Murder Under the Fig Tree

by Kate Jessica Raphael

  “I don’t like to dance. And there was nothing else to do. I only liked it at the end when they set off explosions.” A burst of firecrackers always announced the arrival of the bridal party at the groom’s home. Rania sighed.

  “Perhaps when you are a little older, you will enjoy dancing,” she said. “Your father was a very good dabka dancer once.”

  “Really, Baba?”

  “No, not really. Your mother is just being nice.” Bassam smiled at her. They had first met at a high school dabka competition where the boys and girls competed separately. When they had met again, two years later at Bethlehem University, she had not remembered him, but he had reminded her. Her team had won that competition. His had not even made the finals.

  “You were better than you thought,” she said. She got up to clear the dishes.

  “Are you tired?” Bassam asked his son.

  “No.”

  “You should get ready for bed anyway. Tomorrow is a school day.”

  She had just finished putting the dishes away when her husband reappeared in the kitchen. The quiet in the house told her that her son had yielded to exhaustion.

  “I wasn’t trying to come between you and your friend,” he said. She filled the coffee pot with water and put it on to boil.

  “In Bethlehem, I had a whole circle of friends,” she said. “You remember. Maysoon, Samia, Abeer, Aya, and I, we were in and out of each other’s houses all the time. Then I came here, and nothing was the same. No one understands me.”

  “You get along well with my sisters,” he objected.

  “Dunya and Jaleela, yes. They are political, like us. Though their politics—” she laughed. One of his sisters was a Communist, and the other had voted for Hamas in the legislative elections. “But Chloe is an outsider, so we can talk about things that would be hard to discuss with others.”

  “Such as?” His brow furrowed a little.

  “Things like…why she is not married. She says that in America, a lot of women do not get married. I never thought about it, but she seems happy.”

  “How can someone be happy being alone all the time?”

  “She’s not alone. She has friends…she lives with another woman, who is single also. They share everything.” She had to change the subject, quick. She spooned the coffee into the pot and let it bubble up to the top, stirred it, and set it back over the heat. “Look at your mother. She lives alone, and she is happy enough.”

  “It’s not the same. She has us. She has Khaled here and her other sons and grandchildren right here in the compound.”

  “Yes, and she has our lives to try to run. But if she didn’t, doubtless she would find something else to occupy herself with. She’s not going to sit and sulk just because your father died.”

  “True.”

  She poured the coffee and they sipped it quietly. She hoped she had not said too much.

  Chapter 29

  Light streamed in through the big picture windows in Chloe’s old flat above Ahlam and Jaber’s home. She squirmed on the futon, gauging the sun coming through the branches of the plum tree. She missed this peaceful place. She had no clock or watch, no idea what time it was. She hoped Ahlam had not already left for work. It would be incredibly rude to sleep until mid-morning and slip off without saying goodbye, but Ahlam would never have woken her. She bathed quickly, ran her fingers through her hair, and ran downstairs.

  Ahlam was in the living room, dressed for work and pouring tea for Fareed, who flopped in an armchair looking like he had fallen out of bed. He rubbed his eyes and jumped up to greet Chloe.

  “Welcome, my sister,” he said pumping her hand. His eyes glowed. He owed her his freedom—her and Rania and Avi, and he was a kid who took his debts seriously.

  “Fareed. Nice to see you. How is school?” He was studying politics at Al Quds Open University in Salfit.

  “Good. There is a new teacher there, Ustaz Yusuf Horani. He is very good, and he is helping me apply for scholarships to American universities.”

  “You want to go to the States?”

  “Only for a while. Many important leaders in our country studied there, like Hanan Ashrawi.”

  Chloe was impressed that he had chosen a woman as his role model. She should not be surprised; he was Ahlam’s son, after all. “Let me know if I can do anything to help.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ahlam returned with a breakfast tray—fries, labneh, and manaqish, little rounds of bread baked with oil and zataar. She poured more tea for Chloe.

