Murder Under the Fig Tree

by Kate Jessica Raphael

  “Itsharafna,” honored to meet you, she said.

  “You too,” said Yusuf. Elias said nothing.

  Yusuf looked to be a few years younger than she, in his early thirties. He had serious brown eyes and a neatly trimmed beard. Elias was probably ten years younger than his brother, taller and thinner. His chiseled features reminded her of the American movie star, Leonardo DiCaprio. She supposed someone that good-looking could get away with sullenness.

  “Abdelhakim says you are a policewoman,” he said.

  “Abdelhakim is kind,” she said, thinking that was the last adjective that could ever be attributed to her former coworker. “I was a policewoman. Now, I am nothing.”

  “Hardly nothing,” Abdelhakim said. “You are a mother, are you not?”

  She blushed hotly. How dare he imply that she put no value on her family? But he was only trying to embarrass her. She wished she hadn’t given him the satisfaction.

  “Besides,” he added, “she is going to be training a women’s police force soon.”

  “I never said that,” she said.

  “I have confidence in you.” Confidence that no other opportunity will come to you, he meant.

  “A women’s police force,” Yusuf said. “Tell me about that.”

  He sounded genuinely interested. Rania almost wished she had something to tell him.

  “I hardly know anything myself,” she said. “I think the idea is to train women to intervene when women’s behavior, or the behavior of their families,” she added, glaring at Abdelhakim, “puts them in danger.”

  “That is a good idea,” Yusuf said. “I think most women would much rather talk to another woman when they have such a problem.”

  “You really think so?” she asked. “Is it not condescending to imagine that we need our own special police force?” Not to mention that our personal conduct needs policing, she thought but did not say.

  “Not at all,” Yusuf said. “It is a smart way of handling the complex demands of modernity in a way that respects our culture and its traditions.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “You have given me something to think about.”

  “Ustaz Horani wins the day,” Elias said. He strode away in the direction of the caravan which was assembling behind the bridal car with its long train of tin cans and halo of balloons.

  “I do not think your brother likes me,” Rania said to Yusuf.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Yusuf said. “He is a temperamental artiste. He cannot be bothered with mere mortals.”

  She chuckled. “What kind of artist?”

  “He studies piano at the conservatory. He is very talented.” He was clearly proud of his brother.

  “He called you Ustaz. What do you teach?” she asked. Had it been her imagination, or had Elias been in a big hurry to disappear?

  “I teach sociology at Al Quds Open University,” Yusuf answered. “In fact,” he said, “I would like to invite you to speak to my class in the next two weeks. We are doing a unit on the role of police in our society, compared to western societies.”

  “I would love to do that.” Rania said. If she could not do her work, at least she could talk about it. She was starting to feel more like herself already.

  “Give me your phone number, and I will call to arrange it.” Yusuf was already pushing the buttons on his mobile. She gave him the number.

  “Tell me,” she said, hoping her tone was casual. “Did your brother have a friend at the conservatory named Daoud al-Khader?”

  His face clouded over. “Yes, they were roommates,” he said. “Daoud was martyred, you know.”

  “I know.” She saw Marwan’s car pulling up at the end of the line of vehicles. Khaled leaned out the window, clutching a green balloon.

  “Mama, come on!” he called.

  “I must go,” she said to Yusuf.

  “I will call you tomorrow about the class,” he said.

  Chapter 28

  Chloe almost didn’t recognize Reem when she got into the front seat. Her face was drawn and whiter than a corpse’s.

  “Kiif halik?” How are you? Chloe asked, trying to sound cheerful and not appalled.

  “Al-Hamdullilah,” Praise God, Reem said. Chloe remembered an American friend who lived in Egypt telling her about a time when she had sprained her ankle on the way to work. When her boss asked her how she was doing, she made the mistake of complaining about her injury, and he simply pointed to the sky, reminding her to give thanks for her blessings.

