by Kate Raphael
“We are out of milk,” she told Bassam breezily. “I am just going up to Abu Kushri’s.”
“Do you want me to go?” he asked between lazy rings of cherry-scented smoke.
“No, I can use the air. Just listen for Khaled, in case he wakes up.” She left the door slightly ajar, so he could hear.
When she reached the corner, he would still be able to see her from the porch, so she needed to turn left toward the main road, where Abu Kushri’s store was, and go another block before turning right toward the fields that led to Highway 5. When she reached the fields, she broke into a trot. She was not going fast enough. She would never make it in time to help Chloe. She kicked off her shoes and clutched them, momentarily thinking of Nadya’s loose shoe which had started her on this entire adventure. She ran faster than she had run in twenty years. She couldn’t sustain it. Soon she doubled over, panting and clutching a stitch in her side. She hid her clothes where she had left them when she went to Jalame with Maya, the last grove before the road.
Though it was late, there was plenty of traffic on the road. A steady stream of yellow-plated cars zoomed past in both directions, filled with young people going and coming from the night life in Tel Aviv. She saw a few service taxis, what the Israelis called sherut, white vans with Hebrew writing on the sides. She held out her hand, palm down, not sure if they would stop along this road, even for a settler woman. They didn’t.
Finally a car pulled up, its brakes squealing as it slowed quickly. A woman, her head covered just like Rania’s, leaned out of the passenger’s window.
“L’an?” she asked
“Ramle.”
“We are going to Herzliya, but we can drop you at the Yarkon Junction, where you can get a bus.”
“Maayfo atem?” she asked immediately upon settling into the back seat. She needed to know where they were from, before they asked her.
“Anachnu? Me-Itamar.” They were from Itamar, the most violent settlement in the north. Recently, a young man from near Nablus had been killed in cold blood in front of many witnesses by a man from Itamar. Yet here were these ordinary-looking people, picking up a strange woman late at night, smiling at her.
“You shouldn’t be tramping on this road so late,” the woman said. “It is very dangerous.”
“My car broke down about a mile back.”
“Yes,” the man said, “we saw a car.” Did they, she wondered? Or were they just suggestible?
“Do you want to go back and let Chaim look at it?” the woman asked.
“No, I am going to my cousins in Ramle and they will drive me back tomorrow. My cousin Nimrod is a mechanic.”
“Oh, that’s good,” said the woman, who said her name was Ainat.
When Ainat asked where Rania was from, she said Elkana. At least she knew a few streets, in case they asked where exactly. They didn’t.
“Where did you grow up?” Ainat asked her instead. They could tell from her poor Hebrew she was not Israeli. What should she say? Yemen? Syria? She knew a lot of Jews had moved to Israel from those countries more recently than from Iraq or Libya, but she didn’t know exactly when.
“Artzot Habrit,” she said finally. The US. At least she spoke English, and she was sure they had every kind of Jew in the States. “I’ve only been in Israel a little over a year,” she added.
“Which state?” Chaim asked in English.
Her and her great ideas. What should she say? Chicago. No, that wasn’t a state, it was a city.
“California,” she said, thinking of Chloe.
“Los Angeles?” the man asked, just as she had.
“No, San Francisco,” feeling like she was reading from a script.
“Oh,” he sounded disappointed. “I have family in Los Angeles.”
She had reached the end of her script, and they had reached the checkpoint. One agony became another.
The soldier gave her a long, long look. She made herself gaze back at him without blinking. Oh, God, she recognized him. He was there under the bridge the day she found Nadya’s body. He was the one who had been about to shoot at the kids when Chloe appeared. Please, she prayed, don’t let him remember my face. How could he? Palestinians looked alike to Israelis. In this garb he would never recognize her.
“Mi zot?” he asked Chaim, pointing at her with his chin. Not a very polite way to ask someone who is in his back seat. What if she was Chaim’s sister or cousin? But she supposed some subtle difference in clothing or demeanor told him that she wasn’t.
