by Kate Raphael
“Yes, well, we believe the girl’s death was just an unfortunate byproduct of a much larger conspiracy. There is a major terror ring operating in your area, did you know that?”
“A major terror ring? Run by some twenty-year-old boys? Please.”
“I have seen twelve-year-old boys with bombs strapped to their chests.”
What did he expect her to say? That that never happened? That she supported such senseless acts of desperation? That she was sorry? There was no answer that made any sense to her. Once more, she said nothing.
He had another word with Benny and then announced that they were going to take their prisoner to Petah Tikva. They would let Benny—he was careful to say it that way, not her and Benny—know if they found out anything relevant to their case.
The smaller SHABAK agent, the one who hadn’t said a word, folded a strip of black cloth over Fareed’s eyes, rather gently brushing his hair off his forehead. He readjusted the handcuffs and asked him in Hebrew if they were too tight.
“Mush khaif,” she found herself saying to him as they guided him out, “inta qawi.” Don’t be afraid, you are strong. She breathed a prayer into the words, to give them truth.
Chapter 20
Chloe had been pleased when Fareed asked her to accompany him and his father to the place where the army was waiting for him. She had fulfilled her role with fervor, arguing when they blindfolded and shackled him, even attempting to climb into the jeep with him. In the end, it had all been as futile as she knew it would be. As she returned home with Jaber, she found herself wishing Avi had been there too. At least then people would have seen that he couldn’t do anything more than she could. Now, she felt they would always wonder. Even she wondered if an Israeli man might have been able to do more. It was unlikely. When they came for someone with twelve jeeps, they were pretty determined to get him.
It was just dusk. The scent of fire filled the air as families gathered around the evening bonfires, which would provide light, an unnecessary added warmth, tea, and bug repellent. She heard the lively chatter of storytellers young and old, mixed with frequent laughter. She felt a pang, hearing the happy voices. Would anyone be happy to see her in this village again? Or would they always be thinking, “She is the one who let them take Fareed away to the SHABAK”?
Abu Ziyad, the DCL, was waiting on the porch when they got home. Jaber said a hasty goodbye to her and went to sit with his friend. Chloe sensed from the big man’s demeanor that it was not a social visit. She kept an ear to the open window, and when she heard them saying goodbye, she ran downstairs to catch Jaber before he went inside.
“Was he here about Fareed?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t overstepping her rights.
“Yes.”
He sat down in one of the plastic chairs scattered around. The ashtrays on the little plastic stool that served as a table were overflowing with butts.
“Tfaddali,” he said.
She paused. She heard “tfaddali” a hundred times in a normal day, and it could mean so many things. It always made her think about growing up in the South and hearing “y’all come,” knowing that the people saying that would fall over where they stood if you ever showed up. Tfaddali was often like that. Did Jaber mean it that way, or did he really want to talk to her? She couldn’t read him. But she didn’t want to be alone, so she sat down.
He lit a cigarette, unaware that he already had one half-smoked in his other hand. His hand shook a little as he held the lighter. She imagined he had not been this upset since his own arrest. He smoked in silence for a while.
“Did you know Fareed was going to come back?” she asked.
More silence, then he shook his head. “No, but I thought so. I sent him a text message that they were looking for him.”
“You wanted him to be arrested?” That could not be what he meant. She must have misunderstood.
“Many of our young men are in prison,” he said. “Maybe Fareed has to take his turn.”
She could not believe what she was hearing. Jaber had talked to her more than once about his arrest and imprisonment, the torture he endured from the SHABAK and the army interrogators. She knew he would never want his son to experience one second of that horror.
When the army drove into the village at night and left with other people’s kids, every parent simultaneously ached for their neighbors and thanked Allah that their own children were safe. Jaber could only mean one thing: that he thought Fareed might be guilty of something. But guilty of what? Killing Nadya? Involvement in the plot with the explosives, whatever it was? Would Jaber think the former worse than the latter, because it would have been a crime of passion, not an act of war? Or would he be more upset about the latter, because it could harm his reputation as a leader of nonviolent resistance in the area?
She thought about how to ask, and even if she had a right to ask. She decided to wait. Jaber sat for a long time, smoking and cradling his chin in one cupped hand. Then he started to talk, more to himself than her.
“Fareed was not even two years old when I was arrested,” he began. She knew this, but she listened intently anyway. “They came here in the middle of the night. He woke up and cried, but the soldiers would not allow my wife to go take him from his crib.”
He went over the familiar ground: how they had pulled him from his bed, not even giving him time to put on regular clothes, only letting Ahlam throw a coat over his pajamas before they cuffed him so tightly that he cried out, causing Fareed to cry louder. How they had driven him around for hours, just so that he would have lots of time to worry about where they were going and what would happen to him, and how they told him that when they got where they were going, they would kill him. How they beat him with their guns when he tried to sit up, how they kept him in a room for days, refusing him a bathroom, screaming at him, standing on his neck until he thought it would break, kicking him in the area of his kidneys and laughing at him when he finally lost control of his bladder. He pointed out the long scar on his arm where the captain had grazed his skin with a knife and then literally poured salt in the wound.
