Is That Plastique Explosive in Your Pants or Are You Just Happy to See the Promised Virgins?

The young man casually walks up towards the crowded bus stop that Monday morning. Jews, Druzes, Arabs and Christians, all dragging their feet to work. A slow Monday morning coming out of a slow long weekend. It is a cold, breezy morning that morning, but it is not so very cold. A flannel shirt would have been more than adequate.

He notices a few faces in the morning crowd looking at him curiously. They have never seen him before. Probably another migrant from West Bank. Crossed the border last night, lucky to have made it alive without getting shot at by the patrols. And this morning, he is feeling that that same luck would last him long enough to land him a decent-paying job in the city:
   A brick-layer for a Jewish construction company, or
   A garbage collector for a PA contractor/crony, or
   A truck driver for a Fatah-run olive oil syndicate.

The young man stops short of reaching the bus stop and feels his body for something. He looks like he has left his travel papers behind. He frantically searches for it in his pants and pockets. Oh, there you are. No, not papers. His cigarette pack and a shiny Zippo. He lits one and he puts the pack back into his breast pocket. He then pulls his oversized jacket closer to his body and stands at the back of the morning crowd, fighting the cold breeze, hiding his sweaty hands, avoiding eye-contact, puffing smoke with a spymaster’s poise. The curious faces gradually look away from him and they return to gaze at the stretch of highway in wait for the city bus.

He pulls a fat one and lets it sink gently. This is his third cigarette since breakfast.

Over the weekend, Mossad agents stabbed Khaled Meshaal with a special Zionist poison in Amman as he came out of a restaurant. Two agents posing as Canadian tourists stopped him to ask for directions. Classic Mossad tactic. They stabbed him at the back of the ear, hoping that the poison would get its way into the brain quickly. But God the Almighty said, No luv, his time is not due yet, and Khaled Meshaal, the most senior Hamas leader after the assassinated Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, survived the attempt to end his life with the help of King Hussein of Jordan. King Hussein threatened to drop all his peace process efforts if the Israelis do not send over the antidote in less than 24 hours. Under US pressure, the Israelis caved in. Then King Hussein exchanged the captured Mossad agents for 19 Palestinians prisoned in Israeli jails.

From a hospital bed, and with plastic feeding tubes sticking down his hairy nostril, Khaled Meshaal angrily orders for an immediate retaliation. He wants to see beautiful fireworks in downtown Jerusalem.

An Arab man from the crowd at the bus stop asks a Druze sitting next to him what time is it. He is late for a meeting with a Hebron businessman, he explains. The Druze pulls up his sleeve and shows the man his Hong Kong-made imitation Casio. The Arab slaps his knee and curses the bus driver’s mother for bringing the dumb bastard into this world. The crowd chuckles. Some offer the Arab their curses. Masturbating camel. Bedouin whore. His moustache from a donkey’s ass. His morbidly obese wife pins him down one night of passion and breaks his malnourished dog penis. The crowd laughs. A Jewish grandmother joins in, saying that the bus always come late and that he is the reason why she is suffering from high blood pressure. She curses him, his sons should all be born screwy-eyed, limping, and with only one testicle. The crowd explodes.

The young man smirks nervously. He does not expect the Jewish grandmother to be able to understand, moreover deliver her own, a curse in Arabic. She must have been one of those native Arab-speaking Jews born and raised during a period when the word Zionist was yet to be registered in the dictionary. The young man remembers his late grandmother telling stories about how she, as a little farm girl, used to go to school with Jews and Christians.

The young man also remembers the vivid image of his mother and his aunts wailing and screaming at the sight of the grandmother’s house razed down by Israeli gunships one Friday night --with the old grandmother still sleeping soundly inside.

“Finally! The camel turd is here! Grandma Elsa, come, come. The city bus has come!”

The crowd gets up and forms a queue. The young man snuffs out his cigarette. He looks around and makes sure that no one is left behind. Reciting a simple prayer, he gets on the bus beginning with his right foot. The driver, an old Jewish man who lives in a nearby settlement, shouts at him to get in quick, flicks a red toggle, and the door behind him closes with a mechanical whimper.

At the northern gate of Jerusalem, the bus makes a routine stop at an IDF checkpoint. Two lightly armed soldiers, lean young Jewish boys of Italian descent serving the 2-year compulsory draft, board the bus to check for travel and work papers. One stands guard at the door, chatting up the bus driver he has come to known, while the other makes the rounds, requesting papers from all the passengers. Their sergeant, a lanky female Ethiopian Jew with long braided hair, walks around the bus, looking under the bumpers, inspecting for whatever that seems out of the daily ordinary.

The young man looks out the window. He can see from the distance the wet market, the farm-fresh produce, and the lively fruit vendors. He can see the small crowd of people queuing up at the pretzel stands, and the street corner cafes packed with young urban professionals having their breakfast of bagel, cream cheese and cappuccino. He smiles. He has arrived at his target. He takes a deep breath.

“I have never seen you on this bus. Where are you going? Where are your papers?”

He dials a number on his cell and shouts, “In your mother’s crotch, Zionist cocksucker!”

The young man lunges forward and seizes the soldier’s throat. They struggle on the bus floor. The passengers panic and scream. The soldier by the door takes out his 9mm Jericho sidearm and pops three rounds in the chest. The young man's grip loosen. The choked soldier kicks him away. But it is already too late. Using the remaining air in his bloodied, punctured lungs, the young Arab man silently utters his last rites.

In a fiery, blinding flash, the entire length of his short life passes before his closed eyes--
   Circumcision makes you a Muslim. Shooting an AK47 makes you a man.
   Saniah, please. Please don’t do this. You know I don’t have the money.
   Bah! Man U can go to Jahannam! This year it’s Chelsea, Salim! Chelsea!
   Remember that Khan Younis kid? He’s maimed. IDF tortured him in jail.
   Ummi, is it the 3rd of the month? Has Abi paid his debt to Uncle Sayyid?
   No, Khalil. A woman with a big ass is the best. She gives you children.
   Yasser Arafat is Sharon’s fuck-donkey! Curse be upon his moustache!
   Don’t worry about your family, akhi. We will take care of them for you.

Bus explodes. Souls exit. God yawns. News analysts on TV squabble over a roadmap.