A grave in Gaza

Chapter 2

The Masharawi home in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City was stuccoed white over concrete and the doorways were framed with faded purple paint. Its two floors lay behind a shoulder-height garden wall graffitied with the Palestinian flag and a yellow Dome of the Rock. Spiky barbed-wire curlicues encircled the cartoon mosque.

Omar Yussef stepped out of the sandy lane where the Suburban was parked. The path to the house led through a tangle of lemon trees that stood twice as high as the wall. The trees gave off a warm citrus scent, as though they’d been boiled for herb tea by the strong sun. The low cooing of doves came soothingly through the heat. In a corner of the garden, there was a shady olive grove and a bulbous clay taboun, where Masharawi’s wife might have been baking on any normal day. A strange silence reached out from the open doors and windows of the house into the thick midday stillness.

A thin, gangly boy in his teens, whose left ear stuck out at ninety degrees to his head, appeared at the door. His eyes stuttered between the foreigners and the floor. Omar Yussef spoke to him first.

“Greetings,” he said.

“Double greetings, ustaz,” the boy whispered.

“Is this the home of ustaz Masharawi?”

The boy dropped his eyes to the cheap plastic thongs on his feet and nodded.

Cree stepped up to Omar Yussef’s shoulder. The boy leaned backward to look at the towering man. There was a small quiver in his jaw and his eyes were blank and fearful.

“Is Missus Masharawi at home?” Cree said.

“My mother?” the boy asked, in slow English.

“That’s the girl,” Cree said.

The boy didn’t understand. He looked at Omar Yussef, who spoke to him gently in Arabic. “These men are with the UN. They’re here to find out what has happened to your father. Can we talk to your mother?”

“Welcome,” the boy said, again in English.

They followed him inside. The dark hallway was a relief from the hot sun flashing off the white exterior walls. While his eyes adjusted, Omar Yussef blindly trailed the sound of the boy’s plastic thongs slapping against the tiles. The boy led them to the back of the ground floor and gestured to the several thick, floral couches crammed around the edge of the dim, cool room.

“Welcome,” he said again, as Wallender and Cree entered. Then he turned to Omar Yussef and spoke in Arabic: “Like the home of your family and your own home.”

Omar Yussef acknowledged the greeting. “Your family is with you.”

“Do you want tea or coffee, ustaz?”

Omar Yussef translated for Wallender and Cree.

Wallender smiled, asked for coffee and sat quietly. Cree spoke to the boy in a loud voice that was deaf to the unhappy silence of the house. “A coffee it is. Thanks, laddie.”

“I’ll have mine sa’ada,” said Omar Yussef, who always took his coffee like this, without sugar. “And ask your mother to come talk to us, please.”

The boy left the room. The three men sat unmoving on the sofas. There were low sounds from a corner of the house, as though skirts moved quickly in the hush. A cozy hint of burning gas and brewing coffee floated into the room.

In the corner between Omar Yussef and James Cree stood a cheap bookshelf of chipboard covered with a fake wood finish. A row of photographs lined its top. The shelves were bowed by the weight of volumes on education and history in Arabic, French and English, except for one shelf, which was empty. Omar Yussef stood and examined it. He saw no dust, though the lip of each of the other shelves hadn’t been cleaned for months. Something that had covered the entire shelf had been removed.

Omar Yussef assumed the center photo on top of the bookcase was of Eyad Masharawi. The man in the shot held his head slightly to the left. Omar Yussef smiled and wondered if Masharawi had a wildly protruding ear like his son and was vain enough to hide it from the photographer. The man was bald, but the hair at the sides of his head was as richly black as the bitter coffee being prepared in the kitchen. His eyes were hooded, aristocratic, and dark. The mouth was tense and resigned, as if accustomed to exasperating news.

The boy returned with a tray covered, like the bookshelves, with fake wood. He pulled out two small cherry-varnished side tables and put them beside the guests’ knees. Then he laid down the coffees, the first cup before Wallender.

“Allah bless your hands,” said Wallender, quietly using the traditional Arabic formula of gratitude. Omar Yussef smiled at him.

“Allah bless you,” the boy mumbled. He slouched into an armchair in the corner.

Wallender leaned forward and whispered to Omar Yussef. “Should we refer to Mister Masharawi as ustaz?”

“He’s an educated man, a teacher, so it would be respectful to refer to him as ustaz Masharawi,” Omar Yussef said.

He tasted the cardamom-scented coffee and put his cup on the side table. Two women entered the room with measured, silent steps.

