Murder Under the Fig Tree

by Kate Jessica Raphael

  “We talk about everything,” Tina said. “Our families, growing up, coming out. It’s…I don’t know. It’s like a miracle. I’ve never felt so close to any group of people.” She caught Chloe’s hurt expression. “I said group of people.”

  “I understand,” Chloe said. But she couldn’t say she did. She had never felt that way. She felt comfortable with other Jewish lesbians but not necessarily more so than with other women. There were things they had in common, but they were the type of things that plenty of women from other cultures shared.

  “Does this group have a name?” she asked.

  “SAWA,” Tina said. “It stands for Sisterhood for Arab Women’s Advocacy.” It also meant “together” in Arabic, Chloe knew. The word stabbed irrationally at her heart.

  “What time’s your meeting?” she asked Tina.

  “It’s at three. And will probably go until after eight.”

  “A five-hour meeting?”

  “It’s not just a meeting. We talk, we eat, and then we sometimes go out.”

  “To a bar?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes to a café or even a play or something. That’s why it is best to meet in Tel Aviv on Friday. It’s good for the people who live in the West Bank because they have the day off, but West Jerusalem is closed up on Friday night. Tel Aviv is always open.”

  “I see. So, are you spending the night there or coming home?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on what time we are finished and whether I’m drunk.”

  “Where will you stay if you don’t come home?”

  “Yasmina, one of the women from SAWA, lives in a big house. They have a guest room,” Tina went on. “The West Bank women usually stay there.”

  “Yasmina. She’s the one we met the other night.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You said you work together?”

  “Um, well, not exactly. I said I met her through work.”

  Chloe decided to let it go. Obviously, Tina would not have wanted to say anything about SAWA in front of Rania or, apparently, in front of Chloe.

  “I don’t see any need to come back if you’re not going to be here,” Chloe said. “After I drop the car in Mas’ha, I think I’ll go visit Jaber and Ahlam.”

  “Give them my love.” Tina and Ahlam both worked with Palestinian feminist organizations. When Chloe had introduced them, they had bonded like instant sisters.

  Tina took her cup and plate into the kitchen. Only hers, Chloe noted. Of course, Tina didn’t know if Chloe was done eating, but it still seemed symbolic.

  “Hey,” Chloe called. “Maybe I could write an article about SAWA.” Tina appeared in the doorway between kitchen and living room, her green eyes blazing.

  “Bloody hell, Chloe, that’s exactly why I didn’t tell you in the first place.”

  “What are you getting so upset about? I wouldn’t have to use people’s names.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Tina disappeared into the closet. Chloe cleared the breakfast things and headed for the shower. If she was going to have to manage the stick shift herself, she would really have to get going, because there could be quite a few stalls on the way.

  Chapter 27

  Friday, the Palestinian Sabbath, was wedding day. There were weddings nearly every week, except during Ramadan, and today was no exception. The wedding Rania and Bassam were invited to was at three o’clock. She told Bassam she would be back by one. He looked annoyed but only said, “Okay, see you then.”

  Rania had spent many hours talking to grieving family members. Being Palestinian meant being good at funerals. But she had never had an encounter like the one she was about to have with Hanan. What was she going to say to a young woman whose fiancé had been betraying her with another man? Ahmed had insisted that Hanan knew the truth, but that was too much for Rania to believe. How could any woman allow herself to be used in such a way? She pondered this as she walked through the corridors of Salfit Hospital.

  If she were sick, she did not think the heavy smell of antiseptic cleaning fluids would make her feel better. As it was, she quickened her steps to put distance between herself and the floors where patients were treated. She took the elevator, which thankfully was working, to the eighth floor, where the administrative offices were housed.

