She heard a jeep crunching the stones on the security road across the Fence. She looked up as it screeched to a halt, then went back to her halfhearted reading.
“Come here,” boomed the megaphone mounted on top of the jeep. Chloe couldn’t see the person it belonged to. She also could not “come here,” because the Fence stood in-between them. Presumably they meant for her to get up and come stand next to the gate. She wouldn’t. If they wanted her, they could come get her. She diligently looked down at her book, seeing nothing.
“Hey! I’m talking to you.” The soldier was out of his jeep now. He was small and rat-faced, his close-cropped, dark hair partially covered by a blue and white crocheted skullcap. Another soldier got out on the driver’s side. He was taller and heftier and wore no skullcap. They both looked slightly familiar, but she didn’t waste time trying to figure out where she might have seen them. She had seen so many soldiers when she was here before—at checkpoints, home invasions, demonstrations, patrolling the villages. They all looked more or less alike.
“What are you doing here?” the rat-faced soldier asked.
“Waiting for some friends.”
“Who?”
“None of your business.” At least they spoke English, so she could use the retorts that came readily to mind, though, if they didn’t, she could just pretend she didn’t know any Hebrew.
“It is our business. You are in a closed military area.”
“I am not. I’m in a Palestinian village which is none of your concern.”
“See this fence?” He gestured expansively from the concrete Wall to the Fence and the gate. “We built it. It is for our security. The area where you are sitting is part of the security zone. See that sign?” He pointed to a red sign with white letters posted on the Fence about five feet from where Chloe sat. Mortal Danger, it read in English, followed by (she assumed) the same in Arabic and Hebrew. “Whoever Touches or Damages This Fence Endangers His Life.”
“Look, I didn’t touch the fence. I am sitting on a rock in a Palestinian village, minding my own business. Which you should learn to do.”
She turned away from them and sat facing the village. She made herself read. Robert Langdon was finding out that Sophie was the long-lost descendant of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. About time, Chloe said to herself. Why were people in novels always so dense? Dense! The word roused her from her self-imposed stupor, just as the jeep’s engine fired to life.
“Ron!” she yelled, racing back to the gate. For a second, she thought they were going to drive off. Instead, they drove straight toward the gate, stopping only inches from the steel bars. She pressed up against her side of the Fence, lacing her fingers through the wire mesh. The two soldiers jumped out, their fingers caressing the triggers of their guns.
“Who are you?” the short soldier squawked.
“A friend of Daoud’s.”
“No, you’re not,” the taller one said.
“Who is Daoud?” asked Rat Face.
The kids had said he was the one who was shooting, and Daoud had called him “Ron.” But the tall one had recognized the name Daoud.
“You are Ron, right?” she asked the taller guy.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“Well, I know you. Daoud talked about you.”
“I don’t know anyone named Daoud.”
“Then why did you say I was not his friend?”
“What’s going on?” asked the short soldier.
“Nothing. She’s just making trouble. Maybe we should arrest her.”
“Do you have your passport?” asked Rat Face.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” She doubted they would come over to this side and arrest her. They probably didn’t even have the key. But she had gotten herself in trouble before by thinking she could bluff an Israeli military man. She had almost died because of it. She walked quickly down the road that led into the village. She didn’t hear the jeep leave before she was out of earshot.
When she got back to Rania’s compound, Bassam was sitting on the porch with two men who looked just like him. They were laughing and smoking cigars.
“Thank you for letting me use the car,” she said, handing him the keys. “Is Rania in the house?”
Bassam nodded. Chloe wished he would get up to tell Rania she was here, but he didn’t, so she gathered she was invited to enter the house. Khaled was in the living room, riding his bike through a maze composed of books and toys. He was as adorable as she remembered him.
“Marhaba, Khaled. Ana Chloe,” she said. Hello, I’m Chloe.
“Ahleen,” hello, he said, not looking up from the course he was navigating.
“Weyn imik?” she asked him.
“Fi matbach.” His mother was in the kitchen. Chloe had never been past the living room, but she clearly was not going to get any help finding her way. She wandered through the only doorway and found herself in a hall where the bathroom occupied the central spot. Two closed doors flanked it to the left, but she glimpsed a pantry-laundry room to the right. She correctly surmised that the kitchen must be past that, with a door to the back yard. She found Rania cutting cucumbers and tomatoes into tiny cubes for salad.
“How was the wedding?” Chloe asked.
Rania spun around, startled. She quickly composed her face into a welcoming smile. “It was lovely,” she said, after they kissed. “How is Um Saad?”
“She’s okay,” Chloe said. “Can I talk to you while you cook? I have a couple things to tell you.”
“T’faddali.” Rania gestured to a plastic armchair next to the small, round table where she was working. Chloe settled into it.
“Can I help?” she asked belatedly. Then, she blushed. Would Rania think she was angling for an invitation to dinner?
“No, thank you. I like to chop things. It helps me think.”
“You did seem deep in thought. I’m sorry I interrupted you. What were you thinking about?”
