TWELVE.
The little girl sat
huddled in the corner, wrapped in a white robe, clutching herself
tightly. David was sweating profusely under the black hood that
covered his face. He grabbed one of Hamza's legs and arms and
pulled him to the center of the bed.
Hearing a muffled
sob, he looked up to check on the girl. Her face was covered by the
oversize white folds of the hotel robe. He felt a genuine ache in
his heart at the agony she was suffering. He knew it wasn't just
physical pain. Even worse, anguish and nightmares would probably
follow her for the rest of her life.
David guessed that
she couldn't be more than ten years of age. Right about now guilt
and self-recrimination would be working their way into her innocent
mind. She would begin to wonder what she had done wrong to warrant
such treatment. The Muslim world dealt very harshly with sexual
stigmas where women were concerned. In David's patriarchal society
the distinction between a woman who willingly commits adultery and
one who is forcibly raped is often lost. The honor of the family,
which really means the honor of the father, is above all
else.
David looked down at
the poor frightened kid in the corner and struggled over what to do
with her. He knew he should have never untied her. He should have
simply shot Hamza in the back of the head, dispatched the two
bodyguards and left. If he'd stuck with his original plan he'd be
long gone by now; miles of safe distance between himself and the
crime. The maid would show up in the morning and find the young
girl, and she would be taken to a hospital. Everything would have
turned out just fine for her.
As much as he "wanted
to believe it, though, he knew that was far from what would really
happen. The maid would have called the police, who would very
quickly discover they had a dead Iraqi general on their hands. The
media would find out shortly after that, and this little innocent
girl would get swept up in the maelstrom that would follow.
The police and
reporters would talk to her parents and the entire neighborhood
would find out that the young girl had been sexually
assaulted.
Through no fault of
her own she would be shunned and treated as a pariah for the rest
of her years.
David wasn't about to
let that happen. When he'd started down this dangerous path years
before, he'd made a promise to himself. David hadn't grown up in
the camps, but his mother had been sure to bring him along whenever
she visited the various clinics. She wanted him to see firsthand
the squalor that Palestinian people were forced to live in.
His mother, unique in
more ways than he could ever count, used the long car rides to and
from the camps to enlighten her only son on the politics of the
most contested region in the history of mankind.
The camps were a
breeding ground for discontent, corruption and anti-Semitism. The
Jews were blamed for everything, both real and imagined,
consequential and inconsequential. They were the evil greedy
Zionists who had stolen the land away from the Palestinian people.
The propaganda was insidious but his mother had been very careful
to teach David about the complicated history of the conflict
between the Palestinians and the Jews. In her mind there was more
than enough blame to go around.
For a brief period in
1948 the Palestinians actually had a state, but instead of taking
what the United Nations had legally mandated, they decided to
attack the fledgling country of Israel with the help of five Arab
armies. The decision proved disastrous. Israel trounced the Arab
armies, seized the land that had been set aside for the Palestinian
state, and deported most of the Palestinians who hadn't already
left.
David's mother liked
to point out that it was a little disingenuous of their people to
cry that Israel had stolen their land. She was fond of asking him,
"If we had won the war back in forty-eight, do you think we would
have allowed the Jews to keep their land?" She never waited for him
to answer. The reply was always a resounding, "No. The Arab armies
would have killed every last Jew."
"The Jews are
racists," she used to tell him, "but the Jordanians, the Egyptians,
the Syrians, the Iraqis and the Saudis are all worse. The Jews hate
us because we've given them no reason to like us, but what excuse
do our Arab brothers have? They have none. We are beneath them,
that is the way they feel. They have kept our people in these camps
and stoked the flames of hatred toward the Jews to serve their own
corrupt governments. We are servants to them. A useful tool in
their campaign to keep their subjects' anger focused not on them,
but on the evil Jews."
His mother's
teachings had made David wary of all propaganda.
He refused to allow
hatred to drive his ambition. He would never allow himself to turn
a blind eye to the truth. He would never allow himself to become
just another cold-blooded killer. That was why he didn't just shoot
Hamza and leave the poor girl to be discovered in the morning.
David truly was a unique man. He was a pragmatist with a heart. The
girl would be brought with him now, and an explanation and some
cash would be given to her father later.
