Chapter 42 – Risking it all
Rania was putting Khaled to bed. She heard the distinctive peal of her mobile phone in the other room, but she ignored it. She was so happy to have her family back, she wasn’t going to interrupt their time together. She would call whoever it was when Khaled was asleep, if it was important. If not, she was looking forward to some private time with Bassam.
“Another story,” Khaled pleaded.
She didn’t bother resisting, because they both knew she would give in. “A short one.”
“The Flying Duck.”
“No, that’s a long one. The Little Red Train.”
“I want to go on a train.”
“We don’t have them in Palestine. A long time ago, we had, but no more. They have them in Jordan. Some day soon, maybe we can go there on a holiday.”
She found the book, and he settled back into his pillow to listen. When he looked up at her like that, her heart felt in danger of bursting. She looked down at the book quickly, so she wouldn’t start to cry in his face. Her phone’s song began for the third time. Whoever it was, was persistent.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Khaled.
Book still in hand, she yanked the phone from the charger. Chloe.
“What’s the matter?” she answered.
“They’re taking me to the airport. We’re almost there. I have to hurry. If they see me on the phone, they’ll take it away.” Chloe was whispering.
“You think they will try to put you on an airplane against your will?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t know what I can do to stop them,” Rania said.
“Do whatever you can,” Chloe said. “I’m glad I met you.” She hung up before Rania could even say, “I’m glad I met you too.” Maybe she was afraid I wouldn’t say it, Rania thought.
What should she do? What could she do? Really, Chloe should have found someone better than her to turn to for help in a crisis. Rania dialed Avi’s number. He knew, he said. He sounded breathless. He had gotten a text message from Chloe. He had called Rachel, the lawyer, who was on the phone with the police at the airport, trying to stop her flight. He himself was already on his way to Ben Gurion.
“On the train?”
“No, I borrowed my parents’ car.”
Why had Chloe texted him and called her? Because she believed he would act right away but figured Rania would have to be prodded? Or because she didn’t know if he would help, but trusted Rania to do something? Or maybe she didn’t believe Rania could help her, and just called to say goodbye.
She didn’t dare leave Chloe’s fate in Avi’s hands, not with all the questions they had about him. She needed to think of a plan and fast. Maybe she could call Benny. She looked at the clock. Surely he would still be up. He was an Israeli asshole, but deep down, she thought he cared about what he considered justice. He obviously had some sort of soft spot for Chloe, because he let her go when she was arrested without her passport. Surely, he wouldn’t want to see her shoved onto a plane, just because she had pissed off some big shot in the army.
No. She was sick of asking Israelis for favors. If she called Benny, she would have to play some stupid word game for five or ten minutes before he would even say if he was or wasn’t going to help.
“Pick me up on the road,” she told Avi.
“No, it will take too long. It’s better I go by myself.”
“I will meet you at Yarkon Junction in half an hour.” She hung up before he could say anything else.
She took a scarf from her closet, unfolded it and wrapped it tightly over her hair, tying it in front and then tucking the knot under the rim, like the settler women did. She rummaged among the hangers and came up with a long blue skirt and a white long-sleeved peasant blouse.
I look good, she thought, when she checked herself in the mirror. She felt guiltily happy, wearing her old Bethlehem clothes out in public. Actually, in those days, these had been her conservative clothes, she admitted, thinking longingly of tank tops and skin-tight vinyl skirts.
Her hand stretched into the depths of the closet until it closed on something steel. She took out the pistol and looked at it. It had been Bassam’s father’s, and Bassam refused to give it up when the call came for all Palestinians to turn in their weapons. “Let the Israelis turn in their weapons first,” he had said.
Rania was entitled to carry a gun because she was police, but she had never done so. Her job was about talking to people, not about guns. She didn’t even know how to shoot a pistol. She wondered if she could. If she were caught carrying a gun into Israel, she would go to prison. No question. Khaled would grow up without his mother.
This is majnoon, said a voice in her head. She didn’t know what she imagined doing with the gun. She just knew that she was going to meet someone she couldn’t trust, who was connected with some dangerous people. Those people were trying to get rid of Chloe, and if Rania got in their way, they wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of her. They couldn’t put her on a plane. They could only shoot her. If they were going to shoot her, she would shoot them first, if she had the chance.
They can get away with shooting you much more easily if you have a gun, her practical side objected. Shooting an armed Palestinian is no crime in Israel. You get medals for it. She tucked the gun into the waistband of her skirt, well hidden by the loose blouse.
Bassam was outside, smoking argila with his brothers. Should she tell him where she was going? He would never allow it. But it wasn’t his to allow or not. But she had no time to fight with him. Guiltily, she looked at the little train book, still sitting on the nightstand next to the telephone charger. She had completely forgotten about Khaled, waiting for her to return. She peeked into his room and found him conked out, his head flopped over. She pulled the quilt over him, though it was not chilly in the room. Probably he would throw the covers off. She kissed her fingers and laid them ever so softly against his cheek, afraid to wake him with a real kiss. She prayed this would not be the last kiss she would give her son. She switched off his light and went back to her room. She buttoned a jilbab over her clothes and covered the settler scarf with a hijab.
