Abu Hamid hated the place, hated the dirt and the filth and the smells of the camp. He hated the recruits who were his responsibility. He hated the flies in the day, and the mosquitoes that came at dusk from the irrigation ditch beyond the perimeter, and the rats that swarmed at night from the coiled wire. He hated the food that was cooked dry under the corrugated iron roof and over the open wood fire. He hated the relaxed calm of Fawzi who was the Syrian spy in place to watch over him. He hated the boredom of the training routine.
Most of all he hated the isolation of the camp.
He had requested of Fawzi the necessary pass that would have enabled him to get to Damascus to see his Margarethe. Of course, the requests were not refused.
Nothing was ever refused by the Syrians, the requests' were only diverted, there was just the hinted promise that later everything would be possible.
For two weeks he had been a prisoner.
In two weeks he had not seen Major Said Hazan, nor had he seen any of the big men of the Popular Front.
Of course, he knew that the Doctor, the inspiration of the Popular Front, could not travel into the valley, could not expose himself that close to the territory of the Zionist enemy, but there were others that could have come, others who could have demanded of the Syrians the right of access to himself and to the new recruits.
The place was hell to him. And there was a worm that ate at his confidence. Abu Hamid had performed a service to the Palestinian cause, to the government of the Syrian Arab Republic who were the sponsors of that cause. The service was secret, could not be spoken of.
That was the worm. Of course, the recruits knew that he had taken part in the battles of 1982 in Tyre and Sidon and Damour and in West Beirut. But the recruits too, every last one of them, had been inside one or more of those battles. As young teenagers they had carried back the casualties, carried forward the ammunition.
The young teenagers had been left behind in the Rach-idiye camp, and the Ein el Helwe camp and the Miye ou Miye camp and the Sabra and the Chatila camps when the fighters had been given safe passage by foreign peace-keeping troops and sailed away. The kids had stayed, under the Zionist occupation. They showed him a degree of respect for having been to the military academy at Simferopol and having passed out as top officer cadet, only a degree of respect. If only they had known…
"When can we go to Israel?" was their sole concern.
"When can we fight the real war?" the recruits pleaded with Abu Hamid. "When can we show that we have no fear?"
Abu Hamid had known men who had gone to Israel, fought the real war, shown that they had no fear. He had known them in the camps before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. He had seen them go. He had never seen one of them return.
One fact alone mitigated the hatred he felt for this filthy, stinking camp. It was a secret to his recruits, but he had proved himself at Simferopol, and he would never be required to prove himself again. It would never be demanded of him that he should go through the security zone into Israel.
A very secret thought. A thought that he would never share.
They were coming down the gentle lower slope of the valley wall. The recruits were in a loose formation, twenty ranks of three abreast, and Abu Hamid played the part of a non-commissioned instructor at the military academy and strode at the side of them and shouted for the step to be maintained. The recruits were singing, with fervour, an anthem of the Popular Front, a song of killing and victory. The anthem was of death, was of battle, but the valley was a place of peace. From the elevation of the track, looking out across the cultivated floor of the valley, and across the sharp ridge lines of the irrigation ditches, and the light sweep of the unsurfaced road that fed their camp, Abu Hamid could see a scene of undamaged tranquillity. There were women from the Shi'a village pruning in the grove of olive trees, more women bent amongst the marijuana crop. There were men working between the lines of the vineyards, more men shepherding flocks of sheep towards brighter pastures amongst the gullies in the rock scrub. Smoke spirals drifted into the air above the commandos' camp.
He could hear birds singing. He could see two jeep vehicles kicking up short dust storms as they approached the camp along the unsurfaced road.
They came down the hillside. They reached the gate of the camp, the gap in the coiled wire, when the nearest of the jeeps was a hundred yards from the perimeter.
Abu Hamid gave his orders. The RPG-7 launchers to be returned after cleaning to the underground armoury.
The rifles to be cleaned and inspected. The cooking for the midday meal to be started.
He waited at the entrance of the camp. The first jeep ground to a stop in front of him. The second jeep had pulled up fifty yards further down the track. The engines were switched off. Both jeeps carried the red and white flashes of the military police of the Syrian Army on their dust-coated flanks. He saw that the driver of the near jeep wore the white helmet of the military police, he saw Fawzi climb out from the passenger seat.
Fawzi had been away for three days and three nights.
He saw the grin, the expectant pleasure on Fawzi's face.
Fawzi acknowledged Abu Hamid, a casual waft of the hand, then walked to the back of the jeep, threw it open.
The woman was chicken trussed. She was carried easily by Fawzi from the back of the jeep. Her ankles, below the length of the long hem of her skirt, were bound many times with the sort of twine that is used to bind straw or hay for cattle fodder. Her wrists were handcuffed behind her back. Fawzi carried her over his shoulder. She did not whimper, she did not writhe. Abu Hamid could not see her face which lay limp against the chest of Fawzi. She had no headscarf, her long hair was dirt-streaked, the pale soil of the Beqa'a smeared into the black tresses. He saw the military policeman, the driver, stay in his seat, light a cigarette. He followed Fawzi into the camp, behind the unmoving legs of the woman. The woman had no shoes and the soles of her feet were raw and blood-caked. Abu Hamid's finger flicked at the scar well in his cheek.
Beside the tents, Fawzi heaved the woman to the ground. She fell hard, on her hip and her shoulder. No sound from her lips, only the heave of her lungs to replace the breath punched from her body.
Abu Hamid swallowed. The recruits were gathering, forming a hesitant circle around Fawzi and Abu Hamid, and the woman. Fawzi was panting, but silent, preparing his speech. Abu Hamid saw the face of the woman. He thought that her nose was broken because of the twist of the point of her nose as if it were putty and could be moved easily sideways. Her eyes were closed, perhaps she did not care to open them, perhaps the bruising was too heavy for her to be able to open them; there was dark vivid bruising on the soft sallow skin. He could see that the buttons of her heavy blouse had been torn away, he could see the sears on her throat and on the upper skin of her breasts.
Abu Hamid thought that she had been burned with cigarette butts. He was struggling to suppress his vomit nausea.
"This woman is Leila Galah," began Fawzi. "Her parents live in Nablus, in the Occupied Territory. She herself comes from the Bourj el Barajneh camp in Beirut. She is 23 years old. She left the Occupied Territory seven years ago to join the Popular Democratic Front – all this she has told us."
No one looked at Fawzi. Every eye in the circle of recruits was fixed on the still body of the woman lying at Fawzi's feet.
"Also she has told us that for two years she has been an agent of the Zionist enemy… "
Abu Hamid heard the anger growl from his recruits.
He heard the sucked breath. He saw the smile sweeping Fawzi's face. He wondered if the woman heard her denunciation.
"She has told us that she is a spy."
Abu Hamid had gone, after the evacuation from Beirut, to the port of Aden, the capital city of the People's Republic of South Yemen. He and friends had once gone in a fishing boat out to sea, beyond the sight of land, and they had tossed over the side a sack of offal and entrails, and when the sharks had closed on the blood-soaked meat, they had fired at them with their automatic rifles… for sport. He could remember the surging interest, the relentless approach of the sharks to the meat and the blood and the skin. The woman was the meat, that she was a spy for Israel was the blood scenting the water, the recruits were the sharks of the scarlet-streaming Red Sea.