Excerpt

Chapter OneShe
wanted to be lifted away from here by angels, plucked up into the
empty sky. Failing angels, she would accept any transportation --
no matter how mean, no matter how low. The crowd was squeezing the
breath out of her, and Ibrahim's hand kept almost slipping away.
Marina picked him up so that she wouldn't lose hold of him. He
turned and twisted irritably in her arms. There was too much old
sweat here, there were too many bodies close to hers, and the whole
thing made her feel like retching, like running. Too many people
were breathing down her neck, and whose breath was it? No one who
knew her, no one she wanted to know. Strangers, foreigners, was how
she thought of them, really, even though they were her own people,
standing packed around her. Finally, she was sharing their
predicament. She had always thought she wanted to.They
were all treading dust out here on the Ramallah road under the blue
winter sky, and Ibrahim was inhaling it, too, like fire. It was
scratchy air. He coughed and coughed again, and squirmed in her
arms, trying to see what was happening. He was pale and feverish,
but there was strength in those little legs. Marina looked down at
his flushed cheeks. She looked through the dust up at the sky and
saw a string of faded plastic flags fluttering over the road,
crisscrossing it. There was a picture of the Chairman on one side
of each flag, and on the reverse, a picture of a jowly commando who
had been assassinated more than ten years earlier.She
felt an elbow grind into her side. No one liked to be this close to
his fellow man -- she could say that with certainty. A car alarm
yowled. The crowd was approaching the yellow sign: PREPARE YOUR
DOCUMENTS FOR INSPECTION. The sky overhead was clear, but there was
a threat in the clouds piling up far out to the west over the
distant sea. The wind whipped through the cypresses that scrabbled
up a hill behind the low stores and houses. Straining toward the
rickety watchtower that overlooked Shuhada checkpoint, the faces of
the crowd, upturned and expectant, were like faces in religious
paintings, the faces of believers waiting for a miracle. Just let
me through, Marina thought. A man next to her coughed in Ibrahim's
face.Next
time, get him out of there and over to us as fast as you can, Dr.
Miller had said. He needs to be on the machines. He needs drips you
can't always get at your hospitals. He needs our
nebulizers.She
held Ibrahim tightly with one arm, and pushed his hair back from
his eyes. He felt hot and he looked frightened, and this was a boy
who did not scare easily. Not even when they went to visit Hassan
in the prison on the other side. In order to see Daddy, they had to
get through the checkpoint, find a taxi, drive into Jerusalem --
and then, at the prison, pass through a reinforced steel door while
men with big guns watched them and asked questions.Marina was used to the rituals of crossing over. But today was
different. The press of bodies made her feel faint. In the months
since Hassan was arrested, she and Ibrahim had become accustomed to
lining up. It was more or less civilized. With the right papers you
almost always got through -- if you had the patience. Sometimes the
soldiers didn't check at all; they were naturally unsuspicious and
lenient with mothers and children. But if they did run her through
the computer, she was ready with her passport and with Ibrahim's
medical file from Hadassah Hospital. There would be a few questions
about Hassan, because prisoners always turned up on the computer.
But then, right through. Marina looked like what she was, a
Palestinian, but she was an American citizen, born in Boston, with
what had always been a foolproof passport.But
nothing works forever, especially here. Early this morning, there
had been two bus bombs in downtown Jerusalem. Bodies had been blown
all over a square. These were the first attacks in a long time, and
now the checkpoint was like a place she'd never visited before.
Marina had never seen a complete closure before, a towq, it
was called in Arabic. They hadn't done one in years, and she'd
never believed they could do it, not really.Could they? No one knew, not even her doctor in Ramallah. She
had run to him this afternoon, when Ibrahim seemed to be getting
sicker. The medications he had been expecting for more than a week
had been delayed again. Get yourself into Jerusalem, the doctor
told her. With your passport, it should be all right.Turning away from his office door, Marina flagged a cab and
headed for the checkpoint. Traffic to the crossing had slowed to a
stop a half mile from the Jerusalem line. She got out to finish the
trip on foot.
