Martyrs’ Crossing (29 page)

•  •  •

D
ORON LOOKED
at Marina. She had turned her eyes brusquely away from his side of the crowd. She was quiet, unsmiling. He stared at her, trying to judge her feelings. Again he was stirred by her silent, unmoving beauty. The woman he had robbed and destroyed. Doron stared, trying to understand. He looked at her averted eyes, fixing her face in his mind. She was staring out, and her face was blank.

Doron looked at the people closest to him. Was it possible that his getup had actually worked? He couldn't believe that they all did not immediately recognize him as an impostor. But then, it would never occur to them that someone would bother pretending to be them. To his eye, in fact, some of them looked as much like pretend Palestinians as he himself did. Off to his left, for instance, he saw a ridiculous moustachioed man in a suit that was just a little too old and too tight. He seemed stuffed with self-importance, like a B actor in an old comedy. He was trying to get Marina Raad to notice him. Funny, Doron thought. Then he recognized the man. It was the Ramallah lawyer—her knight in shining armor—standing, gnawing on one corner of his moustache and watching her. Doron ducked and turned away. Raad took the microphone.

•  •  •

“I
'M SORRY TO BE
here today,” George said, squinting out at the crowd. They grew silent as they took in those first words, so impolite, the wrong thing to say, yet the truth. It brought the audience up short.

“I have no thanks to offer to my host.” George turned to Ahmed and shook his head briefly.

“I am sorry, but I have no thanks to offer, Ahmed—friend of my childhood.” Ahmed Amr lowered his eyes. It was rude and very intimate to address someone by his first name only, in front of an audience. Rude to say you had no thanks to give.

George shaded his eyes with his hand for a moment, and swayed slightly. He put his other arm out to Marina, and she walked over to him. He put his arm around her.

“This is my daughter,” he said.

“My beloved daughter.” He looked at her. Something was wrong, he thought. She seemed to have no expression. But then, everything was wrong.

“My daughter came to Palestine four years ago on her own, after completing her degree in America. I was worried about her, but was glad she felt for Palestine some of what I had always felt. She wanted to begin to know her homeland. She met a man she loved here, at Bir Zeit, where she was studying her country's history, a man who shared her passion for Palestine.” George had to stop for a moment as the crowd stomped and applauded Hajimi. He tapped his foot, waiting.

“They married and had a child.

“That child was my grandson, Ibrahim.”

George let the crowd savor the story, which they already knew. He heard them sigh. An old woman started to cough. He waited until she had finished.

“My grandson, Ibrahim. Let me tell you about him, if I can.” George gripped the sides of the podium to steady himself, letting Marina go. Wind whipped through the square. “Ibrahim was a small boy with blue eyes, calm, clever. He knew how to get his grandfather to give him sweets and tell him stories. He was a lovely child.” George turned back toward Marina and put his arm around her again.

“Now, Ibrahim had asthma,” George resumed. “Sometimes his asthma was bad, other times, not so bad. The other night, he had a bad asthma attack—he should be in a Jerusalem hospital bed now, on a nebulizer.” The wind ruffled George's hair, and he pushed it back. A cloud passed behind the clock tower.

“But he's not.

“And I can tell you why. He's not in a bed in a hospital in Jerusalem because the other night, he ran into trouble at a checkpoint. He ran into trouble because he was sick.

“And because we are at war.

“He did
not
run into trouble because his mother is a courageous Palestinian heroine. She's not. My daughter is his mother. Our little Ibrahim was
not
a brave Palestinian freedom fighter. This was my Palestinian grandson, my boy who was going to have the life in Palestine that history did not permit me to have. The life that history stole from me, and stole from you, Ahmed—stole from us all. Ibrahim was just an innocent little boy—you all have them in your families, innocent little boys—and his memory should be served by respect for the dead, not by political manipulations of his fate.”

George took a deep breath, as deep as he could muster. He had stunned the crowd into silence. Marina felt him tremble.

