by Kate Raphael
“Hebrew.”
“Did she speak English?”
“No. But I think she spoke Russian.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I heard her speaking to the woman in the store, in a language I didn’t know.”
Delmarie showed them the house, and then ran away. Nimrod was about to bang on the door, but Rania stepped in front of him and knocked politely. A young teenage girl, maybe thirteen, answered the door, still in her school clothes. She had thick, wavy brown hair, bobbed nearly to her shoulders and a sweet face with gaps between her front teeth. She looked uncomfortable in her slightly chunky body. When she saw Rania and Nimrod, she said immediately in Hebrew, “My parents aren’t home.”
Rania asked her, “Do you speak English?”
The girl nodded. “My father’s American.”
“Are you here by yourself?” she asked, trying to sound motherly.
“With my little brother and sister.”
“When will your mom be home?”
“Probably in an hour.” The girl was shifting from one foot to the other. Rania could hear the same cartoon playing that they left the other children watching. She considered whether it was a good idea, but she showed the girl the dead woman’s photo.
“Does this woman work for your family?”
The girl looked very scared, but she nodded. “That’s Nadya.”
“Do you know her last name?”
“No. Where is she? Where did you get that picture?”
Rania tried to deflect her questions with one of her own.
“Where does Nadya come from?”
“I’m not sure I should be talking to you. Why are you asking about Nadya? Is she all right?”
“Has she worked for your family for long?”
“No, only four months.”
“Do you know where she lived before this?”
“I think she said… Eilat.”
“Was she working for a family there too?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I should be talking to you. You better come back when my parents are home.”
The girl tried to close the door. Rania caught it with her foot. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Malkah.”
Queen, Rania thought. “That’s a pretty name.”
“It doesn’t really fit me.”
“It will.” Rania was annoyed by her compassion for this girl, who had no idea what a hard life for a teenager is. She sure didn’t have to clean out chicken coops like girls her age in Mas’ha, or climb a ladder and jump from roof to roof to avoid being shot on her way to school like students in Hebron. But when you are thirteen, a pimple can ruin your life faster than a missile, or at least you feel like it can. She wanted to reassure Malkah that some day she would have the stature and confidence to give her name credibility, but that wasn’t her job here.
“Malkah, I am trying to help Nadya. If you want to help her too, you must tell me everything you know about her life before she came here.”
“She wasn’t working for a family. She lived in a house with a bunch of other girls, and men would come… and there was a man who told them what to do. He said he would hurt her little girl if she ran away, but she did anyway.”
Pimps and brothels? Rania had heard rumors about such things in Israel, but she hadn’t necessarily believed them. Most Palestinians would believe the Israelis capable of anything. She always prided herself on being more discriminating. Now she thought maybe she had sold them short in the evil department. Maybe the stories about generals keeping the heads of children they killed on their mantels were true too.
One thing that was clear was that this was a bigger problem than she had anticipated. It didn’t seem like something to be discussing with a thirteen-year-old girl.
“Malkah, where do your parents work?” she asked.
“My mom’s a teacher at the elementary school,” she said, glad to be asked something she could answer without hesitating. “My dad works in Tel Aviv. At the Kirya,” she added.
Rania’s heart did a somersault. The man worked at the Ministry of Defense? The case was getting more sensitive by the minute. If she was on her way out of it before, she would truly be history when the two DCLs heard about this. Unless, she thought, they already knew. Nimrod’s ears had also pricked up, and he decided that this was the moment when an Israeli man should step in and stop letting a Palestinian woman call the shots.
“What’s his name?” he demanded.
“Nir Gelenter,” she answered.
Nimrod started. Rania looked at him. He was digesting this piece of information, which seemed important. She had no idea why.
“The deputy defense minister?” Nimrod said.
Malkah nodded, a little proudly. Her father would be back at six p.m., she told them.
Elation mixed with frustration in Rania’s soul. If this were a normal case, now that she knew who she was looking for, she would go off and find him. But she could not even get to Tel Aviv, let alone waltz into the Ministry of Defense. She would need to call Benny and see what he wanted to do. She didn’t want to do that, especially in front of Nimrod, or even Malkah. She made a snap decision.
“We will return at six thirty,” she told Malkah, who quickly closed the door.
She looked at her watch. It was two thirty, too late to go back to Salfit. She was so close to Mas’ha, she could almost see her house. Two years ago, she could simply have walked from the gate of the settlement over the roadblock at the entrance to her village and been home in ten minutes. But now there was the Wall, and the Israeli highway was completely separate from the Palestinian roads. She would have to ride back all the way to Ariel and catch a taxi to the Qarawa blocks, cross over and catch another taxi to Mas’ha. She would arrive home too late to make Khaled’s favorite okra stew for dinner. Of course, if she were a good mother like her mother-in-law wanted her to be, she would have prepared the stew last night, and it would be ready to heat up. She would have to stop at the falafel stand and buy falafel and hummus and red cabbage salad for dinner. Khaled wouldn’t mind. She would fry some potatoes to eat with the falafel and it would be like a picnic.
