by Kate Raphael
“We will always be Palestinians,” he said.
“That Israeli policeman who was there today, Ali,” she said. “Do you think he considers himself a Palestinian?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “I’ll always be a Palestinian, my children will always be Palestinians. If they are Israeli citizens, they can live anywhere they want, have Israeli passports and go where they want in the world. They can work, and the Israeli government won’t be able to uproot their trees and tear down their houses.”
“The government demolished twenty houses in Kufr Qasem last year because they didn’t have permits,” she said. “They do that in Palestinian towns all over Israel. When’s the last time they demolished houses in Tel Aviv?”
“But if all the Palestinians can vote,” he said, “we will be the majority, and we can change the government.”
She sat quietly for a little while, trying to envision such a peaceful transition. If Jaber, who had grown up amid the tanks and nighttime raids, and had gone away to become a military man himself, could imagine a different future, she should be able to. But it seemed light years away.
This afternoon seemed light years away, too. She remembered a question she had wanted to ask him.
“When Abu Anwar told you they had found a woman’s body, it seemed like you already knew.”
“The mayor mentioned something about it yesterday.”
That made sense. She felt a little hurt that no one had told her. Not even the little kids, who usually couldn’t keep quiet about anything.
“Did Avi know?” she asked. “Is that what he wanted to talk to you about?”
“No,” he said at once. “It was something else.”
He had more information, she was sure, but she wasn’t going to get it, at least not now. She couldn’t take it personally. She might be almost family, but she was still ajnabiya.
Even so, talking with Jaber had soothed her. Much of her time here was spent with women who were interested in things she knew nothing about, children and crafts and family gossip. Even Ahlam, who was always bristling with industry and ideas for women’s development projects, had no interest in politics. Chloe had asked her once why she never came to the living room when Jaber met with other leaders of the village. Ahlam had stretched her arms and mouth in an exaggerated yawn.
“It’s too boring,” she said. “During the First Intifada, when Jaber was in prison, I had no choice. Now he is here, so I don’t need to be involved in that nonsense.”
Sometimes Chloe felt like she wasn’t a “real woman.” She thought momentarily of Rania. There was someone she could relate to more naturally, who also had work she was passionate about. If she could make Rania like her, she was sure the policewoman could tell her fascinating things. She took the tea things into the kitchen and kissed Ahlam goodnight, and went upstairs.
She was fast asleep when Avi called. She strained to read the clock: 11:45 p.m. What was wrong with him? He had been up as early as she, why wasn’t he crashed out too? He was twenty years younger, she reminded herself. She was entitled to her lack of stamina. But she felt old old old. As she adjusted to being awake, she realized he sounded upset.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I wondered if Fareed was at home.”
Fareed was Jaber’s oldest son. He was studying in Nablus, and because of the difficulty of getting through the checkpoints, he shared an apartment there with some other students, only coming home on weekends.
“I didn’t see him,” she said. “I assume he’s at school. But why are you asking me? Why not call him yourself, or ask Jaber?”
“His phone is closed.” Jaber’s or Fareed’s? she wondered. But she wasn’t really interested enough to ask.
“I haven’t seen him,” she repeated.
“Call me if you do,” he said. She bristled at the order.
“I’ll tell him to call you,” she said. “Now I’m going back to sleep. Good night.”
Chapter 12
Rania had just enough time, after they left Abu Anwar’s house, to make the falafel shop before closing. The good cabbage salad was all gone, and she had to settle for eggplant instead. Khaled did not like eggplant. She made him extra fries to atone.
Benny had offered to pick her up at her house to go to the Gelenters’. She couldn’t tell if he was really an idiot, or if he was joking. He must know she was never going to let an Israeli policeman pick her up inside her village.
“Meet me on the road,” she instructed. Bassam drove her to the bridge, where she had found the girl’s body the day before. Khaled sat wedged between them on the front seat. Bassam would take him for an ice cream on the way home. She climbed up to the road and found the blue and white car there waiting.
The soldier at the gate of Elkana was unhappy about letting a Palestinian into the settlement at night, even with Benny vouching for her. The soldier called his commander for permission to allow her through the hallowed gates. She took off her hijab before she got out of the car.
“I’ll ask the questions,” Benny said. “Don’t say anything. If you do, it will only provoke him and he won’t give us any information.”
“I will ask questions if I have them,” she said.
Nir Gelenter was expecting them. He did not try to shake Rania’s hand, and he asked for her police ID and not for Benny’s, but he was courteous, gave the ID the once-over and then said, “Todah rabah,” thanks very much, when he handed it back to her.
“Can we speak English?” she said at once. “I don’t speak Hebrew.”
“No problem at all,” he said, looking only at Benny.
“My daughter said you were looking for Nadya,” Gelenter said, again to Benny alone. “We have not seen her since the night before last.”
“I’m afraid she’s dead,” Benny said.
“Dead? Are you sure?” Gelenter managed a stricken look, even took out a handkerchief and acted like he was wiping away tears. Or maybe he really was.
“Weren’t you surprised, when she didn’t return for two days?” Benny asked.
