Quill of the Dove by Shaw Ian Thomas

Author:Shaw, Ian Thomas [Shaw, Ian Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771833783
Amazon: 1771833785
Goodreads: 41840642
Publisher: MiroLand
Published: 2019-04-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter

29

Paris – March 1978

NABIL COUGHS AS HE READS THE NEWSPAPER. The news from the Middle East isn’t good. A group of Palestinians have attacked Israel again. This time they’re led by a young woman from Sabra. He remembers Dalal Mughrabi well. She’s only a year younger than him. Now she and her comrades are all dead and more than thirty Israeli civilians, including thirteen children, have perished in the failed mission.

He looks over at Selima quietly sleeping in his bed, her perfect body curving under the sheets. They’ve found peace in Paris, but those they left behind are still caught in the cycle of violence. He worries for his sister Hoda and for Marwan. It’s clear from her letters that they’re now deeply involved in the Syrian Social Nationalist party. She writes of joining him in France when she marries Marc. But she also speaks often of Marwan and the importance of the work that they’re doing. When he lived with Marwan in Beirut, he saw how Marwan would look at his sister, how he would speak of her. And at times, she would also look back at him. He wonders if Hoda really knows what she wants.

Images of Dalal Mughrabi and her comrades are already painted on the walls of Sabra when Marc and Riley arrive to interview her family. At first, the family refuses to speak to them. But as Dalal’s mother is closing the door on Marc and Riley, Hoda appears. She asks Dalal’s mother to tell them why her daughter left her nursing studies to become a fighter. Right or wrong, the world should understand why young Palestinians are taking up arms.

The mother’s story differs little from that of hundreds of thousands of refugees driven from their homes by the violence of the 1948 war. The Mughrabi family had intended to return when the fighting was over, but Israel’s victory prevented that. In vain, they waited for the international community to force Israel to recognize their right to return. But supported by the West, it flouted UN resolutions and humiliated the Arab states in three wars. The build-up of the PLO in Lebanon gave young Palestinians like Dalal the hope that they could do what the rest of the Arab world couldn’t.

The Mughrabi family claims no knowledge of the planning of the attack and is horrified that their daughter was involved in the death of the Israeli children. But they know that they’ll never be able to express their views publicly. The PLO has already elevated their daughter to martyr status, and her actions are beyond criticism.

Later, Riley will learn from senior PLO sources that the goal was to disrupt Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The target wasn’t civilians but the Israeli Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv. The plan went awry when bad weather forced the zodiacs carrying Dalal and her comrades to make an emergency landing forty miles north of the city. Determined to continue the mission, Dalal’s group hijacked a civilian bus.

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