by Kate Raphael
“I have a friend in the immigration police,” he explained. “He recognized the trick. A man in Nir’s position cannot risk anyone finding out he bought a woman from a trafficker. So the seller arranges for the woman to go to an agency, and the client happens to go to that same agency and poof, the deal is legitimate.”
“Would Galit have known what was going on?”
“My friend doesn’t think so. Dmitri probably gave Nadya the name of someone who really was placed through that agency, to say she was referred by.”
She had to admit it was clever. She was halfway to the door when he said, “I was going to call you today.”
“Really? What for?”
“I had a blood test run on Fareed. He wasn’t the father of Nadya’s baby.”
“Why did you do that?” asked Rania. “You said the case is closed.”
“I’m thorough at my job,” he said.
“So why are you telling me? What can I do with it?”
“I just thought you’d want to know.”
She did, but she wasn’t even sure how it helped. He voiced her thought.
“You know, it doesn’t prove your kid didn’t kill her. It gives him an even stronger motive.”
“It also proves someone else has one. Are you going to get a blood sample from Nir?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve been through this.”
She picked up a Gumby doll from his desk and squeezed it into a nonhuman shape. “You’re just protecting these guys because they’re big military honchos.”
“What do you think they pay me for?” He was laughing at her. How could he be so cavalier about an innocent boy going to prison? She knew, intellectually, that he couldn’t care about Fareed the way she did. Even though she only met Fareed that once, when she hadn’t been particularly nice to him, she thought of him as a nephew. To Benny, he was just another unlucky kid who was probably a terrorist.
While she was arguing with herself, he had opened one of the hundreds of manila files littering his desk. He was rifling through it, and now he handed her a piece of paper.
“What’s this?” she asked. It was some kind of lab report, she could tell because some of the letters were in English, but most of it was in Hebrew. She didn’t want to say she couldn’t read Hebrew, but damn it, he must know that. Most Palestinians could not read Hebrew, even if they spoke it.
“It’s from Nir Gelenter’s service records,” he said. “It proves he couldn’t be the father of the baby either.”
Her heart sank. Why did he have to make everything a game? Couldn’t he ever just come out with what he knew straight away?
“But if not him, then who?”
“Who knows?” he was waving another, identical slip of paper at her now. “But this one says that Colonel Wilensky could be.”
She gaped at him. As far as she knew, he hadn’t even known Wilensky had any connection to the case until today. But wait… a terrible thought hit her like an ice storm. “You knew all along it was him in that picture!” she choked out. He didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t need to.
“You have to get them in here!” she shouted.
“On what grounds? You can’t prove anything.”
“They bought a slave from a sex trafficker.”
“We only have the word of the sex trafficker about that.”
She tossed the flattened Gumby on his desk. “Except we know Nir had the passport and lied about it.”
“No offense,” he said, “but you’re a Palestinian policewoman. The men you’re trying to take down are two of the most beloved heroes in our country. Who do you think we are going to believe?”
“No offense,” she threw at him, “but you’re a son of a bitch.”
She tore out of the office and out of the station. It was a long walk down to the settlement gate, and it was hot. She wasn’t going to walk it, so she defiantly stood at the bus stop, daring the drivers to pass her by. Two did, but the third one didn’t blink to see a lone woman in jilbab and sneakers climbing aboard and asking how much in English.
* * *
Back in the office, she called Chloe. “As long as Fareed stands by his confession, there’s nothing I can do,” she said. “And there’s something else. Nadya wired the thousand dollars home a couple days before the Azzawiya boy was arrested for planning an attack.”
“But Nadya had never been near Azzawiya then,” Chloe objected.
“No. But she knew Wilensky, and maybe also Gelenter.” The timing suggested two possibilities: Palestinians hired Dmitri and Nadya to help them gain access to the Ministry of Defense through Gelenter, or someone in Israeli intelligence paid them to set up Fareed and his friends. Either scenario increased the chances that Fareed’s confession was genuine.
“I don’t believe it,” Chloe said. “Please, you’ve got to convince Fareed to take back his confession.”
“How can I do that? I don’t even know him, and I have no way to talk to him.”
“He calls his parents nearly every day. Maybe they could get him to call you.”
Rania considered that. “I suppose it’s worth a try,” she said. “But I doubt I could convince him of anything in a few minutes on the phone.”
“When I went to Jalame, they didn’t even ask me for ID,” Chloe said. “You sound like a native English speaker. If you dress like an international, I bet they would let you in.”
Rania’s heartbeat quickened. She loved the idea, she had to admit. Sneaking into Israel, masquerading as an international, with the freedom and privilege they possessed, breezing into an Israeli military prison. But if she were caught, it would not be like it was for Chloe. For her, it could be the end of everything. They could even shoot her, pretend she had been coming to bomb them. Who would know otherwise?
“It would have to be on Friday,” she said. “I can’t miss any more work. But how would I get there?”
“You have to go with an Israeli. We can ask Maya to take you, she’s Avi’s girlfriend. I’m sure she can borrow a car from someone. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
“I have no ID,” Rania said.
