any kind of drug, even if it promises normalcy. Who gets to decide what is normal? The only solution was to give myself a very exact report on my situation and to deal with it without giving up. That’s it.”
“And?”
“I think it’s working. Every morning is a new struggle to convince myself that getting out of bed is worth the effort. I can’t swear that I am over it. I think it’s something inside me, maybe it’s inside each one of us, and yet, you know, I still believe that I will eventually find some kind of peace.”
I kept on pushing my empty glass on the rough wooden table, going around the ashtray and getting near the edge.
“What about happiness?” I tried.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she laughed. “It really is a very big word.”
“Well, I hope you at least got over the knives and the jumping.”
“Me too.”
“So what are you doing now?” I tried my best to get away from this depressing topic.
“Not much, mostly freelance stuff; some for the Ma’ariv newspaper and some for You magazine, and a little bit for foreign TV stations. If you ever need a field reporter for CNN, don’t hesitate to call me. It’s not a question of money; it’s more about my need to actually work. You know, occupational therapy and all that…”
The pub was almost empty between the midday crowd and the night drinkers.
“So what’s the story with the mystery house?” I went back to the intriguing question that was gnawing at me.
“Which house?” Karni was still engrossed in her other world.
“The house on Arania Street.”
“Oh, that,” Karni’s eyes focused once again. For a second, the mischievous look came back. “Walking into that strange house is a scary experience,” she said. “It’s one of the last buildings still left from the days of the British Mandate, built for government employees, complete with colored tiles, and high ceilings. They barely let me into that building. I would go in through an emergency door and then another door and then a buzzer and an intercom and a closed-circuit camera.
Danny kept me waiting for our meeting for an hour and a half as if telling me that his time is actually mu
ch more valuable than mine. As if that impressed me. I felt like going and leaving him a message that he can kiss my ass, but I was overcome with curiosity.
And then he receives me, your oh-so-important father. He is sitting in the armchair that belongs to the foreign minister when he comes to his Tel Aviv office, and I see that he had just let someone out through the back door. He then takes me back to the street, not Arania, but actually, a side street wedged between the tall walls of some mysterious buildings, and then we cross a lawn diagonally and suddenly find ourselves in a tiny Romanian restaurant belonging to one Lasko, the minced-meat expert. We sit on the grass in the heart of Tel Aviv as if we were out in the country, and he starts talking to me about the good old days in New York and the good old days in Rome.
‘Forget about New York and Rome, I’m in journalism now. What’s happening with the Peace Process?’ I ask. And when he starts giving me the usual phrases about how we need to try every possible avenue so that we can look our children in the eyes, I say, ‘Come on, Danny. This is just me here. What are you trying to sell me?’ and he repeats the same words: ‘We need to be able to look our children in the eyes and tell them that we tried every possible avenue.’ That’s what your father tells me.
‘You realize that the Palestinians aren’t ready for a Peace Process,’ I say to him.
‘Possibly, but there’s no other way,’ he replies. ‘That’s why we have no choice. With the right public relations, we can sell anything, including peace with the PLO, and to the average Israeli.’
‘Public relations?’ I don’t totally understand, and the argument that existed between us since I’ve known him seems to have reawakened.
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Surely you understand; radio, television, newspapers. It’s just a question of quantity, in order to sway public opinion whichever way we want it to go.’
‘So why are you telling me all this?’ I had started to get suspicious and I was sure I knew the answer already.
‘Because you are one of the best I know in the business,’ he replied, out of context. ‘You understand what the alternative is. It’s another war.’
When I left him, I was confused. Surely it couldn’t all come down to marketing. I didn’t get a whole lot from him, but neither did he get much from me, having wanted to take advantage of me as a journalist. Even though he tried to be nice by complimenting me and making me laugh, he had gone one or two notches too high for me. He was playing in another league. As you once said, Shira, he was becoming bigger than life.”
Both of our beepers beeped simultaneously. “The government press office,” Karni read off hers. “Rachel, the all-mighty,” she mumbled to herself. I waited patiently. “Tonight on the evening news on TV,” she kept reading off her beeper, “The Cabinet Secretary will join journalist Dan Margalit in a discussion of a possible breakthrough in peace negotiations.”
“Yes, right,” said Karni imitating Danny’s intonation. “It’s all a matter of marketing and quantities.”
Harel made it back to the international airport half an hour after we arrived there, as soon as the cabinet meeting was over. He immediately started firing off commands at machine gun velocity.
