by Batya Gur
“It has to do with your associations, about faithfulness and all that,” explained Tzilla.
“No, no,” Michael hastened to say. “I’m quite interested in that. Do you really have no idea what gave that impression, that she was being faithful to someone?”
Orly Shushan shook her head. “Maybe it’ll come to me later on.”
“I’ll tell you why I’m asking,” he said as if he were stating a well-known fact. “Because of the pregnancy.”
There was no doubt about the shock and the astonishment in Orly Shushan’s face.
“Pregnancy? What do you mean, pregnancy? What pregnancy? Zahara’s pregnancy?!”
“Twelve weeks, the beginning of the fourth month,” Michael specified, and he did not take his eyes off her face.
The reporter’s thin lips trembled, and from the depths of her throat burst a sound like the beginning of a sob, raw weeping, suppressed. But it had no continuation.
“Zahara? Zahara was pregnant?!” She definitely looked insulted.
“We saw it in the pathological examination.”
“Could I have some water?” she asked in a broken voice, and pointed to the bottle of mineral water. Tzilla put the yellow pad in her lap and poured water into the foam cup she pulled from the carton at her feet.
“Didn’t you know?” asked Michael, leaning forward as she was gulping the water. Her hand shook and she steadied it with her other hand and shook her head.
“Is it certain?” she whispered.
“Twelve weeks.”
Anger joined insult in her eyes as she said: “I can’t understand how she didn’t tell me. We were so close. I thought we were . . . And it turns out that . . . In other things, I was the only one she trusted.”
“Other things?” Michael tensed. “What other things?”
“She’d come to me with the whole family story, and I really helped her . . .”
“What family story?”
“You see,” said Orly Shushan, and a trace of satisfaction crept into her tone of voice. “You don’t know everything.”
“There’s no doubt that we don’t know everything. Very little, in fact. And really, you, and maybe only you, can help us, especially with your skills,” Michael said, and avoided looking at Tzilla, so as not to see the disgust that was probably crossing her face upon hearing this gross flattery. But Orly Shushan swallowed the bait. (“It’s because of his eyes,” Tzilla said later at the special investigation team staff meeting over the tape recorder that was playing the reporter’s voice. “Before that, he looked at her with that look of his, you know what I mean, and then he was silent and struck,” and Balilty laughed aloud and said: “Do we know? For years I’ve been trying to learn that look, but he won’t teach it to me. How does he get them to believe even that kind of bullshit?”)
“Zahara told me that there was a secret in her family, that something happened and they don’t talk about it. I wouldn’t have told you without her permission,” she said, and lowered her head, “but because of the murder, because Zahara was murdered, and because of this story about the pregnancy . . . I can’t keep it all to myself anymore. And anyway, in the end I would have written an article about it, and I’m still going to do that. With a full profile of Zahara. I’m telling you now, so you won’t say I didn’t tell you.”
“But not until we solve this case,” warned Tzilla, and Michael gave her a scathing look (and at the staff meeting afterward he commented that she was liable to have cut off the reporter’s monologue) and he was relieved when Orly Shushan ignored the warning and went on to say: “A whole series of articles, not just one or two. But that’s later. Zahara, because of my profession, which she thought I was very good at, wanted me to help her find out, because all the talk with her mother hadn’t got her anyplace. Zahara told me that every week or two her mother would simply disappear. Without saying anything, she’d just make extra food and leave it in the pots on the stove and disappear for a whole day. Several years ago, Zahara asked her where she went, but didn’t get an answer. Not only that, but every time she asked, her mother would get angry, so annoyed that Zahara couldn’t ask her anymore.