  She imagined that this part of the hospital would be a virtual morgue on Friday. She had been quite surprised when Hanan’s mother had informed her that her daughter was at work. Medical staff, of course, worked around the clock, but surely Hanan’s work was not so essential that it could not wait until Saturday. She found the girl in the windowless office she shared with two other women. At least, she assumed all three desks were occupied by women. Only one other woman was actually in the office, and she and Hanan were deep in conversation that seemed to revolve around the hairbrush in Hanan’s hand and the braids she was attempting to sweep into a crown. Rania thought perhaps it was not a work day after all.

  “Good day,” she said from the doorway. Hanan swiveled her head and looked none too pleased to see her. But she got up and came to the door, bringing the hairbrush with her.

  “Can we talk somewhere—” Rania didn’t even get to finish the word “privately” before Hanan was signaling to her friend that she would return in a while. She led Rania down a dim hallway to a door which, when opened, revealed a pleasant office with plate-glass windows on two sides.

  “The director has gone home,” Hanan said. “We can talk in here.”

  Neither of them wanted to usurp the director’s deep, leather-covered chair. Hanan perched on the edge of the shiny, olive-wood desk, and Rania settled into a leather couch that put her head level with the girl’s knee. She leaned back to make sure that Hanan’s swinging leg did not accidentally catch her in the face.

  “I am trying to find out who killed Daoud,” Rania began.

  “The soldiers killed him.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I know it.”

  “Do you know something you haven’t told me about what happened that day?”

  “I don’t know anything about what happened. I didn’t see it, I told you.”

  “I spoke to his roommate, Ahmed.”

  “I know you did.” Hanan’s half-braided hair made her resemble a cubist painting.

  “So, you knew that Daoud was…” Rania hesitated. Ahmed had known the word “gay,” but Hanan was not a young man living in Ramallah. The Arabic word for homosexual was luuti, derived from the prophet Lot, who lived in a town that was destroyed for its abnormal sexual practices. The word had a highly derogatory connotation.

  “Mithli,” same, Hanan supplied. “Yes, I knew.”

  “But you were going to marry him anyway.”

  “Yes. That way our parents would leave us alone about getting married, and we could do what we wanted. Later, we would have had children, and he would have changed.”

  “Why do you think he would have changed?”

  “Because, all men change when they have children.”

  Had Bassam changed when Khaled was born? Rania had never thought about it. She felt like she had changed, but not herself, her role in society. Bassam had seemed the same to her before and after, but maybe to others he seemed different, more serious perhaps.

  “I loved him,” Hanan was saying. “He loved me, too. He would not have allowed me to be unhappy.”

  “But how could you be happy, married to someone with unnatural desires?”

  “I don’t see what’s unnatural about it,” Hanan said. Rania put that in a vault of things to think about later. Did all the young people think this way? She thought of the young Palestinian men at the bar the other night. They had not appeared ashamed or frightened, at least not until she showed up.

  “Did you know he performed at a bar in West Jerusalem?”

  “Of course. I watched him once. He was wonderful. All of the others only move their lips to the recording, but he sang. He sounded just like the record.�
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  “Hanan, someone told me that Daoud had a boyfriend in one of our villages. Do you know who it was?”

  A beat too long passed before the girl said, “No, I don’t know. He never said anything to me. I don’t believe he had one.”

  “You are sure? It could be important.”

  “Why is it important? We know who killed him.” She slapped the hair-brush against her palm for emphasis. It made a little red mark. “That soldier threatened him in the afternoon, and, that evening, he came back to kill him.”

  “You said ‘that soldier.’ Do you know which soldier it was? Did Daoud know him?”

  “I didn’t mean anything. My sister told you she saw a soldier hit him. That must be the soldier who killed him.”

  Rania knew the girl was lying, but there was no point in prolonging the conversation. She got up to go. Just before she got to the doorway, she thought of something.

  “Were there soldiers at Adloyada the night you were there?”

  Hanan’s eyes narrowed. She nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  “Did Daoud talk to any of them?”

  Another nod.

  “Did you hear what they said?”