“I thought she just went into Tel Aviv for a break,” Gelenter answered.
“Would she have gone on a break without telling you?” Benny queried. Telling? Asking would be more like it, Rania thought.
“Who knows what she would do?” the military man said with a sigh. “She was a bit wild.”
“Wild? Wild how?”
The man heaved another big sigh. “She was brought to Israel from Uzbekistan, by terrible people, to work in a pardon-the-expression whorehouse.” He looked at her for the first time when he said “pardon.”
“These people threatened to harm her family if she left the brothel, or told anyone who they were.”
“But she did leave,” Rania said.
“Yes, she was mortally afraid, but she could not take being a prostitute any more. She was forced to see ten clients a day sometimes, and she was not paid anything. She came to Israel because she could not support her young daughter at home, but now she was not making any money at all. So she had to go.”
“You don’t know who the people were who brought her here?” Benny asked him, his pen poised over his notepad to take down the names Rania doubted would be forthcoming. She was right.
“No, I have no idea,” the man said, shaking his head for emphasis.
It was a lie. Rania could see that in his face. She looked at Benny, whose face was impassive, his stance unchanged. He wasn’t going to press this guy, just because he was some mucky-muck in the Ministry of Defense—the Ministry of Offense, where her people were concerned. Well, Rania wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
“How did she end up here?” she asked.
Gelenter glanced at Benny as if for permission to answer her questions. Benny waited, his pen still in the ready-to-write position.
“I hired her through an agency in Tel Aviv,” Nir said. “Here, I have the card right here.” He had obviously prepared well for their visit.
He pulled the card from his shirt pocket and handed it to Benny, who copied the information into his notebook. Rania craned to read over his shoulder, but both the card and his writing were in Hebrew. She should have studied Hebrew at university, as Bassam had. She had disdained learning to read and write the occupier’s language.
“Did she have her passport?” She continued asking the questions, and Benny scribbling the answers, or she assumed that was what his hieroglyphics represented.
“No.”
“Did she show you any kind of ID?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know for sure that she was from Uzbekistan, or even that her name was Nadya?”
“Well, now that you say it like that, I guess not.”
She asked about Nadya’s duties, her schedule, if she had friends here. He said she got every Friday night and Saturday off, but she rarely went anywhere, because she was afraid of being seen and captured by the men who had brought her to Israel. He said he didn’t know how she got from Eilat to Tel Aviv or how she came to the agency where he hired her.
“How did she get from Tel Aviv to Elkana?” Rania asked.
“I picked her up after work and drove her. The agency is near the Kirya, where I work.”
“Why did you hire someone to take care of your children?” Benny asked suddenly. Rania looked at him in surprise. A few minutes ago, he had seemed happy to accept whatever story the big man spun. Now he was leaning forward, his protruding brown eyes wide open and trained on Nir’s face, giving him somewhat the appearance of a bald eagle.
“My wife isn’t too well,” Nir said, clearly uncomfortable with the line of conversation.
“Oh?” Benny invested the syllable with a host of meanings.
“No, she had a… traumatic episode a few years ago,” Nir said.
“Her illness isn’t physical.” Benny made it a statement, not a question.
“No.”
“I see. But why an immigrant girl? Surely, there’s a child care center in the settlement.” He used the word yishuv, the soft word for settlement, the same word used for communities in Israel. Rania would have called it hitnachlut, colony, but then she would not have succeeded in making Gelenter squirm like he was now doing. She caught herself feeling a drop of admiration for Benny’s technique.
“Yes, but it is not so near here. I need to leave very early in the morning for work, and my wife doesn’t drive.”
“You weren’t worried about the effect someone who had been a prostitute might have on your children’s values?” Rania almost gasped. Benny’s forward posture made this a full-fledged challenge to Nir’s qualifications as both a religious man and a father. She almost felt for the man as he struggled to control his rage and embarrassment. Instead of lashing out, he chuckled.
“My children have a very strong moral foundation. Nadya didn’t even speak that much Hebrew. She certainly could not discuss her former life with my children.”
“Did she ever bring friends to the house?” Benny asked.
“She didn’t have any friends here,” he said. “She called home once a week, on my phone. I allowed her to do that.” He looked at them as if expecting praise.
“Then you must have a phone number for them,” Benny said.
Nir’s left eyelid twitched slightly. He did not want them talking to Nadya’s family, Rania thought.
“I suppose it would be on a bill, but I don’t keep them,” he said. He made a big show of giving Benny the number of his mobile.
“Last week a woman named Delmarie, who works for another family, saw Nadya arguing with a man,” Rania said. She repeated the description she was given. He contemplated it before shaking his head sadly.
“No, that doesn’t sound like anyone I know. It must have been someone connected with the traffickers. They must have tracked her down and killed her.”
“Traffickers would wear a kippa?” she asked.
“They would if they were trying to fit in here. We are a very religious community.”
“You seem to have pretty good security here,” Rania observed.
“Criminals have a lot of ways to get what they want. Besides,” he suddenly switched gears. “This girl Delmarie, she could have made up the story.”