“And let me tell you one other thing, Ahmed,
sadiq at-tufoulah,
” George continued, “if you want to find someone to blame for my grandson's death, look further than the soldier who was at the checkpoint that night. If you want to place blame for my grandson's death, look in the mirror, as well. Look at yourself and the Authority, who've negotiated away our birthright and abandoned Palestinians like my grandson to the whim of the enemy. Who are selling every job in their so-called government, and who have corrupted every official.

“If you want to find the soldier, go hunt yourself down. Arrest yourself, Ahmed.”

A section of the audience was applauding loudly—that would be the students—but others were confused.

“I forbid you to use my daughter's child to play politics, Ahmed,” George went on, looking right at him across the dais.

“There are other ways, we all know there are other ways. . . .”

It started at the back of the crowd. People began to yell, clapping, screaming. It was an extreme speech, George knew it, yet he was immediately certain that this uproar and tumult were not for him. He could see thousands of triumphant hands raised in the air, applauding. Ahmed stood with his arms folded, looking remarkably unsurprised by the uproar. George heard the name Hajimi from the crowd, and then heard the chant: “Hajimi, Hajimi, Hajimi.”

Salah came over and whispered in George's ear. The story was spreading. The rumors were true. Hassan Hajimi was to be released today or tomorrow. George turned to Marina with the news. The people in the crowd were looking to her expectantly. She wondered what emotion they could read on her face. She wondered what they wanted to see there.

This is not happening, Marina thought. She didn't know how to react, but to react in public, that was asking too much. She kept her face perfectly still, and watched Ahmed to see if there had been some mistake, but his face—like hers—was about as full of meaning as the platform's plywood planks. He was watching the crowd's reaction with those lizard eyes of his. Her father was holding on to her wrist now. She looked back at the spot where she thought she had seen the soldier, but he had disappeared.

George stood still for a moment, surveying the scene, then stepped carefully down from the podium; these days, he couldn't trust his balance going down even a single pair of steps—going up was always better, though not good. He looked sideways over at Amr, who was talking to some ferocious-faced man in a suit and nodding. Well,
that
friendship was probably over. George felt overcome by the loss. So few intimates remaining—and he had pushed this one away. But what could he do? It was a family obligation, a loyalty to his blood, after all. Ahmed should know that that was what pushed him to it, pushed him to this extreme. Of all people, Ahmed should understand this repudiation.

George turned to check on Marina. Her face was calm, but he thought he detected something like shock. Her eyes were so still. He leaned on his daughter and she had just begun walking him away from the podium when there was a sudden commotion at the foot of the platform. Marina saw men in dark caps rushing at them and in a few seconds, she and her father were surrounded by big men in dark clothes carrying guns.

“What's going on?” she asked them.

“It's the Palestinian security apparatus in the flesh,” her father said. The men jostled them and pushed them down the stairs from the platform. George tripped and he felt himself begin to tumble, but he fell into the back of the man in front of him, and his body righted like a child's tipping toy. He was afraid that he looked drunk.

“My father is ill,” Marina said to one of the men, as he continued pushing George down the steps in front of him, using the butt of his gun as a prod.

“We'll take care of him,” the man said.

The men shoved Marina into the open door of a waiting car, and then hurried around to the other side with George and stuffed him in. The car drove away.

•  •  •

D
ORON'S STOMACH
was playing games with him. He had to concentrate hard to understand the Arabic around him, but some things were unmistakable. Hassan Hajimi was to be released. He envisioned the guy walking up King George Street, with a keffiyeh wrapped disdainfully around his neck like some pilot from the thirties, and explosives sewn into the lining of his leather jacket, turning down Kakal, and watching Doron's mother's house, checking out the situation. Hajimi was very tough, from what Doron had read about him. Of course, he was the kind of man prison walls would not stop. He had people on the outside who worshipped him, who would do anything he asked. Was Marina ecstatic at the thought of her husband's imminent release? Her face was closed, and who was he to try to measure the extent of her emotions?

Doron tried to push through the crowd and get away, but everything was in turmoil. There had been rousing applause at Raad's final exhortation, only some of which Doron could understand, but that enthusiasm was lost in the news of the Hajimi release, and when people saw Raad and his daughter hustled out like that, the mood had turned more careful. Doron saw Ahmed Amr assessing the situation and deciding whether or not to try addressing the people after Raad's speech.

