by Kate Raphael
“I can’t right now.”
Supercilious asshole! How dare he treat her like a prying nobody? She lived here, this was her family, and he knew something and was acting like she had no right to know it. But she could see that she was not going to get it out of him.
Chapter 16
“What’s our next move?” Rania asked Benny on the phone. It was seven thirty in the morning, and she could tell from how he talked that he was driving.
“I’m heading to the agency where Nir said he met Nadya,” he said. “Hopefully they can tell me which is the real passport, if either of them is.”
“I want to come,” she said.
“I’m going on my way in.” Of course—he had told her he lived in Herzliya, just north of Tel Aviv. He wouldn’t want to drive into the West Bank and then back out. But she wasn’t in the mood to care what he wanted. She hadn’t been in Tel Aviv since before the Intifada. There should be some benefit to hanging around Israeli police.
“You owe me,” she said. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even know about the passports.”
“Do you have a permit to go to Tel Aviv?” he asked.
Of course she didn’t. “Why do I need a permit? They’re going to stop you at the checkpoint?”
“It could happen. The police are not that popular with the army.”
“Well, if they stop you, tell them you’re arresting me.”
“Be at Mas’ha Gate in half an hour,” he said. There was no point in arguing with him that she didn’t want her neighbors to see the army opening the gate specially so that she could go through and get into an Israeli police car. She would just have to hope that by this time of the morning everyone would be far from there.
* * *
The small internet café was full of teenage boys playing violent video games. They sat together in bunches in front of the four aged computers, giving out grunts and yelps as they killed off their targets. Chloe could barely see through the haze of cigarette smoke. She walked over to the register, where a young man only slightly older than the players was reading a newspaper.
“It’s time for the girls,” she said.
“Mmm,” he said. When she didn’t move, he looked up from his paper. “Ya shabab,” he called out. “Il banat ajau.”
Two of the boys swiveled around in their chairs to see that indeed “the girls had come.” One winked at Chloe and said something that brought riotous laughter from the others. These were sons of Maher, who had taunted her in the store the night before. They turned back to their game.
Chloe glanced at the eight girls in the doorway. They would not come in while the boys were there, and they would not want to be seen standing around on the street. She needed to get the place cleared out quickly.
“Yalla shabab,” she said loudly. “Doorna.” It’s our turn. Most of the boys slowly gathered up their headphones and went to pay for their time. Maher’s sons remained stubbornly parked in front of their computer. Chloe walked over and eased herself in between them and the screen.
“Respect your sisters,” she said in Arabic.
The young man behind the counter made a small ssss sound and the boys reluctantly got up. Just before walking away, one of them slammed his cup down hard on the table where the computer sat. The dregs of the coffee leapt up and splattered on Chloe’s shirt.
“Jasoosia,” he said as he passed her. Traitor.
She stood fuming, wondering what she should do. Her impulse was to convene her girls and act like nothing had happened, to show she was above it. But would she lose face in their eyes? She really didn’t know. The café’s proprietor saved her from having to decide. He came over and handed her a damp paper towel. While she daubed at her shirt, he cleaned up the mess around the terminal. By the time he was done, the boys were all gone and the girls had clustered around the other three computers, waiting expectantly.
“Did you bring the cameras?” she asked them. Three of them held up small digital cameras, a donation from her former employers. She gave each group a USB connector and showed them how to upload the photos from the memory cards.
“What did you photograph?” she asked a shy ten year old named Huda.
“My cousin’s henna party.”
“Can I see?”
The girl pointed out one of the women painting henna on the palms of the bride. “Imi,” my mother, Huda said. “And this is my sister, Noura. She studies at Bir Zeit.”
“She must be very smart,” Chloe said. At Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, all classes were taught in English. It was one of the most exclusive Palestinian colleges.
“Are you a traitor?” Huda asked suddenly.
Chloe bit back an angry reply. The girl was just repeating what she had heard.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” the little girl said. “I never met a traitor.”
There was logic in that, Chloe acknowledged. “Who says I’m a traitor?”
“My father says you are Yahudia.”
“Well, it’s true that I’m Jewish, but I am not an Israeli. I’m a Jew from America.” All activity in the room had ceased, as the group focused on this all-important conversation.
“You were in the police yesterday, weren’t you?” said a girl named Wafa. She was the granddaughter of Dilal, the storekeeper. Remembering the unpleasant interaction with Maher in Dilal’s store, Chloe wondered what the girl had been told. She had always thought Dilal liked her, but maybe he was just polite.
“I am not in the police,” she said, deliberately misinterpreting the Arabic expression. “The police arrested me.”
“Why did they take you?” asked Huda.
“They had arrested another man, a Palestinian, and they were beating him. I tried to help him.”
Chloe hoped she didn’t sound like she thought she was a hero. She remembered how the men in the fields yesterday had taunted her with how little she could do to ease their suffering.
“Did you help him?” Wafa wanted to know.
“Not exactly. But when they took me away, they left him.”
The girls looked impressed at that. It seemed like a good note to change the topic on.
“Let’s get back to your pictures, shall we?” Chloe said. “We only have this room for an hour.”
