Martyrs’ Crossing (45 page)

Not far to the checkpoint. Dr. George Raad with
his
gun. Doron was so happy to be rid of it. He felt unburdened. He was happy to ride into enemy territory unarmed, with only his determination protecting him, which was no defense, he knew. Not far to the checkpoint, now, Doron calculated, even though, when he was stationed there, it always seemed he'd never arrive. Then, suddenly to his right, he'd see Jaffar's Supermarket, and be past the store almost before he noticed it, and then around the bend the checkpoint would emerge.

At the light near the Paz station, schoolgirls waited to cross. What would Raad do with the gun? Nothing, probably. He didn't seem the type, to put it mildly. And that was fine with Doron. Off to his left, the tomb of the prophet Samuel rose pink and yellow on its empty hill like those watercolors at the hotel. On the right on another lesser hill stood the skeletal radio towers of the big Israeli listening post where Doron used to hang out with friends.

Oh, fuck, what was
that
? Doron felt the explosion through the tires of his car, it was so big. He rolled his window down to see if he could hear the trail of a jet, but he could only hear the sound of broken mufflers and honking horns and the backfiring of trucks on the Ramallah road. Other people were looking out their windows and up at the sky, and shouting to each other. Doron had the automatic thoughts: Don't let there be bodies strewn all over, don't let there be too much blood, too many maimed—that was the worst thing, worse than the deaths—and don't let it be anyone I know, please. Phones were ringing all over Jerusalem already, he knew. Are you okay? Yes, I'm fine. Are you okay?

Oopa! He'd passed Jaffar's and hardly noticed. He turned on the radio, but as usual, could receive only static.

I'm fine, Doron thought. Fine. He drove through the checkpoint, saluting the men.

•  •  •

E
ACH TIME HE
went through the checkpoint in this direction, Mahmoud became angry. It was so
easy
in this direction. He felt nervous, humiliated, and guilty in anticipation of any encounter with Israeli authority, but it was true that the Israelis simply didn't give a shit what you were planning to do on the West Bank. The soldier had just driven through, like that!, no questions asked, and for all they knew, he could be a crazed Zionist intent on blowing up a mosque at prayer time or taking a school of little girls hostage. And now, Mahmoud and Jibril. Mahmoud's heart was pounding, but of course, easy also! The soldiers waved them through—just some Pals on their way home, right? Didn't even stop them to ask what they'd been up to, even though they too had probably been able to hear that bomb. Lax security, as if it could possibly matter who went in one direction but not who went in the other. As if you'd passionately want to know why someone was going to the store, and then not even care to take a look at what he brought home. Who could ever understand the Israelis?

He and Jibril continued tailing the soldier. Beeline for the Hajimi house. This soldier was a strange bird. He seemed to know just exactly where the house was, as if he'd been there before. Mahmoud checked his watch. Almost time for mid-afternoon prayers. Would Hajimi himself be at home? It was possible. The soldier parked the car with its Israeli plates right in front of the garden wall and got out. Mahmoud parked a little way past him, past the low, leafy askadinia tree near the gate, around a corner, and he faced the car out, so that they were hidden by a green dumpster but could make a fast getaway, if necessary.

“I should get things ready, right?” Jibril asked.

“Right,” Mahmoud said. After all, Doron might not spend much time at this particular stop. He might receive a less than enthusiastic welcome. Who knew how Hajimi might react if he was home? Mahmoud left the keys in the ignition, and sat there thinking while Jibril chattered.

“I'm a little nervous, Uncle,” Jibril said as he straightened up from his preparations and looked out the window.

“Of course,” Mahmoud said. So am I. The right thing, he kept telling himself. It is the right thing, and the only thing to do.

“He will fight us,” Jibril said.

“Yes, maybe,” Mahmoud said. “But we are two and he is only one, even though he is big.”

“What if he makes noise?”

“Yes? What if? Who will come to his rescue?”

“I suppose . . .” Jibril pulled on the fringe of his scarf.

“If he makes noise, we will have five, ten more men who will come to help us, that's all. Anyway, we have a gag. The gag goes on first.”

