by Kate Raphael
“I don’t want to drink tea with you.” Keep your voice down, Rania instructed herself. She was trying to stop people gossiping about her, not give them more to talk about. “I want to know why you are spying on me, and talking about me to my husband and my coworkers.”
“Please sit,” he said and she perched on the edge of the armchair facing his desk.
“Why did you go to Jenin?” he asked.
She sat silently, weighing possible answers. Should she ask how he knew she had gone, or tell him it was none of his business? Or would anything she said make her look weaker? Perhaps she should simply walk out.
“You met Abu Saif and Mohammed Omar el-Khatib,” he said. “Who asked you to talk with them? Did Captain Mustafa tell you to go there?”
Now she was really in a pickle. Technically, he was Captain Mustafa’s boss. If he knew whom she had spoken to in Jenin, certainly he knew that it had to do with the Nadya case. He had told Mustafa to keep her out of the case. If she told him the captain knew what she was doing, she would make trouble for him. If she said he did not, she would make trouble for herself. If she said nothing, he might assume she was trying to protect the captain.
“No,” she said.
“And Tulkarem?” he said. “You were in Tulkarem this morning, were you not? Did Mustafa know that you went there?”
“No,” she said.
“Then why did you go?” he asked.
“I needed some information,” she said.
“Information having to do with the foreign woman’s death,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Didn’t Captain Mustafa tell you to leave the girl’s death to the Israelis?” he asked.
“Yes.”
His phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said to her. She found his politeness somewhat absurd, given the conversation they had been having. He swiveled his chair to face the window as he talked, and she took the opportunity to duck out. She dashed down the stairs and crossed back to the station. She snuck into the small bathroom and locked the door. When she emerged she was breathing normally. Abdelhakim was back at his desk. He looked up with a little smirk as Rania once again tucked away her purse and hijab.
“Um Khaled.” Captain Mustafa was calling to her from his office door. She made herself cross the room slowly, but not too slowly. He held the door for her and closed it behind her. She didn’t sit down. Whatever was coming, she wanted to take it on her feet. The captain settled himself behind the desk.
“Abu Ziyad told me about your conversation with him,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“He said you told him I did not authorize you to go to Jenin. I explained to him that you didn’t want him to know I had disregarded his orders.”
“But…”
“He understands that I gave you permission to look into the foreign girl’s death,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Your husband and son,” he said. “Will they come home soon?”
“I hope so.”
Chapter 28
Chloe put on her tightest jeans and a skimpy tank top. She gathered up her hair into a ponytail, taking care to tuck the gray hairs inside. With shades concealing the lines around her eyes, she thought she could pass for a graduate student. She covered the outfit with a baggy sweatshirt until she got to the road. Glancing around first to make sure no one from the village was in the area, she stripped off the hot sweatshirt and stuffed it into her backpack. She hitched to the Green Line and then caught a bus straight to the Kirya. The entire trip took her only forty-five minutes, but she was in another world.
The Kirya building dominates the Tel Aviv skyscape. It was built to look like a ship, and rises above the trendy town of Ramat Gan, home to the Diamond Exchange and stock market. Chloe sat on the steps to wait for Avi. It felt strange to be here. She rarely went into Israel. When she wanted to get away from Azzawiya, she went to Palestinian East Jerusalem or Ramallah. The streets here were full of fashionably dressed women and men with briefcases, virtually indistinguishable from the people in San Francisco. They bustled by on their way to and from business appointments and shopping lunches, or rushed to pick up their kids from well-regarded schools.
Avi bounded up the steps, his gangly arms and legs making her think of an orangutan. She got up as he neared her, but he gestured to her to sit and plopped down next to her.
“I have something to tell you,” he said. “It’s about Fareed.”
“What about him?”
“The night before Nadya died, Fareed called and said she had found something in her employer’s house that she thought they could use to get him to turn over her passport. He asked me to help. I was supposed to meet them in the morning, in the fields near the Green Line, and see what it was.”
“So what was it?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t know. I got to the meeting place, and they weren’t there. I waited almost an hour, and then Fareed called. He told me Nadya was dead.”
“He didn’t kill her.” She held her breath waiting for the answer.
“He said he didn’t. I’m sure he didn’t.” He didn’t sound so sure. “He told me he got to where they were supposed to meet, and found her body there. He was standing there trying to figure out what to do, and he saw the Israeli soldiers setting up the roadblock. He was afraid they would think he killed her, so he left her body there and ran. I took him to my house and we agreed that he would stay there, not go out, not talk to anyone, and I would go to Azzawiya and try to find out what was going on.”
“That’s why you came to the village that day,” she said. He nodded.
“And then there was the whole thing with Abu Shaadi’s land, and I got stuck there for hours.”
She recalled how impatient he had been during dinner and how quickly he had taken off when they left Abu Shaadi’s.
“When I got back, Fareed was gone. Maya hadn’t seen him at all. He never got in touch with me, or with his dad or any of his friends. He just vanished, until he came back to turn himself in.”
