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Murder Under the Fig Tree

Page 28

by Kate Jessica Raphael

“Her daughter. Please, I’m sorry, you can do whatever you want to me next time I come here, but let us go now.” As if to emphasize the urgency, Reem leaned out the window and choked out a foul-smelling mess. When she pulled her head back into the car, there was white foam around her blue lips.

  “Get out,” the English-speaking soldier ordered.

  “What? You can see how sick she is. You can’t make us wait here.”

  “Get out and give me your keys. I need to search the car.” The soldier nearer her strode to the window, reaching in to snatch the key from the ignition. Chloe’s body made the split-second decision for her. She shifted into drive and gunned the engine. The soldiers fired in unison as she narrowly missed hitting them. She felt the car list to the side as a bullet zoomed through the back windshield and out the front.

  Chapter 36

  “Get down!” Chloe yelled. Good thing both Reem and Amalia knew English, because she couldn’t remember a word of Arabic. She pumped the gas pedal frantically. Why weren’t they going faster? The shots were getting a little fainter but were not distant enough. She looked down at the gear shift. She was in second. She shifted to drive, and the car shot forward. A minute later, she heard silence, then the sounds of a jeep firing up. She drove like a stock car racer, thankful for the straight, narrow road.

  The jeep was coming closer, and she pumped the accelerator. Chloe heard machine gun fire, but it was so distant she couldn’t be sure it was coming from behind her and not from the approaching city. If they made it inside the city gates, they should be okay. She was pretty sure one jeep would not enter Nablus alone at night; there were too many well-armed fighters in the city.

  She looked in her rearview mirror. She barely saw the lights of the jeep, but it was definitely advancing. What should she do? She looked to the right and the left and saw nowhere to make a quick turn-off. This was not an area she knew, and, to make it worse, she was unaccustomed to driving. She couldn’t engage in some action movie chase scene, much as she would love the story. She could only keep driving and hope the soldiers didn’t have too much more speed in their arsenal.

  The jeep steadily gained. The lights of the city loomed. She had perhaps three hundred yards to cover, and the jeep was now maybe five hundred behind her. Was the difference enough? She had not taken calculus, so she couldn’t do a math problem involving two vehicles traveling at different speeds, especially not while trying to evade the Israeli army. Though she could not really say she was doing much to evade them. She was doing nothing beyond keeping her car in a straight line and her emotions under control. Amalia in the back seat and Reem to her right maintained a deathly silence.

  Shots cracked the night. She had never heard a sound so loud or so frightening. Shot after shot rang out. Silence, then more shots; they must have reloaded.

  The shots were close, but they were not getting any closer. She looked in her rearview mirror. The jeep had come to a stop, and guns were firing from both windows. She couldn’t understand why the jeep was not moving, but she was not going to stop and find out. The dimly lit gates of the city were maybe one hundred yards away.

  The jeep spun around, blasting the air with a final, frustrated volley of machine gun fire. As she crossed into the city, she saw a ghostly line of figures move into the road behind her, dancing a little victory dance as they kicked away their impromptu road block. She sent a silent but fervent blessing in their direction, whoever they were.

  “Do you know where the hospital is from here?” she asked Amalia.

  The little girl shook her head from side to side. Her grown-up-ness had fled with the speed of the bullets. She looked as frightened as anyone Chloe had ever seen. Chloe felt wretched for having been the cause. She had done what she thought was right, but maybe she had been wrong. Would Amalia be scarred for life by the experience? She had no idea. But at least the girl was alive, and so was her mother. Chloe didn’t like to think about how narrowly they had missed another outcome.

  “Turn here,” Reem said, her voice faint but steady.

  Chloe made the turn and saw the sign with the circled H before her. She careened to a stop in front of the hospital building and helped Reem out of the car.

  “Ta’ali,” come, she said to Amalia, who obeyed, silently clutching the white horse. She reached for Chloe’s free hand, and they entered the hospital together.

