Murder Under the Fig Tree

by Kate Jessica Raphael

  Her cheeks were scalding. She must look like she was about to have a stroke.

  “That is the most insulting thing I have ever heard,” she said.

  “I thought you would say something like that. But just listen to me.”

  “I am listening,” she said, though, with the ringing in her ears, it was hard to do so.

  “We are not asking you to do this kind of work yourself,” he said. “It is just that it is difficult in the police right now. There are so many unemployed men, and, with the Europeans and Americans holding back the funds from the Palestinian Authority, we cannot afford another detective. Abu Ziyad thought that, while you are on leave, you could help to train the new squad.”

  Abu Ziyad was his boss, the District Coordinating Liaison. The police in this area were under his authority.

  “Abu Ziyad suggested me?” she asked. Abu Ziyad had never wanted a woman detective and found Rania far too opinionated. He had tried to get her fired a number of times. She couldn’t imagine him choosing her as a role model for the paragons of virtue he would be seeking for his morals enforcement squad.

  “It was Captain Mustafa’s idea,” Abdelhakim clarified. She abruptly took the ashtray and dumped its contents into the teapot. She enjoyed watching the remains of the captain’s cigar disintegrate in the urine-colored liquid.

  They were all ganging up on her. She was not going to have any choice. If she wanted to work, this was her only option. She didn’t wonder why the captain had not brought it up. He knew she would have torn his head off.

  “I…I will think about it,” she stammered. She stacked their glasses in one hand and picked up the teapot in the other.

  “Thank you for coming by,” she said. She hoped she didn’t sound too sincere.

  He had been about to light another cigarette, but he didn’t let her abrupt dismissal make him trip. He twirled the cigarette for a second and tucked it back into the pocket of his open-necked, striped shirt.

  “Remember me to Abu Khaled,” he said on his way to the door.

  “I don’t want to remember you at all,” she mumbled under her breath as the door closed behind him.

  Chapter 14

  Rania’s call had come just in time for Chloe. She was just starting to feel extraneous. That morning, Tina had broached the subject of what Chloe was going to do here.

  “How long are you going to stay?” was what she had actually asked.

  “Are you sick of me already?” Chloe shot back.

  “Not at all. I just thought you might have to get back. You left San Francisco in a hurry.”

  “True, but it’s okay. I wasn’t doing that much.”

  “You don’t have to work?”

  “Things are still slow in the software industry. I’ve been doing some consulting, but my last project ended a month or so ago. And you know, I could even work from here if I needed to.”

  During the Silicon Valley boom, Chloe had signed on with a start-up called Bastille, which went platinum with firewalls in the mid-nineties. If she had gotten out a little sooner, she would have been a multimillionaire, but, as it was, she had a safe cushion between her and the repo man. She maintained a generally frugal lifestyle, except for her penchant for travel.

  “So, what are you going to do now?” Tina asked.

  “Today, you mean?”

  “Well, not specifically. I just meant in general.”

  “Good question,” Chloe said.

  Chloe’s unemployment had happily coincided with an international call for human rights activists to travel to Palestine. Chloe had answered it at once, but the overdose of testosterone among the group’s leaders had gotten too much for her. By then, she had befriended some women in the little village of Azzawiya, which was embroiled in a struggle against land confiscations. Armed with her trusty video camera, she had kept a watchful eye on the Israeli soldiers when they made their periodic forays into the village, searching houses, taking people’s kids away for brutal interrogation. In between such incursions, she helped women apply for international development aid to start embroidery cooperatives, and she started a computer class for teenage girls. She had met Rania the day the policewoman discovered the body of Nadya Kim in the fields of Azzawiya, and that set in motion the chain of events which had concluded with Chloe’s forced departure from the country.

  When she heard that Rania was in prison, Chloe had not thought twice about returning. But now that Rania was back with her husband and son, Chloe had no mission here. She didn’t doubt that her friends in Azzawiya would be glad to have her, but she had to acknowledge they had been doing fine without her.

  “I thought I might do some interviews with women who were elected to local councils,” she said. Two years ago, women’s organizations had banded together and demanded a quota of seats on the local councils be set aside for women. Though men and women alike in the rural areas had been skeptical at first, many women had discovered they had a calling to help lead their communities. Women had even been elected deputy mayors in some of the cities.

  “You’re going to write an article?” Tina asked.

  “I might. Maybe even Ms. would be interested. But I was thinking of making a video.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Maybe I’ll stay in Azzawiya part of the week and only come down when you’re off work,” Chloe suggested. She thought too much togetherness might not be good for their relationship.

  When the love of her life had walked out two years ago, Chloe had nursed the wounds until they oozed only phantom blood. She had reconciled herself to being alone with her cat for the rest of her life. These ten days in the apartment in Ramallah, she had given herself over to feelings she had thought were buried permanently.

  She didn’t want Tina to feel suffocated, and she didn’t want Tina to be the only thing keeping her in Palestine. Now, she had a good excuse to go up to Salfit, though there was the problem of the stick shift. Maybe she should rent a car after all. Hopefully Avi would be back soon, and she could ask him to find a car she could drive.

