Murder Under the Bridge

by Kate Raphael

  The principal told her to empty her pockets. She turned them inside out, so he could see that there was nothing there but ten shekels, a bobby pin, and the fortune from a bubble gum wrapper. He told her to open the top of her desk, and she did, and he looked through all her books and notebooks, and then he told her to open her school bag. She did.

  He told her to take everything out of her bag. She put a textbook on the desk, and then the four pamphlets from Btselem, and then immediately put another textbook on top, and her notebooks on top of that. The principal picked up the empty bag, turned it over, unbuckled the outside pocket, where she kept pencils and a hairbrush, and for a minute she hoped that he would ignore the books. But when he was done with the bag, he picked up the notebooks and flipped through them, even stopping for a minute to read a little of the story she was working on, and then he flipped through the textbook and then he picked up the first pamphlet.

  From the look on his face, you would have thought that she had had the money folded up in the pamphlet. He curled his fist around the pages, brandishing it at her like a club. “Where did you get this?” he thundered.

  She looked down at the floor, willing herself not to cry. All the other students were staring at her. She saw the girls with desks nearest to hers craning their necks to see what it was that the principal held in his hands, but they couldn’t make it out. She bet they thought it was dirty magazines. She wasn’t sure what to say—“a strange woman gave them to me”?—and anyway, she didn’t see why she had to tell him. She thought it might be one of those questions you really didn’t have to answer, so she stayed quiet, to see if he would forget about it.

  He didn’t. He put down the pamphlet he had crumpled up, and picked up the others. He seemed particularly upset about the little one with the triangle on it, the one Chloe had said was for soldiers. The principal leaned into her face.

  “Do you know what this is?” he yelled.

  She wasn’t sure how to answer. She didn’t exactly know what it was, because she hadn’t read it yet, but she didn’t necessarily want to admit that. But if she said yes, he might ask her about it, and she wouldn’t really be able to answer him. So she again said nothing. It was a mistake, because he thought she was being smart. He grabbed her arm. “Come!” he snapped.

  “Bring these,” he ordered, indicating that she should put all the books back into her bag and bring it with her. They walked out to the office, her, the principal, and the teacher. Apparently, he had forgotten all about the missing money. She didn’t think she should remind him. If she was going to get in so much trouble anyway, then someone else might as well not.

  In the school office, he told her to sit in a chair near the secretary, while he and her teacher, Dvora, went through another door, into his office. She waited a long time. She could hear them talking in the office, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then Dvora came out and put a hand on Malkah’s shoulder and told her not to worry, everything would be all right. Dvora was in her early thirties, pretty, with wavy light-brown hair covered by a black net and eyes that sparkled when she talked about certain books she liked. She was going to have a baby in about five months, and that made her face rounder and shinier. She liked Malkah because she was smart and paid attention in class. Dvora left to go back to the class, and the principal came out and called Malkah to come into his office.

  He told her that he had called her father, who was coming from work. Dvora had told him she was a good student, he said, trying to look benevolent but failing.

  “Give me the pamphlets,” he said. She handed them to him, and he put them to the side, without even looking at them. It was a good thing she had nearly finished reading all of them, because she didn’t think she would get them back.

  “Tell me,” he said, “who gave you these?”

  “Just someone I met,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “Someone you met where?”

  “In the schoolyard,” she said truthfully.

  He looked concerned at that, and demanded to know exactly when and where she had met Chloe. He asked her to describe the person, and she was too afraid to think of describing a whole different kind of person. She tried to modify a few details, but she thought that if Chloe showed up in the settlement again, she would probably get in trouble. She had better warn Chloe not to come. She couldn’t, though, because she had no way to reach her.

  “Why did you want to read something like this?” he asked her.

  “Because I want to know more about our country,” she said. She was proud of that answer. Who could argue with wanting to know more about your own country?

  He sighed. “I understand,” he said, but he didn’t look like he did. “But this is not information. This is propaganda.”

  “Well, that’s how you see it,” she said. “Some people would say that this is propaganda”—indicating a flier posted on his wall announcing a big settler demonstration in Jerusalem, protesting the government’s planned evacuation of settlements in Gaza. Elkana was chartering buses so everyone in the settlement could go.

  “Maybe this is propaganda,” she said, waving her history textbook at him.

  She couldn’t believe that she was talking like this to the principal, but she was on a roll.

  “Even this is propaganda,” she said lifting her Tanach, a small copy of the three sections of the Jewish Bible, the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.

  Her timing was unfortunate. The principal’s mouth dropped slightly open, and the door also opened. Her father was standing there, just in time to hear his daughter call the holiest book in Judaism “propaganda.”

  Her father took two giant steps from the door to where she stood. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her so hard that when he let go, she fell onto the desk.

  “How dare you,” he hissed at her.

  Grabbing her bookbag, she turned and ran out of the office and out of the school.

