by Kate Raphael
Benny was watching the road with one eye and handling the wheel with one hand, simultaneously checking a map. They veered away from the water, and before long were in a section of town where all you could see were tenement complexes, dirty children, and trash. He stopped the car in front of a nondescript housing bloc that looked exactly like all the others on the street. He rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. He rang again, this time leaning on the bell for a long time. Rania was about to suggest that Alexandra wasn’t home when the door opened a crack. A thin face peeked out from behind a chain lock.
“Da?” the woman asked. Apparently Russian was the lingua franca in these parts.
“Politsia,” Benny knew at least one word of Russian. He held his badge up to the slight opening in the door. The woman closed the door and then opened it wide, admitting them.
Alexandra Marininova was in her late twenties, Rania estimated. She was attractive in an amply endowed, bleached blonde sort of way. She spoke no English and her Hebrew sounded like none Rania had ever heard. She had to struggle to understand her, but as the woman spoke very slowly, she made out most of what she had to say.
“Have you ever seen this girl?” Benny produced one of the photos they had taken from Nir Gelenter’s house. Alexandra looked closely and shook her head.
“Or any of these other people?” He brought out the pictures of Nadya with friends in Eilat. The woman looked at one after another, shaking her head, but her gaze lingered on one of them.
“You know someone?” The eagerness in Benny’s voice was palpable. Clearly, he had not believed this errand would lead them anywhere, any more than she had. But now he was practically falling off the couch, leaning forward to scrutinize the photo along with Ms. Marininova.
“Him,” she said, pointing to a portly man in dark glasses. He looked about fifty, with thinning brown hair. He had one arm around Nadya and one around another young woman. They were standing in front of a beachfront hotel, with palm trees rising behind them.
“Who is he? Where do you know him from?”
“I don’t know who he is. But he comes into the restaurant where I work sometimes.”
“You are sure you do not know his name, or where he lives?”
“No. He orders a sandwich with chips, I bring it to him. That’s all.”
“Does he come often?”
“Not often. From time to time.” It wasn’t much to go on. They could be here for days, waiting for him to get a craving for that particular sandwich.
“Do you know how this girl”—Benny pointed to Nadya’s photo—“got your passport, with her picture on it?”
Alexandra was genuinely shocked. No, she insisted. She had no idea. She never saw Nadya before. She never gave anyone her passport.
“Was your purse ever stolen, did you lose your passport?” Benny suggested.
“Only years ago, in Russia. But that passport would be no good by now.”
Benny’s cellphone played its stupid little song. He answered it on the second go-round.
“Beemet?” he sounded excited. “Matai?” Really? When? He hung up after a few more terse questions.
“Thank you,” he said to Alexandra. “We’ll go now.” By the time Rania had grabbed her purse and flown out the door, he was unlocking the car.
“They found the Azzawiya kid,” he said. “We need to go back.”
“But what about this man? Shouldn’t we try to find him?”
“There may be no need,” he said. “If there is, we’ll have to come back.”
Her stomach churned. Please, please, don’t let it be this kid, she begged the cosmos. Make it be the man in the sunglasses.
“Wait,” she said, as he pulled away from the curb.
He turned to her, head inclined, waiting.
“I need to get a present for my son,” she said. He looked pointedly at his watch. She stared back at him, not giving an inch.
“We need to make it fast,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”
“How should I know? I’ve never been here before. You tell me.”
“What kind of thing would he want?”
“I don’t know—something special to this part of the land.”
“You know Eilat stones?”
“Yes, well, we have another name for them, but I know what you mean.”
“I know a place—but jewelry would be more for a girl.”
“Let’s go.”
He drove maniacally, weaving in and out of the buzzing traffic, and turned onto the street that went along the sea. Rania gazed out at the white sails bobbing along on the gentle green waves, wondering what it would be like to be on one of them, with nothing but water around her for kilometers. He pulled up in front of a shop which had a huge picture of a ring on the sign that hung perpendicular to its window. “Top Quality—Low Prices,” read the sign in English. The Hebrew one she couldn’t read, but she imagined it said the same. Or maybe it said, “Stay Away—This Place Is Only for Sucker Tourists.” No way to know. She would have to trust Benny.
The clerk, a dark-skinned Israeli in his early twenties, with curly hair very like her husband’s, was helping two skinny American women in short shorts with blonde hair and leathery brown wrinkly faces. The two women haggled with the man for a while, then walked out without buying anything. Rania picked up a bracelet. The stones were okay, but from close up, she could see the settings were sloppy. The sterling was new and made to look old, probably with bleach.
“I don’t see anything good here,” she told Benny.
“Wait a second,” he told her. He explained to the young man in rapid Hebrew what she wanted. The shopkeeper nodded and disappeared into the back.
He came out with a black velvet rack, holding several rows of silver bracelets inlaid with the copper-based turquoise-malachite stone unique to the Red Sea port of ancient Palestine. This was the good stuff, she could see, real antique silver. She picked up one and studied it, the thin metal bands framing the stone. It would be much too big for Khaled now, but he would treasure it… She looked into the eyes of the young Arab Jew, trying to work out if he was someone she could trust, but how could she really trust any of them, these enemies of her people?
