When I stopped for gas for my Hyundai, I texted Siman.
Chapter 24
More than he hated to do tasks in daylight, Billal hated to do tasks followed by information brought by Captain Fajar. His competitor for the sector management was able to find the exact location where Corporal Keinan was held until three days ago, in the village of Marah-Rabakh. It was not just an intelligence benchmark; it was a strategic political achievement − the patience of Seffi Keinan’s parents had already expired. They thought the prime minister was hiding something from them and was afraid to act. They gave him a one-month ultimatum to bring him back before they start a national campaign against the government.
On the last day, the prime minister summoned them to his office and told them that the ISA had achieved a breakthrough in the search for him. Thanks to Captain Fajar’s lead (which was mine, actually), they agreed to give him a six-month extension. Fajar was in seventh heaven: being recognized by the head of the ISA is the first step for rapid promotion.
All the handlers are stubborn, but most of them know and disguise their stubbornness with some grace. Captain Billal is too tired for that kind of shit.
“Come.” “Drive.” “Faster.” was his spoken language, and he didn’t discriminate: he spoke with the same impatience to both Palestinians and Israeli colleagues.
Leroy and I met Captain Billal at a police station early in the morning; he had slept there on one of the office desks because he finished working the previous day at 2:00 a.m.
“Three,” Billal murmured on the way to Marah-Rabakh.
“What?” Leroy asked him.
“Four . . . and --”
Boom! That was the first stone to hit our vehicle. I’ve already forgotten the blessing as we enter this place; this is the third time. We hung out for hours in Jurat a-Shima and didn’t find Nur, the daughter of Mussa, who is perhaps the only one who can know where her uncle Yahya is staying. The guard at the entrance to the school where she worked said that she hadn’t come to work today, and Billal thought he was lying. The ISA procedures forbid him to enter schools, unless with court approval.
At the gas station inside the village, we bought three servings of falafel, and we stopped for lunch at a river near the village. Billal pulled out a primus stove and lit it with a silver Zippo lighter with the unit’s logo. By the time the coffee was ready, he had finished two cigarettes.
“Home after coffee?” Leroy asked as he received his cup and took a careful sip from the boiling coffee. Billal finished half of it as if it were at room temperature.
“Very funny, boy,” he replied. “We’re going to Nur’s house.”
It was noon and already the whole area between my back and the protective vest was soaked with sweat. “Aren’t you getting tired?” I asked him. He didn’t answer, just winked while he swallowed the rest of the coffee.
“What’ll you do when your wife gives birth?” Leroy asked him.
“Depends on what happens with the kid,” he said.
“Problems with the pregnancy?” I asked him, and they both showed me their most baffled faces.
“He meant, what will happen with Seffi Keinan,” Leroy clarified.
“Oh, sorry,” I said.
“If you find him before, I’m taking maternity leave,” said Billal. “Come on. Yalla. We’ve gotta move.”
Two army vehicles joined us for the tour. After two hours of combing the village, Billal spotted Nur leaving the bakery. Leroy parked the vehicle with two of its wheels on the sidewalk, and the military vehicles blocked the street.
“I’m in a hurry,” Nur said. Little does she know. Forty minutes of a monologue from Billal’s throat awaited her, and he didn’t even let her sit or put down her bag. She stood there and didn’t say a word. At first, I managed to understand an occasional word. He wanted to know something about her uncle, Yihya Sidawi, and she claimed not to know where he is, and that she had not seen him in a week. The colorful clothes sitting on her exhausted body emphasized her big green eyes.
“What’s the story with Miami?” Leroy asked me. Not far behind him, a crowd was gathering. It was just a matter of time.
“I’m waiting for my final placement. Please don’t jinx it,” I said, and tried to assess how big of a mess this was going to turn into, and very soon.
“Don’t forget to change your clothes before the flight.” Leroy winked at me. I was wearing pants covered in dust and a bulletproof vest with the sweat of all the guards who had worn it in the last 10 days. I couldn’t even imagine myself at the beach in America, in shorts and flip-flops.
