Heaven From Hell (Part 1)

The furnace of the sun was relentless. Heat rose and shimmered from black tarmac, forming strange wavering mirages, as if the ghosts of millennia were awakening. 

Sara shuffled along, wiping sweat from her eyes, conserving energy as best she could. Shade, sought and offered on the street by thin and sparse trees, gave some form of respite. Some, but not much. 

The cracked pavement, the walls themselves, absorbed, then radiated back the sun's energy, sapping her own. Hanging from every second or third window, air conditioners rattled and pumped yet more heat and noise into the overflowing cauldron that was Jerusalem. 

Sara liked to walk, find these out of the way places, but she'd badly underestimated a Middle Eastern summer. Right now, a taxi, rather than walking, seemed a good idea. If there was one. There wasn't. 

The bedlam of humanity, normal in this sacred town, didn't help. At the top of the hill and behind her, a bus appeared and she could just make out its number. It would have to do. It was heading down towards her. Its next stop not far ahead of where she was. She could if she hurried, make it in time. But she would have to run. The thought was loud in her head. In this heat!

She began to jog - running would be too much - moving into the road for more space. As she stepped onto the tarmac, absurdly, she found herself flying. In a detached kind of mild surprise, she watched sky and ground chase themselves around her head. Cobalt blue following grey concrete followed cobalt blue. 

When the ground came up, the impact sent the wind from her lungs. Things began to make sense. Yet no sense at all. Mouth agape and unable to breath, slowly, painfully, her lungs refilled. Hot tarmac was burning her cheek. Ears ringing, she looked out at a silent and lopsided view of a world on its side with fragments of paper fluttering sideways through a haze of black dust. Shards of glass, sparkling like diamonds, bounced and glittered around her head. 

Sara sat up, quickly patting herself down. The noise of the world came back to her. Shouts, screams and car alarms were everywhere. Her medical instincts checking for the horrors that might be her new reality. She found none. That immediate threat averted, she took stock. Clearly an explosion. The blast sweeping her off her feet, lifting her up before rolling her down the street, depositing her in a ball of shock. She was not alone. Around her, those that were able to do so, were clambering up and scattering. Crawling, limping, running, getting the hell away. 

Instead of joining the fleeing, as her head told her, she headed towards the shattered remains of the bus. It sat, still on its wheels, but opened like a flower. Jagged petals of aluminium and glass spread apart in sharp relief against curling black smoke. Dark, blood-red lumps of flesh, mounds of cloth, fragments of bone and limb, lay here and there. Some limply hanging and grotesquely garlanded in garlanded in tattered streamers, within the branches of trees. The remains of human life, still and silent, lay incongruently, grotesquely, amongst tinsel coloured paper and glittering glass fragments. 

A hand grabbed her arm.

'Yella! Yella!' a voice attached to the arm was shouting at her. 'Mamounia!! Come!'

A young man, eyes wide, demanding. Blood trickling down his forehead. Tiny details. Important amongst the enormity of what had happened. A way of comprehending the incomprehensible. 

'Your hurt...' She mumbled, reaching for the wound.

Pushing her hand away, he tugged at her, dragging her away. 

They half-stumbling into a alleyway, past now empty shops and further away from the carnage. Behind them, sirens were screaming in the air, people in uniforms running past in the opposite direction. A blur of people, soldiers, police and emergency responders. No one paid them any attention. No one stopped them.

As if a switch had been thrown, they found themselves in a very different part of the town. Normal life reappeared as if nothing had happened. Far enough away. Life goes on. Fate. What will be, will be. Inshallah.

They paused and took breath. As they rested against against an obscure and crumbling wall, pitted by erosion and ancient conflicts, bullet holes, never repaired. A silent witness to many conflicts, unmoved, the scars told their mute story.

'Thank you', Sara said. But it wasn't enough. 'What's your name?'

'Kamal', said with a shrug, eyes to the ground. 'So stupid. Stupid tourist, more stupid than most, going to bus, instead of running.'

'I wanted to help.'

Kamal turned. 'Let them help,' he said, shaking his head in the direct of the ambulances. 'You're too old, what could you do but get killed'.

'I wanted to help!'

'Help? How you help? Get killed help? Two bombs! TWO!' Kamal waved his fingers in front of her face. 'The second kill the ones who come help!'

'No, no I didn't know that...' Sara said quietly as the tears came.

Kamal waited. 

Wiping her face, running her hand through her greying hair, Sara thought. He was right. She understood. And at sixty two, she was too old to be of any use. 

'You Englisy?

'Yes, from England. Manchester.'

'Ah, Manchester United, good!'

'Not these days!'

Kamal smiled. 'Come. Let me buy tea. I know place. Mamunia. You good woman. I see that. I know place, safe place, near by. Come. Please'.

