Bloodline (31 page)

Hassan wasn't aware that people on the sidewalks were looking at him as his car continued to backfire as it climbed the steep hills that led out of Jerusalem. He drove toward the periphery of the city, past hospitals, museums, and television buildings, and soon arrived on the road north from the city to the Sea of Galilee.

Hassan had recently returned from Peki'in, where he'd followed the doctor, Yael, from place to place. Why was the damn woman interfering? Didn't she know her place? Hassan had told the imam of her visits, of the times he'd seen her suspiciously talking to people. And the imam was worried by her activities. Although he didn't discuss it with Hassan, the young man knew that it must have something to do with Bilal, with what he'd told her.

When he'd informed his imam of what the Jew doctor was doing, the decision that she must be killed was made. Prayers were said, thanks were given to Allah, and Hassan was ordered to return and continue what he had begun. The doctor knew too much.

The first time was a scouting expedition. Her image, her hair, her face, were now known so well to him. He had been given a high-velocity rifle, a handgun, and ammunition. He had been told that if the circumstances permitted it—if there was nobody else around and the escape path was clear—he should use the handgun, shooting the young woman in the chest or the head. If he couldn't get close enough because she was surrounded by friends, he should hide behind a tree or a building while she was sitting outdoors at a table or somewhere and use the rifle to kill her. In all the screaming and confusion, Hassan would have time to dismantle the rifle, pack it into a bag, and walk away as though he were a local villager.

The imam had assured him that from the moment the girl fell
dead to the floor to the time he was in his car and far away, the police would only just be arriving at the scene of her death. Hassan would be on the road to Bayt al Gizah and safety well before the police had time to set up roadblocks. The imam had told him that on his way back from the scene of the crime he should pull up in a quiet spot on the northern fringes of the Sea of Galilee and throw the gun and the rifle as far from the shore as he possibly could. Then he was to strip naked, walk into the water, and swim for a few minutes. That, the imam said, would remove all trace of the gunpowder residue so that in the unlikely event that he was stopped at a random Israeli roadblock, the police dogs wouldn't smell anything on his hands. Hassan had packed a change of underwear and clothes so that when he emerged from the water, he could dress himself in trousers and a top that had never been in contact with guns. He would dump the clothes he'd worn to travel to Nahariya in a trash can somewhere along the way.

It was all so clinical, so matter-of-fact. As if the imam were giving him instructions to go to a supermarket and buy food for that night. Hassan gripped the wheel, his knuckles white with tension. Fear? Anger? Doubt? He didn't know; all he knew was that he was about to kill the woman who'd saved the life of his best friend.

Whether she was a Jew or not, his culture, his upbringing—everything he understood about himself as an Arab—told him that he had to revere her for what she'd done for Bilal. As the sun was breasting the Mountains of Moab, his mind was such a maelstrom of emotions that he had to breathe deeply in order to concentrate on the road. He loved the imam, but after what Bilal had told him in prison, what should he do?

He'd never killed anybody before. He'd talked about it many times when he was inside the tightly knit cabal sitting at the feet of the imam, learning about the amorality of the Jews, of their theft of Palestinian land, of their genocide of the Palestinian
people, and much more. Everything the imam said explained the misery of Hassan's life and the way his parents and grandparents had suffered all these years. And his fury had been fed and had grown and grown until he was desperate to avenge the degradation with an act of vengeance.

Bombs, rocket attacks, grenades hurled at checkpoints, were all part of the fantasy. That was killing the enemy at a distance; it was impersonal. But a pistol in the hand, a bullet in the head of a young woman, lining her up in the crosshairs of a high-powered rifle, seeing her head blown off—these were no longer what the young Palestinian could aspire to. He'd now been told that he would be going up to a young woman and looking at the terror in her face as he raised the pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. He realized he would no longer be a freedom fighter but a murderer. Hassan felt sick as he thought of Yael's blood and brains splattering and watching her fall to the street. Bombs, rockets, and grenades were all impersonal, but using a gun sat heavily and uneasily with Hassan.

