She was about to conclude that she really had wasted her time when the door opened a crack. Elias stood there, rubbing his eyes.
“Eh? What time is it?” was his not-very-welcoming greeting.
“Close to eight thirty.” She tried to make it sound like that was very late. “May I have some coffee?”
“I guess.” He opened the door for her. She saw no sign of Ahmed. The living room was not too much of a disaster, barring the heaping ashtrays. There were some dirty dishes on the table, but they were neatly stacked and not crusted with food scraps. She picked them up and headed for the kitchen, which was really part of the living room, separated only by a half wall with windows cut out.
“I can make the coffee, while you dress,” she suggested. Being fifteen years his senior, she could act like his mother. He wore a baggy, green T-shirt and sweatpants that looked suspiciously like he had nothing underneath.
“Fine,” he mumbled. She put the dishes in the sink and ran a little water to soak them. She easily located the coffee pot next to the sink, but finding the coffee took some effort, as it was hiding behind several days’ worth of moldy leftovers in the refrigerator. She set the sugary water on the flame and hunted down the proper glasses.
“Do you want coffee?” she called. Perhaps Ahmed was sleeping in the other bedroom, but she did not care. It was time he was getting up. Elias did not respond. Was he taking a shower? She listened for water, but heard nothing.
She put the long-handled coffee pot on a tray with three glasses. If Ahmed woke up, he could join them. She took the tray into the living room and sat down on the couch. After ten minutes, she decided he had graduated from fastidious to rude. She peeked into the hallway and saw no one. She walked down the hall, past the open bathroom to the bedroom opposite the one Daoud had shared with Ahmed. She knocked on the closed door. No answer. She opened the door a crack, praying Elias wasn’t masturbating or something. He was not. In fact, he was not in the room at all. She knocked on the door across the hall. A faint “Naam?” invited her to open the door. Ahmed was in bed, only his eyes visible above the light blanket. Those eyes reflected confusion that turned to alarm when he realized who she was.
“What are you doing here?” he croaked. She forgave him his bad manners, as he had clearly just awakened.
“I am looking for Elias,” she responded, trying to act as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be talking to a young man while he lay in bed.
“He is not in here.”
“I can see that,” she said. She started to back out of the door. She could not figure out where Elias had gone or how he had escaped, but she didn’t need to talk to him badly enough to chase him around the streets of Ramallah. Ahmed might not know it yet, but he was today’s egg in place of tomorrow’s chicken.
“I would like to talk to you,” she said.
This young man, unlike his roommate, was too polite to tell her she had no business coming into his home, waking him up, and demanding he talk to her. He said he would be right out, and she withdrew, thoughtfully closing the door behind her. Then, on second thought, she cracked it open. If he was going to abscond out of a second-story window, she wanted at least a possibility of hearing him.
She poured the coffee when he appeared, dressed in jeans and a Kansas City Chiefs T-shirt. The kids all wore strange American T-shirts these days. Either some enterprising Palestinian American had started a company to export leftover American shirts to Palestine or they were being sent over as part of the US economic aid package. The Israelis got F-16 aircraft, the Palestinians got shirts with irrelevant slogans on them.
She poured him a coffee. He sipped it, but without the relish he had shown for the cappuccino.
“Ahmed,” she said, “Hanan told me that she was at Adloyada with you and Elias the night she interrupted Daoud with an Israeli soldier.”
He sighed and downed his coffee in one gulp. It burned his tongue, she gathered from the quick breaths he sucked in.
“If I had told you, you would have asked who I went there with.”
She sipped her coffee, being careful not to make the same mistake he had. It was still very hot.
“So, you lied to protect Elias?”
He nodded. “Elias’s father is an imam. His brother, Yusuf, is active in Hamas. It could be dangerous if anyone knew he was gay.” He used the same word Hanan had used, mithli, meaning “same.”
“Were Elias and Daoud…together?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. That did not seem likely. They shared an apartment, after all. And it was not her impression that discretion was one of Daoud’s virtues. But she left it alone.
“Do you mind my asking…?” It was unlike her not to be able to finish sentences. But he was good at filling in the blanks.
“I am not gay.” She tended to believe him. He sounded sincere and didn’t look away.
“It did not shock you?” she asked.
“It did at first. But these guys—they’re like my brothers.”
His friends were lucky that he was so open-minded, she thought. Though just how lucky had Daoud been, after all?
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” she said. “Please tell Elias it is safe to talk to me.”
“Is it?” he asked, as she exited.
She thought about that as she walked out to the street. If Elias had killed Daoud, or even if Ahmed had, what would she do? She had begun this investigation, she realized, assuming that she would prove the army had killed Daoud and then everyone would love her again. Now, she was stirring up a volcano, and she couldn’t stop, even though she probably should.
At three thirty, Rania set dinner on the table. She had made all Khaled’s favorite foods: fried potatoes and cauliflower, salad with tahini dressing, and stuffed zucchini. She left a note on the table for Bassam and went upstairs to tell her mother-in-law she was going out. The old woman didn’t bat an eyelid.
