"Your mother was from Jerusalem," Nadir's father told him, "when it was controlled by the Arabs, when it was the home of good Muslims, not the Jews."
Then he reached over and took Nadir's hands and held them in his own, and made his youngest son promise him that he would exact vengeance on the Zionist infidels who had broken his mother's heart, and driven her into a long and bitter exile.
"Your mother, on her deathbed, made me promise her," his father told him in a whisper, his voice barely audible. "She made me promise that when she was gone, when it was safe, I would tell you she had one final request of you."
"What is it, Father?" Nadir had asked, taken by surprise by the tremor in the man's voice, and the moisture in his eyes.
"You need to leave Iraq. You need to use all the military skills that Allah has given you, and use them no longer to advance Saddam's kingdom but to regain Palestine and Al-Quds — Jerusalem — the city of your mother's birth."
"But how, my father? If you ask me to, I will do it. But how could I possibly do such a thing? I have no passport. No money. No contacts, except those in my military units, none of whom I could turn to or trust."
For the next hour Nadir's father spoke in hushed tones, as though Saddam's secret police — the Mukhabarat — were listening in and about to burst through the door and take them down in a blaze of machine-gun fire. He told Nadir of the men he'd met through the bank, the men who ostensibly worked for Saddam, but were actually building a secret army to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea. He told Nadir how he'd earned the trust of such men, how the men had chosen to begin banking with him almost a decade before precisely because they had heard that he and his wife were Palestinians, a fact Nadir's family did nothing to broadcast and everything to keep to themselves. His father told him how these men had secretly been stashing money in small accounts through the Iraqi national banking system, and always allowing their favorite teller — and later branch manager — to skim off a little for himself, as a sign of their goodwill.
Over the years, and combined with the $37,000 his father now explained he had stolen from the Jordanians on June 7, 1967—a night he would never forget — he had amassed nearly $150,000 in various international currencies, none of which were Iraqi dinars. And he was giving it to Nadir. To run. To flee the country. To join Al-Nakbah. To train suicide bombers. And then to become one himself.
This was his mother's dying wish, and thus his father's in his old age. The man was almost eighty-five now. He was old, and without his precious wife of almost seventy years, he would soon die, too. He would die penniless and alone, but with the hope that his son would redeem all his wasted years in exile by inflicting vengeance upon the Jews and freeing Palestine from the grip of the infidels.
Nadir could feel his eyes getting heavy. He was catnapping for a few hours at a time, feverishly racing for the East Coast. Time was short. He had no way of knowing how many others had or were about to make it across the borders and into the United States. There was no way to know how many were en route, even now, to complete their mission and strike terror in the heart of the Great Satan. But he was here. He had made it through. His mother's dying prayers to Allah were guiding him — propelling him — forward. He would succeed. He would make his mother and father proud.
Perhaps his father would be able to turn on the radio in that stifling little banker's apartment in Baghdad in a few days and hear of a heroic attack in a major East Coast city, and fall asleep with the pride of knowing his youngest son had done his duty. But for now, Nadir needed to sleep. He would be no good to the revolution if he dozed off at the wheel and veered into the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.
As Nadir saw another sign for Albuquerque go by, he began to wonder why his mother and father had chosen him for this honor. He'd always been the least successful son in the family. Of his four brothers, one was a professor of mathematics. Another was an engineer, designing and building bridges in the southern tier of Iraq. A third was a police constable. A fourth was a tank commander. He had no idea where any of them were now, since the Amer ican rape of Iraq. But they were all men of distinction. All were married. All had borne their parents grandsons. All were highly respected by their families and their peers.
How then had he turned out so poorly? He was not married. He had no lover. He had no close friends to speak of, no home or material possessions or much of anything holding him back. For years this had weighed heavily upon him, made him feel lonely and rejected and a failure.
But perhaps Allah had prevented him from settling down and getting comfortable. Perhaps it was his will that he be restless and free and ready to carry out his parents' wishes. Of all five sons, only he was truly qualified and willing to give his life for the cause. Perhaps his mother had understood this all along. Perhaps she was waiting for him in Paradise, waiting to see if he would fulfill his destiny, waiting to tell him, "Good job, my son. I am proud of you. You have honored your father and me. Enter into the joy of Allah." Of all this he was not certain. But he knew one thing. He was ready to die in a blaze of glory, and that day was coming up fast. So was his exit, and Nadir clicked on his turn signal, checked his mirrors, slowed to thirty-five, and carefully made the exit.
"Should we hold the peace talks at Camp David?" asked MacPherson.
Sa'id and the PLC wanted to start talking with Doron immediately. But something in his gut was warning him away from the historic presidential retreat site.
"It's a very kind offer," he began.
"But…"
"I think we need to avoid the big, media-driven peace talks of the past— the one in Madrid in '93, the one Clinton tried to engineer between Barak and Arafat at Camp David in 2000. It's my sense that those typically end in failure."
"Why do you say that?" asked the president.
"Because they're media-driven events. They're designed to posture, not produce."
"What do you have in mind?"
"To be honest, I'm not sure exactly."
"Jon, how about you?"
"You know, I have to agree with the prime minister, Mr. President. I'm thinking the best-case scenario would be for Sa'id and Doron to meet somewhere in the region, not on U.S. soil, for secret talks — without the glare of the media, and without dozens of aides and advisors whispering a million reasons in their ears why making peace isn't such a good idea after all. If they can strike a deal, great. If they simply begin a relationship and lay the groundwork for a deal down the road, that's fine, too. But it should happen fast, and it should happen under the radar."
"But don't we need to send a public signal that the peace process is under way?"
"Eventually," Sa'id explained. "But right now, people are totally focused on the war, as they should be. I don't want to confuse people by being in peace talks — at least publicly — while there is a fight for survival going on in our homeland."
"Mr. President," Bennett now added, "perhaps we should think of it like the major mergers or acquisitions we used to do on Wall Street. A leak to CNBC that a new deal might be in the works could sometimes be useful, to stir the pot a bit, get people interested, and to gauge reaction. But only when the talks were well under way, or essentially done, right? We never wanted to conduct negotiations amidst the glare of the media, and for good reason. It totally changed the dynamics when everyone knew exactly what was going on."