A Little Piece of Ground (19 page)

Cold fear ran through Karim's veins, but excitement was possessing him as well. He was watching Jamal, who was fumbling ineptly with his sling. Only a few moments ago, Karim had wanted to see Jamal make a mess of it, but now, with his whole heart, he wanted his brother to do it well, to send off a peach of a missile in a perfect arc, one that would hit a hated soldier between the eyes and lay him out cold.

“Go on, you big idiot,” he muttered out loud, as Jamal's sling, in imitation of Tarik's, went twirling in a circle through the air. For a moment, the shot looked good, then, just as Karim knew he would, Jamal let go too soon and the stone, shooting harmlessly off to the side, hit a wall and fell limply to the ground.

The others were keeping up the hail of missiles and issuing bloodcurdling cries.

“Death to Israel!”

“Free Palestine!”

“
Allah u Akbar!”

Jamal had thrown away his sling in disgust. He was picking up stone after stone and hurling them with his bare hands. Karim felt his fingers curl as if round a stone of his own. His feet twitched with the desire to run forward and join the others. Instead he stood indecisively, more afraid of Tarik and Jamal than of the Israelis.

They'll be furious with me for following them, he told himself. Jamal will go on and on.

The soldiers had been shouting in Hebrew, but now they were ominously quiet. Another of Tarik's stones hit the roof of the Jeep and skidded over to the other side. It acted on the soldiers like a signal. They hunched over their rifles and two shots rang out almost simultaneously.

Karim flinched at the report and ducked away, and he saw that Jamal and Basim had instinctively crouched down too, but Tarik was taking no notice of the deadly danger he was in. His sling was spinning, dervish-like, round his swathed head again, and another stone flew through the air, to land harmlessly, this time, against the heavy wire mesh that covered the Jeep's windscreen. The soldiers' bullets, too, had gone wide.

Then, from behind, Karim heard the sound he'd been unconsciously expecting: the whine of sirens. The man in the tank must have been calling up reinforcements. They'd be cornered now, if they weren't careful. They'd end up with broken arms and legs, and cracked skulls too, if they were unlucky, in an Israeli prison.

“Jamal! Basim! They're coming! Quick! From behind!” he screamed, breaking cover and racing towards his brother. “You've got to run! Now!”

Jamal was in the act of picking up another stone. Karim could see only his eyes between the folds of the keffiyeh. They'd been hot and red with anger, but caution leapt into them now.

Pushing Karim aside, he shouted, “Basim! Come on! They're coming! Tarik! Both of you!”

Karim had expected them to run back the way they'd come, but further shots from behind the Jeep were forcing them to take instant cover. Following Tarik, they vaulted lightly over a wall into the grounds of an apartment complex and, dashing through the underground parking garage, came up the other side.

It was a wild scramble back up the hill. They dodged around the sides of buildings, in and out of doors and gates, swarmed up the crumbling walls of the ancient terraces, darted across roads and through the stone-strewn remnants of old olive groves, until at last they reached the crowded streets above and knew that they were safe.

It was in the last rush up a back street that the accident happened. Jamal, busy peeling the keffiyeh off his head, was blinded for a moment by its folds and crashed into the corner of an air conditioner that was protruding out of a window over the pavement. The sharp edge of it caught him on the temple and blood began to trickle down his face.

Karim, as anxious as the others to put the greatest possible distance between himself and the soldiers' bullets, had also been keeping his distance from Jamal, but when he saw Jamal hit the air conditioner and stagger backwards, and the bright blood glistening on his brother's forehead, he ran up to him.

“Are you OK?”

Jamal shot him a furious look.

“Of course I am. What do you think? Bashing my head open and nearly knocking myself out's my favorite activity.”

Under the red flow his face had gone pale. He shut his eyes as if he felt faint. Karim nudged up against him, to support him, and Jamal unwillingly put his hand on Karim's shoulder to steady himself.

“Were you down there for long?” Karim said artlessly. “Did you get any hits in? I heard them shooting. Were they rubber bullets or live rounds?”

Jamal opened his eyes and looked down at him suspiciously.

Karim fished in his pocket, found a dusty crumpled tissue and handed it to Jamal, who held it under the wound to stop the blood from flowing into his eyes.

“You know perfectly well how long we were there. You followed us, you little creep,” he said.

Karim assumed an expression of injured innocence.

“Followed you? Would I bother? I was up by Uncle Mohammed's place, and I heard shouting and went down to have a look.”

The cut on Jamal's head, though not deep, was still gushing blood. He dabbed at it with the end of his keffiyeh and succeeded only in smearing blood across his forehead. Basim, who had reached the main road above, came hurrying back down.

“Jamal! What happened? Hey, did they get you? Are you OK?”

“It's nothing,” said Jamal. “I just—”

Before he could say any more, there was a shriek from further up the hill. Looking up, the boys saw a crowd of girls staring at them with horror on their faces. In the middle of them was Violette. She ran down ahead of the others, and a minute later they were all hovering admiringly around Jamal like a crowd of agitated butterflies.

“We saw your brother up there,” one of them said to Basim. “He told us there'd been a clash. We heard them shooting. He didn't say anyone was hit though. My God, they must have been shooting live rounds! How deep is it?”

