Martyrs’ Crossing (34 page)

Leave me alone.

Soon none of this would matter, because Hassan would be home. Her father had been wrong. He thought that Hassan would reject freedom because it had been granted by the enemy. It almost made her want to laugh, how wrong George had been. Her father thought that all a man's actions should be based on lofty principles. It must be nice, Marina thought, to sit in your house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a chair that was the only remnant of your life in Palestine—a chair that was a virtual archaeological find—and decide what behavior was appropriate for people ten thousand miles away. George thought it was shameful for Hassan to accept what the Israelis offered, to provide the enemy with even a moment to appear humane—when they were the ones who had let Ibrahim die. He didn't say that to Marina, but she got the gist. Didn't George understand? Hassan was not a hero, he was a man, and he wanted to be with Marina. He was proud to be humiliated. He was doing the correct thing, the honorable thing. He was showing respect for his family. He wanted new babies. At nine tonight, he would be home.

Only a few hours after the announcement of Hassan's release, George told Marina that he and Philip would be moving out of the house in Ramallah.

“I don't think I can handle all the bustle after Hassan's release,” he said. “In my weakened condition. Anyway, we'll be just down the road at the American Colony.” Marina smiled. She knew what would happen at the hotel. He would install himself, and reign from there. He would create his own bustle, instead of enduring Hassan's. There, it had not escaped her, he would also not be subject to Ramadan's restrictions.

“Marina!” her father called from the living room.

She went in to him, wiping her hands on a dish towel. I am an Arab housewife, she thought.

“One more thing, sweetheart.” He jacked himself up a little higher in his chair. “God, that chicken smells delicious.”

“Yes? What is it?” She knew he was about to interfere in her affairs. He couldn't resist.

“I think it would be better if Philip answered the doorbell tonight, you know,” he said.

“What?” She looked at him as if he were joking. George, the stage manager, she was thinking. Philip was reading a book.

“That way, if there
are
cameras, they won't see us all gathered around in the doorway, pathetically, like some refugee-camp family gratefully accepting their recently released stone thrower.”

“I want to be there waiting for him.”

“Absolutely not. Waiting there is as bad as putting up decorations or fixing festive sweets.”

“This is my house.”

“Marina. Think about what I'm saying.” George coughed. “You know I'm right.” Then he coughed again. Philip looked up from where he had been studiously attempting to keep out of things, a ripple of concern on his face. George kept coughing. His shoulders began to shake and the cough sounded like choking by now. His face was turning white, bluish white. Marina looked at him, watched him. His color was Ibrahim's color, as if a harsh blue light had suddenly been focused on him. When he didn't stop coughing, she began moving toward him, her panic rising slowly. Philip stood up. Marina was at George's side now.

“Dad. Dad?”

George put his hand up toward her and turned his head away. Philip held his shoulder. George coughed and choked and made a retching, spitting noise. His back heaved as if he were sobbing. Then there was silence. A half minute passed. They could see him breathing heavily, but his face was turned away.

“Philip, could you possibly get me a tissue?” He said it sharply, as if he had already asked and been ignored.

Philip swiftly left the room and returned. George wiped the tissue across his mouth, folded it. He turned and looked up at Marina, who was standing next to his chair.

“In any case, it's not your house, it's Hassan's, and this is what he would want.”

“Are you all right?” Marina asked, thinking:
You're
speaking for Hassan, now?

“I'm fine. Listen, he doesn't want a greeting committee at the door,” George said, “and he doesn't want to be folded into his grieving wife's arms on international television.” George patted at his mouth again. “You decide, Marina. But think of your husband's position. Think of the symbolism.”

When
will you be moving out? she thought.

•  •  •

T
HE ARMORED VEHICLE
came for him after dark. He had finished his evening meal, water and more water and one piece of pita bread—not much of an
iftar,
but fine as a part of his continuing protest. Hassan was no longer hungry—just empty. Protest against what? He no longer knew—protest against his own release? But he couldn't stop not eating. He couldn't help it. He had gotten into the habit, and now he habitually didn't eat. He felt weak. His eyesight was not strong and especially in the dark, he felt half blind. The armored vehicle's huge headlights seemed to hit him at the back of his eyes. They lit the courtyard and cast long shadows of the big soldiers who jumped out to receive him into their custody. Five soldiers, armed with everything, combat ready, riot ready, wearing—strapped onto their belts—gear whose use even he was unsure of. Miniature stun guns? Communications equipment? Incapacitating chemical sprays of some kind he'd never seen before? He couldn't tell, couldn't even see well enough, with those high beams burning into his eyes. Everything seemed artificial in that light. The whole reason for the nighttime release was to ensure secrecy, but under those lights, he felt as if he were being filmed.

