“Do you think these are from the gun?” she asked Um Mahmoud. No need to specify which gun she meant.
“Mumkin,” could be, Um Mahmoud replied. “I have bullets.”
“You took bullets from the ground that night?”
“Yes.”
Why was it people never thought to tell you the most important things? Chloe wondered. What had she planned to do with the bullets, if not give them to a human rights worker? But maybe she was waiting for an official visit, from the Israeli group B’Tselem or the Palestinian one, Al-Haq, and didn’t want to hand them over to a random foreigner. Couldn’t blame her, if that was true.
“Can I see the bullets?” she asked.
“T’faddali,” as you please. She led Chloe back to the house. Chloe sat alone in the living room, awkwardly sipping cold tea for a few minutes. Then, Um Mahmoud appeared and put two bullets into her hand. They were dark brown, hard, and cold. She didn’t know enough about bullets to know whether they were likely too old to be the ones that killed Daoud or not. At the beginning of the Intifada, in particular, the army had shot hundreds of bullets into villages like this one, sometimes just firing at random on their way through at night to terrorize the population, sometimes shooting at kids who were throwing stones at their jeeps, sometimes going after wanted men. These could have been lying in the soil for years. But, presumably, Um Mahmoud had not spent time hunting in the dirt for them. If she had picked them up just after finding Daoud, chances were they were the right bullets.
“I would like to take these to the Red Cross,” she said. “They will be able to see if they match the ones that killed Daoud and if they are the same ones the army uses.”
“Welcome,” the woman said. “I was going to give them to the human rights, but they did not come.” Chloe didn’t know which human rights organization she meant, but it didn’t matter. She would be the human rights people now.
Avi entered the house and showed Um Mahmoud the finished drawing. She looked pleased.
“Shater,” clever boy, she said.
“Shukran,” thanks, he answered.
“Can you tell us how to get to the school?” Chloe asked her.
“I will take you.”
“It is not necessary. You can just show us the way.”
But the woman was already putting on her shoes. The three of them walked up into the village. The school was obviously just letting out. A sea of light-blue polo shirts teemed from one side; a tidal wave of blue and white seersucker dresses rushed in from the other. They met in the middle in a cacophony of teasing and chatter, the universal language that followed the closing school bell everywhere.
Um Mahmoud waved goodbye and headed up the road, probably to shop. Chloe looked around at the ravaging hordes flooding past her and wondered how and where to start. Finally, she caught one girl’s sleeve.
“I am looking for the students who saw the soldiers the other day,” she said to the startled girl.
The girl’s eyes, the color of pale honey, combed her face as if looking for the Mark of Cain or the Kiss of Death. Apparently, she saw neither.
“Ibrahim,” she called out. Nothing happened.
“Ibrahim,” the girl bellowed, then covered her mouth when she saw not only all the boys but one of the male teachers in the doorway of the boys’ school glaring at her.
Ibrahim was a small boy with quick, dark eyes and dimples to die for. Chloe’s first impression was that he was eight or nine, but, when he was standing in front of her, she realized he was probably twelve, just short for his age. He spoke to her in perfect English.
“Hello,” he said. “How can I be of service?”
Her mouth twitched, but she controlled it. “Where did you learn to speak English so well?”
“My father teaches English at Al Quds Open University.”
“Maybe you will do the same.”
“No, I am going to be a doctor.”
“That’s great. You could probably get a scholarship to study medicine in America, if you want to.”
“No. I do not like America. Bush,” he made a spitting motion.
“I don’t like Bush either. Can you tell me, Ibrahim, what happened the day that Daoud was killed? Did you see the soldiers come into the village?”
“Yes. My friend Mohammed and I were just crossing the street when the jeep came up. We ran over there,” he looked toward the path leading down to the orchard below and hesitated.
“You went to gather stones?” she asked. He cocked his head for a second, suspicious, then gave a tiny nod.
“Then what happened?”
