Free Damascus Gate by Robert Stone

expected him there that night. So we lay in wait behind the school. A bright moon there was that night. Sure enough, around eleven a jeep pulls up—a jeep with the serial numbers painted out—and five guys get out. One's a Palestinian teenager in civilian clothes. The other four are in IDF uniforms. They send the Palestinian into the camp and presently he comes back with two young kids. So at that, two of the soldiers crouch and unsling to cover the place and the other two grab the kids. One of the guys has a great billy club. So we broke cover and the Rose took a flashbulb picture."
    "The Rose" was a Canadian UN staffer who worked with Nuala at the International Children's Foundation.
    "Then it's all shouts and grunts and he hit me. Called me a fucking bitch, too. In English. Or American, anyway. They took the Rose's camera. So I told him, 'I'm on your case, chum.' So he hit me again. The other guys had to pull him off me. Then they gunned it out of town and the Palestinian grass is left on the road running after them."
    "And you've reported all this?"
    "That I have," she said. "To the army, to Civil Affairs and to Majoub. Today I went up the hill to UNRWA and to see the Israeli Human Rights Coalition as well."
    "What did they say?"
    "I talked to Ernest at the Human Rights Coalition, and they'll do what they can. Maybe get some questions asked in the Knesset. They'll draft a press release and I've written one for the Children's Foundation. UNRWA can't do much. It takes America, you know."
    "Is that where I come in?"
    "You could get a piece in a magazine. I know you could. The Sunday
Times Magazine.
You've had things there."
    "There are other representatives of the American press here," Lucas said. "They have more clout and more resources."
    "But not the soul," said Nuala.
    What an odd thing to say, Lucas thought. Can it be she likes me after all? He had never been able to get to first base with her.
    "Also," Nuala added, "they have tight deadlines and more pressing stories. Whereas your time seems to be your own."
    Hearing that was less satisfactory.
    "I don't know," he said. "I've just about resolved to do a piece on the Jerusalem Syndrome. You know, religious mania and so forth."
    "Ah," sighed Nuala, "gimme a break, will ya."
    "It's quite an interesting story," Lucas said. "Sort of timeless."
    "Well, people aren't timeless," Nuala said.
    "Sure people are."
    "I'm not. And neither are you."
    They got up and walked along the muddy ridge. It had been the Green Line once; a rusted half-track marked the place where the Arab Legion's armored column had been stopped in 1948. A cool wind whipped the high ground and Nuala put her sweater back on. Agnon had lived on these heights, Lucas recalled, and his best novel had been called
The Winds of Talpiot.
    "Well now," said Nuala, "how's your love life, then?"
    "Poor," said Lucas. "How's yours?"
    "Poor fella," she said. "Mine is all confusion."
    "Tell me about it."
    "Nah. You'd mock and jeer."
    "Not me."
    Lucas, who fancied her keenly, was painfully aware that he had never been able to generate the degree of menace she seemed to require. In Lebanon, she was supposed to have been the mistress of a Druse militia chief. In Eritrea, she had been able to provide food for the starving through the largesse of her good friend, an insurgent colonel. She was associated in popular lore with Golani Regiment commandos, contrabandists and
fedayeen.
Lucas, who lived a fastidious and anxiously examined life, was not for her.
    "Ah," she said, "I know you wouldn't, Christopher. You're a good and gentle person. You make me feel like telling you my woes."
    "I wish you wouldn't call me a good and gentle person," Lucas said. "It makes me feel epicene." He put his foot on the rusted fender of an Arab Legion armored personnel carrier and leaned on his knee. "Pussylike."
    Her relationship with the State of Israel and its defense forces was singular, he thought. It seemed to give a special resonance to the