Murder Under the Bridge by Kate Raphael

Author:Kate Raphael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2016-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

“Jenin, Jenin,” chorused the drivers at Anabta Gate, just outside Tulkarem. Good, Rania thought. She would not have to wait for a car. She climbed into a service taxi along with two other women and two little girls. Both women were laden with packages, so after they had filled the trunk, there were still plastic bags covering every inch of the interior. The crowning grace was the live chickens one woman held on her lap. It was going to be a noisy, smelly trip.

Twenty minutes later, they were still sitting in the parking lot. A service held seven, and they were five. At this rate, they might need to wait for the next bus from Ramallah to deliver two more passengers. Rania looked anxiously at her watch. She had not been to work since Wednesday, when Captain Mustafa had taken her off the Nadya case. This morning she had called the station and told the young woman who answered the phone that zuruf, circumstances, detained her. She hoped she would be in the office by noon. The woman with the chickens took out a large round of taboun bread and tore off a piece for her little daughter. She held out the folded slab to Rania, who politely declined. If the woman really wanted to share with her, she would tear off a piece herself and thrust it into Rania’s hand. She didn’t. That was fine, Rania wasn’t hungry. She just wanted to get to Jenin.

Their driver was sitting with several other drivers on upturned milk crates under one of the shade trees. One of them had made coffee on a small camp stove.

“Haj,” she called, and the driver of the car she sat in turned around. “Let’s go,” she said. “I will pay the extra fares.”

He threw back the remains of his coffee, said goodbye to his buddies and climbed into the cab. It was a lot of money, forty-five shekels in all, and she could not afford it, but she couldn’t afford to sit here all morning either. The car jounced along the rough roads, making good time. The windows were wide open to the warm air, pungent with the smell of the garlic that grew in the fields along the road. Rania realized she had nodded off when the car made a sudden stop. She sat up straight and looked around, hoping to see the shops and traffic of central Jenin. But no, they were still on the empty road.

“What is it?” she asked the woman with the chickens.

“Roadblock.”

Now Rania saw the soldiers, their olive garb blending in with the surrounding foliage. There were five of them. She didn’t see a vehicle. She didn’t envy them, dropped here in the middle of nowhere, outside the city with the most organized resistance forces in Palestine. Three of them were guarding the road, and two searching a car in the middle of the road. There was one more car between theirs and the one being searched.

Rania fidgeted, craning her neck to see over the driver’s head.

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