“I met a young man at the wedding, and he asked me to speak to his class at the university about the role of police in our society. I was thinking about what I will tell them.”
“How interesting. What will you say?”
“Police in our society are different than in independent societies. In America, for instance, the police protect ordinary citizens from the people who violate your society’s laws.”
“That’s the theory,” Chloe said. “But, in reality, the police maintain the social order. So, they enforce the laws against people the government wants to keep at the bottom and protect the people at the top.”
“I had not thought of that. What I know about your police comes mostly from television shows.”
Chloe recalled that when she had first told Rania she came from San Francisco, Rania had asked if she knew Michael Douglas from The Streets of San Francisco.
“Even some of the TV shows depict that reality,” Chloe said. “Did you ever see Hill Street Blues or Cagney & Lacey?” Chloe had no idea what American television was available in Palestine.
“I loved Cagney & Lacey,” Rania said. “That’s why I wanted to be a policewoman!”
“It’s not exactly like real life…but some of the episodes were really good. Showed the complexity of race and gender and class.”
Rania tilted the cutting board onto a green glass bowl and pushed in the tomatoes and cucumbers. She took an immense bulb of white garlic and broke off three cloves. While she chopped the first one, Chloe peeled the other two.
“Sorry,” Chloe said, “you were talking about how it’s different in Palestine.”
“No need to be sorry. I like talking to you about these things. Understanding your society helps me to better understand my own. But, what I was saying is, in our society, enforcing our laws is secondary to protecting the people against the occupier. Since we do not have an army, the police substitute for that role in many ways. We look for people who may be working on behalf of the Israelis, we make sure that demonstrations in the cities
are not attacked by the army, and we help people make peace with their neighbors so that they cannot be so easily turned against one another.”
“But don’t the police also prevent demonstrations sometimes? I read recently that the PA outlawed Hamas demonstrations just after the elections.”
“Yes, because they were an effort to further destabilize the country. We need to show the Americans and Europeans that we are in control, that the situation is calm, so that they will restore the funding they have blocked.”
“But then aren’t you doing. . . No offense, I’m not trying to tell you how to run your country, but isn’t that the same as what American police do? Keeping the people in power at the top?”
Rania scraped the chopped garlic from the cutting board into the salad bowl. “I don’t think it is the same. I don’t know enough about your country to say, but I believe that the PA has the best interests of my people at heart.”
“Even though they won’t let you go back to your job?”
“Yes. Although it is hard for me, I understand that decision. They cannot allow someone to work in the police until they are sure that person is not an informer.”
“But they asked you to train the women’s force, so they must trust you.”
“The women’s force is not real police. It is a way of enforcing social norms that I’m not even sure should be enforced. It is more like what you are saying your police do.” Rania was done with the salad, having squirted a lemon over the vegetables and added salt and pepper. She measured a cup of rice into a saucepan and covered it with water. She set the pot on the stove and lit the flame.
“Do you think if you find out who killed this boy, Daoud, you will get your old job back?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t know. I suppose it depends on what I find out. If he was killed because of something related to his being…gay…or being friendly with Israeli soldiers, people would probably rather I left it alone.”
“Then, if you don’t mind my asking, why don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I have been asking myself that. I guess because if our society cannot accept the truth, even in a case like this, then we cannot hope to achieve true justice.”
“True justice,” Chloe mused. “Do you think there is such a thing?”
“There has to be,” Rania said. “As a Palestinian, the only thing you can hope for is that there is true justice in the world, which will someday come even to us.”
“I find that kind of ideal hard to believe in.” Chloe berated herself. If Rania could still believe such a pure form of justice was possible after a month in Israeli prison, who was she to dismiss it?
“Daoud might have been killed by the army after all,” Chloe said. That’s what I came to tell you. Avi and I went to Kufr Yunus yesterday.”
Rania was visibly not pleased.
“I called to tell you,” Chloe said. “But you didn’t answer your phone.”
“I was in Aida, visiting an old friend,” Rania said. “There’s terrible reception in the camp.”
“I wanted Avi to make a picture of the place Daoud’s body was found and the soldiers who the kids saw him arguing with. Here they are.” She pulled the two drawings from her backpack.
“Your friend draws well,” Rania observed, studying the pictures.
“Yes. I saw these soldiers today, just here outside the gate. One of them is named Ron.”
“Which one?”
“I am pretty sure it’s this one, but the kids told us the other one was shooting at them, and they said Daoud called him Ron when he yelled at him to stop.”
“I could show it to Benny,” Rania said thoughtfully. “Though who knows what he would do with it. Even if he knew who they were, I doubt he would tell me. But I don’t know how else to find out.”
“Um Mahmoud gave us some bullets,” Chloe said. “She picked them up the night Daoud was killed, but who knows how long they had been there. I’m going to take them to the Red Cross to have them analyzed. There were some blood stains on the rocks where he fell. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I figured you’d want to look at them.”
