Martyrs’ Crossing

by Amy Wilentz

  Ahmed smiled broadly at a tall foreigner who was already ensconced at the table. Ted, the American consular officer, had agreed to meet Ahmed here to discuss the final details of Hajimi’s release in The Sheikh’s back room. Hajimi released in time for Ramadan. What a coup.

  “Would you order a nargileh for me, please?” Ted said, leaning over the table to pick a sweet off a silverized plastic tray.

  Ted was ready to finish up their talks: what day, what time, where. He smoked a nargileh like an Arab—as if it were a normal thing to do, without too much bullshit, although you could always trust Arab custom to attach some bullshit to every ritual. Ted treated the nargileh as if it were a half a pack of Marlboros. Ahmed could do business efficiently with Ted: if only the two of them could run Palestine together and alone. You couldn’t smoke during the days of Ramadan, Ahmed reminded himself with a wince.

  “Oh, Ted,” said Ahmed. “I nearly forgot to mention it. I was talking to the Chairman yesterday, and he told me what a wonderful job he thinks you’ve been doing.”

  Ted nodded. Even the toughest man secretly enjoys flattery, Ahmed knew, and will believe any compliment to some degree or another. Tell a fat man he looks slim—even if at that very moment he is looking in the mirror—and he will think that possibly he’s lost a few ounces, or that, possibly, to you, he does seem slim, for some reason. The praise will gladden him even if he knows at some not very deep level that it’s untrue. And that you don’t mean it. As you watch him take pleasure in your insincerity you feel a small surge of power. Ahmed also knew that a compliment is more likely to be believed if it’s secondhand, and that the good feeling generated by secondhand flattery extends even more to the bearer of the praise than to the flatterer himself. At first, Ahmed had been merely an assiduous relater of secondhand compliments, but soon, running low on material, he began fabricating the compliments themselves. It was highly unlikely that he would ever be found out. Would Ted dare go to the Chairman and ask: “Oh, by the way, Mr. Chairman, did you tell Ahmed Amr the other day that I’ve been doing a wonderful job?” Never.

  It was no Versailles, but as far as Ahmed was concerned, The Sheikh’s back room—with its red wallpaper and hard-backed, beat-up, vinyl-covered chairs—was almost as good for treaty-making as the reception room at Orient House, or the checkpoint at Erez. Maybe better. This was the kind of place where Ahmed liked to do business: not a boardroom or an office or a dais or the antechamber of a conference room or that ugly little fluorescent-lit, soundproofed, debugged hole in the back of the Chairman’s Gaza apartment that was used for supposedly important meetings. For Ahmed, the place where a deal was done always remained a part of the deal, a part of history. The Sheikh’s had a stale, authentic West Bank atmosphere.

  Things were looking up. Now if only George could remain calm during the rally. And not go spluttering off and ruin all Ahmed’s fun. The students who helped organize the thing had wanted the old writer, and so George would be there, and speaking. Dah! George hated Find the Soldier—that was what had made him walk out of Orient House in a fit of babyish pique. Still, Ahmed was hoping that in public, George would stick with them. He straightened his tie. Let’s expect the best . . . after all, George was a gentleman.

  • • •

  AND THERE HE WAS, a little late but gorgeous as ever. It was a wonder how a sick man could look so glamorous. Ahmed stared at his old friend through the bobbing heads of the crowd. George looked like no one else there, Ahmed thought. He seemed not larger than life but more intense: slightly taller, somewhat darker, his eyes brighter, his hair thicker, his clothes in some indescribable way better, his whole being poised on the brink of something ineffable, like flight. He is more like me than I am, Ahmed thought.

  With his chin tilted up and his whole leonine face raised toward the sky, George seemed to be judging the direction of the wind in preparation for something grandiose and remarkable. The unconquerable arrogance of his character was readable in his every movement and gesture. He looked like a man who feared nothing. As if something had caught his eye and displeased him, George turned his head brusquely away from the clouds, downward, and next to him Ahmed saw a covered woman standing as quiet and unmoving as if she had been alone in a big room. Ahmed’s little niece Marina, gazing with deep empty eyes over toward the square where an enormous digital clock sat perched on a pedestal. Around the magnificent, absurd timepiece, the Authority’s limousines were parked near a temporary stage where today’s speakers were to gather. George said something to his daughter and they began to move toward the clock.

