Murder Under the Fig Tree

by Kate Jessica Raphael

  They had just settled themselves in the waiting room when a young man in dark blue scrubs appeared at Reem’s elbow.

  “I am Dr. Rahman,” he said in Arabic. He did not offer her a handshake.

  Chloe didn’t know why she was surprised that he was Palestinian. One-fifth of the Israeli population was Palestinian Arabs. Despite the discrimination in education and employment, there must be plenty of doctors among them. She suspected the receptionist had scoured the hospital for this one.

  “Min weyn inta?” Where are you from? Reem asked.

  “Min Gaza,” he said. He smiled at the three dropped jaws, ultra-white teeth gleaming in his swarthy face.

  “Is it hard to get the permits?” Reem asked.

  “No. I have worked here for a long time.”

  “Aren’t you needed in Gaza?” Tina asked.

  “There are plenty of doctors in Gaza,” said Dr. Rahman. “There is just no money to pay us. I have a large family, and I am the only one who has work.”

  They followed him to a large room with tasteful seascapes dotting the walls. A nurse settled Reem into a reclining chair, like the BarcaLounger Chloe had in her living room in San Francisco. There were straight-backed, carpet-covered chairs for her and Tina.

  “Do you have any questions?” Dr. Rahman asked.

  Reem hesitated. “Will I be sick?” she asked finally.

  “Probably not right now,” he replied. “The medicine might hurt a little going into your arm, but we will give you something to prevent nausea.” Chloe didn’t understand the Arabic words for “prevent” or “nausea.” She looked at Tina, who translated for her without being asked.

  “I am ready,” Reem said, as if committing herself for execution. Her skin had gone ashen since they had come into this room. Tina took her free hand and stroked it, as the nurse began to swab a throbbing vein with an alcohol wipe.

  Reem settled down once the red liquid was dripping into her arm.

  “What is it like where you come from?” she asked Chloe in English.

  “We can speak Arabic if it’s easier for you,” Chloe offered. She didn’t think she’d want to speak a foreign language while she was getting an infusion of poison.

  “I like to speak English,” Reem said.

  “Well, San Francisco is very beautiful. Have you ever been to Haifa?” She hoped it wasn’t impolite to ask that. Palestinians could no longer go to Israeli cities, but Reem was old enough to remember a time before so many restrictions. Reem nodded. “Many people say that Haifa reminds them of San Francisco. They don’t seem that similar to me though. They are both on the water, but San Francisco is cold all the time. The ocean is wild, the shore very rocky with high cliffs. You can walk along the ocean for miles—kilometers. I like to roller-skate there—do you know what that is?”

  Reem shook her head. Her eyelids were starting to droop.

  “I wear shoes that have wheels, and I can go fast.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” Reem said, sounding far away.

  “It is if you go down big hills,” Chloe said, “But I try not to. Or, if I do, I don’t go that fast. It’s very foggy,” she continued, “and some days from the top of the cliffs by the ocean, you can just see the outline of the tall buildings downtown rising out of the mist. It looks like a magic kingdom.”

  Reem’s eyes closed and she snored lightly.

  “I better not plan on a career as a storyteller,” Chloe said.

  “It was a bedtime story. I’d love to see you skating around the magic kingdom,” Tina responded.

  “You should visit sometime.”

  “Melbourne is beautiful too. You would like it.”

  “What did you think of Dr. Rahman?” Chloe asked.

  “I feel bad about asking why he wasn’t working in Gaza. It just slipped out,” Tina said thoughtfully. “It’s so weird; Gaza seems like a foreign country, and it’s not even an hour’s drive from here. A woman who works at the center comes from Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. She hasn’t seen her family in four years.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen mine in two,” Chloe said. “But there’s no checkpoint between us. Just the Gulf of Political Disunity.”

  Tina’s lips turned up, but her eyes remained sad.

  “How did it go?” Rania asked when they returned the car.

  “Fine, I guess,” Tina said.

  “She’s a lovely woman,” Chloe said. “I think it was scary for her, but not too difficult physically. How was your day?”

  “It was interesting,” Rania said.

  “Oh?”