“We are out of milk,” she told Bassam breezily. “I am just going up to Abu Kushri’s.”
“Do you want me to go?” he asked between lazy rings of cherry-scented smoke.
“No, I can use the air. Just listen for Khaled, in case he wakes up.” She left the door slightly ajar, so he could hear.
When she reached the corner, he would still be able to see her from the porch, so she needed to turn left toward the main road, where Abu Kushri’s store was, and go another block before turning right toward the fields that led to Highway 5. When she reached the fields, she broke into a trot. She was not going fast enough. She would never make it in time to help Chloe. She kicked off her shoes and clutched them, momentarily thinking of Nadya’s loose shoe which had started her on this entire adventure. She ran faster than she had run in twenty years. She couldn’t sustain it. Soon she doubled over, panting and clutching a stitch in her side. She hid her clothes where she had left them when she went to Jalame with Maya, the last grove before the road.
Though it was late, there was plenty of traffic on the road. A steady stream of yellow-plated cars zoomed past in both directions, filled with young people going and coming from the night life in Tel Aviv. She saw a few service taxis, what the Israelis called sherut, white vans with Hebrew writing on the sides. She held out her hand, palm down, not sure if they would stop along this road, even for a settler woman. They didn’t.
Finally a car pulled up, its brakes squealing as it slowed quickly. A woman, her head covering just like Rania’s, leaned out of the passenger’s window.
“L’an?” she asked
“Ramle.”
“We are going to Herzliya, but we can drop you at the Yarkon junction, where you can get a bus.”
“Todah rabah.”
“Maayfo atem?” she asked immediately upon settling into the back seat. She needed to know where they were from, before they asked her.
“Anachnu? Me-Itamar.” Itamar, the most violent settlement in the north. Recently, a young man from near Nablus had been killed in cold blood in front of many witnesses by a man from Itamar. Yet here were these ordinary looking people, picking up a strange woman late at night, smiling at her.
“You shouldn’t be tramping” – “tramp” was Hebrew for hitchhiking – “on this road so late,” the woman said. “It is very dangerous.”
“My car broke down about a mile back.”
“Yes,” the man said, “we saw a car.” Did they, she wondered? Or were they just suggestable?
“Do you want to go back and let Chaim look at it?” the woman asked.
“No, I am going to my cousins in Ramle and they will drive me back tomorrow. My cousin Nimrod is a mechanic.”
“Oh, that’s good,” said the woman, who said her name was Ainat.
When Ainat asked where Rania was from, she said Elkana. At least she knew a few streets, in case they asked where exactly. They didn’t.
“Where did you grow up?” Ainat asked her instead. They could tell from her poor Hebrew she was not Israeli. What should she say? Yemen? Syria? She knew a lot of Jews had moved to Israel from those countries more recently than from Iraq or Libya, but she didn’t know exactly when.
“Artzot Habrit,” she said finally. At least she spoke English, and she was sure they had every kind of Jew in the States. “I’ve only been in Israel a little over a year,” she added.
“Which state?” Chaim asked in English.
Her and her great ideas. What should she say? Chicago. No, that wasn’t a state, it was a city.
“California,” she said, thinking of Chloe.
“Los Angeles?” the man asked, just as she had.
“No, San Francisco,” feeling like she was reading from a script.
“Oh,” he sounded disappointed. “I have family in Los Angeles.”
She had reached the end of her script, and they had reached the checkpoint. One agony became another.
The soldier gave her a long long look. She made herself gaze back at him without blinking. Oh, God, she recognized him. He was there under the bridge the day she found Nadya’s body. He was the one who had been about to shoot at the kids when Chloe appeared. Please, she prayed, don’t let him remember my face. How could he? Palestinians looked alike to Israelis. In this garb he would never recognize her.
“Mi zot?” he asked Chaim, pointing at her with his chin. Not a very polite way to ask someone who is in his back seat. What if she was Chaim’s sister or cousin? But she supposed some subtle difference in clothing or demeanor told him that she wasn’t.
“She lives in Elkana,” Chaim told the young soldier.
“You know her?”
“No,” Chaim admitted. “Her car broke down and she is going to her cousins in Ramle.”
The soldier motioned to her to roll her window down. She obeyed.
“You are going to Ramle?”
“Yes.”
“To visit?”
“To visit my cousins, yes.” Did he think she would contradict what Chaim had told him? Even if she was a liar, she wasn’t deaf.
“Where do they live in Ramle?”
Damn. She had never been in Ramle in her life.
“Herzl Street,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “Near Weizmann.” Every town in Israel has streets named Herzl and Weizmann, for the founders of their State. Briefly, she wondered if Ainat and Chayim could have named even one man her people would name streets after.
“Nsiyah tovah,” good trip, the soldier said to Chaim, and seconds later, they were clear of the checkpoint.