The first woman nodded to each of them and whispered her greetings. She wore a long black housecoat with large gold buttons that hung loosely almost to the floor. Her headscarf rounded her face to a gold clasp under her chin. The scarf was cream with a brown floral print around the bottom edge, which fell across her shoulders. Her skin was a light brown, like her melancholy, preoccupied eyes. Her black eyebrows were raised, as though she had taken a breath and was about to sigh. Her features were small, despite the thickening of age around the jaw. Omar Yussef thought she was in her mid-thirties. She carried a thin manila folder in front of her upper belly like a clutch bag, tapping it edgily with the finger which bore her simple gold wedding ring. She sat on the edge of the unoccupied couch, holding her neck erect and her back straight, with her palms flat on the folder she now placed in her lap. Her ring finger made tiny nervous circles on its surface.

The woman behind her was a few years older and dressed similarly, though her headscarf was plain, her gown was gray and her body beneath it was bulkier. Her mouth was wide and shapeless and pouting. When she moved, her fleshy cheeks quivered with each step. She smiled at the guests and sat on the same sofa as the first woman. Her plumpness reminded Omar Yussef of his neighbor Leila back in Bethlehem and, with a shiver of shame, he recalled the sexual attraction he had often felt for her. He experienced a similar physical curiosity about the thick-set woman on the couch. He caught himself holding his breath as he watched her stroke her friend’s shoulder blade reassuringly.

That comforting gesture gave Omar Yussef his clue. He spoke to the woman in black. “You’re the wife of Eyad?”

She nodded and lifted her head a little higher.

“I’m Abu Ramiz, Omar Yussef Sirhan, from Bethlehem. These are my colleagues from the UN.” Omar Yussef introduced Wallender and Cree, then addressed them quietly in English. “I’ll ask her what happened during the arrest?”

“There’s no need for you to translate, Abu Ramiz,” the woman said. “I’m a teacher of English.”

Cree and Wallender smiled with appreciation. “Where do you teach?” Wallender asked.

“Sometimes at the same UN school where Eyad teaches. I give lessons to the local children here, too.” She turned to the woman beside her. “This is my friend, Umm Rateb. She works at the university as secretary to the president.”

The chubby woman smiled, showing big teeth along the wide mouth, and looked a long time at Omar Yussef with an expression of amused curiosity.

“Eyad was arrested because of something that happened at the university, not because of his work at the UN school,” Masharawi’s wife said.

“Why do you say that, Missus Masharawi?” Cree asked.

The woman paused. That form of address must have sounded as odd to her as it did to Omar Yussef. “I am Salwa Masharawi. You are welcome to call me Umm Naji-the mother of Naji. This is Naji, my eldest boy.” She gestured to the lanky kid, folded on the armchair in the corner.

Cree nodded, with a hint of impatience.

“Fourteen armed men came to our house very early this morning, when everyone was asleep,” Salwa said.

“Israeli soldiers?” Wallender asked.

“Palestinian security agents.”

“What did they want?” Wallender took out a small notebook and a pen.

“The agents asked my husband for his papers.”

“His identity papers?”

“No, his papers from the university. There have been exams at the university recently and he kept the test papers here.” Salwa pointed at the bookcase in the corner. “They took all the papers from that empty shelf.”

“Why did they want these papers?”

“There has been trouble at the university, Mister Wallender.” Salwa closed her eyes and touched her forehead. “Well, at least, Eyad has done things which, as I believe one says in English, are asking for trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Three days each week, Eyad teaches at your UN school. He likes to be there, because he is from an old Gaza City family, and he often says that we should work with the refugees to show that they are always welcomed here. It seems silly, perhaps, because they are just as much Gazans as anyone else, after sixty years in their camps, but they are still the poorest people in town and Eyad thinks it’s his duty to work on their behalf. The other two days each week, he works at the university. He teaches in the Education Department.” Salwa hesitated and glanced at her friend, who gave her a nod. “Unlike his UN job, the work at the university is no longer a source of pleasure for Eyad. It is a battle.”

“Against whom?” Omar Yussef asked.

“Perhaps you think that the corruption of Palestinian life should not infect the university, Abu Ramiz? That academia should be above such dirtiness?” Salwa shook her head. “Sadly, this is not so.”

Cree drank the last of the coffee in his tiny cup, wiped the thick dregs that clung to the tips of his mustache, and put the cup down on the side table with a rattle.

“Naji, make tea, now,” Salwa said. She puckered her lips and blew out a breath, as though in relief that her son would be spared her story.

“He’s a good boy,” Omar Yussef said, after Naji left the room.

