Martyrs’ Crossing (50 page)

She smoothed the sheet next to her father's hand and watched as the television reporter in his fresh clothes talked into his shiny microphone while behind him the chaos was continuing to unfold. It was Hassan's politics that had put Ibrahim on a list, and once she had realized that, she knew she would never recover from it. Hassan Hajimi had believed and spoken and acted, and then Marina and Ibrahim Hajimi were on a list, and then her baby was dead. You could go back forever to decide which side's claims were legitimate, back into the darkest history for a millennium, at least. Hassan would always blame the Zionists. Marina lifted George's hand and held it. It was cool and dry.

We all agree, but in the end, so what? What if we win? If you could establish a utopia on earth at the expense of the eternal suffering of one child and its mother—even a Zionist child and its mother—then Marina did not want that utopia. She wanted to be in a place where nothing mattered very much and nothing was worth it, and no one had to make any final sacrifices. She wanted to remove herself from history. She knew she was lucky to have the ability to flee, and only wished, bitterly wished, that she had done it before. She could have escaped—instead, she had returned. Returned to Ramallah. What had she been thinking? Daddy's fault, she thought again, for glorifying The Cause and romanticizing The Homeland when she was a child.

She remembered her fantasies as an adolescent: life on the run with handsome boys, living in desert caves, talking about raids and revolution. What a child she had been. It
was
her father's fault, but she was what he was: a Palestinian. Soon he would be dead, and blame would be useless, as it was already. A Palestinian. That was why she wanted to escape from history; it pressed down too hard on her. Now, she was dreaming again of the Star Market.

Five-fifteen in the afternoon, she whispered.

•  •  •

G
EORGE MOVED
his head slightly.

There was babble all around him.

That noise, what was that noise? Sounded like gunfire or explosions. Did Ahmed have the gun? Salah al-Din, charge!

Ahmed threw sand in his eyes, but the castle was rich and splendid. Splendid. Someone was holding his hand, how sweet, nice cool long fingers. Was it Nurse? Or Sandra? Sandra, it must be. Hard to say, it was so dark in here. He tried to open his eyes, but it was too much of an effort for a tired old coot like him. He gave in to the fatigue. Just lie down, stay calm, no one will hurt you.

I have a lucky charm from home here in my pocket.

That girl, gee, she was so pretty. Ahmed's friend.

Don't bait me, Philip! Ahmed is my
friend.
They sent me to kill him, they made me do it, gave me their gun, but an Arab does not kill his Arab brother. Not for any reason besides family, and especially not with
the enemy's
gun.

But it
was
family, there was a question of family.

My, it's nice to lie here quietly.

Family. Yes, that's right, it was the little boy. Don't kick my castle down, little boy. Stop all the clocks. Turn off that ranting, babbling noise.

Where
is
that child?

He's lost, down in the orchard, Grandfather.

Send for him, send for him.

What time is it?

•  •  •

M
ARINA LOOKED OVER
at her father. He was checking his wrist again. It was disturbing to her, this constant checking of his wrist, because she knew he had so little time left. She leaned over to him.

“It's five-thirty, now, Daddy,” she whispered. Twilight was spreading over the Arab villages below.

•  •  •

D
ADDY. DADDY
. It's five-thirty in the evening. A lovely day for a picnic, they'd had. We took the horses down through the village. Down the hill through the almond trees to Grandfather's, with the turbulent cousins running among the hooves. The blossoms are pink, the pinkest palest pink like children's skin.

Oh, Grandfather, I've found the boy. Look! He was hiding there behind the cypress, silly thing. Kiss me, little Ibrahim, you scoundrel! Gotcha! I have him by the scruff of the neck. Aren't you glad I found him, Grandfather?

I am glad, so glad. And lucky to find him before nightfall, too, young fellow. Put the darling little one up on my lap.

Send Hamad on the donkey for water with the earthenware jug.

