Vicious Circle by Robert Littell Page A

single 150-wattbulb suspended from a braided electric cord. The two armed guards, the el-Tel brothers, Azziz and Aown—one lounged on an Army
     cot under a bricked-in window while the other straddled a kitchen chair back-to-front and surveyed the prisoners—saluted the
     Doctor with grins; the youngest of the two, Azziz, leaped to his feet and spun the chair around so that the Doctor could sit
     on it in the normal way.
    Picking at a crumb lodged between two teeth, the Doctor sat down on the kitchen chair, removed his thick wire-rimmed spectacles
     and meticulously cleaned the lenses with the hem of his long robe. His eyes, as usual, were bloodshot and swollen from fatigue.
     For the Doctor, there were not enough hours in the day, or days in a lifetime, which is why he kept himself awake with amphetamines.
     Replacing his spectacles, squinting through them to bring objects into focus, he studied the two prisoners, their heads covered
     with thick leather hoods, sleeping in the heavy wooden chairs set away from the wall with the Palestinian flag and the Ghazeh
     Central Import-Export Bank calendar. The short-sleeved shirt, the calendar had been Yussuf’s bright idea: if you dropped enough
     hints that the Rabbi was being held prisoner in Ghazeh, so he had reasoned, the Jews would eventually conclude that we were
     trying to convince them he
wasn’t
in Ghazeh and decide that he was. Yussuf’s ruse seemed to have thrown the Isra’ilis off the scent; the public declarations
     on Isra’ili television and radio, as well as private intelligence reports reaching the Doctor from Ghazeh, indicated that
     the Jews were convinced the missing men were somewhere in the Strip. And Petra, monitoring the Isra’ili wavelengths, could
     detect no unusual police or Army activity in the Jerusalem area.
    The ankles of both prisoners were lashed to the thick legs of the chairs, their wrists handcuffed in front of them. The younger
     of the two Jews slumped in his seat, his breath coming in frightened rasps. Rabbi Apfulbaum sat erect, his chin nodding onto
     his chest and jerking back up under the hood.
    The Doctor leaned forward and pulled the hood from the Rabbi’s head. Then, striking a wooden match, he held the flame to the
     tip of a rough Palestinian Farid and dragged on the cigarette in short, agitated puffs, as if he was smoking for the first
     time in his life.Defying gravity, the ash grew longer than the cigarette until it finally broke off and drifted down onto the lapels of his
     double-breasted suit jacket. The Doctor, staring intently at his prisoner, didn’t appear to notice the ashes. The foul-smelling
     smoke must have irritated the Rabbi, because he leaned away and, raising his manacled wrists, waved the back of one hand to
     dispel it. “In America,” he remarked in Arabic, his eyes straining to make out his captor, “they print on the packs that cigarette
     smoking is hazardous for your health.”
    The Doctor grunted. “Being an Islamist in a Zionist-occupied country is hazardous for your health,” he said in Hebrew. “Being
     right when everyone around you is wrong is hazardous for your health.” He summoned a cheerless laugh from the depths of his
     gut. “In any case the question is academic because, as the holy Qur’an tells us, nobody lives a fraction of a second longer
     than God gives him to live.” He reached out and grasped the Rabbi’s bony wrist and felt for his pulse. After a moment, still
     talking in Hebrew, he commented, “All things considered, you appear to be in satisfactory health. How old are you?”
    “Fifty-three,” the Rabbi responded in Arabic.
    “Do you have a family history of high or low blood pressure? Fainting? Heart trouble?”
    “
Min fadlikoum
,” the Rabbi said testily in Arabic. “
Please
. Stop this farce of inquiring about the health of someone you are going to put to death.”
    Switching to English, the Doctor said, “It is awkward, your talking Arabic, my talking