Leroy was in position at the front of the jeep, and I was watching Billal. Leroy was the only one who knew what I was going through. Exam season had begun a week ago, and Leroy and I were the only ones in the unit who had to run from tests to field operations, like combat soldiers who had to calculate mortgage payments under fire. After 25 long minutes of conversation between Billal and the green-eyed woman, Leroy asked me to switch positions. Every couple of minutes the soldiers shouted an occasional “Irja lawara,” so that the crowd stayed back. When I got close to him in the front of the jeep, he said, “Don’t let that woman there get close. She’s testing us.” The woman he was referring to was an elderly, tired-looking Palestinian. “Luwara!” I screamed at her to move back, pointing with my gun to the other side of the street. She pointed at the bakery behind me. “Hubzar,” she indicated with her fingers towards her mouth. “Bread.”
“Luwara!” I said once again. Her sunken eyes continued to stare at me, waiting for me to say something else.
“Bas khamsa dakayk,” I said, hoping we would actually be gone in five minutes.
“Captain, we should end this. There are too many people here,” I shouted to Billal. The old woman was still staring at me.
“One minute!” he yelled at me, the way Uncle Abraham, Libby’s father, would yell at Shifra when she nagged him. Billal hit the keys of his computer with his tanned fingers. His eyes were focused on the screen as if he were diffusing a bomb. “Come on. This is a village of accountants,” he muttered. Maybe he did listen to himself occasionally.
The woman was crying. She asked Billal for something I didn’t understand.
“Yihya himself told me you spoke to him this week! Don’t lie to me!” he lied.
The woman stuttered and I yelled at some kids to move back. The five soldiers leaned on their vehicle; one of them was smoking and yelled to us, “Come on ISA, let’s go.”
“Not yet!” Leroy shouted before Billal lost it.
The woman tried to avoid Billal as he closed the jeep door. “No problem! Keep your secrets with you!” he shouted at her.
“No, no!” Suddenly the green-eyed woman was screaming, “I’ll tell you!”
“Don’t tell me! No problem,” he said as he went to get into the car. “Tell Ja’far he’s unemployed as of tomorrow. He’ll no longer have a work permit in Israel. Also, tell your mother she is leaving Wolfson Hospital. That’s it. The party’s over.” He almost closed the door, but she threw herself down on the door. If she were a man, I would have hit her in the face with my gun. But her leap towards the vehicle was not aggressive. She was desperate.
“Get out of here! I don’t want to hear from you,” Billal screamed at her. Tears streamed down her face, creating gray-black lines in her cheap makeup. She grabbed his vest and begged in a whisper.
“Two days ago they came by our place. Shahid Square, house No. 4, blue bars,” she whispered.
Billal looked down at her from the jeep with a serious face. He stared at her silently.
“Be careful. If you’re lying to me, I’ll be back.”
“Just don’t take my mother out of Wolfson,” she whispered, her voice breaking when she mentioned her mother. She sounded like Yemima.
Billal closed the door. Leroy quickly walked around the jeep, ignori
ng the old woman asking him if she could go now.
“Come on, Evron!” Billal bellowed at me, and I jumped into the heavy vehicle.
Billal hit the gas, and over the radio the soldiers shouted, “Hey, wait for us!” but he was high on the mission he was leading. Had this been a regular day, I would have asked to go home since I was exhausted from standing and being alert for so long. But no one dared stop Captain Billal from trying to get new information on the whereabouts of Seffi Keinan. Who could stand in his way when the decision was about to be made regarding the new position of Branch Director, with Captain Fajar competing with him?
When we arrived at Shahid Square, the soldiers stopped their vehicle behind us and ran into house No. 4. Billal hollered while leaving the jeep, ignoring Leroy and me telling him to close the door until the soldiers gave us the all-clear sign.