Suddenly he changed direction, talking about the first time that Ahlam brought Fareed to visit him in Ansar III, the biggest prison, in the desert. Always before Ahlam had come alone, he said, and had told Fareed that his father was in Jordan, working. But Fareed had begun asking for him relentlessly, so she decided it was better to let him see his father, even in prison. She tried telling him that they were going to meet Jaber at the checkpoint between Palestine and Jordan, which was why there would be so many soldiers and wire fences around. They never knew if Fareed believed her, but he did not question it. Jaber held Fareed on his lap, he said, and told him how much he loved his country and that he must always put Palestine first, even before his family.
“Always I told him, never do anything that might hurt your people.”
When he said nothing more for more than five minutes, she decided to try asking what she wanted to know.
“Do you think there’s some connection between this Nadya and the explosives they found?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t think… but it seems strange, that this girl dies, and suddenly they are saying Fareed is involved with guns.”
She tried to piece together where his mind was going, and forbade herself to point out that they were saying he was connected with explosives, not guns.
“You think she could have been working for the Israelis?”
“Abu Ziyad said that she was,” he answered.
“How does he know?”
“The Israeli DCL told him.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Why would he lie?”
She pondered this. Why would the Israeli DCL lie to his Palestinian counterpart? But then again, why would he tell him the truth? It seemed like dangerous knowledge to spread around in the villages, that the Israeli government was sending foreign spies. Unless…
Don’t be absurd, she told herse
lf sternly. The Israeli government wouldn’t have made up a story like that just to alienate her from the villagers.
It was more logical that Nadya was sent by the Israelis to get information from Fareed and that’s why she was killed, than that the Israeli army just happened to be looking for Fareed at the same time a girl he was involved with just happened to be killed. But if that was the case, then that meant… She couldn’t imagine Fareed killing a woman, even if she turned out to be a collaborator. She couldn’t imagine Fareed being involved in a plot to blow anything up either, though he had been growing more depressed and nihilistic in the last months.
“If she was a spy and Fareed found out, do you think he could have…?” she asked Jaber, holding her breath for the answer. She willed him to say no, mustahil, impossible. But he said nothing, just sat puffing on yet another cigarette.
* * *
Rania was tired and took a private taxi from Qarawa. She had never seen the SHABAK in action before. It was a name that got whispered when people didn’t show up where they were supposed to be. In the days after her brothers were arrested, she heard her parents and neighbors say that they were with the SHABAK, and everyone would get silent for a few seconds, knowing what that meant. Seeing them in person had unsettled her. On one hand, they were no longer a ghostly presence, they were just big, distasteful men with short tempers. On the other, they knew her name now, and that made them a bigger threat to her. She didn’t want to think about what Fareed was enduring now. She wanted to hold Khaled and help him put the kite together.
She thought uneasily about Bassam. When she had left in the morning, he didn’t even say goodbye. He would be relieved that she wasn’t spending the night in Eilat, but his suspicions would still lie between them. She was not going to apologize for wanting to do her job well. If he thought hanging out with an Israeli policeman was her idea of a good time, he didn’t know her at all.
She had been walking quickly up the walkway of her house, anxious to see Khaled. Now, anticipating a chilly reception from Bassam, she slowed. She heard a distant whistle, and seconds later, the street was full of children and young men, running to throw stones at the army. Many of them clutched slingshots, some crafted out of carved wood and leather, others assembled from branches and rubber bands. She watched them idly, recalling her own slingshot-wielding days, but then she glimpsed a familiar, slightly bowlegged figure among them.
She started toward her son, meaning to scoop him up in her arms and carry him into the house and slam the door. But then she stopped, the image of Fareed blindfolded and in chains warring with the image of herself at eight, standing right in front of the jeeps and waving a forbidden Palestinian flag. Khaled is too young for this, she thought. No Palestinian child is too young, her dead brother’s voice responded. She trotted along behind the youths, straining a little for breath. She was not used to this. Other women were drifting out of their houses as well. Most simply stood in their doorways, but a few fell into step with her. If it became a genuine melee, even some of them might be gathering stones and passing them to the young men. Fortunately, today was not the day when she would need to choose. A double whistle announced that the jeeps had gone, or maybe it was a false alarm. The youths strolled back in small groups, laughing, teasing each other about who had been in front and who behind. Khaled spotted her and ran to be picked up, not yet self-conscious about wanting his mother.
“Atini shantatik.” Give me your bag, he demanded, reaching for her purse. She handed it to him, and he quickly found the brightly colored kite.
“What is it?” he asked. His little face revealed some disappointment. She wondered what he had hoped for.
“I will show you,” she said. “It is something that flies.” She made a flying motion with her hand.
She carried him into the house, where Bassam was waiting just inside the door. Probably he had been looking out the kitchen window, which faced the street. She hoped that meant he had made something for dinner. She didn’t feel like cooking.
“Aja jesh?” he asked. Did the army come?
“No.” She kissed him on the cheek and passed Khaled into his arms.
“What do you have here?” he asked his son.