  • • •

  SHE WAS EVEN more impressive in traditional clothes. The white hijab covered the thick hair that distracted you from her eyes, and so you saw those eyes in a new way: they were profound and empty and they sucked up light. She rarely blinked, Doron noticed. She stood a good distance from her father, but seemed attached to him, moved when he moved, went where he went, without looking at him, without seeming to think. She held her left wrist with her right hand in what looked like a symbolic gesture from a medieval Christian painting. Her stillness chilled Doron, and excited him. He had moved down to the front of the crowd and he could see every detail, even to the single lashes. She wore so much clothing, like a proper Palestinian lady. No jeans today. He remembered her bare foot, and the rain rattling down. The night so black outside, the closeness of the trailer so hot and damp and bright, and all his men breathing their hot nervous breath down his back. Her wild hair. And here now, distant, correct. It was too much. It unleashed in him an unbridled pack of emotions that he chose not to examine. At least, she would never know what he was feeling. And her father would never know. And her husband.

  • • •

  UNCLE AHMED was going to introduce them. This was an unbelievable scene in a life that had become unbelievable. The bereft mother stands before the crowd. What was she doing here? She felt a terrible physical feeling of heartache, as if there were pressure against her heart, remembering the photographs in the newspaper. The crowd was solemn and still as Ahmed approached the microphone. Marina looked out at the people, and saw the tops of their heads, their dark hair, their white, beige, blue collars. Their shoulders were hunched against the wind. The glinting rims of sunglasses. White and dark hijabs dotted the scene. She saw television cameras. She closed her eyes, listening to Ahmed’s low voice, letting it rumble in the back of her consciousness without paying attention to the words.

  She heard the name of her son, her husband, her father. She looked down at the plain plywood planks of the stage. Humble, she thought, composed, grief-stricken. They were all looking at her. She felt her father move closer, protectively. It was as protective as he got. He must feel the same shame I do, she thought, standing here, being talked about in front of people. But at least he has a mission. I just want to go home and be alone in Ibrahim’s room. He wants to speak to the people. Teach them something. Clear things up, as he said. Okay, let’s get it over with.

  She looked at her father. He drew his eyebrows down into a violent V, and pulled his scarf tighter around his neck. She could see he was preparing to speak, and that when he did, Uncle Ahmed would not be happy. Never underestimate Dad, she thought. She looked out over the heads of the crowd at the reflection of the moving sky in the windows of a dirty building across the street.

  The crowd was full of people she didn’t know. Why are they here, she kept thinking. Why aren’t my father and I at home, going through picture albums? Why aren’t all of these people at home? She looked at the front rows, trying to pierce through to each individual’s motivation, his need. It was important for her right now to understand why events happened, if you ever could understand. That old lady, for example, she should be home in her rocker, Marina thought to herself. Those two young men with their neat attachés? Back to the office, on the double. Get out of here. And you, how can you hear on your cell phone in this crowd, stupid man? Miss, your skirt’s too short. And this one is bizarre. She felt the tinies
t twinge of amusement. Handsome, but doesn’t know how to wear a scarf, even, she thought. Then she saw who it was. Her heart turned over. She stared in disbelief. Fear tightened her chest, fear that he would see her looking. Fear of contact. She averted her gaze.

  • • •

  DORON LOOKED at Marina. She had turned her eyes brusquely away from his side of the crowd. She was quiet, unsmiling. He stared at her, trying to judge her feelings. Again he was stirred by her silent, unmoving beauty. The woman he had robbed and destroyed. Doron stared, trying to understand. He looked at her averted eyes, fixing her face in his mind. She was staring out, and her face was blank.