  “Eat, Chloe,” she said.

  “Bless your hands,” Chloe said. She broke off a piece of manaqish and dipped it into the creamy, white labneh. Ahlam made a small plate for herself and joined Chloe on the couch.

  “How is Um Khaled?” she asked, using Rania’s honorific nickname.

  “She’s fine. It’s hard for her because they won’t let her go back to work yet. But she might be starting a women’s police force.” Why had she said that? Rania didn’t even want to do the women’s force.

  “A women’s police force for what?” Ahlam asked.

  “She isn’t sure. Some people want it to be kind of a morals police. You know, prostitution, girls having sex before they’re married. She doesn’t want to do that.”

  “I would think not,” Ahlam said. She was active in women’s affairs, running a network of women’s development clubs throughout the region.

  “Rania, Um Khaled, is trying to find out what happened to the young man who was killed in Kufr Yunus a couple weeks ago,” Chloe said, not wanting to dwell on the women’s police force. “You must have heard about that. Daoud al-Khader, I think was his name.”

  “I knew him,” Fareed said. “Some actors from a theater in Jerusalem came to put on a play in Salfit, when we were in high school. Daoud was in it. I was too.”

  “I didn’t know you liked acting.”

  “As it turns out, I don’t.” They all laughed. “But Daoud loved it. He was a lot of fun.”

  “So I hear.”

  Ahlam stood up and took the breakfast tray toward the kitchen. Chloe got up too and gathered up the tea glasses.

  “Will you stay again tonight?” Ahlam asked on her way out of the house.

  “No,” Chloe said. “I should go back to Ramallah. But I will come again soon.”

  “You are always welcome,” Ahlam said. She kissed Chloe and headed out.

  “Fareed, wait,” Chloe said to stop the young man from vanishing into his bedroom after his mother was gone.

  “Did you need something?”

  “I wondered…since you knew Daoud. Did you know anything about who his friends were?”

  “Are you asking if I knew he was homosexual?” Fareed used the derogatory Arabic word, luuti.

  “I was, yes. I’m sorry if it seems like I’m prying. But someone told us that he had a boyfriend in these villages, and Rania really needs to talk to him. She would be very discreet.” She in fact had no idea how discreet Rania planned to be, but she trusted her friend.

  “I don’t know for sure,” he said. “But there was another kid in the play. They seemed very close. I think he came from Jamai’in.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  Fareed wrinkled his face, as if trying to squeeze the memory to the surface. “I think it was Elias,” he said. “He played the piano well.”

  “Marhaba, Tina,” Rania said, when Tina answered the phone. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Taba’an,” of course, Tina replied. “What’s going on?”

  “Chloe told me you are in a group for Palestinian gay women,” Rania said. Pregnant silence met her from the other end. She hoped she had not said something wrong. “I believe it could be very helpful to a friend of mine,” she continued.

  “I see,” Tina said. There was another long pause. “I need to check with the others,” Tina said at last. “But it might be possible for your friend to come.”

  “Oh, no, that is not what I had in mind.”

/>   “What, then?” Tina’s voice betrayed relief, as well as a bit of impatience.

  “I was hoping I could come myself.”

  “Not to a meeting,” Tina said. “We do not allow outsiders at our meetings.”

  Outsiders, Rania thought, bristling. Tina might have been born here, but she still carried a foreign passport. Who exactly was the outsider here?

  “I might be able to get a few of the women to meet with you separately,” Tina was saying.

  “That would be fine.” Better, in fact. She didn’t know what they did at their meetings, but she didn’t necessarily want to sit through it. She wanted someone to tell her what she could do for Samia.

  Tina called back an hour later. “We can meet you on Monday if that is convenient,” she said.

  “What time?” Rania asked.

  “It must be after five, because we all have to work. Is that too late for you?”

  “Where are we meeting?”

  “It will be easiest to meet in Tel Aviv, at my friend Yasmina’s house. I can see if someone could pick you up on the road with a yellow-plated car.”

