Before We Say Goodbye Read Online Free Page A

had taped them to two small mortar bombs, which he had bought from a shepherd in ash-Shawawra. Finally he had connected everything to a firing button.
    Boy, Rizak certainly knew how to do a good job. Ghassan had to admit that he had never learned to prepare bombs like this. Rizak was better at it – especially at picking things up here and there and adapting them to the purpose. It had been a good idea to ask him to lend a hand this time. Not that Ghassan didn’t understand explosives; he did. You could even say that he liked them – a lot. He liked to imagine the strength of the blast that lurked inside. He liked their smell and their texture; he could always feel them under his skin.
    The first time they had given him explosives, Ghassan was fourteen and had only been in Dheisheh a few months. He had come there with his family after the Oslo Accords, from the refugee camp in Lebanon where he was born and raised, just like Rizak. Today, nine years later, he still hadn’t got used to the fact that he was finally in Palestine, but at the same time he wasn’t there yet. You could say that he had been happier in Lebanon: at least there it was easier to dream.
    So it wasn’t long before they gave him explosives, and by sixteen he had already had an accident: a grenade had exploded too close, and a few fragments had pierced his forehead and left eye. Since then he had suffered from terrible migraines, which mostly occurred on days like this, when the weather changed. But Ghassan never felt anger towards that grenade, nor towards the person who had given it to him. On the contrary, he felt that those fragments which remained in his head had charged him with power, giving him a surplus of trapped strength, ready to explode to order.
    Already this year Ghassan alone had planted a good six explosive charges in various parts of Jerusalem, and things had only gone wrong that time at Ghilo, when the guards of the Mishtara had fired at him and he’d had to flee with a bullet in the leg without managing to trigger the explosion. Otherwise he was the precise type – he knew how to time things and didn’t allow his nerves to get the better of him. Nothing compared with the moment when he set off the device: his rage exploded into the sky and for a moment he felt as if he had won a truce.
    He opened a cupboard and pulled out a woman’s shoulder bag, the kind with two long handles. Carefully he placed Rizak’s explosive device inside the bag and threaded the firing button through a pocket in the strap. It seemed to him that the thing should work. It was easy to reach the pocket, and the bag didn’t seem either too full or too heavy. He put it back in the cupboard and kicked Rizak’s empty bag under the bed.
    Then he went to watch the video recorded the day before.
S HOSHI RECEIVES ANOTHER PHONE CALL
    After her conversation with Vered, Shoshi felt even more exhausted. It seemed as if fate had decreed that this morning she should remain sitting on that chair. She couldn’t move.
    They had returned to Israel with ideals. Where had they ended up? Why was it that a Jewish mother no longer knew what to say to her children?
    The phone rang again.
    “Nathan! How are you? In Jerusalem? Why Jerusalem? Wait, I’ll come and pick you up… Right now. Wait for me in that bar on the right, just as you come out of the station… Actually, it might take me a while; I’m not dressed yet. But wait; I’m coming.”
    Nathan on compassionate leave. Nathan in Jerusalem. She didn’t even pause to wonder why. All her strength came back to her. She slipped quickly under the shower, towelled her hair without drying it, dressed, picked up the car keys and headed for the bus station.

10 A.M.
     
M YRIAM IS ON THE HILL
    Up on the hill it was still wet but the sun gave the earth a particular scent. From there Jerusalem seemed to lie quietly, waiting to be noticed from above. Myriam looked down over the Knesset, the Gan Sacher, the Rehavia district.
    Since