On the way back to Ariel, she called Benny with the news. She feared he would say he would go to Tel Aviv by himself to talk to Nir Gelenter, but he merely grunted assent to the six thirty assignation. He had other things on his mind.
“Mustafa said you interviewed a farmer in Azzawiya, who discovered the body yesterday.”
“Abu Anwar,” she replied warily.
“I want to talk to him.”
“Why? I’m sure the captain told you what he said.”
“I want to hear it for myself.” Naturally, the Israelis were not going to take the word of Palestinian police about a key witness—even Palestinian police they acted all chummy with.
“I will call him and tell him we will come tomorrow morning,” she said.
“No, I want to go now.” Again with “I want.”
“I need to get my son’s dinner,” she said.
“No problem, I can go by myself. Give me his telephone number.”
She would not be able to stop him from going to Abu Anwar’s without her. Her responsibility was to protect the people. That meant she must go with him. What about your responsibility to your family? her inner mother-in-law challenged. Two days in a row, you are not there to make dinner for your son?
“I will meet you there,” she told Benny. It wouldn’t look good for her to arrive with the Israeli police. She needed to get there first. But he could drive straight on good roads, and she would need to take two taxis on bad ones. There was only one way she was going to get there before him. She tapped Dani on the shoulder.
“Turn around,” she said in Hebrew.
She prayed he wouldn’t argue with her. There was no way she could explain to these young men why they should go out of their way to protect her reputation. Fortunately, Dani looked at Nimrod, who seemed to be the man in charge her
e. Nimrod shrugged, and Dani spun the jeep around with as much squealing of rubber as humanly possible.
She would absolutely make it up to Khaled on the weekend. He would be proud of her, because she would make sure nothing bad happened to his people.
Chapter 11
Avi had not gone back to Jerusalem with the others. He was walking with Jaber at the front of the little parade back to the village. They were conversing in Hebrew when Chloe caught up with them, but Jaber finished his sentence and switched to English when he saw her. She smiled at him gratefully. Just then his phone rang. When he hung up, he told her, “Ajat shorta la beet Abu Anwar.” The police have come to Abu Anwar’s house. He quickened his already frenetic pace.
“Ana maak,” she puffed. I am coming with you.
“Very good,” he nodded. Then he turned to Avi and explained to him in Hebrew. “You must come with us,” he told the young man. Chloe felt her chest tighten. Why did Jaber suddenly think she couldn’t handle the police? Avi didn’t seem thrilled either. She wondered why. He usually seemed anxious enough to stick his nose into every crisis.
Abu Anwar’s house was at the top of a hill. Chloe had to pause for breath before entering the house, or she wouldn’t even be able to say hello to anyone. She noticed with irritation that the men were not breathing hard. Rania was there, leaning forward on the sofa, a cup of coffee untouched in front her. A big, bald Israeli policeman sat in an armchair that was clearly not as comfortable as he had thought it would be. Chloe observed that there were only grounds in his coffee cup. Ali, the Palestinian Israeli policeman she had seen on the road the day before, was standing a little behind the other policeman and saying nothing. Rania was showing Abu Anwar some photos, and the old man was shaking his head a lot.
“What’s going on?” Jaber asked, when they had all been introduced and served coffee.
“They found a dead girl on our land,” Abu Anwar said succinctly.
“Really?” Jaber didn’t sound very surprised. “Was she from the village?”
“No, she was ajnabiya.”
“So why are they here?” Jaber asked him. Abu Anwar shrugged, as if to say, who knew why the Israeli authorities did anything.
Whatever they wanted, they appeared to be done with it. The big Israeli cop was staring at Avi now.
“What are you doing here?” he asked him. Avi said he had come to visit friends, and to see what was happening with the work they were preparing to do on the land near Elkana. He did not mention the confrontation with the army and the bulldozers.
“Do you come here often?” asked the big policeman. According to the tag he wore, his name was Benny Lazar.
“Sometimes,” Avi said.
“Did you ever see this girl here?” Benny thrust a photo under Avi’s nose.
“No.”
Avi covered well, but Chloe was sure he knew something. Probably the policeman could tell too, but he did not push it. She thought he wouldn’t want to threaten an Israeli in front of Palestinians. Rania had definitely noticed Avi’s discomfort. Chloe wondered why she didn’t say anything.
Benny asked Avi for his ID. Chloe was surprised that the young man handed it over without a protest. She wouldn’t have. Benny pulled out his telephone and gestured to Ali to follow him outside. Again, Chloe was surprised that Avi just sat there and let these policemen walk away with his ID. There was a lot she didn’t understand about Israelis. Rania made no move to follow her colleagues. Chloe wondered if that was her way of showing she was not interested in their business, or if they had somehow signaled her it was none of hers, or maybe they had already agreed that if they had some reason to leave the room, she would stay to keep an eye on the locals.
“Do you know who the dead woman is?” Chloe asked her.
“Not exactly, but she was working in Elkana,” Rania said.
How awful, Chloe thought, to die in a foreign country, and have no one who cares for you back home even know! The thought sent a shiver through her. It would never happen to her, of course, she had valid ID, but even so, she suddenly pictured herself lying forever on a slab in an Israeli morgue.
