Moses & Mac, page 15
part #1 of Vatican Archaeological Service Series
Eoin and I got ourselves prepared, changing into cleaned jeans, shirts, and jackets and prepared a knapsack for a night’s stay. At the first sign of nightfall we climbed into the Bubbie Bakes truck. Eoin and I sat snugly in the back, inhaling the tantalizing smell of lingering bread while Dawud drove us out of Jerusalem. The four- and half-hour drive went smoothly. Adiva did a lot of talking about Israel, between her laments about abandoning her father to her brother.
We got to the Egyptian border just after midnight, and Adiva couldn’t stop giving us bear hugs. “Be careful, and don’t forget to put in a good word for me with VAS people.”
We assured her we would, bid her and Dawud goodbye and with trepidation (me, anyway, Eoin looked calm) we entered the station. We were the only customers and outnumbered by at least thirty guards with terrifying rifles. We showed our Vatican City passports and were swarmed by all border agents. They started to throw out questions about the pope and the Vatican and got a kick out of Eoin being a Swiss Guard. They ignored my job as a librarian, which brought me back to my pre-thirtieth birthday self and made me feel uneasy. The subterfuge was more inviting than going back to my old life.
Was I going to go back to being overlooked once this mission to find Moses’ rod was over? A part of me wanted that quiet and unassuming life again, where no one shot at me, but a larger part of me wanted to bid it adieu and stay in my post-thirtieth birthday self. I had to keep avoiding bullets and rocket launchers, but I felt alive. The sex was also superb.
Once all the questions were answered, one agent remembered his job and inquired about our reason for going in to Egypt. I pulled out the letter from the University of Cairo. He read it, gave us back our passports, the letter, and receipts and even waived our exit fee. “Duty free?” We shook our heads and he waved us through a gate.
It was the Egyptian border guards’ turn now to question us, but they, too, were just as fascinated by our passports. Once their pope and Vatican questions were answered (yes, more “wows” about Eoin being a Swiss Guard and nothing about my job), the agent waved us through security checks. Our passports were stamped, our visas given and a welcome to Egypt extended.
Eoin and I graciously thanked the agent and headed to the parking lot. Eoin took my hand and squeezed. I felt exactly as he did. Relieved.
We stepped outside and not a minute later a black Toyota Corolla skidded to a stop in front of me. A small wiry man wearing a white and black stripped Juventus soccer jersey jumped out of the driver’s seat. He pushed back a mop of hair from his face and butted out a cigarette.
“Guillaume Haberlin and Annalisa Bertolucci?”
Eoin and I nodded and his face brightened with a smile that made him look like a fresh-faced teenage boy.
“My good Vatican people!” He bowed and gripped Eoin’s hand with both of his followed by mine. “I am Hassan Sabbagh, Dawud’s first cousin on his father’s side and your tour guide into,” he lowered his voice, “lots of trouble.” He laughed, which didn’t make me feel better. “We will be okay, not to worry. Let us be going. It is wise to arrive in the semi-light. Lies are more difficult to see then.”
I got into the back while Eoin got into the front, moving his chair to fit his big frame.
“My friends are all small people, Eoin undercover as Guillaume,” Hassan said, climbing into the driver’s seat. “I know your real names but will only use your pretend names. Make yourselves relaxed. We have four to five hours to drive. We should be in Rafah just in time for breakfast. My aunt has promised me my favorites—Lahm b’Ajeen, and Zaatar bread and if she has forgotten I broke her window last time I visited, then she will have Maamoul. All delicious, you will see, my Vatican friends—or should I say my Canadian friends.”
Eoin took an envelope out of his jacket and gave it to him. “For your help, Hassan.”
Hassan opened it and his smiled widened. “For my Italy and Juventus fund. This is a most beautiful day indeed for me to be your tour guide. Hockey or soccer, Eoin?”
Eoin showed him the Manchester United cap hanging from the knapsack. “Both.”