“She lives in Elkana,” Chaim told the young soldier.
“You know her?”
“No,” Chaim admitted. “Her car broke down and she is going to her cousins in Ramle.”
The soldier motioned to her to roll her window down. She obeyed.
“You are going to Ramle?”
“Yes.”
“To visit?”
“To visit my cousins, yes.” Did he think she would contradict what Chaim had told him? Even if she was a liar, she wasn’t deaf.
“Where do they live in Ramle?”
Damn. She had never been in Ramle in her life.
“Herzl Street,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “Near Weizmann.” Every town in Israel has streets named Herzl and Weizmann, for the founders of their state. Briefly, she wondered if Ainat and Chaim could have named even one man her people would name streets after.
“Nsiyah tovah.” Good trip, the soldier said to Chaim, and seconds later, they were clear of the checkpoint.
Chapter 44
Chloe figured her phone had done her as much good as it was going to do. She punched in Tina’s number and waited impatiently through one, two, three rings. When she realized Tina wasn’t going to answer, she felt salt burning her eyes. Five, six, seven. At least, let her voicemail come on, so she could hear the melodious voice once more. Click. Shit, it was going to cut off, no voicemail even.
“Hello?” Tina’s voice was faint against a background of loud music.
“I love you,” Chloe said at once. There, at least she wouldn’t go home without having said it.
“Sorry? I can’t hear well. Who is this?”
Chloe couldn’t remember being so crushed. “Chloe,” she said.
“What? Wait, I have to go outside. The reception here is terrible.”
Chloe heard crackling, and the line went dead. Shit! They were almost at the airport now. She saw the high-rise hotels on her right, and cargo terminals loomed just ahead.
Her phone rang. Shit, she had forgotten to turn off the ringer. She quickly pressed the answer key and pushed it to her face. It was too late. David was turning around, and yelling to Shaul, “Yesh la pelephone.” She has a phone.
“I love you,” she said again into the phone.
“—too,” she heard just as the phone was torn out of her hand.
The van stopped next to a beige sandstone building that looked like a prison. Shaul left David and her in the van and went inside, the motor still running. A few minutes later, he returned and opened her door.
“Get out.”
She sat.
“Come on!”
It wasn’t going to take much to get him to use violence. Chloe ordered her heart to stop racing and her breath to stop coming short and quick. She stared straight ahead, resolutely not looking at Shaul or David. She scooted over until she was square in the middle of the wide seat, so that in order to pull her out, one of them would have to lie halfway across the seat. Not a dignified position from which to exercise authority.
“If you do not come now, I will use force,” Shaul said in the ritual words that so often preceded an ugly episode.
Chloe counted the wrinkles on her hands: one, two, three.
Her head smashed against the door frame as he hauled her from the van like a sack of potatoes. Each policeman took an arm and they dragged her unceremoniously up the stone steps, depositing her smack in the middle of a big room full of men, women, armed guards, and luggage. Shaul deliver
ed a kick for good measure before stomping out.
The eyes of forty or more people from every continent made her self-conscious. She doubted she made an attractive picture, sprawled there on the floor. With as much dignity as she could muster, she stood up, straightened her t-shirt, combed her hair with her fingers, and looked around for a place to sit. There was not a vacant chair in the room. In fact, people were standing three deep, smoking, chatting in fifty languages, drinking from small plastic cups that came out of the coffee machine in the corner. A clump of Africans over here, a cluster of Filipinas there, Russian speakers occupying the center. On one wall was a small barred window, behind which a uniformed woman exchanged Israeli money for the currencies people would need back home.
Chloe picked a path through the luggage to the corner farthest from the door and hunkered down, squatting on her haunches. The room cleared mercifully quickly. One group of ten or twenty names after another was called, and the people moved out with their suitcases, presumably to be searched and get on their flights. Soon enough there were plenty of chairs.
