The Attack Read online

  Sirens are wailing outside. The first ambulances invade the hospital courtyard. I leave Kim with the machines and rejoin Ezra in the lobby. The cries of the wounded echo through the wards. A nearly naked woman, as enormous as her fright, twists around on a stretcher. The stretcher-bearers carrying her are having a hard time calming her down. She passes in front of me, with her hair standing up and her eyes bulging. Immediately behind her, a young boy arrives, covered with blood but still breathing. His face and arms are black, as though he’s just come up out of a coal mine. I take hold of his gurney and wheel him to one side to keep the passage free. A nurse comes to help me.

  “His hand is gone!” she cries.

  “This is no time to lose your nerve,” I tell her. “Put a tourniquet on him and take him to the operating room immediately. There’s not a minute to spare.”

  “Very well, Doctor.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  “Don’t worry about me, Doctor. I’ll manage.”

  In the course of fifteen minutes, the lobby of the emergency room is transformed into a battlefield. No fewer than a hundred wounded people are packed into this space, the majority of them lying on the floor. All the gurneys are loaded with broken bodies, many horribly riddled with splinters and shards, some suffering from severe burns in several places. The whole hospital echoes with wailing and screaming. From time to time, a single cry pierces the din, underlining the death of a victim. One of them dies in my hands without giving me time to examine him. Kim informs me that the operating room is now completely full and that we have to start channeling the most serious cases to ward five. A wounded man demands to be treated immediately. His back is flayed from one end to the other, and part of one bare shoulder blade is showing. When he sees that no one is coming to his aid, he grabs a nurse by the hair. It takes three strapping young men to make him let go. A little farther on, another injured man, his body covered with cuts, screams and thrashes about madly, lunging so hard that he falls off his stretcher, which is wedged between two gurneys. He lies on the floor and slashes with his fists at the empty air. The nurse who’s trying to care for him looks overwhelmed. Her eyes light up when she notices me.

  “Oh, Dr. Amin. Hurry, hurry. . . .”

  Suddenly, the injured man stiffens; his groans, his convulsions, his flailing all cease at once, his body grows still, and his arms fall across his chest, like a puppet whose strings have just been cut. In a split second, the expression of pain on his flushed features changes to a look of dementia, a mixture of cold rage and disgust. When I bend over him, he glowers at me menacingly, his teeth bared in a ferocious grimace. He pushes me away with a fierce thrust of his hand and mutters, “I don’t want any Arab touching me. I’d rather croak.”

  I seize his wrist and force his arm down to his side. “Hold him tight,” I tell the nurse. “I’m going to examine him.”

  “Don’t touch me,” the injured man says, trying to rise. “I forbid you to lay a hand on me.”

  He spits at me, but he’s breathless, and his saliva lands on his chin, viscid and shimmering. Furious tears start spilling over his eyelids. I remove his jacket. His stomach is a spongy mass of pulped flesh that contracts whenever he makes an effort. He’s lost a great deal of blood, and his cries only serve to intensify his hemorrhaging.

  “He has to be operated on right away.”

  I signal to a male nurse to help me put the injured man back on his stretcher. Then, pushing aside the gurneys blocking our path, I make for the operating room. The patient stares at me, his hate-filled eyes on the point of rolling back into his head. He tries to protest, but his contortions have worn him out. Prostrate and helpless, he turns his head away so he won’t have to look at me and surrenders to the drowsiness he can no longer resist.

  2.

  * * *

  I leave the surgical unit around ten o’clock, long after dark.

  I don’t know how many people wound up on my operating table. Whenever I was finishing with one patient, another gurney would come through the swinging doors of the operating room. Some operations didn’t require much time; others literally wore me out. I’ve got cramps everywhere and a tingling sensation in my joints. Every now and then, as I worked, my vision blurred and I had a spell of vertigo, but it wasn’t until a kid nearly died on me that I decided to be reasonable and yield my place to a colleague. Kim, for her part, lost three patients, one after the other, as though she were under some evil spell that turned her efforts into dust. She was cursing herself as she left ward five. I think she went up to her office and cried her eyes out.

