“I wanted to. Believe me, I did. But I couldn’t do it to my family. The army is everything to them. My father lost his foot in the Six-Day War.”
“Okay, so you didn’t find the gun, and you fought with Daoud in the village. What then?”
“Nothing. We left. The next day, I said I was sick and stayed home, so I missed the inspection. I was sure I would be able to make Daoud give me the gun before the next one. But then I learned he was dead and…everything. Three days ago, there was another inspection.”
“Why didn’t you miss that one?” she asked.
“We didn’t know about that one in advance. They sprang it on us; they do that sometimes.” Quite a coincidence, Chloe thought. But who would have set it up, and why? She leaned forward to encourage him to continue. “They asked me what happened to my gun, and I said Palestinians took it. They asked where, and I said near Mas’ha. I don’t know why they searched that house.”
“They got a tip,” Chloe said. “From the muhabarat.” He looked bemused at that. He scratched at an old pockmark until it bled.
“They arrested me right away for losing my gun,” he said. “It’s the worst thing you can do.” He hesitated, maybe conscious that he was saying the army rated the loss of a gun worse than killing a Palestinian. But Chloe already knew that.
“Yesterday, they came and said they had found the gun, and they were charging me with killing Daoud. I can’t believe this is happening.” His eyes were starting to fill up. She felt bad for him, in spite of herself. In spite of the fact that he had threatened to arrest her twice. But, the fact was, she didn’t see how she could help him. She opened her mouth to tell him that.
“I’ll see what I can do,” her mouth said instead. “Try not to worry. It will all work out.”
He looked a little more cheerful as she left, which only made her feel worse. Two of the guards accompanied her as she wound her way back through the network of wire cages and barbed wire–lined passageways to where Avi was embroiled in the World State. Once he had gotten them onto the southbound highway, she called Rania’s number. It rang twice, and she was just thinking it would go to voicemail, when Rania answered.
“Chloe!” The single word was more panic-stricken than Chloe had ever heard.
“What’s wrong?” Chloe asked. Her pulse throbbed in her temple.
“Khaled is missing,” her friend said, and burst into sobs.
Chapter 47
If Hanan insisted on marrying Elias, Rania would need a present. That’s why she announced to Bassam on Saturday that she was going to take Khaled to Nablus after school. It was a furlough day for his ministry, her husband said, so he would join them. He looked happy. At the party the night before, he had talked with colleagues who were highly placed in the Foreign Ministry. They thought that a deal with the Europeans would be struck soon, a deal that would get euros flowing to the Palestinian Authority again. When they arrived home, they had made love for the second night in a row. A family outing was just what they needed to get their lives back on track.
They went together to pick up Khaled from school. Bassam heard that the checkpoint was not too bad, so they drove their own car into Nablus for the first time in over a year. That meant they could buy whatever they wanted. She loaded up on vegetables and fruit from the produce market, even though she would have to carry the heavy bags around while she looked at possible gifts, because she did not want to miss the produce vendors, who often went home early. She bought bananas and mangos from Jericho. Inside the walls of the Old City, she hurried them through the street where enormous cow and sheep carcasses hung from every doorway, sending rivers of blood down the cobblestones. She covered her face with her hijab, feeling sorry for her husband and son that they had nothing to block out the stench.
In the fish market, Bassam said that his mother had asked him to bring back some haddock. He went to check out the stalls, to see who had the freshest catch at the cheapest price. The phone reception in the Old City was almost nonexistent, so they arranged to meet in half an hour at the ice cream shop where she and Khaled had gone a week ago. She took Khaled by the hand, and they went to the store that featured hand-blown Nablus glass. Khaled got bored as she picked up heavy decanters and delicate bud vases, candelabra and fluted bowls, sometimes inquiring about prices.
“Mama,” he complained, “I want to ride on the elephant.”
“Habibi, you’re too big,” she reminded him. “You tried last week, and you did not enjoy it, remember?”