“We threw stones at the jeep. The soldiers stopped and got out. One of them fired gas. The other shot his gun up to the sky and yelled that we were going to die. Then, Daoud came running up and pushed us into the school yard.”
So far that corroborated what Rania had said. “Did you see what happened then?”
“No. Daoud yelled at us to go into the school, and we did.”
“When did you come out?”
“Ten, maybe twenty minutes later. Daoud was gone and so was the jeep.”
“Ibrahim, this is important. Do you remember what the soldiers looked like?”
He thought. “One of them was short and skinny. The other was taller and not so skinny. One of them had a beard and wore a cap. The other had no beard and no cap.”
That wasn’t much to go on, but it was something.
“Ibrahim, my friend wants to draw a picture of these soldiers. Could you help him?”
He nodded. Avi took out his pad and leaned on the white stucco wall of the school yard.
“You said one was short. How short? Like this? or like that?” By asking question after question, Avi managed to make a sketch that Ibrahim approved. Ibrahim’s friend Mohammed came to look too.
“He had glasses,” Mohammed said in Arabic, pointing to the taller soldier.
“He did not.” Ibrahim shoved his friend, as if trying to get him away from the picture before he contaminated it with his bad recollection.
“Yes, he did. He just took them off when he shot the gas.”
That was possible. A soldier firing tear gas at close range could easily gas himself. He would be better off without glasses to fog up and get coated in gas.
“Do you remember what kind of glasses?” she asked Mohammed.
“Black, with black rims.”
“Add sunglasses,” she told Avi. “Anything else you remember?” She had learned the hard way that people often held something back until you asked directly.
“Daoud knew one of the soldiers,” Mohammed said.
“How do you know?”
“He called him Ron. When he chased us into the school yard, he said, ‘Ron, stop.’”
“Did you know which soldier he was talking to?”
“No. But this was the one who was shooting at us.” He pointed at the picture of the smaller man with the cap. Avi wrote “Ron?” next to the man’s picture.
“That’s all?” she asked the two boys. They both nodded.
“Thank you for your help,” she said.
“You are very welcome,” said Ibrahim in English.
Chapter 24
Rania was gone again. Bassam had barely seen her since she got out of jail. The first night had been like their wedding night again. He had held her while she cried for hours, stroking her back and kissing her hair. He had had to learn the spots where she had been beaten, which he loved twice as much even as he avoided them. He had always been proud of having a wife who was fierce and served their people. That meant accepting that it might be she who suffered and was gone instead of him. But now it was getting old.
Why couldn’t she be grateful for the time off from work? She had survived a difficult encounter with the occupation. Everyone needed time to readjust to the world when they returned. She acted like special rules were supposed to apply to her. Of course, people would be suspicious when someone got out of jail all of a sudden without even a hearing. In Rania’
s case, it was even more complicated, because Abdelhakim was going around saying that an Israeli policeman from Ariel had visited her the day before her release. Bassam knew that Rania would never have agreed to collaborate. He didn’t need any investigation by the muhabarat to allay his suspicions. But he was her husband. If he was not, he would want her name to be cleared before he trusted her with the secrets of their people. That kind of precaution flowed with the water into homes under occupation.
Meanwhile, they could build their family. Whenever he brought up the subject of a baby, Rania made objections about his insecure salary and the embargo, things that made no sense. His family was well off, even if they were not as wealthy as they had once been. Look at this house. Plenty of room for a dozen kids. Not that he was demanding a dozen. Two or three more would be perfect. He would like a little girl next time. He would call her Sara, after his sister who was killed at the beginning of the First Intifada. She would be just like Rania, eyes alive with fun and mischief. Khaled was dying for a little brother or sister. It was hard to be alone for so long.
His mother’s door was ajar. He heard his son’s voice as he mounted the stairs.