  According to Ezra Benhaim, the tally of the dead has been revised upward and now stands at nineteen, among them eleven schoolchildren who were celebrating the birthday of one of their classmates in the fast-food restaurant where the bomb went off. We’ve performed four amputations, and thirty-three people have been admitted in critical condition. After receiving emergency treatment, about forty of the less seriously injured were picked up by relatives at the hospital; others went home under their own power.

  In the hospital lobby, the relatives of patients still in our care bite their fingernails and pace around like sleepwalkers. Most of them don’t seem to realize completely the enormity of the catastrophe that has just struck them. A frantic mother clings to my arm and pierces me with her eyes. “Doctor, how’s my little girl? Is she going to make it?” A father turns up; his son’s in intensive care. The father wants to know why the operation’s lasting so long. “He’s been in there for hours. What are you doing to him?” The nurses are being harassed in the same way. They defend themselves as best they can, calming people down and promising to get them the information they want. As I’m in the act of comforting an old man, an entire family spots me and presses in on me. I’m forced to beat a retreat to the outer courtyard and walk around the whole building in order to get back to my office.

  Kim’s not in hers. I go and ask Ilan Ros if he’s seen her, but he hasn’t. Nor have the nurses.

  I change my clothes; I’m ready to go home.

  In the parking lot, policemen are coming and going in a sort of hushed frenzy. The silence is filled with the crackling static of their radios. An officer gives instructions from inside a 4X4 with a light machine gun mounted on its dashboard.

  Exhilarated by the evening breeze, I reach my car. Kim’s Nissan is parked where it was when I arrived this morning, its front windows rolled halfway down because of the heat.

  When I leave the hospital grounds, the city seems calm. The tragedy that has just shaken it can’t make a dent in its habits. Endless lines of vehicles are streaming toward the Petach-Tikva expressway. The cafés and restaurants are packed. Night people crowd the sidewalks. I take Gevirol to Beit Sokolov, where a police checkpoint has been set up since the attack. Drivers on this road are obliged to make a detour around Hakirya, which draconian security measures have now isolated from the rest of the city. I manage to make my way to Hasmonaim Street, which is sunk in an ethereal silence. From a distance, I can see the fast-food restaurant the suicide bomber blew up. Officers from the forensic police unit are combing the area, looking for clues and taking samples. The front of the restaurant is completely destroyed; the roof of the whole south wing of the building has fallen in. Blackish streaks bar the sidewalk. An uprooted streetlight is lying across the roadway, which is littered with all sorts of debris. The violence of the blast must have been unimaginable; the windows in the surrounding buildings have been blown in, and the facades of some of them are heavily damaged.

  A cop comes from out of nowhere. “You can’t stay there,” he tells me in a commanding voice.

  He sweeps my car with his flashlight, lets it linger for a while on my license plate, and then turns it on me. Instinctively, he takes a small step backward and puts his free hand on his pistol.

  “Don’t make any sudden moves,” he warns me. “I want to see your hands on the steering wheel. What are you doing here? Can’t you see this area�
�s been sealed off?”

  “I’m on my way home.”

  A second officer comes to the rescue. “How’d this guy get through?” he asks.

  “Damned if I know,” the first policeman says.

  The second cop shines his own light on me, examining me with baleful, mistrustful eyes. “Your papers!”

  I hand them to him. He checks them and points his light at my face again. My Arab name disturbs him. It’s always like this after an attack. The cops are nervous, and suspicious faces exacerbate their predispositions.

  “Get out and face the car,” the first officer orders me.

  I do what he says. He pushes me roughly against the roof of my vehicle, kicks my legs apart, and subjects me to a methodical search.

  The other cop goes to have a look at what’s inside my trunk.

  “Where are you coming from?”

  “From Ichilov Hospital. I’m Dr. Amin Jaafari. I’m a surgeon at Ichilov. I’ve just left the operating room. I’m exhausted, and I want to go home.”