Facing the crowd, in the shadow of the watchtower, Lieutenant Ari
Doron flicked away his cigarette and tried to decide on a few next
steps. In the old days, he might have panicked. But he was a harder
man now, he didn't wilt when confronted. That's why his superiors
used him for checkpoint duty when the situation got bad. And today
it certainly was dangerous. The crowd had grown larger as more and
more were refused permission to cross. It was hot out for this time
of year, and Doron felt damp beneath his heavy bulletproof vest. He
pushed his hair up under his cap and drank some tepid water out of
a plastic bottle that was standing on one of the sand-filled,
plastic roadblocks the army had set up at the intersection three
years ago, as a temporary measure. By now, the checkpoint had
become a permanent part of Jerusalem's geography. Since the peace
was declared, Doron thought. He tried to brush some of the dust off
his shoulders.Today's disturbance was going down like clockwork, each notch
up in the violence coming according to schedule. It was like a
drill for the checkpoint soldiers, the angry crowds of
rock-throwing young men. Doron was used to it. It started with
children, the little boys who slipped through legs and whipped
around the crowd and were having the best time, you could see it.
It was only a matter of minutes before the young men joined in.
They used slingshots, which Doron considered fair practice in the
land of David. He wondered whether these were the kind David had
used to kill the giant. The contraption looked like a holiday
noisemaker, and the Palestinians spun it from the hip so that if
you were up close, which you tried not to be, you could hear it
whipping the air. The slingshot could send a rock flying at what
seemed like the speed of a bullet.Usually, the soldiers waited until a rock hit its mark, until
there were enough men throwing stones, so that they weren't firing
into a gaggle of schoolboys. First they shot into the air. Rubber
bullets. Then they tried tear gas. When the tear gas didn't work,
the soldiers would shoot in the air again, which also never worked,
and then they'd begin shooting in earnest, over the heads of the
crowd if their aim was good, into the crowd if it wasn't. By then,
the men would be angry and nervous and ready to shoot for real, but
Doron always tried to avoid this stage. He had never used live ammo
at a checkpoint, and could not imagine the situation in which he
would give that order. Rubber bullets were bad enough. Or there
were sound bombs, a kind of grenade that did not explode but could
generally be counted on to send a mob hurtling away. Doron also
tended to go extra heavy on the tear gas. He didn't want casualties
on his record. Things could escalate quickly into something really
bad, something he didn't want to see, didn't want to deal with,
didn't want to be responsible for.Doron had seen the crisis building today as the politicians
pulled the closure tighter and tighter. The Palestinians here at
the checkpoint were trying to get into Israel for all the usual
reasons: work, work, and work. There had been closures before, as
punishment for acts of terror, and yet they would still come,
desperate to get through, and every day, some of them made it,
because usually the closure was not airtight, and there was room
for lackadaisical enforcement, there was room for leniency -- even
sympathy, on occasion.Like
most of the officers in charge of the checkpoints today, Doron had
asked headquarters to loosen up -- he could feel the place turning
into a flashpoint as the pressure built. But Tel Aviv kept tugging
on the drawstrings. Responding to terror, the government said, the
two bus bombings all over the television, the two suicide boys,
dressed up like Israeli soldiers, who packed their kit bags with
explosives and got on the buses and blew themselves up. Whose
brothers or cousins might explode tomorrow at the mall, the movies,
the grocery store. Fifty killed and scores wounded, in two minutes.
So. No passage between the West Bank and Israel. No movement among
the towns and villages of the West Bank. Even the most urgent cases
would be judged harshly today.The
stone throwers were close. Doron called in to headquarters. There
was trouble at several of the other crossings. It sounded chaotic
over the phone line. He heard other phones ringing and the sound of
someone cursing loudly. He hung up and had his men advance a few
more meters in front of the watchtower, hoping they would look
tough and determined, even though right now he had only seven men
on shift, if you didn't count the other two he had diverted to
watch the dry, deserted wadi a hundred meters away. Sometimes
enterprising Palestinians would walk or drive around the checkpoint
through the dry riverbed behind it. The Israelis knew about these
violators, but usually ignored them. Today, the wadi was
off-limits. Nine men total, a reasonable number. The checkpoints
were not supposed to be war zones.Zvili came up to him. It amazed him that checkpoint duty always
meant working with guys like Zvili."They're closing in," Zvili said. He sounded
excited."They are far away," Doron said."We
might have to begin firing," Zvili said. He knew that Doron shied
away from this."I
don't think so, not yet." Doron looked at Zvili. The little man had
a hard look on his face, like a gargoyle. These little guys shocked
Doron with their toughness. They were ready for anything. Unlike
