Matt Rees - A grave in Gaza

Salwa Masharawi waited for them at the gate of the compound in her loose black gown and flowery headscarf. As they approached, she straightened the scarf and wiped her nose with a pink tissue.

“How are you, dear lady?” Omar Yussef asked.

Salwa smiled and toyed with one of the gold buttons on her gown. Her eyes were shot with red. She had been crying. “May Allah be thanked, ustaz.”

“We’ll take you to your home and you can tell us the news from Eyad.”

At her house in Tuffah, Salwa gave a long glance at the barbed-wire graffiti surrounding the cartoon of the Dome of the Rock as she entered the yard. Naji waited by the door, fiddling self-consciously with the ear that stuck out from his head. Salwa whispered to him and led her guests into the sitting room where she had met them on their first visit. Omar Yussef glanced at the photo of her husband, smoldering and aloof, his head turned to hide his malformed ear. He wondered if Masharawi cared about such vanities after a night in jail.

Salwa sat with her hands clasped in her lap. She looked at the picture of her husband, as though she needed to feel his presence before recounting their meeting to Omar Yussef and the foreigners. “My husband asked me to send his greetings to you from the jail and to thank you for your efforts,” she said.

“How is he?” Omar Yussef asked.

“I regret to tell you he has been tortured, ustaz.”

Omar Yussef had considered the heat and dust and the stench inside the cellblock, but he hadn’t thought the man would be tortured. Wallender groaned and rubbed his beard.

“Since you visited Colonel al-Fara this morning, they have fed Eyad, but before that he was without food and water for over twenty-four hours,” Salwa said. “They kept him in the shabbah. You know this position?”

“I’ve read about it,” Cree said. “A low crouch, bent forward with your hands tied behind your back and your heels off the ground. After a few minutes, your legs and back feel like they’re on fire.”

Salwa covered her mouth and nose with her hand. She sobbed and lowered her head, then she sat upright and breathed deeply. “They beat the soles of his feet and put on his head a dirty sack that smells of vomit. They tied his hands behind his back and suspended him by them from the ceiling. He passed out a number of times.”

“How could they?” Omar Yussef touched his fingers to his brow. He thought of the discomfort he had felt in the room where he had waited for Salwa. He was ashamed of the self-pity he had experienced there, a short distance from where Masharawi had been exposed to true suffering.

Salwa’s eldest son entered with a tray of tea. Omar Yussef was thankful that the boy lowered his head and shoulders with the awkwardness of adolescence. He wouldn’t have wanted him to see the pity and horror in the eyes of the guests as they watched him. Naji set out the cups and left the room.

“Eyad spoke to me at first in a very organized way. But when he told me about the torture, he broke down.” The memory of that moment halted Salwa and she reached for a tissue from the coffee table. “I was able to see him only through a wire mesh. He entered the room hunched forward, shuffling, as though every motion was an agony. He smiled and asked me about the children. I told him about your help, Abu Ramiz. He was very grateful. He sends his regards.”

“What have the interrogators asked him?” Omar Yussef said.

“They asked no questions. They only commanded him to sign a confession.”

“Confessing what?”

“That he’s a CIA spy, whose mission was to spread rumors against the government. They said the university will stop his salary and there will be no money for me and the children.”

“He will receive his UN salary,” Wallender said.

Salwa nodded her thanks. “He asked his interrogator when he would go to his trial. The interrogator laughed and said, ‘When the Palestinian state is established, you will have a trial.’ You understand-” she turned to Wallender and Cree “-that this is what people here say when they mean that something will never happen. It’s supposed to be a joke. Then my husband cried and said to me that he felt he had died five hundred times already. I’m so worried, Abu Ramiz. If Eyad is in this condition after one day, perhaps they really do mean to kill him.”

“Certainly not,” Omar Yussef said. “You said that they fed him after they realized the UN was following the case. The tortures will surely stop now, too. Yesterday, he was just a Palestinian, and we all know how the security forces treat their compatriots. Today, he’s in the international eye. In case they have to bring him before UN investigators, they won’t want him to look like he has been tortured. They need to be able to deny that, to say that he’s just telling lies about them and that he was treated well.”

Wallender stood. “Umm Naji, we’ll be in contact with our office in New York. We’ll go to send a report on the torture right away, to bring pressure on the government to end this situation immediately.”

“Magnus, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay with Umm Naji for a while,” Omar Yussef said.

“Good idea, Abu Ramiz. We’ll go back to the hotel and report to the office.”

“Fine. I’ll probably be back late in the afternoon. I have to leave time to get ready for dinner with Professor Maki tonight. Will you be having dinner at the hotel?”

“Don’t you worry about your old Magnus,” Cree said. “I’m going to take him out for the best fish dinner in Gaza.”

Wallender and Cree left. Salwa and Omar Yussef sat in silence, while the UN Suburban labored out of the sandy alley in reverse.

“I invite you to join us for lunch, Abu Ramiz.”

“Allah bless you.”

She lowered her head and her headscarf shook. Omar Yussef pulled a tissue from the box on the coffee table and handed it to her. She dabbed below each eye, but the tears weren’t finished. “Abu Ramiz, I’m scared.”

“It’s a terrible, frightening story, my daughter. But you don’t have to face it alone.”

“I’m scared for my son Naji. You know what happens to the sons of collaborators-they’re so desperate to make amends for their family’s damaged reputation that they volunteer for suicide missions against the Israelis. He’s such a quiet boy. He could plan something dreadful, and I wouldn’t know about it until I heard it on the news.”

“He doesn’t seem like that kind,” Omar Yussef said. “Besides, he’s only the son of an accused collaborator, so far. And we’ll make sure it goes no further.”

Salwa sniffed. “Thank you, ustaz. I’d better prepare lunch.” She left the room.

Omar Yussef heard the sound of plates being removed from a cupboard in the kitchen. After the big, empty breakfast room at the Sands Hotel, it was a calming, domestic sound.

The boy came to the door. He linked his fingers and stared at the backs of his hands.

“Yes, Naji?”

“ Ustaz, would you like to see my birds?”

“I’d be delighted.”

The boy led Omar Yussef upstairs to a big, light room at the back corner of the house. He heard the doves whose muffled throatiness he had noticed in the olive grove when he first arrived at the house. The room was spartan. A cheap, fluffy blanket covered the bed, colorful and synthetic. A small desk stood against the wall, neat piles of exercise books and textbooks flush with its edges.

Naji opened a glass door to a balcony. A cage of chick-enwire and plywood about four-feet-square stood in the corner farthest from the bedroom. A pair of doves perched on a thick, twisting olive branch propped inside the cage. Two canaries flitted in orbit around them. Naji bent to the seed tray. He fed in some new seed from a small sack. He looked up and a smile broke through the rigidity of his desolate face. Omar Yussef felt his lips tremble with pity.