“That’s just as well,” Chloe replied. “This way, when you tell them you lost it, you’ll be telling the truth.”
Chapter 37
Rania was light-hearted as she walked purposefully through the fields. In all this time since Israel had been off limits, she had never thought to sneak across the Green Line. With one part of her brain, she thought she must be nuts to rely on a young Israeli woman she had never met to keep her out of trouble. But Chloe had told her Maya was coolheaded and would know how to charm the soldiers. In the last olive grove before the road, she took off her hijab and jilbab. She started to fold them into her enormous purse, but then she thought that wasn’t such a good idea. Just because the soldiers hadn’t searched Chloe’s things didn’t mean they would not search hers. Of course, if they searched her very well, she would be in trouble, but at least she didn’t need to have traditional Muslim clothes in plain sight.
She remembered the tree where Fatima had kept her things. It had been easy to find, because it was the tallest one in the area. She looked around at the trees where she stood. They all looked alike to her. She placed her things next to the low stone terrace, and quickly covered them with leaves and branches. She fished a handkerchief out of her purse and tied it to one of the nearest trees, to mark the spot. She prayed no one would be using the rest day to come and prune these trees. She reached the road and carefully peeked over the last ridge in case there were border police in the area. When she saw none, she climbed the rest of the way up and stopped just inside the guardrail, while the cars whizzed by.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long. The girl who picked her up in a late-model Subaru was even younger than she expected, and wore the spaghetti straps and short skirt that most Israeli girls would wear on a hot day. The blue slacks and off-white turtleneck she had chosen for th
is trip were likely to make her stick out almost as much as the jilbab would have. Hopefully the soldiers at the prison wouldn’t know any American women.
The black-haired girl looked very glamorous, with her wide dark eyes outlined in kohl. She seemed as uncomfortable as Rania, and they mostly listened to music on the long drive to the prison.
“Whose car is this?” Rania asked once.
“Avi’s parents,” Maya responded. Chloe had mentioned that Avi’s family was a long time in Palestine and very wealthy. They must like his girlfriend a lot, to let her drive their new car.
“Who is this singing?” she asked.
“Me, myself.”
“Really? You sing very well.” The girl looked pleased. It wasn’t an empty compliment. Rania didn’t think much of the music, which was loud and grating, but the voice was strong and rich. She wouldn’t have thought such a powerful sound could come out of such a thin body.
“Would you rather hear the radio?” Maya asked. Rania hesitated. She really would, but she didn’t want to hurt Maya’s feelings.
“Perhaps make it a little softer,” she said, but Maya laughed and changed back to the radio. She even fiddled with the dial until she found an Arabic station from Nazareth.
“Thank you,” Rania said.
“No problem. Punk isn’t everyone’s thing.”
They both sang along with Fairouz. Maya flirted with the soldiers at the checkpoint on the Green Line, and they sailed through in one minute. At the prison, she flirted some more, while Rania stood uneasily in the shadows, trying to be unnoticeable.
“But what if he won’t see us?” Rania had asked Chloe on the phone. “He refused to see your friend Avi, and he doesn’t even know me. Plus if I tell them my name, they’ll know I’m Palestinian.”
“They probably won’t even ask your name,” Chloe assured her. “Just say you’re his American friend from the village. He’ll assume you’re me. The guys who are there probably won’t be the same ones who were there when I came.”
It worked. After ten minutes of giggling and eyelash-batting from Maya, one of the soldiers beckoned to Rania in that annoying way that they told people to come, crooking a finger. For an instant, she thought his eyes narrowed with something like recognition. Don’t, don’t ask for my ID, she subvocalized. A few seconds dragged out to eternity, until he said, “Come with me.”
“You’re not going?” he asked Maya.
“No, I don’t know him,” she replied. “I just brought my friend.”
He almost looked like he was going to reconsider. But his buddies were happy to have the beautiful Israeli girl to themselves and motioned to him to go, go. Five minutes later, Fareed entered the small cage room. When he saw her, he looked confused and almost turned to say, there’s some mistake.
“Fareed, you look good,” she said hurriedly in English.
“Oh, thank you,” he replied, sitting down opposite her at the small table. The soldier was too near for them to speak Arabic. He probably couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but he would certainly be able to hear what language they were speaking. She would have to do this in English.
“Do you remember me?” she asked softly. “I was at Ariel the day you were arrested.”
He shook his head slightly, then his eyes widened. “The police?” he asked. “From Mas’ha?”
“That’s right. Chloe asked me to come talk to you. She thinks you are making a terrible mistake.”
“I made a terrible mistake,” he said, and immediately the tears were there.
“Which mistake? Loving Nadya? Or killing her?”
“I don’t know… both.”
“Chloe does not believe you killed her. Neither does your friend Avi.”
“He is not my friend.”
“I think you are wrong about that,” she said. What did she say that for? she asked herself. She didn’t even know Avi. Why did she care if Fareed misjudged him, and how could she know the truth? But somehow, from all Chloe had said, she didn’t think Avi had betrayed Fareed. Never mind, she was not here to talk about Avi.