“A few months ago Zahara told me about those disappearances and asked me to help her find out what was going on. I told her that there was nothing simpler, there wasn’t even any need for a private detective or anything. Her mother doesn’t know me all that well, because I’d only been to their house maybe two or three times, and even if she did recognize me, it wouldn’t be a problem to say that I was there in connection with my work. So one day Zahara called me and said, this is it, she’s getting ready. I hopped into a cab and waited by their house, and followed her to the central bus station, and saw her get on a bus to Rosh Ha’ayin.” Orly Shushan paused for a moment. “I said to myself that this has something to do with Yemenites, because Rosh Ha’ayin—how should I put it?—Rosh Ha’ayin is associated with Yemenites.”
Michael nodded affirmatively, and because she did not continue, he went on to say: “Definitely.”
She followed Zahara’s mother to Rosh Ha’ayin and saw her go into Rabbi Kappah’s house. There was no way she could go into the house, and to stand outside the windows was also impossible, but from the cab at the street corner she could follow quite well the other people who went into the house, and afterward (“It wasn’t as hard as people think”) she found out through the grocery store and the neighbors about a weekly meeting of a group of men and women who had immigrated to Israel in 1949 from Yemen through the transit camp in Aden to the immigrant camp at Ein Shemer. “At the time I did not know what they did or what they spoke about. One might have thought it was a kind of regular reunion, but I continued to investigate until I came up with what was happening there.”
Michael waited in silence. A minute went by, and then another.
“I’m thinking about whether to say any more,” Orly Shushan said suddenly, and leaned back. “This is first-rate journalistic material and I wouldn’t want it to get out without . . . I think that perhaps I need permission from my editor, unless . . . unless . . .”
Michael, who knew that she was waiting for him to urge her on, waited in silence.
“Can we sign an exclusivity agreement now?”
“Meaning?” Michael inquired, and laid his hand near the edge of the table, close to Tzilla, whose body was already tense. “Exclusivity regarding what, exactly?”
Then the journalist gestured toward the tape recorder and Michael, after deliberating a moment, pushed the button and the tape stopped. In a very low voice Orly Shushan explained that she was asking for exclusive rights to publish the story if she gave it to them, and she stipulated another condition: Michael’s commitment to be interviewed by her. “An exclusive interview,” she clarified, and her eyes again took on that sealed look they contained when they’d met in the Basharis’ yard.
Tzilla gaped, but one look from Michael silenced her (“I’ve never heard such nerve,” she grumbled afterward at the staff meeting. “They think they’re the kings of the world, those journalists”).
“I fear that there’s a misunderstanding here,” Michael said, and enlisted for this statement and his ensuing statements the courtesy and caution he kept for situations in which evident anger is not efficacious. “We’re in a police investigation now, not volunteer work.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the journalist in a tone similar to his, so that it was possible to think that she was mocking him again, but her eyes revealed neither mockery nor irony. “You didn’t summon me here with an official order and I am not being questioned officially or under caution. You told me to come and I did.”
“That’s not exactly so,” elucidated Michael. “Everyone who is connected to the case is called in for questioning, and in your case we dispensed with the formal processes, because we formed the impression that you were a good friend who was interested in helping with the investigation, but . . .”
“But what?” demanded Orly Shushan, and as he
remained silent she asked: “Do you mean to say that I’m here as a murder suspect?”” and this time in her question there was a tone not only of mockery, but of anger.
“You might say,” said Michael with forced indifference. “You might very well say.”
“Pardon me?” she said in astonishment. “Me?! How could you . . . On what basis? I hadn’t seen Zahara for more than a week.”
“That’s what you say,” Michael said, and lit a cigarette.
“Well, do you want me to bring proofs? How can a person prove that . . . I can only tell you what I did during the hours when Zahara . . . This is totally impossible!”
And at that moment Michael tossed the burning cigarette into the paper cup, and after listening for a moment to the sizzling in the residue of the coffee, he leaned across the desk and said that the time had come for her to talk, and talk to the point, and especially in light of the phone conversation she had with Zahara on the day of her death and in light of the fact of the bad quarrel she had with Zahara the last time they met.
