Miral (17 page)

T
o all appearances, Miral's life went on in a normal fashion, and she went home to her father's house every weekend. But in fact, she was living two parallel lives: the regular school life she had led for years, in which the bulk of her time was given over to study and her only distraction was the nightly bedtime story she told the littlest girls; and the secret life bound up with Hani and the Intifada. She thought about him constantly, about their moments together and their growing love. Now, whenever they had a chance, they would meet at his house and spend hours embracing and chatting, and as their passions mounted, Miral discovered the secrets of love. Hani was very gentle; the veils of childhood and innocence fell away, and Miral's physical awareness grew. At the same time, her voracious reading of political books and newspapers broadened her intellectual horizons. For the first time, she began to turn on television news programs, to the great annoyance of her sister, who wanted to see action movies. To make it up to Rania, Miral sometimes brought her along to Hani's house, where they would all stretch out on the roof and watch the sunset.

She felt that she had finally escaped being managed by others and was now the author of her own choices. If she slept at home more often during the week, she'd have even greater freedom of movement than she did at school, where it was becoming harder and harder to find new excuses for leaving the campus.

In a certain sense, time had inverted Miral and Rania's roles. In their first years at Dar El-Tifel, Miral had been protective of her sister, acting almost like a mother to Rania; after Miral became one of the most politically active girls in the school, it was Rania who took on the protective role, covering for Miral with the teachers while at the same time trying to dissuade her from exposing herself to such frequent danger. As the years passed, the temperamental differences between the sisters had grown more conspicuous. Rania became increasingly intolerant of school life and its attendant rules and was not at all fond of study. She wanted to go to Haifa to live with her aunt and, eventually, get married. Miral tried to convince her that she should continue her education, telling Rania that she had observed her while she was giving mathematics classes to the camp children and that she thought she had a great talent for teaching. “Knowledge is freedom,” Miral told her, trying to persuade her sister by repeating their father's words. Miral loved both her school and her political activities, believing that her emancipation would result from her studies and her growing awareness. These days all her conversation revolved around history and politics. Rania loved pop music, the kind she could dance to, and found her sister boring and repetitious; Miral listened only to patriotic songs performed by Jordanian or Lebanese singers, and she became particularly emotional when such anthems were broadcast on television as the soundtrack to the intifada demonstrations.

Rania preferred to wear skirts or dresses, and her great passion was brightly colored high-heeled shoes. Miral loved tight jeans, loose-fitting T-shirts, and gym shoes, substituting sandals for the latter during the summer months. Although the two sisters often quarreled, and found themselves in disagreement on practically every subject, they loved each other deeply.

 

At their weekend family dinners, Jamal and Rania liked to talk about what they had done during the previous week. One evening Rania described the new brassieres she had seen her friends wearing (which she was sure would make her look less flat chested) and then addressed the topic of what she wanted to do that summer. Miral was distracted, her eyes vacant, her appetite nearly gone. Hani was moving farther and farther away from the party; everyone was complaining to her about him. He was deserting everything; he was making speeches advocating moderation, just at the moment when panic had spread through the entire group because of the hundred arrests that had been made all over the Old City in the past few days. It was only a matter or time for Hani and perhaps for her as well.

“What's wrong, sweetheart?” her father asked, stroking her head.

Miral remained silent for a few seconds, searching her brain for the right words so as not to alarm her father; then she described what she had seen during her most recent visit to the refugee camp. Jamal gazed at her with mounting concern.

“Do you understand, Papa? Our people can't continue to rot in the camps. What future can there be for those kids? The world's indifferent, and we're faced with the injustice and arrogance of a military occupation. You know, Papa, for refugee-camp children, the Israelis are either soldiers or settlers. That's the only face of Israel they know.”

Jamal looked out the window at the clear blue sky over Jerusalem. “Miral, I know how you feel, but we have to find nonviolent ways of making our voice heard. We won't obtain what is ours by right with stones or even with rifles, and we risk triggering a vicious circle of violence that will be very hard to break out of. Please, I do wish you would spend more time thinking about school and your final exams.”

