A rumble of engines outside sent her scurrying to the window. Two Hummers and four jeeps were tearing up the Palestinian American’s carefully manicured lawn. Soldiers poured out, dozens of them, and, in an instant, she could tell that the house was surrounded. What were they doing here? Had they come to search for something, and, if so, was it the same thing she was looking for? And why?
Perhaps they just wanted to use the house as a staging ground or to look off the roof. The army often chose the highest house in the village to try to find someone or something hiding among the trees. Or they might be planning to use it for an exercise, a mock search, knowing that it was huge and empty.
Whatever they were doing here, she did not want them to find her. She did not think she was wanted. After all, she had been released from prison; she had not escaped, so the men who had had her arrested must have agreed that she could be freed. Benny knew what she had on them, and they knew he knew, so he would only have needed veiled threats to get their approval. But she could never be sure that they would not put her name right back on the wanted list.
There would not be a way to get out without the soldiers seeing her. Besides, they were already running up the stairs, their boots like a stampede of angry mules. Still holding the bloody cloth, she thought about hiding in one of the kids’ empty closets and decided against it. If the soldiers found her hiding in a closet, she was dead or at least in jail. The only hope at this point was to pretend she had every right to be here. She turned the little towel inside out so that the blood stain was not so visible. If they did not look closely, it would look like a dust cloth and that’s what she would insist it was.
She stepped out into the hall and walked down the stairs to meet them on their way up. The soldier in front stopped short when he saw her. He lifted his gun, finger on the trigger.
“Who are you?” At least he spoke English.
“I am the housekeeper,” she said. “I come once a month when the family is not here. What are you doing here?” she asked. She shouldn’t have asked that. A maid would not.
“That is not your business,” he said. “Let me see your hawiyya.”
She did not recognize his face, but she recognized the blond hair and imperious voice. He was the one who had asked for her ID at the Petah Tikva bus station. She could see him searching his memory for where he knew her from.
“I’m sorry; I did not bring my ID,” she said. “I just live down the road.” The closest house was half a mile away, so she hoped hoped hoped that he would not send someone with her to get it.
“That’s not good,” he said. “You’re supposed to have it with you all the time.”
“Not in my own village,” she said. “This is Area B; you are not supposed to be inside.” Another mistake. The average Palestinian did not know or care about the intricacies of the Oslo accords. He knew it too.
“Who are you?” he hissed.
“I told you,” she said.
“You are lying.”
She stood stock still. She did not want to lie about whether she was lying. It would become a contest she would not win.
“Maybe I am, and maybe I am not,” she said. “But I will tell you this— whoever or whatever you are looking for here, it is not me.”
She made herself very small and squeezed past him, gun and all. She walked down the stairs slowly and deliberately. She half-expected someone to grab her, but it didn’t happen.
She made her way out of the house, through the line of smoking, gossiping soldiers, and down the path that led into the village. But she did not follow it. Instead, she circled around and came back up to the olive groves on the left-hand side of the house. She went to the tallest tree in the grove. In her youth, she had been good at climbing trees, but, recently, when they picked the olives, she always used a ladder, so she had not had practice. She remembered when she was in prison and had tried to climb up to the window and couldn’t. But, there, she had been unable to find a handhold, and this tree had a knobby trunk. She put her right foot on the lowest knob and hoisted herself up. She grabbed the nearest branch and clung on, even when she heard it start to crack. She caught a higher branch with her fingertips, just as the first one gave way. She thought for a terrifying instant that she was going to topple to the ground, where she was almost sure to break her collarbone because of the angle at which she was dangling. But she righted herself and climbed up, choosing her branches more carefully this time. At last, she sat lodged in the top branches of the tree, the heavy foliage providing nice camouflage from which she had a perfect view of the house. Now, she just had to make herself marginally comfortable, so she could wait for the soldiers to come out.
She peered down at the road and saw two men coming from the direction of the house. She wondered how they could have gotten past the soldiers, but, obviously, they had done so. She recognized Abdelhakim’s skipping walk and Yusuf’s bushy head above his turned-up collar. They crossed the road and found a good place to wait for a servees.
Whatever the soldiers were doing, it took them a long time. She got very stiff sitting in the tree. She would have liked to shift position, but she was afraid she would fall, so she just made herself count, using the days of Khaled’s life as she had done in prison. Finally, she saw them trooping out. The guy leading the pack presented a rifle to the blond commander like an offering. When he climbed into the Hummer, Rania could clearly see that he wore a gun slung over his shoulder, just like all the others. The soldiers piled into the Hummers and jeeps and, before long, they were all gone. To her relief, she soon saw the caravan speeding down the highway. They had not gone into the village to look for her.
She scrambled down the tree and headed back to Mas’ha. She wondered if they had found what they were looking for. She didn’t see how the gun they came out with could have been in that house.