At once the face opposite him went pale, and now fear was evident in the prominent brown eyes. “How do you know about that? Did Zahara tell her brother or Linda?”
Michael did not reply. He had already turned the tape recorder back on, and with his head he signaled her to keep talking. (“Of course he didn’t answer her,” explained Tzilla to the assembled staff, who listened to the silence that had been recorded on the tape. “What would he tell her? He couldn’t tell her that he was playing poker, or that he had deduced one thing from another, so he left her hanging, and from that moment she was completely in his hands.”)
Orly Shushan insisted on calling the quarrel a “disagreement.” She repeated the word “disagreement” two or three times, and once she used “differences of opinion” and spoke about Zahara’s fiery temperament (“When she was really angry, nothing stopped her”), and also about Zahara’s refusal not to let the story out “at this stage.” In the end, Zahara would have given in, and it was only natural that she, Orly, as a journalist, would see the social potential of the private family story, as it was kind of a metaphor for the terrible injustice that had been done in this country to the immigrants from the Arab countries. And not only that, there was the fact that a large picture of Zahara, in the center of the spread, with her beautiful face, and a few words about her musical talent, would advance her cause. But under no circumstances did Zahara want a public outcry without getting her parents’ agreement, and she hadn’t even told her older brother Netanel—or at least that is what the journalist thought—about what she had discovered.
“And I,” she said bitterly, “I’d already done all the work—do you know what kind of investigation went into this?” She sat up straight in her chair, and with a severe expression announced: “But I’m not revealing my sources to you, no matter what. I don’t reveal my sources.”
He maintained his silence.
“Zahara’s mother came from a good family—she’s the daughter of the last chief rabbi in Yemen,” said Orly Shushan, “and because of that they made a good match for her, with Zahara’s father, who was a promising young religious scholar. The mother was thirteen, and the father a bit older. They had a baby son who died right after he was born. Imagine, a girl of fourteen has a baby and he dies. Can you imagine such a thing?”
As she looked at him expectantly, Michael nodded.
“So then, imagine something even worse. Imagine that this girl, Naeema Bashari, gives birth again in the transit camp in Aden, on the way to Israel, and she gets to the immigrant camp at Ein Shemer, with a two-month-old baby girl . . .”
“Zahara?” asked Michael.
“Zahara. Big Zahara.”
“Did she die too?”
“No, apparently not,” Orly Shushan said, and crossed her legs. “She was taken away—that’s what happened to her. We’re talking about 1949. Do you know what happened in that year?”
Michael said nothing, but had an expectant look on his face.
“And not only in ’49. Until 1954 they could take immigrants’ children—not just Yemenites, but also Romanians—and give them up for adoption and just tell the parents they died. Haven’t you read about this in the newspapers?”
“I’ve read about it,” confirmed Michael in the tone of an obedient but helpless pupil, “but I didn’t make the connection, because I haven’t investigated the . . . But you, you’ve investigated.”
“In 1953 alone, in a single year, more than a hundred fifty children were given up for adoption without the knowledge of their parents. I won’t give you the sources, but I am prepared to tell you that before I got onto the matter of Big Zahara I had already spoken with a woman from the Women’s International Zionist Organization from England, a very old and sick woman who had adopted a girl in 1953. They even let her take the child out of Israel. Can you imagine? But the facts, of course, are known: Between 1944 and 1949, two thousand Yemenite children dis appeared! After they got sick and were sent to hospitals, they simply vanished. The parents who came to look for them were told that the children had died, but there were no death certificates, no graves and no nothing. Why do you think Rabbi Meshullam and his followers went on their rampage?”
Michael said nothing. He did not mention the well-known “Sarah Levine” trial, in which it was revealed from a DNA test that a woman who believed with all her heart that she was the daughter of one of the Yemenite women whose children were stolen for adoption was not really her daughter.
“In any case, I’ve checked and I’ve got proof: Naeema Bashari had a daughter, and two months later this daughter was taken from her.”
