Jericho Mosaic by Edward Whittemore

Author:Edward Whittemore [Whittemore, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: BA
Publisher: Edward Whittemore
Published: 2011-10-16T00:07:55+00:00

Part

3

ONE

For many years until he was brutally killed in the sordid tribal warfare of Lebanon, the little journalist Ziad was Halim's closest friend in Damascus. A Syrian by profession as much as by act of God, as he was fond of joking in the coffeehouses, nervous and smiling and ever brash as he sank more deeply into failure, Ziad was never able to achieve his lifelong dream of escaping his homeland. The great capitals of Europe were always his secret goal, above all the glittering wonders of Paris. But circumstances trapped him early in life and chance receded, and like any man with too weak a grip on hope he sank back into what he already knew and made a routine of it.

Europe was his eternal over there, an unreachable land of freedom far from the stifling clutter which was his real lot in the world. Halim — who was still Yossi undercover in the beginning — would have loved him as a friend no matter where they had met and under whatever conditions. For despite all his faults Ziad was a peculiarly lovable man, although perhaps an outsider like Yossi was better able to see that.

Yet circumstances counted in any friendship and particularly for someone as isolated as Yossi had been when he first arrived in Damascus, struggling to make a place for himself in a dangerous enemy capital.

There was no way he could ever forget all the help Ziad had been to him then, nor could Ziad himself ever realize the extent of his gifts to Halim, for the simple reason that Halim could never speak of them. It was what Tajar would one day refer to, in consoling Yossi after Ziad's terrible death, as the lost factor of friendships in the world of intelligence. Or what Abu Musa in Jericho, going beyond espionage to more fundamental failings of human nature as he saw them, had once referred to in Halim's presence as the pitiful silence of the human heart.

The hard facts of the matter were that Ziad made very real contributions to the early achievements of the Runner operation, without ever knowing it. Through Ziad's ridiculous posturing in the coffeehouses, Halim first made the acquaintance of the vain young lieutenant who was the nephew of the Syrian army's chief-of-staff.

Through Ziad's desperate attempts at womanizing, Halim became a close friend of the colonel in command of Syria's paratroop brigade on the Golan Heights. And eventually through Ziad he also came to know the Syrian minister of information, a rigorous intellectual who could open almost any door in those days. But for Halim there would always be another dimension to the closeness he felt for his great friend: the small, strictly personal things Ziad had done for him when Yossi was newly arrived in Damascus and groping inside himself, truly alone and truly frightened.

Halim met Ziad on his first exploratory trip to Syria from Argentina, the visit that was supposed to decide whether he would move to Damascus to go into business.

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