The girls obediently turned back to their screens. She heard them talking quietly among themselves. She was sure they were not through with the subject, but that was okay. Nothing she could say would convince people to trust her. Her actions would have to do that.
* * *
“Yes, of course,” said Galit, the owner of the Tel Aviv employment agency. “Nadya had her passport, everything was legal.”
Galit was forty-something and well groomed, with too-black hair cinched in a tight knot behind her head.
“Did she take the passport with her?” Benny asked.
“I gave it to her employer, Mr. Gelenter.”
“He told us he never saw it.” Benny kept his voice casual.
Galit hesitated. Rania wondered why she didn’t simply say, “He’s mistaken.” It would make things much easier for her, but she guessed lowly employment agency proprietors couldn’t just accuse powerful officials of lying. The two police waited patiently for her to make up her mind.
“I’m sure I gave it to him,” she said finally. Her voice squeaked on the word “gave.”
“Did you make a copy?” Benny wanted to know.
“Well, usually I do.”
She didn’t move to pick up the file from where it sat on top of the cabinet. Benny gestured toward it. “Could you check?”
She had no choice. “Here it is,” she announced.
Benny took the file from her. “What about the visa?” he asked with his trademark eyebrow arch.
“Isn’t it here?” Galit took the file and pretended to search its contents. Now Rania understood the woman’s dilemma. If she accused Gelenter of lying about the passport, he could counter that he did it to protect
her, because the passport contained no visa.
“I felt sorry for her,” Galit said, shifting her eyes from Benny’s face to Rania’s. Maybe her neck was just tired from looking up, Rania thought. Or she hoped another woman would share her soft heart. Rania kept her expression neutral. “She looked very frightened. So many of these girls escape from desperate situations. If I didn’t help her, where could she go?”
“How did she find you?” Rania queried. How likely was it that Nadya simply wandered into an agency where someone would overlook her status out of compassion? But perhaps she had gone door-to-door until she found one.
“She had a recommendation from another girl I placed,” Galit responded. “Mr. Gelenter happened to come in that afternoon. He took a liking to her.”
“Is it common for employers to come into the office?” Benny asked. “I would have thought they would place the order over the phone.”
“Well, yes, most do, but he said he worked nearby and wanted a walk,” Galit said with a shrug. She was trying to be cool, Rania saw, and act like the discussion about her business practices was over. Benny let her sweat, keeping the file in his hands while they talked about other things.
“I trust this was a rare exception,” he said at last, putting the file down on the desk. Galit replaced it in the file cabinet immediately, as if hoping she could make it disappear. If she was smart, Rania thought, she would indeed misplace the papers soon.
The agency was on Ibn Gvirol, not far from the fashionable shopping center at Dizengoff Square. Cafés with outdoor tables lined the sidewalk. Benny pointed to one which looked particularly inviting, with umbrellas providing shade over the spacious tables.
“Let’s eat,” Benny said.
He was a man who liked to be comfortable, Rania reflected. He seemed to think about food almost obsessively, yet he wasn’t fat, just big and strong. Palestinians seldom ate between eight in the morning and four or five in the afternoon. But she looked at the scantily dressed women sitting in high-backed metal chairs with sunglasses on, eating sandwiches and sipping mint lemonades, and thought it might be nice to be one of them for a change. She did not protest when he chose a table right on the sidewalk, and even let him order for her in Hebrew. Here, she didn’t need to worry about being seen with an Israeli man or eating in public. She didn’t know anyone in Tel Aviv.
She removed her hijab and stuffed it into her purse. It was hot, and the sun felt good on her face and hair. Benny raised his eyebrows and that made her regret the gesture, but she wasn’t going to let him see her embarrassed. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. Her face felt a little hot. It got hotter as she had a terrible thought—what if he imagined she was flirting with him?
She pushed her untouched lemonade away and jumped up. “Let’s go,” she said.
He gawked at her in disbelief, which embarrassed her even more.
“Come on!” she said. “It’s late. I have barely seen my son and my husband all week.”
“It’s not even twelve,” he protested. “You’ll have the whole afternoon with them.”
“I don’t like it here,” she said. “It’s bourgeois.”
He laughed, making her wish she could kick him with the high heels on that girl seated over there.
“Sit down,” he said. “Eat your sandwich.”
She stood by the table, feeling foolish, seeing people looking at her, trying to figure out what her problem was. She supposed a Palestinian woman with a Jewish Israeli man was noteworthy enough, and now her raised voice had aroused people’s curiosity. Slowly she sat back down. He was eating with gusto. She had lost whatever appetite she had come with, but she nibbled a little just so he wouldn’t dwell on it.
Chapter 17
Chloe bolted awake. Someone was pounding on her door. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. It was pitch dark outside, but she could see bright lights too. The banging on the door grew more insistent. She got up and threw it open.
“Jesh,” Alaa’s small mouth said soundlessly.
The young girl stood there in her pajamas, clutching her teddy bear, soft brown hair sticking out in every direction. She was visibly shaking. Chloe slipped her feet into sandals, feeling momentarily bad when she looked at Alaa’s bare feet. But Alaa could stay inside if she wanted to, and she could not.
