Mackenzie, Lost and Found

by Deborah Kerbel

  “Please! Who else but a ten-year-old has a seven o’clock curfew?”

  He paused and began rubbing his forehead. Horns from the intersection below filled the silence while I waited for his reaction. But when he spoke again his voice wasn’t angry at all. In fact, it was a little hoarse.

  “You’re right, honey. I guess I’ve been kind of out of it for a while … probably since Mom died. You seemed like such a little girl when that happened and now, well … I just don’t know what to do with a young woman.”

  I was shocked to hear him admit that I was a young woman, and even more shocked to hear him bring up Mom … He never did that! My heart softened a bit when I saw the tears in his eyes; I could tell this was difficult for him.

  Before he could change the subject, I took a deep breath and asked, “Dad, do you ever wonder what Mom would have thought of it here?”

  He paused for a second and dabbed at the corners of his eyes with his fingertips. When he spoke again, his words caught in his throat.

  “Y-yes, I do. All the time.”

  I dropped Frou-frou and reached for his hand. It felt rough compared to the soft fur of my bear. But it was warm and just as familiar. I gave it a light squeeze.

  “And?”

  “I think she would have adored it. I think she would have soaked up the history and culture of this place. She would have loved the dig in Tiberias. I thought about her a lot when we were there. I know how fascinating she would have found the whole process — even though she didn’t have any formal training, she was always an archaeologist at heart.”

  I smiled at that. After Tiberias, I felt that way, too.

  “But I think the thing she would have loved most about this place would have been watching how it affected you, Mack.”

  I was surprised by that. “Me?”

  Dad nodded. “You’ve become a different person since we moved here. You’re more confident, more independent. You’re definitely more assertive. I think — no, I know Mom would have been proud of you.”

  Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I didn’t reply. I just let those words sink into my heart.

  Mom would have been proud of you.

  Chapter 32

  Later that morning, a tall, lanky policeman came to our door. I immediately recognized him as Detective Stern, the officer who’d taken my statement at the department the day before.

  “Good afternoon Professor Hill … Miss Hill,” he said with a couple of cordial nods of his head. “I have some news about your case. May I come in?”

  I could tell from the low tone of his voice and the deep furrow between his brows that, whatever the news was, it wasn’t going to be good. A jumble of knots began to form in my stomach as Dad stepped aside to let him in. Once we were all inside the apartment, Detective Stern pulled out his notepad, cleared his throat, and promptly proved me right.

  “Ahem. So the officers we dispatched to the Hadad residence arrived approximately fifteen minutes after you reported leaving. Although blood was found on the floor, the perpetrators had apparently fled the scene.”

  “Excuse me,” Dad interjected. “What do you mean they ‘fled’? Both of those men were badly injured.”

  “I mean that the apartment was empty,” the detective replied, looking up from his notepad.

  The knots in my middle began to tighten. “S-so, where did they go?” I asked.

  He frowned, and the furrow in his forehead grew even deeper. “Well, that’s exactly what we’re trying to find out, Miss Hill. After an intensive search of the building, the market, and most of the surrounding neighbourhoods, our officers turned up no trace of them. Wherever they went, it appears that they were able to cover their tracks quite well. In fact, considering the nature of the injuries that you reported they sustained, we suspect that these guys must have had some help.”

  He paused for a moment to let this information sink in, then turned towards me and said, in a voice that oozed suspicion, “Miss Hill, we were hoping that perhaps you could shed some light on the matter. You mentioned yesterday that one of the perpetrators,” here, he glanced down and began flipping through his notepad, “a minor named Nasir Hadad, is your boyfriend?”

  Oh my God! What was this guy implying? I could feel my face begin to burn with an angry heat. Suddenly on the defensive, I spit out a reply.

