Selected Detective
GOA OLD SALT MINE V

One of them hit Uzi on his stomach, the other came near to the two and handcuffed his hand, re-strengthening his body. Khalifa tensed up, her fists tightened, but with a weapon pressing against the side of her head, there was nothing she could do. Layla stared at the floor, the red on her cheeks growing wider and deeper.

“Why?” ben-roi said, gasping for breath, trying to remove handcuffs. “For God's sake, why?” Har-Zion moves his shoulders, trying to loosen the construction on his burnt skin, which becomes increasingly taut and itchy behind his jacket.

“To save our people,” he replied. His voice, opposite Ben-Roi's voice, was cold, measured and toneless.

“By slaughtering it?”

“By proving to them and on all sides that there will be no peace with the Arabs. That their purpose is and always is to corrupt us, and that in order to survive we have no other choice but to do the same to them.” Ben-Roi spits.

“You killed him!” Ben-roi. “You killed him, you animal!” Again Har-Zion moved his shoulders. Face's empty.

“If there is another way I would be happy to choose it. But there is no other way.our people should see what Arabs really like them.”

“Hamas not doing a good enough job for this?” shout Ben-Roi. “Islamic Jihad?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Unfortunately?”

“Ya, unfortunately,” says Har - Zion. His tone slightly hardened, his eyes shone a faintly emotional glow for the first time. “Unfortunately, because no matter how many of our people they kill, we keep trying to convince ourselves that if we just negotiate, give in a little, then things will be fine, then everything will be fine, everything will be safe, and they will let us ourselves raise our children in peace and safety.”

“You are absolutely crazy!”

“No,” said Har - Zion, the feeling of resentment in his eyes is now inevitable. “Those who talk about compromise and discourse are crazy! It was the compromise that burned the oven at Auschwitz, the discussion that dug the death hole at Babi Yar. And now we intend to make the same mistakes again, the mistakes we have always made, year after year, centuries, multilevel mistakes of the Jews: the: to constantly believe that goyim is always trustworthy, can always be our friends, want anything other than to herd us into the gas chambers and wipe us off the surface of the earth!” His voice began to rise, words barking from his mouth like a barrage of bullets from a weapon.

“We don't need a peace process,” he said.

“Deal, approval, road map, conference none. If we want to save ourselves, we only need one thing, only that one thing, and that is anger. The same anger that has been directed at us throughout our long and dark history is all that can protect us, giving us the strength to survive. And this is what Al-Mulatham provides. This is why we made it. That's why he exists.”

He stopped, his high and pale forehead filled with sweat, small tremors radiating throughout his body from his itchy skin, which was getting more and more difficult to deal with, he said, as always happens when he does not apply the ointment at a scheduled time.

Ben-Roi looks at him, no longer trying to take off his handcuffs, his eyes bleak, his mouth open and stopped as if unable to find the right word to convey the depth of his hate feelings.

“Moser,” he whispered finally, “Rodef.” Lips Har - Zion tightens. He returned the detective's gaze, then raised his glove-covered hand and moved it to the fat-haired man, who then stepped up and, without looking completely at his arm, pulled up, immediately raised his fist on Ben-Roi's hip, just a few centimeters above his groin.

“Allahu Akbar,” murmured Khalifa, frowning, his fists tightening helplessly at his side. Ben-Roi let out a deep and down grievance.

“There is only one traitor here and that is you,” said Har-Zion, standing above him, with a voice that has returned cold, monotonous. “You and, from what I heard from her, your fiancee too. There was a death I regretted, but the death of that woman was not one of them.” Ben-Roi muttered something and tried to move his arm, but he still felt dizzy from the punch and had no energy to move. Har-Zion again signals and the lash-haired man slams his heels into the side of Ben-Roi's head, kicks the top of his ear, and throws him into the crate.

“Stop!” yelling Khalifa, unable to hold back any longer, Uzi who pressed the back of his neck was forgotten due to the shock he felt after what he witnessed. “For God's sake, stop!”

Har-Zion turned his head, slowly, rigidly. He looked at the Egyptian, with an unpleasant look, and then said something in Hebrew. Uzi was lowered and Khalifa suddenly felt her neck suffocate. On the floor, Ben-Roi has been trying to be able to sit up, his torn ears bleeding.

“Let her go, Har - Zion,” her door. “He is not part of this all.” Har-Zion let out a mocking laughter. “You heard that? We were blamed because we were defending our people while he was defending his Arab friend. Whatever he is, believe me, this piece of shit is definitely Jewish.” He nodded at the flap-haired man, who then lifted his boots again and flapped them on Ben-Roi's heart, the detective floundering in pain.

Then he walked towards Khalifa and without pause directed his fist directly into the heart of the Egyptian, the blow given with controlled accuracy as in the matter of dissecting corpses.

Khalifa has been hit before, often half his youth seems to have been spent in boxing on the back roads of Giza where he grew up but never anything like this. His fist seemed to have landed slightly in his abdominal cavity, stretching out his vital organs, pushing air out of his lungs.