“But you haven’t spoken to Naeema Bashari about this? Or to her husband, Zahara’s father?” Michael half inquired, half stated.
“No. Zahara didn’t agree,” Orly Shushan said, and bit her lower lip. “She wasn’t willing to let me do that. I didn’t want to endanger my relationship with her at this stage. I knew I would be able to convince her, and that was what the disagreement was about the last time we met.”
“And you talked about this when you were with her on the day she was murdered,” said Michael in the same tone as before.
“No, of course not,” said Orly Shushan, aghast. “How could I? I was . . . If only I had been with her . . . She wouldn’t . . . Nothing would have happened . . . I waited for her and she didn’t show up.”
“When was she supposed to have come?”
“At eight. We’d arranged for eight o’clock.”
“And you didn’t look for her after she didn’t show up?”
“No, I was afraid that she . . . I was afraid that she had told her parents that she was at my place, and was somewhere else.”
“Where were you on Monday?”
“I’ve told you. I told the first guy . . . the one with the belly, the one called Balilty. I told him everything I did on Monday—from the swim at the Gordon swimming pool, through the coffee meeting and the meeting at the newspaper and lunch with—”
“You didn’t leave Tel Aviv?”
“I was waiting for Zahara. From eight in the evening I was waiting for her at home. People phoned me at home. There are people who talked to me. Are you asking . . . Really, why should I . . . And anyway, how would I have carried her up to the attic there? On my shoulders?”
“But you talked to her on the mobile that day,” Michael reminded her.
“Yes, I spoke to her. I phoned her to confirm our appointment, and she said she’d be at my place at eight. That’s what she said.”
“Do you know of anyone she was planning to meet at the Hilton?”
“At the Hilton? Hilton Tel Aviv or Hilton Jerusalem?”
“Tel Aviv. Did she mention anything about that to you?”
“Nothing,” said Orly, astonished and insulted. “I didn’t know she even knew anyone who frequents the Hilton.”
“Did you ever hear the name Moshe Avital from her?”
“Avital?” A furrow a
ppeared between her eyebrows. “Avital . . . I think she mentioned that name. I think it’s someone . . . someone who’s friendly with Linda? Could that be it?”
“Tell me”—he leaned forward again—“did you know that she was planning to buy an apartment?”
“An apartment?!” She snorted. “Zahara? What apartment? Don’t you know that she lived with her parents? And was planning to go abroad to study, next year. She was just saving for the trip and—”
The door opened wide, and Balilty’s large body blocked the opening, almost completely hiding the person who was standing behind him. “Listen to this,” he chortled, and leaned forward a bit and made a flowery gesture with his hand, as if trying to imitate the servant of a French noble, who had got his hands on some sensational news that couldn’t hurt. In the middle of his ceremonious bow he caught the piercing look that Tzilla shot at him and immediately stood up straight and retracted his hand. At the sight of Orly Shushan he went silent and changed the expression on his face, and cleared his throat loudly to signal Michael to step out of the room.
Michael, who realized that if he did not respond immediately Balilty would say whatever he had to say in front of the journalist, hurried out of the room. His face wore the expression of “What now?” but in the corridor he took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out and let the intelligence officer light it.
“I’ve got two things,” said Balilty festively.
Michael held up his forefinger as if to start counting.
“I’ve spoken to Deri.”
“Aryeh Deri?” said Michael in astonishment. “What’s he got to do with—”
“No, with the other buyer’s lawyer.”
“What other buyer?”
“Someone who wanted to buy the apartment on Railroad Street, the apartment Rosenstein wanted Zahara to have.”
“Nu?”
“And it’s really true,” said Balilty with a disappointed expression on his face. “He wanted the apartment and Rosenstein beat him to it because of some technicality, and is going to get it, so at least about this he wasn’t lying. And Mr. Avital, the owner of the apartment, is on his way here. He didn’t even argue.”