At the edge of the fields, she stripped off her hijab and jilbab, revealing her idea of hip Tel Aviv clothing—jeans and a peach-colored T-shirt two sizes too large so that the short sleeves hung down to her elbows. She chose a particularly luscious olive tree bursting with blossoms. She buried her normal clothes at the base of the tree and covered it with loose branches. Then she made her way carefully to the Wall, which, in this place, was a double fence surrounded on either side by trenches and roads.
She walked parallel to the Wall, staying among the trees but always keeping the giant fence in her sight lest she veer off course. At the very last possible minute, she emerged. She looked around once, twice, three times for border police on the military road across the Wall. She saw no dust and heard no engine noises. Here was the place she was looking for. Everyone knew about it, but she had never actually seen it before and it took her several passes to see the small tear in the fence. Whoever had cut it from its posts had carefully bent it back into position so that the soldiers would not notice, and each person who took this perilous route made sure to put it back exactly as they found it. It had been like this for months, and, as far as she knew, the soldiers had never been tipped off. She had better not be the one to mess it up and leave the gap showing, so that they would notice it on patrol.
She slipped through the space, then crouched down and painstakingly reconnected the wires to keep the piece of fence from flapping open in a strong wind. She didn’t know if crouching down did anything to hide her, since there was absolutely nothing on either side but wide open space, but it made her feel less vulnerable. She squeezed the wires together as hard as she could and pulled on it to make sure that it was holding, even though she knew that every time you touched the Wall, you increased the likelihood of triggering the sensors. She scampered down into the red dirt ditch and took a minute to breathe, knowing she was momentarily out of sight. Better not to wait until she lost her nerve. This, after all, was the very worst place to be, caught in-between the fences.
She identified the place where the fence wa
s open on the other side before darting across the wide asphalt road. She did not linger in the ditch on the other side. She easily pulled back the bottom of the fence and slid through on her belly. She looked around twice more before she bounded up the embankment, and now she was on the main road, with the bus stop that said Civil Park directly in front of her.
She sank onto the bus stop bench, her heart a bass drum. She felt light-headed from holding her breath. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the air that tasted like freedom to her, even though it would taste like industrial waste to anyone else. Civil Park was home to a massive collection of factories.
The bus came quickly, and she paid her fare without saying a word to the driver. If he spoke to her, she would answer in English, and he would—she fervently hoped—think she was an international. But he did not speak. She took a seat two thirds of the way to the back, next to an old woman with a paisley scarf covering her head. It was not a hijab, she knew, but what the Russians called a babushka, but, still, it felt comforting to sit next to a woman wearing a scarf on her head. Rania took out an English newspaper she had brought for this purpose and pretended to read. She was much too keyed up to take in the words.
In a few minutes, the bus reached the Petah Tikva bus station. She climbed off through the back door and looked around, wondering where she should wait for Tina and her friends. She was a little early; they had said five thirty, and it was about ten past. She settled herself on a bench facing the street, so they would see her, since she had no idea what kind of car they would be driving. She took out her newspaper and really did try to read it. But now her mind kept wandering to the interrogation center only a few kilometers away, where she had spent several days dreading questions that never came.
As if thinking of them had conjured them, soldiers were coming toward her. She folded up her paper and jumped up, looking quickly for a place to hide. But they were not coming to get her. They were just going into the bus station. Probably, they were getting off work from the base where she had been held and going home for the evening. She looked back at her paper. Fighting was worse in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority had had to lay off more workers because the Americans still had not released the funds they had promised. The call for a boycott of Israel had been taken up by a major church in America, called the Presbyterians. She wondered if it would do any good.
“Where are you from?”
She had not seen the soldiers approaching. There were three of them, hands loosely resting on their guns. They were like sleeping scorpions, seemingly harmless but ready to bite in an instant. She considered her options. Running was not one. One soldier stood on either side of her and the third directly in front. The wooden bench was at her back. She discarded the possibility of telling them she was from Mas’ha, because that would bring questions about permits, which of course she did not have. There were only two choices. She was a Palestinian from Jerusalem, or she was a foreigner.
“I am from America,” she said. Her English was good, and she knew a few cities in America. Plus, Americans had the most power in the world.
“Can I see your passport?” The blond soldier asked pleasantly enough, but she did not think it was a simple request.
“I don’t have to show you,” she said. She did not think that was true. Even Chloe usually produced her passport, or something resembling it, when soldiers asked. But she thought maybe inside Israel, the army could not arrest an international. They would need to get police to come and, by that time, Tina and her friends might have shown up.
“Yes, you do.” The blond guy was not taking no for an answer.
She didn’t think she would be able to convince him to leave her alone. The only thing to do was get up and walk away, the way she had seen Chloe do, and maybe they would be impressed with her self-confidence and decide she really was American. She stood up.
“Where are you going?” the soldier demanded. He didn’t sound quite so casual now.
