MAALI, WHO DID TWELVE HOURS OF VOLUNTEER WORK A WEEK in a neighborhood Red Crescent clinic, checked with the woman behind the reception desk to see when her next stint was scheduled. Still wearing the white ankle-length apron over her long robe, she covered her head with a shawl and, pushing through the heavy door of the building in East Jerusalem, made her way to the back of the lot where her scooter was chained to a fence post. Standing on the starter, she kicked over the motor and pulled out into the traffic choking Nablus Road. She had blackmailed her father into buying her the Italian scooter four years before by threatening to run off with a Syrian, something she never had the slightest intention of doing, but then all was fair when it came to wrangling things out of her father. Since then she had met and married Yussuf and, inspired by her husband’s example, turned deeply religious. She was ashamed of many of her teenage escapades—she had played the role of the spoiled princess to the hilt—but she never regretted the scooter, which allowed her to move freely about the city she loved, studying the Qur’an in a mosque one day, doing volunteer work for the Red Crescent the next, from time to time meeting Yussuf in the homes of trusted friends.
Halfway down Nablus road the traffic slowed to a crawl because of an accident, so Maali turned onto Amer Ibn El-Atz, which was being repaved and was closed to automobiles. Riding on the sidewalk, she could make out the fire-ball reflection of the midday sun in a high window up ahead; for a moment she thought the building was actually on fire. Near the corner where Amer Ibn El-Atz crossed Salah El Din, a BMW motorcycle with two men on it overtook the scooter and, veering sharply, forced it into a narrow driveway. Furious, Maali was about to shout an insult she had picked up from her younger brother, something impugning the driver’s masculinity, when a bear of a man wearing a leather motorcycle helmet and goggles leaped on her. Before she could cry out he pinned her to the ground and, tugging free her shawl, pressed a sweet-smelling handkerchief over her mouth and nose.
Maali came to in the back of a small delivery van filled with burlap sacks of pistachio nuts. In the dirty light filtering through the two small windows in the back doors, she could see the man with the leather helmet and goggles sitting across from her, his legs stretched straight out, his spine against the side of the truck, calmly breaking open nuts and popping them in his mouth. She couldn’t make out whether he was a Palestinian or a Jew. When he offered her a fist full of pistachios she turned her head away. “Your mother is a whore,” she muttered in Arabic, hoping to identify her abductor from his response, but he only laughed under his breath.
Suddenly she remembered the ring Yussuf had taken from the dead Jew named Erasmus Hall. Wriggling into a sitting position, she hid her hands behind her back and tried to work it off, but she couldn’t force it past the joint.
She was still struggling to remove the ring when, twenty minutes later, the delivery van bounced over what felt like railroad tracks, climbed a ramp and reversed up to a loading port. The engine was cut. The man in the motorcycle helmet held out a blindfold and motioned for Maali to put it on and knot it. “I categorically refuse,” she said, raising her chin as she twisted the ring around so that the stone was on the palm side of her hand.
Speaking perfect Arabic, the man said so quietly that she shivered: “If you don’t do it, I will.”
Maali knotted the blindfold. The man reached over and adjusted it, then rapped twice on the side of the van. Maali could hear the back doors being thrown open. Strong hands reached in and pulled her from the van. With someone gripping each elbow, she was led up stone steps and through a door, then up a long flight of metal steps and into a warm room, where she was shoved up against a wall. “Remove the blindfold,” a voice ordered in Arabic.
She tugged the blindfold down around her neck and immediately understood why the room seemed so warm; she was almost blinded by a bank of blazing spot lights trained directly on her. She could hear the soft buzz of whispering coming from shadowy figures in the back of the room. Then a man said, again in Arabic, “Yes, I’m absolutely sure she is the one I saw.”
Two muscular women in blue jeans and turtleneck sweaters started to push Maali toward the door. As she was being led away, someone carelessly turned off the spotlights before she was out of the room. A man cursed in Hebrew and one of the women jerked the blindfold up over her eyes, but it was too late; over her shoulder Maali had caught a glimpse of a stooped Arab hastily pulling his kiffiyeh up to cover his face. She could have sworn the man looked familiar—and then it came to her. Of course! It was Mr. Hajji, who had changed her Egyptian pounds into Israeli shekels at the Damascus Gate after her trip to Cairo.
Maali was hustled down a long corridor. She could hear metal doors clanging shut behind her and the voices of women whispering encouragement in Arabic from cells along the way. She was pushed through a door and instructed to remove the blindfold. Blinking, she found herself in a small, whitewashed room with a stainless steel table against a wall. One of the guards issued instructions in Hebrew, a language Maali understood but refused to speak. The prisoner was to strip to the skin. When Maali didn’t move, the woman arched her penciled brows. “What are you ashamed of?” she asked.
Maali had heard stories of how the Isra’ili police systematically humiliated their prisoners before they questioned them. She was determined to remain calm. “Am I arrested?” she asked, but instead of answering, her jailers once again gestured for her to disrobe.
A fat woman wearing white trousers and the white jacket of a medical worker entered the room. “You must do as they tell you,” she said in Arabic. “If you don’t take off your clothing, they will summon the men and instruct them to do it for you.”
Moving deliberately, Maali removed her garments and folded them one by one on the metal table until she finally stood naked in the middle of the room, with her right hand covering the ring on her left hand and her left hand covering her pubic hair. The woman pulled on a rubber glove and dipped her forefinger into a small jar filled with Vaseline. Then she motioned for the prisoner to bend over and grip her ankles. Tears spilled from Maali’s eyes as the two women jailers folded her over like a sheaf of paper. She sucked in air as the medical worker roughly probed her vagina and then her anus. Straightening, she snatched a formless gray shift flung at her by one of the guards and hastily pulled it over her head. The medical worker came around with a small cardboard box and pointed at the prisoner’s silver earrings. Maali took them off and dropped them into the box. The woman nodded at the gold locket around the girl’s neck and the rings on her hands. Maali’s heart sank as she worked her engagement ring, and then her wedding band, off her fingers and added them to the box. The woman pointed at the gold-colored ring on Maali’s fourth finger. Maali made a half-hearted attempt to remove it, and then shrugged. “It’s too tight,” she said.
“Rules are rules,” the woman said. She spread some Vaseline on the finger and worked the ring back and forth until it came free. She was about to drop it into the box when she noticed writing on the inside. Holding the ring up to the light, she sounded out the word. “E-ras-mus Hall.” She looked at Maali. “This is a strange ring for an Arab woman to be wearing. Where did you get it?”