The Shahid's Widow

by Danny Bar

  Ten minutes had passed since the scheduled time of the meeting and Adnan still remained seated. He ordered another glass of sweet tea and stirred it with a spoon. Many were doing the same in the tables next to him, some conducted loud arguments about the political situation. Their attire was simple, and in the cacophony of voices surrounding him, he recognized the dialects of Bedouins and ignorant farmers. Adnan was suddenly startled to discover he had become a passive spectator in a life he had no part in. These are your people, he reminded himself and could not understand why he found it so difficult to feel a sense of belongingness. Perhaps the years he had spent so far from his home country now separated him from all those now surrounding him.

  Everything was clearer before I came here, he thought, but something had gone wrong. Perhaps rubbing shoulders with the Jews in the hotel had hindered my devilish mental image of them I had labored so hard to preserve? After answering in the affirmative to himself, he felt that he must preserve and rekindle that baggage of hatred he had brought with him from Venezuela and began to mourn the death of his brother and his lost roots all over again. Time is my biggest enemy, he thought. Then he decided to go to the American Colony hotel. People told him the cream of the crop of the eastern part of the city regularly frequented the place. Perhaps there, I will be able to find something that would pique my interest or an interlocutor to ease my loneliness.

  He paid the check and even left a generous tip. Then he reconsidered, this isn’t customary here, he thought. He went back to the table, took the money and left the café. He was swallowed into the commotion of the street and made his way among the tamarind vendors, recalling how much he had loved to drink the juice during his childhood. Porters tried to make their way among the crowd as well, shouting and ringing bells. He made room for some women wearing black embroidered dresses, carrying their newly bought wares on their heads. He turned into Nablus Road, went inside the hotel and sat by the bar.

  “Beer, please?” Adnan asked and examined the others sitting there.

  Foreigners, he thought, while his eyes wandered to the corner table. A handsome woman in her thirties was sitting there, sipping a glass of red wine. She wore a light-green pantsuit; a cellphone and a pager rested on her table. She vigorously wrote in a small notebook, occasionally pausing to arrange her thoughts. She roughly erased words or sentences, removed her elegant reading glasses, then returned to write with renewed vigor. Adnan looked at her for a long moment and hurried to lower his head embarrassedly each time she raised her head. When she had noticed him, she smiled, joined the concealed “game” and continued writing. She knew that he was looking at her, occasionally stealing a glance of her own. Adnan interpreted her behavior as an affirmation and rose to go and introduce himself. The ringing of her cellphone made him retreat and sit back, while she burst into laughter. She spoke with someone in English. It was a brief conversation, after which she sipped the remaining wine in her glass, collected her things into her bag and rose. When she passed him by, she smiled and placed a calling card on his table.

  Adnan waited until she had gone, took the card and looked at it.

  Ellen Cross

  Correspondent

  PRN Network

  He ordered another glass of beer, scrutinized the card and an idea came to his mind.

  Far from there, in the Hebron area, the surveillance team continued with the task of following Jamil, who did not stay in the same place for a single moment and roamed about the city like a man possessed. One moment he was walking down the quiet, narrow alleyways of Hebron and the next he was in the bustling and clamorous market.

  There he met with an anonymous man, sat in a café and kept scrutinizing his surroundings suspiciously, setting his eyes on each passerby that chanced to walk by him.

  His behavior posed a difficult challenge for the surveillance team and forced those following him to constantly take turns and switch places. They followed him a short distance, returned to the vehicle, changed their clothes and returned to the surveillance.

  “The taxi is stopping,” the team reported on the outskirts of the Al Arroub refugee camp.

  “I’m boarding it,” reported Rami and hurried into the taxi.

  “Hebron,” he said to the driver and took the backseat, his knee almost touching Jamil’s.

  “By Allah, where is Abu Afif’s children’s clothes store?” the woman who shared a seat with him asked as the taxi arrived at the outskirts of Hebron.

  “By Allah, I do not know,” Rami apologized and smiled at her, “I don’t have any children, yet.”

  “You will, insha’allah, she mumbled.

  Jamil was now on the alert, looked at Rami from the corner of his eye and did not cease until Rami’s stomach knotted itself into coils of pain that did not let go until the taxi drove into the outskirts of the city.

  The taxi waded its way through the swarm of honking vehicles attempting to reach the central area of the market to offload their cargo. Bicycle riders slalomed their way among the cars, holding the handlebars with one hand and a large copper tray laden with sweets in the other.

  “Where are you from?” asked Jamil suspiciously

  “Al Quds,” answered Rami and stared into Jamil’s eyes.

  Jamil looked right back at him. For a moment, they looked like two reindeer preparing to lock horns.

  The taxi driver looked at the rear mirror. He smelled trouble, “Al Halil hospital!” he quickly declared in an attempt to lower the tension. A pregnant woman sitting in front disembarked next to the hospital situated in the city’s main street. Rami assisted an elderly woman off the taxi and it continued with the three remaining passengers to its final stop in the market square, next to the bus station near the Hebron Kasbah.

  “And to what family do you belong?” asked Jamil again.