Doron."Well, what do you suggest?" Zvili asked him."Nothing," Doron said. "Nothing yet.""So
we're just going to sit here like target practice?" Zvili spat on
the ground. He was a gremlin, but he was scared. Doron could see it
in his posturing."No,
we're just going to sit here like grown-ups until we see what's
developing," Doron said to him. His tone was condescending, the
vocal equivalent of patting Zvili on the head. "For all we know,
this is business as usual, but a little more intense. Anyway,
they're still too far away to hurt us."Doron prided himself on his new maturity. He was an old hand,
temperate and calm, having found himself -- sometime after his
twenty-eighth birthday -- suddenly quite able to distinguish
between a problem and a crisis. Was it a run-of-the-mill melee, or
"a situation"? Making that judgment was the essence of Israeli
military professionalism. Doron checked the time and calculated how
long it would be until nightfall. Even the most violent crowds
tended to disperse at sunset. It was a matter of keeping the boys
at bay until the earth's rotation came into line with your military
strategy. It would be almost an hour, not soon enough. He noticed
the dust rising. It made his eyes itch. He sniffed at the air. He
listened. A car alarm was going off. From this distance, about a
hundred meters, he could only make out beetled brows, and kerchiefs
around noses and mouths. It always looked in photographs as if they
were seeking anonymity, but in fact it was protection against the
gas. The gas slowed them down -- it prolonged the time between the
hurling of the rock that smashed a soldier's cheek, and the
shooting that would repel the stone throwers. That was the only use
for the gas, as far as Doron could see. It never really put an end
to things.He
nodded to Zvili, and Zvili prepared a tear-gas cartridge. The young
men were moving in closer, their pitching arms back. Doron nodded
again.Zvili fired off the cartridge. It soared up into the air and
then plummeted down like the tail end of a firework, exploding on
descent. The crowd opened up around it. Breaking through the ring
of those who were fleeing, a young man with a kerchief around his
face ran up to the spewing cartridge, picked it up, and galloped
toward the checkpoint like a strange tribal smoke-dancer, stopping
finally a few meters from Doron's line of defense to hurl the
cartridge back at the Israelis. Doron coughed and bent over, and
tears bit at his eyes. He felt for a second as if he were going to
black out, the stuff was so fucking strong. Should have shot him,
he thought. When Doron stood finally after the cramp in his lungs
had abated, he saw the boy scampering back into a rejoicing
crowd.Doron wished these battles did not have to be so intimate. He
coughed into the back of his hand. There was something too much
like children's games about being at such close quarters with the
enemy. It was like hide-and-seek, or a color war. They ran up to
you, you chased them back. They conked your guy, you conked theirs.
You got to know each other by the end of a day. You could take the
measure of certain individuals. He hated seeing their joy at a
wounded soldier, and wished he could take the same raw pleasure in
their injuries. He wanted to want them dead. But God, he just
wished that these people had stayed home today. He wished that they
would stay home every day.
"Hold on, hold on, hold on here," a voice shouted through the
crowd. No one could see who was talking. An old man's walking stick
thudded against Marina. People jostled her from both sides,
stepped-on toes crunching like pebbles underfoot. The car alarm was
still wailing. The crowd lurched forward; someone was pushing from
behind. Marina felt one of her shoes come loose, and then it was
gone.The
crowd stumbled backward a few paces as the soldiers advanced toward
them. Gunfire popped. For a moment, everyone stood still. I have to
get out of here, Marina thought. But she couldn't afford to leave.
She had to get to the checkpoint, and through it, now. So this was
total closure, she thought, an occasion for riot, a mini uprising.
And then there were the people, like her, who really needed to get
across. Four years in this place, and she still had learned
nothing.A
slight breeze blew a cloud of gas over them. Marina put her shirt
over Ibrahim's face. He was gasping. Tears were coursing down her
own face, too, from the gas. She stood up against the side of a
photocopy store, panting. The crowd was running away from the
checkpoint, now, but young men still stood around, in corners,
behind walls, down alleys, waiting for the next assault.A
man standing next to her offered his handkerchief. He pulled a
small plastic bottle of scented toilet water from his bag and
poured it over the white square."Here," he said.She
took it gratefully and put it over the boy's nose and mouth. The
man smiled briefly, and then looked back out at the wildly
scattering crowd. He was thin, and his suit was shabby in the local
style: a little too long in the cuffs, worn at the elbows, cut too
sharply, glossy at the collar, the lapels too broad. A West Bank
professional of some kind, Marina guessed. An accountant, or a
dentist.She
thanked the man over and over for his kindness."It
is nothing," he said. "You keep that." He turned away.Marina closed her eyes. A vision of the Star Market on Mass Ave
in Cambridge came abruptly into her head. The piled-up apples.
