A Little Piece of Ground (3 page)

Karim's stomach lurched with fright at the thought of what Jamal and his friends would be doing. They'd be picking up stones and hurling them at the tanks, shouting insults at the soldiers inside. The soldiers would have their fingers on the triggers of their rifles and they'd wait for a bit, and then they'd get angry, or they'd panic, and they'd fire. Someone, sure as anything, would get hurt, or even killed.

If it's Jamal, thought Karim, he'll be a martyr, and I'll be so proud of him I'll never, ever think anything bad about him again.

He had set off by now and was running fast towards the school. With luck, it wouldn't take long to hand in his schoolwork and grab the next assignment.

Joni was at the school gates already. He was moving bizarrely, spinning and kicking on his sturdy legs, and punching out with his plump arms. The boys who were streaming past him on their way in through the battered old gates looked at him oddly, but Karim, used to Joni's habit of practicing karate kicks, was unimpressed.

He had run fast for the last ten minutes and, unused to exercise after the long days indoors, was so winded that for a moment or two he couldn't speak. He bent over, gasping for breath.

When at last he straightened up, he found Joni's foot high up in the air, four inches from his face. Karim pushed it down.

“Listen,” he said, “I got to Level Five in Lineman.”

“You didn't.”

“I did.”

He was impressed, Karim could tell, but he was trying not to show it.

Joni followed Karim up the stairs towards the upper row of classrooms. Other boys were crowding round the open doors.

“Where's Mr. Mohammed?” Karim asked one of them.

“Not here,” he said. “He hasn't turned up. He's not coming.”

“Great!” Karim disliked his stern teacher. He grabbed Joni's arm. “There's no point in hanging around here any longer. We can go and play soccer. I've got to meet my mother at the supermarket, but she won't be ready till at least seven thirty. We've got nearly an hour.”

A crowd of boys was already assembled on the soccer field behind the school and a game had just begun. There was no time to organize teams. Everyone joined in, playing around, dodging and passing and shooting at the goal.

For the first few minutes Karim felt clumsy and breathless, running as if his legs were as stiff and weak as matchsticks, missing the goals he tried to score and being easily outmaneuvered by anyone who tried to tackle him. Then, suddenly, he felt his skill coming back. Power vibrated through him. A rare magic tingled through his feet.

The light was going now, the sun sinking fast towards the horizon. The white stone walls of Ramallah were turning a pale yellow. Soon they would be golden, then pink. In more normal times, the smell of frying onions would be wafting from open windows and music would drift across the town from a dozen radios. Tonight, though, the return of darkness would bring only the soldiers and the tanks, the occasional burst of gunfire and the wail of sirens.

Karim had just scored a peach of a goal and was enjoying his triumph with squawks of delight when the caretaker came running round the side of the building. His red and white checked keffiyeh headdress was flapping round his shoulders and he was waving his arms urgently.

“Out! You've all got to get out now!” he shouted. “I'm shutting up the compound! I've got to get home before the tanks come back!”

Karim felt a thump of anger and savagely kicked at the ground. The precious two hours of normal life were over. There was no telling when the next time would be.

Together, he and Joni went out through the school gates and set off towards the supermarket.

“Hey,” said Joni suddenly. “Your brother's over there.”

Karim looked up, surprised. Jamal was a ways ahead, further along the road, with a gang of friends. Sharply dressed, they were standing around the door of the Internet cafe, their favorite place in town.

He was relieved. There must have been no violent clash down by the tanks today.

“Isn't that your sister, too? Look, isn't that Violette?” he said, pointing towards a girl in tight pink trousers with swinging
shoulder-length hair who was coming out of a shop on the far side of the street.

Joni looked up quickly and dropped his eyes again, then he sidled around to walk on Karim's far side.

“What's the matter with you?” Karim said, surprised.

“I don't want her to see me,” mumbled Joni. “You don't know Violette.”

“Sure I do. I've known her all my life.”

“You don't. She's just totally embarrassing. Last time I met her in the street she was with all her stupid friends and she called out, ‘Hey, little brother! Leila thinks you're really handsome.' She does it to tease me. One day I'm going to strangle her. I mean it.”

Karim was no longer listening. He had noticed something else. His brother, the self-styled cool guy of Ramallah, was staring across at Violette with a soft, stupid look on his face. The very sight of it made Karim feel queasy.

He was about to dig Joni in the ribs and point out this odd new development when a roar came from down the hill. The soldiers were revving up the tanks' engines. They were about to roll back and take possession once more of the town.

“Mama! I've got to help Mama!” said Karim, suddenly remembering. “I'll call you.”

His mother had already finished her shopping. She was struggling out onto the pavement, loaded with half a dozen bulging bags.

“Karim! There you are at last,” she snapped. “Quick! They'll be here in a minute.”

She had hardly finished speaking when, from below, they heard a crackle as the soldiers' loudspeaker cleared its throat and the awful, frightening rumble as the tanks came nearer and nearer up the hill.

“
Mamnou'a al tajwwol!”
the loudspeaker blared out. “Being outside is forbidden!”

“Hurry!” shouted Lamia. “Run!”

Together they scrambled home, over the litter of stones and rubble covering the street, clutching the flimsy plastic handles on their supermarket bags, hoping that they would hold until they and their food supplies were safely back inside.

Chapter Three

It was another week before the tanks rolled away again from the middle of town and the daytime curfew was lifted. The tanks would come now only in the evening, staying all night, to withdraw each dawn.