  “Everything in order,” the other policeman says, slamming the trunk lid closed. “Nothing to report in here.”

  His colleague refuses to let me go just like that. He moves away a little and calls his headquarters to verify my employment status and the information on my driver’s license and professional ID card. “He’s an Arab, a naturalized Israeli citizen. He says he’s just left the hospital, where he’s a surgeon. . . . Jaafari, with two a’s. . . . Check with Ichilov. . . .” Five minutes later, he walks up to me, gives me my papers, and peremptorily orders me to return the way I came without looking back.

  When I finally reach my house, it’s nearly eleven o’clock. I’m drunk with fatigue and chagrin. I’ve been stopped by four police patrols along the way; each of them went over me and my car with a fine-toothed comb. It was no use showing my papers and announcing my profession; the cops had eyes only for my face. At one point, a young officer had enough of my protests and pointed his pistol at me, threatening to blow my brains out if I didn’t shut my trap. His commanding officer had to intervene vigorously to put him in his place.

  I’m relieved to be on my street again, safe and sound.

  Sihem doesn’t open the door for me. She hasn’t come back from Kafr Kanna. The woman who cleans the house hasn’t come, either. I find my bed unmade, just as I left it this morning. I check my answering machine: no messages. After such an agitated day as the one I’ve just spent, my wife’s absence doesn’t worry me inordinately. Every now and then she takes it into her head to prolong her visits to her grandmother. Sihem adores the farm. She likes to stay up late into the evening, atop a mound bathed by the tranquil light of the moon.

  I go to my room to change my clothes and stop in front of the photograph of Sihem that reigns over my night table. Her smile is as big as a rainbow, but it isn’t matched by the look in her eyes. Life hasn’t always been kind to her. When she was eighteen, her mother died of cancer, and her father was killed in a road accident a few years later. It took forever before she finally agreed to accept me as her husband. She was afraid that fate, which had already been so cruel to her, would return and deal her another blow. After more than a decade of married life, despite the love I lavish on her, she still fears for her happiness, convinced that the smallest thing would be enough to shatter it forever. Nevertheless, luck continues to smile on us. When Sihem married me, my sole asset was an old asthmatic jalopy with a tendency to break down every few blocks. We set up house in a working-class suburb where the apartments had a lot in common with rabbit hutches. We had Formica furniture and not enough curtains for our windows. Now we’ve got a splendid residence in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Tel Aviv, and our bank account is fairly substantial. Every summer, we take off for some fantastic place. We know Paris, Frankfort, Barcelona, Miami, and several Caribbean islands, and we have loads of friends we’re fond of and who are fond of us. We often entertain people in our home, and we’re invited to many elegant parties. I’ve received several awards for my scientific research as well as for the quality of my work as a surgeon, and I’ve succeeded in building an excellent reputation in the region. Among our close friends and confidants, Sihem and I can count municipal dignitaries, civil and military authorities, and even a few stars of show business.

  “You smile on me like luck, my dear,” I say to her picture. “If only you could occasionally close your eyes.”

  I kiss my finger, lay it on Sihem’s mouth, and hurry to the bathroom. I stand under a scalding shower for twenty minutes; then, wrapped in a robe, I go to the kitchen and nibble on a sandwich. After brushing my teeth, I go back to my bedroom, slip into my bed, and swallow a pill to ensure that I sleep the sleep of the just. . . .

  The telephone resounds like a jackhammer in my brain, shaking me from head to foot, as though I’ve received an electric shock. Stunned, I grope around for the light switch, without success. The telephone keeps ringing, further confusing my perceptions. A glance at the alarm clock reveals that it’s 3:20 in the morning. I extend my hand into the darkness again, uncertain whether I should concentrate on answering the phone or switching on the lamp.

  I knock over something on the night table. Finally, after several tries, I grasp the receiver and pick it up.

  The ensuing silence almost brings me to my senses.

  “Hello?”

  A man’s voice says, “It’s Navid.”

