To the Death

Meanwhile, Ravi and Shakira, now wearing Arab dress, were given exquisitely forged documents and the passports that identified them as Mr. and Mrs. Mehadi, who were supposedly Jordanian travel authors, working on a new publication highlighting the historic wine-growing districts of Egypt, Israel, and other Middle Eastern vineyards. Shakira carried a long-lens camera for authenticity.

Any journey into Israel is fraught not with peril, but with eccentricity. It’s only twenty miles from Amman to the King Hussein Bridge, which straddles the Jordan River north of the Dead Sea. But the Jordanians insist that you are not leaving Jordan at all, even though they declared, in 1988, that they no longer had any ties with the West Bank.

On crossing the bridge to leave the country, they do not actually give you an official stamp, but instead give you a permit stating that you are not going any farther than the West Bank. No one admits they are going into Israel; but halfway across, as travelers enter the Holy Land, the span over the river is suddenly named the Allenby Bridge.

The Israelis immediately stamp you into their country, just as soon as you set foot on the West Bank. But they do it on a separate sheet, since everyone knows passports with an Israeli stamp are bad news when traveling in Arab countries. So right there, standing on the West Bank, you are in two countries at once, never having officially left Jordan.

This was all slightly nerve-racking for the world’s most wanted terrorists; but, coming out of Jordan, the King Hussein Bridge is the only way over the river. There is also only one way to make it over the bridge. You take one of the JETT minibuses, which are the only vehicles permitted to make the crossing. You can’t walk. You can’t drive, you can’t cycle. And you sure as hell can’t hitchhike.

Ravi and Shakira came by taxi to the foreigners’ terminal and proceeded to the minibus. They crossed the Jordan and went into the Israeli terminal, avoiding as much as possible the closed-circuit surveillance cameras. Both were in heavy disguise, Ravi with a full beard, Shakira wearing spectacles and walking like an elderly woman in black robes.

They were each issued a government-stamped document that welcomed them officially into Israel. The problem for their pursuers was the documents did not reveal they were Mr. and Mrs. Ravi Rashood. And they did not look anything like Mr. and Mrs. Ravi Rashood.

They walked for about a mile, carrying only one small leather bag, and then paused as a black sedan, bearing the blue license plate of “The Territories,” pulled up beside them. A chauffeur signaled them to climb aboard and immediately drove west. In the plush backseat, Ravi and Shakira removed their disguises and sank back gratefully, traveling once more in the style of a commander in chief and his greatly revered wife.

And traveling, moreover, in a car that would not attract a throng of stone-throwing youths once they reached their destination. That only happens to cars bearing the yellow Israeli license plate.

They covered the thirty-eight miles to Jerusalem in a half hour, moving swiftly along the highway. From the Holy City, it was a two-hour run to the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean coast. They went through the Israeli military checkpoint with barely a word, thanks, no doubt, to the blue license plates. From there into the town of Gaza was a matter of minutes, and in mild traffic they proceeded to the long Omar el-Mokhtar Street, which runs out of the main Shajaria Square all the way to the seafront.

Gaza has been destroyed by war more than any other town in the world, occupied in its long history by Crusaders, Turks, Muslims, the British, and even by Napoleon’s troops.

As befits an endless battle zone, Gaza is a coastal eyesore, a squalid place of ruined buildings and constant running fights, Arab against Israeli, Palestinian gangs against the IDF, the haves against the have-nots, right against wrong, neither side prepared to give an inch, which is, of course, the trademark of all wars.

Ravi and Shakira drove through the sandy streets, past people who had somehow lost everything and whose presence now renders Gaza the “Soweto of Israel.” Arab women, clad in black robes, balancing baskets on their heads, walked through the streets, heading mostly for one of the eight refugee camps, lending a biblical mood to a vicious, thoroughly modern conflict. These are the displaced Palestinians, thousands of them refugees, blaming the West, blaming especially America and Great Britain, blaming the Israelis. None of it without reason.

Yet this was the spiritual home of Ravi Rashood, the Iranian-born, Harrow-educated British Army officer, who had answered the mystical call of the desert, and its people, after rescuing a Palestinian girl, whom he later married.