Pyramids of boxes containing macaroni and cheese mix. The wide
corridor of frozen foods. The soups with the soups, the dog bones
with the dog bones, bags with bags, meat with meat. The spray that
rained down on the vegetables every ten minutes like a passing sun
shower. The quick click of the cashiers. In every way, life was
orderly there.Marina wanted life to be normal, whatever that was. She wanted
to be at home with her baby. She wanted to feel his head and call
Dr. Miller's office and have them say, Yes, come in, and then get
in a car and drive him over, like a normal person. And have them
say, He's fine, don't worry, calm down, everything is going to be
fine. Ibrahim had a very bad cold, you'd think it was nothing. But
the last time he'd had a cold with a fever, he'd begun to come up
short for breath, and then he wasn't breathing right at all, and
she ended up rushing him through the checkpoint to Jerusalem, to
Hadassah, and Dr. Miller had hurried over to see him. Ibrahim lay
in a hospital bed, with his blue eyes looking up over the green
plastic nebulizer mask, a drip in his arm, and she had felt like
collapsing, but at least Dr. Miller had been there, saying he's
going to be fine.That
was last month and all the days before. But now something -- many
things -- had changed. You couldn't even get near the checkpoint
because of the demonstrators and the crowd. She thought of her
father, who had left Ramallah last week, and the small crowd of
admirers who had stood on her doorstep, waving goodbye at his
disappearing taxi. He was heading back to America. Marina felt a
pang of nostalgia for the Boston winters of her childhood, for
snowboots and slush. She imagined her father in snowy Cambridge
now, sitting comfortably with his reading glasses down near the tip
of his nose or lounging in front of the television watching tennis.
He would never get caught in a situation like this. During
his visits, her father, with all of his ties to the Authority,
managed swift and unlimited checkpoint crossings for himself --
whenever he wished, which was not very often -- each one planned
carefully in advance, each strategically fixed: the right car one
day, VIP documents the next, a connected driver, whatever it took.
But today, Marina had been caught by surprise. No time for
arrangements. Ibrahim's breath came in gasps. She watched the crowd
rush by. Rabble, that would be the word that would rise to her
father's lips, even though he'd never say it.
It was getting darker. That was help from on high, thought Doron.
The clouds might bring darkness earlier than expected. He hoped so,
he hoped so. One of Doron's men had been hit. It wasn't serious but
blood was flowing down into his eyes, which did not exactly raise
morale. Doron looked up at the sky. If only God would send a
message down the way he used to, publicly and unmistakably.
Instead, rain clouds, gunfire, boys with stones, dust.Doron watched the kerchiefed boys preparing another onslaught.
He knew that what was unhappily called a situation had developed on
his watch. Behind the boys, the crowd was moving toward the
checkpoint again. Doron thought about percussion grenades, good for
stopping animal stampedes -- or starting them -- and for stopping
running crowds in their tracks without causing casualties.
Certainly no matter what he ended up doing, it would be found that
he had done something wrong, had forgotten to do something, had
neglected something that right now, right now, should seem utterly
obvious to him as a course of action. He was sure that firing on
the crowd at this point would be a mistake. On the other hand, he
didn't want to be a sitting duck for some kind of unprecedented
attack on the checkpoint."Let's launch a sound bomb," Doron said. It was getting too
close, they were getting too cocky. It had to end. There was a
moment past which you could not let things continue, or the
escalation might prove unstoppable. Doron stood out in front of his
men while they prepared the percussion weapon. Rocks were coming at
him from three sides. It was raining rocks. Doron felt an urgent
need to reassert control. He knew he could do it. It was going to
happen now. We can always win, he thought. He reminded himself: The
one who gains victory in close quarters is the one with superior
firepower -- and the will to use it. That last bit had always been
Doron's problem.
A shattering noise shook the ground. They are bombing us, Marina
thought. That's impossible. She had never heard of bombs, not at
the checkpoints. This one was so loud the shock seemed to continue
in waves under her feet like an earthquake. She trembled and
thought about natural disasters. She didn't see anyone lying bloody
and wounded, the way they would after a bombing. No buildings
collapsed.Another tremor rattled the ground. Maybe they're trying to end
it, Marina thought. The windows of the businesses along the street
rattled and one or two shattered as another blast shook the street.
She closed her eyes tight and prayed that they would get across.
She tried to make her way to the checkpoint, but the crowd kept
pushing her back.
Doron watched the crowd flee from the waves of the explosion. The
blast rippled under his feet and he thought it would toss him into
the air. The crowd felt the same thing: it was like an earthquake.
He gave a signal to launch another bomb. One or two more, and
they'd be so far gone they would never regroup. Doron wished
fervently never to see another Palestinian. Dream on, he said to
himself, tapping his foot, waiting for the end, his gun at the
ready.In a
few minutes, he knew it was over. No shouting, no tramping, no
stones. Not a single one."Hooray," he heard Zvili say to another man.Hooray is right, Doron thought. It was over for today. As
usual, the sound grenades had worked, combined with a massive dose
of tear gas and a few strategic bursts of shots fired into the air.