There goes Hamad, disappearing under Grandfather's willow toward the well. Grandfather's put his walking stick down and he's sitting on the terrace with his fez and all his medals, and that sweet little big-eyed boy on his lap. Let's go down among the bushes, shall we, Sandra?

I have a patient and another patient, George the Worm. Twist it into the heart. Carefully, my little angel!

Where's my lucky charm, my shiny silver key?

Marina! Save me, kiss me, where are you? Hold my hand tight.

What time is it?

O
LD GUY THOUGHT HE WAS
sleeping but Doron was not sleeping. He knew what was lying flat against his throat. It was a final judgment. A sharp and shiny final judgment. Doron willed himself to relax beneath the blade, to keep his breathing calm and regular. His heart was pounding. Easier, he thought, to be his father, hit suddenly, full blast, in the middle of a battle, than to lie here passively, waiting. He could smell the other man, his smoky, garlicky breath. It was definitely the lawyer and not the young one. Somehow he held out more hope for the lawyer than for the kid. The lawyer wanted to do it, but there could be mitigating circumstances. The other was young and probably thought he had nothing to lose. He was like Doron.

•  •  •

T
HEN SOMETHING CHANGED.
The blade was removed and Big Hands started to pummel him into consciousness. He pretended to wake suddenly. Maybe they just wanted to finish him off someplace else. He couldn't make out their Arabic.

“We go now,” Big Hands said to him in Hebrew; it was always the younger ones who could speak it; they learned it from the television. Big Hands unchained him from the desk and stood him up. They whisked him to the bathroom—a brief respite. He wondered if the bathroom stop meant they would be going a long distance now.

“Are we going far?” Doron asked Big Hands.

Big Hands looked at him.

“Don't ask questions, you,” he said.

He took the gag and the keffiyeh from his back pocket and wrapped them again around Doron's head.

They hustled him down the stairs—he wondered why they didn't wait to put on the blindfold until after the stairs were negotiated; not thinking, probably—and out to the car. They pushed him up against it so that his knees were touching the fender. One of them opened the back door, and while Doron was standing next to the car, waiting for the next thing to happen, someone came up behind him with a whoosh of air and the sound of something descending, and Doron fell into the backseat and blackness.

•  •  •

S
HE'D FALLEN ASLEEP
in the chair next to George's bed, and when the light came up over the villages below his window, it struck her across the face and woke her. His monitor was still beeping. She'd been dreaming of the soldier. She wondered what had happened to him. Spirited away like that, when his only reason for coming was to express his shame. Well, if you didn't like to be ashamed, you shouldn't be an Israeli soldier, she thought. We were all victims of history.

She looked at her father. He seemed asleep, but deep asleep. A painful lump of sadness swelled in her throat. George's breath came in puddles and falls and great gasps and gulps, as if he were drowning. He tapped his hand against his side, over and over, as if he were feeling his pockets. This was new. He had no pockets, anyway. He was wearing a humiliating hospital robe with Hebrew scrawled all over it.

Ahmed was outside in his car in the parking lot, using his cell phone, and Philip was sleeping on a couch in the waiting room. Marina stood and kissed her father and smoothed his cheek. Even dying like this, in an Israeli hospital, too thin and bleeding and unable to breathe, he was still heroic, still the handsomest man she had ever seen, except for Hassan. He would find it so ironic to be dying under Zionist sheets, in a Zionist robe. She kissed him again, and held his hand briefly. When she let go, he patted his side again.

“I'll be back in a minute,” she said to him. Pat, pat, pat.

She went to get coffee from the stand downstairs.

•  •  •

N
OW HERE HE WAS
. Where was he? Doron shook his head. He had received a terrible blow. His head was pounding. His eyes were wide open but everything was black and his face felt constricted. Why? Doron reached up with a hand he could move—ah, they had uncuffed him—and felt his face: the blindfold. Well,
that
was a good explanation, and it cheered him because he was lying here thinking but not letting himself think that for all he knew they might have blinded him while he was unconscious from that blow. Or was it a blow? Possibly he had fallen, fallen from something, what was the last thing he could remember? Doron tried to gather his wits. His head did hurt.