“In ten minutes I want the representatives of the army spokesman’s unit, military intelligence, Dagan, and the commander of the unit, in the briefing room,” he was referring to the elite commando unit that was practicing nearby. “Get me, in this order, the prime minister, the head of military intelligence, then what’s-his-name the temporary director of the foreign ministry, Uzi Bar-Sela, and then I want the army spokesman. Let’s see what we can get out of him,” he shouted at the operations sergeant by his side and placed his huge, scary palms on the table. “Shira! Are you with me for the live broadcast from the plane?” he actually ordered, then added, “I need a foreign TV reporter I can work with.”
“How about Rami Soffer from NBC?” asked Amir, the operations sergeant.
“Negative,” I said. “He is corrupt. Besides, I don’t want his name on anything that has to do with CNN.” They didn’t argue. There was no time for it.
“Karni Meridor?” Harel asked. “I think I saw her at the briefing a few hours ago.”
“Good choice,” I said without flinching.
“Perfect then.” Harel barked at the operations sergeant, “Locate her right away and have her brought here.”
I started to doubt my decision. Was Harel aware of Karni’s problems? He might be endangering her as well as the lives of the hostages. I had to join the crew as well.
“You need the liaison to the foreign forces,” I told Harel and tried to sound authoritative.
“You mean Micko?” he didn’t get it. “I really need him to be as far away from here as possible, and he needs to keep Johann Strauss away from all of us. Actually, that’s your job too, isn’t it?”
“No, I meant that I should be getting on the plane; if not as UN liaison then as TV producer.”
He laughed and said, “No producer is getting on board. We might get three people on board, at best: a cameraman, a reporter and a soundman; and it needs to be done right. It may be our last chance, so you, honey, are definitely staying here and giving us CNN coverage. You can report anything you want to the LUFF, as long as you keep them away from here.”
“Are you aware of Karni’s problems?” I asked in a low voice. He rubbed his chin for a moment.
“I know the problems and I know her,” he responded almost in a whisper.
“Are you sure she can withstand this kind of pressure now?”
“Who can be sure of anything? She is a true professional; this kind of activity will only do her good.”
Ronny entered the room, more awake and alert than usual. “So I’m your new cameraman now?”
“Said who?” It had become sticky.
“Haroush sent me.”
“Not you!” I exclaimed. This was turning into an old friends’ reunion. In case of failure, the loss would be unbearable to me.
“You can’t get your regular crew in there. They aren’t built for this,” he said plainly. “You know that I’ve come out of many hairy situations in the past. If anyone can board that plane and do the job, it’s me.”
Karni arrived like a storm, listened to a short briefing, and in a matter-of-fact manner started taking control of the situation.
“He is professional and experienced,” she asserted. “There aren’t too many other volunteers and time is running out.”
I hesitated for a moment.
“It’s decided then. We have to move!” Harel concluded.
I agreed reluctantly. “I’m joining the crew as well,” I announced.
Harel looked at me, bemused. “Just keep Micko and his buddies away from me.”
If he thought that I could block Micko he was in for a surprise, because a minute later, Micko arrived at the tactical headquarters and said that Red Cross chief, Raus, had informed him that Geneva had just announced that CNN was about to broadcast from inside the plane.
“So what?” Harel asked worriedly.
“So the Red Cross demands to be present.”
“Negative. The CNN representative is here in case we need anything. And apart from Raus, there will be fifty million viewers keeping an eye on the whole thing.”
We gathered around Harel in the corner of the room to hear more details.
“So that’s going to be the big story?” Karni asked.
“I’m not sure you should be doing this. It’s difficult and dangerous. This is the critical moment.” Harel was very direct. “I wouldn’t want you getting killed just now. I know a person or two who would miss you.”
“You know I won’t get killed and you know that if you don’t give me this job I’m going to kill you.”
Harel stifled a moan. “What’s going to be your line?”
“Semi-professional. I’ll talk about terrorism and communications, and throw in the human interest angle. Something in between the two phases, maybe we can
bring Abu Shahid a little bit closer to us.”
“I’m counting on you.”
“I have to get his full file.” Karni wasn’t buying into the show of trust. “I need everything that we didn’t know before.”
“Should we give her everything?” the lieutenant was half-whispering, still breathless after running over.
Harel winked at Karni and she smiled back in anticipation. “No way, are you crazy? Give her only the top secret staff or less.”
The lieutenant adjusted the reading glasses on the bridge of his nose and said, “Abu Shahid was born in Haifa to a family of extremely wealthy Arab merchants.”
“Christians?” Karni asked. “His wife and daughter are dressed as Muslims.”