The doctor had saved Bilal's life. And Bilal had begged him to contact her. Yet, now, under orders from the imam, he had to murder this doctor because the imam was certain that Bilal, stupid Bilal, had told her things he shouldn't have. Was the imam right, or was Bilal telling the truth when he assured him that he'd said nothing? Bilal had always told him the truth, even when they'd been lying to others about their little crimes, even when they were kids together. But this wasn't kids' stuff any longer. This was big stuff, adult stuff, matters of life and death, and Hassan felt lost.

And what of Bilal? Had he really seen things that he shouldn't have seen? The imam swore on the Koran that Bilal had broken the most sacred rule by which the group operated. Who should he believe? His mind was so confused, spinning in all directions as he drove north, ever north, toward his moment of decision with the Jew doctor. Damn Bilal! Damn the Jew doctor! And damn
the imam. Life had been hard but uncomplicated in the village. But at least there he knew who he was! Now he was confused, frightened, and alone.

The road ahead was crowded, but he knew that by the time he reached Afula the roads would be a lot less busy, and when he reached the Galilee the traffic would almost disappear. That would make driving easier, but it would also make his car more visible to the Israeli police and others who were constantly monitoring the nation. And Palestinians acting as Israeli spies were everywhere, watching every move of their fellow Palestinians and reporting their whereabouts to the authorities.

It took him four hours of cautious driving well within the speed limit to reach Nahariya. He parked his car on the outskirts of the city and caught a bus to the hospital, where he would spy on the doctor. Trying to appear inconspicuous, he studied the building directory and found the surgical wards on the third floor. He took the stairs, not the elevator, and meandered from corridor to corridor, trying to find the room where the surgeons gathered.

“Can I help you?” a nurse asked him.

“No!” he said. “No, I'm looking for . . .”

“A patient?”

“Yes, a patient. My uncle,” Hassan lied.

“You really shouldn't be here outside of visiting hours. What's your uncle's name?”

Without thinking, he immediately said, “Ali.”

The nurse smiled. At any time there could be twenty Alis in the hospital. “Ali who? What's his surname? Which ward is he in?”

Hassan looked at her blankly.

“Well, what's he in the hospital for?” she asked.

Hassan was suddenly frightened and shrugged. Then he turned and walked away quickly. He ran down the flights of stairs and out of the front entrance of the hospital, praying that the nurse wouldn't call security.

Sleeping in his car in the backstreets of the northern city, Hassan waited for two days before he had the courage to drive up to the hospital's parking lot. He could see the doors where doctors and nurses, patients and relatives, walked in and out, and he sat there, hour after hour for the entire day, hoping that she'd walk out of the hospital so that he could follow her home.

On the third day he was about to phone the imam and give him the coded message that his mission had failed, when Yael Cohen emerged from the doors of the hospital accompanied by two other people. Instead of a white coat, as he expected, she was dressed in jeans and a blue top with a white scarf. He watched her walk toward her car, parked four rows from his. She was young, fresh, confident, and gorgeous. And soon she would be dead.

As she got in, he turned the key and prepared to follow her. They left the hospital grounds and she drove northeast, away from the sea and in the direction of the Lebanese border. But what surprised him was that as she drove out of the center of the city, instead of heading for residential areas, she turned east and headed toward the hills. Her car was far more modern and powerful than his, and as she gunned her machine up the steep hills, she almost left him behind. Only when he came over the crown of a hill by pure luck did he see her far in the distance, on a road to the right and heading south. If he hadn't spotted her, he would have continued along the same road. Hassan turned in the new direction and followed as best he could. Theirs were the only cars on this road. After many miles, up hills and down into valleys, he saw a road sign. And in the distance he realized that she'd suddenly pulled over in the middle of a village. The sign told him that the village was Peki'in. It was his second time here; this time his goal was very different.