  Chloe was silent as she pulled onto the settler highway. She concentrated on accelerating smoothly, shifting into fourth at the right moment. She wanted to give Reem an opening to talk about what she was going through, but she wasn’t sure how to do it.

  “You look thin,” she said finally.

  “I have not been hungry at all.”

  “Were you sick?” She didn’t know if Reem would understand that “sick” was a euphemism for throwing up, but she wasn’t going to ask a Palestinian she barely knew if she had been puking her guts out.

  “A little. I have been very tired.”

  “I bet. How many children do you have?”

  “Four.”

  “Wow. How old?”

  “The oldest is twenty-one and the youngest is seven.” Reem didn’t look old enough to have a twenty-one-year-old, but Chloe had learned not to be surprised by that. Reem probably had her first child at sixteen or seventeen. Chloe would have liked to ask, but she didn’t want to offend, so she just counted backwards.

  “Were you able to work?” She remembered Reem saying that she wanted to work during her treatments.

  “We had school only the first week. Last week was a holiday. I went only one day.”

  Too bad, Chloe thought, that the holiday hadn’t come a little later in the process. If Reem was looking this ill already, in a few weeks, she might be too weak to go out at all. She cast about for safe subjects to talk about.

  “Do your children like English, too?” she finally asked.

  “The oldest, my son, teaches English in our village. My daughter is studying in America.”

  “Really? Which state?”

  “Mi—Michigan?” She pronounced it with the hard ch.

  “What is she studying?”

  “Now she studies English. When her English improves, she will study international relations.”

  “She must be very smart.”

  “She is. But my youngest daughter is the smartest of all. She can already speak English better than I do.”

  “That’s saying a lot, because your English is great. Far better than my Arabic,” Chloe said.

  “Arabic is a very difficult language to learn,” Reem said. Her voice sounded strained, and Chloe wondered if she would rather not have to make the effort to chat. But Chloe was too nervous to maintain silence.

  “People always say that. But why is it more difficult than other languages? They’re all difficult, at least for me.”

  “Arabic is one of the oldest languages, so it has many more words.”

  Chloe had heard that before. She found it hard to believe. She had learned at least eight Arabic words for “group,” but each one had a corresponding word in English: society, organization, association, committee, community, and so forth. That was true for just about every Arabic word she knew.

  They had reached the checkpoint. Chloe presented the permit and their IDs and counted to twenty while the soldier examined them. He handed them back silently and waved them through. Both Reem and she let out deeply held breaths.

  “I hope he is there every time we pass,” Reem said.

  “Amen—insha’alla,” Chloe said.

  “How is Tina?” Reem asked, after a few moments of quiet.

  “She is…fine. She’s gone to meet some friends. She has been very busy with work.”

  “What is her work?”

  Chloe thanked the Goddess that her effort to change the subject had worked. “She works at a counseling center for wo
men whose husbands are violent toward them and their children.”

  “That is good—we need that. She is a good woman, like Um Khaled.”

  “Yes.” Chloe seized the opportunity to stop talking about Tina. “What do women in the villages think about Rania, Um Khaled, being a policewoman?”

  Reem said nothing for several moments, and Chloe wondered if she had said something wrong. But, just as she thought she needed to apologize, without knowing what for, Reem spoke.

  “All the women love her. Why would they not? She is a very nice person.”

  All that time to come up with “nice”? “Yes, but she is different from many of the women here in this area.”

  “They accept that because she is a refugee. She protects our people.”

  “But maybe women do not understand the way she does it.”

  “They are a little afraid of her.”

  “Intimidated.”

  “I do not know that word.”

  “Sorry, it means being afraid of someone, usually because we think they are better than we are in some way.” See, English has a lot of words too, Chloe wanted to say.

  “Say it again?”

  “In-ti-mi-da-ted,” Chloe repeated slowly.

  “Intimidated,” Reem said. “I must write it down.” She fished in her large purse for a pen and paper. “Can you spell it, please?”