  Rania thought about that. It would indeed be easier to get through the checkpoint that way, and she was very jumpy about checkpoints these days. But, if someone saw her on the road, they would wonder where she was going, and she did not want Bassam or anyone else to ask about that.

  “Could you pick me up at the bus station in Petah Tikva?” she suggested.

  “Fine, see you then.”

  Chloe dropped the bullets off at the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Salfit before going back to Ramallah. When she opened the apartment door, the smells of cardamom, cinnamon, and frying olive oil floated out to greet her. She went into the kitchen. Tina had her back to the door as she fished bits of cauliflower out of the hot oil.

  “Mmmm,” Chloe said. “Makluube?”

  “What else do I make?” Tina turned around, smiling. She looked fetching in a sleeveless, black, girl tee emblazoned with Aussie Chick in white cursive.

  “How was your meeting, Aussie chick?” Chloe asked. She told herself sternly to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Tina had a right to have other friends. She had had a life here for a whole year now, during most of which Chloe had been in San Francisco.

  “It was good. How is Reem?”

  “Fine, as far as I know. The appointment went well. She taught me to write Arabic.”

  “Oh yeah? Let’s see.” Chloe fished out the notepad with her carefully copied letters. Tina frowned at them.

  “Your handwriting is awful.”

  “It’s awful in English too. I brought some wine.” She had stopped for a bottle of merlot in the Christian part of the city. She took it out of her pack. “Want some now?”

  “Not yet. But it will be lovely with dinner.”

  “Shall I make salad?”

  “No. I’ve got it covered. Go take a bath.”

  “I don’t need a bath.” Chloe bristled. “I took one at Ahlam’s.”

  “Well, take another one.”

  Chloe grunted. She didn’t want to fight with Tina, but she wasn’t going to take a bath just to please her either. She tossed her pack in the living room and lay down on the couch.

  “Would you at least go turn the water off, then?” She had not noticed that the bath water was running. Had Tina turned it on for her when she came in? That was sweet, even if she didn’t want a bath. She went into the little bathroom. The water was trickling, which was why she hadn’t heard it, but the tub was almost full. She dipped a finger in. It was pleasantly warm, for a warm day. Bubbles floated on the surface, and the room was suffused with a smell of eucalyptus. Tina must have brought the bubble bath from Australia. Little tea lights burned at the four corners of the tub and along the edge of the sink.

  Chloe stripped her clothes off and wrapped a towel around herself for modesty before venturing into the kitchen. You never knew who might be watching. She didn’t see anyone out the window, so she planted a quick kiss on Tina’s shoulder before returning to the bathroom to strip off her towel.

  “Can we go to Adloyada after dinner?” she said over heavenly makluube. She felt refreshed from the tub and from Tina’s warmth. Everything seemed right between them. Maybe the time away had done her good after all. “If that guy Lior is there, maybe he knows something about Ron.”

  “Who is Ron?”

  “Oh, I have so much to tell you,” Chloe said.

  They finished their meal and piled the dishes in the sink to worry about later. They made it to Adloyada before the Saturday night rush began and picked a table near the door. If Lior or any of Daoud’s Ramallah friends showed up, Chloe wanted to be able to corner them before they bolted.

  By the time they were on their second beer, the place was so full Chloe didn’t think a fly would be able to pass through. There was no show, but the DJ spun old English rock and roll mixed with loud, thunking Israeli pop, and the crowd, young and middle-aged, Jewish and Arab, male, female, and everything in-between, danced energetically and drank heartily. The decibel level rose to barely tolerable. There was no sign of Lior or the guys Rania had talked to.

  Chloe was about to say “Let’s go,” when the door opened and a group of soldiers walked in. Chloe looked at their faces closely. She thought she would recognize Lior, but she had been tense, and it had been dark the other night. Soldiers tended to look alike to her, however much she told herself that they were people too. There was something about the green clothing that camouflaged them not only among scrub and olive trees but even among normally dressed civilians.

