A grave in Gaza oy-2

by Matt Beynon Rees

  In the courtyard, Omar Yussef stopped to blow the dirt from his nose. Above the line of Audis there were small, barred windows in the wall. Cells. He felt a flash of abandonment, cold across his chest, and he knew it for the way Masharawi must have been feeling, confined up there. He thought of calling the prisoner’s name, but Wallender and Cree already were on their way to the gate, happy they had arranged a meeting for Salwa Masharawi with her husband.

  Omar Yussef looked back at the windows. Behind the bars, there appeared to be no glass in the frames. The dirt that hung in the air would fill those rooms as well.

  Chapter 7

  Vivid orange spots vibrated behind Omar Yussef’s eyelids, decaying to red and purple. His head ached. His breathing was shallow and the air was hot, thick and sweaty.

  “This is a bastard place to make us wait,” Cree said.

  Omar Yussef opened his eyes and the bright sun needled deep into his brain. Cree sat across the bare room on a plastic garden chair, his tall body folded awkwardly. He pinched the shoulders of his shirt and lifted them away from his sweating skin. Wallender’s eyes were shut. He rested the backs of his hands on his knees and breathed slowly and deeply through his small nose.

  The windows had been painted shut and there were no shades. Cree had propped open the door with a chair to circulate some air, but the corridor smelled powerfully of feces from a blocked toilet. This was clearly a room where people were put to make time drag excruciatingly, to render every breath a crushing effort, rewarded only with foul air virtually devoid of oxygen.

  It was nearly two o’clock. They had brought Salwa Masharawi to the Preventive Security headquarters at noon. The burly guard with whom Omar Yussef had first clashed at the gate led them to this room on the ground floor, while another took Salwa across the courtyard toward the cells. The guard locked the door at the end of the corridor to keep them from wandering the halls. All the open doors on the hallway led to rooms as bare and stifling as this one.

  Omar Yussef’s chest was tight. The dead air in the room was familiar to him, though it was a memory he had tried to bury. It rushed through his mind now in a cascade of heavy turning locks, filthy food and air that was hot and still. He felt an urge to confess to the two foreigners, but he wondered what they would think of him. You know, a long time ago I was in jail, too, he would say. It was an injustice, a matter of political revenge. They wouldn’t believe him. They would assume he had been guilty, because, after all, they came from countries where there was law and justice. Perhaps shame keeps me silent, he thought. Not shame that I was jailed, but shame that I was bullied out of politics by the threat of more time in prison. Shame that I chose to live a quiet, easy life for so long, while there was death and suffering all around me. He stared at the sun and tensed his jaw to be sure he wouldn’t speak.

  A key turned in the lock at the end of the corridor and the door opened. They heard heavy feet shuffle into the hall, then stop.

  “If you please,” the guard called. His voice echoed along the corridor.

  Wallender opened his eyes and rolled his neck. “A nice rest,” he said, with a gentle sigh of contentment.

  Cree stared at the Swede with his mouth wide open.

  Omar Yussef followed the foreigners along the dark corridor. He felt stiff, but he tried to move as fast as he could to keep up. The guard watched him all the way and he couldn’t help but fear being left behind, closed into this place without the protection of the UN, imprisoned with the stink of filth and the maddening heat and the hopeless vulnerability.

  Salwa Masharawi waited for them at the gate of the compound in her loose black gown and flowery headscarf. As they approached, she straightened the scarf and wiped her nose with a pink tissue.

  “How are you, dear lady?” Omar Yussef asked.

  Salwa smiled and toyed with one of the gold buttons on her gown. Her eyes were shot with red. She had been crying. “May Allah be thanked, ustaz.”

  “We’ll take you to your home and you can tell us the news from Eyad.”

  At her house in Tuffah, Salwa gave a long glance at the barbed-wire graffiti surrounding the cartoon of the Dome of the Rock as she entered the yard. Naji waited by the door, fiddling self-consciously with the ear that stuck out from his head. Salwa whispered to him and led her guests into the sitting room where she had met them on their first visit. Omar Yussef glanced at the photo of her husband, smoldering and aloof, his head turned to hide his malformed ear. He wondered if Masharawi cared about such vanities after a night in jail.