“Something to fly with,” Khaled answered.
“Nice,” Bassam said. “We can fly together.”
He unwrapped the kite and showed Khaled how to fit the pieces together. “Mama, it’s a bird!” Khaled cried when he saw the toy assembled.
He was already running for the door, trailing the kite string behind him. Rania worried that he would let it go and they would spend the next week chasing it around the hills of western Salfit.
“I’m with him,” Bassam assured her, dashing after his son. They spent the next half hour taking the kite around to show Khaled’s various cousins and playmates, while she scrambled eggs and potatoes for their dinner. Bassam had, apparently, been thinking about dinner because a cucumber and two tomatoes sat out on the counter with a knife, but that was as far as he had gotten.
While she cooked, she thought about what she would tell him about her day, especially the encounter with the SHABAK, and that poor boy from Azzawiya. But when Khaled was finally asleep and she was alone with her husband, she found herself only telling funny stories about Benny, and describing the blue blue sea in Eilat. She told him all about the jewelry store and how she had decided on the kite.
“Why didn’t you stay the night?” he asked.
She wondered if she should say that she had insisted on coming back. That would make him happy, but omission was one thing, and lying another. She couldn’t stand to tell him that she had sat in an Israeli police station— inside Ariel, where both of them righteously refused to go—and watched the SHABAK brutalize a boy from the next village. No doubt he would hear about the arrest tomorrow, and the village grapevine being what it was, he might even hear that she had been there. He would be angry that she had not told him, but she would deal with that when and if it came.
“Benny needed to get back,” she said.
Chapter 21
Up ahead, Fareed saw the barbed wire fence looming. He ran toward it. He glanced behind him, trying not to look like he was looking. The soldiers were very far behind him. He pushed his legs a little faster, he was almost there. If he could stretch his legs a little farther, go a little quicker, he would be free. He wasn’t sure how he would get out, there was no gate that he could see, but somehow he knew that once he got to the fence it would open for him. He ran and ran, but the fence didn’t seem to get any closer. Every time he looked up, it was the same distance ahead, just out of his reach. He leapt over terrace after terrace, and tripped on a loose stone. He was falling, the ground rising quickly to meet his nose.
Someone was pulling him up. He looked up, confused. Two men were raising him from the cot where he was lying, half on, half off, one leg shackled to the cot’s iron frame, one arm cuffed to a metal ring far above his head. One of the policemen reached up and unlocked the handcuff. Fareed rotated his shoulder, massaging his neck with his free hand. The relief was brief. They put a heavy burlap sack over his head, cuffed both hands tightly behind him, unshackled his leg and yelled at him in Hebrew to stand up, “Kum!” He tried to obey, but his body would not cooperate. He had not slept more than one hour at a time in four days. His head swam, and his legs buckled. The two men’s strong hands kept him from sinking back onto the cot. His legs still would not move. One of the policemen stood behind him and placed one knee behind Fareed’s, forcing him to walk. Slowly, he remembered how to do it.
They had not asked him any questions. They had only kept him in these uncomfortable positions, and when he started to fall asleep anyway from exhaustion, they beat on the bars of his cell with heavy metal instruments. Once when that didn’t keep him awake, they threw cold water on his body and left him shivering in his freezing wet clothes for many hours.
Now they led him through a door. “Hinei hu,” one said. Here he is. So someone in that r
oom was waiting for him. They shoved him into a hard wooden chair. He lost his balance and tipped sideways, his head nearly hitting the ground before they righted him. One of his captors snickered.
“Shush,” said a voice across the table. “Remove the bag,” said the voice and suddenly he could see the man sitting there, looking relaxed and cheerful, with a cup of coffee in front of him, next to a pile of manila folders. The coffee was fresh, Fareed could tell. A bit of steam rose from the cup, and he could smell it. It wasn’t Arabic coffee, it was the bitter type the Israelis called caffe shachor, black coffee, but he would gladly take it right now.
“The handcuffs also are unnecessary,” the coffee drinker said and his hands were freed. He rubbed the red welts on his wrists.
“Would you like coffee, Fareed?” the man asked in Arabic. His Arabic was not like what the Palestinians spoke, but it was not the fractured Arabic you usually heard from Israelis. It sounded like the Arabic you heard on television. The man must have grown up speaking Arabic—probably an Iraqi Jew. That didn’t make Fareed like him any better, but at least if he was going to have an unpleasant conversation, he wouldn’t have to struggle to understand what his torturer wanted to know.
This man wasn’t acting like a torturer. He was rummaging in the corner, where there were an electric kettle and some ceramic mugs. In a minute, he brought Fareed the coffee, with a sugar bowl and a spoon, so he could sweeten it himself. Fareed added two sugars and gulped the hot liquid until it burned his throat. It felt so good. He tried not to hate himself for his weakness. He had grown up on the stories of his father’s interrogations, and those of his father’s friends. You didn’t take anything they offered, because that let them know you were weak, gave them desires they could use to get what they wanted from you. But he had not chosen this life. He was not an activist. He didn’t even know what the interrogators wanted. No one would suffer because he drank their coffee.