Her name was called after she had fidgeted for an hour and a half. What should she do? Sit still, keep silent, and hope to delay long enough to miss her flight? Or go and argue with the people that she wasn’t supposed to be deported yet, and hope that one of the officials was reasonable? When in doubt, do nothing, she decided. She ignored the voices calling her name again and again, and it seemed to work. Another hour passed. Who knew? Maybe she would pass years in this room. There was a guy she had heard about, a Palestinian, who had been living in the Paris airport for five years because no country would accept him.
She heard her name again. Trying to be surreptitious, she glanced up and saw Shaul standing in the doorway with two armed guards, whose uniforms were different from his. He saw her and pointed, and the three of them marched over to her, menace in their gait. Had he driven back to Hadera, then turned around and come back in order to identify her? If so, she was sure it had done nothing to improve his temper. Hadn’t she missed whatever flight they were planning to get her on?
The two khaki-clad men with rifles slung over their chests yanked her out of her chair. One twisted her arm crazily behind her back. She gritted her teeth, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of crying out. When they started to walk, she could not resist walking with them; the pain was too intense. She was not cut out for torture. Well, who was? Maybe, if what you had to protect was worth it. Most people who withstood torture, she had heard, did so because they didn’t know anything they could use to stop the pain.
They half-carried, half-dragged her out of the building to the El Al terminal, where the contents of her backpack were placed methodically in bins and run through X-ray machines batch by batch. A woman ran a black wand over her clothes, then set up a screen around Chloe and yanked her pants down to her ankles. They separated everything with Arabic writing on it and super X-rayed it again. Chloe wondered, did they imagine that you could hide a bomb in the little pamphlet she had gotten from Addameer about Palestinian prisoners?
Then Shaul was grabbing her arm and trying to make her run.
“Hurry, hurry,” he urged. “We don’t have time.”
“We have plenty of time because I’m not going anywhere,” Chloe told him for the fifteenth time.
They carried/dragged her back through the terminal and piled with her into the van. They drove in what seemed like smaller and smaller concentric circles until they were sitting on the tarmac, next to a Continental jet with its engine running. Its light was whirling on top and she could see the coolant discharging to eat away at the ozone layer. A flight attendant stood on the top step, waving to them frantically.
“We have been waiting for you,” she said to the police accusingly. “We are late.”
“She is a problem,” Shaul said briefly.
Chloe called on every reserve of fight and contrariness she had been saving up for the last ten months. She curled into a tight ball on the seat, squirming out of their grasp when they tried to grab her. She rolled off the seat and onto the floor, smacking her head on the floor of the van.
Once they succeeded in hauling her out, she lay on the ground, screaming at the top of her lungs.
“I am being deported illegally,” she yelled in the general direction of the chagrined stewardess.
The neatly pressed woman reached up and rubbed her temple. What ever happened to simple problems, like not enough champagne glasses for first class?
“I REFUSE TO GET ON THIS AIRPLANE!” Chloe shouted. “IF I AM FORCED TO, I WILL NOT OBEY ANY OF YOUR RULES. I WILL NOT BUCKLE MY SEAT BELT. I WILL SING LOUDLY DURING THE SAFETY PRESENTATION. I WILL DISABLE THE SMOKE DETECTORS IN THE BATHROOM.”
“If you do not shut up,” Shaul hissed, “I will sedate you and take you in chains.” At least that’s what she thought he was saying. She didn’t understand the Hebrew words, except for “shut up” and “take you,” but his gestures spoke volumes.
She continued screaming. Two of the armed guards went to talk with the flight attendant. Then they were ushered into the plane, presumably to talk to the captain. She saw passengers staring out the window, trying to get a view of whatever the commotion was. She had no idea if they could hear or see her or not. Now someone else was running toward them, from the direction of the terminal, waving his hands. She hoped it was not the vet with a hypodermic.