The warden had given him back the things he had had on him when he was arrested. They were delivered to his cell in a used plastic bag from a toy store in downtown Jerusalem. Some functionary had scribbled
HAJIMI
in bold squares of Hebrew over the toy store's logo. There was his wallet, as well as his belt, his shoelaces. Thank God for the belt. Until now, he had nothing to hold up his pants properly. He was so thin he had to roll his trousers at the waist to keep them from falling down around his ankles. Now he had his belt and even his wallet, with his frayed identity card—issued by the Israelis, of course. Among the big Israeli soldiers with their bulky gear, he felt old and breakable. They could snap his body in half right here, now, and no one would be the wiser. What protected him from them? But he was resigned, he would submit to whatever they inflicted. He deserved his punishment, not for their reasons, but for his own. He would come out, he would suffer, and endure.

He had told the Israelis that he was renouncing violence. Now, what could that mean? The big Israeli soldiers hustled him along. He felt their big hands on him. Hassan never had thought of himself as a violent man, but he did believe it was right to repay with violence any violence that was directed against his people. Acts that had to be answered with violence were: forced exile; occupation of territory; torture; illegal imprisonment; assassination; and the killing of innocent demonstrators, innocent worshippers, the killing of mothers and children. That was Hassan's litany, which, he felt, nicely summed up the relationship of the Israelis to the Palestinians. He himself had never placed bombs or detonated them nor had he ordered bombs detonated, but he knew how to build one, and he had never rebuked the bombers, not even when a particular incident revolted him with its cruelty. It was an item of faith for him never to reprimand them unless their activities interfered with long-term strategy—if it was possible to imagine a group like this with a long-term strategy. Hassan often doubted it.

His wallet felt heavy in his pocket as he moved toward the headlights of the dark armored vehicle that stood before the barrier. He hoped it would not drag his pants down in spite of his belt. Of course, there was nothing in the wallet but his ID card. No money. No photographs. He was tired and his stomach felt empty. He wanted to let the strong soldiers carry him, but he summoned up his pride and made his legs move forward. The light was painful, still. They had turned on a searchlight in one of the towers. He felt like an actor.

During their times together, Marina had softened him slightly. She made her own small points, her little, humane inroads. She understood the big battle, but from time to time she raised what Hassan thought of as feminine objections. It moved him when she looked at him with American horror in her eyes, talking about the kind of attack in which nice, working Israelis who had no idea they were a part of a terror machine ended up dead through no fault of their own, exploded on the drive to work or while having a cup of coffee or window-shopping with their kids. She didn't like Israelis much. She found them imperialist and aggressive and arrogant on a personal level, almost without exception (and what Palestinian wouldn't? he wondered. Look at these soldiers here). But she'd still felt compelled to make these incidental victims of the struggle real to him. He'd watched Israelis reacting to bombings on television with new interest, then, and felt a mixture of shame and sadness when one day it dawned on him that he was capable of sympathy for them. He believed that it might just be philosophically admissible that among these victims were innocents.

He tripped over his pant leg and tried to stop for a moment to tug it up from beneath his sole, but the soldiers pulled him onward. The innocent enemy was a new concept to him. He did not tell Marina that her sentiments had begun to bend his habitual rigidity. “Feeling,” they called this way of thinking in English. “Feeling” was a way of communicating through emotion that was alien to Hassan, but Marina was teaching him. His thoughts on the innocence of the enemy were still inchoate, and he certainly did not think that such feelings could evolve into policy. The feelings would never be acceptable to others, and they weren't consistent in him, either. The soldier, for example, the commanding officer? No matter how Hassan reasoned, he came to the same conclusion. The soldier was not an innocent—not in any way.

