A Little Piece of Ground (23 page)

All the soldiers had relaxed. The one who had first seen Aziza walked over to the tank and called out to the person inside, who appeared at the turret and handed something to him. He strolled back to the little cat and squatted down beside her, holding out his hand.

Food. She's even taking food from them, Karim thought with disgust.

Aziza sniffed at the offering, then accepted it, gulping down the tidbit and looking up hopefully for more.

The soldier laughed. Gently, he stroked her neck. She rolled on her back, offering him her tummy. He played with her, talking softly, as if he knew her already, as if he understood what she liked.

Then he looked up, his face under its steel helmet alive with laughter, his teeth showing white against his tanned skin. Karim drew in a sharp breath. For a moment, for a split second, the hated soldier, in his invader's uniform, had looked exactly like Jamal.

One of the others hit him affectionately on the shoulder, nearly knocking him over. Aziza meowed again, wanting more attention. The soldier began to caress her again, then a shout from the road brought him to his feet, his rifle once more at the ready.

Someone, just out of Karim's line of sight, called out what seemed to be an order. The soldiers swarmed up into the tank and a moment later the engine roared into life.

They'll be gone in a minute, thank God, thought Karim.

The tank began to move, its great tracks gouging huge ruts in the surface of the soccer field, but after a moment Karim heard a shouted order. The tank stopped and the engine cut out.

Karim's heart sank again. They were staying after all. They'd probably be here all day.

Noiselessly, he sank back down into the crack and edged his way back into the car. He flopped down on the back seat.

The whole day stretched before him. He could do nothing at all but wait.

The long, long morning crawled by. Sometimes, Karim tried to go back to sleep. He never managed it. He invented little games and told himself stories, trying to lose himself in daydreams. At one point, he remembered the list he'd made, of all the things he'd wanted to do and be. Was it only a few weeks ago that he'd written all that? It seemed like a year, at least. He tried to remember everything he'd written down.

All that stuff, he thought, that I used to dream about—saving Palestine, being a soccer star, creating computer games, inventing things—what a load of nonsense.

He remembered that the list of things he'd wanted hadn't been quite finished. One more item had been needed to round it up to ten. He knew now what it was. It was the only thing he wanted, after all.

Just to be ordinary, he murmured. To live an ordinary life in an ordinary country. In free Palestine. But it'll never work for us. They'll never give us back what's ours.

And he twisted and turned restlessly, trying not to make a noise.

By mid-afternoon, the sun, beating down on the roof, had long since dispelled the chill of the night and it was hot and stuffy in the car. Karim, horribly cramped and confined, managed once or twice to creep out to his viewing place again, but he only dared to move when the sounds of engines and voices speaking Hebrew drowned out the noise he inevitably made. He couldn't count on Aziza to cover for him again.

The heat had made him thirsty, and now and then he allowed himself to take a swig from the second soda bottle, but he didn't drink too much. There was no knowing how long the soda would have to last. He was surprised to realize that he'd have actually preferred water, if he'd been able to choose. The sweetness of the orange drink seemed only to increase his thirst and coat his tongue.

Aziza came and went. When she was away, he played with the kittens, tickling and teasing them, content sometimes simply to watch as they explored the inside of the car, peering after them when they disappeared under the front seats, then helping them as they tried to haul themselves up by digging their sharp little claws into the torn black nylon upholstery.

These were the best times.

As the afternoon wore on, he let himself hope that the curfew might be lifted for an hour or two, that the tanks would pull out of town to let people shop for food. Bit by bit the hope grew and grew, until it became a certainty.

Not long now, he kept thinking, looking at his watch again and again, marking each minute as it passed. They'll go at four o'clock. OK then, four fifteen. Well, that was too early. Five o'clock. They're sure to be gone by five.

But five came and went. Half past five, six o'clock, half past six. At last, Karim had to accept that the curfew would not be lifted after all. He'd have to face another night in the car.

It was at this point, the lowest in the day, the worst, probably, in his whole life up to now, that he heard his father's voice, speaking in his inner ear as clearly as if Baba himself was in the car beside him.

“Endurance. That's what takes courage. When they humiliate us, the shame is on themselves.”

His chest stopped heaving. The tears dried up.

Enduring, that's what I'm doing, he told himself. In the end, endurance is what counts. And the shame is on themselves.

It was getting dark. The night stretched ahead. Restlessly, he stretched his arms out and yawned. It was too soon to try to go to sleep.

Outside, there was a racket of some kind going on, vehicles coming and going, raised Hebrew voices, the sound of a siren on a distant road.

Aziza came suddenly, leaping in through the opening. With a murmur of welcome, Karim stretched out his hand to her, forgiving her treachery at once. She sniffed at it briefly, then went to her kittens.

They'd been resting on the driver's seat, their favorite place, after a particularly vigorous game of chase. She let them drink her milk for a while, then began to push at them with her nose.

“Aziza, what are you doing?” Karim whispered. “Stop that.”

The cat went on, nudging the kittens, pushing them off the seat. Ginger fell first, squeaking in protest, and Hurriyah followed him, landing in a heap on the floor of the car.

Aziza picked Hurriyah up by the scruff of the neck and half dragging, half carrying her, climbed back out through the opening, moving clumsily up the wall of rubble, encumbered by her heavy load.

Karim watched, aghast. Aziza was leaving. She was deserting him. She was going and taking her kittens with her.

“No!” he said, too loudly. “Aziza, please. Come back!”