“Qaddesh?” she asked him softly in Arabic.
“Miit shekel,” he answered her. “Really, madam, this is the best place in the land for these stones.”
One hundred shekels was a lot of money. The piece was probably worth it, but she didn’t like the idea of giving so much to this Israeli. She glanced out at the sea, which looked so much like the stone she held. On the beach, tourists played volleyball in bathing suits, and a group of young boys ran back and forth trailing a kite. They ran and ran and the kite finally got airborne, soaring in and out of the palm trees like a crazed bird. Abruptly, she put the bracelet down on the counter.
“Laa, shukran.” No thanks, she said to the young man, leaving him and Benny staring at her in shock. Quickly, she walked two shops to her left, and saw what she was looking for. It was a generic beach store, with lots of tourist kitsch, hats, sunglasses, those little license plates with people’s names on them in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The kites were standing in a big barrel, and she went through them quickly, picking a fanciful orange and blue dragon-bird. She didn’t know if Khaled and his friends would really use it, but she hoped so. She liked the idea of them running fast and thrusting their winged creature into the air to careen above the clouds.
Chapter 19
Benny drove fast on the northbound superhighway. On the way, he shared what scant information he had gotten from his colleague on the phone. There was no great drama involved in Fareed’s capture. He had come home and an informer in the village had gotten word of his return to the army commander for the area. The captain had called Jaber Haddad and told him that they knew his son was in the village. They told him they had men at every exit from the village, and gave Fareed ten minutes to come to a house on the main road. If he did not turn himself in, they warned,
they would come to the house and make a scene that would be unpleasant for Fareed’s little brothers and sisters.
He had arrived at the designated place, accompanied by his father and the American woman, Chloe. The American woman, Benny reported, had tried to get into the jeep with Fareed. Benny seemed to find this very amusing. Rania found it endearing, if quixotic. She wondered if Chloe really had any idea what happened at SHABAK interrogation centers. If so, she was brave even to want to be nearby when it was going on.
She remembered that she wanted to find out more about what Chloe was doing here. Would Benny tell her what he knew? Probably not, but she couldn’t see any downside in asking.
“What was Chloe doing in the police station the other day?” she asked.
“Some border police picked her up at a checkpoint. They said she was making problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Talking to a suspect they were detaining.”
“What’s so terrible about that?”
“Would you want some random person interfering with a suspect you were holding?”
She hadn’t thought about that at all. She couldn’t imagine that happening. “It’s not the same,” she said.
“What’s different about it?”
She wondered how to explain. If the Palestinian police arrested someone, which didn’t happen often, there were usually lots of people around. They didn’t try to hide what they were doing from the people.
“If we take someone away, it’s because the community wants that person taken away,” she said. “So people wouldn’t interfere.”
“Well, what if a settler came along and tried to talk to that person?”
“Okay, I see your point.”
She had no chance to ask more about his conversation with Chloe because he was pulling into the parking lot at Ariel police station. The station was crawling with so many Israeli men, there were not enough places for them all to sit. They walked around talking on cellphones, some in Hebrew, some in Russian, some in shouting. Six of them occupied the small room where Fareed was handcuffed to a wooden chair. Four of these wore blue uniforms like Benny’s. The others wore plain clothes, jeans and baggy t-shirts; one wore a leather jacket despite the heat. Those would be the SHABAK guys. They were not talking to Fareed, and they did not talk to Rania either when she entered with Benny. Benny was immediately drawn into a huddle with the two SHABAK agents and the two Russian policemen. One of the other policemen sat at the table, filling out forms. The only one she knew, besides Benny, was the Arab policeman called Ali. He was simply sitting in a corner, watching everyone. She supposed he would be the interpreter when they got around to talking to Fareed.
Fareed was a nice-looking young man with wavy black hair and the angular cheekbones she recognized as his father’s genetic contribution. At twenty, he still had the look of a teenager, attesting to his status as the pampered oldest son of a privileged household. There was a recent gash above his left eyebrow. She assumed that had been a gift from the army unit who transported him here. His hands were cuffed behind him with metal bracelets, the wrists starting to swell.
Rania went over to where he sat.
“Marhaba,” she said softly.
“Marhabteen,” he responded.
“Kul ishi tamam?” She cringed at herself, asking, Is everything okay? Of course it was not okay. But he knew what she meant.
“Tamam.”
“Shu sar hon?” she asked, indicating the wound on his forehead.
“Jesh,” he said with a shrug, including all the men in the room in a quick sweep of his eyes.
“Do you want something for it?”
He shook his head. “My hands hurt,” he told her. She nodded.
Rania went over to the Arab policeman, Ali. “Can’t you free his hands now?” she asked. “Where could he go, with so many policemen here?”
“I’ll see,” he told her.