“You are right. But I need to see the police report before I go. Otherwise, I won’t know what to look for. Give me the drawings. I will make copies and take them to Benny and make him show me his report.” Chloe wondered how Rania was going to make Benny do anything, but that wasn’t her problem.
Rania took the two drawings out of Chloe’s hand. Chloe hated to let them go, but it was Rania’s case—insofar as it was a case at all. She had done her duty. She got up to go.
“Won’t you eat with us?” Rania asked. Even though the invitation was belated, Chloe didn’t think it was pro forma. Too bad she had to refuse. The kitchen was starting to fill up with the pungent smell of chicken. But Chloe didn’t eat chicken, and she wasn’t hungry, having just eaten.
“Not today, thanks. I need to get to Azzawiya.”
“I wanted to ask you about something first.” Chloe sat back down.
“The friend I visited in Aida,” Rania began. She fidgeted with her sleeves, unrolling the cuffs and rolling them up again. “She is gay.” She pronounced the word carefully. Chloe raised her eyebrows. She had been sure that Rania didn’t know any gay people. The other day, she had not even seemed to know they existed.
“She just told me yesterday,” Rania said, reading her confusion. “Or, in fact, I guessed.”
“Once you know about it, it’s everywhere,” Chloe said with a smile.
Rania did not smile back. Her expression was serious. “She is very sad,” Rania said. “I do not know whether that has anything to do with this.”
Chloe knew what “this” meant, but it made her smile involuntarily.
“But I would like to know if there is something I can do to help her. I suggested we go to Adloyada together, but she said she did not want to.”
“A bar might not be the right thing,” Chloe said. “But there is a group for Palestinian lesbians.” She saw that Rania did not understand the English word. “Gay women,” she amended. “Their group is called SAWA. It’s like a support group for gay women. Tina is a member.”
“I would really like my friend to know about them,” Rania said. She contemplated her sleeve for a long moment. “Perhaps I could call Tina and find out about it?”
“Of course,” Chloe said. Maybe she should have asked Tina before telling Rania about the group. But Tina would certainly want to help a Palestinian lesbian. She wrote down the number on the pad Rania produced and stood up once more.
“You are staying at Abu Fareed’s house?” Rania asked. Chloe nodded. Rania knew Ahlam and Jaber from Fatah circles.
“We will drive you,” Rania said. She stood and untied her apron. “Bassam,” she called out. Chloe put out a hand to stop her.
“No, please,” she said. “The walk will do me good, really.” She kissed her friend’s cheeks three times rapidly and left quickly, to let her know she meant it.
“Why did your friend leave?” Bassam asked when Rania called him for dinner.
“Chloe, you mean?” For some reason, his use of the word sahibtik irritated Rania, seeming to imply she had only one friend.
“Chloe, yes. I thought she would stay for dinner.”
“She was going to Abu Fareed’s.”
“Ah.” He took three rounds of bread from the plate by the stove and placed one on the open gas flame, turning it over rapidly so it did not burn. “What did you discuss?”
“She and her friend Abe went to Kufr Yunus. They spoke with some of the children who saw Daoud fight with the soldiers and received some bullets from the area where he was killed.”
“Not only are you investigating his death without official permission, but you are getting foreigners and Israelis involved?”
He placed the warm bread on the counter and put the next one on the low flame.
“I didn’t ask Chloe to go. It was her own idea. She needs something to do with herself also.”
&n
bsp; “What is she doing here, anyway?”
“How can you ask that? She came to get me out of prison, and she succeeded.”
“I thought you did not know why they released you.”
She stared at him, hands on hips.
“What are you suggesting?”
“I was not suggesting anything. Just asking a question.”
“You told me you liked Chloe.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like her. I just asked what she is doing here. I never understood why she came to Palestine in the first place.”
“You have a tongue. Why don’t you ask her?”
“Forget it.” He put the plate of warm bread on the table. “Khaled,” he called. “Ta’al, n’okel” come, let’s eat.
Khaled appeared at once, pulling out his chair with a clatter. Rania suspected if she had called, it would have taken at least three invitations and a trip to the living room. He tore off half a round of bread and started to dip into the hummus with it.
“Khaled,” she said. “Use a smaller piece.” He looked like he would argue, but then he tore the piece of bread in half again and let half drop onto the table in front of him. She supposed it was a good sign that he did what she asked.
“Chloe told me once that her parents raise money for Israel,” she said as her husband and son dug into the salads. She picked up an olive and chewed it thoughtfully. “I think she is trying to make up for what they do.”
“Hmm,” her husband said. He scooped a handful of mujaddara, mixed rice and lentils, into his mouth. “Do you think she is a spy?”
“Bassam! How can you say that?”
“I am just asking. You cannot be too careful.”
Rania looked down at the rice and lentils on her plate. She separated the rice so it looked like a face, with two lentil eyes.
“Khaled, what did you think of the wedding?” she asked. “It was boring,” he said, his mouth full of lentils. “I don’t like weddings.”
“You didn’t like the dancing?”
Murder Under the Fig Tree Page 22