“He looks just like his father, even down to the ear. You saw, it sticks out?” Salwa said. “But he’s quiet and calm. Not like Eyad.”

“What went wrong for Eyad at the university?” Omar Yussef asked.

“Eyad discovered that the university is selling degrees to officers in the Preventive Security.”

“Preventive Security?” Wallender frowned. “What’s that?”

“The plainclothes police force,” Cree said.

Salwa nodded.

“Why would a policeman need a degree?” Omar Yussef said.

Umm Rateb put her hand on Salwa’s wrist and took over. “To be promoted quickly, these policemen need to show that they have studied law or had some other higher education. It puts them on what you’d call the fast track to the highest posts. Of course, that means a better salary and more power.”

“So the university gives them the degree in exchange for payment?” Omar Yussef said.

“Yes, they have to show up to a couple of classes, but they don’t really study,” Umm Rateb said.

Salwa clicked her tongue and her tone edged into anger for the first time. “They couldn’t study if they tried. They aren’t qualified to be at the university. These men didn’t even graduate high school. They were on the streets making trouble when they should have been in class. But now the troublemakers are the law in Gaza and they want to receive something valuable without working for it.”

“What did Eyad do when he discovered this?” Omar Yussef said.

Salwa shook her head. “My husband is not a calm man. If he sees something he dislikes, he has to act against it. I always say to him, ‘Please, Eyad, slow down. Let us live in peace.’ But that isn’t what he wanted. Three weeks ago, he set an exam for his class at the university.”

“The exam that was confiscated this morning?” Omar Yussef said.

Salwa handed him the folder. “They didn’t get this copy of the exams. Eyad left it on his bedside table.”

Omar Yussef translated from the first page: “ Write an essay about corruption in the government.” He looked at Cree, whose face was measured and unreadable. Wallender bowed over his notebook.

Umm Rateb spoke up. “The head of the university, Professor Adnan Maki, was very angry. He called Abu Naji to his office and they did a great deal of shouting. When Abu Naji left, he forgot even to say goodbye to me at my desk outside Professor Maki’s office, though I am a good friend of his family. For the rest of the afternoon Professor Maki was extremely irritable.”

“Did the university punish Eyad?” Omar Yussef asked.

“My husband didn’t wait to be punished,” Salwa said, with a sad laugh. “He went straight to his classroom that afternoon and set another exam for his students. Have a look.”

Omar Yussef turned to the second page in the file and read: “ Write an essay about corruption at the university.”

“All the students wrote about the university selling degrees to the plainclothesmen,” Salwa said. “Professor Maki immediately suspended Eyad.”

Wallender looked up from his notebook. “If the students already knew about the selling of the degrees, why would Eyad be punished?”

“It was not something to talk about in public, not something to set exams about,” Umm Rateb said.

“It’s more than that,” Salwa said. “It became personal.”

“Between Eyad and Professor Maki?” Omar Yussef said.

“Worse.” Salwa waved her hand. “Colonel al-Fara.”

“Bloody hell,” said Cree.

“Who’s that?” Wallender asked.

“The head of the plainclothes police. One of the most powerful men in Gaza and certainly one of the nastiest bastards you’ll ever come across.” Cree slapped his thigh. “He’s tortured more prisoners than you’ve had pickled herring and Aquavit, Magnus.”

“James,” Omar Yussef said, flicking his eyes toward Salwa.

Cree looked at the woman’s solemn face. “Sorry, dear,” he said, with a little cough.

Salwa nodded, but her mouth was tense. She shivered slightly before she continued. “Professor Maki told my husband that he had embarrassed him in front of Colonel al-Fara. As you point out, Mister Cree, that’s not a favorable situation in which to find oneself in Gaza these days. With men like Maki and al-Fara, all kinds of politics are involved which, as I told my husband, he couldn’t possibly know about.”

“Shouldn’t the head of the university protect academic freedom?” Wallender asked.

Salwa and Umm Rateb shared a glance that suggested the Swede might as well have dropped in from Mars. “Professor Maki didn’t become head of the university because he’s a notable academic. Rather, it was because he’s involved in politics,” said Salwa. She turned once more to Umm Rateb, who nodded with grim approbation. “He’s a member of the Fatah Party’s Revolutionary Council and very senior in the PLO. So is Colonel al-Fara. No doubt many secret deals could be strained by a conflict between them. I warned my husband they would need a scapegoat to allow them to patch up their differences.”

“After he was suspended, what did your husband do?” Wallender asked.