“We have no choice. Let’s follow him.” Leroy’s voice was calm over the radios, the jeep doors slamming. The young soldiers ran with their heads down, holding their rifles up, in front of their eyes. Billal walked with his head up, holding his helmet like a pilot before takeoff. He looked as if the house with the blue bars was his, as if the street was the street he grew up on. Leroy managed to slow him down when he grabbed his vest, but he only slightly delayed him. The soldiers ran ahead of him, kicked the door down, and ran inside.
The screams of people whose homes were invaded no longer affected me. A boy, probably in high school, ran towards me in the living room. I kicked him, and he rolled back and landed on the glass table in the living room. We learned to ignore the loud crying of the women.
“Check the house. Check everything. Upside down, inside out – every centimeter!” Billal instructed the soldier whose job it was to enter all the rooms. The sound of glass shattering came from one of the rooms.
“Not here,” they shouted to the captain, who was talking to the head of the family, who at first demanded an explanation but very soon was explaining himself.
“Arrest him,” Billal said to the soldiers in Arabic and turned to leave the house. The soldiers didn’t understand him and continued standing there alert.
“No!” the man pleaded. “I have diabetes. I take medication.”
“Look,” Billal said, looking down at a broken plate with baklawa on it. “If you ate less baklawa, you wouldn’t be diabetic.”
“Captain, this isn’t funny. My family needs me!”
“If you eat baklawa, you’ll get diabetes.” Billal stuck his face near the man’s face and grabbed his ear. “Do you understand me, Abu Said? It’s very simple. Cause and effect.” Billal pulled his ear with every word he said. “You eat baklawa, you get diabetes. You lie to me, I arrest you. Cause and effect. You see?”
The sun had already set. Burning tires were thrown onto the road, covering the few streetlights with black smoke. This didn’t affect Billal, since the next mission was the only thing on his mind. His phone didn’t stop ringing. It was his desk officer, the brigade commander, and the deputy command officer. They were all trying to get him to stop. At first, they were yelling, then they were begging him. “Please!” the generals and desk officers were saying. “At least wait for some back up to arrive.”
Leroy stood with his gun facing the street. The five soldiers were trying hard to deal with the rock- throwers and tire-burners. The only thing left to make this the perfect scene from hell was for our car to go up in flames.
“Captain?” I approached him, trying to sound sensitive like Donna, and determined like Amit. “Maybe we should wait for more guys? It’s getting nerve-racking out here.”
Billal looked at me and it seemed as though he were listening.
“We need to wait, Captain,” Leroy agreed. “There’s a force on its way. They’re coming with Arik and three army vehicles. We should wait for them.”
“Who’s in the force?” Billal asked.
“I told you − a force of ours with three military vehicles.”
“Who–is–on–our–force?” the captain asked, emphasizing each word.
“The guard is Arik, and the captain is . . . Fajar.”
If Billal had been considering waiting, his rival’s name cleared any doubt.
“We’re continuing to the next house. They couldn’t have gotten far in one day. We’re going to search every house on the street now!”
Billal showed the force how determined he was by going out into the street on his own, Leroy running ahead of him. A rock hit his helmet but he ignored it. I turned and fired at the ground near the feet of rock throwers. They fled, but one of them may have been hit by shards. The soldiers moved with us; one fired into the air, and another threw a grenade.
“Asshole!” one of them muttered as a block landed near him.
House by house, room by room – just like in war.
Yihya Sidawi was on the street at the time, but we only discovered that later on. Captain Fajar was furious that they didn’t wait for him, but Billal was later rewarded with compliments for his conduct in the mission. Another break was Seffi Keinan’s watch, found in one of the apartments Billal had burst into. The watch didn’t have much intelligence value, but it gave the soldier’s family hope and showed that they were getting close.
When we returned to Jerusalem, the sun had already disappeared behind the hills. Leroy and Billal were snoring and I was singing old songs on the radio out loud so I wouldn’t fall asleep. When I got home, I slept for two hours, waking up when Donna knocked over my guitar when she tried to put her hair in a ponytail.