“Sitti, look,” he was saying. His grandmother dutifully raised her eyes to see what he was up to, just in time to meet her son’s as he stood in the doorway. He watched his son with gentle admiration. Khaled was good at amusing himself. That went along with being an only child of busy parents. He had constructed a cart with yellow Legos and was piling it with multicolored blocks.
“Fresh tomatoes, peppers, squash, twenty shekels a box,” he called out.
The little squares did look like vegetables, Bassam thought, admiring his son’s ingenuity.
Khaled pulled a twig off one of the logs by the wood stove.
“Go,” he cried and snapped the twig at an imaginary donkey.
Bassam crossed to his son and picked him up in his arms.
“How about letting me be your donkey now?” he said, hoisting his son onto his shoulders. Khaled whipped his back with the twig. Even through his shirt and undershirt, it stung.
“Gently, my son.”
“Sorry, Baba.” But Khaled flicked the whip again, and it stung just as much.
“Khaled.” He put his son down to walk to the rest of the stairs to their flat. “You must be more careful.”
“I don’t want to,” Khaled yelled as he ran into their flat. He picked up a heavy ottoman, bigger around than he was tall, and threw it to the ground. He could not get up much force, since his arms wouldn’t even circle the piece, so he did no damage, but Bassam swatted his hand lightly.
“Khalas,” stop that, he said sharply.
Khaled responded by kicking the ottoman fiercely. The momentum knocked him to the ground, and he draped himself over the cushioned footrest, beating it with his small fists. Bassam could hear him crying. Well, that was okay. His son could do worse than trying to beat the stuffing out of a piece of furniture, and crying would be good for him. Bassam worried about the toll Rania’s absence, physical and emotional, was taking on the boy. When she came home, he would have a talk with her. She couldn’t just tear off on rogue investigations, like this one about the boy in Kufr Yunus. She had not even told him she was doing it, but Abdelhakim had said she was running around the villages asking a lot of questions. He had said Bassam should talk to her about it. “People might mistrust her motivations,” Abdelhakim had suggested with his supercilious half smile. Bassam didn’t completely trust Abdelhakim, because he worked for Abu Ziyad, who was an old family enemy. But Abdelhakim was known as a good man. Bassam would take his advice and talk to his wife about her activities.
He heard her mounting the outside steps. It was about time. He went to open the door. If she had been shopping in Bethlehem, she might need help carrying all the packages inside.
But it was not Rania coming up the stairs. It was her friend, Chloe, who raised a hand in greeting.
“Marhaba, Bassam. Rania hon?”
He shook his head. “I expect she will be home soon,” he said. “Please come in.” He stood aside to allow her to precede him into the house. He went to the kitchen and put on the kettle for tea. When he returned to the living room, Chloe was standing in the center of the room, presumably waiting to be invited to sit. He gestured to the armchair whose ottoman Khaled had recently been fighting with. His son was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Chloe said a little shyly. “I just wanted to talk to Rania for a few minutes.”
“It is no bother,” he said. “But my wife has not been home since yesterday. She went to visit her parents in Bethlehem. I expected her home by now, but perhaps the roads are bad.”
“Perhaps.” Chloe looked doubtful. “Where is Khaled?”
“Probably in his room,” Bassam said. “He was upset. He does not like his mother being gone so much.”
“I understand,” Chloe said. “I’m sure the time she was in prison was hard on him.”
“Very,” Bassam said. “I worry about him. There is violence in him.”
“Violence? What do you mean?”
Bassam told her about the altercation just before she arrived.
“But that sounds very normal,” she said. “Kids don’t know their own strength. They don’t realize they can hurt someone so much bigger than they are.”
“That is possible.” It was Bassam’s turn to look skeptical. “I will see where he has gotten to.” He walked down the hall to Khaled’s room. His son was not there. He checked his and Rania’s bedroom, and he was not there either, nor was he in the bedroom they kept empty for their future children or the little office where their aged computer lived.