He parked in a lane, behind a badly battered and dusty forty-year-old Toyota truck. He took out the sports bag the imam had given him and hurried back to the main street that ran through
the village. Hassan looked for her, hoping that she hadn't gone into any of the buildings. But she was nowhere to be seen. So, for the second time in less than a week, Hassan walked in the shadows of buildings on the periphery of the central square where the village's famous and constantly running spring had been dammed and flowed into the wide tiled reservoir. She could have gone in any direction, so he decided to stand in the shadows and wait for her. Though it was late in the afternoon, the heat was oppressive, and as the sun descended into the distant sea, it cast long shadows. Being a tiny village miles from nowhere, there were few cars and even fewer people.

As he waited on the periphery of the village square, he looked around for a tree or a building that would shield him from being observed. He would need such shade if he was going to point the rifle toward her. He would kill her as she emerged from a building into the empty street. He'd drop her when she was walking toward her car. He'd aim the bullet directly at her chest so that it exploded in her heart and she would die painlessly and instantly. He hoped.

It so much depended on whether or not she was alone, or in his sights, or if the setting sun wasn't in his eyes. For any of these reasons he'd quickly pack up the rifle and kill her with his revolver the moment she arrived at the door to her car. Hassan knew this was what he must do, for if he didn't, then the repercussions by the imam against him and possibly his family would be severe. But he silently prayed it would not come to this.

He'd squeeze the trigger carefully as he'd done in the hills above his village of Bayt al Gizah when he shot tin cans: narrow his eyes so that the target was more focused and then fire the gun. He might not even watch her die. He might just avert his eyes, squeeze the trigger, feel its recoil, then put the rifle away and escape.

He planned it in his head but couldn't help but see Yael fall to the ground, screaming in terror, blood spurting from the wound.
Could he do it? Shooting bottles and tin cans for target practice was a lot easier than shooting a woman in the heart.

Bilal's words from the prison rang in his ears. Had his brother really told the doctor about the imam, about the group which was to bring liberty to Palestine? Because if so, then his finger had to squeeze the trigger.

As he took out the rifle, checking that nobody was looking, he realized that his hands were shaking.

Y
AEL EMERGED
from the village's central records repository half an hour later carrying a sheaf of papers. They'd been photocopied for her by the friendly young clerk, and now she had to determine what path of action to follow. In her hands were the records of families like that of Bilal, going back to the late 1800s.

But since she'd been in Nahariya, the urgency of finding out why her blood and Bilal's were linked seemed to have diminished. It had become secondary to her daily routine, and this time away from Jerusalem was a pleasant break. Although she'd conducted a number of surgeries, she found herself trying to justify this time off.

The pressure of her work in the hospital in Jerusalem, the speed and incoherence of the city, all lost their urgency to a calmness that seemed to have descended on her as she traveled north toward Galilee. Perhaps it was the rugged grandeur of the hills and valleys, or the individualism of the inhabitants, or the feeling of being so far from the cosmopolitanism of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that did it. It was as though she were in a quieter, more laid-back world—a biblical world.

As she walked back to her car, the feeling of always needing to get somewhere, of always having to do something, simply wasn't there. She didn't have to rush back; she could take her time. She
could sit in a café and have a cup of coffee. The one she'd been in the other day, the one with the awning, was close by, and so she sat down at a table and ordered a drink.

There were two other people seated beneath the awning at different tables. They were elderly men, and from their dress they were obviously senior members of the Druze community. They looked at her with indifference, quite used to Israeli tourists coming to the village and visiting the ancient synagogue.

T
HROUGH THE SCOPE
of the rifle, Hassan could see her clearly, sitting and talking to the café owner about what she'd have to drink. He felt the wheel of the rifle's sights and twisted it to the left in order to make the image of her as sharp as a needle. The crosshairs of the rifle's sights blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again until his sweating fingers fixed them precisely on her head. He looked at the four quadrants through the sights: her forehead was high and she had a fringe of black hair that fell over her cheek before cascading down to caress her neck; her lips and cheeks felt so close, he could have kissed her. She was smiling at the café owner. Her neck was long and slender, and if he looked closely, he could see the delicate lines of her throat above the collar of her blouse. He put the rifle down to wipe the sweat from his eyes.