“Ah, you are a friend of a British team.” And for the next four hours, I listened to talk about soccer, hockey, soccer again, followed by basketball, then more soccer. I never knew there could be so much soccer to talk about. It was a taboo issue at home. My father and his father were Manchester United fans, my Grandfather Aldo an A.C. Milan fan, Gabriella and her husband Real Madrid fans (traitors, according to my father), and my Uncles Tony and Gianni, A.S. Roma fans. All that enlightening talk about sports put me to sleep because the next thing I knew the car was at a gas station and faint light was crawling into the night.
“Good early morning, Professor Mackenzie or Annalisa,” Hassan said. “We are very close to our destination now.”
While he put gas in the car, both Eoin and I stretched our legs. I wanted to use the bathroom until I saw it was a hole in the floor, probably shot with some big ammo-firing machine. Once Hassan paid, he opened the trunk of his car. Inside were radios, antennas, the insides of TVs, computer towers, old handheld game consoles and hundreds of brick-sized cell phones. It reminded me of my Grandfather’s Aldo garage. He collected everything that could or couldn’t be used in any foreseeable future and never threw anything away. My Grandmother Rosa said it was the reason for her high blood pressure.
“I’m not making bombs, my Canadian friends. I collect things for my inventions.” He pulled out a cell and turned it on. Thin bars appeared. “Put your hand over it.”
I did what he asked, hesitantly. “It’s hot.”
“It is a grill. I have cooked kebabs on it.”
Eoin laughed and I was impressed. “You should have been an old Italian man.”
He shut the cell, threw it back in his trunk and pulled out a black scarf. “For safety, I need you to put this on, Professor Mackenzie. We do not want the guards to think you are an outsider. They will be patrolling the walls. Eoin, my soccer friend, keep your cap on. Your hair color is not a usual one for Egyptians or Palestinians.”
I wrapped the scarf around my head and neck and Eoin put his cap on.
“It is still a little dark but to be safe, do not look at any of the guards, patrolling the streets. If they have not had their morning tea and biscuits, they may stop us and create problems even with your official passports and letter from the university in Cairo.”
Wonderful. Don’t look at guards. Don’t look suspicious. Lie and all on a full bladder.
We got back into the car and continued toward Rafah. Hassan drove for a short distance alongside a high stone wall punctured with bullet holes and monster cracks that had to have been made by the same weapon used to blow up most of the airport in Churchill. Beyond the wall was an area of overgrown brush and weeds and a barbed wire fence. Armed soldiers and border guards patrolled both sides, ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. Against a backdrop of collapsed or bombed apartments, overturned roads and mangled cars the soldiers on the other side of the wall looked scarier. I started to panic. That was our destination. Rafah in Gaza.
We drove past the Rafah Border Crossing Station and took a road that ran parallel to a vast wasteland of earth, burned grass, rock, and rubble. Our destination appeared to be an expanse of low-rise white buildings on top of more low-rise white buildings, punctured by the occasional palm tree and mosque. This was the buffer zone built by Egypt to stop the flow of illegal products, arms and people from Gaza into Egypt. In the dark it felt like a cemetery. In the light, I didn’t think it would feel any different.
I felt a panic attack coming on. For all my bravado and sense of feeling alive, I now wanted to go home and to my dull life. I hadn’t known what I was in for when that first bullet sailed by my ear in Father Logan’s office or even when those rocket launchers had blasted most of Churchill Airport, but I knew now, and I was afraid.
Hassan drove along the bumpy road, turning here and there until we got to a slender house of three floors that needed a good sand-blasting. It was still dark but an old woman in a hijab, a print top, a long black skirt and what looked to be army boots sat on a step. When she saw the car, she got up and waited for Hassan. She kissed him on the cheeks several times, while exclaiming. She could have been angry to see him or happy. I had no idea.
“My Aunt Yara,” Hassan said. Yara nodded at Eoin but took my hand. She led me inside to a tiny kitchen that had a table in one corner with two different chairs, a stove and counter in another corner and shelves for cabinets against one wall. With all of us in the room, we couldn’t move. Yara pushed Eoin and Hassan into the chairs and it became roomier.
“The money, Eoin?” Hassan asked.