  “Shuf, shurlak!” Rami muttered, “Not that it’s any of your business!”

  Jamil was surprised by the answer.

  “Stop!” he instructed the driver suddenly and quickly disembarked from the taxi before it could actually come to a halt.

  “He’s off,” mumbled Rami and covered his mouth with his hand.

  “I got him,” reported Saul and began to followed him, “He’s acting like a trapped animal,” he added.

  “Don’t follow him too closely,” instructed him the team leader.

  “OK. Now he’s turned into Al Muhajiroun street and went inside a store,” continued Saul, and blended into the crowd of loud students emerging from a nearby school. Five minutes later, Jamil came out of the store holding an attache case. David joined Saul while pushing a peddler’s cart. He did not have a chance to go far when a Palestinian police with two officers stopped beside him.

  “Stop,” the officers instructed him while slowly driving after his cart, but he continued to walk, ignoring their commands.

  The vehicle sped a little until it finally stopped next to the cart.

  “Are you deaf?” the police officer shouted at him and pulled his ear.

  Jamil tensed up and looked at the unfolding events with great interest.

  David poked out his tongue, began to salivate and twisted his face.

  “He’s not deaf, he’s just crazy,” said the policeman, the older of the two, kicked David and knocked him to the floor. Then he tossed the cart aside, went back into the vehicle and drove off.

  David decided to stay down until Jamil would lose interest and go away.

  “Jamil has walked into a cobbler’s shop.”

  “It’s very important to see what he’s doing there,” the team leader told him on the radio.

  “All right. I’m getting closer.”

  “He handed the briefcase to the cobbler.”

  “Don’t take your eyes off him.”

  “The cobbler is opening the briefcase’s inner lining.”

  “Can you continu
e the surveillance or should we replace you?” asked the team leader.

  “It’s better if someone joins me, it’s a very difficult environment.”

  “I’m coming,” said Saul.

  “The cobbler is sewing the briefcase now, must have made him a hidden compartment.

  “Jamil is paying. It looks like he’s about to leave.”

  “Got it, be ready to move out,” the team leader alerted the crew.

  33

  Jamil’s nocturnal visits in Yasmina’s house had diminished over the course of the past few days.

  “Even when he shows up, he seems lost in thought, can hardly sleep at night. Sometimes he’s also muttering in his sleep and wakes up in a panic,” Yasmina told Amos. She also pointed out that he, Jamil, had bought himself a new and elegant set of clothes, which he had left in her house. Yasmina’s report matched the surveillance team’s findings and completed the missing pieces of the intelligence puzzle.

  “I don’t think he will wear the sneakers with the fancy clothes he bought himself for the operation.”

  “You are probably right, Yasmina, what are you suggesting?”

  “His birthday is three days from now,” she hesitantly said.

  “And why should we care about his birthday?” Amos wondered aloud.

  “I’ll buy him a new pair of shoes. What do you think?”

  “Isn’t it strange that you remember his birthday?”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “Well then…what if he asks you about that?” Amos wondered.

  “Don’t worry, I already have a ready made answer,” she looked at Amos as if hiding a secret.

  “No doubt,” Amos laughed out loud, “I know you already!”

  “Good!” Yasmina smiled shyly. “So?”

  “That’s what we’ll do then,” Amos determined.

  “Any news from Khalil?”

  “Yes, he will be coming back from Jordan tomorrow.”

  “I can’t wait to see him, I have some news to tell him.”

  “Good news, I hope,” said Amos and gave her a quick look.

  “The very best,” she said embarrassedly and slid a hand over her belly.

  Their meeting was held at the Tel Aviv Sheraton Hotel. Since the staged accident, Abu Ghazall was careful not to show his face in the field and held all his appointments with agents in Tel Aviv hotels. He was careful even while commuting, and cautiously wore sunglasses and a baseball cap so as not to be recognized. After all, he was supposed to be hospitalized and in critical condition.

  He had asked the security team to drop Yasmina off as far as possible from her home, “We never know who might be watching us,” he explained to her.

  She disembarked from the vehicle on the outskirts of the village and made her way home through the dark and empty streets. It was already late when she had finally arrived and found Jamil sitting and smoking on her doorstep.

  “Where are you going about at such a late hour?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I told you a thousand times: the only one I answer to is Allah himself.”

  “Curse your mother!”

  Yasmina didn’t say a word. She recalled the plan she had devised with Abu Ghazall and decided to try and be nicer to Jamil. There’s not much time left, she comforted herself.

  “They say that you have someone.”

  “There’s no tax for empty words,” she gave him an evasive reply.

  “You are a woman,” he reminded her.

  “I am as free as a bird, and I will fly wherever my heart beckons me to.”

  “And don’t you care what people will say?”

  “What people? You? No!”

  “I love you, Yasmina. You know that.”

  “I am almost tempted to believe you.”

  “Come to me,” he extended his hand to her.

  “If you patiently wait for the sour grapes to ripen, you will end up eating them,” she laughed and slipped inside to the kitchen.

  “And will the sour grapes of your love ripen before my coming death?”