“Right.”

“Ready to go?”

“Yes, I think so.” Jibril checked the bag he had put the stuff in. “Yes, I've got everything.”

“Okay.” Mahmoud turned off the car. “Once he goes in, let's hide under the askadinia tree, there. Outside the wall.”

“Got it,” Jibril said.

Mahmoud hoped Hajimi was not at home. He wanted to take the guy now, and he didn't want Hajimi stealing his prize.

•  •  •

H
ERE HE WAS
, opening the garden gate. In his mind, Doron had done this so many times, opened her garden gate next to the low, leafy tree. Now he was doing it. The little catch, push down on it. It opens inward. He closes it behind him. Rows of geraniums and impatiens, looking dusty and half dead. He walks between them. One of his dried-out willows, over the house. Maybe he loves willows after all. He hears the call to prayer sound out through the neighborhood.

He reaches for his gun. It's a reflex. Because what if the husband is here. Never thought of that, now, did you? What if he likes to pray in the mosque, and he's going to burst out that door right now and run into me. What if he's here? Be brave, big Israeli soldier. You have seen the husband on the television: little, crushable. You can crush him in your bare hand. Suck the breath out of the child, crush the husband.

The house looks like a bunker to Doron now, as he approaches: low, with little windows, and set down in the hill. A child's plastic pedal-car is parked up against the house near the door, and a stroller.

He rings the bell.

She opens the door. Her hair is covered. She's so different with her hair covered. She looks so Palestinian. She looks up at him, curious and worried.

I'm an Israeli soldier at your door, he thinks. What am I doing here?

•  •  •

S
HE WAS ASLEEP
, napping, and the bell woke her up and now she can't help it, as she looks at this big man, this giant, at her door, in that uniform, she has the sudden thought, Maybe they are bringing Ibrahim back to me. It's like a dream: there is a tall Israeli soldier at my door. What else could it be about? Like a dream where the impossible thing you want to have happen is actually happening. She's still half asleep. Maybe there was some terrible mistake and they've had him all this time and now they're bringing him back to her. She felt her arms getting ready to go around him, she starts to reach out for him—give him to me!—and she wants to call out to Hassan that they're bringing the baby back. Hassan's just upstairs praying on the roof, but for this he would break off his prayers. For this. They're bringing the baby back.

“I . . .” Doron stopped.

Marina stared at him and heard his voice.

How could this person be here?

“What do you think you're doing?” she said to him in English. There was a catch in her voice.

Doron didn't know what to say. He stood there, looking down at her. He opened his mouth to say something.

“Why did you have to come?” she asked. She stared at him.

He couldn't read her face. What was there? Shock, anger, pain, what?

Her face was like a wall against emotion, and then it collapsed. Her mouth turned down and her eyes shut tight and she pushed her fist against the wall. Her shoulders started to tremble and he saw that she was crying.

“You're the only one who knows. . . .” she said. “The only one who saw it happen. I can't . . .”

“Please,” he said to her, leaning down. “I came because I didn't know what else I could do. I'm sorry. Oh, God, I'm making it worse.”

She wiped her tears away, but new ones came.

She looked at him. Here he came to her in his uniform to apologize in Ramallah among his enemies at the house of the family he had wronged.

“My
husband
is upstairs,” she said.

“I am glad he is out of prison.”

The man has no idea, Marina thought.

“You're out of your mind,” she said. “He'll kill you if he sees you here. Go away.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” Doron asked her.

“Back to your country,” Marina said.

“Can't.”

“I don't care where you go. Just go, he'll kill you if you stay here. Do you want to destroy my life completely?” she asked. “If he hurts you, they'll take him away from me, too, and then I'll have nothing.” Now she was trying to pile all her arguments and emotions up on top of each other as fast as possible, to be as cruel as possible, only get him out and away. His presence, that look on his face, made her heart ache. It was as if he were the first person to show her that he really knew what it had meant. Maybe in fact he
was
the only one who understood.

“What should I do now?”

“Oh, Lieutenant, Lieutenant.” She shook her head.