A few meters before Hassan and his handlers got to the armored vehicle, the warden loomed up out of the dark into the spotlight that had been following them.

“Mr. Hajimi,” said the warden. It was the first time the warden had used “Mr.”

Hassan looked at him.

“Mr. Hajimi, the American consul here just wants to say one last word to you.”

The tall man cleared his throat.

“Congratulations,” he said, putting out his hand to Hassan.

Hassan did not take it. He looked at it and waited.

“Well, all right,” said the consul, with a wry smile. He put his hand down. “Uh, I just want to make sure that one important thing is understood.”

“Yes?”

“And that is, that before leaving Ramallah—if you intend to leave Ramallah—you check in with Israeli security.” The consul smiled broadly now. “Just to let them know where you're going, you know. It's an arrangement we've worked out with Mr. Amr. For your protection.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” said Hassan. Ahmed Amr, the old whore, he thought, not for the first time. My savior.

“We wouldn't want anything to happen to you, if you were to be traveling without alerting security. You understand.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Hassan looked at him, and smiled back. Marina said that a smile like his could win anyone's trust. He watched the consul's suspicion soften. “I am glad to be leaving this place.”

“Well,” the warden interrupted brusquely, with what Hassan imagined the man thought was sly humor, “we are glad to be getting rid of you.”

“I'm sure.” Hassan laughed. “Ramallah will look like paradise to me.”

“That in itself is a sorry statement about this place here,” said the consul, looking around at the courtyard. He caught himself. “Although Ramallah has its charms.”

“Yes,” said Hassan. He waited a moment. “What is left of my family is there. For me, that is a charm.” He hoped there would not be a big welcoming committee waiting for him. Marina, his sisters, their husbands, the nieces and nephews, his cousins from Jerusalem, George and George's sidekick—what was his name again?—and Katul, the neighbor, and
his
family. . . . The list was endless. But no, it would not turn out that way. Hassan trusted his father-in-law to see to that. There were some things, a few things, that George Raad was good for, and propriety was one. He was unfailingly correct, except when he chose not to be. Hassan wondered if Raad had played a part in his release. Somehow, he doubted it. His father-in-law was above such low maneuvering, such hand-dirtying. And a son-in-law in prison was just fine with George, Hassan imagined. Something to boast about and an irritant avoided, at the same time. Dr. Raad was probably enjoying having his daughter to himself.

Hassan climbed awkwardly into the back of the armored vehicle, the soldiers grabbing at his arms from above and pushing him from behind to help him up. It was more exercise than he had had in the last few months of walking around the courtyard, and it taxed his shoulders, his calves. His weakness shocked him. He did not want to present himself to Marina as a patient, after all this time. One more man to be taken care of. His escort lowered him onto a narrow bench, then sat themselves down heavily on either side of him, and across from him as well, surrounding him. As if he posed a threat. At the checkpoint, they would switch him into the custody of the Authority.

The vehicle pulled out of the courtyard, and Hassan felt his heart lighten. Goodbye to the men, he thought. He loved the pull of that powerful motor. The traction of the treads, pulling him out of wretchedness, toward Marina. Take me away, Israeli military vehicle, take me away. Goodbye, men, goodbye. Goodbye to all their suffering and stories, endless repetitive stories that he had to hear patiently, like some kind of a sheikh or wise man, as if he were wise. He was not wise. He was bored. Goodbye and good riddance. He didn't want to look at one more man. He didn't want to hear one more man's snoring. He never wanted to go to prison again, not like some of the boys he knew, who preferred prison to a woman. He'd been in too long, too many times. Marina, Marina. As they made their way through Jerusalem up toward Ramallah, he watched out the window through the protective iron latticework. Beautiful dark mysterious stone city, he thought. He wanted to kiss every wall, he didn't care which Zionist had built the wall or whose Zionist politician's face was plastered across it, or which damned Palestinian had once lived behind it. He was sick of the words and the stories. He would kiss them all, every wall, every column, every damned balcony and every squat square house and every Zionist oppressor's wall, thank God for freedom. Marina. He didn't dare picture her too clearly. Across from the Old City, the Virgin on the roof of Notre Dame appeared. She was gilded and lit, and holding her boy up to face Jerusalem's walls. Then he remembered Ibrahim not being there, and he hated himself.