  “Yes, he is my boyfriend — or, he was …,” I paused briefly. “But he definitely wasn’t a perpetrator — he was a victim, just like me. And no, I don’t know where he went. You’re the detective … did you check the hospitals?” My voice cracked on the last word as I remembered the horrible image of Nasir lying unconscious on that floor. I felt like crying again. But Detective Stern didn’t look like he cared much.

  “Yes, of course we did,” he said curtly. Then he let out a loud, frustrated sigh and slapped his notebook closed. “Look, you’re probably a nice kid who just got mixed up with the wrong guy. So I’m going to cut you a break here and give you a second chance.”

  I glanced over at Dad to see if he knew what this guy was talking about. But he looked just as confused as me.

  “A second chance?” I asked. “At what?”

  With his hands on his hips, the detective leaned down and peered directly into my eyes. I swear, it felt like he could see right through my pupils and straight into my head. He spoke slowly, enunciating every word so there would be no misunderstanding.

  “Look, you’re a foreigner here and obviously you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself involved with. But if you’re protecting this boy, I promise you’ll be in serious trouble — the kind of trouble your consulate won’t be able to help you out of. So what I’m asking is simple: would you like to make any changes to the official statement you gave me yesterday?”

  A bubble of silence filled the room while he waited for my reply. But I couldn’t speak. Instead, I just stared at him in shock. Holy crap, is he accusing me of hiding Nasir? I didn’t know where to find the words to answer him.

  Thank God Dad stepped up and spoke for me.

  “We appreciate your offer, Detective Stern, but Mackenzie will not be accepting it. Thank you for coming out today.”

  I could hear the controlled anger in Dad’s voice clipping away at his words. Detective Stern must have heard it, too. He stood back up to his full height, smoothed down his shirt, and spun around to leave.

  “Thank you for your time, Professor Hill,” he said on his way out the door. “You’ll be hearing from us soon.”

  My whole body sagged with relief to see him go. After that, I made a promise to myself: I was going to find Nasir on my own. Maybe it was stupid, but I really thought I could do a better job than that smarmy detective.

  I spent the rest of the day calling around to all the Jerusalem area hospitals looking for Nasir. But Stern had been right on that point: none of them had a patient by his name registered in their care.

  And so, after school, I walked over to the little hole-in-the-wall corner store. It was the first time I’d been back since a couple of days ago when Nasir had invited me to his apartment. God, that felt like a lifetime ago!

  I walked in the door half-expecting to see his beautiful, smiling face waiting for me behind the cash register. But for the first time ever he wasn’t there. Instead, I was astonished to find an overweight, balding man standing in his place. I wondered if this was Mr. Khoreibi, the man Nasir told me had hired him.

  “Good morning,” the man beamed, clearly pleased to have a customer. But when I asked about Nasir, his big smile disappeared.

  “That lazy goat?” he sneered. “He hasn’t shown up for work in two days! When you see him, tell him to get his skinny butt back here!”

  I left the store in a hurry, trying to figure out where to look next. All I could think about was finding Nasir.

  You know, I’d never really considered the term heartbroken before. But after losing both my boyfriend and my mother, I knew it was a totally inadequate way to describe the feeling of overwhel
ming pain ripping away at my insides. Heartbroken: it was just too neat. A round, red heart severed neatly down the middle by a clean, jagged line. Heartsmashed … heartdemolished … heartsquashedtoapulp … any of those would have been better ways to describe the feeling. Except this time around, the hardest part had to be grappling with the unanswered question: was Nasir alive or dead? At least when I lost Mom, I had that information. Not knowing was pure torture. I kept wondering if I’d ever see him again.

  I decided to head back to the souk. Of course, I couldn’t tell Dad where I was going — he’d never have allowed it. But I knew I had no choice if I wanted to find Nasir. The Hadad family had lived there, after all — there had to be somebody there who knew where they’d gone.