He went and spoke with the man who was filling out the forms. Then he tapped the tallest man, who was in the huddle with Benny, on the shoulder, and they spoke quietly for a minute. The tall man made a “wait” gesture with his hands and continued his heated conversation with the others. Ali shrugged at her and returned to his corner.
Rania decided that if no one else was interested in questioning Fareed, she might as well seize the opportunity. She sat close to his left shoulder, so they could talk without being overheard.
“I asked him about the cuffs,” she told him, “but I guess they are busy.”
“Maalesh.” It doesn’t matter, he said.
“How did you know Nadya?” she asked.
He looked at her in surprise. “She was my friend.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No! I told you, she was my friend.” His eyes started to fill with water. He squinted and looked away. She felt bad for him, that his hands were unavailable to brush away the tears.
“Then why did you run away?”
He turned to fully face her now, studying her face. “Miin inti?” he asked suddenly. Who are you?
“Shorta Falastinia.” Palestinian police.
“Why are you here? With them?”
“I am not with them. I am getting information from them,” she said shortly.
The two SHABAK guys swooped down on her. “What are you doing? Who are you? How did you get in here?”
She thought for a moment that they might arrest her. One of them put a heavy hand on her arm. She noticed the serpent tattooed along his bulging muscle. Benny intervened before she could do anything rash. He took Snake Tattoo aside in a genial fashion, a hand on his shoulder, and she fumed as she heard them laughing together.
When he turned back to her, Snake Tattoo put his hands deliberately behind his back, as if he couldn’t trust himself not to grab her.
“What did he tell you?” he asked, standing just too close to her. She could vaguely smell the stale cigarette smoke on his breath.
“Nothing. We were just chatting.” She did not like this man, and he had no right to make her feel she was breaking some law by doing her job.
“What are you doing here?” she shot at him.
“That is not your business. This man is a security prisoner, and you don’t talk to him unless we say you can.”
“Look,” she said to Snake Tattoo, who was about to light his eleventh cigarette since they had entered the room. “I’m not interested in whatever your investigation is. I just want to know about his connection with the dead foreigner whose body was found in our lands. Let us talk to him first—” Belatedly, it occurred to her that maybe she should have consulted Benny before laying out a strategy for them. But now that she had begun, best to plow ahead. “And when we’re done, you can take him down to your dungeons and place sacks over his head and give him electric shocks or whatever it is that you specialize in.”
Tattoo wouldn’t be mollified. “I know how to work a suspect,” he told her. “I don’t need any suggestions from you.”
He went over to talk to Benny, leaving his sidekick between her and Fareed. She decided she was through being bounced around, ignored, bullied, ignored again, like a yo-yo that would stay all the way down until you gave it the right wrist action to yank it back up. She deliberately crossed to stand at Benny’s left shoulder. To her chagrin and embarrassment, he turned slightly so that his back was to her. They continued their conspiratorial stage whispering, and she could not make out much of their Hebrew. One of the others said something about sandwiches and two of them left the room. The ones who remained continued whatever they were doing, apparently oblivious of all the drama around them.
She tried to think what a more patient person, like Captain Mustafa or Bassam, would do now. She sat down opposite Fareed. She rummaged in her purse for a nail file, astonishingly found one, and started to buff her strong finger nails with it. When she looked up, she saw Fareed studying her. She smiled at him briefly, then looked back to her task.
Snake Tattoo came o
ver and sat down next to her. He sat a little too close, but she would never let him make her move. She sat stock still and refused to look up from her filing.
“Benny tells me you are from Mas’ha?” She could almost smell his struggle to strike a polite tone.
“I am from Aida camp. My husband is from Mas’ha.”
“Forgive me. But you live in Mas’ha now.”
It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t feel any need to answer it.
“You’re from Azzawiya, right?” he asked Fareed in a harsher voice.
Fareed might have been following her lead, or his own inclinations, but he did not answer either. He also might not have understood, because the man spoke English, and still no one had ascertained whether Fareed knew English. The agent strode over to Fareed, hauling him with one hand, as far out of the chair as he could go with his hands still cuffed to one of its rungs. She felt the punch he delivered to Fareed’s chin as if it had hit her own skin.
“I’m talking to you!” he said to punctuate his physical communication. But just in case it was a language problem, he asked this time in Arabic, “Min Azzawiya, inta?”
“Atah kevar yodea et zeh.” You already know that, Fareed said dispassionately in Hebrew.
The man jerked him once more before letting go and letting him thud back into the chair. He returned to sit next to her again.
“Do you know him?”
“Do you think I would tell you if I did?”
“Look, lady, if you don’t want to talk to me nicely, as a colleague, I can arrange for us to talk somewhere less pleasant.”
“It’s unnecessary for you to explain to me how your kind operate,” she said evenly. “I have heard a lot about your organization from colleagues of mine. It is also unnecessary for you to make threats. I am not hiding anything from you. I don’t know this boy or his family, and until a few minutes ago, I believed I wanted the same thing as you—to find out the truth about a young woman’s murder. Now I wonder if you have some other agenda I should know about.”