The Collaborator of Bethlehem

Chapter 2

Darkness smothered the valley swiftly, sliding gray down the steep hillsides, blotting out the scanty olive trees and shading the romantic portraits of the martyrs in the cemetery, until it settled over the village of Irtas. In the home of the Abdel Rahmans, no one turned on the lights. To do so would have illuminated the vegetable patch and the glade of pines outside, through which the family expected their eldest son to creep home soon for the iftar, the evening meal to break the Ramadan fast. In the front room of the house, Dima Abdel Rahman set down a tray of kamar al-din. She placed the glasses of apricot juice before the cushions where each member of the family would sit to eat. The glass with the most fruit floating in it, she put by the corner of the low table, where Louai would want to sit so that he could watch the windows for any threat. Then she went to the open window for a moment and, ignoring the excited, fluttery calls of her mother-in-law from the kitchen, strained her eyes into the shadows for a sight of her husband. She adjusted her cream headscarf, which curved to a pin below her chin and emphasized the strong oval of her face. Her eyes were a light, warm brown, like the foliage of Palestine’s brief autumn, and her lashes were long. It was a kindly, confident face, though it was tainted by an undertone of recent loneliness and an anxious tightness about her lips. She shivered and hugged herself as the night’s chill penetrated her bright holiday robe.

The building was well situated for these clandestine visits. Louai Abdel Rahman could move from his hideout in Irtas to this square two-story house a quarter of a mile along the valley without stepping into the open, where Israeli hit squads might see him. The cinderblock homes and winding streets of Irtas billowed across the lowest slopes and into the narrow bottom, looking from this end of the valley like rushing rapids washing through a crevasse, foaming against the precipices and cresting on fingers of easier gradients. At the edge of the village, the valley was a fertile place, the green plots of the fellahins spraying out around the famous gardens of the Roman Catholic convent tended by the Sisters of the Hortus Conclusus. Behind the Abdel Rahman house at the head of the valley were the ancient wells known as Solomon’s Pools, which fed the main aqueduct of Herod’s Jerusalem. With springs across the vale, the people of Irtas allowed themselves a luxury barred to other rural Palestinians, who strained to eke out the fetid contents of their cisterns through the eight dry months of summer: in Irtas there were tall, shady pine trees, as well as the squat, functional olives to which most villages were limited. Dima Abdel Rahman knew her husband could move about, hidden beneath the canopy of leaves, as though nature wished to be complicit in his struggle against the occupation. If the Israelis watched from above, Louai would surely see them, because the thick vegetation thinned and petered out as the hillsides cut up from the narrow floor of the wadi. The soldiers would be exposed on those bare slopes, even in the twilight.

Then Dima Abdel Rahman heard sounds among the trees. It must be him, she thought. She kept quiet, even though her mother-in-law called her to help with the serving once more. There was nothing moving that she could see, but the undergrowth crackled beneath careful footsteps. He was coming, for the first time in weeks. She straightened her headscarf excitedly once more and fiddled with the pin beneath her throat.

No matter how long Louai hid from the Israelis, she would never grow accustomed to the absences between his visits to the house where she lived with his parents, his brother and three sisters. They had been married only a year, but he had been underground most of that time. It was as her parents had feared. Before the wedding, they had consulted with their neighbor, ustaz Omar Yussef, a respected friend of her father and a schoolteacher who took a special interest in her. He had told Dima’s father that, though there was a risk the girl soon would be widowed, there seemed to be love between the two young people and such feelings ought to be nurtured in these days of hate.

So Dima had given up her studies at the UNRWA Girls School in Dehaisha to marry Louai. She went to work in her father-in-law’s autoshop, doing the accounts and answering the phones. At home she ended up doing the family’s housework and dreaming of Louai’s rare homecomings. It became a week or longer between his visits to the house, and each time he spent only an hour or two with her before he had to be gone once more. When he wasn’t there, she was melancholy. Without her husband to enliven her nights, the days in the glass booth at the back of the garage were dull. Worse, Louai’s father Muhammad and his brother Yunis grew cold toward her, as though they blamed her for the risks he took in coming through the darkness to the house. Or maybe it was something else.

Weeks before, a burly man in military fatigues had come into the autoshop when Muhammad and Yunis were out. He sat on Dima’s desk, crumpling her paperwork with his broad backside, and tried to touch her cheek. “I have something I need to buy from your family,” he said to her, “but I’d pay double the price if they’d let you deliver it to me.” She moved away and the man laughed. Behind him, she noticed Yunis at the entrance to the garage. The man lifted his hand again, but then followed her eyes to her brother-in-law. He laughed again and left the autoshop. Yunis looked darkly at her and followed the man out, whispering insistently to him. He had barely spoken to her since that day.