The man who ran up was wearing fatigues and had a rifle over his shoulder. He came straight to Shaul. “Mah koreh,” he demanded. What’s going on?
Shaul looked surprised, but answered at length, with expansive gestures.
“No, no, no,” the man said. “We do not do this.”
Was this for real? Was the untimely end to her sojourn here about to be averted by a deus ex machina in enemy’s clothing? It looked that way. The man was showing Shaul a sheet of paper, and Shaul was taking out his cellphone.
Rachel’s fax! Chloe thought. Avi had come through for her after all. He had called the lawyer and she had sent a fax showing that Chloe’s three-day hold was still in effect. She started to breathe a little easier.
Shaul didn’t reach whomever he was calling. He disconnected and tried another number. The stewardess kept waving at him, wanting to know what was going on. He made the wait signal with his hand. She pointed at her watch—the flight was very late already, come on, we have to get going. After ten minutes that felt to Chloe like ten hours, Shaul gave a bye-bye wave, and the doors of the jet slowly slid shut. Not until the wheels started to move back did Chloe’s heart stop playing the William Tell Overture. She was suddenly exhausted. She could fall asleep right here on the tarmac. She supposed she would be going back to Hadera tonight. If so, it would be hours before she got to a bed.
Shaul was arguing with the soldier. Whatever the argument was about, Shaul lost. The olive-garbed man came over to where she sat and stretched out a hand to help her up.
“Come with me,” he said in a pleasant but commanding tone. “I have a few questions to ask you.”
“What kind of questions?” she asked, suddenly wary. She was in no mood to answer any questions.
“Don’t worry, they won’t be difficult questions. Just a formality,” he said.
“Fifteen minutes,” he said to Shaul over his shoulder as he led her away. They walked past the van in which Shaul had driven her here, past several other planes waiting for clearance to take off. The man did not keep his hand on her. He didn’t seem worried that she would run away, but indeed, where would she go?
“Who are you?” she asked him.
“I’m the army.”
Thanks for nothing. “Well yes, I can see that, but what are you doing here? I mean, the army doesn’t usually get involved in deportation cases, right?”
“This is a special case.”
Fear tugged at the edges of her brain. To whom was her case special? Wilensky? Gelenter? But why would either of them want to stop her from being put on the plane? Presumably, it was
one of them who had arranged this eleventh hour flight in the first place.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Adam,” he answered.
He walked her all the way around the terminal, to the front of the line of cars dropping off passengers, and helped her into the front seat of a dark blue sedan. That seemed odd too; army guys usually came in jeeps. She figured it wouldn’t do any good to ask about the car, so she did as she was told. He drove fast, following the signs pointing to “Exit Airport”. While he drove, she memorized his face, for whatever good it might do her if there was something to complain about later. He looked to be about forty-five, stocky and muscular. Although it was pitch dark out, he wore shades. He was also wearing a crocheted kippa over his thinning hair. His most distinguishing feature was a nose that closely resembled a squashed potato.
“Where are we going?” she shouted over the radio and the noise of the engine.
“My office,” he shouted back.
“Is it far?”
“No, very near.”
Just before the exit to the terminal, he hooked a sharp right. Now they were on some kind of private access road. Adam opened a gate with a magnetic card and pulled to a stop in front of a long, low building made of olive-colored prefab slabs. It was surrounded by short brown grass, and behind it she could see a chain link fence sporting white signs with red hands, the danger sign, every few feet.
Adam was examining his keys, hunting for the right one. The metal door had three locks, a deadbolt, a regular door lock, and a padlock. Whatever this building was, it couldn’t be used that much. It certainly wasn’t Adam’s office, because he wasn’t sure which keys to use. He tried one in the padlock, but it didn’t budge. He attacked the deadbolt next, and coaxed it open. It didn’t sound like it had been opened in a long time. He finally found the right keys, and the door swung open. Adam indicated that Chloe should precede him inside.