church services at Harrow with the vast majority of the school in the Church of England faith. Never once was he a part of the small group of separatists, whose parents, Roman Catholics, Muslim, or Jewish, insisted they remain exclusively within their denominations.
It was widely assumed, within the confines of the great school, that Ray Kerman probably had a Jewish grandfather, or something like that. But Harrow is a bastion of racial equality, and no one ever asked him. In any event, Ray was one of the toughest boys in the history of the school, a thunderous fast bowler (pitcher) on the school cricket team, and a brutally strong front-row forward on the rugby team, which he captained. Those kind of kids never had to answer questions.
His application for a scholarship to England's Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, were prepared by his headmaster, utilizing school records. Ray entered the British Army without a trace of his very early background in the official records. So impressive was his school record, written and signed personally by the Headmaster of Harrow, they never even asked for a formal birth certificate.
He was 2nd Lieutenant Raymond Kerman, first in his year at the Academy, a top sportsman at Harrow School, the son of wealthy, well-known North London parents, heir to the Kerman shipping line. Religion: Church of England.
His first Regiment was the Devon and Dorsets, an infantry outfit whose soldiers were historically drawn from southwest England. It was from there he had first entered the SAS, fighting his way through the brutal, soul- searching indoctrination process, before serving for four years, with immense distinction, in both the Kosovo Campaign, and then earning the coveted Queen's Gallantry Medal during an SAS rescue mission in Sierra Leone the following year.
He returned to his Regiment as Captain Kerman, an acknowledged SAS 'hard man,' expert in unarmed combat, skilled in the use of explosives and demolition, an efficient satellite communications operator. He was trained in Close Quarter Battle (CQB), short-range missiles, navigation, strategy, and specialized SAS transport over all terrains. Break-ins to enemy compounds were his specialty. The Regiment had him taught Arabic at the secret Army language school in Buckinghamshire. At thirty-four, he had not yet married.
Recalled to the SAS for a second tour of duty in 2002, Ray Kerman had been personally selected to command a small, highly experienced SAS team, training members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in counterterrorism procedures. The operation, highly classified, was funded by the Israeli Government. Ray's team contained six senior noncommissioned officers, each of them experts on a wide range of military skills and techniques.
One week before they left Hereford, bound for an unidentified Army base in the Negev, Captain Kerman had been summoned to see the SAS Commanding Officer. There he was told the Ministry of Defence had issued a special authorization for his promotion to Major. 'I may say, we are all delighted,' the CO had told him. 'You've earned it.' Ray Kerman had become a very special man in a very special Regiment.
He had been in the desert for several weeks, mostly confined to the wire-surrounded, camouflaged SAS compound, with its custom-built urban area, designed to prepare the Israelis for house-to-house combat in city streets,
The SAS enjoys a towering reputation in the Israeli Army, and Major Kerman, a stern and uncompromising officer, was deadly serious about his job. He was not particularly liked, but he quickly earned a full measure of respect. Like his father, he had little humor, and he possessed the same ruthless streak in his chosen occupation, and this he endlessly tried to drill into the Israeli recruits. He worked them right out on the edge, forcing a supreme fitness upon them, urging them on, driving and cajoling them, hammering home the SAS creed, 'Train hard, fight easy.'
Only rarely did he venture into the nearby desert towns, Beersheba to the east and a few miles farther north to Hebron, the volatile flashpoint of so many murderous Arab-Israeli clashes, intensified always by the city's sacred place in the scriptures of Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. This is the burial place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The city's holiness has always added fuel to the incendiary atmosphere between its Palestinian and Israeli populations. As long ago as 1929, Muslim extremists massacred the entire Jewish minority in Hebron. Ever since then, both sides have initiated endless bloodshed. In 1994, a Jewish extremist gunned down thirty Muslim worshipers. And nothing much improved after 1997, when the western part of the city (H-1) became a Palestinian autonomous zone. Riots and hard military restrictions continue to dominate the last resting place of Abraham.
Ray's first visit to ancient Hebron was in fact his first close encounter with an Arab populace. With his tall red-haired Irish Sergeant, Fred O'Hara, he had wandered through the crisscross alleyways of the souk, watching the Palestinian traders, robed men sculpting olive wood, heating and blowing the city's famous colored glass, selling fruit and vegetables. Ray and Fred both wore civilian clothes, trying hard to blend in as strolling tourists, each of them eating from a bag of pale, sweet Hebron peaches, reputed to be the finest in the world.
The trip was essentially business. The two SAS men were trying to familiarize themselves with the layout of the city, because as ever there were rumors around that the Palestinians were once more stockpiling weapons and bomb-making materials. Ray carried with him a travel guide, and throughout the afternoon he made careful notes inside the little book.
The Major, of course, realized that he too had been born in a similar town, not so steeped in culture, but nonetheless on the edge of a vast desert, among people who wore robes, of the Muslim faith. Like these Hebron Arabs, his own people must have toiled for little in a similar hot, dusty urban trading center. He wondered whether, deep in his subconscious, there was a remembrance of another place, like this, where the toddler Ravi Rashood had eaten peaches and walked with his mother Naz, wearing her long black chador.
But the years in London, in English schools, in the officers' mess, in exclusive Western civilization, had driven any vestige of his birthright deep into the past. He was Major Ray Kerman, and these Arabs were foreign to him, though their closeness did jolt a certain recall of stories told to him by the bearded Saudi in the North London mosque a quarter of a century ago. He could remember some of them clearly, but one stuck in his mind, a quotation from the Koran, which the Imam had asked him to learn:
He supposed that all these robed and bearded men around him knew the same words. He found that strange. In addition, there was another difference Ray experienced in Hebron— different, that is, by the standards of other visiting Englishmen. He had a distinct feeling of deja vu among the buildings of the city. He could not remember ever having seen houses like this, not the flat-roof symmetry, nor the archways, nor the sheer narrowness of the streets. Yet it seemed familiar to him, the yellow brick and stonework of the buildings, some of it exposed by a crumbling cement outer shell.
Ray was only faintly aware of this curious sense of having visited before, and he pushed it to the back of his mind. Meanwhile, he and Fred compared observations about the possible locations of snipers who would undoubtedly show up when the Israelis began any cordon-and-search mission in the Palestinian areas of the town.
Ray and Fred both spent time chatting with Arabs, and in particular, Ray fell into conversation with a youngish Bedouin in his twenties, trying to trade goats. Ray liked him, his soft, polite voice, and the natural acceptance that soon he must take his camels and his herds back to the desert, which lay to the east, simmering in the oncoming summer heat. Ray thought the Bedouin might have made a halfway decent SAS trooper.
Late in the afternoon, he and Fred crossed from the large Palestinian section (H-l), over Al-Shuhada Street near the old bus station, and into the Israeli-occupied section (H-2). From there they made their way through the market, south of the small Israeli settlement on the edge of the Old City, and on to the great edifice of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial ground of Abraham and his family.
Ray's guidebook told him that here God had bestowed upon Abraham his father role of the Jewish people.