  “What did you do today?” Bassam asked after Rania had gotten every last detail of his encounter with a group of students from the American Arab University in Jenin who wanted to set up an art program for kids in the refugee camp. It was an interesting project, and Bassam was a good storyteller. It was the kind of talk she would have enjoyed in years past, taking her mind away from car thefts and family feuds and reminding her of the noble impulses so many Palestinians had in abundance. Now, it just reinforced how meaningful his work was compared to the paltry opportunities presented to her.

  “Abdelhakim came by,” she said. She didn’t even want to dignify Captain Mustafa’s request by repeating it. It wasn’t that she begrudged him or his sister the help that she was in a position to provide, but it reminded her she had become no more than a vehicle. Vehicle, resounded in her mind. She was going to need to tell Bassam that she had offered Chloe the use of the car. First things first.

  “What did he want?” Bassam’s voice was neutral. He didn’t share her antipathy for Abdelhakim. They had friends in common.

  “He came from Abu Ziyad.” That should get him on her side. He might trust Abdelhakim, but he hated Abu Ziyad. “They want me to head a women’s police force, reporting on women’s immodest behavior.”

  She would have sworn the ghost of a smile crossed his lips. She must have misunderstood it. Her husband could not support this idea.

  “What did you tell him?” was all he said.

  “I said I would think about it,” she said reluctantly. “It is true that women are better at dealing with certain kinds of situations: domestic violence, sexual abuse, this kind of thing. But the idea that we should be interfering in women’s private affairs does not sit right with me.”

  “Is it a private affair, then?” he asked. “If someone violates the morals of our society, that affects all of us. We do not want to end up like America, where women sell sex openly on the streets.”r />
  “You cannot think this is a good thing for me to do.” Khaled was playing soccer in the courtyard with some of his cousins. She picked out his happy shout from the din outside the open window.

  “It would be better for you than sitting around being bored,” Bassam said. He pushed his plate toward the center of the table, indicating he was through eating. She took the plates to the kitchen and took down the package of cookies she had bought to feed the well-wishers who had not shown up. While she arranged the rounds in a circle on the plate, she thought about his reaction. It was as if he had already prepared an answer to her objections.

  She put the kettle on for tea and went back to the living and dining room.

  “Did they discuss this with you already?” she asked, setting the cookie plate in front of him with a satisfying thunk.

  “I heard something,” he said. He picked up a cookie and took a big bite. “Delicious.”

  She was supposed to be mollified by being told that she bought cookies well? He had forgotten whom he had married.

  “Don’t change the subject,” she snapped. “You heard it from who?”

  “Abdelhakim mentioned it the other day, at the martyr’s house,” Bassam said. “He asked me what I thought. I told him he needed to talk to you. I didn’t want to speak for you.”

  He was clever, her husband. If he had answered for her, even if he had given the exact same answer she had given herself, she would have destroyed him.

  The water would be hot by now. She got up and went back to the kitchen. By the time she had taken the teapot from the dish drainer and measured the tea and the mint, her heart rate had settled to almost normal. She brought the tray with tea, glasses, and sugar to the table.

  “I don’t think I am going to do it,” she said. “I want to work, but this type of work is demeaning.” She poured his tea and her own, adding a spoonful and a half of sugar to her glass before relinquishing the sugar bowl. If she had not been angry at him, she would have done his first. Hopefully, he understood.

  “It does not need to be,” he said, adding two sugars to his glass. He lifted the steaming glass to his lips, but apparently thought better of taking a sip and put it down untasted. “If you make it something useful, you will get the better of them.”

  “I had not thought of that,” she admitted. She reached for a cookie. “But I do not like segregation. We are fighting the segregation Wall and building walls in our own society.”

  “It is not the same,” he said. “The segregation Wall is a way for the Israelis to take our land and make our lives harder. The separation between men and women protects women as well as men.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “I have always liked working alongside men.”

  “There is a time for that,” he said, sipping his tea. “But this may be a time to strengthen the individual spheres. It is not like we do not have women and men working together already. Women have been elected to local councils and the legislature in record numbers. Let us see what they can do before we criticize the new government.”

  Was even her husband questioning his loyalty to Fatah? She did not think that was possible. Perhaps he was right, and they should give the Hamas people a chance to prove themselves.

  “Besides,” he said, before she could open her mouth. “A training job will be easier to manage if we are blessed with a baby.”

  “A baby? Who said anything about babies?”

  “We have talked about it many times. Khaled is lonely. It is a good time to do it, while you are in-between things.”

  “I am not in-between. I am unemployed. You are only being paid half of what you are owed. It is a terrible time.”

  “Don’t make it worse than it is. You will be working soon, and the Palestinian Authority will find a way to get the tax money released by Israel before too long. We are not poor. We can manage.”

  Khaled ran in, flushed from running around. He made a beeline for the plate of cookies, grabbing one with each hand.

  “One at a time,” she scolded gently. She took one of the cookies from his fist and set it on the tablecloth. She brushed the damp curls off his forehead and kissed the spot where the hair had been. He tolerated her affection, not pulling away but not snuggling up. She made herself let go. He was growing up. One day, she trusted that he would be proud of having a mother who had been in prison. For now, she would let him decide when to forgive her for being gone.

