Martyrs’ Crossing

by Amy Wilentz

  I can tell myself I’ve done the right thing, Ahmed thought, and then of course, there was Hajimi’s poor young wife to think of. It was a humanitarian decision. Find the Soldier? Who needed the soldier now? He was of no use. To reassert its control, the Authority had wielded the little lieutenant and the dead child like a flashing blade. Very efficient tool, and the Israelis had caved and now here was Hajimi on his way home. Now it was over. Ahmed and the Chairman were back in control again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DORON’S EYES WERE CLOSED. HE figured it out, just sitting here behind the wheel in park, letting his mind wander. There was something nipping at the edge. Something in Yizhar’s office that had caught his attention. The two phones. Next to the paperweight, two phones on Yizhar’s desk. Two, not counting the cell phone.

  He started up the car. Poor old car. He was going to pay a little visit to the checkpoint in Ramallah, where he had sworn he would never go again after crossing the wadi two days ago. He would make sure. He was going to visit the checkpoint; avoid Zvili as much as possible while imposing on their so-called friendship. Make a phone call. It was the only military phone he could get access to.

  It was quiet out here on the way to the West Bank. Everyone was at home for Ramadan, eating as much possible before the sun rose again. Doron drove past Petra Car Rentals—with their fat little Fiat Unos lined up outside like a cartoon battalion—and past Joulani’s Furniture and past the big yellow Paz gas station and Jaffar’s Supermarket and past all the tiny Christian missions with their handwritten signs. Each one hoping to save the Palestinian people.

  He approached the watchtower, lit up white against the night sky like a symbol waiting to be sewn on a flag.

  He pulled his car over to the side. Two soldiers looked at it curiously. It was a wreck.

  When Doron walked up to the guardhouse door, Zvili stared at him without embarrassment, but of course Zvili was never embarrassed.

  “Hey, man,” Zvili said. His squinted and tilted his head to the side. His bunched-up gremlin’s body tensed, like a fighter’s.

  “How are things, Zvil?” Doron offered him a cigarette, the soldier’s universal token of friendship. He held out a fresh pack to Zvili. Soldiers are like convicts, Doron thought, always offering each other cigarettes. Doron felt for the crumpled cigarette pack in his other pocket.

  “Things are better,” Zvili said. “Things were better today.” He took a step backward as if to remove himself from Doron’s reach. “It just all of a sudden calmed down. Snap, like that,” and he snapped his fingers.

  “Yeah?” said Doron. “Aren’t you lucky?”

  “No kidding, man. It has been hot, hot, hot,” Zvili said. “Worse than your last day.”

  Doron looked at him, and Zvili looked right back.

  “I doubt it,” Doron said.

  Zvili took a long, self-conscious puff on his cigarette. “Worse. By far.”

  “You’ve had casualties?”

  “So many wounded, you can’t count them,” Zvili said, looking away. “And five dead, so far. That was mostly one day, though. It’s the Find the Soldier thing.” Zvili looked at him meaningfully. Doron smiled back, gave him a wide, innocent smile. “But I think it’s over, now,” Zvili said.

  “Why is it over?”

  “Because of Hajimi’s release.”

  “What?” Doron felt his chest tighten.

  “They’re releasing Hajimi tonight,” Zvili said.

  Doron knew that Hajimi’s release had been proposed, but he never thought the man would accept it. They never did. But this one did. Doron felt his heart move inside him in some new, surprising way.

  “Didn’t you know?” Zvili looked at Doron as if he were an alien. “Watch TV, asshole. Listen to the fucking radio.” He kicked at the ground. “Yeah, they’re sending him home to the bereaved mother. He’ll be coming through here.” Zvili smirked and sneaked a glance at Doron’s face to see if there was a reaction, but Doron kept his face empty.

  “Can I borrow the phone?” Doron asked. He looked up the Ramallah road, remembering fate walking toward him.

  “What?” asked Zvili.

  “Can I use your phone?”

  “It’s an army line, Ari.”

  “I know.” Doron looked at him. “I’m army.”

  “Yeah, sure, I guess,” said Zvili, moving slightly away to open Doron’s path to the guardhouse.