Eoin handed him a package of money and he gave it to Yara. She looked inside and stuffed it into her sweater. While she boiled water for tea and talked nonstop in Arabic, which Hassan translated, I hurried off to a miniscule bathroom. It had a tablecloth for a door but looked cleaner than an operating room. I came back to find Hassan and Eoin eating eggs with tomato sauce and two stools for Yara and me. Once we finished our meal, Yara led us to her bedroom that had only a mattress with a flowery duvet on a low bed stand. Pictures of women and babies were on all the walls. I asked about them and Yara indicated a rounded belly.
“She is a midwife.” Hassan lifted the mattress against a wall to reveal several suitcases.
“You delivered all these babies?”
She seemed to understand because she nodded and showed me a tower of photo albums stacked in a corner.
“That’s a lot of babies!”
Hassan handed Eoin the suitcases, who put them in the hall, and then pulled off the rug. There didn’t appear to be anything except mismatched wooden panels for a floor until Hassan lifted a panel. Below it was a slab of cement with a hook.
“Eoin, can you help me?”
Both men took hold of the hook and hauled it open to reveal a tunnel held apart by slabs of wood. A flashlight was beamed on us from below by a man whose face I couldn’t make out in the dark. Shouts were exchanged and since Hassan was smiling, I assumed he was happy to see him. We heard the creak of wood. The man was climbing up as fast as a squirrel. He emerged and I thought I was seeing a replica of Hassan. Short, thin, and wiry with disheveled hair, except for the addition of a thick beard.
Hassan grabbed the man in a big hug. I was terrified they were going to fall into the tunnel, but they seemed to be aware of it and moved around it like pros.
“My cousin, Talib,” Hassan said.
We shook hands and Eoin handed him an envelope. He looked inside and smiled at Hassan. “Juventus, my cousin, Juventus.” Both men hugged and jumped up and down in joy. Talib said something to Yara. She ran out and returned with a bottle of what looked like aspirin. Talib stuffed it in his pant pockets, kissed her cheeks, and scurried down the ladder.
Hassan indicated the tunnel. “After you my Canadian friends. The duty-free shop is now open.”
Chapter Nineteen
I must have gone pale because Yara took my hand and said something to me.
“She says do not look down,” Hassan said. “She climbs down several times a week.”
“She does?” I was surprised and humiliated at the same time. She looked older than my mom.
“She brings a lot of babies to the Gaza side of Rafah. The women there need her. She gives them medicine, too. It is not found there.”
I wanted to cry. The tunnels had been destroyed by the Egyptian government to stop the flow of arms and terrorists. But they had also stopped the flow of humanitarian needs into Gaza.
The world needed more Yaras… and less of wimpy me.
I told her what I thought, which Hassan translated. She fixed my scarf around my head and kissed me on the cheeks.
“I’ll be right below you,” Eoin said.
“You’ll catch me?”
“No problem.”
Great. We’d go down to the very bottom…all the way down to the bottomless pit in each other’s arms. It wasn’t romantic at all.
Eoin moved to the edge and lowered himself into the tunnel like he did it every day. I adjusted my saddle bag toward my back and while Hassan and Yara took my arms, I lowered myself. I held onto the slabs for dear life as I descended.
“You managed to fly in my little plane,” Eoin said. “You can do this, too.”
“Yes, but I was close to heaven in your plane. I’m on my way to hell here.” I stopped as a slab of wood moved. “If I don’t make it, Eoin, please remind my family that they forgot my birthday and I’m going to haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
“You’re going to tell them yourself.”
Hassan came after me, talking nonstop with lots of words of encouragement, too. When my feet finally touched bottom, I looked up into sheer darkness, to Yara who was shining a light down at us. I had counted thirty slabs of wood. Thirty feet at least.
Hassan shouted something to her and the trapdoor was shut, closing off all light. I was now officially in hell.
I bent over and threw up what I had eaten. A rodent ran over my foot and I threw up again.
Eoin rushed to me as Talib shone his flashlight. I really wished he wouldn’t. I’m sure I wasn’t a pretty sight.
Hassan offered me a bottle of water. “Not to worry, Professor Mackenzie. I did that my first time, too.”
I took a sip of water, covered my yuck with sand and stones and handed the bottle back to him. “Please call me, Mackenzie.”
“I call you brave today.”
“No, Mackenzie is better.”