But Miral had other things in mind than her diploma. Later that evening, as she walked through the streets of the Old City on her way to a PFLP section meeting and inhaled the intensely fragrant Middle Eastern spices in the souk, she sensed all the fascination of the city, all the mysterious force that enveloped it. Her thoughts turned to some of Khaldun's comical gestures, which were still vivid in her memory, and she wondered when she would hear from him again. She had promised to write to him. She thought about the gratitude of the people in the villages around Ramallah. Simple, proud country folk subjected to continual humiliations, determined to hold on to their traditions and their culture. As soon as she saw Hani, she lit up like a candle. He came to her, kissed her on the forehead, and whispered in her ear that the section was being watched and that no more meetings would be held in that place. She must go back home, he said, and he would contact her.

 

At three o'clock the following morning, someone began knocking violently on her front door. Miral understood at once what was going on; she had heard some comrades in the Popular Front talk about such visits. Jamal, surprised and half-asleep, went to the door.

“Police! Open up!” The speaker was a man dressed in civilian clothes. He held out a shiny badge to the incredulous Jamal. “Where is your daughter Miral?” the man asked. “She has to come with us. Here's the warrant,” he added, handing Jamal a sheet of paper.

“Why do you want to talk to her? What has she done? There must be some mistake,” Jamal said, his voice husky with anxiety.

“There's no mistake. We have a precise warrant. Your daughter must come with us for questioning. Now go and call her—we're in a hurry,” the man said, stepping into the living room. Two uniformed policemen stood at the front door, awaiting orders.

Miral, already dressed, came out of her room. “Here I am,” she said, feigning a self-assurance that in fact was nowhere to be found inside her.

“Well, I see that you're ready. Let's go, then,” the man said, seizing Miral by the arm. She was repulsed by the touch of his cold hand. When they passed in front of her father, Miral said, “It's all right, Papa. I haven't done anything wrong. I'll be back soon, you'll see,” and she left him, an old, devastated man in pajamas.

When he saw his daughter being roughly shoved into a police van, together with some other young people from the neighborhood, Jamal ran into the bedroom for his shoes, thinking that he would follow on foot. Meanwhile, a small crowd of furious, worried parents had gathered in the street; someone said the police had rounded up a great many people that night. Jamal saw many of his neighbors embracing one another and weeping. Soldiers were coming out of houses, carrying books, documents, and computers, as Jamal started running desperately after the van.

It rolled through the streets of the Old City, heading for the Mascubia police station, inside the New Gate, where the interrogation center was. So many young Palestinians had been brutally tortured inside the walls of that macabre facade that every Arab who passed in front of it felt uneasy. The deserted streets gave Jerusalem a sullen aspect. The new city, with its towering buildings, seemed to be laying siege to the ancient and tormented Old City.

The van came to a stop in the courtyard of the station, and the prisoners were escorted to their various cells. With the exception of a trembling and weeping girl from her neighborhood, Miral knew none of the others. She was brought into a large room. It was dark except for the light shed by a bulb hanging from the ceiling over a rusty desk with an old black telephone. The rest of the furniture consisted of three wooden chairs and a metal locker. The walls bore stains of every color and dimension, some of them recognizable as dried blood. It was very cold, but Miral's anxiety prevented her from feeling the external temperature. Her hands were sweating, her heart was beating uncontrollably, and she kept thinking, “I must stay calm. They're trying to frighten me, to upset me. I must stay calm.” Despite her efforts to bolster her spirits, her legs were getting weaker and weaker. She heard far-off sounds, the thudding of slammed doors, footsteps in the corridors. That waiting period, which in reality lasted no longer than half an hour, seemed immeasurably vast to Miral. Every minute increased her distress. Finally, the metal door behind her opened, startling her.