  “I met Daoud’s cousin in Ramallah. He said that Daoud sometimes met an Israeli soldier at Adloyada.”

  “Met, as in dated?”

  The word “dated” sounded very loud in Chloe’s ears. She didn’t even know if Rania and Bassam had “dated” or if their marriage had been arranged. She recalled Rania saying they had been in college together, but that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t an arranged marriage. Chloe had no idea how Palestinian marriages were arranged. In San Francisco, she had an Indian friend whose parents kept trying to fix her up with men as far away as London.

  “I don’t know,” Rania was saying. “He just said Daoud met this man there. He didn’t know, or at least he claimed not to know, anything about him. Yesterday, I found pictures of Daoud and Ahmed with an Israeli from a peace camp in Germany. I think maybe he was the one he met at that bar.”

  Chloe was about to ask why she thought it could be the same guy, when Rania said, “Will you go to Adloyada with me?”

  Tina’s mouth was slightly agape, just as Chloe was sure hers was. “You want to go to Adloyada?” she stammered.

  “I need to find out about Daoud’s life.”

  “I don’t know—it seems like it would be a hard place for you to talk to people,” Chloe said. She hoped Rania didn’t ask her to explain why. She didn’t want to say, I’m sure no woman has ever walked in there in a hijab. Of course, Rania didn’t wear her hijab all the time. She had told Chloe she didn’t wear it at work. But Chloe had never seen her outside without it.

  “Please, I want to go there,” Rania simply said.

  “Okay,” Chloe said. “When do you want to go?”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “I guess that would be okay for us,” Chloe looked at Tina for confirmation. “Reem doesn’t have to go to the hospital again until Friday, so I’m free.”

  “I will meet you at Bab el-Amud,” Rania said, using the Arabic name for the Damascus Gate.

  Chloe agreed, wondering how Rania planned to make it to Jerusalem. There were at least half a dozen checkpoints between here and there. But she didn’t imagine anything would stop her friend when she was determined to go somewhere.

  Chapter 20

  In her college days in Jerusalem, Rania occasionally went to bars. That was during the First Intifada, before people got so religious. She had worn what was fashionable then—tank tops, high heels, short skirts, and makeup. Except for the makeup, she still had all of those things in the back of her closet. She greeted them as long-lost friends. Styles had changed in twenty years. Which was the most contemporary? She chose a black and white leopard-print skirt made out of a stretchy fabric. It was not too short, revealing only a tiny bit of knee. She would be sitting most of the night anyway. A black tank top with little sparkles complemented it perfectly. Medium-heeled sandals, and she was ready. Chloe had said she didn’t need to dress up; she could have worn sweatpants and a turtleneck like she usually did under her jilbab. But, if she was going to do something out of character, she wanted to look the part. Or maybe she just wanted to be a different character for the night. It brought back the youthful freedom she had felt in those days of action and promise.

  The bar was nothing like she had imagined. The bars she had been to long ago had been elegant, Arab-style lounges, with red, plush carpets and crystal chandeliers dripping hundreds of tiny prisms. This one had sawdust on the floor and scratched faux-wood tables
with high stools to perch on. It was so dark she could barely see to walk, and cigarette smoke hung heavy in the still air.

  Arab pop music blared over the sound system. As her eyes adjusted, she glanced around. Most of the tables were occupied by people of indeterminate gender. Maybe she would have been able to tell the women from the men if she stared, but she didn’t want to be rude. Two young people she was sure were men sat entwined on a love seat that appeared perilously close to collapsing under their weight. Their lips were locked in a passionate kiss. The only place she had ever seen such a display of affection was in foreign movies. She turned away quickly. Her face felt feverish.

  She sensed Chloe and Tina being careful not to touch. When Tina found them a table near the bar, they sat on either side of her.

  “What would you like to drink?” Tina asked, putting a hand on Rania’s shoulder but not Chloe’s.

  “Red wine,” Chloe said. “Do you mind?” she asked Rania belatedly.

  “Of course not. I’ll have one too.”

  She had never liked the taste of alcohol, though she had enjoyed the warmth and softness it created in her body. Bassam became very amorous after a few drinks. It was on one such night that they had agreed to marry.

  “They have juice and soda,” Tina said.