  “No. I was sitting at a table with Elias and Ahmed. We watched Daoud’s act. Everyone loved him. They cheered. Then, he went to get changed. I decided to surprise him by going to help him dress.” Rania tried not to let her face betray shock. Nice village girls didn’t watch their boyfriends get undressed. But then nice village girls didn’t go to bars, let alone one like Adloyada.

  “I went to the back, where I had seen Daoud go. I asked someone where his dressing room was. He pointed to a door. I opened it. Daoud was there— his shirt was off, but he was still wearing the skirt. There was a soldier there with him. They were kissing. Daoud had his hands—”

  Rania gestured that she needn’t spell it out. It didn’t matter. She knew enough. Ahmed had lied, and Daoud had been involved with an Israeli soldier. Time to get home and prepare for the wedding. But there was one more question she had to ask.

  “I’m sorry to make you talk about this,” she said to Hanan. “I’m sure it was painful for you. Do you know—did you ever find out that soldier’s name? Could it have been Lior?”

  “I don’t know. I shut the door quickly. I don’t think either of them saw me, and I never told Daoud I had seen them.”

  Rania believed her. She pulled out the photos she had taken from Daoud’s room, and opened it to the one in which the Israeli’s face was clearest. “Could this have been the soldier you saw?”

  Hanan glanced at it quickly and looked away. Rania read her thoughts in the tears that made their way into her opaque, brown eyes. Daoud looked so happy with those boys. Why couldn’t he have been as happy with her?

  “I only saw him for a second, from the side. I don’t think so, but I can’t say for sure,” the girl said.

  Despite the slow Friday transit, Rania was back in Mas’ha before one o’clock. She had plenty of time to make lunch for Khaled, but she didn’t feel like it. She stopped at the falafel shop instead. She owed him a treat anyway. She bought ten falafel balls and some fried eggplant.

  “We should be more careful about money,” Bassam said when she laid the food on the table. “Without your salary and with the PA funds frozen, we might have to do without for a while.”

  “How can you reproach me for not getting paid, when you keep telling me to forget about work and have a baby?”

  “Shhh,” he chided her as Khaled raced in, making zoom zoom noises with a toy plane. “I wasn’t reproaching you about not getting paid,” Bassam whispered in her ear.

  “Let’s eat,” she said. She was not going to fight with Bassam today, not after last night. But she didn’t want to talk to him either. She wanted to go off and think about Hanan’s bombshell. She did the dishes as soon as Khaled was done eating. Fortunately, her son rode off on his bicycle, and Bassam went to smoke on the porch. She went to bathe for the wedding.

  Some Palestinian households only had a tub and a cup for pouring water over your head, but she had insisted on a real shower. Her father, who had updated the water system for all of Bethlehem in the seventies, had come up to install it while she and Bassam were on their honeymoon in Jericho. As the warm water coursed over her now, she thought about what she had learned in the last few days. Or, at least, what she had heard, because she had more questions than answers at this point.

  Lior had said the person Daoud met at his apartment was Palestinian, but he also said he never met the boy. So, Daoud could have lied to Lior, or Lior could be lying to protect another soldier. Or, of course, Lior could be the boyfriend, and the whole story about lending Daoud the apartment was a lie to throw her off the scent.

  Speaking of lies, why had Ahmed lied about going to Adloyada? Was he gay as well, or had he just gone to watch Daoud perform? She would have to have another chat with Ahmed. She didn’t relish it.

  She stepped out of the shower and into her nicest dress. It was a deep violet with a drop-waist and black and gold embroidery across the chest and on the cuffs. Bassam had brought it for her from Nablus just before the last Eid al-Fitr, the festival that ends Ramadan. She combed her hair and twisted it into a knot at the back of her neck, covering it with a black and gold scarf. She expected Bassam to come in and change his clothes, but he didn’t. When she exited the bedroom, he put on his leather jacket and called to Khaled, who was still outside, to come put on his jacket.

  “You’re going like that?” she asked.