At least there would be an interlude of calm until tomorrow,
although it would be an interlude filled with stretchers on the
Palestinian side, and exhausted, bleeding soldiers at the
checkpoint. His men were gathering around the watchtower. Now was
the time to deal with the aftermath. Normally, the men would all be
smoking after such an afternoon, but they were coughing too hard.
Dust caked over the bloody face of the man who'd been hit, a
private, first time on the checkpoint. He was looking for water and
a towel. Doron handed him his water bottle as he passed by. A light
injury -- but he'd send the man to get stitched up,
anyway.Doron could see several yards of road now, a stretch of
beautiful, radiant, black macadam, with no one standing on it. The
roadbed. Amazing. He looked at the few yards of blackness as if it
were an old buddy returning from war. He wanted to kiss it, slap it
on the back, offer it a beer. The road was decorated with dust,
dirt, sand, rubble, and stray sandals and shoes lost in the
melee.Not
everyone left, of course. There were always a few troublemakers,
and some people who, Doron supposed, were desperate to get across.
But wouldn't. Zvili appeared at his side and handed him a
cigarette. Doron took it and looked at Zvili with a pained smile on
his face."Good work, Lieutenant," Zvili said."Thank God it's over," said Doron. They went into the
trailer.It
was growing dark fast. Zvili flicked on the fluorescent bulb with
an elbow. Two of the men who had been out front had returned to the
trailer. One parked himself at the desk near the radio with his
feet up, and the other sat backward on a metal folding chair,
reading the log sheet. The bleeding soldier stood against the wall
in a dark corner, with a bloody piece of someone's old shirt balled
in his hand and blood still trickling into his eye and down his
face. He shook his head as Doron examined him."You've got to have someone see that," Doron said. Doron took
the bloody rag and made some swipes at the private's
face."I'm
fine," said the man."Don't be brave," said Doron.Zvili polished his sunglasses on the edges of his flak jacket.
He returned them to their case."Everything cool?" asked Zvili, looking out. This was
code."Yes," said Doron. "No one dead, as far as I can tell." They
watched as an injured man on a stretcher was carried away in the
direction of Ramallah. It was always possible that a couple of
Palestinians would turn up dead after the riots finished; people
you hadn't noticed go down."So
what else?" Zvili asked. "What are we going to do with these
folks?" He gestured to the stragglers coming up the road. "Look at
that guy," he said, pointing at a man in a suit, standing near the
bench outside. "Why the fuck does he need to get across, I'd like
to know. I mean really.""Don't worry," said Doron. "He's not going anywhere. One guy
came through this morning. Authority. Special plates and a special
paper just for today. That's been it. Orders are no exceptions.
Headquarters is scared shitless. They don't want anyone sneaking
through. They've even closed off the wadi.""Yeah," said Zvili. "Makes me want to cry."Sometimes, Doron wished there was something really bad he could
do to Zvili, instead of fucking over all these pointless
Palestinians. Still, the world would be a better place with no
Palestinians in it, he often thought. And Zvili was his comrade,
supposedly. He had worked with him before at this checkpoint. He
had even had a beer at Zvili's house after a hard day. Once. He
tried not to dislike Zvili, but Zvili didn't make it easy. Doron
turned to the guardroom."Be
down in a minute," he said. He walked out and climbed slowly up the
metal staircase to the watchtower. He liked to survey things at
sundown -- this was his personal minaret. The man on watch edged
aside, and Doron peered down. Things seemed normal. It looked like
every night along this road. It was colder, darker, too, without
the headlights from the usual traffic that was deterred tonight.
Cypresses rose like the shadows of flames from the crest of the
hill running behind the wadi. The rain would start soon.
Down on the road, everyone headed home, shocked by the sound bombs
and undone by the growing dark and the storm that was descending.
But Marina could not go home. Ibrahim's eyes were closed. He
wheezed loudly at the end of each short breath. The crowd was
breaking up, each person an individual again, with his own plans
for the night. The man stationed up in the watchtower leaned on the
window ledge with a bored look on his face, pointing his machine
gun down at a straggling line of people who were making their way
toward the checkpoint in the near dark.Marina started to run down the road toward the watchtower, with
one shoe gone and Ibrahim panting in her arms. At least now there
was space to run. At the guardroom, she would plead her case. Those
Israeli soldiers who looked at you as if you weren't the same
species. She knew them. Their impassive faces, deathly
indifference, like Roman praetorians. She'd have to beg, plead, get
down on her knees. She hated having to do it; she liked looking
away as she presented her documents, getting through, no arguments,
no contact, no humiliation. Nothing personal. She had always sworn
that if it came to total closure, she would never beg, never
degrade herself that way. She'd happily stay in Ramallah, except
for her visits to Hassan. What, after all, did Jerusalem have that
Ramallah didn't? But that was before Ibrahim got sick again. She
knew the answer to her old question, now: Jerusalem had Hadassah
Hospital.