  Doron looked at the people closest to him. Was it possible that his getup had actually worked? He couldn’t believe that they all did not immediately recognize him as an impostor. But then, it would never occur to them that someone would bother pretending to be them. To his eye, in fact, some of them looked as much like pretend Palestinians as he himself did. Off to his left, for instance, he saw a ridiculous moustachioed man in a suit that was just a little too old and too tight. He seemed stuffed with self-importance, like a B actor in an old comedy. He was trying to get Marina Raad to notice him. Funny, Doron thought. Then he recognized the man. It was the Ramallah lawyer—her knight in shining armor—standing, gnawing on one corner of his moustache and watching her. Doron ducked and turned away. Raad took the microphone.

  • • •

  “I’M SORRY TO BE here today,” George said, squinting out at the crowd. They grew silent as they took in those first words, so impolite, the wrong thing to say, yet the truth. It brought the audience up short.

  “I have no thanks to offer to my host.” George turned to Ahmed and shook his head briefly.

  “I am sorry, but I have no thanks to offer, Ahmed—friend of my childhood.” Ahmed Amr lowered his eyes. It was rude and very intimate to address someone by his first name only, in front of an audience. Rude to say you had no thanks to give.

  George shaded his eyes with his hand for a moment, and swayed slightly. He put his other arm out to Marina, and she walked over to him. He put his arm around her.

  “This is my daughter,” he said.

  “My beloved daughter.” He looked at her. Something was wrong, he thought. She seemed to have no expression. But then, everything was wrong.

  “My daughter came to Palestine four years ago on her own, after completing her degree in America. I was worried about her, but was glad she felt for Palestine some of what I had always felt. She wanted to begin to know her homeland. She met a man she loved here, at Bir Zeit, where she was studying her country’s history, a man who shared her passion for Palestine.” George had to stop for a moment as the crowd stomped and applauded Hajimi. He tapped his foot, waiting.

  “They married and had a child.

  “That child was my grandson, Ibrahim.”

  George let the crowd savor the story, which they already knew. He heard them sigh. An old woman started to cough. He waited until she had finished.

  “My grandson, Ibrahim. Let me tell you about him, if I can.” George gripped the sides of the podium to steady himself, letting Marina go. Wind whipped through the square. “Ibrahim was a small boy with blue eyes, calm, clever. He knew how to get his grandfather to give him sweets and tell him stories. He was a lovely child.” George turned back toward Marina and put his arm around her again.

  “Now, Ibrahim had asthma,” George resumed. “Sometimes his asthma was bad, other times, not so bad. The other night, he had a bad asthma attack—he should be in a Jerusalem hospital bed now, on a nebulizer.” The wind ruffled George’s hair, and he pushed it back. A cloud passed behind the clock tower.

  “But he’s not.

  “And I can tell you why. He’s not in a bed in a hospital in Jerusalem because the other night, he ran into trouble at a checkpoint. He ran into trouble because he was sick.

  “And because we are at war.

  “He did not run into trouble because his mother is a courageous Palestinian heroine. She’s not. My daughter is his mother. Our little Ibrahim was not a brave Palestinian freedom fighter. This was my Palestinian grandson, my boy who was going to have the life in Palestine that history did not permit me to have. The life that history stole from me, and stole from you, Ahmed—stole from us all. Ibrahim was just an innocent little boy—you all have them in your families, innocent little boys—and his memory should be served by respect for the dead, not by political manipulations of his fate.”

  George took a deep breath, as deep as he could muster. He had stunned the crowd into silence. Marina felt him tremble.

  “And let me tell you one other thing, Ahmed, sadiq at-tufoulah,” George continued, “if you want to find someone to blame for my grandson’s death, look further than the soldier who was at the checkpoint that night. If you want to place blame for my grandson’s death, look in the mirror, as well. Look at yourself and the Authority, who’ve negotiated away our birthright and abandoned Palestinians like my grandson to the whim of the enemy. Who are selling every job in their so-called government, and who have corrupted every official.