When Louai last came home, Dima complained that his father and brother were distant with her. A quiet, calm man, he surprised her with his sudden anger. “You have no right to judge my father and brother,” he shouted. “These are not matters that concern you.”

Dima had no idea what “matters” he meant—she had referred only to their icy manner about the house and office. But Louai quickly calmed himself and apologized. He said he was tense because of his confinement in a safehouse, but Dima knew he was lying. He was defensive, because he, too, was frustrated with his brother. Dima’s suspicions about Yunis somehow were confirmed by Louai’s outburst. Before he had left that last time, Dima had heard Louai and Yunis arguing. They had spoken in whispers. She couldn’t tell what they were saying, but the tone had been heated. She had also noticed her husband stare sternly at his father after he embraced him in farewell.

As Dima Abdel Rahman stood at the window straining to see the source of the steps sounding in the undergrowth, she heard the steady footfalls stop. Then they began again, not so clearly defined, but rather a shuffle through the underbrush, as though the creeping man had suddenly relaxed.

“Oh, it’s you, Abu Walid.”

It was her husband’s voice. He spoke calmly, in a friendly tone. Dima looked toward the voice. For a moment she saw nothing, then at the edge of the pines a small red dot appeared, flitting unsteadily as though describing a circle of a small radius. It quivered to a halt, like a firefly settling onto a leaf. When the red dot was still, instantly there was a shot. Dima gasped, and it was as though the sudden extra oxygen fed her eyes, because she saw Louai. He stumbled from the edge of the trees. Dima couldn’t make out his face, but she knew the denim jacket and the jeans she had bought for him before his last visit. His hand clutched his shoulder.

The red dot, again. Another shot cracked out of the darkness and Louai spun, his arms stretched wide, like a Sufi dancing in the divine trance of the sema, whirling, head back, one hand turned toward the earth, the other palm heavenward. He collapsed facedown in the cabbage patch.

Dima stared. Her mother-in-law came wailing into the room, crying out that the Israelis were invading. “They will murder us all,” she called. “Yunis, my son, come and bring your father to protect us. Muhammad, come to protect us, husband.” There were footsteps from the upper floor as the men awoke from their evening naps and hurried to the stairs. Dima felt as if she had been turned to stone. If she moved, she thought she might fall to pieces on the ground, her body dropping noisily in a cloud of dusty chips. With a fearful effort, she turned and ran to the door, knocking over a glass of kamar al-din on the way.

The killers could be out here still, Dima thought, but I have to reach him and touch him. Don’t let him be badly hurt.

She stumbled through the cabbages and dropped to the ground at Louai’s side. It was then that she realized she was sobbing and, as she turned her husband onto his back, her sobs became a scream. His wide eyes were blank and stared right through her. His tongue protruded palely between his lips. The denim jacket was wet, saturated with blood from the collarbone to the navel. Dima held his hand and touched his face. He was so beautiful. She looked at his hand. His fingers were long and slim, these fingers that touched her delicately when he came to the house. Why was the cause of Palestine worth more to him than their happiness and their love?

Louai’s mother came through the cabbages. She knew the meaning of Dima’s scream. She fell on her knees at her boy’s side and laid her hands on the bloody torso. Dima heard the soft squelching of the wet denim as the old woman gripped it desperately. The mother lifted her hands, covered her cheeks in her son’s blood and called out to God.

“Get away from him.”

Dima heard Yunis behind her. He grabbed her shoulder and shoved her away from her husband’s corpse. He lifted his mother gently, but led her away from the body, too. She sobbed and cried, “Allahu akbar,” God is most great. As he passed Dima with his mother, Yunis caught her eye. His look was defensive and hostile. The glance confused her. Yunis looked away. “Don’t disturb anything. Leave the place for the police to investigate,” he said.

“The police?”

“Yes.”

“What is there for the police to investigate? The Israelis assassinated your brother. Are the police going to go and arrest the Israeli soldier who fired the shots?”

“Just do as I say.”

“The police will be useless unless a Palestinian did this. What Palestinian would kill a member of our family? What Palestinian would kill a leader of the resistance?”

Yunis averted his eyes. Dima stepped toward him, but he turned his gaze on her again and it was reproachful and violent.

Dima would have spoken more angrily, if it had not seemed like a desecration of her husband’s body to use harsh words. When Yunis turned on the lights in the house, beams of fluorescent blue filtered outside. Their icy reflections shone in the pool of Louai’s blood.