He finished tying the
general's wrists and ankles to the bed and then hovered over him
for a moment. General Hamza had spent the better part of thirty
years inflicting pain on people, destroying lives and ruining
dreams. A bullet in the head was too good for him. Hamza needed to
experience the fear he had so perversely meted out to so many
souls. David wanted to see real fear in the man's eyes.
He pulled his knife
from its leather scabbard with his right hand and slapped Hamza's
cheek with his left. The Iraqi thug's jaw hung loose. Reaching in
with his thumb and forefinger David grabbed the tip of Hamza's
tongue and pulled it taut. The general started to stir.
David tightened his
grip and angled the tip of the four-inch blade into Hamza's mouth.
A quick upward slicing motion and a good seventy percent of Hamza's
tongue was severed from his mouth. With perfect timing, the
general's eyes shot open just in time to watch David tear the rest
of his tongue out.
The Iraqi general,
his eyes ablaze with fear and agony, let out a low guttural moan
that because he no longer had his tongue never quite elevated
itself to a scream. Immediately, he began to slash about like a
landed fish in the bottom of a boat. He struggled against his
bonds, trying to break free, struggling to comprehend what was
happening. His last memories were deliciously good ones, and now he
was tied to this bed with some masked man sitting on his chest
dangling a piece of meat in front of his face. Making matters
worse, his mouth was on fire with a pain that his brain could not
identify. A warm liquid trickled down his throat and caused him to
gag when it dribbled into his windpipe.
Suddenly, the pieces
fell into place. In a panic, Hamza lifted his head off the pillow
and tried to speak. All that came out were a jumble of primitive
noises. The masked man sitting on top of him wasn't holding a piece
of meat, he was holding Hamza's tongue.
David dropped the
fleshy organ onto Hamza's bare chest and reached into his own
pocket. He grabbed a pack of crisp counterfeit hundred-dollar bills
and waved them in front of the general's face. He didn't need to
speak. Neither did the general, although he tried. There was
instant recognition in his eyes. David crumpled a dozen of the new
bills into a ball and with the tip of his blood-soaked knife he
pried open the general's lips. He crammed the wad in and then added
two more fistfuls of money until Hamza's mouth was overflowing with
bills.
Moving quickly, he
shoved another pillow under Hamza's head and then got off him.
Taking a moment to relish the sadistic bastard's fear, David looked
down at him and shook his head in disgust. He wondered if this
butcher of Saddam's had ever granted someone a reprieve, if he had
ever felt an ounce of guilt over his actions or pity for the people
he had so brutally tortured. As David looked into Hamza's fearful
eyes he knew the answer was no. Monsters like Hamza were wired
differently. Their brains worked in ways normal people could never
understand.
David felt no shame
in what he was about to do. He felt no pity for Hamza. This would
be justice in its purest form. Hamza would die in a manner
commensurate with his crimes of brutality. David tossed the rest of
the hundred-dollar bills onto the bed. They lay strewn about from
one side to the other. Hamza looked down at the bills and tried to
signal something with his eyes. David ignored him and walked to the
foot of the bed, holding the knife up in the air. He stopped in
between the general's spread legs and looked down. Placing one knee
on the bed, he reached out with his gloved hand and grabbed Hamza
by his genitals. The general's entire body convulsed in fear.
Straining against his bonds he thrashed his head from side to side,
a hideous noise rising up from his chest only to be stifled by the
bloody bundle of worthless bills in his mouth. David did not
hesitate or waver. He pulled hard with his left hand and reached
out with the knife.
It took four slices,
and there David stood with General Hamza's genitals in his hand. He
held them before the Iraqi's horrified eyes and then simply dropped
the bloody mess on his chest along with his tongue. Standing over
him, David contemplated finishing him off, but decided against it.
It was unlikely anyone would visit the room before morning and by
then Hamza would surely have bled to death. It was more fitting to
let him slowly die while staring at his lifeless sex organs, unable
to scream for help, unable to move a limb to stem the bleeding. He
would know the same helpless horror of his victims. And if someone
came earlier and managed to save him, that wouldn't be all that bad
either; Hamza would spend his remaining days a castrated, prick
less mute.