Read Online Bloodline by Alan Gold - Free Book Online Page B

explosion that he had thought had blown his head off. And, most of all, he remembered the crowds that had gathered around him, shouting and gesticulating and shining flashlights into his face in the early-morning light. But that was all he could remember: vague and disconnected images that his addledbrain tried to blend together into a coherent narrative, but that he failed to associate with one another as he drifted off.
    Vaguely and with his eyes closed, he knew from time to time that nurses or doctors or the police or some other Jewish official would come into his room, walk over to his bed, look at his face or his wounds, check the fluid bottles that fed and drained his body, and then walk out, seemingly satisfied. And Bilal’s mind fantasized about remaining asleep forever, not waking up, letting people tend to his comatose body, so that all of his worries and frustrations, his anger and resentment, would be the problems of others, and not him. Even in his dulled mind he knew that being alive was a curse, not a gift. As the veil lifted from his brain, he remembered that he would have to face Jewish punishment for his actions as well as Islamic punishment for his failure to become a martyr and being deprived an eternity of paradise and seventy-two black-eyed and beautiful virgins at his disposal every day of his death. The greatest punishment was that his life would be the same as before, only spent in prison. Death would have been a release.
    Death? Where was the sweetness, the peace and beauty, of the death that his imam had promised him if he failed to escape from the Jews? His imam knew everything and had assured him that if he didn’t manage to get away, the Jews would surely kill him—stick him in the heart with their knives or shoot him in the head with their pistols. A moment of pain for an eternity of joy. His imam had promised him that they wouldn’t allow him to leave the temple alive. His imam never said anything about Jewish doctors fighting to save his life!
    But here he was, in a Jew hospital, in discomfort, his body aching, attached to lines and drips and machines that beeped every couple of seconds, with people fussing over him as if he were somebody important. What had happened? How had it come to this?
    Bilal searched his leaden mind for linkages. He tried to think back to those days when everything had seemed possible. When he’d first been encouraged by his best friend, Hassan Khouri, to come along to the mosque because the new imam had so many answers to the young men’s questions. In the beginning the imam treated him with indifference, and then like an employee, asking him to assist in the mosque after he’d finished working for his father. Then he became the imam’s driver, taking the holy man from place to place, and the imam even paid him for his time and trouble. Yet, never did the imam seem to place faith in him or his abilities as a Muslim until the day he pulled him aside and told him that God had identified him as the man to undertake the mission to blow up the Jews in the temple.
    His mind was clearing now, and he struggled to keep his eyes open. He had left the comfort and security of sleep and was aware of who he was, where he was, and how he was. A nurse came into his room and saw his eyes open.
    â€œHow are you feeling?” she asked. She spoke to him in Arabic, accented but clear. How did she speak his language? he wondered. By custom, he sneered at her. Why should he talk to a Jew?
    She picked up a button device and placed it in his hand. “This is self-administered morphine. If you begin to feel pain or discomfort, press the button once, and it’ll deliver a small amount of painkiller.”
    She turned and walked out. He pressed the button and waited. Nothing happened immediately, but within a minute he felt his aches begin to recede and his pains become less sharp. He actually smiled. But the drug made him tired, and he closed his