She tiptoed like a young ballet dancer to the window. Outside, two small fishing boats slept huddled together, like two lovers stretched out on the bed of their emotions. There were other boats bobbing about on waters of light and darkness. Further out at sea were pale lights in the distance, clinging to the edge of a horizon swallowed in darkness. Jinin thought that they must belong to merchant vessels or tourist boats heading toward the port of Ashdod to the south. And perhaps there were others—warships that had dispensed with their lights, edging their way toward Gaza, further to the south. Just thinking about the existence of warships gave her a fright—even moored in the open sea at Gaza, watching the fishermen and spying in every direction.
Jinin returned to her desk, pushed the laptop to one side, and took hold of Basim’s file. The problems it contained had propelled him into a deep sleep. As she started to rummage through the papers in it, her eyes fell on both printed stories and others that Basim had handwritten. Flipping through them, she came across the story of a woman from Ramla, Nisreen al-Shawish, who had been washed in blood and kneaded in earth. Nisreen had been a young girl, happy in her femininity. She was about to turn twenty when she fell from the world into a hole in the road, leaving behind her a young child and her dream of a little house for the two of them.
Next, she observed Tannus’s victory as she ran from her brother’s pursuing Mitsubishi, until he put an end to her seventeen years at the Rama crossroads in Galilee.
Jinin pitied the simplicity of Ala, a girl from Haifa. The poor girl had believed that she was a first-class citizen in Israel. She was sure that the police would guarantee her protection from the threats of her parents, and cousins, and all her other relatives who had been entrusted with preserving her honor. Ala had made an official complaint, which she had left on the desk of Officer Avigdor—‘Fatty,’ as they called him in the Haifa police station. ‘Fatty’ Avigdor had left Ala to the family honor laundry, which had cleaned her stain away soon after.
“Faryal, Faryal . . . ,” muttered Jinin with a regret that pained her heart, as she read the fourth story in the file.
Faryal al-Huzayyil. A Bedouin from the Negev. Eighteen years old. She had never known a tent, had never gathered wood to make a fire for her tribesmen’s coffee. She had never herded cattle, had never hung a bell around the neck of a goat, or put a pair of golden or silver earrings in her ears like the Bedouin of long ago. Faryal was a child of the times: she usually decorated her ears with two small earpieces connected to an iPod. She had no one to spoil her, so she spoiled herself, calling herself ‘Fufu.’ Fufu danced with passion to the rhythm of songs that she loved. Her body swayed like an ear of corn set in motion by the winds of her desires. Her nose did not carry a ring, but she retained the pride of a young girl in love with her femininity. Fufu rebelled against the traditions of her tribe, her Bedouin identity. Fufu said goodbye to her town, Rahat, and traveled away. She lived alone, with no guardian or male protector, in a small apartment in Tel Aviv. Three men made an agreement to get rid of her. The first was her eldest brother, who couldn’t find work, so threw himself into the ranks of the Israeli armed forces. He found no shame in cooperating with the army of occupation in its crimes against his own people and their Arab neighbors. Instead, he focused his shame on Faryal for living the life that she wanted. The second was her younger brother, who could not bear the fact that she had found work in Tel Aviv that would set her free from his supervision. And the third was her cousin, to whom the tribe had pledged her on the day of her birth. He helped to kill her so that a stranger would not take her virginity. Three ‘heroes’ in a tragedy that ended with Faryal’s corpse being thrown into an old disused well near the town of Ramla.
Three men also came together against Abir al-Ladawiya: husband, brother-in-law, and nephew. The last of these, who was barely on the edge of manhood, and who even his mother called loathsome, became a man with Abir’s death. The two brothers took him with them so that he could learn how to preserve his share of the family’s honor. Together, the three men killed her.
As for Safa, her husband dealt with her on his own. He didn’t seek help from any of his relatives, but set up a special court for her that quickly issued its verdict. He hanged her on a gallows that he had made himself, using the washing line on which Safa had hung his clothes after ridding them of his sweat and other filth. He killed her, and hung her corpse up like a piece of washing for everyone to see.
Poor Suheir was strangled by her husband. He took her four children, and no one asked him any questions. “She betrayed him,” they said, “and a woman who betrays her husband doesn’t deserve to bring up his children.” They didn’t specify how she had betrayed him, or offer any proof for it, and they didn’t relate the children to the mother who had borne them.
The death of Hala, the virtuous nursery teacher from Nazareth whose killer remained unknown—no one even tried to look for him—woke the whole of Haifa, who marched in her funeral procession, with the children from her school at its head.
Jinin closed Basim’s file with its terrifying stories. She sat with her eyes closed for