  Doron sat down at the communications controls, his stomach swirling. He was a pilot returning to the helm of a crashing plane. Hajimi was coming home and he would reclaim Marina. Doron was in a tight death spiral, plummeting down toward the bare desert hills at more than five hundred miles per hour. Pull up, pull up. Doron stared blankly at the controls; the red blinking lights, the buttons that opened new lines, the switch that lengthened the antennae, the green light that lit when communications were established, the touch-tone pad. I’ve been here before. He stared at the controls. He was zoning out, disoriented.

  Now if Hajimi were in the cockpit, surely all could be saved. Doron has seen pictures of Hajimi; he looked like a Royal Air Force pilot, gritty and heroic, with only the keffiyeh wrapped like a scarf around his neck to give him away as what everyone knows he really is: a black-haired, dark-skinned, moustachioed, rag-wearing Middle Eastern bomb artist. Hajimi knows his vehicles, that’s the official wisdom. A crashing plane would not be beyond his ability to control. He knows about switches, they say. Timers. Fuses.

  This is the scene of the crime, Doron kept thinking as he looked at the controls, his hands hanging useless at his sides. We’re crashing. Shit. Shit—the word that was always the last word you heard on the black box after the sappers picked it up from the debris-strewn desert and brought it back to headquarters. The word when all hope is lost.

  Doron took the old crushed cigarette pack from his jacket pocket. He squinted at the scribble of numbers. The handwriting was tremulous and spindly, almost not recognizable as his own. He picked up the receiver and pressed the numbers into the pad.

  It rang at headquarters down in Tel Aviv. Two rings, three. Then a tiny pause, a jump in the dark silence between rings, unnoticeable if you weren’t paying attention, and then a fourth ring, a fifth. A pickup.

  “Yes?” said the voice at the other end. It was a man’s voice—kind, resonant, and caring.

  Doron said nothing. The world was spinning.

  “What is it?” said the voice.

  “Is there a problem?” the voice asked.

  Doron breathed.

  “Who’s there?” Now suspicion crept in. Doron listened. He was breathing, and so was the man on the other end.

  I knew it, Doron thought. I knew it.

  There was the click of the hang-up.

  Unmistakably, the voice at the other end of the phone was Yizhar’s.

  • • •

  DORON DROVE FURIOUSLY down King David Street. The city was empty at that late hour. Clouds passed over the moon, darkening hills where cypress trees bowed toward him in the wind, and then the clouds moved on, opening up the skies and flooding the valleys with blue light. He drove through light and dark single-mindedly, not looking at the scenery, not imagining a destination. Black birds swooped down over the tombs of the lesser prophets that were carved out of pure rock in the valley between the Old City walls and the village of Silwan. The poor car sputtered under Doron’s angry hand. He was in an unallowable rage and he needed to go fast. He tried to sweep Yizhar’s betrayal to the side of his concerns.

  Instead, his thoughts wound in tighter and tighter circles around another subject. I was the one at the checkpoint, he kept thinking. I was with her. I am the one who knows what happened. I am the one who cares.

  They will show Hajimi’s release on the news, he thought. Where can I watch that? He remembered the window at Best Buy at the Talpiot circle. He’d go there. The lights of the diamond factory on the road to Bethlehem twinkled against the shifting skies. To his left loomed an old cement watchtower from the war f
or independence. It was built solidly, like the turret of a castle, with narrow loopholes at the top to shoot down from. He came to Talpiot’s commercial district, and drove around the circle over and over, seeing how fast he could make the jalopy go in such a tight curve. Plastic picnic tables were chained to posts outside the entrance to the housewares store.

  Three-quarters around the circle at Best Buy, two rows of television sets broadcast to an empty street. They made a bright stroke of light in his peripheral vision as he jockeyed past. Doron circled and circled—no one would disturb him; the police were asleep at this hour. Maybe he would crash the car through Best Buy’s window. Smash through the plate glass and upend the televisions, ride up and over the washing machines, and then come to rest, bloody and shattered, in the cool of refrigerator row. Freon. He wanted to breathe it, freeze his insides.