  It wasn’t like an American hospital. The first sight that greeted her was a person-sized list of operations and prices, so no doubt there would be plenty of paperwork and negotiation about the fees later, but now no stern-faced admitting clerk demanded an insurance card. There was no waiting room full of people with tuberculosis and broken arms. White-clad orderlies whisked Reem into an examination room, and, a few minutes later, a nurse came to tell Chloe and Amalia that she was being admitted.

  “You did a very good thing bringing her here,” the nurse told Chloe. Chloe flushed with joy or maybe relief. If the nurse had said everything was fine and they needn’t have come, she didn’t know what she would do.

  They wheeled Reem into a private room with an IV in her arm. She appeared to be sleeping. The nurse set up a cot and gestured to Chloe to lie down.

  “What about Amalia?” Chloe asked.

  “Can’t you sleep together?” the nurse asked. It was not exactly luxurious, but, right now, Chloe could have slept on a torture rack. She lay on her side on the narrow cot and pulled Amalia in next to her. With the girl’s body snuggled against her chest, she slept deeply.

  Chapter 37

  Rania’s head was spinning. The meeting with the lesbian group, SAWA, had been fascinating. There were four of them, not including herself and Tina.

  Yasmina, the young woman she had briefly met at Adloyada, was a pop singer, but said what she really wanted to do was rap. She performed regularly with the hip-hop group DAM and was raising money to do a tour with the British-born woman rapper, Shadia Mansour. She had grown up in the Galilee, but her parents did not approve of her singing in public, and so she was living in Jaffa with a group of other women. Her parents, of course, did not know about her sexuality. She seemed to have a special relationship with Tina, and Rania wondered if Chloe knew.

  Salaam, who came from Abu Dis in Jerusalem, was only seventeen. She had fallen in love with a girlfriend at fifteen. The cultural norms of village life had made it easy for them to be together during high school; they slept over at each other’s homes with no questions asked. Rania guessed she did not share a room with any sisters. But, now, Salaam’s parents were pressuring her to let them arrange a marriage for her. She did not know what to do. She had no way to earn a living, and her family could not afford to send her to college.

  Rania would need a lot of time to think about what she had learned, but it would have to wait. Right now, fifty eager, young faces gazed up at her, waiting for her to talk to them about the role of the police.

  “I am sure you all know of Um Khaled,” Yusuf said to the class.

  She doubted any of them knew of her, except, of course, Fareed. And Hanan, she realized, sitting in the back. Hanan was no longer a student, she recalled. Yusuf must have invited her specially.

  “Um Khaled has done many important things to help our people,” Yusuf continued. “And now she is beginning a new women’s police unit. Please give her your attention.”

  Curse Abdelhakim and his mouth. He was determined to box her into a corner where she would have to agree to head the women’s force. She wondered if he had suggested this invitation to Yusuf in the first place. She debated saying right out that his announcement was premature. But that was not the way she had planned to start, and she would not be distracted from what she wanted to say. They could get to her future plans later, if necessary.

  “Thank you, Ustaz Horani,” she began. “You asked me here to talk about the role of the police in our society. But before I tell you what I think, I would like to know what you think. Who can tell me what role the police play in Palestinian life?”

/>   No one responded. She rolled her eyes. When she had been a student, you couldn’t keep her hand down. After half a minute’s silence, Hanan’s hand went up.

  “Even though you are not a student, I must call on you, Hanan, because no one else seems to want to answer my question.” She smiled at the girl to show the scolding was not aimed at her.

  “The police protect us by finding out who among us are traitors.” Why did the statement make Rania want to scream? A few months ago, she would probably have given that answer first herself.

  “True,” she said. “Anything else?”

  “You make sure justice is done,” said Fareed.

  “The police keep peace between the factions,” said a young woman whose niqab covered her entire face except for a narrow slit across her eyes.

  “Right. An increasingly important part of our work, unfortunately. Anything else?”

