Martyrs’ Crossing (24 page)

Sheukhi looked at Raad.

“He's upset,” Philip said to Sheukhi. “Please. Don't be offended.”

George gave Philip a murderous look.

“His name was Ari Doron, Lieutenant Ari Doron,” Sheukhi said. Raad was not someone he was going to understand, much less like.

“Ari Doron,” said George. That's like Muhammad Abdallah, he thought. Lieutenant John Doe. It has no specificity, a meaningless identifier. It tells me nothing. It was as if Sheukhi had said the Israeli soldier's name was Israeli Soldier. Lieutenant Israeli Soldier.

“I suppose that's something,” George said. “Philip, is that something?”

“Oh, yes, certainly it is,” said Philip.

“Not sure what, though,” said George, exclusively to Philip.

Sheukhi watched. These two were politicians, he could see. The younger man, too, with his delicate face. They seemed to be deciding what the information was worth.

“What will you do with it?” he asked them, interrupting their quiet discussion.

“Do with it?” George said, looking at Philip. “I don't know.”

“You must do something, you know. The Palestinian people are demanding justice,” Sheukhi said. “Something must be done.”

“You are so right,” George said in an unexpectedly loud voice, his hearty military voice. “And something will be, something will be. By the way, did you like the humus? This place has some of the best. Unfortunately, I lost my appetite. Would you like something else? You've been really very helpful, hasn't he, Philip?” Here, George clapped Philip on the shoulder.

Philip nodded, rising.

“Very helpful, indeed,” said George, nodding at Sheukhi.

Philip was helping Sheukhi up from the table.

“So farewell,” George said. “And thanks,
habibi.
”

Sheukhi was halfway across the dining room, escorted by Philip, when he suddenly turned on his heel and headed back toward the table.

“You know,” he said to George, leaning down so close that George could smell the chickpea and garlic on his breath, “you know your daughter heard the name, too. I'm certain of it. Several times she heard it. Why hasn't she said anything? Why hasn't she come forward? She must come forward. I'm sure she will. Don't you think? She knows better than any of us what he represents, this Ari Doron. Don't you agree? That poor little boy.”

Of course she knew. It had not occurred to George even to think about it, but now that Sheukhi had made his point, George realized the man must be right. So Marina knew, and wasn't saying. Wasn't telling George, at least. He hoped she hadn't told Hassan. Because if something happened to the soldier, to this Doron, they could all be in big trouble, especially Hassan. George didn't doubt that his son-in-law was capable of stirring up something fatal, even from inside an Israeli prison, but even if Hassan did nothing, he would be blamed.

He pushed back his chair and stood up to face the man.

“Listen to me,
habibi,
” George said. “Don't you go around peddling this piece of information as if it were a bushel of figs.”

Sheukhi looked at him.

“One moment of irresponsible behavior,” George said, “and I will march over and give your name to the Israelis as a possible threat. I have no compunction where protecting my family is concerned. Do not dream of going to my son-in-law with this. I will not have my daughter or my son-in-law taking responsibility for the fate of this soldier. Do you hear me?”

Sheukhi began to laugh.

“You know what, Raad?” he said, sticking his face right up into George's. “You don't scare me. You've just confirmed something for me; before I wasn't sure if you were a coward, even though you abandoned the struggle. But now, I know. Goodbye, Doctor.”

George wanted to hit the man, but instead, he turned away, and Sheukhi sauntered out.

M
ARINA PUSHED THE CART THROUGH
the narrow aisles. First you had to navigate around the island of nuts and chocolates and pink and blue marshmallows near the entrance. It was odd buying for men only: meat and coffee, pita, the occasional cake. Her father loved lamb, she bought lamb. Meat for men. Not like before: chocolate treats and breakfast cereals, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, sliced white bread, diapers. Or before that, when she shopped for herself and Hassan: chicken and rice, onions, Diet Coke, and Turkish delight, a repulsive sweet he loved. There wasn't much in the cart today, but she was finished. It seemed sad and empty, diminished. She stopped at the counter where Ibrahim liked to pick out a lollipop. If she made a hundred men happy, it would never satisfy her as much as one single smile of Ibrahim's—looking up at her with a lollipop stuck in his mouth, his cheeks hollow with sucking, the lips curled up at the sides with a grin like the drunken one that had come when he finally noticed for the first time who was nursing him, only two years earlier. The edges of the mouth smiling while the rest was occupied with something else. It was a devastating look he used to have, and she tried to face it squarely now, as she pictured him sitting in the pull-back section of the carriage, kicking his legs through the holes, sucking on his red lolly.

Adel was behind the counter. Marina put her stuff next to the register for him to tally. He gave her a rueful smile. She gave one back.

“How is your husband?” he asked.

“He is fine, thank God,” she said. You always had to mention God.

“The Lord be praised,” Adel answered. He turned over her package of meat. “This lamb is not so fresh.”

“Oh,” said Marina. “That's okay. I can cook it forever. It will soften, the Lord willing.”

“Let me see if we have something newer in the back,” said Adel, and he was gone.

On the radio that morning, they'd been talking about unrest at the crossings. People kept flooding to the roadblocks to demand that the Israelis hand over the soldier. Marina never wanted to go near a checkpoint again, and she wouldn't, except to cross over to visit Hassan. The night before, during the Prime Minister's press conference, they had shown boys throwing stones and Israeli soldiers shooting, as usual. And she saw it. The small white trailer at the Ramallah checkpoint. It looked just the same as ever, as if nothing of note had ever happened there. The soldiers outside it could have been her soldiers. That's how she thought of them now: hers.