  He sped around the circle, where next? What next? Up onto the sidewalk he drove, and right up to the Best Buy window. He got out and stood next to the car, looking in. The televisions aired the news in silence. He could see his own reflection in the dark glass between two sets. He was panting—he hadn’t noticed until he saw himself doing it. He shut his mouth and pushed his hair out of his eyes; he was becoming disheveled. His chin was rough with stubble. His eyes were hooded; they looked like Yizhar’s eyes. He looked the way Palestinians expected a checkpoint officer to look: like a bad guy. He looked the way Israelis think a suicide bomber looks in the seconds before he pulls the pin. Bad guy.

  A Palestinian police car flanked by motorcycles was pulling up to a sharp stop in front of a house somewhere on the West Bank. The house in Ramallah. Doron recognized it, but the camera angle was new. What seemed like dozens of policemen jumped out from the squad car whose flashing lights lit the scene. One policemen leapt over to curbside from the street, opened the back door of the car, and pulled something out. And then out from among the massed policemen in their dark uniforms stepped a small man in light clothing. It reminded Doron of magic shows he had seen in the Jerusalem theater courtyard as a child. Hajimi, Houdini. Hajimi squinted under the light. The camera focused on him, that handsome, boyish face, and as he noticed the camera’s presence, Hajimi looked away. Toward the house. The door was opening.

  A thin young man emerged. Thank God it’s not her. The young man put out a hand to Hajimi, and as he pulled Hajimi in, Doron saw—just for a second, just behind the young man’s shoulder—a woman’s covered head. Hajimi moved in her direction and the door shut behind him.

  Doron stepped back from the window. He closed his eyes and leaned against his mother’s jalopy. He felt the odd tickle behind his eyes that signaled the onset of tears that he would never allow to emerge. The idea that she and Hajimi would just sit and mourn their baby, and receive visitors—Doron tried to comfort himself with this plausible version of the night’s unwinding, but he doubted it, he doubted it. He hadn’t seen Raad there at the door: maybe she had gotten rid of her chaperone. She and Hajimi could do what they wanted. No one would hear. He let himself feel all of his impermissible feelings. Why not?

  Doron had been betrayed. Well, screw Yizhar, then. He knew how to get back at his tormentor. Doron was going to go to Marina. That’s what he wanted, he realized now. He’d been wanting to for so long. No contact with the family. We’ll see about that, night creature. Doron climbed into his mother’s jalopy. No more of Yizhar and his crude scheming. No going cravenly to Shell to tell Yizhar’s story. He would do the honorable thing. Put himself at Marina’s mercy, and beg for her forgiveness. Offer himself up. For judgment. Let Marina decide.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IT HAD BEEN SO LONG since George had actually set eyes on Hassan Hajimi that he had forgotten the effect his son-in-law’s presence had on people. Hassan was so dazzlingly handsome—George had forgotten. The fellow walked in the door and the guests who had assembled there and were chatting drew their breath audibly. Was it because Hassan had done the unbelievable, and had managed to win release? Was it because he was a legend? Was it because of those eyes? Was it because he was good, or because he was evil? Hassan walked through the door and went directly to Marina and touched her shoulder softly, then reached down for her hand. He stood next to her, looking around the room.

  George knew that another man in Hassan’s position and from his background would probably have greeted his friends and supporters before he would have gone to his wife, but Hassan was different. For others, this would have been a political meeting to reconnect with backers and adherents. George wondered if Hassan had planned a political strategy for dealing with this occasion. He wondered what Hassan was feeling about Ibrahim; George felt connected in a new way to Hassan because of their shared loss. Looking at him, George could see traces of the child’s face in the father’s smile, in his high cheekbones, his serious eyes. (The thought came to George painfully: Perhaps Ibrahim’s blue eyes came from Hassan and not from George’s mother. . . .)

  What a sad homecoming this must be for Hassan. George doubted he was thinking of anything but his family. It seemed unlikely, from his behavior. Standing there, holding tightly on to Marina, Hassan smiled at a few friends, and then saw his father-in-law across the room. He whispered something to his wife and came toward George.

  Wish I could disappear, George thought. Wish I could sink beneath the floor. He felt overpoweringly that he had nothing to say that would be right. He felt he had nothing to say at all.

  “Hassan,” he said.

