Free Bloodline by Alan Gold

eyes.
    Determined not to think dark thoughts, Bilal tried to remember back to those early days in the mosque when all of his anger was muted by the imam’s gentle words and his questions were answered by the imam’s incredible knowledge. Even when the imam became angry and cursed the Jews and Israel, Bilal felt asense of wonder and for the first time in his life a sense of excitement for his future, of possibility, of something better when the Jews were gone.
    When he’d been the imam’s driver they’d talked and talked about the happiness he would experience when he and his parents were living in a luxury apartment in the center of Jerusalem, once the Jews had been driven out. He would have an important job in the government, perhaps even traveling overseas, and his parents would never have to work again, because the Palestinian government would be wealthy and pay them a pension. It was a wonderful future to look forward to, and Bilal remembered how his chest had swelled with pride that he would be playing his part in the security of his people. He had purpose. He would be someone important. Like his beloved brother, imprisoned by the Jews for trying to free his land . . . his people.
    Bilal thought of one particular day when he’d driven his imam to a village south of Jerusalem, a long way from his village of Bayt al Gizah, on the road to Bethlehem. On the outskirts of the village, the imam had ordered him to stop the car and to remain in the driver’s seat while he met somebody in a private house.
    And he would have done exactly what the imam had demanded had it not been for the girl. She was no more than sixteen or seventeen, with huge dark eyes and a seductive look. She’d walked past the car, glanced in, saw Bilal, smiled at him, and then walked on. But her glance was enough to entice him out of the car and defy the imam’s instructions. In Bayt al Gizah he was nobody—he would have only dreamed about the possibilities and regretted the lost opportunity—but today he was the imam’s driver, he was in another village, and he was behind the wheel of a car, making him a man of position. So he got out of the car and for half an hour Bilal and the girl, whose name was Almira, talked and joked and he arranged to drive down from Bayt al Gizah and meet her again.
    It was already evening, and he had hurried back to the car sohis absence wouldn’t be discovered by the imam. Passing some houses, he glanced into one of the windows. The curtains were partly closed but there was sufficient space between them for Bilal to see inside. There was his imam, talking to a man. Not an Arab or a Palestinian. From the expensive suit and white shirt worn open necked and without a tie, the man was obviously a Jew. He was middle-aged with an amazing stripe of white hair surrounded by graying hair. It looked as if he were wearing an animal on his head. Bilal smiled at the thought but remained crouched so that he couldn’t be seen. And out of the shadows in the room a shape emerged. Remaining hidden outside in the umbra of the room’s light, Bilal looked inside and felt a sudden shock. As the third man leaned forward to pick up something from the table, his shadowy outline suddenly became distinct. A large round hat with a wide brim, ringlets falling down the sides of his face, a bushy beard, a long black frock coat . . . and then the man sat back and was lost in the shadows.
    Now Bilal didn’t want to think anymore. He pressed the morphine button again and drifted back to sleep.
----
    S TANDING AT HIS WINDOW, he looked over the valley and saw the blinding golden cupola of the Dome of the Rock and before it the revered mosque of al-Aqsa. In the distance, he saw the rest of the Old City of Jerusalem, and although he couldn’t see them, he knew with absolute certainty that a thousand Jews, and a thousand more, were praying at the Western Wall of the Temple of Herod,