  “I will have wine,” she said.

  “Coming up,” Tina said.

  She returned with two wine glasses and a tall, dark-colored beer for herself. She also brought a bowl of pistachios.

  “Cheers,” Tina said, raising her glass. Chloe lifted hers, and they clinked them together. By the time Rania realized she had missed the cue and picked up her glass, the others were already sipping from theirs. She deliberately lifted the glass to her lips and breathed in the sour grape smell. It made her feel slightly nauseated. She set it down untouched and reached instead for a nut.

  By the time they had emptied the bowl of nuts, the place was full of people. Most were Israeli, but she heard a smattering of Arabic. She isolated the source of that sound. Five young men huddled around a high, round table crammed with mostly empty beer bottles. Two of them were draped over a third like stoles. The fourth sat in the lap of the fifth. They must have sensed her attention. The one with the two men around his shoulders lifted his glass to her, his upper lip curling slightly.

  “I will be right back,” she said to her friends and purposefully crossed to the men’s table.

  “Masa al-kheir,” evening of joy, she said.

  “Masa an-noor.” Evening of light, they murmured. “Awal marra hon?” one of them asked her. He was asking if it was her first time here.

  “Aiwa,” yes, she said.

  “Ahlan w sahlan,” welcome. He made another mock salute.

  “Ahlan fiik,” she said, as if he had meant it politely. “My friend, Daoud al-Khader, used to come here.” She paused, blinked as if fighting back tears. She thought she saw a hint of something—interest? fear?—in the eyes of the boy who had spoken to her. “He told me he had many friends here. Perhaps you were among them?”

  “No, sorry,” they all agreed after a quick confab of the eyes.

  What did she expect? A strange woman showed up asking about their dead friend. They had no idea who she was, but, if they did, they would trust her even less.

  “Do you come here often?” she tried.

  “Often enough.”

  “Where from?” No way could they refuse to answer a neutral question that every Palestinian heard any time they met someone new.

  “Around.”

  That was her cue to give up, but her stubborn instincts were kicking in. The more they didn’t want to talk to her, the more determined she was to find out what they knew about Daoud. As she was racking her brain for how to prolong the conversation—though you couldn’t really dignify this interchange with that name—a series of colored lights flashed, pink, green, orange, blue, and a loud bell clanged four times.

  “The show is starting,” one of the young men told her. He gestured toward an area she had not noticed before, where a heavy velvet curtain hung. She saw the row of colored lights now and the platform protruding from the bottom of the curtain.

  “What kind of show?”

  “You will see.”

  They were clearly not going to make room for her at their table, nor was there any to make. She wandered back to join Chloe and Tina, who were deep in conversation, heads bent across the table like swans. She turned her chair to face the stage, and, as she sat down, the curtain rose. The man at the microphone was not tall and not young. He was dressed from balding head to pigeon toes in silver sequins which shimmered in the multicolored lights, turning him into a walking rainbow.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. Boys and girls,” he said in English. “Friends. Welcome to Ramallah Night!”

  “What does that mean?” Rania whispered to Tina, who was closer to her than Chloe.

  “All the performers come from Ramallah,” Tina whispered back.

  “Of course, we are all still in shock over the death of our dearest JLo,” the man on stage continued. A murmur passed through the audience. “And so, here with a special tribute to her memory, please welcome Lena, Tina, and Nina!”

  Three women ran onto the stage, holding hands, while the audience thundered approval. The one on the left wore a black evening dress and white gloves under a bouffant hairdo. The one on the right had long black hair and wore a red one-piece suit with something metallic in the material. Rania had never seen anything like it, even on TV. The one in the middle wore a skimpy, spangled tank top above black, stretchy pants. Her straight hair just brushed her shoulders, and her bangs hung almost to her eyelids. She wore massive gold hoop earrings and three gold chains around her neck. They were dark skinned, but didn’t look like any Arab women Rania had ever seen.

  “These women are from Ramallah?” she asked Tina. The other woman smiled.

  “They are men,” she whispered. “They are pretending to be American singing stars. It’s called a drag show.”

  “Arab men?”