Doron breathed in the wet, fresh air. After a hot dusty day, you
almost felt clean, up here in the watchtower. He leaned out the
opening and looked down at the stragglers waiting outside the
guardroom. The sole bench in front, which seated six or seven, was
full. In spite of the rain clouds that were building toward
blackness above them, a few small groups huddled in conversation
near the bench. And heading down toward the checkpoint trailer
across the road, coming at a run, almost, but graceful and
dignified, was a slender woman in blue jeans, with long, uncovered
hair, a beautiful woman, really, Doron could see, carrying a child.
One of her shoes was missing.Chapter NineTo
venture into enemy territory, that was how Doron thought of it at
first. He located the Hajimi house through police records at the
Russian Compound, where Hassan Hajimi was imprisoned. It was like a
research project: First, Raad's books at the library. Then some
treatises on Islam, and books of Muhammad's sayings. Now this. As
he flipped through the long document -- which listed former as well
as current prisoners -- Doron began to wonder who all these
political prisoners were. The sergeant on duty watched him with
folded arms. Doron was in civilian clothes: black jeans, a white
tee shirt."Here it is," Doron said to the sergeant, because the man
seemed to require communication. Doron jotted the address down on a
matchbook. He nodded at the sergeant, whose eyes flickered over
Doron's face. He raised two skeptical eyebrows and quickly came
over and took the heavy notebook from Doron.Doron walked down through Musrara and across King David to the
Old City. Enemy territory, he thought. Man with a mission. He was
looking for a new wardrobe. He wound his way to Jaffa Gate and the
souk, and began descending the main thoroughfare. He tried not to
look out of place, but he felt huge and awkward and surrounded. He
zigzagged through the crowds down to the bottom of the tourist
market, past stalls selling tee shirts, chess sets, ceramics,
candles and candelabras, round leather ottomans, silver jewelry,
and gilt-sheathed daggers, and then turned left and headed toward
Damascus Gate and the real market, where they sold things people
needed. The place was crowded; Doron was certain he was the only
Israeli here -- if you were Israeli, you stayed well within the
Jewish Quarter in the Old City unless you were looking for a
fight.He
passed through the food market. Imploring wide-socketed skulls of
butchered animals hung at waist height. Goats and cattle, possibly
sheep, Doron couldn't tell. Behind the exotic aromas of cumin and
coriander from the spice market, you could smell death. The broad
stones of the alley were slick and black with water and bloody
runoff from the butcher stalls. Women with shopping baskets and
bags engaged in a cacophony of negotiation with the stall keepers.
Bright oranges and lemons lit up the dark alleyways.He
turned down a narrow roofed alleyway and emerged from a world of
skinned chickens into aisles piled with pants, stacked with
scarves, festooned with hanging dresses, leggings, and children's
clothes. Eager faces looked out at him from the stalls. It was less
crowded here.If
he spoke Hebrew -- no, he didn't even want to think about that. But
if he spoke Arabic, his accent would give him away, he was sure.
So, English -- maybe they would not be able to detect his accent in
a foreign language."Pants," he said to a smiling man."Pants?" the man asked.Doron pointed at the stack."Ah,
trousers," the man said."Yes, for me," Doron said, pointing to his legs. The man showed
him a pair of black polyester pants with a sharp crease down the
front."You
like?" he asked."Yes," Doron said. He was assembling his disguise. He felt the
excitement of adventure. Dress-up.The
man started wrapping the folded pants, and looked sideways up at
Doron. Doron caught the look, and understood: Why was this
foreigner buying these things? It didn't make sense.Should he get a keffiyeh? They were hanging from a rack a few
stalls down. Too obvious, he thought. And not everyone wears them.
And could he ever figure out how to wrap one? Never. He settled on
a scarf, a long woolen one. Palestinian men tied them around their
necks with the two ends hanging down in front. Guaranteed to look
authentic, Doron thought, as he put the scarf in his little black
plastic bag along with the pants. Now a close-fitting knitted hat
and a sweater-vest, and I'm ready.He
took everything back to his mother's empty house, and changed
quickly, shoving his real clothes into the back of a closet. He
didn't want to think too much about what he was doing. This would
be normal, he thought, if I were doing it for the army, for some
undercover unit, for some good reason. The greatest generals always
had some story of dressing up like women and assassinating
terrorists in distant Arab cities. But for him, there was no good
reason. He was doing this simply because he felt compelled. He
needed to know more; so far, he could explain nothing to himself.
