The Kill Artist

the betrayal of the Palestinians by the rest of the Arab world. He switched off the lamp and continued tossing the ball and catching it in the dark to test his reflexes and sensory perception.
    A door opening, the snap of a light switch.
    Yusef said somberly: "We need to talk. I misled you about something. I need to tell you the truth now."
    Gabriel snatched the tennis ball out of the darkness and held it very still in the palm of his hand. He thought of Leah, the night she used those same words before telling him that she had retaliated for his infidelity by taking lovers of her own.
    Jacqueline said lightheartedly, "Sounds awfully serious."
    Gabriel sent the ball floating upward through the darkness with a subtle flick of his wrist.
    "It's about the scar on my back."
    Gabriel got to his feet and switched on the lamp. Then he checked his tape decks to make certain they were recording properly.
    Jacqueline said, "What about the scar on your back?"
    "How it got there."
    Yusef sat down on the end of the bed. "I lied to you about how I got the scar. I need to tell you the truth now."
    He took a deep breath, let the air out slowly, began speaking, slowly and softly.
    "Our family stayed in Shatila after the PLO was driven out of Lebanon. Maybe you remember that day, Dominique; the day Arafat and his guerrillas pulled out while the Israelis and the Americans waved good-bye to them from the waterfront. With the PLO gone we had no protection. Lebanon was in shambles. Christians, Sunnis, Shütes, the Druse-everyone was fighting everyone else, and the Palestinians were caught in the middle of it. We lived in fear that something terrible might happen. Do you remember now?"
    "I was young, but I think I remember."
    "The situation was a powder keg. It would take just one spark to set off a holocaust. That spark turned out to be the assassination of Bashir Gemayel. He was the leader of Lebanon's Maronite Christians and the president-elect of the country. He was killed in a car bomb explosion at the headquarters of the Christian Phalange party.
    "That night half of Beirut was screaming for vengeance, while the other half was cowering in fear. No one was sure who had planted the bomb. It could have been anyone, but the Phalangists were convinced the Palestinians were to blame. They loathed us. The Christians never wanted us in Lebanon, and now that the PLO was gone, they wanted to eliminate the Palestinian problem from Lebanon once and for all. Before his death Gemayel had said it very clearly: "There is one people too many: the Palestinian people."
    "After the assassination the Israelis moved into West Beirut and took up positions overlooking Sabra and Shatila. They wanted to cleanse the camps of the remaining PLO fighters, and in order to prevent Israeli casualties they sent in the Phalange militiamen to do the job for them. Everyone knew what would happen once the militiamen were let loose on the camps. Gemayel was dead, and we were the ones who were going to pay the price. It would be a bloodbath, but the Israeli army let them in anyway.
    "The Israelis let the first Phalangists into Shatila at sunset, one hundred and fifty of them. They had guns, of course, but most of them had knives and axes as well. The slaughter lasted forty-eight hours. The lucky ones were shot. Those who weren't so lucky died more gruesome deaths. They chopped people to bits. They disemboweled people and left them to die. They skinned people alive. They gouged out eyes and left people to wander the carnage blindly until they were shot. They tied people to trucks and dragged them through the streets until they were dead.
    "Children weren't spared. A child could grow up to be a terrorist, according to the Phalangists, so they killed all the children. Women weren't spared, because a woman could give birth to a terrorist. They made a point of ritualistically slicing off the breasts of the Palestinian women. Breasts give milk. Breasts nourish a people that the Phalangists wanted to exterminate. All through the night they broke into homes and slaughtered everyone inside. When darkness fell, the Israelis lit up the sky with flares so the Phalangists could go about their work more easily."
    Jacqueline made a steeple of her fingers and pressed them against her lips. Yusef continued with his account.
    "The Israelis knew exactly what was going on. Their headquarters was located just two hundred yards from the edge of Shatila. From the rooftop they could see directly