Murder Under the Fig Tree

by Kate Jessica Raphael

  “They came before,” Hanan said. “Not today.”

  That made sense. The closest friends and relatives visited on the first day of mourning. Today, the third day, brought the people who simply wanted to pay respects. Rania tried to think of an excuse to ask the names of Daoud’s roommates, so she could track them down and interrogate them. What are you doing? she berated herself. This was not her case. She had not even spoken to her boss yet, because today, Friday, all Palestinian offices were closed. But she would call her boss tomorrow, and if she could tell him something he did not know about this incident, wouldn’t that prove she was ready to start work again?

  But she only had Benny’s word that Captain Mustafa wanted her to investigate this incident, and Benny lied habitually. Even if she were able to establish definitively what happened, it would either prove what everyone already believed, or uncover something far more troubling for Daoud’s family and his community.

  Still, last year, she had met a young man in the Jenin refugee camp who had gotten a big settlement from the Israeli army after he was shot. They had paid all his medical bills, bought him a fancy wheelchair, and his parents had gotten enough money for a state-of-the art television set. If she could prove the army killed Daoud, his family might get a settlement too.

  “Have you talked to a lawyer?” she asked Um Issa.

  “A lawyer? For what?”

  “To sue the army. For killing Daoud,” she added when the woman’s expression remained baffled.

  “No one can sue the army,” said Hanan’s mother. Um Issa nodded agreement. Rania stopped talking and sipped her cooled tea. She did not want to get Um Issa’s hopes up by telling her about the family in Jenin. She would go see Captain Mustafa tomorrow. She would explain what the women had said and what she wanted to do. Surely he would agree that it was worth investigating, and she was the one to do it. The world suddenly seemed brighter.

  She saw all the women looking at her and realized she was smiling too broadly. Doubtless tomorrow, the word would be going around the villages that the policewoman had gone crazy in prison and was acting inappropriately in a house of mourning.

  Chapter 13

  Rania was about to leave for the city of Salfit the next morning when her phone rang. The digital readout showed, “Mustafa.”

  “I was just coming to see you,” she greeted him.

  “I am in Biddya,” he said. “I will be there in five minutes.”

  She set the water on the stove and went out to the porch to wait for him. She ran a rag over the purple plastic chairs, careful to remove every mite of dust. He parked his silver Mercedes in her yard, next to Bassam’s BMW.

  “Hamdulilla assalaam,” he greeted her. Beneath his bushy mustache, his mouth turned up in a rare smile.

  “You drove?” she asked, after she had given the ritual reply. It was rare for a Palestinian to risk his car driving over all the Israeli roadblocks between Salfit and Mas’ha. It was safer and faster to take a taxi licensed for the Israeli roads.

  “The Israelis removed the roadblocks last week.” His always-probing black eyes were scanning her up and down. She thought he was looking for signs of injury or illness, evidence of torture. Should she emphasize her damaged right arm or not let him know she was hurt? Which would prove her more fit for duty?

  “I am fine,” she answered his unasked question. She shook her arms and legs slightly, to show she had all her functions. Her right arm throbbed.

  “You are very thin,” he said.

  “I did not like the Israeli cuisine.” She took a stack of purple plastic stools from the corner of the porch and separated them, hugging them to her stomach for leverage. She positioned two of the stools next to the matching chairs, to use for tea tables.

  “Sit, please,” she said. “I will bring the tea.”

  “We can sit inside.” He followed her into the house, wiping his feet repeatedly on the red shag mat inside the door. She did not like people to wear shoes in the house, but she would never ask her boss to remove his wingtips.

  “T’faddal,” welcome, she said. He settled into Bassam’s armchair while she went to the back of the house to make tea.

  He must have something important to talk to her about, she reflected, as she pinched sprigs of mint into the squat tea glasses. It was shameful for a man to be alone inside with a woman not related to him. If he did not want to sit on the porch, it could only be so that no one could overhear him giving her an assignment. She found a package of crescent-shaped nut cookies in the pantry and arranged them in a circle on a plate. The water was almost boiling. It was hot enough, she decided, impatient to hear what her boss had to say.

  He was talking quietly into his mobile phone when she returned. He hung up quickly, but not before she heard him say, “Haiha,” here she is. So he had been talking about her to someone. Perhaps she would be working with someone else. She hoped it was not Abdelhakim. She also hoped whatever it was would not interfere with her quest to find out what had happened to Daoud.

  She put a glass of tea and the plate of cookies in front of him. He spooned two sugars into his glass, blew on it, and took a few sips, seeming in no hurry to get to whatever had brought him here. As usual in the company of this man whom she revered, she found the silence unbearable.

  “I visited the family of Daoud al-Khader yesterday,” she said. “They are anxious to know what happened to him.”

  Okay, so she was more interested in the truth than Hanan or Um Issa seemed to be. Every mother wanted to know how her son died. She pushed away the thought of Khaled’s body bloody on the ground. She would be lying there beside him if she had anything to say about it.

  “The army killed him,” he said with a shrug.

  “Perhaps. But no one saw it.”

