The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

Barakat stopped mid-sentence, turned away from the detective's eyes. One hand picked absently at the scratches on his face.

"What did your father say?"

"That…"Barakat shook his head, looked like a dog that had been kicked too often.

"Tell me, Abdin."

A long moment passed.

"Surely the words of one's father are nothing to be ashamed of," said Daoud.

Barakat trembled. "My father said… he said that Shahin's mother's loins were cursed, she'd been possessed by a spirit-a djinn. He said Shahin carried the curse too. The dowry had been obtained deceitfully."

"A djinn."

"Yes, one of my old aunts is a kodia-she confirmed it."

"Did this aunt ever try to chase out the djinnj Did she beat the tin barrel?"

"No, no, it was too late. She said the possession was too strong, agreed with my father that sending Shahin away was the honorable thing to do-as a daughter, she, too, was afflicted. The fruit of a rotten tree."

"Of course," said Daoud. "That makes sense."

"We were never told of the djinn before the wedding," said Barakat. "We were cheated, my father says. Victimized."

"Your father is a wise businessman," said Daoud. "He knows the proper value of a commodity."

Daniel heard sarcasm in the remark, wondered if Barakat would pick it up too. But the young man only nodded. Pleased that someone understood.

"My father wanted to go to the waqf," he said. "To demand judgment and reclaim the dowry from the mother. But he knew it was useless. The crone no longer owns anything-she's too far gone."

"Far gone?"

"Up here." Barakat tapped his forehead. "The djinn has affected her up here as well as in her loins." He scowled, sat up higher, square-shouldered and confident, the guilt-ridden slump suddenly vanished. Reaching out, he took a drink from the water glass that, till then, had gone untouched.

Watching the change come over him, Daniel thought: Plastering over the rot and mildew of sorrow with a layer of indignation. Temporary patchwork.

"The mother is mad?" asked Daoud.

"Completely. She drools, stumbles, is unable to clean herself. She occupies a cell in some asylum!"

"Where is this asylum?"

"I don't know. Some foul place on the outskirts of Nablus."

"Shahin never visited her?"

"No, I forbade it. The contagion-one defect was bad enough. The entire line is cursed. The dowry was obtained deceitfully!"

Daoud nodded in agreement, offered Barakat more water. When the young man had finished drinking, Daoud resumed his questioning, searching for a link to Shahin's whereabouts after her expulsion, inquiring about friends or acquaintances who might have taken her in.

"No, there were no friends," said Barakat. "Shahin shuttered herself in the house all day, refused to have anything to do with other women."

"Why was that?"

"Their children bothered her."

"She didn't like children?"

"At first she did. Then she changed."

"In what way?"

"They reminded her of her defect. It sharpened her tongue. Even the children of my brothers made her angry. She said they were ill-trained-a plague of insects, crawling all over her."

An angry, isolated woman, thought Daniel, no friends, no family. Stripped of the security of marriage, she'd have been as helpless as Fatma, as rootless as Juliet.

Picking off the weak ones.

But where had the herd grazed?

"Let's go back to Monday," said Daoud. "The last time you saw her, what time was it?"

"I don't know."

"Approximately."

"In the morning."

"Early in the morning?"

Barakat tapped his tooth with a fingernail and thought. "I left for work at eight. She was still there…" The sentence died in his throat. All at once he was crying again, convulsively.

"She was still there what, Abdin?"

"Oh, oh, Allah help me! I didn't know. Had I known, I never…"

"What was she doing when you left for work?" Daoud pressed softly but insistently.

Barakat kept crying. Daoud took hold of his shoulders, shook him gently.

"Come, come."

Barakat quieted.

"Now, tell me what she was doing the last time you saw her, Abdin."

Barakat muttered something unintelligible.

Daoud leaned closer. "What's that?"

"She was… Oh, merciful Allah! She was cleaning up!"

"Cleaning what up, Abdin?"

Sobs.

"The kitchen. My dishes. My breakfast dishes."

After that. Barakat became withdrawn again, more mannequin than man. Answering Daoud's questions but perfunctorily, employing grunts, shrugs, nods, and shakes of the head whenever they could substitute for words, muttered monosyllables when speech was necessary. Pulling the information out of him was a frustrating process, but Daoud never flagged, taking the husband over the same territory time and time again, returning eventually to the issue that had driven a wedge between him and Shahin.

"Did she ever take steps to correct her defect?" Phrasing it so that all the responsibility rested on the woman's shoulders.

Nod.

"What kind of steps?"

"Prayer."

"She prayed, herself?"

Nod.

"Where?"

"Al Aqsa."

"Did others pray for her as well?"

Nod.

"Who?"

"My father petitioned the waqf. They appointed righteous old men."

"To pray for Shahin?"

Nod. "And…"

"And what?"

Barakat started to cry again.

"What is it, Abdin?"

"I-prayed for her too. I recited every surah in the Quran in one long night. I chanted the zikr until I fainted. Allah shut his ears to me. I am unworthy."

"It was a strong djinn," said Daoud. Playing his part well, thought Daniel. He knew what Christians thought of Muslim spirits.

Barakat hung his head.

Daoud looked at his watch. "More water, Abdin? Or something to eat?'

Shake of the head.

"Did Shahin ever consult a doctor?"

Nod.

"Which doctor?"

"A herbalist."

"When?"