  Pushing my fears aside, I went back to the Ha-dads’ apartment, only to find the doorway blocked with police tape. I tried speaking to the landlord of the building, but his English was too shaky to tell me anything. In desperation, I went to a camera shop and had an enlargement printed of my secret, wallet-sized photo of Nasir. I spent the rest of that day and every day after school for the next two weeks wandering up and down the souk with the picture in my hands and a question on my lips: Have you seen this boy? But in reply, all I got were blank stares and silent, shaking heads. If anybody had seen him, they weren’t saying.

  After three weeks of searching I gave up. It was as if Nasir and his whole family had disappeared off the face of the earth. I forced myself to face the awful truth: the time had come to start mourning my first love.

  Chapter 33

  Within a couple of months, the school year came to an end and Dad and I found ourselves packing up to go home to Canada. Remember when I was nothing more than a grumpy tagalong to Dad’s plans? By the end, I was begging to stay. Despite the bad stuff that had happened, Israel felt like my real home now. I didn’t think I had anything left in common with my old friends in Toronto.

  But just like the first time, Dad said “no.”

  “Sorry, honey, but we’ve given up the apartment. Besides, I have to use the summer to get ready for the coming year.”

  When I asked if I could stay with Marla’s family for the summer, his answer became even more emphatic.

  “It’s just you and me now. We’re all we have left in this world and we have to do things as a family. When you’re eighteen, you can make your own decisions about where you want to live.”

  It was almost word for word the same speech I’d heard a year before. But this time around, it didn’t make me angry.

  This time around, it actually made sense.

  The day before our flight, Dad announced that there was one more thing we had to do before we left Israel. “There’s a place I’ve been meaning to take you,” he said. His blue-grey eyes flickered with secrets. I was intrigued.

  “Okay, where?”

  He shook his shaggy head. “No, no — don’t ask questions. Just put on something demure like a long skirt and let me surprise you.”

  It was a strange request, but I decided not to argue. I loved a good surprise. But an hour later I was a bit disappointed when we ended up back in the Old City.

  “This isn’t new, Dad. We’ve been here a million times before,” I complained.

  “Just come with me,” he replied, throwing an arm around my shoulders. He took me through the Armenian quarter, down a series of long, narrow, cobblestone paths, until we came to a steep stairway. I have to admit, I was a little confused. There we were in front of the Western Wall again — the same spot we’d come to on our first tour of the Old City.

  “Why here, Dad?”

  He smiled. “I promised I’d bring you back again one day, didn’t I?”

  My mind skipped back to that day last July when we were fresh off the plane, when this city seemed like a foreign planet, when I was still so angry at him. We’d passed by the Wall wearing tank tops and shorts.

  “Next time, we’ll bring better clothes,” he’d said.

  Aha! So that explains the skirt.

  Before I could ask another question, Dad took my hand and began leading me down the stairs. At the bottom, we went through a metal detector and then stopped in the giant open-air plaza in front of the Wall. There were huge crowds of people milling around us — people quite clearly from all different areas and walks of life. There were old people … young people … light-skinned people … dark-skinned people … men in suits … hippies in tie-dyes … black-hatted rabbis … camera-toting tourists … armed soldiers … security police … tiny new babies … hunchbacked grannies … and, of course, me and Dad.

  And in front of us all loomed the Wall — tall, heavy, and daunting. In the area right in front of it, a dividing fence separated the male visitors from the female.

  “Hey, why are they separated?” I asked, pointing to the fence.

  Dad leaned over and whispered, “I believe it’s considered immodest for men and women to pray together.”

  “Oh.”

  We watched in silence for a few minutes. It was a fascinating scene. The air was thick with the melodious sing-song of Hebrew prayer. Most of the men were swaying and rocking as they prayed. And when they were finished, they walked backwards away from the Wall to avoid turning their backs on the holy site. Remembering Professor Anderson’s advice, I was careful not to make eye contact with any of them.

  “Look carefully between the cracks of the stone, Mack, and tell me what you see,” said Dad.

  I squinted until I was able to make out what looked like paper stuffed in between the massive sand-coloured bricks.