“I want to,” he whined.
“Fine, suit yourself.” She handed him a shekel. “I will be right there,” she called after him. The carousel was just across the street. She made her choice—two long-stemmed goblets marbled in shades of green and blue. She haggled with the shopkeeper until he agreed to a price that was still high, but she liked the symbolism of two colors swirling into one. Maybe even an odd couple like Hanan and Elias could be fused by tradition into a happy family. She counted out the money while the shopkeeper wrapped the glass in layers of white tissue paper. She took her purchase and went outside. The carousel was still going around and around. Khaled was not on it.
He must have gone into the store to look at the candy. She peeked down its narrow aisles, overflowing with candies and cookies. She did not see him. She went to the counter, where the cashier was adding up a woman’s purchases on a long strip of paper.
“Excuse me,” she interrupted. The cashier looked up, annoyed. He was doing the math in his head, and now he would have to start over. “My son,” she said, attempting to keep the rising panic out of her voice. “He is seven years old, curly light hair. He was riding the carousel, but he is gone now. Have you seen him?”
Both the cashier and his customer shook their heads. “Sorry,” the cashier added.
Rania felt their judgment piercing her back as she left the store. What a terrible mother, to let her son wander loose in Nablus.
She ran up and down the crowded street, pushing people out of her way. She looked in every store. In the barber shop, she even insisted on checking behind the curtain that hid the various hair products and cleaning supplies. It was just the kind of place an adventurous child would like to play. But Khaled was not there.
Half an hour had passed, and it was past time to meet Bassam. She dragged her feet along the cobblestones. She felt her throat tighten when she saw him, sitting at the window table and checking his watch. She had half-hoped he would not be there, and she would have a few more minutes before she had to tell him that she had messed everything up again. But this was worse than anything else she had ever done. Worse than making him wait for dinner because she was so focused on an investigation she did not notice that it was time to go home, worse than staying all day in Bethlehem and not calling to say she would be late, worse even than getting arrested and being in prison for a month. This he could never forgive, and she could not blame him because she could not forgive it either.
She burst into tears as soon as she got to the table.
“Habibti,” he said, dear one. Although they were in public, he got up and put his arms around her. It was okay; she was his wife, and she was upset. They were a modern couple. The tears poured out of her so fast she could not speak. Then, he noticed she was alone.
“I don’t know where he went,” she said before he could ask. “He wanted to ride the carousel. I was looking at the glass. I went to get him, and he was gone. It was only a minute, really. I have been looking for him for almost an hour,” she exaggerated, lest he imagine that she had not been diligent in her search.
“We will find him,” he said. He took her hand and led her out of the shop. She could not believe he did not berate her. He did not even seem like he wanted to. His face was full of concern but not reproach.
They ducked into shop after shop. Up one alley and down another, past the plaque commemorating the murder of a family by an Israeli tank in 2002, past the mosque and the old prison built by the British, and finally they
reached the police station. Just then, she recognized the little folk tune of her phone’s ring, deep within her purse. Bassam went into the station to start the process of getting the police to look for their son, while she excavated the ringing instrument. She prayed it would not stop before she found it. She managed to answer just before it would have gone to voicemail. She did not have time to see who was calling, but she was sure it was someone who had found Khaled. Funny, she didn’t even think he had her phone number. She must have given it to him one time, for some reason, and he, smart boy that he was, had kept it in the pocket of his school pants.
It was Chloe. She, of course, did not know anything about Khaled; she did not even know that Rania was in Nablus. She was calling to report on her visit with the Israeli soldier. Rania blurted out her news.
“I’m coming,” Chloe said. “I am near Haifa, so it will take me a long time, but I will call you when I get there.”
“No, that’s not necessary,” Rania said. “I am sure we will find him before that.” If we don’t, she said silently, I will slit my wrists.