“Do you know her?” Rania asked innocently.
“Not personally, no. I know Nadya sometimes took my children to play with the children she watches.”
“Do you know if Nadya had any friends in Eilat?”
“She did have one friend, who she sometimes called. I think her name was Vicki.”
“Did you know that Nadya was pregnant?” she asked.
“What? No, that’s impossible.”
“It’s true.” She held her ground.
“Well, of course,” he recovered quickly, “she was a prostitute, she had sex all the time before she came here. It could have been any one of hundreds of men.”
“She was only about six weeks pregnant, not four months. You say she never went away after she came to live here, so it must have been someone she slept with right here, right? In this house?”
He puffed out his chest. “I tell you, that’s impossible. There are no men here except me.”
She let the statement hang in the air.
“We need to look in Nadya’s room,” she said, rising and turning as if to go find the room for herself. She was overreaching her position, she knew, and he knew it too, but Benny’s silence backed her up.
“Of course,” he said, “but could you possibly do it tomorrow? My wife and I need to get dinner on the table and get the kids to bed.”
She was about to say no, but Benny preempted her.
“We will come tomorrow morning,” he said, removing a small appointment book from his breast pocket. “Would half past seven be convenient?”
Nir nodded assent. Benny stood up and thanked Nir for his time.
“Would you be willing to take a blood test?” Rania asked. “Just to make sure you are not the father of Nadya’s baby?”
His dark red face spoke for itself. He said something she did not understand in Hebrew to Benny. She filled in the blanks for herself. She was sure he was already plotting to have her investigated by the SHABAK, if not to have her entire family locked up summarily. Benny steered her out the door.
“With someone like him,” Benny scolded on their way out of the settlement, “a soft touch is more likely to get what you want.”
“I’m not good at the soft touch,” she told him ruefully. “You might as well get used to it.”
“Why do I need to get used to it?” he challenged. “You’re not working this case any more.”
She felt the disappointment swelling her throat. Obviously, between leaving Abu Anwar’s house and now he had talked to the captain or Abu Ziyad or the Israeli DCL. Why had he let her come to the house? she wondered. And why had he said “we” would come back in the morning?
“Come on,” she said, trying to strike a light note. “You know you like having me here. It rattles people like Gelenter to have a Palestinian policewoman in his house.”
She had guessed right. He gave her a goofy half-smile. “I’m a good guy,” he told her. “I take guns away from the settlers, when they fire in the air to frighten people. They hate me. Ask Mustafa. We used to eat lunch together, during the Oslo years. I ate at his house. I know his wife.”
“You want a prize for that?” she asked.
Chapter 13
Achorus of loud voices outside woke Chloe from the soundest sleep she had had in weeks. She popped up, startled, and then realized it was only the neighborhood kids, passing under her window on their way to school. She snuggled back into her pillow, and reached for the dregs of the dream she had left. Alyssa was in it, but she had looked like Tina. How embarrassing.
She tried to go back to sleep, but she heard the roosters crowing erratically and the donkeys braying as their farmers loaded them up for the trip into the fields. The light was already streaming in through the sheer
curtain, foretelling the heat that would soon descend on her sanctuary. The bright space created by the big plate glass windows was a blessing, if a little foolhardy in a place where most people have bars on their windows to deflect stray bullets and gas canisters. But in the summer, these big windows could turn the pleasant little house into a furnace. It was just May, so the early mornings and late evenings were bearable, but by nine a.m., no one who didn’t have to would want to be in the sun.
She was past the great divide between sleeping and waking, too awake for sleep, too sleepy to do anything very productive. She got up and reached for the gold coffee filter she had brought from California. At the last minute, she reached for the Arabic coffee pot instead. She half-filled the little long-handled pot with water and a spoonful of sugar. When it boiled, she added a heaping spoonful of finely ground coffee and cardamom and watched it bubble up, snatching it from the burner before it overflowed. She put it back to the flame twice more, letting the flavor deepen, then poured off barely more than three thimbles full of steaming dark liquid into a tiny cup.
Now clear-headed, she took her camera and headed out to the crossroads to see what the situation was like. She passed a group of men hunkered down in the weeds, snacking. One of them was talking on a cellphone and she heard him saying in Hebrew, “Yesh po mishmar hagvul.” There are border police here, so obviously he was calling his Israeli employer to explain he couldn’t get in right now. Hopefully, the man would wait for him, rather than pick up someone else. Cell phones were a gift in this situation, she thought. Five years ago, he would have lost the job.
The man with the phone saw her and motioned her over. He was about her age, hefty, with bushy graying hair and sideburns. She approached the group of men, hoping she wasn’t about to get another marriage request. She had had at least ten since she had been in Palestine. Even understanding it was her passport, not her appearance, that men found so attractive, there was something disconcerting about being proposed to within five minutes of meeting someone.
“Assalaamu aleikum,” she greeted the men.
“Aleikum salaam,” replied one of them, not the one who had summoned her. That guy didn’t waste time on pleasantries.