  Chapter 15

  Before Prison, Rania seldom arrived home before Bassam. She was chronically late to start her family’s dinner because of the Israeli roadblocks she had to pass on her way from Salfit City. She had said that so often, she more or less believed it. But, of course, after five years of closure, she knew how long it would take her to reach home. She could have left earlier, but she was usually so engrossed in her work, she didn’t even hear everyone else saying goodnight and then was left to hunt for transportation.

  Now, her day was a gaping chasm of waiting. Waiting until one o’clock when she could meet Khaled coming home from school—much to his embarrassment. No seven-year-old wanted his mother coming to walk him home from school. She would make up an errand to run in the neighborhood of the school, so she could just happen to run into him on the road. She would spend an hour or two playing with him, and then he would do his homework at the kitchen table while she cooked, and together they would wait for Bassam to arrive home.

  Today, she would make vegetables stuffed with rice and minced meat, a dish she seldom had time to make in her real life. She heard the distant squawking of the vegetable truck’s loudspeaker: bandura, filfil, kousa, toma-toes, peppers, squash. She grabbed her purse and ran outside.

  It was so muggy that she started to sweat as soon as she got to the road. The air was fragrant with donkey dung and old grease from the falafel stand. Her neighbor, Um Samer, was waiting for the vegetable truck as well. She wore a tent-like, paisley dress and a filthy white hijab. “You’re not working?”

  The older woman was clearly fishing for a bit of gossip she could use in a future social encounter. “Not right now,” Rania said.

  “Mmph.”

  Um Samer might have pressed the conversation had she not lapsed into a fit of spittle-filled coughing. By the time she had finished coughing up a small ocean of phlegm into the tissue Rania provided, the truck had arrived.

  “Hamdullila assalaam,” the vegetable peddler greeted Rania.

  She did not recognize him, but it didn’t surprise her that he knew who she was and where she had been.

  “Will you be returning to work?” he asked.

  No doubt he too was hoping to increase his stock in gossip, the most coveted currency of the region.

  “Insh’alla,” she said, God willing, the all-purpose evasion.

  Both faces fell, the young man and the old woman, but they let it go.

  “What would you like?” He turned to the business at hand. “Tomatoes? Bananas?”

  “Bananas from where?” She fingered a bunch. The bananas were firm, and she could smell the sweetness even without lifting it to her nose.

  “I don’t know.” That meant they were from Israel. Most of the tropical produce this close to the Green Line came from Israel. It was cheaper and easier to transport from there than from Jericho. Few of her neighbors cared.

  “The squash and cucumbers are from Qalqilya,” he offered.

  “Kousa,” she pointed to the plump zucchini. “Half a box.” She filled the other half of the box with bright-orange peppers and huge, aromatic onions.

  “Do you need help carrying them?” the young man asked her.

  “No, thank you.” She staggered under the weight of the box, but consciously straightened her back and made herself walk like someone who was not carrying a quarter of her weight in produce.

  In the kitchen, she settled to the task of washing everything carefully, peeling the tomatoes and putting them on the stove to simmer, chopping the onions and the meat, boiling water for the
rice. Mahsheesh was enough work to keep her mind off what she wished she was doing. She switched on the radio to keep her company.

  “…the martyr Daoud al-Khader was gunned down by the Israeli army just two weeks ago in Kufr Yunus,” the announcer was saying.

  That wrenched her mind back to the subjects she had been trying to avoid—why she was released and what she was going to do. She had been out of prison five days, and Benny had made no effort to contact her. As far as she knew, he had accepted her refusal to investigate the murder of Daoud, and her release had nothing to do with his visit. Abdelhakim’s words had confirmed what Captain Mustafa’s silence had implied—there was no place for her as a detective right now.

  A series of clumps on the stairs prepared her for her mother-in-law’s entrance.

  “Ahlan w sahlan,” welcome, Rania said, kissing the old woman’s cheek. She turned on the gas and lit the burner under the tea kettle while Um Bassam settled herself at the kitchen table. Rania wasn’t sure whether she was glad or sorry to have the company. The one-time hostility between the two women had thawed to near affection in the last year, but they loved each other best at a distance. She felt her mother-in-law scrutinizing each small movement she made: scooping the tea leaves into the kettle, pinching sprigs of mint from the window box, spooning the filling into the hollowed-out vegetables.

  “Mahsheesh,” Um Bassam said. “Bring them here.”

  “Drink your tea first,” Rania suggested, setting the glass of amber liquid on the table along with the sugar bowl.

  “It’s too hot,” Um Bassam replied. She added several spoonfuls of sugar into the glass and set it aside to cool.

  Rania didn’t want help with her meal. She had counted on the preparation eating up the time before Khaled got home. With her mother-in-law’s practiced hands, she would be done in an hour. But refusing the help would jeopardize their fragile détente. Rania placed the heavy pot full of vegetables and the bowl of filling on the table and sat down opposite her mother-in-law. The old woman began working immediately, automatically gathering the right amount of filling in her right hand for the squash or pepper she held in her left. They piled the stuffed ones on the platter between them.