by Mark Sullivan
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Gaza
Reynolds had been driving for almost two hours through the coastal plains when he saw
strange patches of dark in the sky, whirling upwards on the wind. It was midday and black
columns of smoke from burning tires rose above him, a filter through which the sunlight labored.
The land and sky looked ill, as if afflicted by some horrible disease. Like Kuwait, when he had
walked through the oil fields there after the wells had been set aflame.
A while later, whiter dust clouds appeared from explosions as the Israelis destroyed the
tunnels the PLO had dug as escape routes. He choked on his anger as he navigated the car along
the bad road. This endless scarring of the Earth pissed him off to no end.
Human waste was on the same scale. He had watched some of the ISIL beheadings, though
to him they were paltry and sensational compared to the millions of children in the region whose
lives had been ruined by war.
He focused his attention out the car window. The smoke got denser as he drove onward
through the dying landscape, and then fences appeared, strung with razor wire at the top.
Israeli soldiers and others – the U.N. troops being the most prevalent of the foreign elements present-
patrolled the makeshift borders. Farther ahead a sudden profusion of hedgehog barricades appeared.
A Swedish cadre passed him at high speed in a military vehicle along the highway.
Before long he reached an IDF checkpoint at Jabalia town, which was no more than a pile of
sandbags along the road with machine guns mounted on every side. Reynolds flashed his
American passport. “I’m here to visit a friend.”
“You Americans are running out of friends,” the young IDF soldier said cynically. “Got a
cigarette?”
Reynolds was tempted to say something about Israel’s even shorter list of friends, but
instead reached into his pocket and handed him a cigarette. The kid with the gun nodded his head
and waved Reynolds through. Just a reminder of who was in charge.
His heart sank a little, as it always did, upon entering the place. Jabalia Town was a
collection of shallow buildings made from mud bricks, concrete and corrugated iron, and there
were occasional small marketplaces around which the women gathered with their wide-eyed
children. A spirit of deprivation filled the air that felt to him like a permanent condition. He saw
few people in the streets.
“Prayer is better than sleep” are the words cried out by the muezzins each dawn in all
Moslem cities and villages. But the Palestinians would probably be far better off asleep, Reynolds
thought, without sarcasm.
In truth, for as much pity as he could afford, given his job, he pitied these people. The Gaza
was an example of the genuine degradation of a people who could not – due to a change in world
politics — be eliminated en masse as the Jews had been by the Nazis. So they were herded into
these nauseating places and kept together like animals. In the land of mystical abstractions and
almighty covenants, the Gaza corrected the whole picture for Reynolds. This was just another
goddamn war. Or, more accurately, there was no war, only the gradual elimination of a people
whose time had come by another people possessing more might. The land belongs to those who can
defend it. Not that the Palestinians wouldn’t do the same to the Israelis if they ever got the upper
hand; or to each other, inside their own tribal divisions, if the Israelis were gone. But probably not
in his lifetime.
What the hell, he thought, at the highest levels it was all moving fast towards cyber-warfare now.
The machines were taking over. God wanted us to make the perfect computer that would
eliminate us. In fact, Stephen Hawking had once explained computers boded ill for
humanity: we would make one that would take over, not from ‘malice’ but merely because we
would get in the way of its goals. We would be like the ant hills unfortunately located at the site of
a new hydro-damn going in. It was like training your replacement before you got fired, adding
insult to injury.
And in the few years since 9/11, America had become an electronic prison.
Reynolds continued down the patch of local dirt road until he came around a curve. He
moaned, overwhelmed for a moment like a person who has just discovered rotten meat in their
stew. The wretched dwellings suddenly multiplied beyond belief and now spread out in a massive
ghetto that appeared endless. At one point he passed a small crowd surrounding an Israeli soldier.
Men, women and children were yelling and whining in unison, breaking down their prey with the
persistence of professional beggars. From his car window Reynolds saw the young Jew’s eyes. No
more than twenty years old, the kid looked frightened.
Reynolds saw the familiar makeshift mosque on a corner, made a turn and drove until the
Mediterranean Sea appeared in one sudden bold stroke. As if by a miracle, it put an abrupt end to
the waste and degradation in the way that only Nature can.
Just before a triple set of razor wire fences running before the beach sat a lone, single-story concrete house facing the sea. On the other side of the fence near it was a boat on a mooring. This was Yavi Habibi’s place, paid for by his
favors to Mossad and American intelligence.
Reynolds opened the car door and got out. Habibi was always there. He never went out
except in secret and on very rare occasions, and this was his cover. The other occupant of the
house, an old Egyptian woman posing as a Palestinian, came and went freely.
Reynolds wondered if Mossad made food deliveries these days as he knocked on the door.
The woman answered and let him in, walking him solemnly and in silence to a door that led
to the deep basement. Habibi was waiting for him midway up the stairs, a fat, well-fed man crowned with a
shock of black hair and inquisitive blue eyes. “Reynolds! Come in, man.”