The Infiltrator - III

I: Who are you two?  Where are ______ and _______ ?

[names blacked out in the transcript]

I: Well, send them my warm regards.  I do hope they find those oranges which so concerned them.  I didn’t know Jews so concerned themselves with citrus or I would have…

I: No, I don’t know those names.  Say the names again?

I:  No, I have never heard of them.  But they are common names. 

I: Documents?  Where?

I: I can’t read while you speak.  Really, is that what those men are telling you?  You are a worse translator than the other one.

I:  No, I don’t know Hebrew, but this man here doesn’t know the Arabic of a wet nurse…

I:  Everything in these papers, all the things these people say about me are lies.  They are feeding you lies like dung and telling you its a feast for a king.  These people are telling fairy tales about me.

I: Why?  To please you.  Because you coerced them, bribed them, beat them, because they are my enemies…

I: Of course I have enemies.  You, a Jew, should know that every man who is a man has enemies!  Jews make enemies in every land they dwell.  Arabs are a gracious and hospitable people, but if my brother insults a man, that man has the right to insult me.  If my brother then kills that man, that man’s brother has the right to kill me.  Half of these names are people who are the enemies of my family.  People who owe us money.  People we owe money.  The victims of slights, both ours and theirs…you cannot take their word on anything.  They are honor bound to try and destroy me.

I: Of course I am upset.  I am a man who must steal oranges that he has planted with his own hands.  How else should I act?

I: It doesn’t matter what those documents say.  They aren’t worth the paper they are written on.  I am not a saboteur.  I do not smuggle.  I do not ambush and kill Jews.  I do not blow up roads…

I: A lie is a lie, even if it is signed and witnessed.  The Koran says that to lie about a man’s deeds is as grave a sin as saying there is no God…

I: No, I said WITNESSED, from to witness, you half wit…

I: No, I do not know Hebrew.  But your translator is mumbling.  He speaks with a Baghdadi accent as thick as river mud, I don’t have a chance to make myself clear…

I: I went over this before.  I crossed the line to pick my oranges.  I take them to a man who pays me and then he takes them to Amman to sell.  There is nothing more to say.  I will no longer speak.

           

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