'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 Barakat became withdrawn again, more mannequin than man.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?'