  Tina nodded, but Rania didn’t believe it. That an Arab man would get up on stage looking this way—even leaving aside that it was in a bar full of Israelis—was impossible. The music blasted and the women—or men, if Tina knew what she was talking about—shook their hips in a highly provocative way.

  “I will survive. I will survive.” It seemed like a good anthem for Palestinians.

  The dancers twirled and twisted in a rainbow blizzard.

  The audience shrieked in appreciation. A hail of shekels clattered onto the stage. One of the women—the one with the bangs—knelt to pick up the money. She put a note to her lips and kissed it, then held it out to the crowd. There was more applause. Rania snuck a glance at the Arab men she had been talking to. They were rapt, eyes fixed on the stage, hollering in Arabic.

  Rania felt a pounding behind her eyes, in rhythm with the music. She picked up her wine glass and made herself take a swig. She longed for something to cool her down, but the wine had the opposite effect. Still, the burning sensation it made going down felt almost good, the shock to her system made tangible. She quickly downed half the glass.

  “And now, please put your hands together for Sister Leila!”

  The woman who took the stage next wore a bright-pink sweater dress accented with something blue and fuzzy around her neck. Black fishnet tights crawled up her narrow, muscular thighs and she balanced on heels higher than any in Rania’s closet. A Nancy Ajram song began to play, and the woman gyrated her thin hips just like the Lebanese singing star did.

  Rania caught a flash of something familiar near the door and turned to look. Icicles formed in her throat. Her worst fears were about to be realized, and she had no chance to escape.

  “Chloe, look,” she cried, grabbing her friend’s arm. Both women followed her pointing finger.

  “What?” Chloe said.

  “Soldiers are here.” She saw only one soldier, but, where there was one, there were sure to
be others.

  Chloe made a dismissive half wave. “He’s not going to bother us. He just wants to see the show.”

  Of course, Rania knew soldiers came here. For all she knew, this could be the soldier Daoud had been kissing. He bent down to plant a kiss on the security guard’s cheek, his gun sticking out behind him like an awkward tail. She watched him make his way through the throng and, much to her shock, land at the table of young Arab men she had just so unsuccessfully tried to engage. One of them said something to him, and he burst out laughing. He picked up a half-full glass from the table and took a few sips.

  She strained to see his face in the dim light. From what she could see, he was definitely not the Israeli in Daoud’s pictures.

  “Where is the hamam?” Rania asked Tina. Tina gestured toward the opposite corner from where they sat, the one nearest the bar. It was very crowded over there. She didn’t know how she would make her way back there or what she would find in the way of a bathroom, but she needed to be alone.

  Was she imagining that the soldier watched her walk to the back of the bar? She put it out of her mind. Heavily pierced women and men and people of indeterminate gender sporting skintight leather fashions blocked the door to the single bathroom. So much for a quiet place to think. The music pulsed around them, though, from here, the words were too muffled to make out. She pressed her back against the wall.

  She had looked forward to this adventure. Now, her soul was ripping into fragments. She was a liberal, a secular nationalist. Islam was her tradition, but she didn’t feel the need to dictate to others how to live. But this—Arab men flirting with Israeli soldiers, performing in front of them like the ones on the stage—could not be right. Yet all these young people, pressed in hip to hip, laughing and singing, were having so much fun. She couldn’t say they were hurting anyone.

  The MC announced the next performer, and the narrow hallway emptied with a whoosh, leaving Rania staring at a wall of pictures. She leaned forward to study them. Various groups of men and women in poses of love stared out at her, some tender, some teasing. She almost didn’t recognize Daoud with eyeliner widening his onyx eyes and long, silver earrings touching his shoulders. But she did recognize the skinny, pock-skinned young man with him—he had just asked her if she was new here. His chin was balanced on Daoud’s shoulder, his arm circling the other man’s neck. And here was Daoud again—this time in full regalia, page-boy wig and glittering silver dress, holding hands with an Israeli soldier, gun dangling like a third arm at his side. Was it the same soldier she had just seen? She couldn’t tell. She searched her memory for the man’s features, but her fear had overcome her police training, and she could call up only a fuzzy image. It didn’t matter anyway. She could not walk up to a soldier and demand that he talk to her about a dead Palestinian.