She contemplated all this. “If he was in love with Nadya, it must have been a big blow to find her dead. He might just have wigged out and needed to be by himself.”
“But he doesn’t know anyone else in Tel Aviv. Where did he go?”
“So what do you think it means?” she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
He shook his head. “I don’t know—I felt like there were things he wasn’t telling me.”
“Like?”
“Like maybe he knows who killed her—or thinks he might…”
“Gelenter,” she insisted.
“It’s possible,” he said slowly. “He could have seen something, and be afraid to tell anyone, but it doesn’t seem that likely. I thought maybe one of his friends did something to her, because she was Muslim but not practicing, the way she was dressed …”
“Like an honor killing? But no one in Azzawiya would have had any reason to care about Nadya’s virtue.”
“They might if they thought Fareed was going to marry her. Especially if they found out somehow that she was pregnant.”
“I don’t see how they would have found that out,” she objected. “It’s much more likely the father of the baby, Gelenter or this Wilensky or whoever, killed her to keep her from destroying his pious reputation.”
“But why would they need to kill her? They could just fire her, or have her arrested and sent back to Uzbekistan.”
She told him what Abu Ziyad had told Jaber about Nadya being a spy. He considered it, absently stroking his small beard.
“Do you think it could be true?” she asked. She realized that if he had something to say, he would say it, but she was nervous and unable to stand silence.
“I guess so,” he said. “It would make sense.”
“But if she was a spy…”
“People in Azzawiya would have had more reason to want her dead than people in Elkana,” he finished.
She didn’t like where this conversation was going. If Nadya was a spy, and she was hanging around with Fareed, pretending to be in love with him, that suggested Fareed was involved in something the Israeli authorities were really interested in. Unless, she supposed, the girl had just been told to get close to someone in Azzawiya, and Fareed had been the unlucky, softhearted guy to fall for her setup.
“Wait.” She stopped her own train of thought. “If anyone from Azzawiya had killed Nadya, surely they wouldn’t have dumped her body on their own land.”
“Probably not if they had a choice,” he said. “But remember the army was there. If they planned to move her body, the blockade would have stopped them.”
“Well, I don’t believe it,” she said, more to herself than him. “This Gelenter and his friend Wilensky had a lot more to lose. We’re here to find out what it was. So let’s go.”
She was doing research in Israel for her dissertation in international relations, she explained to the guard at the door. She was focusing on the international reaction to the Jenin Camp battle—she was careful not to say “massacre,” and she had read about the incident in which Colonel Wilensky and his unit had killed several militants. She really wanted to get his perspective on that incident; none of what she had read had quoted him directly. She was very disappointed to hear that he no longer worked at the ministry.
The guard didn’t even want to let them through the metal detectors, but Avi did some fast talking. He followed a young woman in a very short skirt into an inner sanctum and returned with two temporary badges in his hand.
Could anyone tell her how to get in touch with the colonel? Chloe asked upstairs.
No one could, but they were surprisingly unsuspicious about why she was asking.
“Do you know why he left the ministry?” she asked the gum-chewing woman who said she had been Colonel Wilensky’s assistant.
“I’m not allowed to talk about that,” said the young woman. Chloe silently sounded out the Hebrew letters on her left breast to discern that her name was Hilla.
“But you know?” Chloe made it sound like she doubted it.
She had guessed right. Hilla stuck her chin up in the air. “Of course I know.”
Hilla spoke English, so Chloe thought she could establish a rapport. She leaned toward her conspiratorially. “I heard,” she said, “that Mr. Gelenter had something to do with getting rid of Colonel Wilensky.”
Hilla’s chest heaved. “Who told you that?” she demanded.
“A confidential source,” Chloe threw her own game back at her. “What do you know about his relationship with Mr. Gelenter?”
“They are friends since the army,” Hilla said. “They were like David and Jonathan around here. There’s Nir now, why don’t you talk to him?” and before Chloe could say, no, no, I’m sure he’s busy, she was showing them into Gelenter’s office.
Chloe kicked herself. They were underprepared for a face-to-face with Gelenter. She had wanted to build up the case against him before confronting him. Avi seemed unhappy too, and in a second, she realized why. Gelenter clapped the young man on the shoulder.
“Avi,” he said jovially in Hebrew. “What brings you here?”
Avi looked at Chloe. She should have realized that he and Gelenter would know each other. He had said his father and Wilensky had done their military service together, and Hilla had just said that Gelenter and Wilensky were friends from the army. She must have really meant the air force, Israelis generally called all the forces “the army.” Gelenter must have also served with Avi’s father.
Given their relationship, she hoped Avi would make up a story that would satisfy Gelenter, but he was waiting for her to do it.
“I’m doing some research about what happened in Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield,” she began. “Avi told me his uncle was out of the country, so I thought you would be the next best person to talk to.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “I wasn’t there.”
“But Colonel Wilensky is your friend,” she objected. “He must have talked to you about it.”