“Why don’t I call you when we’re near Tulkarem,” Chloe said. “And if you still have not found him, I will come help you look.” She hung up, murmuring platitudes about how it was going to be all right. Rania walked into the police station. Bassam was there, speaking to three uniformed officers. They all looked much too young, she decided. They could not be more than rookie patrolmen. She would insist on talking to someone higher up.
“They have something to tell us,” Bassam said. He looked very worried.
“What is it?” Why was he keeping her in suspense? She couldn’t wait a second longer.
“Come this way,” said one of the policemen. He was smooth-skinned and had eyes like pools of molten chocolate and was not quite as young as she had thought. She followed him and Bassam through a heavy metal door riddled with bullet holes from numerous Israeli incursions. For a police station, it didn’t look that bad. She had seen doors that looked like swiss cheese.
“We had a phone call,” said the young officer, who said his name was Majid. He sat behind a desk, and they sat in chairs facing him, like recalcitrant students sent to the headmaster.
“Who from?” She realized she was sitting as if she was ready to dart out after whoever it was as soon as he said the name. She planted her feet on the floor and looked straight into his chocolate eyes.
“I don’t know exactly who. But they said they have your son, and he is fine.” He hastened to say that part. She tried to take comfort in it.
“Did they say why they took him?” Bassam asked. A very reasonable question, to which she was sure she knew the answer.
“They said that your wife,” he said, looking at her, “should stop asking questions about things that do not concern her. They took the boy to demonstrate that they are serious.”
“That’s criminal,” she said. “You have to find them immediately and arrest them.”
“I agree,” he said. “But first we must make sure that your son comes to no harm.”
“What do we do?” asked Bassam. He was so calm in a crisis; she wanted to strangle him.
“They said you should go to Al Yasmeen Hotel,” said Majid. “They will contact you there.”
“Contact us how?” she asked.
“I do not know. But I am sure they will find a way. Do you know who they might be?”
She thought about what to say. There were many people who were upset about her investigation. If she knew who had reason to take Khaled, she assumed she would know who killed Daoud and would not need to ask questions people didn’t want her to ask. She did not want to cast aspersions on innocent people. But there was one person who knew Nablus and perhaps had the most to lose.
“There is a young man named Issa al-Khader,” she said. “He is from Kufr Yunus, and he went to school at An Najah. His brother was recently killed, and I am trying to find out who killed him.”
“I would think he would want to know,” Majid said, small wrinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes.
“Yes, but things are not always as they seem.”
“I will send someone to speak to him.” Majid made a note on the pad in front of him.
“We will go now,” Bassam said. He got up and held out his hand for her to follow. She stuck her feet to the floor and her behind to the chair.
“What are you going to do?” she asked Majid, “while we are sitting drinking mint lemonade at Al Yasmeen?” She could not imagine spending the afternoon at the quiet luxury hotel, while her son was being tortured—or more likely overfed on milk and cookies—in an undisclosed location. Kidnapping in Palestine was often a matter of enforced hospitality, not the fingers-cut-off variety. But it didn’t make it any easier on the ones who waited for word.
“There is not that much we can do right now.” He emphasized the last two words. “Nablus is a big city, and he could be anywhere. We cannot go house to house. But we have our ears to the ground. We have people asking all over the city, and I am sure we will know something in an hour or two.”
“An hour or two?” Her voice went up plaintively at the last word. In two hours, she would have no hair left on her head.
“It can take some time,” Majid said. “But, really, there is no need to worry. I am sure he is fine, and he will be returned to you before long. Go to Al Yasmeen now. If they try to contact you, you must be there.” That was true. She rose to go.
“Where did the call come from?” she asked. “Surely you could trace them that way.”
“It was not from a telephone,” he said. “It came from a Skype account, but the owner of the account is in Finland and has never been in Palestine.” Smart of them to choose a Finnish account, she thought. Any Muslim country, and people might start imagining an Al Qaeda connection. She doubted there were ten Muslims in Finland. She followed her husband out of the police station, and they raced through the streets of the Old City to the hotel just outside the walls. Rania couldn’t stop herself from looking into every store they passed, trying to catch a glimpse of her son’s blondish curls, even though she understood the futility of it.