“Come here. Sit in front of me,” a police officer ordered her, pointing to a chair that faced the desk. Except for a lock of hair that hung down over his forehead, he was almost completely bald. He sat down and arrogantly lit a cigarette. Then he took a file out of a drawer. Miral caught a glimpse of her name and some documents in Hebrew. The man began to turn pages with his chubby fingers, all the while holding the cigarette clamped between his lips. “We've had our eye on you for some time now, Miral,” he said, chuckling in a reproachful tone. “You've disappointed your father, and you've disappointed all of us.” There was a singsong quality to his voice.

“I beg your pardon?” Miral replied, feigning ignorance. She had decided to limit herself—if she could—to giving only vague and evasive answers.

As the policeman slowly put out his cigarette, his lips curled in a sneer. “Very well,” he said. “If you answer properly, I'll let you go back home before nightfall. Otherwise, you'll force me to keep you here longer. Who gives these orders?” As he asked this question, he showed her a leaflet. Miral shrugged her shoulders. The leaflet came from the PFLP; it was one she herself had delivered two days before, carrying them from place to place in a straw purse under a few bunches of wild mint. The leaflets bore the central orders to the Bethlehem section. Jasmine was supposed to deliver them but had asked Miral to do so in her stead, and Miral had complied unbeknownst to Hani, who, when he found out, became quite angry and accused her of being reckless and impulsive. Miral had resented this, but he explained that the whole area was full of collaborators. She should have told him first, he said.

“Look at it closely,” the officer said. It sounded like an ultimatum, and it snapped her out of her thoughts. “And don't make me waste time with little games.”

After an initial moment of confusion, Miral replied, “Do you want me to say what you want to hear, or do you want me to tell you the truth? I don't know what that leaflet is.”

“Don't give me that shit! If you want to play the naive innocent, do it with your daddy, not with me. Now take a good look at this photograph and tell me which of these is the one who gives the orders.”

The photograph showed almost all the members of the PFLP, including Hani, at the last demonstration. Miral found the strength for another denial: “I don't have the slightest idea who these people are.” She spoke in the firmest voice she could summon up.

The policeman leaned back in his chair and lit another cigarette. “It would be a shame for a pretty girl like you to spend the best years of her life in prison. A real shame.” His voice resumed its singsong lilt. “Give me the names, and I'll let you go home immediately.” He handed her a pen. “If you don't like saying them, write them down. Or take the pen and make a circle around the faces of the persons who print these flyers. Who are they? Who brings them their orders? Who's their contact with the outside?”

The man's fake courtesy rekindled Miral's anger. “It's no good putting on the paternal act. I don't know who these people are. I don't know who printed the leaflets. I don't know anything at all.” And she added defiantly, “Beat me if you have to. I don't know anything.”

He laughed and pushed a button. “So you want to play with the grown-ups. Keep provoking me and you'll see what happens to that pretty face of yours. You won't recognize yourself when you walk out of here!”

Miral gave him a defiant look. “If beating up a girl makes you feel more like a man, do it.”

“You're mistaken. I personally will not lay a finger on you. But I've got a friend who can't wait for the chance.”

“I'm an Israeli citizen,” Miral asserted. “If this is really a democracy, I have the same rights you do.”

The man smiled as he spoke: “Not when it's a matter of national security. Now, will you make up your mind to cooperate, or shall I call my friend?”

Miral looked at him. “I have nothing to say.”

He fell silent and continued to smoke, without saying another word and without looking at her, as if he were alone in the room. Suddenly, Miral heard the heavy door behind her screech on its hinges. She turned around and saw a woman a little older than thirty, blonde and powerfully built. She was wearing a black T-shirt, sand-colored camouflage pants, and a pair of heavy combat boots.

Without a word, she rushed at Miral, seized her by the hair, and dragged her out of the room. Miral screamed as she was yanked along a corridor made dazzlingly bright by innumerable fluorescent lights. Her cries mingled with those of other young people who were being beaten. Those howls of pain seemed to shake the whole building. The woman flung Miral through an open door, into a room that was practically dark. It looked like a bathroom, completely covered with white tiles and divided by transparent curtains. The woman tied Miral's hands with plastic handcuffs and shoved the girl's face against the wall. Miral felt the plastic cord cutting into her wrists and her heart beat wildly, as she waited for the torture to begin.