  Yasmina did not reply, but a mysterious smile rose to her face.

  “May Allah keep me safe from you, who knows what you’re scheming,” he grunted and went out into the yard. He lingered there and only the smoke of his cigarette seeped into the house.

  Yasmina knew that he was looking at her through the half-open shutters and instinctively straightened her dress to cover her body.

  It was a late evening hour when Jamil had finally come back inside and turned to the kitchen. Only then did Yasmina go out to the yard herself to wash her body, then went back inside. Jamil stepped into the room and sat beside her. She moved to the other end of the mattress and Jamil interpreted her motion as an invitation. Yasmina had not known a man since denying herself to me, he thought, now she is overcome by her desires. He decided to try his luck and sent a hand to stroke her hair.

  Yasmina remained indifferent, but did not remove his hand.

  “I’ve missed you, Yasmina.”

  “Go and unburden your longings on the Bethlehem whores.”

  Jamil looked at her suspiciously, then menacingly drew closer, “On whom?”

  The look in his eyes frightened her.

  “My girlfriends at work told me that their husbands go to them each time they are with child,” she said, hoping this would lead her out of the trap she had dug herself with her words.

  Jamil hissed a curse and went out to the yard. He lingered there for a long while, his breath shortening. Only the barking of the dog accompanied him like the howls of a jackal on a full moon night.

  34

  Something deep inside had caused Adnan to defy the instructions of his superiors in the organization.

  I can’t possibly go to my death so alone, he told himself and tears threatened to wash his eyes. I want to leave some traces of my body behind me before it scatters. Perhaps I could bring a new life into this world, to replace my own.

  He called Ellen.

  “Hello?” a feminine voice answered.

  “Good evening,” he hesitated a moment, “this is Ortado speaking, from the hotel.”

  “Yes… you sure took your time,” she joked.

  “I thought… perhaps we could meet?”

  “Great idea. I need to send an article to the network at ten tonight. How about meeting me at eleven at the King David Hotel lobby?” she asked.

  “I’ll be there,” said Adnan, hung up and began to get ready. At the appointed time, he waited in the hotel lobby, wearing a gray suit and a red tie. A few short moments later, Ellen entered the hotel dressed in cream-colored trousers and a fitted t-shirt. She quickly combed the lobby with her eyes and walked to him with her hand extended.

  “Hi,” she said kindly.

  Adnan rose to greet her and shook her hand.

  “Let’s find ourselves a quiet corner,” Ellen suggested and pointed at the nearby café.

  “How was your day?” he took an interest.

  “Every day is interesting in the Middle East, there’s never a dull moment,” she smiled.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Two years, and you?”

  “I’ve only been here for a week. I have a tourism business.”

  “Hmm… interesting,” she hummed, “it must be challenging to be doing business right now, with all the travel warnings and everything.”

  “Yes, it’s true, but my business focuses on pilgrim tours, you know, ‘following in the footsteps of Jesus,’ as we call it.”

  “I’m familiar with it. The three monotheistic religions have turned this city into a powder keg.”

  “And you, do you have your own conclusions about the situation here?” he asked her.

  “When I first came here, I knew exactly who the bad
guys and the good guys were,” she said with a smile, “now all I know is that I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “How can you keep your viewers glued to the screen with such an attitude?”

  “You’re right, it’s not easy. In the two years I’ve been here, the situation has been relatively calm and nothing special has happened. This frustrates me because I’m still looking for that major story, the scoop my predecessors and colleagues could never lay their hands on, this is my dream.”

  “Maybe you’ll get such a scoop yet. Who knows?”

  Ellen laughed. I don’t have much time left. I’m finishing my tenure here and going back to the States in two months. Where are you from, by the way?”

  “Spain.”

  “And what are your thoughts about this area?”

  “I think the Palestinians are a suffering people,” he said cautiously, “and someone needs to ease their suffering.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m in contact with Palestinian businessmen. I see the humiliation that Israelis regularly cause them, but I take no sides in the conflict,” he concluded evasively.

  “I understand. I, on the other hand, have had enough time to learn that reality is much more complicated than it first seems to us, foreigners: you, me, all the reporters here who claim to be experts and understand it all. One day I sit with a Palestinian and say to myself just how right he is and how much injustice and suffering the Palestinians have had to go through, and then, the very next day, I find myself sitting with an Israeli and everything turns upside down. So I’ve decided to no longer try and understand anything, I let the cameras speak instead.” She leaned her body toward him and lowered her voice. A picture is worth a thousand words. Let my viewers decide for themselves.”

  “You’re being too modest. You know how much influence you media people have over the public opinion.”

  “I’ve sobered up. I gave up on the idea of shaping public opinion.”

  “What if you’ll have an exclusive story showcasing the Palestinian problem, would you use it?” he cautiously tested her.

  “Of course. My loyalty lies only with those who pay my salary. Understand, my enemy is neither the frigging Israelis or the miserable Palestinians,” she made finger quote marks, “my enemy is the competing network. Bring me a good story to cover, that’s all I’m looking for.”