Ginger was trying to follow his mother. Mewing pathetically, he had crawled out of the car and was attempting to scramble up the mountain of trash after her, but his legs were too short and his movements too uncontrolled. He couldn't jump easily from one stone up to the next, as she could. He stood on the lowest projecting brick, shivering with fright, making his cries for help as piteous as he could.

Karim wanted to snatch him back and hold him, keep him a hostage to ensure Aziza's change of heart. He was lunging forward, stretching his hand out to do just that, when a thought struck him.

If he imprisoned Ginger and forced Aziza to stay where she didn't want to be, he'd be as bad as the enemy. He hadn't called the second kitten Hurriyah for nothing. She had to be free to go.

Aziza had struggled up to the top of the rubble with her burden now and disappeared. Karim leaned out of the car and picked Ginger up off the brick he was clinging to.

“It's OK. I'll give you back to her when she comes,” he murmured.

He wanted to hold the kitten for the last time, to feel the warmth and comfort of another living presence. He would only have the memory of it, he knew, to sustain him through the coming night.

Aziza came back all too soon. He let her come up to him and felt her head push against his hands, urging him to put her kitten down. Instead, he wriggled out of the car himself and set Ginger down at the top of the wall of rubble, taking care to keep his head hidden behind the plastic chair. Through the hole, he watched as they set off.

Aziza didn't try to carry Ginger, as she had carried Hurriyah. Instead, she went on alone, stopping and looking back, calling all the time to Ginger to follow her. He managed better than Karim had expected, slipping down between broken bricks and old tubes, struggling up tilted concrete blocks, protesting continuously with raucous little cries.

Karim watched them until they had disappeared into the darkness. Then, a little time later, he heard exclamations and laughter, and the same enticing, clucking sounds the soldier had made that morning when he'd first seen Aziza. It was too dark to see the man now.

He stood there for a long time, feeling bereft and desolate. “Winner takes all,” he told himself bitterly. “Winner takes all.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Unexpectedly, although he had dreaded the second night even more than the first, it passed more easily. For one thing, Karim spent more time planning ways to make himself comfortable. He managed to wrench the headrest off the back of the front passenger seat, which, though loose, was miraculously still in place. It made a passable pillow. Then he tied the spare clothes together so that they made a kind of blanket, a real covering, much less likely to get tangled up and slip off during the night.

Oddly, he was less hungry than he had been the night before. It was as if his stomach had begun to shut down. He permitted himself a good long drink, hoping that it would help him get through the night without being woken by thirst. He had finished two whole bottles now. He'd have to be more careful tomorrow. He'd be in trouble when all the soda had gone.

He could hear noise and activity when he woke up, and it was light outside. The tank's engine was on. It sounded as if there were other huge machines nearby too, somewhere out on the road.

Karim scrambled quickly into the driver's seat. The engines might not be switched on again all morning. The opportunity to get up to his viewing place was too good to miss.

He scrambled out through the gap and poked his head up, looking as usual through the hole in the chair. Soldiers he didn't recognize were climbing up into the tank, calling out to each other. The roar of the great vehicle was deafening.

It was too deafening. He realized with a shock that the sound was coming from behind him as well, not from the main road, but from the side road on the far side of the rubble. He whipped his head around and saw, to his horror, a row of tank turrets with helmeted soldiers standing up in them, clearly visible, not more than 40 yards away. They only had to turn their heads a fraction in this direction and they would see him, as plainly as anything.

He ducked down again and was back in the car, his heart thudding, faster than he would have thought possible. Had one of them seen him? What were they shouting about now? Was it about him? Would he hear feet soon, out there on the rubble, as they set up a search for him, or would they simply blast the spot where they'd seen his head with bullets or a tank shell?

The seconds ticked by, one, by one, by one. Then the roar changed as the tanks began to move. He couldn't make out which direction they were going in, though it was away from Hopper's ground.

The sound grew quieter, then fainter still, then faded almost entirely. The column had gone, though no doubt they had left one tank behind, as before, on Hopper's ground.

Karim waited, expecting to hear the voices that he'd almost come to know, and the familiar metallic sounds as the soldiers climbed in and out of their tank, but there was only silence.

Hope began to stir. Had they gone? Was the curfew over? Did he dare to look?

He was about to make the perilous ascent up to the lookout place again, when a thought held him back. If they'd spotted his head above the rubble, they might have set a trap. They might have pretended to withdraw, to lure him out, so that they could put a bullet through him the moment he appeared. He hesitated, listening as he had never listened before.

There was no sound at all, except for the distant twitter of a bird, and the last rumble of the tanks miles away.

If they know I'm here, they'll get me one way or another, he told himself. I might as well risk it.

He moved out of the car with care, managing without the least sound, and lifted his head inch by inch, his scalp crawling with fear.

Nothing happened. No one was around. He couldn't see the tank. Hopper's ground appeared to be empty.

It's all over! he thought. I'm free!

Still cautious, he scrambled up through the crack until at last he was right out in the open and the car, his prison and his refuge, was properly behind him. Hopper's ground was empty. The tank had gone. He turned and looked the other way. The road beyond was empty too.

Karim lifted his arms above his head and stretched luxuriously, feeling his muscles uncramp. But as he lowered them again, he noticed the stillness of the streets all around and the unearthly silence hanging over Ramallah. When the curfew was lifted, the streets usually filled with people at once. They burst out of their houses, desperate for freedom and fresh air, and hurried to buy food. Where were they? Where was everyone?

His heart missed a beat.

The curfew must still be on, he told himself. Am I crazy? What am I doing out here?