The Spoils of War. Gordon Kent

Gaza City, Palestinian Authority

      He wasn’t sure where he was—somewhere in the territories. The interrogation room smelled of mold. It was underground, the white paint on the walls peeled away from the concrete in long strips, exposing the rough surface beneath. It was too bright, lit by a pair of hot halogen lights, so that cockroaches threw sharp shadows on the floor where they scuttled.

      Rashid had been waiting there for three hours. He had surprised himself by falling asleep. He had woken up to find that the persistent itching on his leg was an insect that had crawled up his jeans. He panicked, flailed around the room getting the unclean thing out of his clothes.

      Then he sat, his arms crossed on his chest, and waited.

      He heard steps in the hall, conversations, snatches of laughter, once, a startled scream.

      More steps in the hall, sharper, and the click of a woman’s heels. His door opened.

      There was a man and a woman. The man was middleaged, thin, smoking. The woman was younger, but not by much, wore heels and a short skirt.

      Men with guns brought two chairs.

      “I am Colonel Mahmoud Hamal and this is Zahirah,” the man said. “You are Rashid George Halaby?”

      Rashid nodded.

      “You know who I am?”

      Rashid shook his head.

      “Perhaps you have heard me called the Tax Collector. Hmm? I am responsible for the security of our Palestinian Authority in regard to antiquities. You work for Hamas?”

      The question pierced through Rashid’s other fears; something to be dreaded, something for which he had not prepared an answer. So he said nothing, tried to keep his eyes down. He had heard of the Tax Collector. Salem had mentioned him—feared him, even.

      “How long have you been with Hamas?” Colonel Hamal was looking at a manila folder.

      Rashid looked at him with lowered eyes. The colonel was wearing a suit, had a silk tie, and a heavy gold ring on his finger. Rashid blinked to keep tears off his face.

      The colonel waved the folder at him. “You are Rashid George Halaby. You live in Haifa. You run errands for Hamas. You had two brothers killed in the Intifada by Jewish soldiers. Your father died in Jordan in a riot. Your mother teaches at a Muslim school. Why not just say these things?”

      Unbidden, Rashid’s eyes rose and met the colonel’s. The man smiled.

      “You have an Israeli passport. As far as I can tell, you have never been arrested in Israel. Are you a Muslim?”

      Rashid nodded.

      “How do you come to have an Israeli passport?” the woman asked. Her voice was warm, her Arabic slightly accented.

      “We live in Acco. Not Haifa.” Rashid spoke softly, as if he was afraid he might be overheard. They must know these things. Haifa was an Israeli town. Acco had a big Palestinian population, one of the biggest in Israel. “I’m a Palestinian.”

      The man waved his hand, his attention still on the documents. “Acco, then. Either way, you are not from Gaza or the West Bank. You have an Israeli passport.” Hamal threw it on the table in front of the boy. “Why didn’t you proclaim it? I have no jurisdiction over you.”

      Rashid couldn’t think of a reply. He couldn’t think at all. All answers were going to lead to the same place—Hamas, Salem, Hamas, Salem. Had he killed the man with the hammer? Did they know? He shrugged, the motion stiff. Rashid rubbed the back of his hand over his face, rubbed his lips. The arresting officers had not been gentle.

      “What were you doing here?” Hamal paused for effect. “In Gaza?”

      “Working. With a friend.” Rashid thought that sounded harmless, but both the man and the woman smiled.

      “What were you working on?”

      Rashid’s lips trembled.

      “How long have you been with Hamas?” Hamal asked again.

      “Since my brothers died.” Rashid answered savagely.

      Hamal nodded. He smoked for over a minute. “You were working with a friend. Digging, perhaps?”

      Rashid didn’t know what to say, because these people seemed to know so much. And he had no idea what they wanted. But after too long a hesitation, he said, “Yes,” softly.

      The woman leaned forward across the table. “Is your friend Salem Qatib, Rashid?”

      Rashid gave himself away with his reaction, and read it on them. But the mention of the name caused much of the fear to drop away. They were in it now. He raised his eyes, met hers. She was attractive; her eyes were big and friendly. She wore scent.

      “Yes,” he said.

      “How well do you know Salem Qatib?” Colonel Hamal asked.

      Rashid squirmed. “We are friends.”

      Hamal rustled his papers and glanced at his watch.

      “He—he played with my oldest brother—when they were boys,” Rashid said.

      Hamal didn’t look up from the dossier in front of him.

      “Then—then he went away to—America,” Rashid said. “When he—Salem—came back, he came to visit my mother.”

      The woman nodded her understanding.

      Rashid went on, “He wanted to offer my brother a job, but Ali—was dead. So he took me instead.”

      “Tell me about that job.” The woman leaned forward, and her scent covered the smell of mold and made the room a better place. It was not a smell of sex, but of flowers.

      “We dug. For old things, antiquities.” Rashid knew he was committed now, had said too much, but their expressions didn’t change and he had nothing to lose. They were interested in Salem. So was he. “Salem would identify a site, and we would dig by hand. If there were things, then other men would come, but we would do the fine work.” Rashid tried to express the fine work by brushing the table with his fingers. “With a toothbrush? You know? And sifting. The other men would never sift, they wanted to use a backhoe for everything.”

      “And Hamas told you to take the job.” Hamal was leaning forward too, his cigarette smoke cutting through the woman’s perfume. She waved at the smoke, but her eyes stayed with Rashid.

      Rashid wrapped himself in his arms again and sat quietly. Because it was true, and because it was a betrayal of Salem before he even knew Salem.

      “You had to, yes? Your mother would have asked you to do this work for them.” Zahirah sounded concerned. Perhaps she, too, despite her modern clothes, was a mother.

      “They took care of us when my father died.”

      “Of course. And you—what? You reported to them on what Salem found?”

      Rashid put his face in his hands. He sobbed, “Not after we were friends! I—” he gulped air, swallowed the word loved. “We were friends.”

      She nodded. Hamal leaned across her. “You were at the dig at Tel-Sharm-Heir’at?”

      Rashid nodded. He could see the dig, the pit facing the sea, and everything covered with blue tarps against the winter rain. The row of burial urns that started them on the site. The stone structure nearest the sea that had electrified Salem.

      “You were there when Qatib was beaten?” Hamal asked.

      “I—ran.” The beach full of men. Salem kneeling, hit with a shovel. The bearded man he hit with a hammer.

      Zahirah nodded. Hamal made a mark in the manila folder.

      “Salem