“He should have waited until next year and the suspension would have been lifted, when everyone had forgotten about what he did. But he went to one of the human-rights organizations, which has campaigned against corruption. They decided to make this an issue of academic freedom. They wrote to Professor Maki about my husband’s case.”

Omar Yussef felt a darkness enveloping him. He thought of this woman’s impulsive husband, determined and arrogant. Those aloof eyes in the photo were too proud for Gaza, debased as it had become. To live here, you would have to accept the shadows, swelter in airless rooms, choke on your resentment.

“They also wrote to Colonel al-Fara,” Salwa said.

Omar Yussef knew where that letter must have led. The boy returned with a tray of small glasses filled with mint leaves and dark tea. Omar Yussef saw a flicker of fear on Salwa’s face and her lips tightened, as though the boy before her were in as much danger as her husband. Naji set a cup before Omar Yussef and glanced at the open file on the older man’s knees. Omar Yussef reached for the tea. His hand shook and he withdrew it. His pulse raced.

“Did Colonel al-Fara make any reply to the letter from the human-rights group?” Cree said.

“The arrest was his reply,” Salwa said.

“You said they asked for his papers,” Omar Yussef said. “We can see from the empty shelf that he gave them the papers they wanted. Why did they arrest him, as well?”

“The policemen insulted him. I heard one of them say that the papers looked very suspicious and that they would need to interrogate him about them. Eyad lost his temper and shouted at them. I’m sure they wanted to provoke him, so they could arrest him.”

“Where were you?” Omar Yussef asked.

“I was upstairs. As I came down, I saw them taking Eyad through the door of this room and out of the front of the house. He was in handcuffs and one of them made him bend forward as he walked, pushing his neck down. I called out to him, but an agent stood at the bottom of the stairs and refused to let me pass.”

Omar Yussef heard the desperation of that moment even now in Salwa’s voice. “They were Preventive Security agents?”

“Yes. They wore leather jackets, even though it wasn’t cold. They took Eyad through the garden and went away very quickly.”

“Did anyone tell you why he was arrested?”

“First thing this morning I went to their local office. They told me Eyad was held at their headquarters in the south of the city. They said he was being investigated, that perhaps he worked for the CIA.”

“The CIA?” Cree shouted.

“That’s right.”

“Jesus Christ, they’re aiming for the bloody top.” Cree clapped his hands. “No messing around with piddling accusations of collaboration with the Israelis here. No, he’s a big CIA hotshot. Christ.”

Salwa drew herself straight. Her voice was soft and precise. “I agree, Mister Cree. If my husband is a spy, then take him to Palestine Square and shoot him, I told them. But he should be put on trial first. There should be justice.”

“They didn’t mention a trial to you?” Omar Yussef said.

Salwa shook her head.

Cree scoffed and waved his hand. “Trial? No chance.”

Magnus Wallender looked up from his notes. He rested his elbow on his knee and rubbed his short beard. “Your husband will have the backing of the United Nations, Umm Naji. We will see to it that he’s freed or, at least, allowed to have a fair trial. We will work with all our contacts here in the government, and we will inform our diplomatic representatives.”

“Thank you,” said Salwa.

Omar Yussef sensed the meeting was at a close. His hand felt steady enough to lift the glass of tea from his side table. He put it to his lips and took a sip.

Umm Rateb sat forward. “Perhaps, Mister Wallender, you will visit Professor Maki at the university to discuss the case?”

“Yes, Umm Rateb, I think we shall.”

“Leave it a few hours,” the plump woman said. “He was in Rafah this morning, and he’ll go home for lunch and a siesta before he goes to the office. You will find him there after four or four-thirty. Go to the main entrance of the university and ask directions from there.”

“Thank you.”

Umm Rateb stood, resting her weight on one leg and pushing out that hip. Omar Yussef liked the way she held herself. “Salwa, I have to go and prepare lunch for my family. I’ll talk to you later.”

Salwa stood and kissed Umm Rateb’s round cheek.

Umm Rateb smiled at Omar Yussef, showing the teeth in her wide mouth. “I’ll meet you later today, Abu Ramiz.”

Omar Yussef was taken aback. Had she sensed his attraction to her? Could she be propositioning him in front of these people? His hand shook and dropped splashes of tea onto the manila file and the crotch of his trousers.

Wallender covered Omar Yussef’s embarrassment. “At the university, Abu Ramiz. Umm Rateb is Professor Maki’s secretary, you remember.”

“You will have to pass my desk to reach his office,” Umm Rateb said.

Omar Yussef put down his tea and cleared his throat, composing himself. “If Allah wills it,” he said.