  Salwa sat with her hands clasped in her lap. She looked at the picture of her husband, as though she needed to feel his presence before recounting their meeting to Omar Yussef and the foreigners. “My husband asked me to send his greetings to you from the jail and to thank you for your efforts,” she said.

  “How is he?” Omar Yussef asked.

  “I regret to tell you he has been tortured, ustaz.”

  Omar Yussef had considered the heat and dust and the stench inside the cellblock, but he hadn’t thought the man would be tortured. Wallender groaned and rubbed his beard.

  “Since you visited Colonel al-Fara this morning, they have fed Eyad, but before that he was without food and water for over twenty-four hours,” Salwa said. “They kept him in the shabbah. You know this position?”

  “I’ve read about it,” Cree said. “A low crouch, bent forward with your hands tied behind your back and your heels off the ground. After a few minutes, your legs and back feel like they’re on fire.”

  Salwa covered her mouth and nose with her hand. She sobbed and lowered her head, then she sat upright and breathed deeply. “They beat the soles of his feet and put on his head a dirty sack that smells of vomit. They tied his hands behind his back and suspended him by them from the ceiling. He passed out a number of times.”

  “How could they?” Omar Yussef touched his fingers to his brow. He thought of the discomfort he had felt in the room where he had waited for Salwa. He was ashamed of the self-pity he had experienced there, a short distance from where Masharawi had been exposed to true suffering.

  Salwa’s eldest son entered with a tray of tea. Omar Yussef was thankful that the boy lowered his head and shoulders with the awkwardness of adolescence. He wouldn’t have wanted him to see the pity and horror in the eyes of the guests as they watched him. Naji set out the cups and left the room.

  “Eyad spoke to me at first in a very organized way. But when he told me about the torture, he broke down.” The memory of that moment halted Salwa and she reached for a tissue from the coffee table. “I was able to see him only through a wire mesh. He entered the room hunched forward, shuffling, as though every motion was an agony. He smiled and asked me about the children. I told him about your help, Abu Ramiz. He was very grateful. He sends his regards.”

  “What have the interrogators asked him?” Omar Yussef said.

  “They asked no questions. They only commanded him to sign a confession.”

  “Confessing what?”

  “That he’s a CIA spy, whose mission was to spread rumors against the government. They said the university will stop his salary and there will be no money for me and the children.”

  “He will receive his UN salary,” Wallender said.

  Salwa nodded her thanks. “He asked his interrogator when he would go to his trial. The interrogator laughed and said, ‘When the Palestinian state is established, you will have a trial.’ You understand-” she turned to Wallender and Cree “-that this is what people here say when they mean that something will never happen. It’s supposed to be a joke. Then my husband cried and said to me that he felt he had died five hundred times already. I’m so worried, Abu Ramiz. If Eyad is in this condition after one day, perhaps they really do mean to kill him.”

  “Certainly not,” Omar Yussef said. “You said that they fed him after they realized the UN was following the case. The tortures will surely stop now, too. Yesterday, he was just a Palestinian, and we all know how the secu
rity forces treat their compatriots. Today, he’s in the international eye. In case they have to bring him before UN investigators, they won’t want him to look like he has been tortured. They need to be able to deny that, to say that he’s just telling lies about them and that he was treated well.”

  Wallender stood. “Umm Naji, we’ll be in contact with our office in New York. We’ll go to send a report on the torture right away, to bring pressure on the government to end this situation immediately.”

  “Magnus, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay with Umm Naji for a while,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Good idea, Abu Ramiz. We’ll go back to the hotel and report to the office.”

  “Fine. I’ll probably be back late in the afternoon. I have to leave time to get ready for dinner with Professor Maki tonight. Will you be having dinner at the hotel?”

  “Don’t you worry about your old Magnus,” Cree said. “I’m going to take him out for the best fish dinner in Gaza.”

  Wallender and Cree left. Salwa and Omar Yussef sat in silence, while the UN Suburban labored out of the sandy alley in reverse.