  Hassan embraced him.

  “Hassan, congratulations,” George began.

  Hassan smiled sadly. “Thanks. I’m not feeling much joy.”

  “I know,” said George. George touched his arm gingerly. “The worst thing.”

  “Coming back to this house,” Hassan said. “It’s too hard. It’s not how I ever thought it would be. When I permitted myself to imagine.”

  George looked at him. “Life seldom gives us what we imagine it will.”

  Oh, really, George? Oh, my, how profound. George’s discomfort prompted him to issue declarations, but that was no excuse. How like a father-in-law he was, he thought. How despicable. Pompous blowhard—why did he say such a stupid thing? He was wary of Hassan, mistrusted him, but still, they shared so much now. How he must irritate Hassan, who was so immediate and so seemingly intimate. But Hassan’s face betrayed no annoyance. His blue eyes looked on his father-in-law with undeserved equanimity and friendliness. Life seldom gives us what we imagine it will.

  “That is very true, Doctor,” a deep voice said from behind him. He turned. It was Ahmed. Out of the corner of his eye, George saw the big Palestinian photography book he’d been reading the other day. It was still sitting on the coffee table. Although he had read almost every word of it already, he wanted more than anything to pick it up now and rush off into a corner with it, alone.

  “ ‘Life seldom gives us what we expect,’ ” Ahmed intoned. He had a tight smile pasted on an otherwise forbidding expression. He and George had not spoken since the Ramallah rally two days earlier. “Such a profound observation. As we have all come to expect from you, Doctor. Very true. I remember you saying that you yourself did not expect that your son-in-law would accept the terms of his release, for example.”

  George glared at Ahmed. He recalled how certain he had been that Hassan would not accept a brokered freedom. Then he recalled the car ride after the rally, the thick, stupid-looking back of the driver’s neck.

  “How are you, George?” Ahmed asked.

  “As well as can be expected,” George said. George stood next to Hassan, as if there were solidarity between them. Hassan was watching George and Ahmed closely, with that little smile he had that looked so amused and yet was barely even a smile. George could feel the intensity of his son-in-law’s observation. “Who invited the television cameras to my house?” George asked.

  “Your house?” Ahmed smiled. “Your house is in America, George.”

  “This is his house, Uncle,” Hassan said.
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br />   Ahmed shook his head at the two of them in feigned wonderment. He held a single decorative piece of pink pickled holiday cauliflower between his fingers, and now he waved it over the two of them like a censer.

  “George Raad and Hassan Hajimi. Who would have supposed? We are so glad to have you back among us, Abu Ibrahim,” Ahmed said to Hassan. Hassan flinched. It was a sign of respect to call a man by the name of his first son. Still, George was shocked. His eyes widened. No one had said Ibrahim’s name aloud in George’s presence since his return to Jerusalem. Ahmed popped the pickle into his mouth. He swallowed hurriedly, raising his eyebrows at George.

  “Dah!” Ahmed said, smiling broadly. “George, I almost forgot to tell you. I saw the Chairman yesterday. He told me that he thinks you’ve behaved impeccably throughout this ordeal.”

  An outrageous lie! The only question in George’s mind was whether the lie came from the Chairman or from Ahmed. George knew from a dozen sources that the Chairman was furious with him for repudiating the Authority and rejecting its campaign to find the soldier. Yet perhaps the Chairman wanted some kind of entente with George. It was possible.

  “And how do you think I’ve behaved?” George asked.

  “It has been a very hard time,” Ahmed said.

  “Thank you for working for my release, Uncle,” Hassan said. Ahmed leaned forward and embraced Hassan, and over Hassan’s shoulder, he smiled at George. George wanted to punch him. It was bad enough that he had used Ibrahim’s death for his own political profit. But now! Whom did he think he was kissing when he kissed Hassan Hajimi? Was he kissing his own rosy political future? Was he embracing Hamas? George noticed that all the hugging and kissing was done away from the eyes of the international and Israeli television cameras, but in front of the very local eyes of all the assembled backers and funders and supporters and checkpoint shabab and long-time adherents and militants and anyone else who would find it to Amr’s credit that he had negotiated Hassan’s release.