  “If someone violates our laws, the police make them pay for their sin,” said a young man with a bushy beard.

  “Good, but I want to point out something,” Rania said. The young man had given her a perfect entrée into her prepared talk. “Sins are different from crimes. Sin is between the individual and God. The police are concerned only with crimes, which are committed against our people and our society.” In the front row, three young women put pen to notepads and began scribbling rapidly.

  “The police are concerned not with virtue, but with justice,” she went on. Yusuf looked as if he might interrupt her, but he did not.

  “Justice, of course, is a virtue,” she said, “but it is only one among many. And, at times, other virtues might be at odds with justice. So, that is the role of the police: to look out for what is just and make sure that it does not get neglected in favor of other values in our society, such as the love we all feel for our country or the honor a husband and wife are commanded to give one another. But, at the same time, it is our job to ensure that Palestine remains Palestine and does not adopt a concept of justice that might be appropriate for another country, but not for us.” Then she was rolling, contrasting the job of the Palestinian police with that of the American and European police they saw on satellite television.

  She finally stopped for breath after fifty minutes. “Are there any questions?” she asked.

  A small forest of hands shot up.

  “If a girl does not come home at night, what do you think should happen to her?” the girl in the niqab asked.

  “I think that is between her parents and her and not a matter for the police,” Rania said.

  “But,” put in a young man in a People’s Party T-shirt, “if her father hurts her, then that will be a matter for the police. So, wouldn’t it be better for the police to step in right away to ensure that it does not go so far?”

  “Those are good questions,” she said. “What do you think?”

  Then she sat back while the young people argued among themselves. Why was it always girls’ behavior that everyone had such strong opinions about? But as long as they were engaged, she had done her job. She noted that the girls were generally more in favor of regulating young women’s conduct than the boys. It wasn’t surprising. That had been true even back in her youth, before everyone got so religious. And she knew from her college sociology classes that, in most societies, women were the keepers of religion.

  The students were still debating when the bell rang for the end of class. Yusuf got up to thank her, but, before he could speak, Fareed stood up.

  “Please, one moment,” he said, and the students stopped gathering their papers and turned to where he sat in the center of the room. “You all know that last year, I was imprisoned by the Israelis for something I did not do. I owe Um Khaled my freedom and probably also my life. To my sisters here, I say, you cannot do better than to learn from her.” There was an appreciative rumble around the room. “If she chooses you for her program, you must work with her.”

  The class erupted in applause then, and Yusuf merely joined in heartily.

  Half a dozen women remained after the others had flocked out. The young woman in the niqab was among them. So was Hanan.

  “Where do I sign up?” asked the girl in the niqab.

  “I am sorry,” Rania said. “Your teacher should not have told you that I am starting the women’s squad. I am not sure yet that it is going to happen.”

  She couldn’t see the young woman’s face, but the disappointment in her eyes was profound.

  “Please,” she said. “You must. This is what I was born for.”

  Rania was suddenly seized by a coughing fit that neatly covered her need to laugh. “What is your name, my sister?” she asked.

  “Kawkab,” the young woman answered.

  “Well, Kawkab, if you want to be in the police, I would be glad to help you apply. You do not need a special women’s squad.”

  “No!” said a woman wearing sandals with four-inch, spike heels under her maroon jilbab. “It is improper for women to police men and men to police women. The spheres are separate, so the law must be separate.”

  “But we have only one law,” said Rania, “for all citizens of Palestine.”

  “Perhaps, but different laws are relevant to men and women,” insisted Hanan.

  “That is true,” Rania admitted. “But Hanan, what about your job at the hospital?”

  “It is boring,” Hanan said with a small laugh. “You sounded so happy when you talked about your work. If it can make you so happy, I want to try it. But I do not want to work alongside men.”