Not the boy's death, not the mother's strange allure, not his own
involvement. If he got closer, maybe he'd see things more
clearly.And
maybe not. But he had to try. He wanted more than anything to see
Marina Raad again. He wondered: Was this normal? In any way? He
turned her over in his mind. The black hair, the way it curled in
the rain, and her frightened face, which she tried so hard to keep
distant and haughty.When
he looked in the mirror, he thought he'd done a pretty good job. He
wondered if Palestinians had a different way of walking; he thought
so. Israelis moved aggressively; the Palestinians were more
cautious. He would try a cautious walk, then, and keep himself as
invisible as possible. He pulled his hat down low over his
forehead, put one hand in his pocket, and fitted the other with a
cigarette. He looked at himself again, and a Palestinian looked
back.
From the street, you could barely see the house. It was perched on
a hill overlooking the Ramallah road, and only its roof was visible
from the street that was listed as its mailing address. Fig trees
grew in the garden. Their dark green tops rattled up against the
roof in the sandy winter wind. There was a rusting red tricycle
sitting in a corner of the rooftop. Some old, dusty, machine-made
prayer rugs had been scattered here and there. In front of one
section that had been covered with makeshift tin, a clothesline
ran. Flowered sheets whipped along it. The flapping sheets waved
him away, warned him off. The day was dark and the sky was an ochre
color that signaled that the hamsin was coming
again.Doron hated the desert wind: it coated cars with a film of
yellow sand, it got up your nose, it made you cough, and worst of
all, it reminded you that Jerusalem, with its McDonald's and Burger
Kings and nice red buses and nice red post offices and its green
gardens and flowering terraces and public buildings flanked by
fountains, was actually right on the edge of an ancient desert
where camels and cactuses and Bedouins were the only successful
species.He
saw that there was no door from the house onto this street. He left
his unhappy taxi driver waiting and went around the corner. He
hoped no one would see him; they would probably be able to spot him
as an impostor right away. Down the hill was the Ramallah road,
always busy, its intersections and lanes filled with potential and
actual car crashes. Across from the house was a big empty lot. Bits
of paper trash skittered along its broken ground, and piles of
construction materials -- tiles, cement blocks, bags of sand --
stood in heaps waiting for the day, long distant, no doubt, when
someone would manage to scrape up the money to build something here
and also get around to doing it. Facing the Hajimis' driveway was a
big green overflowing garbage dumpster. Doron decided he would
stand just a little behind it and wait for Marina to come
out.He
pulled his wool hat down a bit further around his head. He put the
collar of his shirt up against the wind, pulled his sweater-vest
tighter, and double-wrapped his long wool scarf, letting its tails
hang down at the sides of his neck. He lit a cigarette. Now he
looked like someone he would normally avoid. He move farther behind
the dumpster, so that he could just see around it. Certainly she
would come out. A Muslim mother was not allowed a long mourning
period, especially if her son had died a martyr. Not that Doron
imagined that Marina Raad was a particularly devout
Muslim.Doron hadn't learned much about Islam in his few short days in
the library, but he had dipped into a few handbooks in Hebrew and
English. First of all, Muhammad ("Peace Be Upon Him," as they said
in the books) was always on horseback, which seemed oddly heroic to
Doron, who imagined his own prophets as outcasts with mud-caked
hair, ranting on street corners, or elderly men with long beards
and shepherds' crooks -- their transportation at its best an old
jackass. The Prophet of Allah (Peace Be Upon Him) rode horses and
pitched tents and dug trenches for battle, working with shovels and
pickaxes. He was like an Israeli pioneer. He made miracles in which
rocks turned to sand and a girl's apronful of dates was made to
feed hundreds of trench diggers. He caused lightning to flash from
beneath the blow of his pickax. He claimed Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
and Jesus as early prophets of Islam. Like so many of these fellows
who purveyed the word of God, Muhammad (PBUH -- they abbreviated it
in the books) seemed to have had a quirky mind, with opinions on
everything. "Do not wear silk," he is supposed to have told Muslim
men. The sexual proscriptions and advice were particularly
interesting: according to another book, the Prophet said, "A man is
not allowed to have a woman and her paternal aunt as two wives
simultaneously, nor a woman and her maternal aunt." Probably the
translations were not great, Doron thought.In
any case, you could certainly find equally silly precepts in
Judaism. Do not wear blends of linen and wool. Why? And the other