  Outside, she squinted in the sunlight. School was over for the day, and students were pouring out the doors. There were many doors, doors on both sides, just like Ali’s house, she reflected. She walked a few hundred meters, then stopped, wondering where to go. She didn’t want to go home. Even her mother would probably know about what had happened. Maybe even her grandmother, who adored her and brought her her favorite lemon shortbread every day, would find out and be angry at her.

  With everyone so angry at her, it was hard not to feel she had done something wrong. But in her heart, she didn’t feel she had. Even if the Btselem material was propaganda, she had a right to decide for herself what to believe.

  She wandered around aimlessly for a while, but she didn’t want to run into any of the kids from her class, who would either tease her, or would want to know what happened in the principal’s office, and how much trouble she was in. After a while, she went home. Her father was already there. He called her into his study. The principal, he told her, thought this incident could jeopardize her chances to get into the best religious boarding school.

  “And that could have an effect on your entire future,” her father pronounced somberly.

  For some reason, instead of feeling afraid, Malkah felt a little ripple of excitement in her chest, like maybe that would lead to some kind of adventure. But that in turn made her uneasy. Was she turning into a “bad kid,” in front of her own eyes and without any choice in the matter?

  “Who is the woman who gave you these books?” her father asked her.

  “I don’t really know her. I just met her one day, and she asked if I wanted something to read.”

  He didn’t look like he believed her, even though it was not very far from the truth. But he didn’t press it.

  “If you see her again, do not talk to her. Tell her that if she comes near you again, she will be arrested,” he instructed. He leaned forward. “You know, Malkah, I am very progressive with you.”

  “I guess,” she said, because it was expected.

  “Some people th
ink I shouldn’t let you go to Tel Aviv for ice skating lessons,” he said. She took ice skating lessons every Wednesday, at the big rink in Tel Aviv where the Olympic ice skaters practiced. She went there on the bus by herself, and afterwards, her father picked her up and drove her home. It was their special time together, because she was the oldest.

  “The policeman who came here last week asked why I allowed a gentile to take care of my children. He suggested that Nadya might have had a corrupting influence on you all. I told him it was ridiculous, because we are a family of very strong Jewish values. But now, I wonder if I was wrong.”

  “Dad, Nadya didn’t change my values. I didn’t spend that much time with her. Not like you did.”

  Her father looked down. He blew air into his cheeks and the space behind his lips. He opened the desk drawer and shoved it closed with the heel of his hand. When he spoke, he sounded like he did when she heard him talking on the phone to someone at work.

  “I don’t want you talking to anyone you don’t know. If anyone comes around here trying to talk to you, I expect you to let me know right away. If I hear about any more trouble at school, you won’t be allowed to go ice skating any more. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. For some reason, the fact that he was mad cheered her.

  “Good. We won’t talk about it any more.”

  She got up to leave. “Wait a second,” he said.

  She turned around. He was holding out to her the Btselem booklets, even the crumpled up one. “How …?” she asked.

  “I told the principal I would discuss them with you after you finish reading them.”

  She smiled a small smile at him, and took them from his hand. She went into her room and lay on her bed and finished reading the one about Ali. Someday, she decided, she would find him and tell him about today, and they would become friends.

  Chapter 26

  Rania was lucky with the roads. Beit Hanina was a bustling town nestled between the Ar-Ram and Qalandia checkpoints, the one marking the edge of Jerusalem and the other sealing off Ramallah. Shira Zohari had told her to look for the Dalla Rent-A-Car. She easily found it, and next to it was a building that housed a dozen nongovernmental organizations. Shira Zohari was waiting inside a little office where faded posters covered the peeling walls.

  She was a short, plump woman, about Rania’s age. She tapped the eraser of a pencil compulsively on the desk as she talked.

  “I’m sorry to make you travel so far,” she said, as Rania gratefully accepted a cup of tea. The cookies she offered were stale, but Rania ate one anyway. She had eaten nothing all day except the little sweet in Jenin, and she was very hungry. “I couldn’t be sure you were really who you said you were,” Zohari continued.

  “Who did you think I might be?” Rania asked.

  “Who knows?” the lawyer responded with a wave of her hand. “The families who received settlements from the army signed confidentiality agreements. And so did I. If any of us violate the agreement, everyone has to return the money. So you see, I can tell you nothing about the settlement. Only what I said on the phone.”

  “What I’m trying to understand is why only those five families were compensated, out of all the people hurt in the siege,” Rania said.

  “I don’t know that they were the only ones,” Zohari said. “They were the only ones I represented, but there could have been other cases.”

  “How did you get in touch with those families?” she asked.

  “Through Btselem. One of their investigators made a report on the incident. He contacted me.” The cousin of Abu Saif. The incident, she had said, not the incidents.

  “Were they all hit by the missile attack on April 7?” Rania asked.

  “I have told you, I cannot talk about this case,” Zohari answered. Rania was stupefied. Surely the woman had not brought her all this way to tell her nothing. But she couldn’t think of another question to ask. She sipped her tea and made small talk for a few minutes, asking the woman where she lived (the West Jerusalem neighborhood of German Colony), how many children she had (one boy, one girl, both in grade school), where she came from (a kibbutz outside of Haifa). She finished the tea and got up to go.