  “Is that how you all feel?” Six heads nodded in unison. “All right,” Rania relented. “I do not say necessarily that I will start a separate squad for women, but, if my boss agrees, I will begin a training course for you all. We will meet the night after tomorrow at my house at six o’clock.” She wrote down all of their names and phone numbers so she could call them if they did not come.

  “You were brilliant,” Yusuf said as he walked her out of the building.

  “Thank you,” Rania said. “I enjoyed it.”

  “I could tell. You are a natural teacher. You will teach the girls well.” Something about the way he said it made her wonder if this had been his goal all along. He had been talking with Abdelhakim when she met him at the wedding. Had it been Abdelhakim who suggested he invite her to speak to his class? She hoped not. Yusuf was much nicer than Abdelhakim.

  Chapter 38

  The next time Chloe stirred, the nurse was changing Reem’s IV. Reem had lost that terrible pallor, but, even from where she lay halfway across the small room, Chloe could still see the bluish tint around her mouth. Reem’s eyes were closed, but Chloe couldn’t tell if she were sleeping, resting, or semiconscious.

  “What happened?” she asked the nurse in Arabic.

  The nurse answered in two words, neither of which Chloe understood.

  “I didn’t understand, I’m afraid,” Chloe said in Arabic. “I don’t speak Arabic well.”

  “I speak English very well,” the nurse replied. She wore a white hijab with her white pants and white coat. Only her rouged lips broke the monochromatic effect.

  “I can hear that you do,” Chloe said. “What is wrong with her?”

  “A bad infection,” the rail-thin nurse replied. She finished her task and left without another word.

  “Is Mama going to be okay?” Amalia asked. She was still lying down, combing her horse’s mane with her fingers. At least she had not become permanently speechless.

  “I think so,” Chloe said. “I’m sorry about making the soldiers so angry. I did not think they would shoot at us.”

  “It was fun!” Amalia said. Her eyes were wide and shiny as silver dollars.

  “Don’t say that,” Chloe said. “We almost got—” She stopped herself. If Amalia didn’t know how close she had come to being killed, better not to tell her. “Our car was almost destroyed.”

  Shortly after she and Amalia had polished off Reem’s breakfast, Jawad showed up. Jawad took Chloe’s h
and in both of his.

  “I owe you so much,” he said.

  “Baba, the soldiers shot us!” Amalia said proudly.

  Jawad looked questioningly at Chloe. Great, see how grateful he was about to be.

  “They shot at us,” Chloe said.

  “Hamdullila assalaamu,” thank God you are all safe, was all he said.

  Chloe would never be sure whether she had been reckless or done the right thing. What she did know was that Avi’s parents’ nearly new Volvo had shattered front and back windshields and at least two bullet holes in its shiny, red exterior. She needed to get to Tel Aviv quickly, because she didn’t know how long it was going to take to get it fixed.

  She dialed Avi’s number, but it went straight to voicemail. His girlfriend Maya answered hers right away.

  “Do you know where Avi is?” Chloe said without preamble. “I need his help.”

  “He’s at work. He always turns off his phone when he’s working.”

  “Oh, shoot. That’s right; it’s Monday.” Avi worked twelve hours on Monday and Tuesday, slept most of Wednesday, and saved the rest of his time for activism. Nice work if you could get it.

  “Can I help?” Maya asked.

  “Maybe you can.” Chloe explained her predicament.

  “I know where to go,” Maya said, laughing. She was always up for an adventure, even a vicarious one. She gave Chloe an address and explained how to get there.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Maya said.

  The body shop was in the ritzy suburb of Ramat Gan, naturally. Where else would they be comfortable working on Volvos? It was on a street crowded with like businesses—paint shops, hardware shops, and storefronts offering every variety of automotive necessities—and the requisite number of honking cars. The guy at the counter said they would arrange to have the glass brought over while they fixed the holes in the car. The whole thing would set Chloe back six hundred dollars, far more than it would have cost to take Reem to Nablus in a cab. Good reminder for the next time she prayed would never come.

 

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