He walked along the smoke-filled street nonchalantly, as if he were out to buy the morning paper, his Kalashnikov stuttering in his hands. Another commando burst apart and Hussein went down, his weapon spinning like a top across the street.
Ibrahim and Jamal couldn’t stand it any longer. The noise. The blood. The concussion of explosions. They leapt to their feet, completely terrified, and fled. The remaining Zionist rolled to one knee, took aim, and was about to shoot them in the back when Hussein sprang up, like a scorpion, and shot three rounds — before anyone could even breathe — into the last commando’s chest. The commando looked down at his shirtfront. He pulled at the material, revealing the broken bloody ribcage underneath. A stream of blood began to fountain from his mouth. Hussein walked up to him and kicked him in the face, and he went flying backwards into the blazing jeep. His hair and clothes caught fire. He wriggled for a moment longer as he burned, and then was still.
The firefight was over. It had taken less than ninety seconds from the initial blast. Ibrahim and Jamal ben Saad stood speechless. They looked about each other at the carnage, the shattered corpses of the 101 commando unit, at the bloody smiling face of Mohammed Hussein, and began to laugh hysterically. Hussein stepped up and ushered them away. It didn’t pay to linger after a firefight. You never knew.
In the shadows, outside a tiny electronics store, as Hussein cleaned and reloaded his Kalashnikov, they introduced themselves to one another. Hussein had heard of the ben Saads. Everyone knew the wealthy business mogul, Hanid ben Saad. He was a legend in Beirut. And within half an hour they had made their way to the ben Saad villa not far from the Palais de Justice.
Hussein was overwhelmed by what he saw. He lived in the ‘Ayn ar Rummanah neighborhood with three other Harakat al-Mahrumin guerrillas. His entire apartment could have fit inside the foyer of the ben Saad villa. Although it wasn’t situated on the gold coast where most of Beirut’s largest mansions loomed, it was impressive nonetheless. The two boys told him to sit down and wait, and then rushed off to find their father. He was in his study, just down the hall.
Still pulsing with adrenaline, Hussein was unable to sit down. Instead, he paced about the room, examining the hand-made European furniture, the Turkish carpets, the paintings of distant pastoral scenes, wheat fields and orchards, seascapes spattered with sails. After a few minutes, his curiosity got the better of him and he wandered down the hall. He passed a giant mirror on the wall, set in an ornate gilded wooden frame, and stopped to examine himself. In his ragged jeans and blood-soaked shirt, in his tattered veil, he had never felt so out of place. Not even his trusty Kalashnikov could make him feel at ease or secure in these strange opulent surroundings. He took another step and peeked between the doorframe and the door where the boys had disappeared.
Inside, he could see the boy named Ibrahim with an old man dressed in a Western suit. The old man stood behind a desk. His back was to the door. He was reaching into what appeared to be a wall safe, peeling off bills from a large stack of paper money.
“Found what you’re looking for?”
Hussein spun about, ducked and trained his gun on the figure of Jamal ben Saad.
“You’ve heard the stories, haven’t you?” continued Jamal.
“What stories?” asked Hussein.
“About the great fortune locked up in my father’s safe. Just in case we have to flee.”
Hussein smiled and lowered his weapon. “Are they true?”
Jamal did not respond.
“You should be glad you have such parents,” Hussein continued with a laugh.
Jamal’s face grew dark. “She is not my mother.” Just then, Ibrahim returned with the reward.
A long, long time ago, thought El Aqrab. But even then there had been only three types of terrorists: first and foremost, the local street kid found in Palestine and throughout the ghettos of the Middle East, like El Aqrab himself; second, those who were radicalized by an Imam abroad, in Europe or America, who were committed to the jihad in a very personal way; and third, the indolent guilt-ridden rich, the bored, the younger brothers and cousins of the wealthy and the upper middle class — the jinn, who considered themselves distinct from, and above the ordinary run of people, and who reinforced their eminence through the passion of their faith.
That’s what Ibrahim had been, and his older brother, Jamal. Ironically, despite their obvious differences, Jamal ben Saad and El Aqrab looked strangely alike, and this always disturbed Jamal. He was a student of architecture, it turned out. An academic. Weak and afraid. A fool. El Aqrab feared no one, and yet he was no bigger and no stronger than Jamal.
“You appeared to have vanished after the invasion,” Seiden continued. “Was that when you first went to Kazakhstan? Perhaps you shouldn’t have attacked our Ambassador in London.”
El Aqrab smiled. It was an old saw. In July, 1982, the Zionists invaded Lebanon with the declared aim of routing Palestinian guerrillas. They cited as justification an attack that wounded their ambassador in London. Operation Peace for Galilee’s ostensible goal was to push the Palestinians forty kilometers or so from the Lebanese border in order to prevent them from shelling nearby Israeli settlements. Yuri Garron headed the incursion, the same Garron, who — as Housing Minister — later reshaped the country’s settlement policy, and who was now Prime Minister. At the time, he’d been Minister of Defense, under the Likud. But Garron had had a hidden agenda. He sought not only to push the Palestinians from the border, but to alienate Lebanon from rest of the Arab states.
To accomplish his goal, Garron attempted to exploit the hatred the dominant Maronite Christians harbored against the Palestinians, whom they wanted to see driven out of Lebanon. In Garron’s mind, the Maronites were natural allies. The Zionists would underpin the Maronite position; in return, the Maronites would take Lebanon out of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But the plan failed, El Aqrab remembered with a smile. The Syrians considered Lebanon part of their sphere of influence and — once they realized what Garron was up to — they mobilized to thwart the invasion.
Garron’s forces soon found themselves outside Beirut facing the Syrians and a mishmash of guerrilla factions: the pro-X Palestinians — pro-Iraq, pro-Syria, pro-Saudi, pro-Libya, etc., depending on their sponsors; the profiteering PLO; the Druze irregulars; the Morabitum; PFL; Amal; and a hundred other freelance forces. Most did not seem too serious about the struggle, more interested in holding on to their few square blocks of West Beirut than in fighting the Israelis. As soon as the Israelis broke for lunch, they would revert to killing one another instead of the Israeli Defense Forces, or slip off for a bite to eat while watching the latest World Cup soccer match.
Since the IDF didn’t want to engage the Arab forces hand-to-hand inside the ghettos of the city, and since the Maronite Christians refused to do this for them, the Zionists turned to the United States. Then-President Reagan agreed to dispatch U.S. troops as part of a Multi-National Force, and by the time Operation Peace for Galilee was over — after the bombardments, the shelling and the air raids — more than 20,000 people lay dead.
“Of course, you never wanted a peaceful solution,” Seiden said. “If you had, you wouldn’t have assassinated President Gemayel.”
“And, in exchange, you gave us Sabra and Shatila.” El Aqrab turned and looked at Seiden. “Gemayel was an Israeli puppet. It was the Zionists who let the Christians slaughter all those people. It was Garron,” he spat.