The Attack Read online

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  Also by Yasmina Khadra

  Copyright Page

  I don’t remember hearing an explosion. A hissing sound, maybe, like tearing fabric, but I’m not certain. My attention was distracted by that quasi-divinity and the host of devoted followers surrounding him as his bodyguards tried to clear a passage to his waiting automobile. “Let us pass, please. Please move out of the way.” The faithful elbowed one another, hoping to get a better look at the sheikh or touch a part of his kamis. From time to time, the revered old man turned to greet an acquaintance or thank a disciple. The eyes in his ascetic’s face glinted like the blade of a scimitar. I was being crushed by the enraptured throng and tried in vain to break free. The sheikh plunged into his vehicle, waving with one hand from behind the bulletproof glass while his two bodyguards took their places on either side of him. And then . . . but there’s nothing more. Something resembling a lightning bolt streaks across the sky and bursts like a giant flare in the middle of the roadway; the shock wave strikes me full force; the crowd whose frenzy held me captive disintegrates. In a fraction of a second, the sky collapses, and the street, fraught with the fervor of the multitude a moment ago, turns upside down. The body of a man, or perhaps a boy, hurtles across my vertiginous sight like a dark flash. What’s going on? A surge of dust and fire envelops me, flinging me into the air with a thousand other projectiles. I have a vague sensation of being reduced to shreds, of dissolving in the blast’s hot breath. . . . A few yards—or light-years—away, the sheikh’s automobile is ablaze. Hungry tentacles enclose it, spreading abroad a dreadful odor of cremation. The roar of the flames must be terrifying; I can’t hear it. I’ve been struck deaf, ravished away from the noises of the town. I hear nothing, I feel nothing; I hover, I only hover. I hover for an eternity before plunging back to earth, stunned, undone, but curiously lucid, my eyes wide open on the horror that has just descended on the town from out of the sky. In the instant when I touch the ground, everything freezes: the flames rising above the destroyed vehicle, the flying projectiles, the smoke, the chaos, the smells, time. . . . Only a heavenly voice, floating over the fathomless silence of death, is singing One of these days, we’ll go back home. It’s not exactly a voice; it’s more like a rustling, a filigree of sound. . . . My head bounces off something. . . . A child cries: Mama! The call is weak, but distinct and pure. It comes from far away, from some calm elsewhere. . . . The flames devouring the sheikh’s car refuse to budge; the projectiles won’t fall. . . . My hand gropes among the gravel. I believe I’ve been hurt. I try to move my legs, to lift my head; not one of my muscles obeys me. . . . Mama, the child cries. . . . I’m over here, Amin. . . . And there she is, Mama, emerging from behind a curtain of smoke. She advances through the suspended debris, amid petrified gestures, past mouths opened upon the abyss. For a moment, because of her milk white veil and her tormented look, I take her for the Virgin. My mother was always like this, radiant and sad at the same time, like a candle. When she placed her hand on my burning forehead, she took away all my fever and all my cares. . . . And now she’s here; her magic powers are still intact. A shudder runs through me from my feet to my head, setting everything free and unleashing delirium. The flames start their macabre movement again, the exploded fragments resume their trajectories, and panic comes flooding back in. . . . A man in rags, with blackened face and arms, tries to approach the blazing automobile. Although he’s gravely wounded, some reserve of stubbornness moves him to try to help the sheikh, no matter what the cost. Every time he puts his hand on the door of the car, a jet of flames drives him back. Inside the blasted vehicle, the trapped bodies are burning. Two blood-covered specters approach from the other side and try to force open the rear door. I see them screaming orders or crying out in pain, but I don’t hear them. Not far from where I’m lying, an old man stares at me stupidly; he doesn’t seem to realize his guts are exposed to the air and his blood is streaming toward the crater in the street. A wounded man with an enormous smoking stain on his back is crawling across the rubble. He passes quite close to me, groaning and panic-stricken, and gives up the ghost a little farther on, his eyes wide open, as if he’s still denying that such a thing could happen to him, to him. The two specters finally break the windshield and dive into the automobile. Other survivors come to their aid. With their bare hands, they pull apart the flaming vehicle, break the windows, tear off the doors, and succeed in extracting the sheikh’s body. A dozen arms lift him up, carry him away from the inferno, and lay him down on the sidewalk, while a flurry of other hands strives to beat the fire out of his clothes. A deep, intense tingling makes its presence felt in my hip. My trousers have almost disappeared; only a few strips of scorched cloth cover me here and there. Against my side, grotesque and horrible, my leg is lying, still connected to my thigh by a thin ribbon of flesh. Suddenly, all my strength deserts me. I have the sensation that my fibers are separating from one another, already decomposing. . . . At last, I hear something, the wailing of an ambulance, and little by little, the noises of the street return, break over me like waves, stun me. Someone bends over my body, gives it a summary examination with his stethoscope, and goes away. I see him stoop before a heap of charred flesh, take its pulse, and then make a sign to some stretcher-bearers. A man comes to me, picks up my wrist, and lets it fall again. . . . “This one’s a goner. We can’t do anything for him.” I’d like to hold him back and force him to reconsider his assessment, but my arm mutinies, refusing to obey me. The child starts crying out again: Mama. . . . I look for my mother amid the chaos . . . and discover only orchards, stretching as far as I can see . . . Grandfather’s orchards . . . the orchards of the patriarch . . . a land of orange trees, where every day was summer . . . and a dreaming boy on the crest of a hill. The sky is a limpid blue. Everywhere, the orange trees are holding out their arms to one another. The child is twelve years old, with a porcelain heart. At his age, there’s so much to love at first sight, and simply because his trust runs as deep as his joy, he thinks of devouring the moon like a fruit, convinced that he need only reach out his hand to gather up the happiness of all the world. . . . And there, before my eyes, despite the tragedy that has just ruined forever my memory of that distant day, despite the bodies of the dying scattered in the street and the flames that have now completely overwhelmed the sheikh’s automobile, the boy bounds to his feet, his arms spread like a kestrel’s wings, and goes running across the fields, where every tree is enchanted. . . . Tears furrow my cheeks. . . . “Whoever told you a man mustn’t cry doesn’t know what it means to be a man,” my father declared when he came upon me, weeping and distraught, in the patriarch’s funeral chamber. “There’s no shame in crying, my boy. Tears are the noblest things we have.” Since I refused to release Grandfather’s hand, my father knelt before me and took me in his arms. “There’s no use staying here,” he said. “The dead are dead, they’re over, they’ve served their time. As for the living, they’re ghosts, too; they’re just early for their appointment. . . .” Two bearers pick me up and put me on a stretcher. An ambulance backs up to us, its rear doors wide open. Arms pull me inside and practically throw me among some other corpses. In my final throes, I hear myself sob. . . . “God, if this is some horrible nightmare
, let me wake up, and soon. . . .”