“Jesh where?” she asked. “Here? Hon?” She couldn’t remember how to speak Arabic when she was half asleep.
“Barra.” Outside.
She could hear them now, yelling. She heard a shot and went running downstairs.
Jaber stood in the doorway in his long sleeping robe, talking to a soldier who had guns all over his body. One, of course, was in his hands, both hands on the trigger, the barrel more or less under Jaber’s chin. Jaber appeared cool and composed. Chloe didn’t understand the Hebrew words he was using, but from his gestures, she gathered he was asking to see a warrant. His sons crowded behind him.
She saw five jeeps forming a semi-circle around the house. She could count thirty soldiers, posted every ten feet or so. All of them looked ready to shoot at anything that moved. As she watched, one of them called something to the one next to him. She tensed. The other guy reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter and threw it to his friend, who had to take his hand off his gun to catch it, fumble in his own pocket for a cigarette, and light it.
Chloe stood on the porch, just behind the commander and facing Jaber and his sons. She saw Ahlam come into the room, wearing a loose robe and her hijab, carrying her smallest daughter. The little girl was crying. Ahlam shushed her gently, but that only made her cry louder.
The commander was ordering all the men to come out of the house. “The women and children can stay in this room,” he said.
Jaber disappeared inside, and one of the soldiers charged in after him. They emerged together, Jaber refusing to be hurried, acting like he didn’t even notice the gun prodding his back. Mohammed went with his father immediately, without a word, his chin defiantly jutting out, his chiseled face showing anger mingled with pride. Naeem, at fourteen, wasn’t sure if he qualified as a man, or if he wanted to. He was small for his age, and he could probably have stayed with the women and children if he wanted. Chloe saw him hesitating and said softly in Arabic, “You can stay here if you want.” She thought maybe her saying that pushed him over the edge, certainly not her intent, but he strode out, a little wobbly at first but composing himself so that by the time he reached the other men, he was standing straight and not trembling so anyone could see.
The commander pointed to a spot on the ground, and indicated with his gun that the men should make a single file line. Chloe seethed as he adjusted their positions, just so much space between them. She hesitated, not sure what to do. She wanted to go with them, both to show solidarity—if they must stand out in the chill night air, so would she—and to be there in case the army guys were inclined to violence, but she thought maybe Ahlam and the children needed her more. They certainly looked more frightened than Jaber and the boys, who stood rigidly.
As a compromise, she stood in the doorway and watched the commander examine the male members of the family, asking a question or two, ordering each of the boys to lift the thin t-shirt in which he slept. When he came to Jaber, she feared he would do something horrible, like tell him to lift up his long robe. He hesitated, and she was sure he was considering it. She moved closer, so that she could hear what he was saying. She felt goosebumps covering her forearms, a combination of fear, the cool night air, and the discombobulation of being woken so abruptly from her sleep. She could see the neighbors gathering on their porches, discreetly watching, trying not to miss any details without drawing any attention to themselves.
The commander decided to presume Jaber did not have a bomb under his night clothes, and simply asked him and Mohammed for their IDs. He took for granted that Naeem didn’t have one, so he must have known how young he was, but he did not suggest he go back into the house. Chloe didn’t know what she thought about that. It would h
ave been humiliating for the boy to be sent back to stand with the children, and the commander would know that, so maybe he was actually trying to be nice. It might have just happened, that what he wanted and what the boy wanted coincided at this moment, or he just had bigger things on his mind than playing king of the mountain with a teenager.
Jaber explained that Mohammed, who was tall for his age, was only fifteen also, still too young for ID. Give me yours, the man said, holding out his hand impatiently. His other hand was resting on his gun, finger inches from the trigger.
“Babayit,” Jaber said, gesturing to the house.
“Tavi et hateudot shelo.” Bring his ID, the commander yelled toward Chloe.
“Shu biddo?” What does he want? Ahlam asked tensely.
Chloe whispered to her, and Ahlam turned around and went back to the bedroom. She came back with the ID, along with three sweaters. Chloe took them and went outside. The captain immediately held out his hand for the ID. Chloe ignored him, handing the men the sweaters first. Jaber seemed to approve of her stuntsmanship. He and the boys took their time putting the sweaters on before he reached for the ID and passed it on to the captain.
The commander called another soldier to come and guard the men while he took the ID and went over to one of the jeeps. He took out a cellphone and called in the ID number. While he was on the phone, another man strode over to him. He was not in army uniform, but wearing slacks and a blue shirt. When he moved into the headlights, Chloe saw that it was Benny, the guy who had questioned her at Ariel. Almost at the same moment, he turned and saw her. His eyes popped and he strode over to where she stood.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed.
“Just watching,” she said.
“Who told you we were coming here?”
“No one,” she said. “I live here.”
His eyebrow shot up. “You live here?”
He marched over to Jaber. She followed. “How long has the tourist lived here?” he demanded in Hebrew. The Israelis used the word tayeret, tourist, for a foreigner who was not clearly a worker, but the word always made Chloe bristle. If she was a tourist, why wasn’t she getting to sit around on the beach, drinking piña coladas, and reading novels?