“I think he must have run upstairs while we were outside,” Bassam said. “I will go check.” He mounted the stairs to his mother’s apartment, his heart momentarily filled with dread. What if his son was not there? How could someone vanish just like that? But Khaled was there, sitting on the floor and making a fort around himself with pillows from his grandmother’s couch. His face was streaked with tears. Bassam took a tissue from the box on the end table and blew his son’s nose, which needed it badly.
“He says you hit him,” his mother said.
“I did not hit him. Not really. Not the way Baba used to hit me.”
“You needed to be hit. You and your brothers were wild, and things were dangerous then.”
“Things are not dangerous now? Have you forgotten that, a few weeks ago, soldiers came to our house in the middle of the night and took my wife to jail?”
“It is not the same. If your father had not beaten you, you would be dead by now.”
“I’m not so sure.” They had had this argument before, but he did not resent his father’s discipline. It was what people did then. He picked his son up, smoothing his tousled curls.
“Come on, big boy.” Khaled’s response was a wail worthy of a torture chamber. He wriggled out of his father’s arms and climbed into his pillow fort.
“All right, stay there if you want.” Bassam went back to attend to his guest. At least his son was safe here. Let his grandmother ply him with cookies for a while, and hopefully his mother would be home by the time he came downstairs.
He found Chloe studying the pictures on the mantelpiece. She picked up the only one of a woman. “Who is this?”
“That is my sister, Sara. In the First Intifada, soldiers came into our village to arrest some boys they said had thrown stones at the jeeps.” He had been one of the boys they were looking for, and, of course, he had thrown the stones. But that was a part of the story he had never told anyone. “They fired gas into the school, and all the students ran out. As we ran out, they fired live bullets at us. Sara was one of five students who were killed that day.”
“That’s horrible.” Chloe studied the photo some more. “So, the boys and girls studied together back then?”
“Not usually, no. But Sara was very good in math, and she planned to become a doctor. My father arra
nged for her to go to the boys’ school half the day, because the girls’ school did not emphasize math and science.”
“Your father sounds like a very unusual man,” Chloe said.
“He was,” Bassam said. He went into the kitchen to prepare the tea. “Come, Chloe,” he said when he returned. They sat opposite one another, she on the couch, he in an arm chair. He spooned the sugar into glasses and poured the tea. She took a sip.
“Delicious.”
A tiny grimace told him she was lying. He did not make tea as well as Rania did. He never understood what she put in it to take away the bitterness. One of the many little secrets women kept from men. When Chloe had managed to finish the tea, she stood up.
“I won’t wait any longer,” she said. “Please, tell Rania I stopped by.”
“No, you must stay for dinner,” he said. “I am sure my wife will want to see you. We are so grateful to you for getting her out of prison.”
“I really don’t think I had much to do with getting her out,” Chloe said. “And I’m sure she is sick of me by now.”
“Oh, have you seen her recently? She did not mention it.”
Chloe looked confused. “You lent us your car the other day, to take Reem, Um Saad, to her appointment.”
“Of course.” He had the feeling that was not what she had meant, but he could be wrong. Rania had mentioned that Chloe and her friend stopped by to borrow the car, but not that they had stayed to visit.
“In fact,” Chloe said, “that was part of what I wanted to talk to Rania about. Reem needs to go to the hospital again tomorrow. Is it possible for us to borrow the car again? I am sorry to ask, but I don’t have another one to use.”
“Ma’lesh,” it’s nothing, Bassam replied. “We have a wedding to go to, but it is nearby, in Biddya. If we cannot go with my brother, we can take a taxi. Why do you not spend the night and save yourself the trip from Ramallah?”
“Thank you, but I need to get home.” Chloe made to leave.
“Do you want to take the car to Ramallah with you now?” he asked.
“That’s very kind,” she said. “But I don’t trust myself driving to Ramallah. I will see you in the morning. I believe her appointment is at one, so I will be here by eleven.”
Murder Under the Fig Tree Page 18