“But, Jamal, I will tell you something. It is a lie! The people of Lifta fled four months before Deir Yassin! They are cowards, even now. Scattered, homeless, landless. They have lost everything. And still they cannot face the truth.”
“They are pathetic,” said Jamal.
“Perhaps. But their emotions are human and timeless. And that is why I am telling you this sad story of my village. Because it is our story today. Do you doubt me? Do you think that we have learned our lesson and it cannot happen again? Listen to me for a moment more.
“After the catastrophe of 1948, many of the people of Lifta went to Amman. They had lost their village and their country. But in Jordan they were at least among brother Arabs, with passports and the rights of citizenship. The Liftawis built homes and businesses. They made a little money and perhaps they bought a car, or a bigger house, or they sent their children to university. Or perhaps they moved to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia and made even more money.”
“I know people like that,” said Jamal.
“Of course you do,” answered Abu Nasir. “They are all around you. They are the face of our people, struggling, hoping, trying to survive. The Liftawis were no better or worse than the people of any other village. They made friends with the Jordanians. They grew comfortable. They believed in the liberation of Palestine, perhaps even in the dream of returning to Lifta. They supported the fedayeen and gave us money and time. They believed they had learned the lesson that to survive in a world like this, you must be strong.
“Now I will tell you the saddest part of my story. During the fighting in Amman last September, I visited a family from my village. From Lifta. They were living in Jebel Hussein near one of the Jordanian Army positions. Do you know where that is?”
“Of course,” said Jamal.
“I asked them for help. I told them that our fighters needed their house to stop the advance of the King’s army. I pleaded, but they refused. They told me the fighting would be over soon and they would be safe. They didn’t want to have the fedayeen so close. What harm could come to them from the Jordanians? They had done nothing wrong.”
“What happened to them?” asked Jamal.
“They are all dead. The whole family was killed when an artillery shell hit their house. I cried when I heard the news, even after what had happened. Here were people who had been driven like dogs from their home in Lifta only to die like dogs in Amman!”
Jamal shook his head with a mixture of sadness and contempt.
“Now I will shock you by saying something,” continued Abu Nasir. “Our people hate Menachem Begin, don’t they? That is an article of faith for us, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is!” answered Jamal.
“But I don’t hate Begin. I admire him. His people were crushed and demoralized. They had been dragged back and forth across Europe and then gone silently to their deaths. They had trusted in the Germans-in reason and progress and assimilation-so much that they couldn’t understand what was happening to them. They died trembling, with their eyes closed, lying to themselves to the very end. But not Begin. Have you ever read his book?”
“No,” said Jamal disdainfully.
“You should. In this book, Begin put the matter of survival very simply. He said: ‘I fight, therefore I am.’ And he was right. The Jews would survive only if they were prepared to kill their enemies. Begin put his trust in the power of Jewish guns, rather than in the goodwill of others.”
Jamal nodded. He was beginning to see the castle emerging from the fog.
“Begin understood something else,” continued Abu Nasir. “He understood that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. That terrorism gives power to the weak by making their enemies afraid. He understood that if you have the ability to create fear, then you have power.
“I will tell you something from my heart about terrorism, Jamal. Do you know what I feel when I read in the newspapers about Palestinian ‘terrorists’ who have hijacked airplanes and killed civilians? Or when I read that the Palestinians are cruel and ruthless and inhuman? Intellectually I am critical, of course, because Fatah’s official line is to oppose international terrorist operations. But do you know what I feel in my heart and my stomach?”
“What do you feel?” asked Jamal, almost in a whisper.
“I feel proud! It makes me happy to know that they are afraid of us. I like to see the look of fear in people’s eyes when I walk down the street. If I hear someone say behind my back, ‘Be careful of him! He is a madman! He is a killer!’-I am happy for the rest of the day.”
Jamal nodded. Yes, he thought. That is what I feel. That is what every Palestinian feels. We may not defeat the Jews, but at least we can make them fear for their lives.
“I would like to tell you a secret,” continued Abu Nasir. “It is what the Egyptians would call a secret of state. Something that Nasser said, which I swore I would never tell anyone else. But now that Nasser is dead, God rest his soul, I will tell you. The first time Nasser met the Old Man was in 1967. At the end of the meeting, after much talk back and forth, Nasser said to him: ‘Why not be our Begin?’ ”
“ Begin? ” asked Jamal.
“Yes. We didn’t believe Nasser. We thought he was joking. But he was right.”
“What are you saying, Uncle?”
“Our people are dying! It is happening to us again. The resistance is scattered, our morale is broken, our people are in flight. This time our enemy is an Arab leader, the King of Jordan, but that is the only difference. September 1970 is the same as December 1947. Another generation is developing the psychology of defeat. They are already inventing the lies they will tell their children about the events of Black September! We are dying as a people, vanishing into history on a tide of defeat and self-deception.
“Jamal, my friend and brother, we must break out of this cycle! To survive, we must find a way to make our enemies afraid of us. Otherwise we are finished. And that is what I wanted to tell you: That will be our task, you and me. To make our enemies feel the knife of fear.”
The story ended as quietly as it had begun. By now, the room was full of smoke, so dense and thick that the face of Abu Nasir was barely visible. Jamal rose from his couch and silently kissed the older man. Tears were running down his cheeks. For Jamal, that was the night that Black September was born, a mythic organization that had no leaders, no structure, no purpose or plan other than to sustain the intoxicating and deadly specter of terror.
32
Beirut; July 1971
Through the spring and summer of 1971, Jamal was the dog that didn’t bark. He slipped quietly in and out of Beirut, was rarely seen in public, avoided old friends from Fatah, and even altered the conduct of his amorous adventures. As a concession to security, he stopped bringing women home. He went instead to their apartments or hotel rooms or palaces, slept with them once, and then disappeared. He felt virtuous for this modest restraint.
Jamal travelled ceaselessly, relearning languages he had half-forgotten. His passports usually said he was Algerian. They were real Algerian passports, provided by a cooperative member of the Algerian Embassy in Beirut. This particular Algerian could be trusted, Abu Nasir had advised Jamal, because he had never been tortured by the French. That was one of Abu Nasir’s peculiar rules: Never trust a man who has been tortured, regardless of whether he cracked. A victim of torture sees the very worst about the world, in himself and his torturers. He loses something.
Jamal made a plausible Algerian, with his dark black hair and continental manners. He was Chadli bin Yahiya or Omar Sahnoun or Tariq bin Jedid. The names became like new layers of skin, masks on top of masks.
Jamal’s task was to solve a riddle. Abu Nasir had told him to build a solid structure that was invisible, to develop the infrastructure of an organization that would not exist, to plan operations that would appear to have no planning-operations that could be denied plausibly by the very people who had ordered them. It was crucial, said Abu Nasir, that Black September should have no address and leave no footprints. In the aftermath of each bombing or assassination, there should be only the blackness and anonymity of pure terror.