  He waved her objection aside. “We don’t need to see a donkey to know it brays.”

  “When Benny came to see me in prison, he suggested that something else might have happened. He said you agreed I should look into it.”

  “He said that?”

  She should have realized Benny Lazar was lying to her. He would say anything to get what he wanted.

  “He didn’t talk to you?”

  “He called, last week. He said he thought he could get you out of prison. Of course, I told him to try. But he told me you refused to take on the investigation.”

  “I did. I don’t want to work with him. But now that I am free and have met the family, I am willing to look into it. I will report to you, not to him.”

  “I don’t know.” Mustafa smoothed his mustache with thumb and forefinger. “It might be better to leave it alone.”

  “But, if I can prove the army killed Daoud, the family might get some compensation.”

  “There is no compensation for losing a child.”

  “No, of course not. But his family should get something. After all, he was studying at the conservatory. Perhaps he would have become a famous singer, like Ammar Hassan. Another son of Salfit to become a big international star.”

  “Not many become like Ammar Hassan.”

  “We don’t know what Daoud could have done. Maybe he could have been even bigger than Ammar Hassan.” Might as well spin the dead boy into a folk hero. After all, Ammar Hassan didn’t have martyr status.

  “His family will get nothing from the army.”

  “You don’t know what they will get until I find out what happened,” she insisted. Why was she pushing so hard, when she hadn’t even decided she wanted to investigate? At least, it would let him know that she was ready to work. If he didn’t want her to work on this case, let him give her another.

  “It’s too soon. You need to rest, spend some time with your family.”

  “I rested more than enough in prison.”

  “Perhaps another child.”

  She groaned inwardly. Bassam had been bugging her for three years about having a baby, pointing out that Khaled needed a little brother or sister. Had he been talking all over Salfit in her absenc
e—no, likely Ramallah and Jericho too, all over the damn country—about having another baby?

  “It’s not a time to have more children,” she said.

  “It’s always nice to have children,” he said. He practiced what he preached. His four daughters were long grown, with many kids of their own. He had a son not yet in high school, one studying at university, two in the police, and two working in the Gulf. But he also had two wives who did not go out to work.

  “Of course, I would like more children, but I want to get back to work first,” she said.

  He drank the last of his tea then took out a cigar. Most men smoked cigarettes. He was the only one she knew who smoked cigars. Benny smoked them, she recalled. Captain Mustafa had probably picked up the disgusting habit from him.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said. “My sister has cancer.”

  “I’m very sorry,” she said. “Your sister Reem?” She had met at least four of his sisters over the years. But Reem was the only one she really knew. She lived in Salfit City and occasionally dropped by her brother’s office.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is in her ovaries. Very bad.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Rania said again, meaning it. She recalled Reem Odeh as a bright, strong woman. Rania’s great-aunt had died of ovarian cancer, and it had been a miserable death. “Is there something I can do?”

  “I hope so.” He puffed on his cigar. She waited impatiently for him to tell her what he wanted. No one in her family or Bassam’s was a famous doctor; she didn’t have connections with a hospital in Europe or America or even in Jordan. It was not until he had thoroughly polluted her living room with his foul-smelling cigar that he spoke.

  “She has permits to go to the hospital in Petah Tikva for treatment. She cannot drive herself, and her husband cannot get a permit to take her. I know you have friends in Israel and from out of the country. Do you think you could ask someone to drive her?”

  Rania tried to calm the raging inferno in her skull. Her boss, who knew exactly why she had been imprisoned, didn’t even want her for her own skills, just her connections to foreigners and Israelis? You have friends in Israel too, she wanted to say.

  Benny claimed to be his friend. Why not ask him? She answered her own question. Benny was not the kind of friend you asked for a favor like this. Even as she struggled with herself, Rania knew she would do it. Chloe would probably be delighted to drive Reem—it was exactly the kind of savior behavior she loved. Rania didn’t want to be more beholden to Chloe. She already suspected that, if it were not for the American, she would still be in prison. But there was no one else she could ask. Maybe she would get lucky, and Chloe would not answer. She entered Chloe’s number, while the captain continued to puff on his cigar.

  Chloe picked up on the second ring.

  “I need to ask you something,” Rania said, forestalling the other woman’s questions about how she was adjusting to life outside.

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “A friend of mine, well, not mine, exactly, the sister of a friend, needs someone to drive her to the hospital in Israel.”

  “Well…I’m in Ramallah. It would take me a couple hours to get there.”

  “No, no, not right now. In a few days.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t have a car, but I guess I could rent one.”

  “I thought perhaps your friend Abe would lend you his car.”

  Abe was the name Avi used when he wanted Palestinians to think he was a foreigner. Though Rania knew he was Israeli, she still used the English name.

  “He’s out of the country,” Chloe said. “I could ask my friend Nehama.”

  Rania’s head was going to explode. She didn’t want to wait for Chloe to make more calls. She wanted to satisfy the captain’s request, and then maybe he would satisfy hers.

  “You can borrow my husband’s car,” she said. “It’s not as good as a yellow-plated car, but with the permit, you should be okay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think so.”

