by Kate Raphael
She walked back to the place where she had noticed the drag pattern on the ground, some one hundred meters distant from where the body now lay. There were more tracks leading to and away from that place. She did not think they were from the same shoes that had run from the place where the body was finally left, but she couldn’t be sure, because that person had been running, and this person was moving slowly. The area was a bit muddy, so the set of tracks along the creek bed was not as distinct as the other two.
How had the girl gotten from where the drag marks ended to where she was left? Could she have been dragged, left, gotten up and walked, and then fallen down and died? She couldn’t be sure. There were many sets of footprints in the area, and no wonder; so many people used this unofficial crossing into Israel, it would be impossible to sort out one young woman’s, or those of the person who had caused her to be lying here dead.
The captain did not come by taxi to the bridge as she expected. After half an hour, a Mercedes came bumping along through the fields, stopping just short of where she was working. The captain got out of the passenger’s side. She stifled a grimace when she saw the driver, a thin, stooped man whose heavy mustache gave his face an indelible frown.
Why had she assumed the captain would come alone? Of course, in such an unusual situation, he would go immediately to his friend, Abu Ziyad. They had known each other for twenty years. They had fought together and been in prison together.
As District Cooperating Liaison, or DCL, Abu Ziyad was the bridge between the Israeli authorities and the people. People distrusted him because of his job, and because of his personal wealth. His personality didn’t help either. But if you really needed something, he was the one man in Salfit with the best chance to get it for you. People said he had known Arafat personally.
The phrase “old boys’ network” could have been created for Abu Ziyad. When Captain Mustafa decided to hire her, Abu Ziyad had tried to dissuade him. People even said he went to the governor about it. He was probably the reason that five years later, she was still the only woman investigator in this district. She wasn’t going to let him rattle her now. She greeted him politely, then showed the men the body and the drag marks.
“She did not simply fall down the hill,” she concluded.
“We must notify the Israelis,” Abu Ziyad said. “Whoever this girl is, she is not from one of our villages.”
“We should try to find out if anyone in the area knows who she is first,” Rania objected. “If we call the Israelis before we know how she came to be dead in this land, they will go charging into the villages and frighten the people.”
Captain Mustafa considered the point, but Abu Ziyad shook his head. “If we do not tell them about the body and they find it themselves, they may try to make it a problem for us.”
She had to admit that made sense, but she did not want Israeli soldiers and police poking around her land yet. Of course, she did not want them there at all, but since it seemed inevitable, she needed a little time to get organized. She would not give the Israeli police the names of the people she had seen at the roadblock, but if she told them nothing, they would take it as a sign of the Palestinians’ complete incompetence and go off on their own fishing expedition. Once she knew what information people might have that was relevant, she could figure out how to protect them.
“Wait a few hours,” she insisted. “I know the people here. Let me ask around and perhaps we will find there is no need to involve the Israelis.”
Abu Ziyad shook his head. “We cannot leave the body here for people to stumble over, and we cannot remove it without telling the Yahud.”
“Why not?” Rania argued. “It is on our land.”
Abu Ziyad’s usual scowl deepened. He spoke as if to a particularly slow third grader. “What if she belongs to one of the settlements?” he said. “Or was married to an Israeli? What do you think will happen if we call and tell them she is in a Palestinian hospital, dead? If they find out we did not tell them right away, they can make hell for us.”
“We,” Captain Mustafa made a circle enclosing himself and Abu Ziyad, “will go inform the Israeli DCL in person.”
Did Rania want to insist on going with them? She had no interest in talking to any Israeli officials, but she wasn’t going to be sent out to play while the grownups did important work.
“I will go talk to the women who were at the roadblock earlier.” She looked at Captain Mustafa, avoiding Abu Ziyad’s glowering face. “They may know something that would be useful.”
“Go back to Salfit,” Abu Ziyad said. “We do not want word to spread among the people yet.”
Captain Mustafa did not say anything. Rania decided to take that as tacit approval for her disobedience. As soon as she could no longer see the dust from Abu Ziyad’s fancy tires, she headed off to find Maryam, Salma, and Um Raad.
Chapter 5
Maryam taught in Deir Balut, Salma worked as a visiting nurse in the three villages in this sector, and Um Raad worked at the Ministry of Prisoners in Salfit. But as Rania had guessed, none of them had gone to work after the checkpoint was finally cleared. She found them all in Biddia, the larger central town for this part of the district. Maryam and Salma were eating lunch together in a restaurant. They were both in their late twenties. Maryam had a sweet, serious, round face. She seemed a little dull to Rania, who always found it a little surprising that she should be a teacher. But she taught first grade, so the children would not notice that she was not the brightest star in the sky. She was very patient with her own three children, and Rania thought she was probably a good teacher for the little ones. Salma was her polar opposite, with a lively, expressive face atop the lithe frame under her jilbab, her hands always moving when she talked. Her career also seemed well chosen, the intellectual challenge of nursing, combined with the variety of moving from town to town, preserving her youthful enthusiasm.
They were making the most of an unexpected day off from work, to socialize and gossip until their children came home from school. They were happier to see her than she expected.