  “I invite you to join us for lunch, Abu Ramiz.”

  “Allah bless you.”

  She lowered her head and her headscarf shook. Omar Yussef pulled a tissue from the box on the coffee table and handed it to her. She dabbed below each eye, but the tears weren’t finished. “Abu Ramiz, I’m scared.”

  “It’s a terrible, frightening story, my daughter. But you don’t have to face it alone.”

  “I’m scared for my son Naji. You know what happens to the sons of collaborators-they’re so desperate to make amends for their family’s damaged reputation that they volunteer for suicide missions against the Israelis. He’s such a quiet boy. He could plan something dreadful, and I wouldn’t know about it until I heard it on the news.”

  “He doesn’t seem like that kind,” Omar Yussef said. “Besides, he’s only the son of an accused collaborator, so far. And we’ll make sure it goes no further.”

  Salwa sniffed. “Thank you, ustaz. I’d better prepare lunch.” She left the room.

  Omar Yussef heard the sound of plates being removed from a cupboard in the kitchen. After the big, empty breakfast room at the Sands Hotel, it was a calming, domestic sound.

  The boy came to the door. He linked his fingers and stared at the backs of his hands.

  “Yes, Naji?”

  “ Ustaz, would you like to see my birds?”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  The boy led Omar Yussef upstairs to a big, light room at the back corner of the house. He heard the doves whose muffled throatiness he had noticed in the olive grove when he first arrived at the house. The room was spartan. A cheap, fluffy blanket covered the bed, colorful and synthetic. A small desk stood against the wall, neat piles of exercise books and textbooks flush with its edges.

  Naji opened a glass door to a balcony. A cage of chick-enwire and plywood about four-feet-square stood in the corner farthest from the bedroom. A pair of doves perched on a thick, twisting olive branch propped inside the cage. Two canaries flitted in orbit around them. Naji bent to the seed tray. He fed in some new seed from a small sack. He looked up and a smile broke through the rigidity of his desolate face. Omar Yussef felt his lips tremble with pity.

  “Do you hear what they’re saying, ustaz? Listen, they’re saying uzcouru Allah. You hear it?”

  Remember Allah. Those words of the dove were a traditional childish conceit. Omar Yussef listened to the repetitive call of the white birds and watched the tender expression on Naji’s face.

  The boy straightened. He hooked his fingers through the chickenwire. One of the canaries perched on his thumb. “Will my father be okay, ustaz?”

  Omar Yussef sniffed and cleared his throat. “Of course.”

  “Did he do something wrong?”

  “The exact opposite. Your father stood up for what is right. In a place full of wrongs, that’s a dangerous thing to do.”

  Salwa called up the stairs for Naji. Gently, he let the canary fly from his thumb. He watched it land by the seed tray. “I think there’s food downstairs,” he said.

  The table was in a small dining room at the front of the house. As Omar Yussef entered, Salwa set down a final plate of eggplant salad. “ Babaganoush is Eyad’s favorite,” she said. “Please, Abu Ramiz, sit here.”

  Omar Yussef sat at the head of the table. Salwa introduced him to the other four boys. The older ones watched him inquisitively. The two youngest looked about six and seven, and they ripped their bread into strips without seeming to notice the visitor.

  The table was spread with hummus and other salads- spicy, red Turkiyyeh and creamy, white labaneh. The boys seemed to favor the pickled radish: each had a plate of these, sliced, with a few olives at the side. Omar Yussef broke open a kubbeh. From within its cracked-wheat crust, the ground lamb gave off a sweet scent of cinnamon and pine nuts. He smiled at Salwa. “Umm Naji, I very rarely eat any food except what my dear wife Maryam prepares-she’s so good in the kitchen. For this reason, I don’t like to travel. But your skill as a cook has made my absence from Bethlehem less of a hardship today.”

  Salwa smiled. “Welcome. Your double health,” she said. “Your family is from Bethlehem, Abu Ramiz?”

  “No, we’re refugees from a village on the edge of Jerusalem. My dear father arrived at Dehaisha Camp in 1948, when I was a baby. But I belong to Bethlehem. I’m not aching to go back to the village.”