  “Does it have automatic transmission? I can’t really drive a stick shift.”

  “What do you mean?” Rania knew nothing about cars, except you got in and turned the key.

  “When Bassam drives, does he have to press something with his left foot, or only his right?”

  “I’m not sure…I think both.”

  “Okay, it sounds like it’s a standard transmission. That’s okay; I bet my friend Tina can drive it. When is the appointment?”

  Rania realized she had no idea. “You had better talk to Captain Mustafa,” she said. “He speaks only Arabic.”

  “Tamam,” okay, Chloe said. Rania handed the phone to the captain. He spoke for a few minutes and then said, “Tayeb,” very good, and hung up. Now that he had gotten what he wanted, the captain was out the door in a matter of seconds, mumbling something about calling on her next week to see how she was feeling.

  She had not gotten to bring the conversation back around to Daoud. Maybe she could have insisted on having her say, but she had a feeling it would have been useless.

  “Why didn’t he want to sit outside?” she wondered as she put away the uneaten cookies. Certainly his sister’s illness was not a closely guarded secret.

  She put the glasses into a bowl of water and added soap. Slowly, she swabbed each with a rag. He hadn’t wanted to be seen talking to her. He didn’t want her to come back to work. It all added up to one thing. People didn’t trust her, because she had gotten out of prison so suddenly. They thought she might be a collaborator.

  A soapy glass slipped from her hands and broke into pieces in the sink. When she tried to fish the fragments out, she cut her finger. Instead of finding a bandage to wrap it, she left it sitting in the bowl, enjoying the smart as the water turned deep rose with her blood.

  Bassam may have gotten food on the table every day—Khaled did not look any thinner—but he definitely had not picked up a sponge or cleaning rag in the weeks she had been gone. He was not much of a shopper either. Rania cleared away rotting tomatoes and cucumbers turned to mush and took out her frustrations on a stubborn stain in the refrigerator. Probably, his mother had been preparing all their meals anyway. She scrubbed ferociously, pretending each swipe was at her boss’s face.

  A series of sharp raps at the front door forced her to close the refrigerator door, leaving the soapy water inside and her rubber gloves on the kitchen table. She had been expecting neighbors to drop by to welcome her home, but, except for Bassam’s brothers and their families, and Captain Mustafa with his infuriating request, no one had come yet. She went to answer the door, eager for distraction.

  The last person she wanted to see on her doorstep stood there, waiting to be invited in for tea. Well, the last choice would have been an Israeli soldier, but Abdelhakim ran a close second.

  “T’faddal,” she said, holding the screen door open. He hesitated for a second on the doorstep. Would he opt for the propriety of the porch, or like Captain Mustafa, opt not to be seen with her?

  “I will not stay long,” he said, wiping his feet carefully on her welcome mat as the captain had done. She glanced down at her own bare feet. A year ago, Abdelhakim would have removed his shoes. He must think his status had risen enough to allow him to sully her floor.

  She didn’t want to offer him tea, but she also didn’t want him spreading rumors that she had forgotten how to behave. She would be under enough suspicion as it was. She went to the kitchen and prepared the tea but neglected to bring out sweets. That would let him know how she felt, in case he was in any doubt.

  Her dislike of him was both personal and political. Last year, he had tried to sabotage her work, in order to help his own career. But that was not the most important thing she held against him. Just like her, he came from a long line of PLO fighters. His father and grandfather had been members of Fatah, and he had switched over and campaigned for the Change and Reform Party, the political arm of Hamas. She didn’t believe he cared
about change or reform. He just wanted to increase his own power. And she had no doubt that, while she had been stuffed away in a concrete box, he had done so.

  When she brought out the tea, he was sitting on her flowered couch, flicking ashes into a bowl she had gotten as a wedding present. She plucked it out from under his cigarette and presented the ashtray littered with the remains of the captain’s cigar instead.

  “How is your son?” he asked.

  “Mnih,” fine, she said.

  “Good. And your husband?” He had just seen Bassam yesterday, at Um Issa’s house.

  “Fine,” she said again. “I am sorry about your cousin’s fiancé.”

  “Yes, a tragedy. So much talent.”

  “So I hear. What do you think happened?” She couldn’t resist asking, even though she would hate to learn that he had information she did not.

  “The army,” he said. “They had a confrontation with him earlier that day. They returned that night to settle the score.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But, from what I hear, he was not the type of boy to get into confrontations with the army.”

  “It is not we who make confrontations,” he said. “It is the soldiers who provoke them.” Of course she had not meant that the youth caused the conflict with the army. He just wanted to make her feel bad.

  “I wanted to discuss something with you,” he said, when he finished his tea. Great, maybe he had a sister who needed rides, too.

  “Please,” she said.

  “We want to begin a women’s police force,” he said. She felt like a light bulb switched on behind her eyes. He had come to bring her back to the police! Perhaps she should have brought cookies after all.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “There are bad things happening in our area,” he said. “Girls are staying out late at night, being alone with men, using drugs. There are rumors of girls having sex with men for money. It is not right for men to investigate these offenses. We want to create a special squad of women to deal with them.”