My jaw began to hurt, so I looked up at her. I saw she had her eyes closed. A moment later, I couldn’t move my jaw any longer, so I backed away. I flung myself on a chair, dazed and exhausted.
After a moment, she opened her eyes. She sat up feebly and began putting her clothes back on. Then she asked me for a cigarette.
I lit one and gave it to her, then she lit one for me. I noticed that her eyes were brimming with tears.
“Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death,” she said in a whisper.
I moved over next to her and took her in my arms. She rested her head on my shoulder. Then she looked at my lap. Hesitantly, she put her hand on my crotch, then looked in my eyes and asked, “Did you…?”
“Nothing happened. That’s not what usually happens with me.”
“And I wasn’t doing anything to turn you on.”
I looked at my watch over her head. “It’s twelve o’clock now,” I said. “I have to go. You should, too, otherwise they’ll be asking about you.”
“Ouf — this city gets on my nerves. It’s so small! You can’t move around freely in it without someone seeing you. I wish we were together in Paris. By ourselves. We could have fights and yell at each other. And sleep together.”
“There are Arabs there everywhere you look.”
“True. Alright then, Geneva.”
“Do you know it well?”
“Of course. I’ve visited it several times.”
“And did you stay at the Noga Hilton?”
“How did you know?” she asked in astonishment.
“Because all Arabs like you stay there.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Except that the owner of the hotel is an Israeli who gives Israel two million dollars a year. He accompanied Begin when he visited Cairo for the first time. He was with him to welcome Sadat at Beersheba last year.’’
She raised her eyebrows in disapprovaclass="underline" “And what do I have to do with all that?”
“True. What do you have to do with all that?”
After a moment, I added, “Also, I don’t have the money to travel.”
“I’d pay for you,” she said eagerly.
I shook my head. “What makes you think I even want to travel with you?”
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked, putting her hand on my chest to push me away.
Smoothing her hair, she stood up, picked up her bag and hurried to the door.
I hurried after her, and grabbed hold of her. Then I put my arms around her and kissed her. Her legs buckled and I clung to her body. She began to move slowly, then pulled away, saying:
“I have to go.”
“Did you forget that you promised to drive me?” I asked.
“It’s better if I don’t, so that no one sees us together.”
I let her go. I straightened out the couch and adjusted my clothes and hair. Then I put on my jacket and headed outside.
Chapter 20
The Sixth and Final Part of the Film
Title card:
In May 1977, Menachem Begin became prime minister of Israel. Two months later, he visited Washington, carrying with him a plan to restart negotiations to settle the Middle East crisis. Before he traveled, he declared that Israel was prepared to participate in the Geneva summit, provided that the PLO was excluded.
But the visit resulted in his agreement with President Carter to get around the Geneva conference and remove the Soviet Union and the PLO from the negotiations.
There were clear indications about Sadat’s aims, and about the keys to his personality. Begin found the opportunity was a suitable one for conclusively removing Egypt from the Arab bloc.
Begin began by making hints to Sadat via the royal palace in Morocco that he had information about a Libyan conspiracy against Sadat. He made it clear that he was prepared to give the details directly to a designated Egyptian deputy.
Sadat hastened to send the director of Egypt’s military intelligence services to Rabat, where he met the head of the Mossad, who gave him the details of the conspiracy. Sadat immediately ordered a punitive attack on Libya. For a full week, Egyptian planes bombed Libyan positions at the borders, and beyond. With these raids, Sadat hoped to prove that he was capable of opposing a regime hostile to the United States.
Over the course of the following months, there was a flurry of secret communications, capped by a secret meeting between Moshe Dayan, Israel’s minister of defense, and King Hussein of Jordan on August 24, and between Dayan and King Hasan of Morocco the next month.
Two months later, on November 19, 1977…
Jerusalem Airport. President Sadat comes down the stairway from his private plane (which cost 12 million dollars, paid for by the Saudis) with Ephraim Katzir, president of Israel, beside him.
Title card:
On the first visit of its kind by an Arab president, and under the slogan of “Permanent peace at any price”, and under the auspices of American hegemony, Sadat acknowledged the historical right of the Jews in Palestine, and in the Holy City, not to mention the right to the presence of Zionist settlers.
This admission was the turning point. Begin started talking about acknowledging the right to the presence of the Palestinians who remained until Zionist occupation, in the form of a plan of self-administration for the inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As for those who were not under Zionist occupation, they had no right to Palestine, and had to be dissolved into the state they were living in.
The Israeli Knesset. Sadat makes a speech, declaring: “There will be no other wars… between Egypt and Israel…”
Title card:
A few days before…
Israel began testing Kfir planes, which were produced in their factories, in a surprise attack on the village of al-Izziya in southern Lebanon.
Headline in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth: “The leader of the Kfir squadron states that the execution was flawless, and the advanced systems worked outstandingly.”
Jerusalem Airport. Sadat prepares to board his plane to head back to his country. He shakes hands with the leader of the Israeli Kfir squadron which attacked the village of al-Izziya; he himself is entrusted with accompanying Sadat’s plane in the sky over Jerusalem.
A circle around a paragraph from an article with the byline of the journalist Jim Hoagland, in the Washington Post: “Investigations carried out by Congress, by way of the committee headed by Senator Frank Church, with some of the CIA leadership, have confirmed that King Hussein received sums of money from the CIA. While Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to bring down the conservative Saudi regime in the 1960s, Kamal Adham, the director of Saudi intelligence and its liaison officer with the CIA, was able to mobilize the greed of Sadat, who was vice president of Egypt at that time. At one point, Adham provided Sadat with a fixed personal income, according to a well-informed source who refused to provide detailed evidence.”
Ismailia. The Egyptian president’s luxury retreat. Sadat and his wife welcome Menachem Begin and his wife on Christmas Day, 1977. An open-air press conference. Sadat reads from a piece of paper: “We have agreed that the war of October, 1973 will be the last war between Egypt and Israel.” Directly behind Sadat in the photograph, Moshe Dayan’s black eyepatch can be seen.
Title card:
Two and a half months later…
South Lebanon, near the Israeli border. Small green tobacco shrubs spread out on the hills and lowlands. Entire families bent over doing farmwork. Camels and beasts of burden. Farmers lie down on the ground, in front of baskets of figs, grapes and prickly pears that they sell with the skin on. Palm fronds and orange tree branches. The Mays al-Jabal pond. Lebanese women wash clothes and household dishes in the muddy waters. Pack-animals drink from the same water. On the surface of the road Palestinian nationalist slogans have been drawn.