Violette twitched the keffiyeh out of Jamal's nerveless fingers, took off her own flowered scarf and began to gently dab at Jamal's forehead with it. Jamal had shut his eyes again, but the pallor of his cheeks had turned to a healthy red blush.

“A half inch lower and it would have entered the brain,” Violette said earnestly, eliciting murmurs of outrage from the other girls. “You would have been a martyr.”

Jamal looked sideways at Karim, who rolled his eyes derisively.

“Do you feel faint? Shouldn't you get this looked at in the hospital?” Violette's voice throbbed with compassion.

Jamal squared his shoulders bravely.

“It's fine. It's OK. Just a scratch, that's all.”

“But the shock! The loss of blood!”

Revolted, Karim cleared his throat.

Jamal grabbed his arm above the elbow and squeezed it in a painful but trembling grip.

“I really am fine. You're so...so sweet to... ”

Karim, his stomach turning, tried to pull away. Jamal's grip tightened.

“We've got to go,” Jamal said reluctantly. “There'll be a fuss at home if we're late.”

“My God, yes. They'll be frantic when they see you've been shot,” said Violette.

“Oh, I won't tell them.” Jamal looked noble. “I'll say I hit my head on an air conditioner or something.”

Karim choked. Violette didn't notice. She was brushing Jamal's forehead one last time with her scarf.

“It's hardly bleeding now. Look after him, Karim. Make him sit down if he feels faint or anything.”

Karim was already dragging Jamal away.

“You...you... ” Karim began, when they were out of earshot.

Jamal, in a happy dream, didn't seem to have heard him.

“Jamal, you con artist. You total, total creep.”

Jamal looked down at him.

“Did you see her? Did you see how she looked at me? She actually mopped up my blood with her very own scarf! My blood! What? What are you looking at me like that for?”

“You're disgusting. Letting her think you'd been shot.”

Jamal grinned.

“What could I do? I didn't say it myself. She just assumed it. I didn't tell a lie.”

“No, but you...I mean... ” Words failed Karim.

Jamal suddenly frowned.

“You were about to tell, weren't you?”

“I wasn't! Who do you think I am?”

“Yes, you were. I saw.”

“I didn't tell though, did I? And I'm not going to, either, so you can get off my back.”

He wriggled his shoulders defensively.

“You'd better not if you know what's good for you. No one. Not even Joni.” Jamal's hand was sliding into his inner pocket. “Otherwise I'll take this back again and sell it to someone else.”

He put a small, square, flat box into Karim's hand.

“Lineman!” Karim's face lit up. “How did you get the money? Did you sell your guitar?”

Jamal looked embarrassed.

“No. If you must know, I took the necklace back to the shop.”

Karim was touched at this sacrifice.

“Oh, well,” he said consolingly. “It didn't look like you needed it just then. She was totally impressed. You were doing great. I could tell.”

Jamal rearranged the keffiyeh around his neck so that the bloodstains were more visible. He was clearly enjoying the curious and sympathetic glances of the passers-by.

“Actually, I would have taken it back anyway. Basim told me he's been talking to his cousin and she said that kind of jewelry's totally out of fashion. Looks like I got it wrong.”

Karim tucked the little plastic box securely into his own pocket.

“I see,” he said, though he was still befogged by the convoluted workings of his brother's mind. “Just don't take it away again, OK? I need this game. I need it. If anything happens to it, you know what I'll do?”

“I get the message. No need to spell it out.” Jamal draped an affectionate arm around Karim's shoulders and together they walked home.

Chapter Nineteen

News of the latest clash with the Israelis, and of Jamal's heroic wound, spread as fast as a bush fire through the youth of Ramallah, and for several days, while the dressing covering the wound on his forehead was still visible to all, Jamal was treated like a hero. Everyone admired his self-deprecating modesty. His ironic insistence, to all but a chosen few, that he hadn't really been shot at all, was greeted with nods, winks and murmurs of, “He's only trying to spare his mother the anxiety.”

Karim, though he rejoiced in the return of Lineman, had no time in which to play it. It seemed to him that he was busier than he had ever been in his whole life, running between school, the shop and clandestine meetings with his friends. In his better moments, he could conjure up the ideal vision of Hopper's ground in his mind. In his worst moments, he could see only a dusty, uneven vacant lot and a sense of futility would depress him.

There was a pattern now to the boys' meetings. They normally reached Hopper's ground at more or less the same time in the middle of the afternoon. By then, Joni had finished school, Karim, after his own, earlier school hours, had done a stint at the shop and Hopper had finished most of the chores his mother had given him. He seemed to have given up on trying to sell Koranic verses in the town. It made so little money it wasn't worth doing.

As soon as everyone arrived, they'd dive straight into the car and check up on the cats (Joni never forgot to bring food for them, and Karim sometimes managed a bit as well). They'd fetch out their hidden clothes and change, kick the ball around for a while, then get started on the next task they'd set themselves.

“If we could just get that huge rock out of the way,” Karim said to the other two, as they rested, panting, after a particularly energetic game.

“That thing? Are you kidding?” Joni picked up a pebble and threw it at the big rock, which was disastrously positioned near the very centre of the playing area. The pebble pinged against it and bounced off mockingly. “We can't possibly move it. We're stuck with it.”