“Did you find out what the jesh were looking for?” Salma asked eagerly, leaning toward her.
“They found a stolen car on the big road,” Rania answered.
“Just a car?”
“That’s all they told me,” she said. She would get further if she could cough up some juicy intelligence, but emphasizing that she wasn’t in the confidence of the Israeli authorities would have to suffice.
“You got to the junction at seven o’clock this morning?” she asked them. They had told her they were there for one and a half hours, she remembered.
“Seven, seven thirty,” Salma replied.
“Did you see anyone in the fields?”
“The fields? Which fields?”
Rania wanted to kick the woman. If she was going to feign ignorance, she could at least put some feeling into it.
“In any groves next to the road, near where you were waiting. You were there for such a long time, you must have had a lot of time to look around.”
“No,” Salma said quickly, giving Maryam a sidelong look. “We weren’t looking there, we were watching the jesh.”
Rania looked at Maryam, and she nodded, but a beat too late. Rania leaned into them. If she had to, she would separate them and Maryam would be sure to crack, but it shouldn’t be necessary.
“Look,” she said, “whoever you think you are protecting, they don’t need it. I am not working with the Israelis. I don’t believe that any of our people are guilty of anything. I just need to ask them some questions, about what they might have seen, just like I am doing with you, and you know that you have not done anything wrong.”
Maryam was clearly reassured by this logic. Salma seemed to be weighing her natural suspicion of Rania as a policewoman and an outsider against what her good sense told her was the better part of wisdom. Rania’s temper flared. If Salma wanted to be snotty, she could play that game too.
“Don’t ma
ke trouble for yourselves, my sisters,” she said sweetly. “If you do not want to talk to me, the Israelis will be along soon, and their methods are more persuasive than mine.”
Salma took another minute to consider that before saying, “There were some men.”
“Some men? Which men?”
“I didn’t know all of them. Some going up to the trees, and some waiting near the road.”
“Abu Anwar was looking around under the bridge for a while,” Maryam supplied.
“Who is Abu Anwar?” asked Rania.
“The brother of Abu Jawad, the mayor of Azzawiya,” Salma told her.
“He fell down,” Maryam interjected.
“Fell down?” Both women nodded vigorously.
“I thought maybe he was sick,” Salma concurred. “I was going to ask if he needed help, but then he got up again and went back to his donkey.”
“Did you see anyone else?” Rania asked.
“Walla wahad.” No one, the two women said in unison.
Rania was sure they were lying, but she would not pursue it right now. It probably was not even important, and if it was, she knew where to find them and it would be better one on one. She would see Um Raad, and then go to find this Abu Anwar.
Um Raad was home in Biddia, preparing vegetables stuffed with minced meat. She placed a row of hollowed-out squash on a plate and spooned the meat into them as she told Rania a story about seeing an Israeli girl walking through the fields.
“An Israeli woman? Are you sure?” Rania asked. Since the Intifada, even most Israeli men were afraid to walk through Palestinian lands by themselves, unless they had guns.
“She was wearing a scarf like the settlers wear, and a long skirt. And dark glasses.”
Um Raad sounded quite sure. Rania couldn’t imagine why she would be lying, unless it was to protect someone else. She thanked Um Raad and left.
* * *
Abu Anwar’s house in Azzawiya was quiet, and no one answered her knocks. She found the mayor, Abu Jawad, at his palatial home at the top of the village.
“Yes, I know,” he said when Rania told him about the body. “My brother called me from the fields. He said he had discovered an ajnabiya, lying dead on the land.”
“And you didn’t call the police?” She supposed it was possible that he had talked to someone in the police and they had not thought to call her.
“Abu Anwar said he would come when he was done with his work. After that, we would figure out what to do.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, exasperated. “What was there to do besides call us?”
It crossed her mind that the unkind things villagers in Mas’ha said about their Azzawiyan neighbors might not be completely unfounded. To find a dead body and not call the police? These people were very strange indeed.
“We were going to talk to the DCL,” he said.
“Why? The DCL is the liaison between our community and the Israelis. Do you have some reason to believe that the Israelis are involved in this girl’s death?”
“Abu Ziyad is a friend,” he said. There it was again. The secret brotherhood.
“What time will Abu Anwar be back from his fields?” she asked neutrally, as if she were interested in borrowing a tractor from him.
“I don’t know, maybe three, maybe four o’clock,” the mayor replied.
“Can you call him to come back now?”
“No, he has no mobile.”
“But he called you.”
“He borrowed a phone from a neighbor.”
She literally bit her tongue. Nothing good would come from lecturing this man, who was old enough to be her father or even a youngish grandfather. She needed that tact that she was so short on.
“Where are his fields?” she asked.
“Ba’id.” Far.
She smiled. Was he trying to keep her away from the old man, or did he seriously believe it wasn’t that important, and she wouldn’t want to go far?
“I don’t mind,” she said, “I can walk a long way.”
He pointed out the window, indicating trees far across the Israeli bypass highway, up near the big water tower belonging to the settlement, Elkana. “It will take you at least an hour to walk there,” he said. “By then, Abu Anwar will be coming down. You may as well wait for him here.”