  “Why not?” Indeed, he looked fine, his short-sleeved, periwinkle shirt perfectly crisp and gray pants neatly pressed. Still, she suspected he hadn’t come into the bedroom to change his shirt because he didn’t want to be alone with her.

  The wedding was in a hall in Biddya, a short drive from their house. Since Chloe had their car, they rode with Marwan and his family, piled into the back seat with two kids on each lap.

  Piercing ululations drew Rania inside. She left Bassam greeting his cousins and walked inside, where women and girls whirled in a furious dabka. Old women beat the tablas rhythmically, their gnarled hands flying. There were no men inside except the groom, seated with his bride on thrones on the dais. She did not know either of them. The groom was the son of one of Bassam’s endless supply of cousins. The bride looked about sixteen, the groom close to thirty. She recalled that he had been working in the Gulf and had only come home to get married. She wondered if he would be taking his bride back with him or if he planned to live here for a while. With the economy the way it was, she doubted they could stay here for long. She felt sorry for the girl, if she was to be taken far away from her family so young. Maybe that was why she had a pasted-on smile beneath her ornately piled tendrils of hair.

  Rania did not feel up to dancing yet. She hoped she would later. She had loved to dabka in her youth; she had been part of a troupe that traveled all over the West Bank for dabka contests. But, right now, she was still tired and confused from the last few days. She found a spot along the wall and allowed her mind to wander along with the music.

  There was one other man in the room, she realized. He was putting the final touches on an eight-tiered cake, wielding a pastry tube as delicately as a paint brush. He finished and stepped back to check his handiwork. He moved slowly around the cake, making sure every rosette was the same. He finished and wheeled the trolley containing the cake up to the dais. The drummers beat a final crescendo and silenced their instruments. The girls stopped dancing and melted into the walls, making room for the men who poured into the middle space.

  Then, the presentation of gifts began. First, the bride’s father came forward and looped several thick gold strands around his daughter’s neck. Rania clapped heartily along with the others. By giving the jewelry to his daughter, he gave her power in the relationship. If her husband mistreated or left her, she could take her dowry with her. Then, the groom’s father came forward. He presented a gold pocket watch to his son and silver ea
rrings with some type of shimmering stone to the bride. Then came the uncles, mostly bearing pouches stuffed with cash, which they handed to the groom, of course. Bassam stepped forward and handed the groom something. Rania hoped he hadn’t gotten overgenerous. After all, they barely knew these people, and he had just been lecturing her about buying falafel.

  The men danced the bride and groom over to the cake, and they cut it in the traditional way, hand over hand. They fed each other a piece, and the photographer snapped away. Then, the men began to dance, holding hands in a tight circle. Bassam was not among them. He did not dabka. The women could not dance with the men present. They stood against the walls, clapping and chatting. It seemed Rania had missed her chance. But then, some women she didn’t know grabbed her hands and led her, along with a string of other women, to a long, narrow alcove off the main room where they could hear the music. There was no room for a circle, so they made a line and danced. After a little while, she stopped thinking about Ahmed and Lior and Hanan and Daoud and Bassam and Chloe and Tina and just thought about how wonderful it felt to move her body, to be here among her people and not in prison. Someone passed sweet pineapple juice and then nuts and dates and cookies, and, eventually, pieces of wedding cake made it back to where they were.

  As suddenly as it had begun, it was over, and everyone quickly gathered their possessions. There must be another wedding coming in. It was often like that on Fridays, one stacked against another. When she reentered the hall, she saw that the thrones were empty. The bride’s brothers must already have escorted the couple to their wedding caravan. Rania took her purse and went to find them. People were piling into cars. She looked around for Bassam, but didn’t see him. He and Khaled must have gone with Marwan to get the car. As she waited uncertainly, she heard her name and turned.

  “Abdelhakim,” she said. “I didn’t know you would be here.” Why was it that the one person she hoped not to run into turned up everywhere she went?

  “The bride’s brother is my friend from college,” he said. “These are their cousins, Yusuf and Elias,” he added, indicating the two young men near him.