“Why are you so interested?” he asked her.
“I want to write about it.”
“Why that incident in particular?”
“I’m comparing reports in the international press to the perception of the incident in Israel. I read about the Knesset hearings, but didn’t find much information about what was said. The panel concluded that there was no wrongdoing, but Colonel Wilensky resigned immediately afterward. It seems like there must be more to the story.”
“What more? What do you mean?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, as if trying to figure out where he had seen her before. She was sure she had never met him before, but she supposed she could have hitched a ride with him, on her travels around the West Bank.
“Well, there is the matter of Yuri Shabtai,” she said. “He testified in the hearings, and the next time he went on reserve duty, he killed himself.”
His face did a series of contortions and he jumped to his feet. He was well over six feet. She felt every inch of him towering over her.
“I know who you are!” he exploded. “You’re the one who has been harassing my daughter. Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused her?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked ingenuously.
He jabbed a button on his phone and barked something into the speaker. Chloe wanted to run, but she also wanted to know how Gelenter knew she had given Malkah the Btselem information, and what kind of trouble it had gotten her into. And now she couldn’t run because he was standing in front of her, blocking her path.
“She described the person who gave her that subversive literature,” he growled. “I know it was you. Now they found it in the school and she won’t get into ulpena and her life will be ruined.”
“What do you mean?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t know who you are, but I won’t let you make my daughter into an Israel hater.”
Chloe was a jumble of emotions. Fear was at the top, because he was still standing very close and so worked up, she thought he might hit her. Her better judgment said she should continue denying his accusations, but pride in Malkah’s desire to move beyond the narrow settlement world won out.
“Malkah’s a special, beautiful girl,” she said. “You support her independence. It will make her a better citizen, and a better Jew.”
“Don’t tell me how to raise my family!” he shouted, and then the room was full of men shouting in Hebrew, grabbing at her and Avi.
She expected the SHABAK, for certainly that was who these unpleasant people were, to march them to some dank cell for questioning, or beating, or both. But they all stood around in the hall, just outside Gelenter’s office, with bureaucrat bees zooming past them, as the men demanded their IDs. Chloe gave them her passport copy, which brought the expected “Mah zeh?” and remonstrations, but eventually they settled for it and stepped aside to call in the numbers to someone they presumably expected to spit back information about what terrorist cell she was working for.
Not for the first time, she marveled that once the Israeli authorities had her ID, they seemed to believe they didn’t have to watch her. She was free to wander the hall, and did, watching them from a small distance, one eye always on the open door that led to the stairwell. At one point the men got anxious when they didn’t see her, but once they caught sight of her, they immediately turned away again.
They were more interested in Avi than in her. They kept going back and forth between asking him questions and huddling in a big group around his ID. The guy who had taken hers had put it in his pocket after making his phone call, and was now standing in the doorway to one of the offices, chatting with a young woman he found more compelling than Chloe. She wondered that Gelenter wasn’t doing anything to protect the son of one of his friends. But of course, Avi hadn’t said his father was friends with Gelenter. Gelenter had seemed pleased to see him, but that didn’t mean
anything. Avi had also said his parents were liberals, and Gelenter was religious and a settler. Maybe he saw this as a way to settle some old score with Avi’s father, the famous newscaster.
Two of the SHABAK were talking to Avi now. She heard them say that he was “wanted.” They were insisting on something, voices climbing, and now he was sitting down and one of the agents was taking out handcuffs while two others yanked his arms back and up over his head. Chloe thought about going to his aid, but self-interest got the better of her. He was the one with good family connections. He would be okay. She would hardly be able to help him, but she might be able to help herself.
She ducked into the stairwell. She didn’t really expect to make it. All the way down the six flights of stairs and onto the street, she waited for footsteps in pursuit, voices screaming her name, but none came. She jumped onto the first bus that arrived and realized with amazement that she was safe, and Avi was a prisoner.
Chapter 29
Rania put off going home as long as she could. That morning, she had gotten out of the house even more rapidly than usual, but the emptiness had still overwhelmed her. The small flat had felt cavernous, the walls themselves reproaching her. She roamed around the station straightening things up. She washed all the squat coffee glasses and dried them with a dirty cloth, even though they would be cleaner if she left them to dry overnight. She read through her notes on the Nadya case for the hundredth time, looking for something she might have missed. She wondered why Chloe hadn’t called to report on her trip to the Ministry of Defense. It was unlike the American not to want to chat at length about whatever she had learned. Probably they had not gotten in at all, and she didn’t want Rania to be disappointed. She called Chloe’s number, but only reached the voicemail.
The station was starting to feel oppressive too. She walked out into the street. It was not a busy time. People who lived in the city were having dinner with their families, and people who only came there to work had already left. She strolled into a store piled high with dark purple eggplants and cauliflowers the size of basketballs. She started to pick things up, but then changed her mind. If she bought them, she would need to cook, and that would only remind her that there was no one to eat with.