Martyrs’ Crossing (23 page)

Inshallah.
Did God have a will? She had always doubted it. Now more than ever. She pulled her head scarf forward. After all, Ibrahim was dead. Her baby was gone. What was she doing here, among these men? She swallowed hard and took a few steps into the hot courtyard. Then she turned for one last look back at the door of the visitors' cell. He was still standing there in the doorway, watching them go, and she shielded her eyes from the sun and looked as deep as she could into her husband's unfathomable blue eyes. He stepped back. The guard shut the door.

P
HILIP PARKED THEIR LITTLE RENTED
car and popped out, rushing to open the door for George on the passenger side. Good manners, thought George. But he knew it was more than manners. Philip was always trying to curb George's physical activities. He extended an arm and gave George a modest, almost unnoticeable lift out of his seat. George was more grateful for the subtlety than for the help. They walked together across the hotel's driveway and into the lobby.

It was crowded before lunch. This was East Jerusalem, the Arab side of town, where people took their time about eating—there was the walk-up to lunch, there was lunch, and then, there was after-lunch. Development workers, foreign-aid donors, members of multinational forces, Canadians, Finns, Swedes, Frenchmen, and Italians, Palestinian businessmen, a handful of tourists, and foreign correspondents: that was the mix. More neckties concentrated in this lobby than anywhere else in the Holy Land, a scattering of military epaulets and berets, scores of drooping moustaches. Coffee and whiskey, cigarettes. Brass coffee tables—big shining circular trays held up on delicate wrought-iron legs. Next to the concierge's desk, a tile arrangement depicting the tree of life.

Over near the door, a man with his legs stretched out straight was holding a cell phone between his ear and shoulder, a copy of
Al-Ayyam
open on his knees, lighting a pipe, talking intently between sucks, nodding. Philip hid his hand and pointed to the headline in the man's lap: The Chairman Says: Find the Soldier. George shook his head. He was feeling weak, although for the first time since he'd come back for Ibrahim's funeral, he had had a full night's sleep. Last night's rain had lulled him, the sound of rain hitting the roof, the grill, the old rusted bedsprings, the hot water tank—and the broad askadinia leaves rattling in the wet breeze.

Across the lobby in a corner George saw one of the nodders from yesterday's meeting. He looked away quickly.

“They're everywhere,” Philip said.

A man George did not recognize came up to them and began talking quietly to Philip.

“Get us a table, will you?” George said to Philip, interrupting. The man looked at him. George turned and walked away into the courtyard.

It was still too cold for eating outdoors. Too bad—this courtyard made him happy, always had. It had real Arab grace—it was the atrium of another old family palace. A room off the courtyard, that would be ideal. Quite a step up from his room off the bathroom in Ramallah. He looked down at the small fishpond beneath the courtyard fountain. He had read somewhere, probably in the science section of the
Times,
that goldfish were so overbred that some swam upside down in order to eat. Something about dappled goldfish and their swim bladders. Those science reporters, they take the mystery out of everything.

Ah, yes. There. There was one black-and-orange fellow, happily dashing around upside down through the green water, chasing a flaky lunch above an old rusting bucket that lay at the bottom of the pond. It was true, then! Fact! Evidence, George loved evidence. He peered downward. The water below him swirled with fish.

Genetics is a curious thing. Fish swimming upside down. Look how a useless thing like asthma could run in families, George thought. It hopped from the DNA strand of one generation to the next, possibly over thousands of years, as pointless as blue eyes or upside-down eating. The spotted fish finally managed to snatch his food. Beneath him and his comrades, a few vain coins glittered dimly from the pool's depths. George smelled garlic, and strong coffee brewing. He wanted his lunch. Faint stirrings rippled through his belly. It had been a long time since he'd experienced anything like the desire to eat. He wasn't sure he recognized it.

“Dr. Raad,” said the maitre d'. “Welcome.”

George nodded in acknowledgment. He scanned the room. Ah, there was Philip, in the corner near the window, but sitting with an unfamiliar man. How annoying! It would ruin lunch. What could Philip be thinking? He knew George hated surprises. Philip saw him and jumped up from the table, came across the room and took his arm.

“Who is that man?” George asked.

“He's a lawyer from Ramallah,” Philip said. They passed several tables full of men speaking in undertones.

“Please, Philip, I do not want to have lunches with Ramallah lawyers.” A man at one table looked over at George and spoke quietly to his companion.

“Well,
this
Ramallah lawyer was at the checkpoint the other night,” Philip said.

“Oh.” George felt a disturbing tightening in his heart. He looked at the man from a decent distance. Not too close. Fear. “Can't we sit somewhere else?”

“I don't think so. He has something he wants to tell you.”

“Mmm.”

“He says he knows the soldier's name.”

They arrived at the table.

“Hello,” George said.

The man returned his greeting. Then he said: “Mahmoud Sheukhi.”

At first George thought, That can't be. The soldier's name. What does he mean? Then the man put out his hand and George understood.

“Ahhh. George Raad,” said George, taking the proffered hand briefly.

“Yes, I know,” Sheukhi said. He looked intently at George. George knew the look: Sheukhi was measuring the man in front of him against his reputation.

“I honor the memory of your martyr,” Sheukhi said.

“What?” said George. “Oh. Yes. Thanks.” He put his napkin on his lap. Why did he feel there was something rude about this intrusion? The man was handsome but his face was flushed, overexcited. George shifted his gaze away from the thick black hairs of Sheukhi's moustache—they looked like hairs under a microscope. He stared down at his own lap, examined his hands resting on the blank napkin. I need to get away from this place, he thought. He picked at the napkin's edge, pushed back his hair, and looked up. He saw his own reflection in the dull back of a soupspoon. Face it, he thought. Face whatever it is.