  1.

  * * *

  After the operation, Ezra Benhaim, our hospital director, comes to see me in my office. He’s an alert, lively gentleman, despite his sixty-odd years and his increasing corpulence. Around the hospital, he’s known as “the Sergeant,” because he’s an outrageous despot with a sense of humor that always seems to show up a little late. But when the going gets tough, he’s the first to roll up his sleeves and the last to leave the shop.

  Before I became a naturalized Israeli citizen, back when I was a young surgeon moving heaven and earth to get licensed, he was there. Even though he was still just a modest chief of service at the time, he used the little influence his position afforded him to keep my detractors at bay. In those days, it was hard for a son of Bedouins to join the brotherhood of the highly educated elite without provoking a sort of reflexive disgust. The other medical school graduates in my class were wealthy young Jews who wore gold chain bracelets and parked their convertibles in the hospital lot. They looked down their noses at me and perceived each of my successes as a threat to their social standing. And so, whenever one of them pushed me too far, Ezra wouldn’t even want to know who started first; he took my side as a matter of course.

  He pushes the door open without knocking, comes in, and looks at me with his head tilted to one side and the hint of a smile on his lips. This is his way of communicating his satisfaction. Then, after I pivot my armchair to face him, he takes off his glasses, wipes them on the front of his lab coat, and says, “It looks like you had to go all the way to the next world to bring your patient back.”

  “Let’s not exaggerate.”

  He puts his glasses back on his nose, flares his unattractive nostrils, nods his head; then, after a brief meditation, his face regains its austerity. “Are you coming to the club this evening?”

  “Not possible. My wife’s due home tonight.”

  “What about our return match?”

  “Which one? You haven’t won a single game against me.”

  “You’re not fair, Amin. You always take advantage of my bad days and score lots of points. But today, when I feel great, you back out.”

  I lean far back in my chair so I can stare at him properly. “You know what it is, my poor old Ezra? You don’t have as much punch as you used to, and I hate myself for taking advantage of you.”

  “Don’t bury me quite yet. Sooner or later, I’m going to shut you up once and for all.”

  “You don’t need a racket for that. A simple suspension would do the trick.”

  He promises to think about it, brings a finger to his temple in a casual salute, and goes back to badgering the nurses in the corridors.

  Once I’m alone, I try to go back to where I was before Ezra’s intrusion and remember that I was about to call my wife. I pick up the phone, dial our number, and hang up again at the end of the seventh ring. My watch reads 1:12 P.M. If Sihem took the nine o’clock bus, she should have arrived home some time ago.

  “You worry too much!” cries Dr. Kim Yehuda, surprising me by bursting into my cubbyhole. Continuing without pause, she says, “I knocked before I came in. You were lost in space. . . .”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  She dismisses my apology with a haughty hand, observes my furrowing brow, and asks, “Were you calling your house?”

  “I can hide nothing from you.”

  “And, obviously, Sihem hasn’t come home yet?”

  Her insight irritates me, but I’ve learned to live with it. We’ve known each other since we were at the university together. We weren’t in the same class—I was about three years ahead of her—but we hit it off right away. She was beautiful and spontaneous and far more open-minded than the other students, who had to bite their tongues a few times before they’d ask an Arab for a light, even if he was a brilliant student and a handsome lad to boot. Kim had an easy laugh and a generous heart. Our romance was brief and disconcertingly naïve. I suffered enormously when a young Russian god, freshly arrived from his Komsomol, came and stole her away from me. Good sport that I was, I didn’t put up any fight. Later, I married Sihem, and then, without warning, very shortly after the Soviet empire fell apart, the Russian went back home; but we’ve remained excellent friends, Kim and I, and our close collaboration has forged a powerful bond between us.