  “If you want to find the soldier, go hunt yourself down. Arrest yourself, Ahmed.”

  A section of the audience was applauding loudly—that would be the students—but others were confused.

  “I forbid you to use my daughter’s child to play politics, Ahmed,” George went on, looking right at him across the dais.

  “There are other ways, we all know there are other ways. . . .”

  It started at the back of the crowd. People began to yell, clapping, screaming. It was an extreme speech, George knew it, yet he was immediately certain that this uproar and tumult were not for him. He could see thousands of triumphant hands raised in the air, applauding. Ahmed stood with his arms folded, looking remarkably unsurprised by the uproar. George heard the name Hajimi from the crowd, and then heard the chant: “Hajimi, Hajimi, Hajimi.”

  Salah came over and whispered in George’s ear. The story was spreading. The rumors were true. Hassan Hajimi was to be released today or tomorrow. George turned to Marina with the news. The people in the crowd were looking to her expectantly. She wondered what emotion they could read on her face. She wondered what they wanted to see there.

  This is not happening, Marina thought. She didn’t know how to react, but to react in public, that was asking too much. She kept her face perfectly still, and watched Ahmed to see if there had been some mistake, but his face—like hers—was about as full of meaning as the platform’s plywood planks. He was watching the crowd’s reaction with those lizard eyes of his. Her father was holding on to her wrist now. She looked back at the spot where she thought she had seen the soldier, but he had disappeared.

  George stood still for a moment, surveying the scene, then stepped carefully down from the podium; these days, he couldn’t trust his balance going down even a single pair of steps—going up was always better, though not good. He looked sideways over at Amr, who was talking to some ferocious-faced man in a suit and nodding. Well, that friendship was probably over. George felt overcome by the loss. So few intimates remaining—and he had pushed this one away. But what could he do? It was a family obligation, a loyalty to his blood, after all. Ahmed should know that that was what pushed him to it, pushed him to this extreme. Of all people, Ahmed should understand this repudiation.

  George turned to check on Marina. Her face was calm, but he thought he detected something like shock. Her eyes were so still. He leaned on his daughter and she had just begun walking him away from the podium when there was a sudden commotion at the foot of the platform. Marina saw men in dark caps rushing at them and in a few seconds, she and her father were surrounded by big men in dark clothes carrying guns.

  “What’s going on?” she asked them.

  “It’s the Palestinian security apparatus in the flesh,” her father said. The men jostled them and pushed them down the stairs from the platform. George tripped and he felt himself begin
to tumble, but he fell into the back of the man in front of him, and his body righted like a child’s tipping toy. He was afraid that he looked drunk.

  “My father is ill,” Marina said to one of the men, as he continued pushing George down the steps in front of him, using the butt of his gun as a prod.

  “We’ll take care of him,” the man said.

  The men shoved Marina into the open door of a waiting car, and then hurried around to the other side with George and stuffed him in. The car drove away.

  • • •

  DORON’S STOMACH was playing games with him. He had to concentrate hard to understand the Arabic around him, but some things were unmistakable. Hassan Hajimi was to be released. He envisioned the guy walking up King George Street, with a keffiyeh wrapped disdainfully around his neck like some pilot from the thirties, and explosives sewn into the lining of his leather jacket, turning down Kakal, and watching Doron’s mother’s house, checking out the situation. Hajimi was very tough, from what Doron had read about him. Of course, he was the kind of man prison walls would not stop. He had people on the outside who worshipped him, who would do anything he asked. Was Marina ecstatic at the thought of her husband’s imminent release? Her face was closed, and who was he to try to measure the extent of her emotions?

  Doron tried to push through the crowd and get away, but everything was in turmoil. There had been rousing applause at Raad’s final exhortation, only some of which Doron could understand, but that enthusiasm was lost in the news of the Hajimi release, and when people saw Raad and his daughter hustled out like that, the mood had turned more careful. Doron saw Ahmed Amr assessing the situation and deciding whether or not to try addressing the people after Raad’s speech.