I stopped sweeping. Gina stopped crying that her house was ruined. Avram stopped asking Saddiq if he wanted more coffee.
Even the midget asked his chief on the walkie-talkie to call him back in a minute.
*
The minute the television people left, I knew I didn’t have a chance, that without the camera I was finished. It didn’t matter whether they called me Nissan or Saddiq, a dog’s tail can never be straight, and a policeman won’t fight an Arab without putting handcuffs on him.
But I still kept on working. I banged with the chisel till there was a crack between the bricks, and then I pulled out the loose brick the way you pull out a slice of cake. There was an empty space behind it, as quiet and cold as a grave. I stuck my hand inside and at first I didn’t feel anything, but when I stepped on to the next rung of the ladder and pushed my hand in deeper, I touched something. A bag. I pulled it out, and everyone in the house stopped talking. The policemen. The old man who thought he was my father. The young woman with the tiger eyes. They all wanted to see what was in the bag.
Inside the crumbling bag was another bag. The second bag was made of stronger cloth, the kind they make cement bags out of. The opening was held together with a thick rope tied in a complicated knot. I opened it, twist after twist. I used my teeth too.
The chief stopped talking with his generals and came over to the ladder too to see what was in the bag.
My mother hadn’t told me what she’d left there, but I could already see it in my head. What do people usually hide inside walls? Either weapons or money.
I pulled a gold chain out of the bag. A thin, delicate chain exactly the right size for a small woman’s neck. Even though almost fifty years had gone by, it still glittered in the light. Allah carim, dear God, I thought with fear in my heart, this is Grandma Shadia’s chain. All the old people in the family, my mother’s brothers and sisters, always used to talk about this chain. It had been handed down from mother to oldest daughter, from mother to oldest daughter for maybe a hundred, two hundred years, from the time the family was living in Lebanon. And no one knew where it had disappeared to during the war. Except for my mother, who knew and kept quiet about it. The chain slithered through my fingers like a snake. Why didn’t you tell anyone, ya umi? Maybe you were ashamed of leaving it behind like that. Of forgetting the thing that was most important to the family and running away. And now what? Maybe you don’t care any more. Most of the old people are dead already, and the ones still alive, their memories disappear like salt in water.
I’m asking you to hand over that chain, the short policeman said, coming closer to me and putting a foot on the first rung of the ladder.
I looked at the old man, at my saviour. I waited for him to wave the bread knife around again, to yell and save me. But suddenly his eyes were empty, and he looked at me as if I was air. Then his expression changed again, as if I was another one of those people he didn’t know, and all he said was, I’m cold. Then again, I’m cold. His wife said, come Avram, you’ve had a long day, maybe you should rest, and then she took him by the hand like he was a little boy and pulled him along to their bedroom.
I demand that you hand that chain over to me or I’ll be forced to arrest you, the short policeman said and took his handcuffs off his belt again.
I looked at the young woman with the tiger eyes. She looked back at me. I felt as if she wanted to say something on my behalf. I even thought I saw her lips move. But she didn’t say anything, and in the end, she even stopped looking at me and fixed her eyes on the hole in the ceiling made by the bullet.
This chain is mine, I said and put it into my pocket, it belongs to my family.
The other two policemen also moved closer to the ladder. That chain is stolen property, the short policeman said, and you’ll give it to me now. Later on, if you win the trial, you can go to the confiscated property department. It’s open on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays from nine to one and on Tuesdays till two, he said and smiled like an asshole.
Suddenly, my mouth was full of the words I hadn’t been able to say when the television crew was there, all the sentences that had been stuck in my throat like cement. That’s a sad joke, I said in a strong voice, like Gamal Abd al-Nasser in his good days. What’s happening here is a sad joke, but one day it’ll end, one day the strong will be weak and the weak will be strong, and then none of you will laugh any more, believe me, none of you will laugh.
Maybe some day that’ll happen, the short policeman said and grabbed my arm hard, but meanwhile, mister, you’re under arrest.
They put the handcuffs on me, dragged me out of the house and slapped me when I tried to resist. They pulled the chain out of my pocket and threw me into the police car. They blindfolded me with a handkerchief and slapped me again, harder, for the fun of it, and cursed me in Arabic the whole time — the Jews always curse in Arabic — and took me to the Russian Compound, to an investigator who wanted to know what organisation I belonged to, Fatah or Hamas, or maybe to the Popular Front, and I told him I’m just one man, alone, no organisation. He slapped me — the third slap — and kept at it. Isn’t it too bad for your family? he said, your children? Give me the name of your chief now and I’ll make sure you won’t get more than a year inside, and I said, what chief? What do you want? I didn’t do anything. What are you charging me with? And he said, oh man, we’ve got ourselves a smart-arse here, and without warning, like a football player kicking from where he’s standing, he gave me the fourth slap and yelled, who do you think you are? You have two choices, either you co-operate willingly or you co-operate unwillingly, which will it be? And I said, I didn’t do anything, no one sent me, I don’t know what you want from me. He got up and paced around the room to make me nervous. Then he went out and said to the guards waiting outside, take him to a cell, and the guards came in and blindfolded me again and dragged me through hallways that smelt of detergent. They took off the blindfold and gave me a fifth slap, you stinking Arab, and threw me into a small cell with Arabic writing on the walls and the smell of piss. But I didn’t care, because my heart was filled with happiness that I’d been in my house, that I’d gone back to my home and did what my mother asked. I’d gone into all the rooms and found the chain and made a big stink and they filmed it and it would probably be on television, on the evening news. For the first time, they’d see an Arab talking on television about his home, and the whole world would listen. The whole village would be proud of me.