“I have many things to tell you that you will want to hear,” Mahmoud said.

“No doubt, no doubt,” said George. So formal. Too bad I can't tell him I don't want to hear any of it. Because although I dislike this man so intensely, I do want to hear. I need to know certain things.

“You know your daughter waited there in the rain under my umbrella for at least a half an hour,” Sheukhi said.

“Something like that, I had heard, yes,” George said.

“That was before they agreed to see her,” Sheukhi said. “They knew the boy was in trouble. It was an outrage.”

“Outrages are what the Israelis commit by nature,” George said. He felt it sounded reflexive, like a maxim. Well, it was. He did not want to think about the incident. Did not want to pour himself into a conversation about it. Did not want to be having this conversation with this sudden stranger—or with anyone. Hadn't had it yet with Marina, for example, though that was as much her doing as his. He only wanted one piece of information, but you couldn't just ask a man like this bluntly for what you wanted to know. You had to sit there patiently and take it. Which was not George's style.

He didn't want to think about the tragedy and he especially didn't want to think about Ibrahim's last minutes. There are details in life that one can live without. My poor little boy, in the rain. With this man. The picture George had struggled not to see was becoming more specific. It was like Ibrahim's pad of magic pictures. He had shown it to George: you drew the flat of your pencil over the pages lightly in no particular pattern, and with no warning Mickey Mouse appeared as the Sorcerer's Apprentice, in that funny hat, surrounded by his cohort and his appurtenances, bucket, broom, fountain, flood. He remembered Ibrahim looking up from the page with a serious look of accomplishment.

“How did they know he was in trouble?” Philip asked.

“I told them,” Sheukhi said, with a measure of self-satisfaction. His moustache bristled as he dipped a piece of pita into the plate of humus in the middle of the table. “The boy could barely breathe. I mean, I'm no doctor,
ya'ni,
but you don't have to have a degree in internal medicine to notice a kid turning blue.” He looked up from the pita at George, saw the pallor. “Oh, God, I'm so sorry. Excuse me.” He popped another piece of pita into his mouth. “Thoughtless.”

George leaned back in his chair and breathed deeply. “It's all right,” he managed to say. “I'm just not used to the idea, yet. Having a little trouble.”

“He was a good-looking little boy, Doctor,” Mahmoud said, trying to recoup.

George stared at him. The Sorcerer's Apprentice. This terrible man was making the bad story come true. It hadn't been real before. Now it was real.

“So,” said Philip, resting a hand on George's knee lightly, fleetingly. “You told them the child was ill. And then?”

“Oh, they were all exhausted from the day's work, you know,” said Sheukhi. “There was a riot at their checkpoint and they were sort of unfocused, like soldiers after a battle, you know? The
shabab
threw their tear gas back at them, and it exploded, did you hear?” He smiled. “So anyway, I was trying to concentrate their minds on this pathetic picture outside, but of course,
ya'ni,
they hate someone like me so much that they can barely see you, much less listen to what you're saying. You could be telling them that the sky is about to fall on their heads, they wouldn't hear it.”

“That
is
in effect what you were telling them, as it turned out,” George said.

“Hmm?” said Sheukhi. “Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Well, they didn't realize that then, did they?”

“Apparently not,” said Philip.

“So I'm standing in the door of their trailer, yelling at them, because of course they can't let a Palestinian into the fucking miserable little office, and this other little dick there wants to put handcuffs on me, actually threatens me,
ya'ni
 . . . while your girl is sitting in the storm.”

George kept staring at him. Why had fate selected this particular man to be his daughter's protector? It was cruel, a cruel joke played on George, who would have had them wrapped up in a mackintosh and on their way to the hospital in no time. Instead, fate had seen fit to choose a weak man, a well-meaning man but a man of no authority, of no weight, a man who could not command the attention of a dog, with his
ya'ni, ya'ni
and his bristling moustache with humus adhering to it like foam. A Ramallah lawyer. George closed his eyes tight shut for a second, then opened them, but the man did not go away.

“What kind of law is it that you practice?” George asked suddenly.

Sheukhi looked uncomprehending.

George kept his eyebrows up, his head bent in curiosity, not relenting, offering a tiny unfriendly smile.

“Oh, you know,” answered Sheukhi, bravely facing the look. “The usual local mix. Questions of property, title, family stuff, small claims. Like that. My brother and I.”

“Ah,” George said.

Philip shook his head at George. One unnoticeable disapproving shake.

Oh, I'll behave, George thought. Don't worry. I won't let loose.

“Just wondered,” George said. He gave the little smile again.

“So half an hour after the rain began, I finally got the commanding officer to let her in. Some little jerk frisked her first with a metal detector.”

George flinched.

“They can't resist a chance to humiliate us, you know? She's lost a shoe, she's soaking wet, she's got this child on her hands, and they frisk her like she's some security threat. I couldn't believe it.”

“May I say something here?” George said.

“Yes, sure,” said Sheukhi.

“We don't require every detail.”

“No?” asked Sheukhi.

“Just a few facts. A very few facts.”

Sheukhi wiped his moustache with a napkin. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes. I'm sure.”

“Because I imagine that every detail is important. Or will be.”

“What you imagine does not concern me. Will be when? When the Israelis bring their men to trial for the death of a Palestinian child?” George looked at Sheukhi. “When was the last time that happened? Tell me. Or when the Palestinians take the fellow into custody and try him in a court of law? Is that when the details will be pertinent? What was the man's name, for God's sake?” George asked.