day, Doron had heard that an important rabbi in Jerusalem -- some
jerk with an Old Testament name who wore a high hat and a rich cape
encrusted with gold and jewels -- had advised religious men not to
walk between two women, just as it is written that a man should not
walk between two donkeysor
two camels, for fear of becoming like them. And that same rabbi
declared -- no doubt after giving it a lot of thought -- that it
was permissible for an Orthodox man to pick his nose on the
Sabbath, but Alka-Seltzer was off-limits because it fizzed. Doron
could never take religion seriously.Doron stood there and inhaled the dust and fumes from the
Ramallah road, along with his own cigarette smoke. There were
things no Israeli did. No Israeli went to Ramallah: it was enemy
territory, a place where they wanted to kill you, like certain
places in the Old City. The Authority was in charge in Ramallah. If
an Israeli walked down the street in Ramallah, these days, he'd get
knifed, people said. But there was no avoiding it for Doron -- this
little wasteland in Ramallah, his post at the dumpster. He was
afraid that Marina might see him -- that if she did, she would
recognize him, and after that, who knew what might happen. And
there was some little, contrary, dangerous feeling in him, too: he
hoped maybe she would see him.Two
men were walking down the hill, talking. Doron tried to look
relaxed as they approached. They squinted at him, and he thought,
What if they speak to me? He drew on his cigarette in what he hoped
was a Palestinian way, and kicked at the dirt, looking down,
waiting for them to go on. They stopped. He didn't look up. He
heard the sound of a lighter being flicked, an exchange of words.
He kept his eyes on the ground. The men stood for a moment more,
then continued on. Doron lifted his eyes after they passed, and
watched them recede down the hill. He tossed his cigarette and
tucked himself behind the dumpster.The
whole neighborhood used the dumpster, and a bad smell spilled out
of it -- old canned fish, dirty diapers. He closed his eyes, and
the scene at the checkpoint came back to him. He saw himself at the
communications controls. He remembered Zvili's angry face and the
boy's scared blue eyes. At the bottom of the hill, a car screeched,
glass shattered, and there was distant heated shouting. Closer to
Doron, a man's voice said goodbye. In English. A door
opened.Doron peered around the dumpster. Marina was coming out of the
garden gate, walking toward the street with the young man Doron had
seen at the funeral with her father. Her face was half hidden by a
silk scarf and sunglasses. The two of them stood there, silent,
staring across the street at the dumpster and the empty lot, and
for a moment, Doron thought they had seen him. He pulled his head
back a few centimeters. The young man looked at his watch, and then
checked the street. He shook his head. Marina stood stiffly apart.
She leaned lightly against the wall of the garden. An askadinia
tree brushed its thick pointed leaves against her
shoulder.They
waited. Doron waited with them. He was beginning to feel imprisoned
by the vigil when finally their taxi arrived and they set off.
Doron hurried up the hill and around the corner to his waiting cab
and jumped in. He watched Marina's taxi as it plunged and bucked
through the traffic on the Ramallah road.

At
the side of the street, small children walked with their mothers to
the market. At every intersection, young men were waiting to be
picked up by jitneys and driven across the checkpoint to the
Israeli side of Jerusalem for day work. Today they would wait in
vain -- the closure was still in force -- but they were eternally
desperate and eternally hopeful. Through the small crack in his
cab's curtains, Doron saw a fresh graffito on the walls that were
bouncing past. Then he saw it again. He tried to sound it out in
his iffy Arabic each time he passed it, translating as he went
along. He saw it again. Ah, an "s" sound. He heard himself hissing,
"Ssssss, ssssssss." And then he realized what it said. find the
soldier. Find the soldier. Soldier, he recognized the whole word,
now. It was a word he had learned in training, a long time ago. The
CD disk that his driver had hung with a red ribbon from the
rearview mirror jumped up and down to the rhythm of the traffic
like some kind of measuring device, a meter of impending disaster.
Specks of light flicked off it. Doron had always assumed that the
disks must be symbolic in some way for Muslims, like the
rounded-off crescents that topped so many mosques and minarets.
Endless frittering useless thoughts crackled across his brain. He
sat back. His stomach bounced. He let himself relax into the car's
worn vinyl upholstery. His taxi followed the same rocking
trajectory as Marina's. Find the soldier. Like a child's
game.

Martyrs' Crossing
by by Amy Wilentz [5]

Genres: Fiction [10]
paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN-10: 0345449835
ISBN-13: 9780345449832