After an hour of sitting on the deep-cushioned, wicker chairs in the lobby of Al Yasmeen, she gave up and called Captain Mustafa.
“I am not sure what I can do,” he said. “If the Nablus police are handling it, we must let them do their job. But,” he forestalled her protests, “I will call Abu Ziyad and see what he thinks. Perhaps we can offer some assistance.” She thanked him. She didn’t know what she had expected. At least it was something to hang a little hope on.
Her phone rang. Al Yasmeen had intermittent service. She went out onto the terrace to take Chloe’s call. The city looked calm and lovely from that vantage point.
“Could you call the international press?” she asked.
“I suppose I could,” Chloe said. “But, I don’t know, is it a good idea? I mean, I really don’t know anything about kidnapping, but, at home, I think they usually say to let the police handle it.”
“I think you should call them,” Rania said.
“I’ll talk about it with Avi,” Chloe said. “He knows people who have been kidnapped.”
“Tayeb,” very good, Rania said. She was frustrated that people were being so deliberate, but her own tendency to leap before looking had created this situation in the first place. She could not blame her friends for wanting to be sure they would not make things worse. They knew, if they did, the fact that she had suggested the course of action in the first place would not protect them from her anger.
“Avi thinks we should just call Al Jazeera,” Chloe reported a few minutes later. “The Western press will misconstrue it.” Rania did not know what “misconstrue” was, but she wasn’t the least bit interested in an English lesson right now.
“Please,” she said. It was a generic plea, carrying a host of requests. Please get my son back soon. Please don’t let him be hurt, emotionally or physically. Please don’t let
my husband be angry that I jeopardized our family once more. But she knew that Chloe would understand it as Please call Al Jazeera, which in fact was the only one of Rania’s requests she had any power to grant.
The Al Jazeera reporter showed up in twenty minutes. She wore a smart, navy-blue pleated skirt, falling just to mid-calf, and a blue and red plaid blouse, accented with a red scarf around her neck. Her soft, brown hair flipped under just below her chin. She wore a little makeup, just a touch of red on her lips and a tiny bit of foundation covering a blemish or two.
“I am Dunya,” she introduced herself.
“My sister’s name is Dunya,” Bassam said with his lopsided smile.
“Greetings, yaa akh,” my brother, Dunya said. “You are the father?”
“Yes. Where are you from?” he asked.
“Kuwait. But I am Palestinian. Is this the mother?” The father. The mother. The reporter. The hotel manager. All neatly arranged into a nice, cozy scene for the viewers, who would turn on their television sets at five o’clock, or look on aljazeera.net on their computers, and hear about the tragedy of the boy snatched from the carousel in Nablus where, no doubt, Dunya and her crew had stopped to shoot a little tape for background use.
Dunya gathered them in front of the fireplace, taking care to get the argila smokers over her left shoulder, and signaled to her camera people to point their lenses at her.
“In the lobby of this elegant hotel on the outskirts of Nablus’s Old City,” she intoned, “a drama is playing out with a seven-year-old child at its center.” She went on like that for a few minutes, and then stuck her microphone in Bassam’s face. Naturally, she would turn to the father first.
“My wife can say more about the reasons for this attack on our family,” he said simply and turned to her.
Rania had had a bit of time, since Chloe’s call, to think about what she wanted to say. Well, not what she wanted to say—which was that if the kidnappers didn’t bring her son back this instant without a hair on his head having been harmed, she would personally cut off each one of their testicles and stuff them into their mouths and watch them choke—but what she thought was right to say. She took a deep breath to make sure that she did not come across as hysterical, but as sincere and worried, someone deserving of compassion from everyone seeing her, including, she fervently hoped, the people who were holding her child.
Murder Under the Fig Tree Page 33