  She studied the soldiers as they filed into the club. Lior was definitely not among them. But Ron was.

  He started when he saw her. He moved quickly toward the door, barely saying anything to his friends. Chloe made it to the exit before him.

  “Over here,” she said. She caught his arm. She didn’t know if it was illegal to grab a soldier when he was off-duty, but she was not afraid of this scrawny guy. Even though he had his gun with him, he seemed more or less afraid of his shadow. She led the way around the corner, into the tiny alley called Koresh. She kept hold of Ron’s arm, though of course, he could flee at any time. Still, it was an odd role reversal, to be detaining an Israeli soldier. She sat him down on the concrete, second-floor steps of a motel-like office building, and took the step below him so she could trip him if he tried to leave.

  “My name is Chloe,” she began, hoping she might put him at ease. “I’m an American. I’m trying to help Daoud al-Khader’s family find out what happened to him. I know you argued with him in the village that day. I know he called your name and said to stop shooting. But I also know that you were not the one shooting.”

  “He did not say, ‘Stop shooting,’” Ron said.

  She looked at him, surprised. She had not expected him to answer. She had just been rambling until she figured out some question to ask.

  “He just said, ‘Stop.’” Chloe thought back to her conversation with the kids. The boy, Mohammed, had reported that Daoud yelled, “Ron, stop.” They had all assumed he meant “stop shooting,” but now she realized he could have meant “Stop, I want to talk to you.” Which would give his chasing the boys into the school a different meaning as well. He may have meant to protect them, but he also might have wanted them inside so that they would not see him conversing with Israeli soldiers.

  “What did he want to talk to you about?”

  “What makes you think he wanted to talk to me?”

  “Why else did he stop you? You knew him from the club, right? I mean, he performed there regularly, so that makes sense. Were you lovers?”

  “No! An Arab guy? Come on. I barely knew him.”

  “But he knew your name.”

  Ron picked up a cigarette butt from the stairs. It was a significant bit of a cigarette, obviously discarded by a chain smoker who didn’t smoke a cigarette down before lighting the next one. Ron found the seam in the pape
r and began unrolling the cigarette, laying it out on the step. “My friend Lior was a friend of his. I just knew Daoud to say hi to. That day was the first day I ever talked to him.”

  “And what did he want?”

  He had dismantled the entire cigarette now. He dumped the filter and began rerolling the tobacco into a little roll that resembled a joint. Must be a pot smoker, Chloe thought. “He wanted me to help him get asylum in Israel. He said his brother had threatened to kill him.”

  “Why would he tell you that, if you didn’t even know him?”

  “I don’t know. Probably because I happened to be there. He seemed scared.”

  “Did he say why his brother threatened him?”

  “He said Issa found out that he was performing at Adloyada.” He rolled the little cigarette between the fingers of his left hand. His right rested casually on the butt of his rifle. The only time Chloe had been so close to a lethal weapon was last year, when one had been pointed at her heart.

  “So, he asked you to help him get asylum. What did you say?”

  “I said I couldn’t help him. I don’t know anything about getting asylum. I didn’t want to talk to him. The guy I was with, Yonatan? He doesn’t like gay people.”

  “Yonatan doesn’t know you’re gay?”

  “No.”

  “So, you hit Daoud to keep him from outing you to Yonatan?”

  “I didn’t hit him. He hit me. All I did was push him away, and that’s the truth.” Ron got up abruptly. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. If you bother me again, I will arrest you and take you to jail.” He got up and stepped over her legs, moving quickly up the street. She caught up with him as he was turning the corner onto Shushan.

  “I’ve been in jail, so you don’t scare me. What did Yonatan say after Daoud talked to you?”

  “He asked how I knew him. I said he was a friend of Lior’s.”

  They were nearly back at the bar. “Did he believe you?”

  “None of your business,” he said. He showed his gun to the bouncer and entered the bar with a smile. Chloe had to turn all her pockets inside out to get back in.