“Your parents,” she said, playing the one card she knew would work. “They deserve to know why you are going to prison. Do you want them to think they raised a boy who could kill a girl for no reason? Do you want them to think they raised a boy who will confess falsely, just to stop the interrogation? Tell me what happened.”
At the mention of his parents, his face crumbled and he really began to sob. The soldier looked over at them.
“Pull yourself together,” she whispered to him in Arabic. “We don’t have much time.” Then in English, “What happened that day?”
“Every day we meet at six o’clock in the fields,” he said. “Three days before, she tell me she find something in her employer’s office that she think will help her get her passport from him. She tell me bring Avi to translate it for her. I talk to him that day and he say he cannot come until Sunday. The next day, I tell her and she say fine. But then on Saturday, she say she know what the document is, and say tell Avi to come the next day with the car and take her to Tel Aviv. And she say come at six-thirty. I ask her why not six o’clock as usual. She would not say, she just say come at six-thirty.”
“Did she have the passport then?” If she did, Rania thought, she must have had yet a third one. This was possible, but it was not found on her body, so if she had it, the killer must have taken it for some reason.
“She did not say, but I think so.”
“And what was she going to do in Tel Aviv?”
“She say with the passport she can work in Tel Aviv until she make enough money to live on her own. Then she can move to Ramallah and we will get married.”
“But if you were going to marry, why couldn’t you do so right away, and live in Azzawiya?”
“She was afraid to be near her employer. And she did not want me to leave school.”
She guessed that made sense. It also made sense that Nadya didn’t want to live covered up like a good Muslim village wife. And there was the baby, which would be early even if they married right away.
“Did you know she was hamel?” she asked him, turning her face from the soldier as she used the Arabic word. She didn’t know if he would know the English. His face gave her the answer even before he spoke.
“Hamel? No, no, she was not. She could not have been.”
“She was. Almost six weeks.”
He started to cry again. “She was a liar,” he said flatly. “I thought she loved me, but she lied.”
“Continue with what happened,” she said coldly. If she indulged his emotion, she would never get the information she came for. He could cry when he was back in his cell.
“I could not sleep, so I thought, I will go early and just wait for her, surely she will also be anxious and maybe she will come early. I got near the place where we always met, and I saw her. She was with a man.”
“What man? Did you know him?”
“No.”
“What did he look like?”
“Young. Not so tall. Dark hair.” Not Wilensky or Gelenter. It could have been Dmitri. Chloe had not described him, but even if she had, it probably wouldn’t have helped, Fareed’s observation had been so nonspecific.
“What were Nadya and this man doing?” she asked before he could start crying again.
“They were talking. He had his hand on her arm. She was laughing.”
“Did you speak to them?”
“No. I went away. I was angry and I decided to go home and not meet her. But then I change my mind. I went back, and first I did not see her. Then I walk a little and I find her lying in the groves. She is bleeding from her head.”
“Bleeding? Not dead?”
“No. She is breathing, but she does not wake up. I think I will carry her to the village and find a doctor. But she is heavy. I think, I will go back to the village and get a doctor to come look at her. So I put her body in the dirt, where the trash is, and cover her with some grass
so no one will see her.”
“But you did not go back,” Rania said.
“No, because when I get to the mafraq,” the crossroads, “the army is there. And they are there a long time. So I go back to where I left her and she is not breathing. She is dead. And I take her bag with me, because I think maybe there is something in it about me, and if someone find her, they think I am the one who kill her.”
Telling the story had calmed him. He seemed spent, listless. Rania leaned toward him across the table.
“Is this the truth you have told me?” she asked.
“I swear, it is.”
“It was not your fault,” she said. “You did not kill her.”
“It is my fault,” he said. “If I did not leave her, she might be alive.” She had no time to find out whether he meant if he hadn’t left her with the man she was talking to, who presumably caused her head wound, or if he hadn’t left her body in the groves. The soldier was at her elbow, telling her her time was up.
“Fareed,” she said. “Do not give up. We will get you out of here.”
* * *
Maya seemed to be having a cozy chat with the soldiers, but she jumped up when she saw Rania.
“L’hitraot.” See you later, one of the soldiers said to her.
“I hope not,” Maya said so only Rania could hear.
The fastest way back to Mas’ha would have been to take Road 60 south past Jenin and Nablus, turning west at Zatara. But that road was littered with checkpoints, and she had no ID. Anyway, Maya said she didn’t want to drive through the West Bank—Palestinians might mistake them for settlers and throw stones at the car. She turned north, toward Afula and Hadera. As they sped down the highway, Rania found herself wishing she could prolong the trip. Israel was a small country, but it felt limitless to her. As she thought of crossing the Green Line, she felt the world contracting around her, like an oppressive blanket. It occurred to her that since she had lost her ID, she felt freer, as if she had removed herself from the rigid system of permits and checkpoints. It was an illusion, but a happy one.