Chapter 43
As soon as the dinner things were cleared, Rania packed Bassam and Khaled off to Marwan’s so she could have the house to herself for the training session. She set out tea and little wafer cookies with chocolate cream in-between. She wanted everything to be nice for the girls, and she realized that she was excited about the meeting.
The college girls, Kawkab, Abeer, Ayat, Noura, and Suheir, came in a bunch, at six on the dot. Hanan showed up a few minutes later.
“Before we begin, I would like you to tell me why you want to be in the police,” she said. “Kawkab, why don’t you begin?”
“To help our people,” Kawkab said.
“Abeer?”
“I need the money,” the girl said, “so I do not have to get married right away. The Americans give us money for police. So, it is the only job that we can count on.” Rania saw heads bob up and down.
“Ayat, is that why you want to be in the police?”
“It is part of it,” Ayat answered in a voice that could barely be heard. “But also, my father used to beat my mother very badly. She had nowhere to go except her family, and they would send her back to him. The police did not help her.”
“What do you think the police should do in such a situation?”
“Explain to the woman that she must not anger her husband,” said Noura.
“Tell her to kick her husband out!” said Hanan.
Rania smiled at her. “What do you think would happen then?” she asked.
Hanan shrugged. “He probably would not go. But why should she be the one who has to leave, if he is the one who is breaking the law?”
“It’s not against the law,” said Noura. “Islamic law gives a husband the right to discipline his wife.”
“Discipline?” Abeer broke in. “Is she a school child? The Qur’an says husband and wife are equals.”
“Each in their own sphere,” said Suheir.
“And the house is the wife’s sphere,” said Hanan. “So, it is she who should set the rules there.”
“Enough,” Rania says. “It is not Islamic law we are enforcing but the civil law of our country. Who knows
what the Palestinian National Assembly has said about domestic violence?”
None of the girls knew.
“That’s because there is no law,” Rania said. “It is not a crime for a man to beat his wife, unless her injuries are so severe that we can call it attempted murder. But that does not mean that we cannot help her. There are shelters in Bethlehem and Jericho if she is willing to leave, or she might go to her family for a while if they are supportive. And there are counseling centers for battered women and their children in both Nablus and Ramallah.
“Now let us consider another scenario. Imagine that a woman becomes romantically involved with another woman. What do you think the police should do about that?” Part of her listened to her own voice and wondered what the hell she was doing. She was playing with fire, but she could not stop.
“Arrest them,” said Noura.
“Why?” Rania asked.
“Because it against our law.”
“No, it isn’t,” Hanan said.
“Who believes Palestinian law forbids homosexuality?” Rania asked. She cringed at the old, unpleasant word, but, if she used one of the new ones she had learned recently, probably no one but Hanan would understand her. The girls looked at one another for guidance before four of the six raised their hands.
“It does not,” Hanan said.
“Well, it should,” said Noura.
“Love cannot be a crime,” Abeer said.
“Our law does not forbid homosexuality. But let’s suppose,” Rania said, “that the woman’s brother finds out about her relationship and kills her. What do you think should happen to him?”
“He should go to jail,” said Abeer.
“Why? He was defending his sister’s honor,” said Noura.
“Hanan, what do you think?” Rania asked. She hadn’t known she was going to do it, but she looked steadily at the young woman. Hanan’s dropped her lively eyes to the ground.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Hanan said. “It is stupid. Something like that would never happen.” She gathered up the tea glasses with so much clanking, Rania was afraid she would not have a single glass left.
“Can you help me carry them into the kitchen?” she asked. She heard the others chattering in their wake.
“Hanan,” she said when they were out of earshot, “why are you upset?”
“I’m not.”
“You are. I would rather you tell me than break my glasses.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, her chin nearly on her chest. Rania put a finger under her chin and looked into her watery eyes.
“You are not the one who should apologize,” she said. “I obviously have been thinking about this issue, and I thought it would make a good topic for our discussion. I did not think about how you might feel.”
“Tomorrow night, I am getting engaged,” Hanan said. “I want you to come to my party.”
Rania tried to keep the shock out of both face and voice. “So soon? Who is it?”
“Elias,” Hanan says.
“When did this happen?”
“Two days ago. He and his father came to my parents’ house, and my father agreed.”
“Is this what you want?”
She nodded.
“But you know that Elias is…like Daoud.”
Another nod.
“Why, Hanan? Don’t you want a husband who loves you?”
“Elias is nice. Gentle.”
“I suppose so.” Sulky and self-absorbed would have been Rania’s assessment. “But there is more to marriage than that.”
“It’s okay. He will come to love me.”
“I don’t know, Hanan. I am just learning about these things, but it seems to me that a man like Elias or Daoud cannot change the way that he is.”
She had just seen the girls into a taxi when Bassam and Khaled burst into the flat. They must have been upstairs at her mother-in-law’s, waiting to hear the front door close.