Doron let himself be pushed and shoved along. Had Marina seen him? She had given no sign, but he was almost sure she had. When Doron had noticed Sheukhi there, he had buried himself deeper in the crowd, and so there had been no chance for him to make some definitive eye contact with her. Well, that was probably for the best, Doron thought. Definitely. All she had to do was point a finger, and he would have been deader than dead. He felt light-headed. He wondered where she was being taken.

•  •  •

“L
ET'S BE CALM,
let's be calm,” Ahmed said to the crowd. He couldn't leave the last word to George.

“Instead of recrimination, let's remember our happiness: our brother Hassan Hajimi is to be released.” Ahmed twisted a tail of his keffiyeh. The crowd roared with approval. Fools, Ahmed thought. Who wants the man out?

“That is a palpable gain achieved by the Palestinian people, and no one can deny it.

“Not everyone knows how to be grateful for a gift, however. Let's not be enraged by ungrateful behavior.” Ahmed thought mildly about what he would like to do to George right now, and dismissed it.

“And let's hope that next time we gather, we will have more good news—and less ingratitude. Thank you all for coming out to show your support.”

He left the platform and walked through the crowd surrounded by the Chairman's bodyguards. The people near him were chanting “Hajimi, Hajimi, Hajimi.” Ahmed felt a rush of warmth as the door to his limousine opened.

•  •  •

“T
HIS IS
a little scary,” Marina said to her father.

“We're having a Middle Eastern adventure, darling,” George said.

“Great,” said Marina. “I'm sick of the Middle East.”

“Me too,” said George.

They sped along. There were four men squeezed into the car with them, not including the driver. Each was carrying a large automatic weapon. It was hot in the car with all these big men. The windows were curtained, so it was hard to make out their direction.

“Where are you taking us?” George asked the driver.

The driver said nothing.

“Hmmmm,” said George. “Not very talkative.”

They were stopped at a light.

“That was quite a speech you gave,” Marina said.

“Apparently,” George said. “What did you think of it?”

“I don't know. It seemed true, but very rude.”

“How unlike me,” George said.

Had the soldier really been there? She did not trust her eyes or her memory. It seemed too unlikely. So dangerous for him.

But she knew it had been him.

“Well, it's over, at least,” George said.

“This man is touching my leg with his leg,” Marina said, loudly.

“Not allowed,” said George to the man, gesturing toward the point of contact and then wagging a finger. “Married lady, you know.”

The man moved as far away as he could, which wasn't far.

“See, sweetheart? They still respect tradition. Even in the middle of a kidnapping.”

“This is not a kidnapping,” the driver said, annoyed. “It's a service. An escort. That's what Mr. Amr said. An escort.”

“Where are you escorting us to, may I ask?”

“Home.”

“Home?”

“Yes, home. Your daughter's house. Mr. Hajimi's house? In Ramallah? That's where.”

“So please,” said the man sitting next to Marina. “Don't worry.”

“All of a sudden, I'm not feeling entirely well,” said George, looking out a sliver of visible window at the passing houses and stores. His head ached and his heart was doing odd tricks it wasn't supposed to do, leaping and thrumming and sending Morse code. It was from the effort of standing there on the podium in the wind. He leaned his head against the cold metal window frame. The shards of light coming in from outside were too bright; he felt a pain at the back of his eyes. The scenery seemed to be whirling past their car, slipping down into a dark, slithering vortex. He felt a cold sweat envelop him.

Then he blacked out.

•  •  •

D
ORON HAD T
o get himself back across the checkpoint now. It had been so easy this morning coming out for the rally in his Palestinian gear: all that the checkpoint soldiers wanted was to get rid of another Palestinian, send him home, out of Israel, onto the West Bank. Whooosh, and you're through—in
that
direction. They didn't even look at him. He hadn't given much thought this morning about how to get back this afternoon. After all, he was Israeli, and a soldier.