"A year ago."

"Not more recently?"

Shake of the head.

"What's the herbalist's name?"

"Professor Mehdi."

"The Professor Mehdi on Ibn Sina Street?"

Nod.

Daoud frowned, as did Daniel, behind the glass. Mehdi was a quack and illegal abortionist who'd been busted several times for fraud and released when the magistrates took seriously his lawyer's claims of ethnic harassment.

"What did Professor Mehdi advise?"

Shrug.

"You don't know?"

Shake of the head.

"She never told you?"

Barakat started to throw up his hands, got midway to his shoulders, and let them drop. "He took my money-it didn't work. What was the use?"

"Did she see a medical doctor?"

Nod.

"After she saw Professor Mehdi or before?"

"After."

"When?"

"Last month, then later."

"When later?"

"Before she…" Barakat chewed his lip.

"Before she left?"

Nod.

"When before she left?"

"Sunday."

"She saw this doctor the day before she left?"

Nod.

"Was she going for treatment?"

Barakat shrugged.

"What was the purpose of her appointment?"

Tension, then a shrug.

Daoud tensed also, looked ready to throttle Barakat. Tapping the table with his fingertips, he sat back, forcing a reassuring smile onto his face.

"She saw this doctor the day before she left, but you don't know for what."

Nod.

"What was the doctor's name?"

"Don't know."

"Didn't you pay his bill?"

Shake of the head.

"Who paid the doctor, Abdin?"

"No one."

"The doctor saw Shahin for free'.

Nod.

"As a favor?"

Shake of the head.

"Why, then?"

"A U.N. doctor-she had a refugee card. They saw her for free."

Daoud edged his chair closer to Barakat's.

"Where is this U.N. doctor's office?"

"Not an office. A hospital."

"Which hospital, Abdin?"

There was an edge in the detective's voice and Barakat heard it clearly. He pressed himself against his chair, shrinking back from Daoud. Wearing an injured look that said I'm doing the best I can.

"Which hospital?" Daoud said loudly. Getting to his feet and standing over Barakat, abandoning any pretense of patience.

"The big pink one," said Barakat, hastily. "The big pink one atop Scopus."

Patients began arriving at the Amelia Catherine at nine-thirty, the first ones a ragtag bunch of men who'd made the walk from the city below. Zia Hajab could have started processing them right then, but he made them wait, milling around the arched entry to compound, while he sat in his chair sipping sweet iced tea and wiping his forehead.

This kind of heat, no one was going to rush him.

The waiting men felt the heat, too, shuffling to avoid baking, grimacing and fingering their worry beads. Most of them bore obvious stigmata of disease or disability: bandaged and splinted limbs, sutured wounds, eye infections, skin eruptions. A few looked healthy to Hajab, probably malingerers out for pills they could resell-with what they were paying, pure profit.

One of them lifted his robe and urinated against the wall. A couple of others began grumbling. The watchman ignored them, took a deep breath and another sip of the cool liquid.

What they were paying, they could wait.

Only ten o'clock and already the heat was reaching deep inside Hajab, igniting his bowels. He fanned himself with a newspaper, peered into the tea glass. There was a lump of ice floating on the top. He tilted the glass so that the ice rested against his teeth. Enjoyed the sensation of chill, then nibbled a piece loose and let it rest upon his tongue for a while.

He turned at the sound of a diesel engine. A UNRWA panel truck-the one from Nablus-pulled up in front of the hospital and stopped. The driver got out and loosened the tailgate, disgorging twenty or thirty men who limped down and joined the grumblers from the city. The groups merged into one restless crowd; the grumbling grew louder.

Hajab picked his clipboard off the ground, got up, and stood before them. A sorry-looking bunch.

"When may we enter, sir?" asked a toothless old man.

Hajab silenced him with a look.

"Why the wait?" piped up another. Younger, with an impudent face and runny, crusted eyes. "We've come all the way from Nablus. We need to see the doctor."

Hajab held out his palm and inspected the clipboard. Seventy patients scheduled for Saturday Men's Clinic, not counting those who walked in without appointments, or tried to be seen with expired refugee cards or no cards at all. A busy Saturday made worse by the heat, but not as bad as Thursdays, when the women came-droves of them, three times as many as the men. Women were weak-spirited, crying Disaster! at the smallest infirmity. Screeching and chattering like magpies until by the end of the day, Hajab's head was ready to burst.

"Come on, let us in," said the one with the bad eyes. "We have our rights."

"Patience," said Hajab, pretending to peruse the clipboard. He'd watched Mr. Baldwin, knew a proper administrator had to show who was in charge.

A man leaning on a cane sat down on the ground. Another patient looked at him and said, "Sehhetak bel donya"-"without health, nothing really matters"-to a chorus of nods.

"Bad enough to be sick," said Runny Eyes, "without being demeaned by pencil pushers."

A murmur of assent rose from the crowd. Runny Eyes scratched his rear and started to say something else.

"All right," said Hajab, hitching up his trousers and pulling out his pen. "Have your cards ready."

Just as he finished admitting the first bunch, a second truck-the one from Hebron-struggled up the road from the southeast. The engine on this one had an unhealthy stutter-the gears sounded worn, probably plenty else in need of repair. He would have loved to have a go at it, show what he could do with a wrench and screwdriver, but those days were gone. Al maktoub.