Karim felt as if a stone had been pressing down on his head and it had been eased off for a moment, as if he'd been a fly buzzing against a glass pane and the window had suddenly opened, as if he'd been an animal caught in a trap and the door had been left ajar so that he could squeeze out, at last, into the open air.

“I don't know what you're so cheerful about,” Jamal said sourly. “They'll come back any time they like. They're playing with us. They're the cats and we're the mice.”

Karim didn't bother to answer. He was hunting under his bed for his soccer ball. The moment had finally come when he could play his special game again. He'd wanted it more than anything else, more even than seeing Joni.

It was midday when the soldiers left. Hassan Aboudi, wearing his grey work suit, left the apartment at once, a worried frown on his face, to check on how his shop had fared during the long days of the curfew. There were reports that shells from Israeli tanks had damaged parts of the town center and whole buildings had been demolished. Jamal had locked himself in the bathroom with his razor and his hair gel. Lamia was gathering up her money and her bags, ready to go shopping.

“Fresh milk for you tomorrow, my love,” she was saying to Sireen. “We'll have you well again soon.”

Farah had been with Rasha since soon after breakfast. Karim could hear them giggling together out on the stairs.

With his ball under his arm, he tiptoed towards the front door, moving gingerly, holding his breath in case his mother called him back for some dull chore. He made it, turned the handle silently, opened the door, and slipped out.

Fifteen seconds later, he had bounded down the five flights of stairs and had doubled around behind the apartments, his whole body flexing itself like a spring that had been coiled up and had suddenly been released, his feet itching for the feel of the ball.

There was nobody around as far as he could see, and that was the way he wanted it. This was his time. He could play as he liked, on his own, with no one to watch or criticize.

He started at once. Kick, bounce, catch-ball-on-end-of-foot, kick, bounce....

He was well into it now, the rhythm possessing him, his mind emptying itself cleanly of the tension.

“Freedom,” he was whispering to himself. “Freedom.”

And then, above his head, a window opened in the wall and a scratchy, rasping voice yelled out, “Shut that noise up, will you? Can't an old man get any peace around here? If I hear that ball of yours banging on the wall again, I'll tell your father.”

The window slammed shut again.

Karim wanted to shout and shake his fist at old Abu Ramzi, to kick his ball up high and smash his dirty windows. He didn't dare.

“I don't care if you like him or not,” his father had often growled. “I don't like the man much myself. He's selfish and cantankerous, I grant you. But he's our neighbor. He's old and he deserves respect, and if I hear that you boys have been rude to him I will be extremely angry.”

Karim picked up his ball and bounced it around in his hands, cursing under his breath, then he put it down and punched out with his fists, imagining with each strike that he was connecting with Abu Ramzi's ugly, angry face.

Suddenly he stopped. Someone behind him was laughing. He turned around, hot with embarrassment, and saw a boy.

The boy was perched on a pile of stones, grinning. He was taller than Karim, but thinner, and a little older—thirteen, perhaps. His T-shirt, which must once have been white, was now a pale grey, and the bottoms of his jeans were worn and frayed. There was something wild, something carefree, in the way he sat straddling the stones and looked down at Karim, his chipped front tooth showing as he laughed.

“Who do you think you're laughing at, huh?” said Karim, ready to be offended. The boy was vaguely familiar. He'd seen him around, in the grade above him at school. He didn't know his name.

The boy pointed up at the window.

“I'm laughing at him. And you.”

But his smile was so friendly that Karim couldn't feel insulted after all.

The boy scrambled down off the stones.

“Want a game of soccer? I'll play with you.”

“I can't. Didn't you hear him? He'll get me into trouble with my father.”

At the word “father” a funny look crossed the boy's face.

He despises me, thought Karim.

The boy's expression shifted subtly. There was no contempt in it after all, but something more like envy.

They looked at each other silently for a moment, then the boy jerked his head towards the road.

“I know a better place than this. Want to come with me? We could play a good game there.”

The voices of Karim's parents started up inside his head.

Don't be silly, Karim
, he could hear his father say.
You don't know anything about this boy. He looks like the sort to get you into all kinds of trouble
.

Now his mother was chiming in.

What am I always telling you about rough kids? You want to pick up nasty habits? Or diseases? Then just go ahead.

Deliberately he ignored them. He bent down, scooped up his soccer ball and passed it to the boy.

“All right,” he said. “As long as it's not too far. I'll come.”

Chapter Four

Karim felt nervous as the boy walked quickly ahead, leading him further and further away from the familiar streets near his home. He'd never been this far on his own before, and certainly not to this part of town.

They had come over the crest of the hill and were now looking down into the sprawl of the refugee camp. Karim's uneasiness increased. The people in the refugee camp had lived in Ramallah since long before he, or even his parents, had been born. More than half a century ago, they'd been driven out of their old homes when the state of Israel had first been created. They were Palestinians, just as he was. But they kept to themselves.

“Packed in like sardines—most of them out of work,” Karim remembered Lamia saying. “They're from the other side of Palestine. We don't know much about them really. You can't help feeling sorry for them, when you know what they've been through, but still, not the sort of people you want your kids to mix with, exactly. I mean.... ”

She'd let the rest of the sentence dangle, with a frown of disapproval.

I hope no one sees me down here, Karim thought, looking over his shoulder. If Mama finds out, she'll go crazy.