Adel came back with a better piece of meat, and she paid him and carried her father's lamb out of the store in a plastic bag. Next to the popsicle freezer beyond the doors, four or five folded strollers were piled up against the wall.

As Marina walked up the hill to her house, she read the graffiti scrawled along the wall.
FIND THE SOLDIER.
It was scribbled again in poorly executed script on the green dumpster in the dusty lot across from her house. She wondered where her soldier was now, right now. What he was thinking.

A car festooned with rippling white ribbons and pink balloons was coming down the hill. As it passed by, its hot exhaust brushed her and she caught a glimpse of a bride's rouged downcast face. It was her wedding day, the day of photographs, the groom on horseback on a hill in the park, and the bride primly standing in front of an arch with her hands at the sides of her big white dress. Marina had seen it all a hundred times, she knew it all by now. The customs of her homeland. Hassan looking like a prince in his white wedding suit. She remembered Hassan from the photos more than from the event itself, Hassan squinting into the sun, the lines webbing out around his eyes, a small smile playing like sunlight over his beautiful face.

She felt like a liar. She had kept something from him: and it was not some frivolous girlish thing. It was the name of the enemy. Not just the enemy of her family, but the enemy now of the entire Palestinian people. That's how Hassan would think of it, she was sure. At first, she had forgotten the lieutenant and her West Bank protector and everything that happened before, during, and after—and remembered only Ibrahim's face amid a hubbub of useless whirring activity. But now she could picture the soldier. Little by little, he was coming back to her. It had been a week now. She remembered his eyes were scared. He was useless, but he tried. He crouched over that radio as if it could save him, as if it were something you could rub and a miracle would happen. But it was just communications equipment, and on the other end were Israelis, doing what Israelis do.

And why was she there, anyway? Dr. Miller and her doctor in Ramallah had told her that when it was bad, Ibrahim's case could be critical, and he might need extreme measures that they could not provide on the Palestinian side. Still, they had to have had something better than the pointless inhaler that she had tried to use so many times and then finally left behind. She hated the Israelis, hated the soldiers, hated her own sad soldier. His face afterward, the shock trickling out of the corners of his eyes—it wasn't
his
loss.

The Palestinian people were calling for his blood, and she still hadn't told anyone his name.

Was she protecting Ari Doron? She didn't think so.

She was protecting Hassan, protecting him from what she imagined might be his natural reaction. If a man wants revenge and you give him the information he needs to get it, he'll use it. If something happened to Doron, Hassan was the likely suspect, in Israeli eyes. But maybe Hassan was above revenge; and maybe he would have understood if she'd told him everything about the soldier—the small good things, the big bad things.

•  •  •

W
HEN SHE ARRIVED
home with the groceries, her father was sitting in front of the television, watching tennis. His feet were up on a hassock, his left sock had a hole in it. His shirt was undone at the collar. His hair was rumpled, as if he'd been running his hand through it.

“If all those people who think you're God could see you now, they would be utterly shocked,” she said. She looked at him over the tops of her grocery bags.

He put up a finger, didn't take his eyes off the screen.

“Ah, good, good,” he said, watching the end of a point. “Sorry,” he said, looking over at her. “Even God is allowed to put his feet up once in a while. What did you get?” His eyes brightened.

“Lamb.”

“Lamb,” he said. “You're wonderful.”

“Have you had lunch?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. He gave her a penetrating look for a second, then went back to the tennis. She raised her eyebrows and went to unload her bags.

When she came out of the kitchen, he was still spread-eagle in front of his match, but he had fallen asleep.

He seemed so relaxed, so unlike himself. One arm was flung over the side of the chair, and his trouser legs had both crept up so she could see that sad, vulnerable spot between the end of pants and the beginning of socks. The twin patches of calf were pale white, and the hair on them was sparse. Her legendary father was an old man now, with bald legs. He was snoring gently. He did not look elegant. His glasses had fallen down so that the spectacles were under his chin. He looked like an old Irish character actor on Broadway; all he needed to complete the picture was a tweed cap gone askew. His mouth was slack. Until Hassan, Marina thought, the man I loved best in the world. He would die, too, and then she would be completely alone: Ibrahim dead, Hassan in prison, Daddy dead.

Two women in whites took their places on opposing sides of the court, and applause came from the television like static, the sound of thousands of tiny hands clapping halfway across the world.

She sat down and watched, her sewing box on her lap, her father sleeping next to her, a shirt of his—missing a button—in her hands, two women on the screen, batting the ball between them. Not telling Hassan—it was a gross betrayal of their marriage. But things were different now between them from the way they had been at the beginning. Hassan was isolated and frozen, and Marina was on the outside. With Ibrahim, their greatest connection had disappeared. Hassan had been in prison on and off for Ibrahim's entire lifetime. He'd been at Moscobiyyeh so long that he had grown fuzzy in Marina's imagination, like a dead person. Sometimes between visits she almost forgot the timbre of her husband's voice. That voice was one of his chief attractions, a lithe baritone that could turn sharp and stinging.

She remembered Hassan in a white shirt standing in the corner of the library at Bir Zeit, where everything was supposed to be hushed and reverential, the two windows behind him facing the desert, and the hot wind streaming in. He was holding some novel between two fingers of one disgusted hand and pointing at its pages as the wind riffled through them, his blues eyes alternately blazing and twinkling, his voice rough, and then sweet, laughing as he deconstructed the bad prose, the bad ideas, making unkind but entirely reasonable jokes at the author's expense while a crowd of rapt students listened from their library pods to the eloquent storm of his words, denouncing the winner of a Nobel prize.