“My friends are here.” Rania started toward the curb, where there was not a car in sight. She had no watch, but she thought it was about time for Tina to arrive. She couldn’t count on split-second arrival. She saw a city bus coming up the street. Maybe she should go to the bus stop and get on it and then call Tina and arrange another place to meet. The soldiers were dogging her steps. The blond guy was reaching for her arm. And directly in her path, virtually blocking it, was a uniformed policewoman. Had they called her? Was she going to grab Rania and put handcuffs on her and take her back to prison? Rania took in the woman’s face.
Tali Ta’ali.
Their eyes met. Tali’s face relaxed in something almost like friendship, that gave way to uncertainty when she noticed the soldiers.
“Ma koreh?” she asked them. What’s going on?
“She says she is American,” the blond soldier said. Tali’s mouth made that little twitching motion. For some reason, Tali had always been amused by her boldness.
“Do you know her?” the soldier was asking now.
“Yes,” Tali answered smoothly.
“Is she from America?”
“Yes. I think she is from New York.”
“Humph,” said the soldier. He turned around and walked next to Tali to the bus station. Rania thought he was hoping for a date. She wished she could thank Tali, but it would have to wait for a better occasion. She stepped to the curb just as Tina and her friend pulled up next to her. She climbed in, thanking Allah that a month ago she had decided to start a conversation with Tali Ta’ali.
Chapter 35
Chloe woke to bright lights and shouting. She leapt to her feet, shaking her limbs to rouse herself quickly. She couldn’t work out where she was until she saw Amalia jumping up and down.
“What is it? Jesh?” she said. She always assumed it was the army if she was woken in the middle of the night.
“No. Mama.”
“Reem? What is it?” She heard the retching before she saw Reem stagger out of the bathroom, holding her stomach.
“Oh, oh,” Reem moaned. She made it a few steps before racing back into the bathroom.
“She is very sick,” Jawad said, his face almost as ashen as his wife’s. Chloe went to the bathroom door. Reem was shivering as she bent over the toilet.
“Bring some blankets,” Chloe said to Jawad. He came carrying a jilbab and hijab instead.
“You must take her to the hospital.”
“In Petah Tikva? Now?” Chloe was doubtful. Even with the permit, would they be able to get through the checkpoint at night?
“No, you must go to Nablus.”
“I’ve never driven there. I wouldn’t know how to go. Can you come with us?”
“It’s better that Amalia goes. If I am with you, they will not let you through the checkpoint.” He had a point. But a seven-year-old, even a very put-together one like Amalia, didn’t seem like the most reliable guide.
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?” she asked Jawad.
“No. They will be busy.” She knew there was a Red Crescent office nearby, with ambulances sitting at the ready for emergencies like this one. She had sat with them a few nights when Nablus was under curfew, in case they needed to get through the checkpoint. She thought about Reem saying earlier that it was too expensive. That was more likely the reason Jawad was saying no, but she didn’t think Reem was about to die so she didn’t argue.
“Hurry and get dressed,” she told Amalia. The little girl put on her school dress over her pajamas and was ready in five minutes. Chloe put the little stuffed horse in the girl’s hands. Jawad thrust a glass of tea at Chloe, and she drank a few sips. Jawad helped Reem into the front seat and Amalia climbed into the back, protesting when Chloe insisted she buckle the seat belt. It might not do much against shooting soldiers, but Chloe knew the risks of her own driving.
Amalia was an able navigator. There was no checkpoint at Zatara, and, in fifteen minutes, they were racing along the road to Huwara. Chloe’s stomach clutched as they neared the
checkpoint.
She understood that yellow-plated cars did not have to stop. She had seen settlers driving around time and again. This was a yellow-plated car, and they were two women and a child. She didn’t see any reason why they needed to stop. She pointed the car to the lane she had seen the settlers use and drove slowly toward the green sign that said, in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, Itamar. Itamar was a settlement, just up this road, famous for its violence. A few weeks ago, a settler from Itamar shot and killed a Palestinian taxi driver who stopped to offer him help with a flat tire.
The checkpoint appeared to be deserted. The fenced-in holding pens, which during the day were crammed with bodies, now looked pacific in emptiness. No light shone from the sandbag-lined guard booths. Only the barely visible coils of razor wire attested to the daily humiliation that dominated this place. They were almost through when Chloe saw shapes racing toward her. They materialized in front of the car, green-clad forms waving frantically. Only when they banged their guns on the windshield did she fully make them out.
She put the car in park and rolled down the window.
“Me atem?” Who are you? demanded the soldier on the left, closest to the driver’s side.
“My friend is sick. We’re going to the hospital.”
“Meayfo?” From where?
“Salfit. Look, I really need to get her to a doctor. I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t think anyone was here.”
“We’re always here.” It was the soldier on the right now, speaking English. “She looks okay to me.”
“Well, she isn’t.”
“Who is that?” He gestured with his gun at Amalia, who cowered in the back seat.
Murder Under the Fig Tree Page 27
