Later that morning, a tall, lanky policeman came to our door. I immediately recognized him as Detective Stern, the officer who’d taken my statement at the department the day before.
“Good afternoon Professor Hill … Miss Hill,” he said with a couple of cordial nods of his head. “I have some news about your case. May I come in?”
I could tell from the low tone of his voice and the deep furrow between his brows that, whatever the news was, it wasn’t going to be good. A jumble of knots began to form in my stomach as Dad stepped aside to let him in. Once we were all inside the apartment, Detective Stern pulled out his notepad, cleared his throat, and promptly proved me right.
“Ahem. So the officers we dispatched to the Hadad residence arrived approximately fifteen minutes after you reported leaving. Although blood was found on the floor, the perpetrators had apparently fled the scene.”
“Excuse me,” Dad interjected. “What do you mean they ‘fled’? Both of those men were badly injured.”
“I mean that the apartment was empty,” the detective replied, looking up from his notepad.
The knots in my middle began to tighten. “S-so, where did they go?” I asked.
He frowned, and the furrow in his forehead grew even deeper. “Well, that’s exactly what we’re trying to find out, Miss Hill. After an intensive search of the building, the market, and most of the surrounding neighbourhoods, our officers turned up no trace of them. Wherever they went, it appears that they were able to cover their tracks quite well. In fact, considering the nature of the injuries that you reported they sustained, we suspect that these guys must have had some help.”
He paused for a moment to let this information sink in, then turned towards me and said, in a voice that oozed suspicion, “Miss Hill, we were hoping that perhaps you could shed some light on the matter. You mentioned yesterday that one of the perpetrators,” here, he glanced down and began flipping through his notepad, “a minor named Nasir Hadad, is your boyfriend?”
Oh my God! What was this guy implying? I could feel my face begin to burn with an angry heat. Suddenly on the defensive, I spit out a reply.
“Yes, he is my boyfriend — or, he was …,” I paused briefly. “But he definitely wasn’t a perpetrator — he was a victim, just like me. And no, I don’t know where he went. You’re the detective … did you check the hospitals?” My voice cracked on the last word as I remembered the horrible image of Nasir lying unconscious on that floor. I felt like crying again. But Detective Stern didn’t look like he cared much.
“Yes, of course we did,” he said curtly. Then he let out a loud, frustrated sigh and slapped his notebook closed. “Look, you’re probably a nice kid who just got mixed up with the wrong guy. So I’m going to cut you a break here and give you a second chance.”
I glanced over at Dad to see if he knew what this guy was talking about. But he looked just as confused as me.
“A second chance?” I asked. “At what?”
With his hands on his hips, the detective leaned down and peered directly into my eyes. I swear, it felt like he could see right through my pupils and straight into my head. He spoke slowly, enunciating every word so there would be no misunderstanding.
“Look, you’re a foreigner here and obviously you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself involved with. But if you’re protecting this boy, I promise you’ll be in serious trouble — the kind of trouble your consulate won’t be able to help you out of. So what I’m asking is simple: would you like to make any changes to the official statement you gave me yesterday?”
A bubble of silence filled the room while he waited for my reply. But I couldn’t speak. Instead, I just stared at him in shock. Holy crap, is he accusing me of hiding Nasir? I didn’t know where to find the words to answer him.
Thank God Dad stepped up and spoke for me.
“We appreciate your offer, Detective Stern, but Mackenzie will not be accepting it. Thank you for coming out today.”
I could hear the controlled anger in Dad’s voice clipping away at his words. Detective Stern must have heard it, too. He stood back up to his full height, smoothed down his shirt, and spun around to leave.
“Thank you for your time, Professor Hill,” he said on his way out the door. “You’ll be hearing from us soon.”
My whole body sagged with relief to see him go. After that, I made a promise to myself: I was going to find Nasir on my own. Maybe it was stupid, but I really thought I could do a better job than that smarmy detective.
I spent the rest of the day calling around to all the Jerusalem area hospitals looking for Nasir. But Stern had been right on that point: none of them had a patient by his name registered in their care.
And so, after school, I walked over to the little hole-in-the-wall corner store. It was the first time I’d been back since a couple of days ago when Nasir had invited me to his apartment. God, that felt like a lifetime ago!
I walked in the door half-expecting to see his beautiful, smiling face waiting for me behind the cash register. But for the first time ever he wasn’t there. Instead, I was astonished to find an overweight, balding man standing in his place. I wondered if this was Mr. Khoreibi, the man Nasir told me had hired him.
“Good morning,” the man beamed, clearly pleased to have a customer. But when I asked about Nasir, his big smile disappeared.
“That lazy goat?” he sneered. “He hasn’t shown up for work in two days! When you see him, tell him to get his skinny butt back here!”
I left the store in a hurry, trying to figure out where to look next. All I could think about was finding Nasir.
You know, I’d never really considered the term heartbroken before. But after losing both my boyfriend and my mother, I knew it was a totally inadequate way to describe the feeling of overwhelming pain ripping away at my insides. Heartbroken: it was just too neat. A round, red heart severed neatly down the middle by a clean, jagged line. Heartsmashed … heartdemolished … heartsquashedtoapulp … any of those would have been better ways to describe the feeling. Except this time around, the hardest part had to be grappling with the unanswered question: was Nasir alive or dead? At least when I lost Mom, I had that information. Not knowing was pure torture. I kept wondering if I’d ever see him again.
I decided to head back to the souk. Of course, I couldn’t tell Dad where I was going — he’d never have allowed it. But I knew I had no choice if I wanted to find Nasir. The Hadad family had lived there, after all — there had to be somebody there who knew where they’d gone.
Pushing my fears aside, I went back to the Ha-dads’ apartment, only to find the doorway blocked with police tape. I tried speaking to the landlord of the building, but his English was too shaky to tell me anything. In desperation, I went to a camera shop and had an enlargement printed of my secret, wallet-sized photo of Nasir. I spent the rest of that day and every day after school for the next two weeks wandering up and down the souk with the picture in my hands and a question on my lips: Have you seen this boy? But in reply, all I got were blank stares and silent, shaking heads. If anybody had seen him, they weren’t saying.
After three weeks of searching I gave up. It was as if Nasir and his whole family had disappeared off the face of the earth. I forced myself to face the awful truth: the time had come to start mourning my first love.