I met Leroy again in the afternoon but this time it was at Sacher Park. He had his harmonica and I had my guitar. Leroy didn’t have the faintest idea how to play the harmonica. He had borrowed it from his brother and was bothering the people around us with his pathetic attempts to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” He played the guitar a little but stopped after two songs because Yemima’s cracked sound bothered him. After the sun set, I went to the sushi restaurant where Donna worked. I wanted to surprise her but her shift went on for another half hour. It was a good thing there was a bakery selling sambusak across the street. I bought a pizza-flavored sambusak and sat on the public bench.
An old woman came up to the cashier and put her hand out. The salesman gave her a roll, and she turned and left without leaving any payment. She took a bite out of the empty roll as soon as she turned around. She didn’t even wait to sit down on her bench. Two hungry old ladies in one day were already too much for me. I went up to her as she was about to sit down. “Excuse me. What else do you want from there?” I said and pointed to the bakery because she looked confused.
“Spasiba, spasiba,” she thanked me in Russian and turned slowly to sit down.
“Wait,” I said to her, “to take home.” I tried to show her what I meant with my hands, pretending to hold bags. She looked at me and remained silent. “Home. Take,” I repeated. The roll she was given cost one shekel, maybe two. How many rolls do I make an hour?
I went back to the bakery and she followed me at her slow pace. The glass display was full of bread and pastries. “What do you want? This one?” I asked, pointing at a sesame bagel.
She remained silent but had her eye on a small loaf of garlic bread.
“That one?” I pointed at the one she was looking at. She didn’t answer, just looked from the garlic bread back to me.
“Here.” I gave the baker a 20-shekel note. “Give her five of those.”
“Here’s another 30. Give her a container with labane cheese and two bottles of juice.”
He put everything in a bag and handed it to me and I put it in her bag. She looked at me and didn’t say anything.
“Take this as well. There’s about 45 shekels here,” I said, dumping out all the cash I had in my wallet. “Whenever she comes by this month, give her whatever she wants.”
The baker said “Okay,” softly, looking at the wo
man and trying to imprint her face into his memory.
“Good night, ma’am,” I said, and headed towards Donna’s sushi restaurant. I decided to just wait for her there and not think about anything else.
Chapter 25
Ya’acov Siman was no fool. He knew exactly why I was willing to buy half a deserted store in Afula with a disputed partner.
“You’re a young man,” he said in a tired voice, after talking for two and a half hours in a café opposite the Ministry of Interior in Afula. “If you have the energy to deal with this, this can be a great opportunity for you.”
He and his brother Reuven hadn’t spoken in 20 years.
“I’ll be so glad to get rid of this store; it’s such a thorn in my side,” he said with a fist on his chest.
Yehuda, Dudi’s father, visited me at the store the week before. He didn’t make a special trip from Jerusalem, of course. He just stopped by on his way to another bicycle trip in the Givat Ha’moreh forest. My father also came along and so did Dudi, out of curiosity. Yehuda knocked on the walls, checked the faucets and the electricity, and counted the tiles on the floor. After 20 minutes of mumbling, he told me, “Take it.” He even gave me advice on how to negotiate with Siman. “You determine what your limit is. I really don’t know how much this half is worth. Let’s say 300,000 for example. Start at 200,000. Bombard him with data, but it doesn’t matter if the data is correct or not. Tell him that the average price per square meter of stores in this area is this or that and therefore you’re losing money here. Tell him that the asset is registered as smaller. Tell him you have to replace all the old pipes with new ones. The more data the better. It’s obvious that he hasn’t touched the place in 20 years.” My father stood listening and nodded in agreement.
“After you sign and half the store belongs to you, call me,” Yehuda said, and put down a paper cup containing black coffee that had been there for ages. He slapped me on the back like we were old army buddies and crossed the street without looking sideways.
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