  It takes me a few moments to recognize the grating voice of Navid Ronnen, a senior police official. The sleeping pill I took continues to thwart my brain. I feel as though I’m slowly spinning around, suspended in a state somewhere between drowsiness and lethargy, dreaming a dream that scatters me through other inextricable dreams and ridiculously distorts Navid Ronnen’s voice, which seems this evening to be arising out of a deep well.

  I push back the covers and sit up. My blood throbs dully in my temples. I have to make a monumental effort to regain control of my breathing.

  “Yes, Navid?”

  “I’m calling from the hospital. We need you here.”

  In the semidarkness of the bedroom, the phosphorescent hands of the alarm clock twist around each other, leaving behind a greenish stain.

  The telephone receiver feels like an anvil in my hand.

  “I just got to bed, Navid. I operated on patients all day long, and I’m knocked out. Dr. Ilan Ros is on duty tonight. He’s an excellent surgeon. . . .”

  “I’m awfully sorry, Amin, but you have to come in. If you don’t feel up to it, I’ll send someone to get you.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” I say, rummaging around in my hair.

  I hear Navid clearing his throat on the other end of the line, hear that he’s panting rather than breathing. I’m slowly regaining my wits and becoming aware of my surroundings.

  Looking through the window, I watch a wispy cloud try to wrap up the moon. Higher up, thousands of stars gleam like fireflies. Not a sound or movement in the street. It’s as though the city’s been evacuated while I was sleeping.

  “Amin?”

  “Yes, Navid?”

  “Don’t drive too fast. We’ve got lots of time.”

  “Well, if it’s not urgent, why—”

  He interrupts me. “Please,” he says. “I’m waiting for you.”

  “All right,” I say, without trying too hard to understand. “But can you do me a little favor?”

  “That depends.”

  “Inform your patrol cars and the people at your checkpoints that I’m coming through. Your guys seemed pretty nervous when I was driving home a little while ago.”

  “You still drive that white Ford?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll say a few words to them.”

  I hang up and lie still for a moment, staring at the telephone, intrigued by the nature of the call and Navid’s impenetrable tone of voice. Then I put on my slippers and go to the bathroom to wash my face.

  * * *

  Two police ca
rs and an ambulance are sending the beams from their rotating lights pivoting around the driveway to the emergency room. After the tumult of the day, the hospital has returned to its usual somber, morguelike state. Uniformed policemen are loitering here and there, some drawing nervously on the ends of cigarettes, others sitting in their vehicles and twiddling their thumbs. I park my car in the lot and head for the entrance. The night has cooled slightly, and a surreptitious breeze, contaminated by various sickly-sweet odors, is coming off the sea. I recognize Navid Ronnen’s bulky silhouette as he stands on the steps. His right shoulder declines noticeably over his right leg, which a traffic accident shortened by an inch and a half ten years ago. I was the one who opposed amputation. At the time, I had just won my stripes as a surgeon, hands down, after a series of successful operations. Navid Ronnen was one of my most engaging patients. He had a steely courage and a persevering, though certainly questionable, sense of humor. The first nasty jokes I ever heard about the police came from him. Later, I operated on his mother, and that brought us even closer together. Since then, whenever he’s got a colleague or a relative who needs surgery, he calls on me.

  Dr. Ilan Ros is standing behind him, leaning in the doorway of the main entrance. The light from the lobby accentuates the coarseness of his profile. His hands in the pockets of lab coat and his belly hanging over his belt, he’s staring absently at the ground.

  Navid comes down the steps to meet me. He, too, has his hands in his pockets. His eyes avoid mine. I surmise from his attitude that dawn won’t be breaking anytime soon. “Right,” I say quickly, in an attempt to shake off the premonition that’s starting to dog me. “I’ll go up and change right away.”

  “Don’t bother about that,” Navid tells me in a toneless voice.

  I’ve often seen him looking downcast when he’s brought me a colleague on a stretcher, but the expression he’s wearing tonight beats all the others for gloominess.