The way she said it, Doron thought.

“I'll do whatever you say,” he said.

She put out a hand and touched his arm.

“Go away, now,” she said. “Before he comes down. Please.”

He looked down at her hand on his sleeve. Then he looked back up at her face. She seemed to smile at him, a smile gone so fast he was hardly sure he'd seen it. Maybe he'd imagined it.

“Go on, go, now,” she said. “Prayers are ending.”

He looked down again. Her hand was pushing him out the door. He thought she'd been touching him, but really she had just been pushing him away. He backed up. The stone of her lintel was the exact pinkish yellow of the watercolors he'd seen at the hotel. He shook his head. The sun was shining across the yard, and it was growing darker, he could feel it. She was dismissing him into the void. Oh, Marina, please, he wanted to say. After this, there was nothing for him but Yizhar.

“He will come
down,
Lieutenant,” she said. The soldier looked so bereft, but Hassan would not be capable of a second of pity if he found this figure in his doorway.

“Go,” she said. “Go back to you car and get away.

“Save my husband,” she said.

“Forgive me,” Doron said to her. He leaned on the door frame and looked at her.

“I'm shutting the door now,” she said. “I hear him coming.”

The door began closing and he heard a man's voice call “Marina!” and then the door shut in his face.

•  •  •

D
ORON WAS STANDING
there. Marina's face was gone, and Doron was still standing there, looking at the little golden peephole in the middle of the door and at the grain of the wood showing through the paint. He noticed the peeling door frame and the name of the family in Arabic written near the number of the house, the lovely scratches in Arabic for the number 286, and for the name Hajimi—he sounded it out under his breath—running just below the number in ribbony script, the number and the script looking alien to Doron, like something an archeologist would find on a stone buried in a desert somewhere beneath an ancient citadel, a stone etched with an unimportant message forgotten by generations.

Through the door he could hear them talking, a sound that made him feel lonely and in danger at the same time. She was right. Doron did not want Hajimi to find him there. He turned to go. Each stone in the garden path seemed precious to him as he walked away, each leaf. I will never see her garden again. He pulled open the gate, and stood there under the askadinia tree for a moment, looking at his green dumpster across the street. He wondered what he would do now, where to go. Maybe, maybe just turn around, do it, do it, let Hajimi play the story out.

He heard a rushed whisper like the sound of a hiding child, and he turned his head. A child? Someone grabbed him from behind. What? They had him by the arms and there was something over his mouth. A gag, they were tying a gag around his mouth. What? Was it Hajimi? The leaves of the askadinia tree scratched his face as he was pulled backward into its shadows. He spluttered and felt himself held in an inescapable embrace: one arm around his neck, another around his waist, hands coming from nowhere to bind his hands, the unbending blade of a knife against his cheek. Doron struggled, pulling his face back from the knife, pushing out his elbows to try to loosen the grip. Whoever was holding him wouldn't let go, he wouldn't. Was this a joke? The rope around his wrists . . . a kidnapping. Doron couldn't believe it. He twisted his body first one way, then the other in order to get free, but whoever it was stuck to him.

Who the fuck were they? Hajimi was inside. Doron felt betrayed, but by whom? And what creature could have so many arms? It was a team. He thought of Yizhar and his security detail, but the men behind him, working so hard to secure him, were grunting in Arabic. He tried to relax now into their grip. Why fight it? He would just lose his strength. They have me.

“Good boy,” one said to him in poor Hebrew. “We go to the car, now.” The flat of the blade pushed a little harder against his cheek.

Doron felt hands tapping all over him. They were patting him down. No one had ever searched him before—he usually did the searching. He looked down. Big hands on him, checking waist, legs, ankles, pockets. He had no weapon. They pushed him out from under the tree and across the street to a terrible-looking car. No elite Israeli forces rushed forward to rescue him.

“Get in,” one of the men said. “In back.” Big Hands jumped in and stationed himself next to Doron, a scarf wrapped around the bottom of his face. Another man got into the driver's seat. He started up the car. It coughed, and died.