The thought and shadow of a tangled kaleidoscope flashed through his mind of Zenab, the snow field at the motor service station, the strange blue-eyed man at the Synagogue in Cairo before suddenly, unexpectedly, for just a moment, the synagogue in Cairo, the pain evaporated and he found himself looking into Layla Al-Madani's eyes.

“Ley?” he whispered. “Why?” When he answered, Khalifa did not hear him, because when he almost answered, the moment was lost again. His mind was in a frown, his head fell backwards, and then it was all dark. How long he was unconscious, he did not know. But it must have been only a moment because it was so conscious, it was being pulled into the central alley by two Israelis, with useless drooping feet on the floor (“they made a nice chafing of my shoes!” it was his first confused mind). Ben-Roi looks in front of him, walking with Uzi pressing on the back of his head, his neck and jacket stained with blood from his injured ear; har-Zion and Layla are now at the end of the Cave, and he is now at the end of the cave, observing the fat-haired man who was doing something on the front panel of the Menorah coffin with an iron rod. When he had opened it, the panel was stripped with the sound of wood being torn apart, revealing a dense pile of straw from which was gleamed with a tantalizing golden luster.

Realizing that his captive had regained consciousness, the Israelites set up Khalifa's body and thrust it violently onto one of the box shelves, the wave of nausea caused everything to feel cloudy around him before he came back. Ben-Roi stands by his side. For a moment their eyes met and stared at each other, each giving a subtle nod to acknowledge the presence of the other, to indicate that they were fine, he said, before turning back and focusing on what was going on in front of them.

There was a pause for a moment, the atmosphere suddenly changed, giving hope; then, while stepping forward, Har-Zion and the person both started to take out protective straw. The bodies of both of them blocked Khalifa's view so that he could only faintly grasp the object they were expelling curved arms, pedestal angles, flashes of golden luster and until it had been ejected in its entirety, the two men had stepped back and to the edge, he could only see the object in its entirety.

He had seen it before, of course, in the photo in Dieter Hoth's storage box.The photo was black-and-white, and did not manage to convey the grandeur of the work of art of objects that he was currently actually seeing. The height is equal to the height of an adult, the base is made of two rows of hexagonal storages from the center, as if from a pot full of decoration, a vertical stem protruding upward, and, six branches curved out from its sides, three on the left, three on the right, one on top of the other, each crowned, as well as its trunk, a lampshade in the form of a small canang.

That is the basic form of Menorah. There is more to it than that, a lot of it. The branches are decorated in the most beautiful way with knobs and incandescent and goblets shaped like walnuts; around the base is a relief picture of fruits and leaves and wine as well as beautiful flowers, so alive that makes the beholder almost able to feel the smell. The gold is so deep and thick that it is almost red in color; its symmetry has a balance so perfect, so winding, so steady in balance, that it looks like it is not made of metal at all. But, more as something alive, something grows, breathes and flows weakly. Staggered, feeling unbearable pain and perhaps even longer, Khalifa still could not bear it but was fascinated by it, his head swayed from one side to the other from this amazingly beautiful thing.

The reaction of the Israelite was even stronger, Ben-Roi muttered “Oy vey” again and again; the granite face of Har-Zion had turned softer like an expression of children's joy.

“And God says let it shine,” it whispers, “and there is a ray there. And the Lord saw that the light was so good.” only one person seemed unmoved by all this, he was Layla. He stood somewhat apart from the others, fixated on his own thoughts, showing no emotion except the thin red hue that remained marking the top of his cheek, and his hands seemed to clench and open unwittingly.

During a very short time his eyes met with Khalifa's eyes before immediately switching to another place. He could not return Khalifa's gaze. A few minutes passed, everyone was staring at the Lamp, its beauty, was far from being diminished due to its familiarity, and was instead increasing due to its full and beautiful decoration being so real, so beautiful, until finally the silence was broken by a haired man.

“We have to take it out,” he said, his voice loud and rough, like a rock thrown into a calm watering pool. Continuing to stare, his eyes moist with emotion. Then, with a nod, he signaled to his three men.They stepped forward, lifted up their Envy near their necks, and held the Lamp, counting: echat, shtayim, shalosh one, two, and, three before lifting it up. With their strength and muscles, the object was still too heavy for them, and with the help of a new fourth person they were able to lift it to the limit of the shoulder, their face deformed due to strain, and with the help of a new fourth person, and the legs are bent.

Steiner pointed his weapon at Khalifa and Ben-Roi, and, as a unit, the group began to retreat, stopping every twenty meters so that the Lamp bearer could catch his breath. And finally they reached the farthest side of the cave.

Then the lights were lowered onto the elevator platform, the wooden floor rattled to bear the weight of the object.The Israelis climbed up and stood by its side, Layla joined them, and the controller lever was moved back. The detectives remained in place on the cave floor as the platform slowly rose in front of them.