“Baba got me ice cream!” Khaled crowed.
“You didn’t bring me any?”
“It would have melted by now. You were busy such a long time.”
“Well, that’s true, yaa shater,” clever boy. “Why don’t you go get ready for bed, and then I’ll come read you a story.”
“I don’t want to go to bed yet. I’m a big boy now.”
“Yes, but big boys need to get lots of rest so they can do well in school.”
He wandered away, and she thought she had won her point, but, a few seconds later, she heard the computer whirring to life in the little office. She sighed and turned from the sink, drying her hands on her skirt.
“He’s impossible,” she said to Bassam, who was standing at the dining room table looking at a newspaper.
“He wants to spend time with you,” Bassam said. “He hasn’t gotten over your being gone.”
“How is playing on the computer spending time with me?”
“It’s getting your attention.”
Point to him. From the piles of children’s books strewn around the living room, she picked two at random and went into the office. Khaled was playing Minesweeper, expertly clicking around the bomblets. How had he learned so much suddenly? She could feel him growing away from her. She stood behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Come keep me company for a little while,” she said. “I want to see how well you can read.”
“All right,” he said, not looking away from his game. She tickled the side of his tummy where his shirt was riding up. He squealed with delight. Straining, but trying not to grunt, she lifted him out of the chair and tucked him under her arm, settling into the massive rocking chair which her grandfather had made for a wedding present. He squirmed briefly and then snuggled into her.
“Which book do you want to read?”
He looked at the two on offer, A Land Called Palestine and A Boy’s Life.
“I don’t like either of those,” he pouted. “They’re for little kids.” She started to tell him to go get one he liked, but she couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving her right now, even for a minute.
“Tell me a story, then,” she said, tossing the books to the ground.
He thought, looking quite like his father as he furrowed his small brow. “Once upon a time,” he started slowly, “there was a boy named Khaled. He had a mama and a baba and two brothers.”
“What were his brothers’ names?”
“Mohammed…and Radwan.” Radwan was his best friend at school.
“Were they older or younger than Khaled?”
“Younger. Khaled was very big when his brothers were born, and he took care of them when his mother was busy being a policeman.”
“Policewoman,” she corrected automatically.
“Baba said I might have a little brother soon,” the storyteller said.
“Would you like that?”
“Oh yes. All the kids at school have brothers and sisters to play with.”
“You have lots of cousins.”
“I know, but it’s not the same.”
She was rocking furiously, she realized. Why did Bassam have to enlist even her son to pressure her? She rose, pulling Khaled up with her.
“Okay, yaa walad, enough stories. Time for bed now.” He started to object, but a yawn betrayed him. He was asleep by the time she had finished tucking him into bed. Bassam was waiting for her when she emerged from Khaled’s room. He pulled her to him, stroking her hair. She leaned into his kiss, but, when he urged her toward the bedroom, she stood still, lacing her fingers into his.
“You shouldn’t get his hopes up about having a brother,” she said.
“If it’s a sister, he’ll be just as happy.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know. But I don’t understand what you’re waiting for. I want to have more kids.”
“So do I, but I just got out of prison. I can’t think about this yet. I’m starting the women’s police force, and I need to focus on that for a
while.”
“You didn’t even want to do it.”
“Well, maybe I was wrong. The girls who came tonight… They were very strong, very excited. They want to make a difference. I can help them.”
“Nine months is plenty of time to get them trained.” He silenced her with a kiss.
Chapter 44
“Ron is in jail,” Avi said as soon as Chloe picked up the phone. It was Friday morning, and she was playing Snakes and Ladders with Amalia. She made a “sorry” gesture to the little girl and walked outside where the signal was better.
“What for?” she asked.
“Killing that kid in Kufr Yunus.”
“Daoud? Why do they think he killed him?” And why do they care? she asked silently. When was the last time a soldier was actually arrested for killing a Palestinian?
“Who knows? Who cares?”
“He can’t have done it.”
“How do you know? You met the guy once.”
“Three times, actually. And I think he was really in love.” She caught herself. People killed people they claimed to love all the time. Ron had struck her as weak and impressionable, a little power-mad like all soldiers, but not capable of the kind of anger that drove someone to kill. But Avi was right, what did she really know about him?
“How did they catch him?” she asked.
“They found the gun in a house in Kufr Yunus. It matched the bullets you got from Um Mahmoud.”
“But he told me he lost his gun,” she said.
“I guess they don’t believe him. He wants you to visit him,” he said.
“He does? Why?”
“How would I know? I’m just the messenger.”
The last time Chloe had seen Ron, he had walked away cursing her. The two times before that, he had threatened to take her to jail. If he wanted to talk to her, he must have a good reason.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Atlit, south of Haifa.”
“I can’t go today. I’m in Salfit, and Reem has scheduled a bunch of interviews for me with women on the local council this afternoon. Can you take me tomorrow?”
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