  Chloe did. “You’re lucky,” she said, “that you can read and write in English. I can hardly read Arabic at all, so it takes me longer to remember a word. Writing is a good way to program something into your body memory.”

  “I can teach you,” Reem said.

  “I wouldn’t want to make more work for you, while you are ill,” Chloe said.

  “I will enjoy it. You are helping me so much.”

  “Thank you. I will take you up on that. But there is something else you could help me with too, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Anything.”

  That was such a Palestinian response; Chloe couldn’t help but smile. An American would never make such an open-ended promise.

  “I want to make a video about some of the women who were elected to the local governments,” she said. “I would like to interview you, and also some of the other women on your council. Could you introduce me to some of them and translate for me?”

  “Certainly,” Reem said.

  “How many women were elected to your council?” Chloe asked.

  “We were four. Under the quota, we only needed to have two,” Reem said proudly.

  “And are you all from Fatah?”

  “No. Two of us were elected from Hamas.” Two of us. Did that mean that Reem was a member of Hamas? Chloe had assumed Reem would be a member of Fatah, because her brother, Rania’s boss, was high up in that party. But perhaps Reem’s husband was Hamas, or maybe she had joined on her own. Chloe could not think how to ask.

  She was spared the need to ask anything for the moment, because she was pulling into the hospital parking lot.

  “I can let you off at the front door, if you like,” she offered.

  “No, I can walk,” Reem said.

  Chloe found a parking spot and managed to get the car into first, reverse, and neutral in succession without too much grinding of gears. Reem let out a long, shuddering sigh as they walked through the double doors into the gloomy hallway. Chloe reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  As soon as Dr. Rahman had situated the IV in her left arm, Reem took out her notebook and a pen. She turned to a blank page and quickly wrote out the Arabic alphabet.

  “What letter is this?” she asked Chloe.

  “Alef,” Chloe responded. That, at least, she knew.

  “This one?”

  “Ra.” That was an easy one to recognize. It was the little circle ones and the ones that were all squiggles and dots that she had trouble telling apart.

  They went through the alphabet. Chloe got most of them right, but the order was confusing.

  “Now you write them. Copy each letter five times,” Reem ordered. Chloe thought she liked her better as a cancer patient than a teacher, but she extracted her own notebook from her pack and diligently copied the letters. When she had finished her assignment, Reem’s eyes were closed, and her even breathing told Chloe she was asleep. Chloe opened her novel and let it sit on her lap while she thought.

  If Reem was Hamas, would she not want Chloe to drive her if she knew she was Jewish? Chloe had never met anyone from Hamas. Well, that was probably not true. She had never met anyone who told her they were from Hamas. If Reem was Hamas, would Chloe still want to drive her?

  “Do you want something to drink?” A Palestinian woman, with black hair peeking out of her blue scrub cap, was fingering Reem’s IV. “She will be done in about half an hour.”

  “No, thanks,” Chloe said. “I’m fine.”

  “It is nice of you to bring her,” the nurse said in English.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It is not nothing.” The young woman reached into her pocket and handed Chloe a small packet of Bamba.

  “Thank you,” Chloe said. The nurse wandered out of the room. Chloe wondered if every Palestinian who worked in the hospital was designated to care for Reem or if Palestinian Israelis made up a disproportionate share of the medical staff. She tore open the cellophane square and popped one of the corn puffs into her mouth. It was basically a peanut butter Cheeto. She was hungrier than she had realized. She tried not to make too much noise with her munching, but Reem didn’t seem likely to wake up any time soon.

  Since it was Friday, Reem’s husband and younger children were home when they returned. A Sabbath meal of chicken and rice was already set on the table. Chloe assumed Reem had made it before she left. She had probably been up at six cooking, despite her dragginess. Now she collapsed in an armchair, as if even the drive had drained her.

  “You must eat with us,” said Reem’s husband, Jawad.

