“This is still edible,” he said. “Where’s the basket? Where are your pitas?” One of the men went and fetched the basket from the front of the restaurant, from the spot where the two of them had sat on the Egyptian and where they had punched him in the face because he had peed his pants.
At that moment, there was a knock at the door.
“Don’t open it,” the Egyptian whispered. “Don’t open it.”
The man with the pistol wormed the barrel back into the Egyptian’s mouth, but this time he didn’t break a tooth.
Another knock sounded.
The Egyptian shivered like someone with a high fever. He missed his dogs’ fur, the warmth of their fur; he thought he would never feel that fur again. Crazy to think about that now, about his dogs’ fur, how they jumped up to greet him.
The men heard footsteps going away. The Egyptian heard it, too. The man with the pistol waited for a minute, then pulled his weapon out of the Egyptian’s mouth.
“Okay,” he said.
His assistant came back with the basket, but the man with the pistol put it down casually on the bar. He didn’t even bother looking at the basket.
“He who collaborates with the Zionists becomes one himself,” the man with the gun said. “Look at him, look at him shake. Only women shake like that.”
The Egyptian felt filthy, and therefore unworthy as well. A befouled person is an unworthy person. Unworthy to stand before his judge, who, due to a shortage of time and personnel, was also his executioner. He was afraid that his filthiness would detract from the force of his arguments. He felt that they would have listened to him better if he hadn’t been so filthy. That they would have understood him if he’d been a little cleaner, if he hadn’t peed and pooped in his pants, if no blood had dripped from his mouth. His pleas would have made a much greater impression if he had looked a little more respectable. Suddenly he felt ashamed of his broken tooth. He was ashamed of how easily his teeth broke.
“I support the struggle,” he mumbled. “I always have. You people know that, don’t you? I’ve always donated money. I opened accounts for you, I acted as your intermediary in this country. I helped you. As much as I could. I support your struggle.”
The more he mumbled, the more blood ran out of his mouth.
The man with the pistol said: “If you had been a man, we would have killed you. But you’re not a man. You’re disgusting. That’s why we’re letting you live, do you understand? We’re letting you live because you deserve to live like a worm. Take off his shoes.”
The man who had fetched the basket bent down and began taking off the Egyptian’s shoes.
The Egyptian was suddenly very fond of his shoes. He had bought them on sale not so long ago, one afternoon while he was taking a walk, but not because he’d really needed them. Nice black shoes. The soles were leather, so they made a pleasant sound when you walked down the street. At least, it had sounded pleasant to him — he liked it. Click-clack, that kind of sound, like a horse.
“And his socks,” said the man with the pistol.
Those were pulled off hastily as well. The socks were a dark blue.
The Egyptian’s feet were white. Shockingly pale. There was hair growing on the Egyptian’s toes. Dark hair. You could see the veins beneath the skin. The men looked at his feet as though his feet weren’t really a part of him, as though they were two separate animals that had somehow ended up in Jerusalem Kebabs. Pale and hairy vermin. The Egyptian looked at his own feet now as well. And for the first time he realized how old he really was, and how ugly his feet were.
“Because you’re not a man,” the man with the pistol said, “but a traitor, you will live. But you will mourn every moment of your life; you will always regret being alive. You will feel the pain that you have caused your brothers, and then you must realize that your pain is nothing compared with theirs. We feel more pain than you will ever experience. You’re getting off lightly. Pick him up.”
The men pulled up two chairs. They stood on the chairs. Then they picked up the Egyptian. They had rolled up his pants legs first, then washed their hands right away. They were clean men, and they liked to stay clean.
The Egyptian was hanging in the air now. He was dangling in the hands of the two men. “Please,” he murmured, “please.” But his murmurs sounded less and less convincing. He himself couldn’t believe in them anymore. For a moment, in a flash, he thought about the woman he had been expecting, the woman who hadn’t come. Three men had come instead. He realized that he no longer smelled of desert and of dog; he was no different from the other informants, he was simply one among many. He could lay no claims to anything. In the end he was a traitor; to that led all the roads he had followed, all the cocaine he had sold, all the falafels he had fried, to that moment, to that point, to that day. The day he had become an informant.
Still, he couldn’t rid himself of the impression that he had never betrayed a thing.
Then he peed in his pants again. This time the men paid no attention. “To make sure that you will crawl on your belly like a worm,” said the man with the pistol, “we are going to fry your feet.”
The men held the Egyptian above the deep-fryer. It was hard, but they did it, because they were in excellent shape. They went to the gym on a regular basis, to keep from growing fat, but also to be able to deal with traitors. It was part of their job.
The Egyptian had almost no strength left, but he pulled his legs up to his chest. He kicked. He kicked like a child. “Please,” he whispered, “I beg you.” He tried to turn his head to look at the man with the pistol, and hurt his neck.
The man with the pistol was standing behind the Egyptian; in front of him was the door of his kebab place; the music played on; and for one second, for a fraction of a second, the thought flashed through his mind: Who is this pianist, anyway? What is his name again?
He looked down and saw the oil like a black hole. The boiling oil had no color anymore — no smell, either, although there were still pieces of burned falafel ball floating in it. A reflecting hole, it was, no more than that, a reflecting, boiling hole.
The Egyptian screamed: “No, no, not like this. Please. I beg you.”
But the more he begged, the more ridiculous he appeared in the men’s eyes. The lower their esteem for him, the more he disgusted them.
The man with the pistol grabbed the left foot, slid his hand up to the shin, and dipped the Egyptian’s foot in the fryer.
He didn’t hold it in the boiling oil for very long — five or six seconds at most — just long enough to achieve the desired effect.
Then he did the same with the right foot.
The Egyptian’s screams were horrific. The men actually grimaced at the sound of them, as though they could feel the victim’s pain. It was the most horrific screaming they’d ever heard. They hoped they would never hear anything like it again.
When the operation was over, they let the Egyptian fall to the floor. He landed behind the bar. Beside the light switches, under the tape player. The piano concerto by Beethoven played on steadily. The whole thing hadn’t taken long — a few minutes at most.
The Egyptian’s feet had not turned brown, not even black, more like a slimy white, with pink spots here and there. The flesh had become stringy. The flesh stank.
The men climbed down from their chairs and put them back neatly where they had been. They washed their hands again. There was no towel, so they had to dry them on a roll of paper towels.
The men walked to the door. Behind them walked the man who had dipped the feet in the oil.
“That wasn’t easy,” he told his colleagues. “But it had to happen. You can be proud of yourselves.”