  “Is the village still there?”

  “The village fields are covered by an Israeli shopping mall now, like one of those shiny places you see on the Gulf television channels. I’ve seen nothing like it in any of our towns, although I’m told they’re building something similar in Ramallah.”

  “Did you ever visit the place?”

  “I went back to the village once, in the days when it was easy to get a permit. To tell you the truth, not much remained, except the mosque, which is in disuse. I was just a baby when we left, so my memories are only the stories my dear father told me about the old life. By now, those stories seem real enough to be my own memories, though.” Omar Yussef looked at the kids and thought of their father. “Children, everything that seems bad passes. Life is very long. When you’re young, it’s easy to feel that some bad event is bigger than it is. But, look, I lived through even the great Catastrophe of our people and I’m a happy man. I studied hard at school and I work hard at my job and I have a good family.”

  “Did you take exams at school?” one of the younger boys asked. He watched Omar Yussef and took a mouthful of hummus.

  “Yes, I took lots of exams. I went to university in Damascus.”

  “Why didn’t they arrest you?”

  “They don’t arrest you for taking an exam, Sufian,” Salwa said.

  The boy looked unconvinced. He watched Omar Yussef with a frown, as though failing to be arrested for taking an exam made the older man part of the conspiracy that robbed him of his father. “Why didn’t they arrest you, instead of Daddy?”

  Omar Yussef chewed the kubbeh, but he didn’t feel like swallowing it any more.

  “Are you a policeman?” the boy asked.

  “Sufian, shut up.” Naji shook his little brother’s shoulder.

  “I’m a schoolteacher, like your Daddy,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Daddy says teachers have to be like policemen,” said Sufian. “They have to find out what’s true, and then they make sure all the children know about it.”

  “I’m looking forward to meeting your Daddy. I think I’ll like him.” When the police aren’t interested in the truth, adults keep quiet, Omar Yussef thought. When it’s dangerous, only children ask questions. And maybe their teachers, because they care about the minds of the children and the future in which they’ll grow up. That’s why Masharawi wouldn’t be silent, despite the danger. Maybe that’s why I’m here, too.

  Chapter 8

  Revolutionary Council delegates were crowding the fr
ont desk of the Sands Hotel when Omar Yussef returned from lunch at the Masharawi house. His two visits to Colonel al-Fara’s headquarters that morning had drained him. His shirt was damp and his sweaty hair straggled down his neck to his collar. His eyes stung from the dust storm. He wanted a coffee, but the breakfast room was full of politicians and their aides, chatting noisily.

  Khamis Zeydan was at a table near the door. Six other men in suits sat around the table, as did Sami Jaffari, wearing the black T-shirt that accentuated the lithe muscularity of his shoulders and chest. Everyone smoked cigarettes or pulled on the pipe of a nargileh. The suits were rapt by the story Khamis Zeydan told. Omar Yussef couldn’t hear what his friend said, but he could tell the punchline was coming by the way Khamis Zeydan leaned back in his chair and lifted his arms wider and higher with each phrase. When the arms were above his head, the table exploded with laughter.

  Sami noticed Omar Yussef through the doorway. He winked and raised his eyes, as though he were suffering patiently.

  Omar Yussef went up to his room. He sat quietly on his bed. Someone locked a door nearby and walked down the corridor, arguing into his cellular phone. Then it was silent. Omar Yussef listened to his breath. He thought of Eyad Masharawi, beaten and tormented, and of the children who missed him at home. Masharawi’s chances of escaping further torture might depend on how Omar Yussef handled Professor Maki at dinner that evening. He felt such sudden, desperate loneliness that his jaw dropped and the skin of his cheeks felt heavy. He picked up the phone and struggled to remember how to get an outside line. Then he dialed his home.

  Nadia answered.

  “Greetings, my darling,” Omar Yussef said. “How are you?”

  “May Allah be thanked, Grandpa. What’s happening in Gaza?”

  “There’s a dust storm here,” he said. “How’s the weather in Bethlehem?”

  “Very hot. No dust storm.”

  “You’re lucky. What have you been doing?”