  “Thank you, but I need to get the car back to Abu Khaled.” She had no idea if that was true. Bassam had told her they had a wedding to go to, and she didn’t know what time they would be back. But she didn’t want to sit here and have a gloomy dinner with a family living through cancer, and she didn’t want Reem to have to stay alert and entertain her.

  “Please, I insist,” Jawad said.

  “Thank you, another time,” Chloe said.

  He accepted the third refusal, which meant he didn’t really want her to stay either. Chloe was relieved. She accepted a cup of tea, which he continued to offer long after her three refusals. He left the room to go make the tea.

  Chloe shifted uncomfortably on the couch. She liked kids, but she was always awkward around them at first.

  “Shu ismik?” she asked the little girl, who sat in an armchair to her right. The girl’s hair was dark brown fuzz held back from her face with a faded pink headband.

  “Amalia.”

  “Qaddeesh umrik, Amalia?” How old are you? So far, it was easy to make conversation. These were the questions everyone asked her nonstop.

  “Sabah sneen.” Seven years old.

  “Btihki Inglizi mnih, sah?” You speak English well, right? Chloe remembered Reem saying her youngest spoke the best English in the family.

  “I like to speak English very much,” the little girl said solemnly.

  Directly over the girl’s head hung a framed picture of Khaled Mashal, his expression clerically stern. Last year, Yasser Arafat’s face had adorned the walls of every Palestinian house. Now, the households were split between those where Arafat still reigned supreme and those that had replaced him with Mashal. It must be true, then, that Reem and Jawad were members of Hamas.

  Jawad returned with the tea. He poured for his wife, who roused herself to drink it, and handed a glass to Chloe. It was sweet and liberally flavored with fresh mint. It tasted delicious. While she drank her tea, she repeated a story she had heard from a farmer whom she had helped pick olives. He was invited to the home of an Israeli coworker, he t
hought, for a meal. When he arrived, they had not made anything, and they explained that they didn’t know what he would want to eat, so they had waited. What did he want?

  “Oh, nothing, I’m not hungry,” he said, confident that they would insist. Indeed, his friend’s wife suggested many possibilities. Would he like chicken, cheese, eggs? He repeated that he was not hungry. Then, they shrugged and said, “Okay, if you are sure.” And he never got anything to eat!

  Reem and Jawad laughed appreciatively. Chloe took her bows and exited stage left. For all the mileage she had gotten out of that story, she reflected as she drove, she should go find that farmer and pay him royalties. She was getting more used to shifting, anticipating the road’s bumpy patches and sharp turns with her left foot on the clutch. She didn’t stall once on the way to Mas’ha. She should be grateful to Tina. She had always wanted to be able to drive a stick.

  She found Rania’s house without too much difficulty and pulled the car in-between a tractor missing a wheel and two donkeys grazing. One of the donkeys looked up at her and brayed loudly. Good, if Rania and Bassam were home, they would come out. No one stirred in the house. She waited a few minutes and then knocked on the door. No answer. They must still be at the wedding.

  She had had nothing to eat since early morning, except for the little packet of Bamba. She walked up the street until she found a shop where she could buy some bread and hummus and a box of Marawi apricot nectar. But where could she go to eat it? Women were not supposed to eat in public. She could get away with a lot as a foreigner, but she wasn’t even living in this village and didn’t want to offend their customs. Especially on a Friday in springtime, when so many people were sitting out on their porches. It was too hot to sit in the car. She took her lunch and walked through the town to the edge of the village, where the red roofs of Elkana settlement loomed just past the hulking gray Wall.

  Chloe settled on the highest boulder next to the sun-yellow gate to eat her lunch, making sure to face away from the village in case anyone happened to walk by. She took the never-ending Da Vinci Code out of her pack. Much as she hated it, she also dreaded the day she finished it, because she didn’t have another novel with her. She would have to go to Jerusalem to find an English-language bookstore or borrow one of the dreary, existentialist novels in Avi’s collection.