A Little Piece of Ground (26 page)

“Oh, darling, your leg!” Lamia clucked after him. “You've got to be careful. You ought to be lying down.”

He shut his bedroom door, blocking her voice out, and sat down on his bed. His finger was poised above the touch pad ready to punch in Joni's number, the one he knew best in the world.

He can't be leaving. He's going to tell me it's not true, he thought.

“Karim?” Joni himself answered the phone after only one ring. “Are you OK? You are so crazy! Why didn't you come back with us when we were all running away? Hey, you gave us a scare, man. We thought you were dead meat, for sure. What did they say about your leg? Did the doctors give you back the bullet? A massive one, eh, I bet?”

Karim was aware of a new sensitivity in himself, an awareness he'd never known before. He could detect guilt and embarrassment in Joni's voice, under the forced jokiness.

“Takes more than an Israeli bullet to see me off,” he said, trying for the same lightness of tone.

There was an awkward silence.

“Did you... ”

“Is it... ”

They had both started at once and stopped. Joni began again first.

“Did you really hide out in the car all the time? You must have been so scared. Weren't you hungry?”

“Yeah, starving. But your bottles of soda helped. I owe you for that. Saved my life.”

“And they didn't know you were there? You were right under their noses and they never found the car? Can't have looked very hard.”

“It's all changed, Joni. The rubble's been pushed around. The entrance to the car is totally blocked. I had to go in from above, down a sort of crack. They've left an awful mess. There's ruts all over the place, and heaps of concrete and cinder blocks and stuff, right where we'd cleared it. It'll take us ages to make it all good again.”

Joni said nothing. Karim could imagine him standing there, holding the phone to his ear, frowning downwards, absentmindedly kicking one leg out perhaps, not knowing what to say.

“Is it true?” Karim asked. “You're not really going off to Amman, are you? You're not really leaving Ramallah?”

He knew his voice was stiff with reproach, but he couldn't help it.

A gusty sigh came through the phone.

“It wasn't my idea.” Joni sounded natural for the first time. “You think I haven't argued? I told them they could go if they wanted to, but I'd stay here. I told them—oh, what's the use? They're my family. I've got to go if they do. It's the last thing I want, anyway.”

“Is it? Is it really?”

“Of course it is!” Joni's voice crackled with exasperation. “I don't want to leave home, or you, or Hopper's ground, or—or Palestine. Who do you think I am?”

“A total nutcase. Always have been. Always will be.”

“Yeah, well, I'm not a happy nutcase. Ramallah's home. Always was, always will be.”

“You'll come back sometimes, won't you? I mean, Amman's not exactly a million miles away.”

“'Course we will.” Joni sounded relieved, as if he sensed that the worst was over. “It's like Baba keeps saying, it's only temporary. Just till things get better around here.”

That's what refugees always say, Karim nearly blurted out, but he stopped himself just in time. Instead he said, “Jamal's going to die if he can't see Violette any more.”

Joni laughed.

“Violette's going to die as well, if she can't see Jamal. Since he did all that amazing rescue stuff she can't stop talking about him. She's just as bad as he is now.”

Another silence fell.

“You haven't heard from Hopper, have you?” said Karim. “He was so amazing, Joni, you have no idea. He was throwing all these eggplants at the tanks, like they were grenades. Then, you wouldn't believe it, he ran right up to a tank and swung on the gun barrel.”

“He didn't!”

“He did. On the tank's gun. I couldn't believe my eyes. Then he ran off into the camp. They were all shooting at him. I think they got his arm or something.”

“They did. Above the elbow, he said. He's been at his sister's all the time, in the camp. He called me from there. He was so worried about you. Said he'd seen you fall and hurt your ankle. He didn't think you had gotten away. I called him yesterday and told him you were in the hospital, with the bullet wound and everything. He was seriously impressed.”

Karim felt a little glow of pride.

“What about Hopper's arm? Is it bad?”

“No. The bullet didn't hit the bone or anything. He was super-lucky. It only grazed him. More a really bad scratch than anything else, he says. Hey, listen. Why don't I come over? We could go down there and find him maybe.”

“I can't. Mama has a fit if I take a step. I can get around on my crutches, but not all the way to Hopper's ground.”

“Oh, sorry.” Joni sounded contrite. “I wasn't thinking. Look, I'll come over. See you in half an hour.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was an hour before the expected knock came on the door. Lamia had given up trying to keep Karim on the sofa. She did no more than frown when he hobbled over to the door and opened it, to find not Joni, but every other member of the Boutros family standing there.

“George! Rose!” Hassan Aboudi said, appearing at Karim's shoulder and speaking a little too heartily. “And Violette too. Come on in.”

“We just had to see him for ourselves,” Rose said, looking across at Karim as she went to kiss Lamia on one cheek after the other.

Lamia detached herself quickly.

“Lovely to see you. Karim, get back to the sofa. You know you're supposed to be resting your leg. Where's Joni?”

Rose looked round, surprised.

“He was right behind us. He'll be here in a minute.”

It was like it always had been, Karim thought, like any of the special days the two families had celebrated together. At Christmas, the Aboudis had always gone to the Boutroses. At Eid, the Boutroses had always come to the Aboudis. There had been countless occasions, endless meals and outings. They had shared every part of their lives.

But this meeting wasn't the same. Everyone seemed to be tense and constrained. It might be the last time the families would ever meet like this. The thought was unreal. Impossible.