“You are ready? It will be a long walk now.”
Did I have a choice?
We followed Talib, who shone a flashlight as we moved at a fast pace through tight, curvy and sometimes angular tunnels. Once I got over my initial fear, I looked around and couldn’t help but be impressed. The tunnels were roughly rounded but held apart by anything that had been lying around—wooden doors, tables, metal chairs, bed frames and even refrigerators doors. We passed another one of Hassan’s cousins and while the three cousins caught up on news we rested. Eoin sat down. There were many places where his tall frame wouldn’t fit and he had to move hunched over.
He patted the ground next to him, but I didn’t want to invite any rodents into my lap. I gave him a fist punch and remained standing. Aunt Sara and Moses’ rod was my mission, but he had taken it on as his, too.
Maybe I would keep him around when this was over and done with. That was, of course, if he wanted to keep me around, too.
We must have walked at a good pace for about an hour when Talib told us to stop. We watched him climb up another steep and high ladder made also of wooden slabs and bang at an overhead trapdoor. It was opened, and he climbed into a room. He whistled, and we climbed up. I went first this time, followed by Eoin and Hassan. It was easier going up than down…as long as I didn’t look down.
At the top, Talib helped me up into another small bedroom. A young man who also looked a lot like Hassan and Talib but with his hair pulled back in a man bun greeted me. “Welcome to Gaza,” he said, shaking my hand. “I am Saad.”
Eoin emerged and then Hassan who hugged Saad. “You have Saad’s present, Eoin?”
Eoin took another envelope out of his pocket and gave it to Saad. He peered in. “Juventus,” they all shouted. Once their excitement had subsided, Talib gave the bottle of pills to Saad and went back down into the tunnel.
“Talib will return to bring us back to Egypt,” Hassan said. “Business is good today.”
We went into the kitchen and were given drinks and sweet bread by Hassan’s Palestinian aunt, a thin lady with more lines of hard living than my Great Aunt Liz. But I was filthy and my stomach woozy. Hassan’s aunt must have realized I wanted to clean up because she showed me to the bathroom. A sweet tea was waiting for me that calmed my stomach. She then left with the pills and Eoin and I followed Hassan and Saad outside.
I knew it was supposed to be chaos and I had seen it from the other side, but nothing prepared me for the sheer devastation. The Rafah on the Egyptian side was old, but the Rafah in the Gaza side was catastrophic. It looked like an earthquake had struck when I knew that it had been bombs. Dilapidated low-rise buildings stood among flattened buildings that covered streets and smaller homes. But people navigated through them, over cement slabs, twisted metal, pot-holed roads and blown out walls. Women in hijabs were walking their children to school while men rode bicycles. Everyone seemed oblivious to the destruction except me.
We made our way over rocks and earth and climbed into an old white Citroen parked under a slab of cement. As I held on, Saad maneuvered around buildings, blocks, fallen palm trees and mounds of sand and earth until we got to the Rafah cemetery.
“We will keep our eyes on you, good Canadian friends,” Hassan said, getting out of the car. “But this is a treasure chest for my inventions.” He spied a hammer and scooped it up. “See, already I have found something of value.” He lit cigarettes for Saad and himself and they began walking around the perimeter of the cemetery, looking for treasures and probably conversing about Juventus.
Eoin and I picked our way through the cemetery, which had also seen upheavals. There were many plots, some outlined by cement forms, placed side by side, but most were broken, overturned or destroyed. Some tombstones were still standing but most had fallen or been partially blown off. It took us a good hour, but we finally found the tombstone and plot of Yaaqob Quraishi, which was still intact. We examined it, looked around for something to help us in our search for another clue for Moses’ rod but found nothing that we thought could guide us.
“Now what?” I asked.
Eoin kept circling the plot. “Yaaqob’s son wanted us to see something here. He wouldn’t have repeated it so many times.”
As I rested against a rock, a young boy came into the cemetery, kicking a soccer play. It didn’t surprise me because other children were playing in the cemetery, too. The boy kicked the ball to us. Eoin kicked it back. He did some knee tosses and kicked the ball to us again. This time I kicked it back. The boy hit it back to us but turned and ran away, glancing at us several times.