He was lying somewhere, outside. It was cold. There was something rubbing against his back, now, stones or rubble. It was not car upholstery and it was not linoleum.

He wiggled his back. It was like a massage, all those pebbles or whatever against him, he was having his back scratched. He untied his gag, pulled off the blindfold, and saw the sky. Evening or dawn. He had just about lost track of time but he thought it was night coming on, it seemed the beginning of darkness, rather than the end of it. He loved the night, especially the night without Yizhar. His captors seemed nowhere about. In fact, there was no one near. Only sky. He looked up into it. A few cars passed by. Blue night, blue night. The air was a good fresh cold that roused his brain. Thank God for oxygen and the dark, Doron thought. Above him he could see faint stars, but in the foreground, telephone wires and cables running on and on and poles carrying them, and a huge stone wall rising next to him and obstructing his view, and then the dark blue sky beyond.

Can I stand, he wondered? He bent his legs, and that was not nice, not a nice feeling, not good, he was stiff and felt like old iron. But he did it, and then bent at the waist, and that bent too, with a tearing sensation of a rip on his right side, a huge tear of some kind. He sat on the pavement and felt his side. Wet with ooze. He looked down at his hand. It was like a cup of blood, viscous blood, very black, clotted. He felt himself begin to swoon, but then he recovered. He slapped himself on the face hard with his clean hand, which woke him. He balanced his body away from the pavement and stood. It was a reeling, dizzying moment, and then he righted himself. He stuck his hand back over the wound and felt into it, his fingers went in as if into some kind of wet pocket. It felt shockingly deep and wet and red.

Now he remembered. He had come back to consciousness in the car after a terrible blow. He was lying over the back hump, and his body ached terribly. He gasped or sobbed and heard the lawyer say in Arabic, as plain as day: Let's leave him here.
Khallinah nitriko hon.
The car stopped, then, with a small screech, and Doron was tossed forward on the floor. He remembered Big Hands; Big Hands was pushing him out of the car somewhere and he was half conscious at best with the moon spinning up and over and then down and up and over and then down, and then a blade came up into the air in front of the moon out of nowhere sparkling all of a sudden and Big Hands lifted it high over the stars and struck, and Doron had that moment of thinking, He just can't leave me without a mark of hatred. It would be too humiliating.

He looked down at his side, now. He was bleeding away. Too much, Doron thought. I might bleed to death right here. Well, at least my penance is done. It
is
done, isn't it, Marina? He looked around. He was standing below a high garden wall in Ramallah, and he recognized it—the last wall of the residential area, just where the commercial part of town begins. A pink light stirred at the bottom of the sky, and more cars started to roam the streets. He heard the call to prayer. It was morning, not night. A newspaper blew across the street and over up against the window of a hardware store. In the yellowy light of the dawn, men were trailing into a doorway a block away.

He'd go there, Doron thought. It looked busy—not a place where anyone would think of finishing him off. He dragged himself to the curb and held on to a lamppost. He held on passionately, like a drunk. Finally he summoned up his strength and slowly staggered across the street. My God, I might not make it. He fell at the curb on the other side, but hoisted himself up against the rickety tin of a closed pita stand. For a few minutes, he stood there balancing against it, thinking of Marina's open dreaming eyes and Big Hands' hands. And then he stumbled up a little incline past the tea shop that was closed for Ramadan, and leaning now against the sides of the buildings, hauled himself into a tiny cement-block courtyard where he had seen men gathering. Almost at the door, Doron tried to catch his breath. He heard himself inhale—it sounded like bubbling. Was air escaping from his side? He clung to a bookcase that was filled with shoes. It struck him funny, shoes in a bookcase. His side felt wet, but he didn't want to look down. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. He was afraid he might faint before he could get help.