  “Have you ever heard of Yuri Shabtai?” Zohari asked suddenly.

  “No, who is that?” Rania sat back down.

  “No one. I was just curious.”

  “He must be someone or you wouldn’t have asked.”

  “Perhaps you want to look him up,” was all the lawyer would say. Rania thanked her and left.

  * * *

  Bassam was home when she arrived, playing “guess which hand the shekel is in” with Khaled at the dining table. She kissed them both on the cheeks before going into the kitchen to start dinner.

  “I got mlochia,” she called to Bassam. The soup made from mlochia, Egyptian spinach, was his favorite. She dumped the dark-green, pointy leaves into a big pot and filled it with water, then laid out a cloth to dry it on.

  “Did you get it in Jenin?” Bassam asked from the kitchen doorway.

  “No, Beit Hanina.”

  “You went to Al Quds?”

  “Not Al Quds, Beit Hanina.” It was the same thing, but she knew what he was getting at. It was dangerous for Palestinians with West Bank ID to sneak into Jerusalem. Beit Hanina was easy, so it didn’t count.

  “I thought you were going to Jenin,” he said.

  “I did. But after that, I had to go to Beit Hanina, to meet a lawyer.” She hoped mentioning a lawyer would satisfy him that she really was working.

  “What were you doing in Jenin?”

  “I needed some information about the massacre.”

  “Why?”

  She looked uneasily at Khaled, rummaging through his toys in the living room. In a low tone, she explained quickly about Colonel Wilensky and his connection to the foreign woman who died.

  “Is it true you are supposed to be done with that investigation?” he asked.

  She stiffened. “Where did you hear that?”

  “From Abu Ziyad.”

  “What were you doing speaking to Abu Ziyad?” He detested the man, she knew. There had been some bad blood between his father and Abu Ziyad. A little while ago, Bassam had repeated rumors about Abu Ziyad using his position to get business deals for members of his family.

  “He spoke to me. On the bus.”

  “It is not his business,” she said. Khaled ran over to stand between them, clutching a toy gun.

  “Play with me,” he demanded. She made a face. Who had given him a toy gun? Probably his grandparents. All the boys in the village had them, but she hated them—ironically, since most of her coworkers carried guns.

  “In a little while,” she said. “I need to make dinner.”

  “Stop making dinner and play with me,” he said. She turned around to yell at him that she was busy, but his face stopped her in her tracks. She had been so distracted since stumbling on Nadya’s body, she couldn’t remember the last time she had really played with him.

  “What do you want to play?” she asked.

  “Jesh and shabab.” Army and boys, he said, pointing the gun at her. “I’m the jesh. Bang, you’re dead!”

  He took off running. She chased after him. He turned and shot at her again.

  “It will be a short game if you kill me right away,” she said. That seemed to end his interest in the gun. He tossed it aside and picked up a big rubber ball instead.

  “Not in the house,” she told him. “Bassam!” she called. “Take Khaled outside to play while I make dinner.”

  He obeyed, but she sensed something was on his mind. When she called them inside, they ate quickly in silence. The mlochia was rich and creamy.

  “Go watch television at your grandmother’s,” Bassam told Khaled. Rania looked at him in surprise.

  “What is going on?” she asked when they no longer heard little feet on the steps. She stacked the dishes in the sink and filled a small pot with warm water from the stove.


  “Did the Israelis threaten our son?” he asked.

  She turned from the sink, pale. “Abu Ziyad told you that?”

  “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Abu Walid told me they did. But he might have made it up. Or Abu Ziyad might have. For some reason, they don’t want me looking into the ajnabiya’s death.”

  “You care so much about this foreigner that you are willing to endanger your own son?”

  “A Palestinian boy was arrested,” she said. “He confessed after a week of interrogation.”

  “Well, maybe he is guilty,” Bassam said.

  “I don’t think so. I met him. He seemed like a sweet boy.”

  “You met him? When?”

  “The day they arrested him. The day Benny and I went to Eilat.”

  “You didn’t tell me.” The statement hung between them. She could read the betrayal in his eyes. They had a closer relationship than any husband and wife she knew. Usually they bored one another with every little detail about their work. Now it must seem to him that she had cut him out of her life.

  “I couldn’t,” she said. “It was so hard, sitting there, watching them beat him. I felt you would judge me. I judged myself.”

  “And so you are risking your own son to punish yourself?”

  “That’s not fair,” she said, close to tears. “They are just trying to scare me.”

  “Well, I’m scared.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked. “Sacrifice someone else’s son to save my own? Isn’t that what collaborators do?”

  She knew that would get him. He hated collaborators more than anything.

  “You wouldn’t be collaborating,” he said. “Mustafa is a good man.”

  “Yes, but Abu Ziyad isn’t, and he is the one who told the captain there was a threat to Khaled. I need to find out why he wants me off the case.”

  “So you will disobey Mustafa?”