  “It’s the end of the holiday today,” she reminds me. “The roads are jammed. Have you tried to reach her at her grandmother’s?”

  “There’s no telephone at the farm.”

  “Call her on her mobile phone.”

  “She forgot it at home again.”

  She spreads out her arms in resignation: “That’s bad luck.”

  “For whom?”

  She raises one magnificent eyebrow and shakes a warning finger at me. “The tragedy of certain well-intentioned people,” she declares, “is that they don’t have the courage of their commitments, and they fail to follow their ideas to their logical conclusion.”

  “The time is right,” I say, rising from my chair. “The operation was very stressful, and we need to regain our strength. . . .”

  Grabbing her by the elbow, I push her into the corridor. “Walk on ahead, my lovely. I want to see all the wonders you’re pulling behind you.”

  “Would you dare repeat that in front of Sihem?”

  “Only imbeciles never change their minds.”

  Kim’s laughter lights up the hospital corridor like a garland of bright flowers in a home for the dying.

  * * *

  In the canteen, Ilan Ros joins us just as we’re finishing our lunch. He sets his overloaded tray on the table and places himself on my right so that he’s facing Kim. His jowls are scarlet, and he’s wearing a loose apron over his Pantagruelian belly. He begins by gobbling up three slices of cold meat in quick succession and then wipes his mouth on a paper napkin. “Are you still looking for a second house?” he asks me amid a lot of voracious smacking.

  “That depends on where it is.”

  “I think I’ve come up with something for you. Not far from Ashkelon. A pretty little villa with just what you need to tune out completely.”

  My wife and I have been looking for a small house on the seashore for more than a year. Sihem loves the sea. Every other weekend, my hospital duties permitting, we get into our car and head for the beach. We walk on the sand for a long time, and then we climb a dune and stare at the horizon until late in the night. Sunsets exercise a degree of fascination on Sihem that I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of.

  “You think I can afford it?” I ask.

  Ilan Ros utters a brief laugh, and his crimson neck shakes like gelatin. “Amin, you haven’t put your hand in your pocket for so long that I figure you must have plenty socked away. Surely enough to make at least half of your dreams come true . . .”

  Suddenly, a tremendous explosion shakes the walls of the canteen and sets the glasses tinkling. Everyone in the place looks at one another, puzzled, and then those close to the picture windows get up from their tables and peer out. Kim and I rush to the nearest window. Outside, the people at work in the hospital courtyard are standing still, with their faces turned toward the north. The facades of the buildings across the way prevent us from seeing farther.

  “That’s got to be a terrorist attack,” someone says.

  Kim and I run out into the corridor. A group of nurses is already coming up from the basement and racing toward the lobby. Judging from the force of the shock wave, I’d say the explosion couldn’t have gone off very far away. A security guard switches on his transceiver to inquire about the situation. The person he’s talking to doesn’t know any more than he does. We storm the elevator, get out on the top floor, and hurry to the terrace overlooking the south wing of the building. A few curious people are already there, gazing out, with their hands shading their eyes. They’re looking in the direction of a cloud of smoke rising about a dozen blocks from the hospital.

 
; A security guard speaks into his radio: “It’s coming from the direction of Hakirya,” he says. “A bomb, maybe a suicide bomber. Or a booby-trapped vehicle. I have no information. All I can see is smoke coming from whatever the target was.”

  “We have to go back down,” Kim tells me.

  “You’re right. We have to get ready to receive the first evacuees.”

  Ten minutes later, bits of information combine to evoke a veritable carnage. Some people say a bus was blown up; others say it was a restaurant. The hospital switchboard is practically smoking. We’ve got a red alert.

  Ezra Benhaim orders the crisis-management team to stand by. Nurses and surgeons go to the emergency room, where stretchers and gurneys are arranged in a frenetic but orderly carousel. This isn’t the first time that Tel Aviv’s been shaken by a bomb, and after each experience our responders operate with increased efficiency. But an attack remains an attack. It wears you down. You manage it technically, not humanely. Turmoil and terror aren’t compatible with sangfroid. When horror strikes, the heart is always its first target.

  I reach the emergency room in my turn. Ezra’s in command there, his face pallid, his mobile phone glued to his ear. With one hand, he tries to direct the preparations for surgical interventions.

  “A suicide bomber blew himself up in a restaurant,” he announces. “There are many dead and many more wounded. Evacuate wards three and four, and prepare to receive the first victims. The ambulances are on the way.”

  Kim, who’s been in her office doing her own telephoning, catches up with me in ward five. This is where the most gravely wounded will be sent. Sometimes the operating room’s too crowded, and surgery is performed on the spot. Three other surgeons and I check the various pieces of equipment. Nurses are busy around the operating tables, making nimble, precise movements.

  Kim proceeds to turn on the machines. As she does so, she informs me that there are at least eleven people dead.