The Infiltrator - III

Another page.  Apparently, another session:

I: Drop what pretense?  What the hell are they talking about?

I: I can’t read these.  I can’t speak Hebrew or read it.  I have a headache.  Can’t I be given something?  No, oh…

I:  It doesn’t matter how much you read and how much this nitwit translates…

I:  That is nonsense.  My mother isn’t Jewish.  She’s from East Jerusalem.  She lives there still… may she be kept from harm.

I: You have all your details wrong.  I need a good translator…

I:  How do I know that my words are being mistranslated if I don’t know Hebrew?  I can tell this man is not getting the sense of what I am saying from your reactions.  I mean, the word mother in those letters is used in a sense of respect, respect for an older Muslim woman…

I:  No, you are confusing the issues.  I am not saying that I wrote such letters in Hebrew, only that from what they say, it is apparent it is not the letter writer’s actual mother…

I:  What?  Another letter?  Are you the army or the postal service?  What does this one say, that my mother was a horse?  Oh, Arabic!  Yes, this man I know.  The former mayor of Tel Far.  Slanders again.  He says my mother was a Jew and my father an Arab.  My father had three wives, one a Christian, one Muslim, one a Jew, and I am an issue from the Jew.  This mayor was corrupt and was driven from office because of….

I:  No, not that.  He says my mother is a Jew to insult me.  Like in your language, that your mother is a whore.

I: Everyone knows you say that as the most potent insult… God in heaven.

           

Yet another page, and another session

I: You men again.  Back from Haifa?  I had a thousand cousins in that beautiful city by the sea, and now I don’t know a bed bug there.  Elijah battled the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, just by the…

I:  It is common lore.  Jew, Christian and Muslim know it…

I:  Well, I know you think you have proven my mother is a Jew.  Then, by Jewish law, I am a Jew, even thought I was brought up as a Muslim.  And if you prove that I blew up the road to S___, I can be tried for espionage and executed.  I know what you are getting at here with this Jewish mother thing.

I:  But you are wrong, don’t you see. You confuse your issues.  This is your common mistake.  You don’t have the essentials nailed down.  If my mother is a Jew, and this is not an admission mind you, it makes me a Jew by religious law… but if I live in Jordanian territory, so I am Jordanian.  So I would be a Jew by religion but a Jordanian by law.  Since no one died in the act of sabotage, I can only be jailed here in Israel or deported to Jordan, not executed.

I: No, it is not unusual that I have such a grasp of these matters.  A common laborer, as you say.  An orange picker. I can read… You confuse me with my mule.

I: What is this?

I: Well you have a document that is worth something here.  I will admit that.  Her hand was always beautiful, if she was a man she could have been a scribe;  all her letter in Rashi script no less…

I:  What do you want to know?

I: Maybe I can tell you that.  What will you do for me?  There needs to be something here…

I: You got this because you are good.  That is why you won the war.  I’ll give you some free advice: you’d better stay this good, because if you lose the next war, you’ll be sitting in a chair like this, and things won’t be nearly as civil…

The transcript abruptly ended.