A Little Piece of Ground (12 page)

For a long moment, neither of them spoke, and in the silence Karim felt something shift. Up till now, they'd been mere children, watching the struggle from the sidelines, keeping out of trouble as their parents had always urged them to do.

The approach of manhood, Jamal had said.

“
Come on, then,” he said. “Better leave your bag here. It'll get in the way.”

Joni began to put it down, then shook his head.

“No. It's got my name on everything inside it. If they do a search and find it, they'll think I'm the bomber, and they'll trace me and demolish our house.”

The piles of rubble seemed much bigger as they approached them, and the noise of the stones shifting under their feet was deafening against the silence which had fallen over the whole area. At last, though, they stood underneath the network of scaffolding which stretched up four floors above them to the top of the derelict building. It looked higher and yet less substantial close up.

Karim suddenly felt almost resentful. If Joni hadn't turned up, he'd probably have had the sense to give up and slip off home. There was no way back now, though, if he didn't want to lose respect.

“I'll go up first,” Joni whispered, his face pale and set.

“No. Hopper doesn't know you. He might panic if he sees your ugly face suddenly pop up.”

It was easier, in fact, to climb the scaffolding than Karim had imagined. He found he could swing up it quite quickly, though the distance from the ground, once he was past the second floor, seemed much further than he had expected.

How are we going to get back down again? he thought.

The very idea of it made him feel weak, and his palms began to sweat, but worse than the height was the feeling of exposure. He and Joni must be visible for miles around. If an Israeli soldier was to move just a short distance up the hill, he'd spot them at once. He'd probably assume they were the bombers and simply blow them away.

The idea terrified him so much that he put on a violent spurt, forgetting his fear of falling, and a few minutes later had reached the wall edging the roof and had jumped over it onto the flat surface of the roof itself.

He was just in time. An engine was starting up below. It was moving up the hill. At any moment, the scaffolding would be in full view of the Israelis, and Joni would stand out against it as obvious and helpless as a butterfly pinned to a card.

He leaned over the side of the building.

“Joni! Quick! They're coming!” he hissed.

Joni looked up at him, his face a white mask of fright.

“I can't move! My shirt's caught!”

Karim could see where the shirt had snagged on one of the scaffold bolts. Joni's frantic efforts to work it free, impeded by his bag, were only pulling it tighter.

The vehicle seemed to be moving slowly, thank God, but it was still coming. It would appear at any moment.

“Don't panic, I'm coming down,” Karim called softly. He gritted his teeth, trying to summon up the courage to move, but before he could get a leg over the wall, someone else came up beside him and shot over the edge. It was Hopper.

In a flash, Hopper had swarmed down the scaffolding, released the caught shirt and practically hauled Joni and his bag up the last few feet. Together, they rolled over the wall and out of sight just as the armored vehicle came alongside the end of the building.

For a moment, the three of them lay motionless. Karim couldn't have moved or spoken if he'd tried. His heart was thudding so furiously that he was afraid it would break open.

Hopper was the first to recover. He sat up, frowning fiercely at the other two.

“What the hell are you doing here, Karim? And who's this?”

“He's Joni. He's my friend,” Karim said. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“It's my bomb,” Hopper said, as if surprised at being asked. “Did they see you? If they did, that's it. We're dead.”

Karim was staring at him, open-mouthed.

“What do you mean, your bomb? How did you make it? Where did you get all the stuff from?”

Hopper had grabbed his arm and was shaking it.

“Did they see you? Did anyone see you?”

“I don't think so.”

The three of them looked back cautiously over the edge of the scaffolding. A higher building a little further up the hill effectively blocked all sight of them from the town above, and as long as they kept below the wall, they were invisible to anyone on the ground below. Joni and Karim both let out sighs of relief. A reluctant grin was spreading across Hopper's face.

“Now you're here,” he said, “you might as well see the fun.”

He began to creep towards the far side of the roof. Several holes had been punched through the wall here in a previous bout of shelling. Cautiously, Hopper crawled towards one of these and looked out. The other two peered over his shoulder.

Below, they could clearly see the bridge, and, just underneath it, a bulging plastic bag, its whiteness startling in the brown shadows. It would have looked like nothing more than a piece of discarded garbage except for the little forest of wires, which, even from here, they could see protruding from it.

“That's it?” whispered Joni. “That's the bomb?”

“
You
made it?”said Karim. “
You
put it there?”

Hopper nodded. He was hugging himself with delight.

The Israeli vehicles were out of sight from here, protected behind the concrete embrasure on the far side of the bridge, and the only people visible were three men wearing transparent face shields and heavy body protectors.

“The bomb-disposal squad,” murmured Hopper. “It'll take them ages.”

From this vantage point, a long stretch of the settlers' road was visible. Traffic from the settlement was beginning to build up beyond the roadblock that the soldiers had hastily erected. Irritated drivers were leaning out of their windows, gesticulating to the soldiers and to each other.