“Benny,” Rania gestured in the direction of the Israeli policeman outside, “thinks she might have been involved with a young man here in the village. Can you think of anyone who might have been seeing her?”
“A girl like that? Impossible. Why would he think that?”
“I’m not completely sure. But she was hamel,” Rania said, using the Arabic word for pregnant.
“And they think a Palestinian was the father? That makes no sense.”
After a full fifteen minutes, the Israeli police came back (not bothering to knock at the door, Chloe noticed), and handed Avi his ID. Benny wrote a telephone number on the back of a business card and gave it to Avi as well.
“Whenever you are coming to this village, I want you to call and let me know,” he instructed. To Chloe’s surprise, Avi agreed.
“Are you really going to call him whenever you come?” she asked him after they left the house.
“I don’t know, maybe,” he answered.
“Why? It’s none of their business.”
“Yes, but if I don’t, they might start coming into the village to look for me.”
“You think they’d really do that?”
“They have. They went house to house in Deir Balut once, because some of us went in through the checkpoint and then left another way.”
“At home, we would never agree to tell the police anything. They’re the enemy,” she said.
“They’re mine too,” he said, “but they seriously worry about us here. They’re afraid we will be kidnapped and they’ll have to come in and rescue us.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said.
“Well, it has happened,” he surprised her by saying. She was about to ask him to elaborate, but as they reached the main village road, he turned to Jaber. “I need to talk to you,” he said quietly in Hebrew.
“Come to my house,” Jaber said to him. At the house, Jaber shook her hand in polite dismissal. She nodded goodbye to Avi and headed upstairs. She hoped he would feel the slight that she did not shake his hand, but she doubted he was well mannered enough to notice. She was unlocking the door to her flat when she heard footsteps behind her. She swung around.
“Take my number,” Avi said. “If there are any problems in the village, call me.”
“Why? What will you do about it?” she asked.
She had not meant the question seriously, but he actually thought about it. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Get people to come… If there’s an incursion, I can call the army and find out what they want… I just want to help.”
He sounded sincere, not as arrogant as usual. She put the number in her phone and called it right away, so he would have hers. He went down to Jaber’s and she entered her flat.
She showered, changed, and ate, but was too keyed up to sleep or read. It was rare that she felt lonely or bored in her flat. Living among Palestinians involved a lot of togetherness—big families often sleeping and eating in close quarters, and so many group activities. She enjoyed it, but she was always happy to return to her quiet oasis. But today the high ceilings echoed with her discontent.
At home she had lived alone for ten years, minus the two when she lived with Alyssa. She hadn’t longed for the companionship of a group house since the day she moved out of her last one. She cherished her friends and community, but she cherished being able to get away from them too. But at home she could go out if she wanted to be around people, to the movies, out to dinner, or just aimlessly wandering the streets, stopping in for groceries or coffee or whatever. Here a woman could not wander around without purpose, and anyway, there was nowhere she wanted to go.
Thinking about friends brought Tina to mind. Had she imagined the spark, or was it real? She was assuming Tina was a lesbian because of her height. Alyssa was also tall, nearly six feet. Of course, Maria Sharapova, the tennis player who had just won
Wimbledon, was over six feet and no one thought she was a lesbian. But there was something else; Tina had looked her in the eye. Her first girlfriend had told her that if a woman looks you directly in the eye, she’s a dyke.
It’s wishful thinking, she told herself sternly, and anyway, it’s irrelevant. It would be nice, though, to hang out with a woman she liked, to be able to be open about her feelings. These months of having to hide part of her identity were starting to wear on her. She missed her friends. She missed Alyssa.
No, she was not going to think about Alyssa. Getting far away from the woman who had broken her heart had been one of the attractions of this place. She made herself think of Jill and Diane, her two best friends in San Francisco. What were they doing now? she wondered. It had been almost a month since she had talked to them. When she first got to Palestine, she had been on the phone to them every other day, but the longer she stayed here, the more able she was to talk to people here, the less rooted she felt back home.
She thought about calling Jill or Diane now, but it would be too early in California. For lack of anything else to do, she started to cook. She chopped onions and garlic, and fried them with rice and cauliflower, adding some cinnamon and cumin. She ate a few spoonfuls, but she was still full from her recent lunch. She put some of the food in a dish and took it downstairs to Ahlam. Ahlam didn’t need her food, but it was an excuse to go down. Maybe now, they would tell her what was going on. Ahlam invited her in, and Jaber asked what she thought of the action at Abu Shaadi’s.
“Well, it’s good we stopped the bulldozers,” she shrugged. “But those Israeli activists are so irritating.”
His look made her ashamed.
“They are our friends,” he said. “They want to help.”
What right did she have to be so intolerant, when he, a Palestinian, was so forgiving of their bossiness and wishy-washy politics? Of course, he hadn’t heard Itai and the others saying that the Palestinians should accept Israeli citizenship. She told him about the conversation.
Jaber surprised her by saying, “They are right. That is what must happen.”
“But what about your identity as a Palestinian?” she asked.