His safe place was a tea shop that was small on the outside but large on the inside, dusty and ramshackle. A single storied building in a narrow street, squeezed between two taller and modern buildings. Its faded exterior paint clung to vestiges of broken plaster, the bare patches revealing weathered red brick. Old, cracked wooden doors led into a dimly lit, smoke filled room. Bars of sunlight from shuttered windows cast dust-mote filled shafts of light into its dusty interior. There, on low slung benches and scattered worn-out red and yellow plastic chairs sat a dozen or so locals, arabs, some relaxing with bubbling hookahs, othere sipping sweet tea. Sharp suspicious and evaluating glances were briefly aimed at them before Kamal called out: 'Salam. Salam Alaikum.'

A disinterested murmuring of 'Alaikum Salam.' came the reply in greeting. 

Sara stopped, looking around, uncertain. Tourists like her didn't venture here. 

Kamal smiled. 'Don't worry, these friends. No problem. Women okay. I promise'.

He indicated a table. 'Come. Please. Sit down'.

Sara sat, glad of some air from a dusty and ancient ceiling fan rotating slowly above her head. Kamal shouted in rapid Arabic towards the back and in seconds, small glasses were set down and hot, sweet, Arabian tea was served to them by a boy barely in his teens. 

'Shukran,' Sara offered.

'Afwan,' the boy with a shy smile.

Kamal smiled. 'You have some Arabic. Is good, no?'

'I know very little,' shrugged Sara, embarrassed. 

'You try. Is good. My English also, not so good.'

The tension slipped away as they relaxed, hot tea helping to sooth strained nerves. They learned something of each other. Kamal, a student in his mid twenties and Sara, a mother in her sixties, talked as if age was as nothing. A terrible event, only minutes previously, gave an immensity of shared experience in mere seconds.

'Before you go hotel, Sara, stay here, drink more tea, eats dates, relax, you safe. I need to go talk with friend, nearby, not long, I be back. Then I take you back to hotel?'

Sara thought only for a second. 'Thank you, that's kind of you.'

'Okay,' Kamal smiled. 'Wait here. We talk more. Yes?'

'Yes,' Sara smiled back. 

Watching him leave, she reflected again on how lucky she was. Had always been. Her mother had often said so. Told her so.

‘Listen to your instincts, Sara. You’ll be just fine. Trust in yourself.’

But while a mother's advice is heard, it's usually ignored. Sara was different. She listened. When she listened really hard, that inner voice was still there. Right now her inner voice was busy nibbling at her equilibrium. 

An unstoppable urge to write to her daughter, Beth, made her reach for the tourist postcard she had bought earlier.Postcards, out of date and redundant, a bit like herself, she thought. She shook away that negativity, wiped the droplets of moisture beading her forehead and thought again of that day, years ago when, as a child herself, her mother had saved her life, but lost her own.

Sara shivered. The heat wasn't entirely extinguished by the rattling fan above her head, each new customer brought in with them their own blast from outside. A cold chill crept down her body. The shivering intensified. Shock? Yet again she found herself immersed in the numbing grip of an unforgiving and freezing Irish Sea, her mother holding her head above the waves, telling her again and again that everything would be fine. Everything would be fine. But it was never going to be fine. Never again.

Sara tried her best to push the old memory away, too many things had happened today. A tiny piece of shattered debris, safety glass, fell from her hair onto the table. There it rested, glinting star-like on the unwritten postcard, bright against the dark stained wood. Draining her tea, she picked up her pen and began to write, explaining very briefly, how Kamal had brought her away, she was safe.

After filling in the address, she added the note: 'Wish you were here”. As she finished writing, her eyes swept the strangers around her and the lyrics of an old Pink Floyd album of the same name drifted up into her mind. How did it go? Something like, can you tell...

Heaven from Hell?,

Nobody can really tell, she thought, placing the postcard and pen on the table. At that moment, the door to the teashop opened again and more hot air washed over her. But in response, the chill within her intensified.

There was something about this new arrival, a young man dressed in traditional Jewish attire, that focused her attention as soon as he entered the shop. No traditional Jew would walk into a place like this. She sure of that. Yes, she could see it in his eyes. Large, but dark. Dull. Almost blank. As if time had run out.

Without hesitation, Sara stood and wrapped herself around him, gripping him in a restraining bear hug, her mouth pressed against his ear, whispering rapidly: 'No! Don't do it!'

Taken by surprise, he didn't move. Then he jolted back, trying to twist away. But she held him tightly, repeating again and again: 'No! Don't!'

The two of them pirouetted in a grotesque dance, spinning. Chairs, tables, drinks, all were knocked to the floor as the stampede for safety began. Everyone understood at once. 

The boy’s hand - for he was no more than a boy - began forcing its way between them, searching. Sara could feel the ugly lump of what could only be some kind of gun, hidden beneath his clothes. She resisted his attempts, clung even tighter. Anything to deny him his twisted and fatal ambition, the revenge he craved.

In another sense of calm, Sara knew she'd been lucky yet again; the café had all but emptied. She whispered again into his ear, pleading ‘No!'