  “Tsk. What’s all that? Are people littering here?”

  Dad laughed at that. “No, far from it. Those are prayers. For thousands of years, people have written their greatest hopes down on paper and pushed them into the cracks of the Wall.”

  I looked at him like he was crazy. “Why?”

  “This is a sacred place. So sacred that many believe that the gates of heaven are situated directly above it. And they also believe that putting their prayers in the Wall is one of the surest ways of communicating with God.”

  Gates of heaven? Images of St. Peter and angels and harps suddenly sprang to my mind. I glanced up at the sky, but all I could see up there were a couple of thin wisps of cloud and some circling birds.

  “Anyway, I guess that’s the reason I brought you here today,” he continued. “I know we’ve never been at all religious, but I thought if you had a message or something you wanted to send out into the universe, this would be a good place to do it.”

  I hesitated. “Um, I don’t know, Dad — I’m not sure what I would write.”

  He pulled out a small notepad from his back pocket and tore me off a sheet. Then he handed me a pen and said, “Take your time and think about it. I’ll be over on the men’s side. Meet me back here when you’re done.”

  And then he walked away. Suddenly I was nervous.

  “Wait!” I called after him, jogging over to catch up. “What are you going to write?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, but that’s kind of private — sort of like a birthday wish. All you have to do is write what’s in your heart.”

  I grabbed his arm.

  “But are you sure we’re allowed to do this? I mean, we’re not Jewish.”

  “Don’t worry, people of all backgrounds and religions pray at this wall. Pope John Paul II was here before his death, putting his own prayer in the cracks. It’s one of the holiest spots in the world.”

  “Come on, Dad,” I begged, like a little kid pleading for a toy. “Help me. What should I write?”

  “Relax, honey. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Just remember, there’s no right or wrong thing to say.”

  And with that, Dad walked over to the men’s section of the Wall and left me alone with my thoughts.

  I stood there for the longest time, staring down at the notepaper in my hand while the crowd ebbed and flowed around me. My mind was a total blank. I wasn’t used to saying prayers or ta
lking to God. But Dad said “write what’s in your heart.” So I closed my eyes and tried to figure out what exactly that was. When I opened them again, the words were there. Squatting down, I tore the paper into two pieces and wrote on the first half:

  Dear God, please forward this to Elizabeth Hill:

  Mom, I miss you so much. Don’t worry about me and Dad. We’re going to be okay.

  Love you forever, Mackenzie

  I put it into my skirt pocket and wrote on the second half:

  Dear God, please watch over Nasir, wherever he is.

  And please tell him that I loved him too.

  Tucking it next to the first note, I walked over to the women’s section — which, by the way, was way smaller than the men’s, something I didn’t think was fair at all. But since nobody else seemed to be complaining, I stayed quiet.

  Feeling a little bit nervous, I pushed my way through the crowd of women — teenagers, young mothers, little girls, and old ladies, all of them layered in so much clothing that only their hands and faces showed. The old ladies in particular looked like they’d been there forever. Parked on patio chairs and covered all in black, they seemed like permanent fixtures, weeping and wailing as they prayed. I weaved my way around them until I was right up next to the Wall.

  Reaching out tentatively, I ran my fingertips over its ancient, bumpy surface. From far away it had looked so big and imposing, but up close it was soft, light, and smooth — almost friendly, like a colossal sandcastle. Maybe it was because it was covered with dark, mossy plants, but the Wall seemed alive, somehow. And there was an energy in the stone that made me feel welcome.

  My eyes skipped over the surface, slowly taking in all the notes that had been stuffed into each and every crevice. There were hundreds — no, thousands of them — crammed into the cracks, pushed in so tightly they had become as much a part of the Wall as the ancient stones that surrounded them. So many prayers, so many hopes, so many messages — it took my breath away. I wanted to read them and see what others had written, but of course, I didn’t.