Someone was tugging at his sleeve. It was Farah.

“Don't let Joni go out on the balcony,” she whispered, her eyes pleading.

“Why not?”

“My sheets. They're hanging out to dry. He'll know.”

She looked so anxious he was touched.

“He won't notice them. Even if he did, how would he know you'd wet your bed? Those sheets could be anyone's.”

“He might guess.”

He put a finger on her nose and pressed it. He was surprised at how sorry he felt for her now.

“I'll do a deal with you. I'll keep Joni off the balcony if you promise to keep your smart little mouth shut. No wisecracks, OK? Nobody's private affairs shouted from the rooftops.”

She nodded, her face serious, her black curls bobbing against her cheeks.

“What exciting secrets are you hatching with your cute big brother, Farah?” cooed Violette, in the irritating baby voice she always used with little girls. “Oh, my, just look at your darling little socks. Pink frills! I'm going to get some just the same.”

“They don't sell these in Amman. You can only get them in Palestine,” said Farah.

She bit her lip and looked round at Karim, afraid she'd broken the deal already.

Karim wasn't listening. Joni had arrived.

“Hey, man.”

He came up and punched Karim on the shoulder.

Everyone was beginning to sit down on the overstuffed sofas and chairs that crowded the best part of the living room.

Between them, Lamia had set out little dishes of nuts and chips on the big glass-topped coffee table.

“Well now, Karim,” Hassan Aboudi said. “We're all listening. Tell us all about it. Right from the beginning.”

“Not yet!” Lamia called out from the kitchen. “Wait till I bring in the coffee!”

“I'll be back in a minute, Baba,” said Karim, heaving himself up from the sofa. He pulled Joni into his bedroom and shut the door.

“So what about your leg, then?” Joni said. “Is it all bloody and horrible still?”

“No, but there's a great big hole there, and it's bruised like you wouldn't believe.”

“I'd have screamed and yelled and given myself away if they'd shot me,” Joni said admiringly. “I know I would.”

“Yeah. Well.” Karim didn't know how to answer.

“What was it like being in the car, then?” Joni said. “All night and everything? I'd have died of fright, I know I would. And when they actually shot you. You must have been totally, totally petrified.”

Karim shuddered.

“I don't even want to think about it any more. Like I said on the phone, if it hadn't been for your drinks—and Aziza. She was great, the first night, anyway. And the kittens. There was one soldier—he seemed to like cats. He got her away from me and fed her stuff. The second night she took the kittens and just disappeared. When she left, it felt like she was betraying me or something.”

He stopped, embarrassed, as the words hung between them. Joni didn't seem to have noticed anything amiss.

“Well,” he said, “Aziza made a big mistake.”

“What do you mean?”

“I bumped into Hopper just now on the way here. That's why I came in after the others. I told him you were out of the hospital. He's been so worried about you. He knew you hadn't gotten away. He heard the tanks moving around and he was scared you'd hidden in the car, and they'd pushed all the rubble into it and squashed it flat. He nearly cried when I told him you were OK.”

Karim grinned, pleased.

“I'll call him myself. Got any time left on your cell phone?”

He held his hand out for it.

“No, listen. There's something else I've got to tell you. When the curfew ended this morning, he went up to Hopper's ground to see what it was like and he found Ginger.”

“Oh. So Aziza's still around, is she? I thought she might have taken off with them in their tank.”

He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“She didn't. They didn't take her. He saw her and the little kitten there too. They were fine. But Ginger isn't.” Joni stopped and looked away. “He's dead, Karim. The tank ran him over. It crushed him.”

“Oh! Ow!” Karim let out a cry of pain. He could almost feel again the soft, living ball of fur that he'd cradled in his hands, before he'd helped Ginger on his way to what he'd thought was freedom. Carelessly, callously, the machine of war had smashed the life out of him, without even knowing what it was doing.

Fighting back tears, Karim looked away.

“Hopper picked him up and took him home,” Joni went on. “He buried him at his mother's place, near that patch of flowers by the door. You remember.”

“Ginger,” Karim said thickly. “I can't believe it. He was... ”

He was so alive, he'd wanted to say.

He remembered the last time he'd seen the kitten, when Ginger had set out bravely, on his own, to conquer the mountain of rubble.

The door opened and Lamia looked in.

“Karim,” she said, smiling fondly at him, “your grandma's on the phone. She won't believe you're really alive until she's spoken to you herself.”

“I'll phone her back, Mama,” said Karim, giving a noisy sniff.

“No, darling, she's waiting,” Lamia said, shaking the receiver at him.

Karim endured five minutes of his grandmother's shouted questions, holding the telephone at a distance from his ear, and was relieved when his uncle Abu Feisal took over.

“Well,” the cracked old voice said. “So now you know how it is to be a prisoner, Karim? Even if it was only for a few hours. What did it feel like, eh?”

“Horrible,
sidi
. I hated it.”

“But you survived. You didn't panic. They didn't find you. You were very patient. That's good.”

“I had to be.” He remembered the car's oily, dusty smell and shuddered. “They didn't crush me. I won't let them. They're never going to break me down.”

A wheezy chuckle came down the phone.

“Not even when they put a bullet in your leg? You're a good boy, Karim. Now how's that handsome brother of yours? Bit of a hero too, I hear, breaking the curfew to find you. Still throwing stones at tanks, I suppose? Breaking girls' hearts?”

“I wouldn't know,
sidi
.”