“You can just wait for once. Let's see how you like it,” Hopper crowed quietly.

“But the bomb,” said Karim. “How did you—I mean, the explosives and everything. Weren't you scared of blowing yourself up?”

“Scared of a few stones, some paper, a load of old wires, and some sticky tape?” scoffed Hopper. “What do you take me for?”

“You mean it's not real? It's a hoax?” said Karim. He felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.

Beside him, Joni was trying to suppress an eruption of laughter.

“Hopper, you are—you're awesome!” he managed to say at last.

Hopper turned and looked at him. Karim couldn't read his expression. Did it show contempt or indifference? Hostility even?

“What did you say your name was?” Hopper said curtly.

“Joni. Joni Boutros.”

“You're not related to Zuhair Hussein, are you?”

“Who?”

“Zuhair Hussein.”

“How could I be? That's a Muslim name. I'm Christian.”

“He goes to our school. He's a creep. You look like him, that's all.”

“Oh? So there's another guy around who's as handsome as me, huh?”

Karim, watching the action below, was only half listening to his friends' prickly conversation. It seemed surreal to be up here, on this rooftop, in great danger, while the two of them circled round each other like a couple of sniffing dogs. He was surprised by Hopper's initial resentment, and amazed by Joni's coolness and charm. It seemed to be working on Hopper. Karim sensed that he had relaxed, and when he turned around to look he saw that Hopper was actually grinning.

“You're a couple of nut-jobs, coming up here,” he said, including Karim in his smile. “You know what'll happen if they see us? They'll shoot straight off.”

“Better keep out of sight, then,” said Karim. He spoke lightly, although his stomach was churning.

He tugged at Joni's sleeve to pull him back into the shelter of the wall. Joni's shirt, washed to a luminous brightness by Rose, would be as visible as a flag to anyone below.

A soldier had crept right up to the plastic bag now and was peering at it cautiously. The backs of the other two were turned so that Karim couldn't see what they were doing.

“They'll be doing a controlled explosion,” Joni said knowledgeably. “Blowing it up themselves.”

The men seemed to have finished their preparations. They moved away from the bridge. One called out urgently in Hebrew, and then they were out of sight.

The explosion, although it was barely more than a dull thud, made the three boys jump. Dust was billowing up from below the bridge. For a few minutes they could make out nothing, but then, as the breeze blew the dust away, they saw the three soldiers emerge from the far side of the embankment. The bag had disappeared, but shreds of white plastic and torn paper were swirling around in the air, fluttering down slowly to the ground. One of the men kicked out in exasperation at the settling drift of debris. Another pulled him aside, bent down and picked something up. He showed it to the others, shouted something that sounded like a curse and hurled it away up the hillside on the far side of the settlers' road.

“What was that? Was it something you put in the bomb?” said Karim.

Hopper was grinning delightedly.

“It was a stone. I wrote ‘Free Palestine' on one side, ‘Death to Israel' on the other and ‘Suckers' along the edges.”

“Oh, wow! That is so cool!” Joni's mouth was hanging open in admiration.

“But they can't read Arabic,” objected Karim.

“I wrote it in English.”

He was about to say something else when all three of them became aware of a piercing, droning sound that was getting louder all the time.

“A helicopter!” gasped Karim. “They're searching the area. They're sure to see us! We're going to get caught!”

Hopper, wasting no time, was scanning the large open rooftop.

“Under the water tanks, over there,” he said. “We've got to hide.”

“That's no good.” Karim's mind was racing. “They might have heat-seeking devices. They'll detect us. We've got to get down inside the building.”

“Too late! Quick! It's coming!”

Hopper was already scampering over the bare concrete.

“There's room! Come on!” he called out.

The others squeezed in beside him. There wasn't much space under the platform on which the water tanks (long since holed by settler sniper fire) still stood, but the boys crushed in against each other, desperate to pull out of sight every arm, leg and shred of clothing.

The helicopter was overhead already. It was hovering now, filling the air with the deafening, whining beat of its propeller. It seemed so close that a hand reaching up could touch it.

It's seen us. It's going to land right here. They'll have machine guns. We're going to die, thought Karim.

His eyes were squeezed tightly shut. His hands closed onto the nearest thing to him and gripped it compulsively.

This is it! This is it! This is it!

The words pulsed in his head to the rhythm of the sweeping blades above.

The seconds passed infinitely slowly. Karim felt a wild urge to end it quickly, to crawl out from under the platform's shelter and jump up, screaming, “Go on! Do it! Kill us!”

Then, suddenly, it was over. The great shrieking machine wheeled away through the sky and seconds later had disappeared over the brow of the hill.

The boys burst out from under the platform with the energy of springs released from pressure. Karim felt sick. Even Hopper looked green. Astonishingly, Joni was the coolest of them all. He was bending down to examine his ankle.

“You maniac, Karim. Were you trying to wrench my foot off or what? You were squeezing it so tight you've probably cut off the blood supply and I'm going to die of gangrene.”