She could see that there was no drivable road into the fields. She did not have a donkey, and it would take her a long time to find someone willing to lend her one, especially if the word was out in the village that people should not give her too much help in her quest. She could try to intercept Abu Anwar on his way down, but she did not know the fields and there was more than one path he might take.
“I am going to call Captain Mustafa,” she said, “and we will both come back here at four o’clock to talk with Abu Anwar. Please make sure that he is here.”
Chapter 6
Chloe tore up the wide stone stairs and thrust her key into the lock of the red metal door. She headed straight for the bathroom, without even removing the pack from her back. Relieved, she tossed off backpack and shoes before flinging open the refrigerator door. There wasn’t a lot to choose from. She grabbed a piece of stale bread and smeared it with Nutella. When in doubt, chocolate was her default position.
Two things she had never been able to really adapt to since she’d been in the country were the absence of opportunities to pee and the Palestinians’ apparently complete lack of appetite during the day. She supposed these were natural adaptations to climate and economy, but like the language, they did not seem to be things you could easily acquire later in life.
She was drinking juice from a plastic bottle, her mouth uncomfortably fitting around the large opening, when she heard a small voice behind her.
“Fii wahad taht.”
Chloe jumped, sloshing the orange liquid down her t-shirt. No problem, the shirt was already filthy anyway. She faced the sweet-faced ten-year-old, who looked eight, still in her striped school dress and pigtails.
“Miino, habibti?” Who’s downstairs?
The little girl shrugged extravagantly. “Wahad Israeeeeli.”
“Jesh?” Please, she thought, don’t let it be the army. She was exhausted, and not ready for another confrontation.
The girl shook her head vigorously. She stroked her chin, indicating the man had a beard.
“What is he doing?”
“Talking to my father.”
There was no point standing here playing twenty questions with Alaa. Five minutes later, robbed of a shower but at least having splashed under her arms, wearing a clean blue silk blouse and with her hair neatly pinned back, she knocked on the door of Ahlam and Jaber, her landlords and neighbors. Ahlam welcomed her with kisses on both cheeks and thrust a teapot into her hands.
“Ruhi, habibti. Sobbi shai.” Go, pour the tea, dear.
The fact that she was given a chore to do marked her as family. It meant that Ahlam didn’t have to interrupt her cooking and cover her head to serve the Israeli man, who had so inconveniently turned up near dinner time. Chloe smelled fried cauliflower, her favorite, and hoped she would be invited to eat. She stepped into the living room.
Alaa had mentioned only one guest, so Chloe was surprised to see two men sitting on the couch, opposite Jaber in a matching wing chair. Jaber’s handsome, hollow-cheeked face was animated in conversation. Chloe always had to remind herself that Ahlam was younger than she; the effects of bearing and raising six children gave her a matronly air, though she was still attractive. Jaber, on the contrary, looked like he could be fresh out of college, despite his three years in prison preceded by five years in hiding. Jaber tended his olive trees and goats like every other farmer in Azzawiya, but Chloe always assumed he came from money, based on the size of this house, the elegantly tiled floors and expansive courtyard, and the starched, pressed look he always had. Today, he wore a violet open-necked shirt with his clean blue jeans.
The second man didn’t really merit the noun, in Chloe’s
opinion. The mysterious “Israeli” whose presence had summoned her was only twenty. His name was Avi Levav, and she had met him several times at demonstrations around the West Bank. He had short dark hair and a tightly clipped beard, no doubt an attempt to look older. On one forearm he wore a white sock, the bottom cut off and dyed like a Palestinian flag. It could pass for a sweatband, but Chloe knew it was covering the most god-awful collection of tattoos she had ever seen, a relic of his drug-abusing, squatter days in Europe.
The third man could have been 100 years old. His face was like a road map carved in leather. He wore stiff blue jeans with the traditional keffiya covering his head, Arafat-style. The cracks in his bare feet carried the dirt of years spent tramping up and down into the hills. Chloe had never seen him before, and Jaber did not interrupt the conversation to introduce her. She put the tea things on the coffee table between them and squatted down to spoon sugar into four glasses, added sprigs of mint, and poured the amber liquid. She could not sort out what they were discussing, though she caught familiar words here and there, and it dawned on her that they were speaking Hebrew, not Arabic. Of course, because Avi didn’t speak Arabic.
“Yslamu ideeki,” Jaber murmured as she handed him his tea.
“W ideek,” she answered clearly, so the old man, whoever he was, would understand that she spoke Arabic. If he noticed, she would never know. He did not glance at her, even when she handed him a glass of tea. He simply took it from her hand and slurped greedily.
Chloe settled into the empty wing chair and nursed her tea while the men continued their animated conversation. She could only make out a few words—mitnachlim, settlers; chayalim, soldiers; etzim, trees. Before she came to Palestine, she had imagined that eight years of Hebrew school had taught her something. After a few minutes, her impatience got the better of her. They had called her, the least they could do was clue her in. It would be highly improper for her to interrupt. The most unobtrusive thing would be to ask Avi to translate for her. She inched her chair closer to the couch.