Selected Detective
HANI-JAMAL INTERROGATION

It was already dark when Khalifa finally came out of the internet cafe. His eyes are blurred, his lips thick and his mouth bitter because of the plethora of cigarette smoke. He walked through the market of bright lights, music blaring, people crowding and headed to the Corniche El-Nil, stopping by the side of the road to buy a can of Sprite before descending down a secondhand stone rung to a pier along the Nile, black water touched and soaked his feet.

Surprisingly, after he saw and read everything, all the pictures and statistics, testimonies and descriptions, the only thing he could remember was his family. Zenab, Batah, Ali, and Joseph are the four cardinal points in his world, his light, his life.

How would I feel if it were all them, he asked in his heart: Zenab stood in a state of bones and hollow eyes, staring at the camera like a mad demon; Batah and Ali are piled up in a hole with thousands of other, nameless, unidentified corpses like rotten wood? How are they going to do to me? How can I live with such torture? He had lost a loved one before, of course it was his father, his mother, his brother Ali, and in memory of him he gave the name Ali to his son. However, losing someone to heartless and hateful butchery; seeing them tormented and hurt, collapsed and slaughtered has never been the case. Even imagining experiencing it, he could not. It was frightening, too painful, like the sound of fingernails swiping on a black board.

He sighed and finished his Sprite. His mind is drawn back to all the good times they experienced together, the happy family moments.the day they sailed the river in a Felucca to celebrate Batah's thirteenth birthday, the, stopping for a picnic on a small abandoned island before sailing back to Luxor as the sun sank, Batah stood on the bow with his black hair draped behind him in the wind. When they visited the Onta Bil’esh Market in Cairo, before Joseph's baby was born, when Batah cried because all the camels looked so sad, and Ali tagged one of the animals received by the auctioneer, which was the only animal that was not there, and cause debate as well as chaos. His birthday was just past, the age of thirty-nine, when his wife and children had arranged a surprise party for him, dressed in ancient Egyptian, greet him and cheer as soon as he comes through the front door.

He laughed loudly remembering the memory of little Joseph chattering in his tissue-paper-like clothes; Zenab as Queen Nefertiti's voice echoed through the masts of Felucca who whipped the pier before he suddenly choked, his eyes bristled as if he had opened them underwater.These people were so precious, he said inwardly, but I only spent a very little time on them, providing for their needs inappropriately with police salaries that have not increased since the last five years and which are less than what Husni earned in one month. And if they were suddenly taken from him how could I have mastered that situation? With the thought that there were so many other things I could have done for them, more of me I should have been able to give.

I'll try harder, he whispered to himself, spending more time at home, not working harder.

However, only when this matter passed did another voice come along. only when I knew the truth about Piet Jansen and Hannah Schlegel. Only when I have all the answers.

He threw a glance across the river. Water slid into his feet, the green light on the tower of the adjoining pair of mosques staring at him in the darkness like a snake's eye.

Then, squeezing his empty can into a ball and poking it into the river, he turned around and walked uphill towards the Corniche.

________

HANI AL-HAJJAR HANI-JAMAL had been transferred earlier in the day to a detention cell in Zion, the largest Jerusalem Regional Police post, and it was there that Ben-Roi would interview him, by calling ahead of time to obtain the necessary authorization.

In a sturdy and scary building complex at the end of what was once the Russian Complex inside the city, the station has a very dirty barrier window, the eczema-like scars of the vines that have hardened on the face and walls are covered in tangled sharp wire pipes.

Like the usual criminals, the building has long served as a major interrogation center for suspected Palestinian militants, and earned an unhealthy reputation for brutal and arbitrary treatment of its captives. Al-Moscobiyyeh, the name given by Palestinians to the place, follows the Arabic word for Moscow, mentioning it with a mixture of fear and foretelling.

Ben-Roi has always had a bad feeling about the place in recent years he turned down the promotion because it means he will be moved there and once he enters now through the door at the back of the Police post, he will be transferred to the site, through a group of confused looking Arab women searching for news of their loved ones being held inside, she felt her stomach harden, like a frightened animal curling itself up into a ball that protected her.

He introduced himself to a Sergeant on duty, signed a number of forms and was ushered through a winding, dirty and rough-looking corridor and descended to the basement floor, when he was welcome to enter a small interview room with a table, two chairs and, incompatiblely, a bright purple tulip poster was affixed to the wall. Sounds mixed with buzz out of nowhere in the post, sneaking into the room ringing the phone, someone screaming, yelling, the almost inaudible sound that could have been laughter or a faint groan left him with the uncomfortable feeling that he was listening was not external noise but rather a ghostly echo from everyone the one who once had misfortune found himself in this particular room. He waited until the sergeant left, then sat down, took out his bottle and enjoyed a long, satisfying gulp.

Five minutes passed, then the door opened again and another policeman came, bringing the man that Ben-Roi had detained a few nights ago. For some reason he only wore T-shirts and boxer shorts of large size, without trousers. The policeman escorted him to the table and sat him down, handcuffing his left wrist to one of the legs of the chair, an unusual position that made this prisoner bend forward and to the left.

“Call me if you're done,” he said. “I will be in the corridor, the third room on the right.”

He walks out and throws the door behind him, leaving Ben-Roi and the Palestinian himself.

As well as the black eyes he received on the night of his arrest, this man now adorns his upper left cheek with an ugly bruise. It does not shave, and gives off a sour, sweaty odor and a slight odor of dirt that slowly creeps in the room. He looked up at Ben-Roi, then downstairs, shifted forward and backward in his chair, completely uncomfortable in the position forced by the handcuffs in his hands. Ben-Roi pulls the gum from his pocket and slips it in his mouth.

“What's with your trousers?” The Palestinian shrugged his shoulders, saying nothing.

“Someone stole it?” The Palestinian did not answer. Ben-Roi repeated his question.

“No one stole it,” said the man, his red eyes looking forward and then down again.

“I'm sick,” he murmured after a brief pause, his face flushed red. “I want to poop. I told the guard but he didn't let me out, so I defecated in the pants.other people in the cell, they gave this to me, but no one had new trousers. okayies? Happy?” He looked up again, eyes full of hostility and hatred. Ben-Roi looked back at him, noticing his purple cheeks, shorts and handcuffed wrists, the sound of his gum crackling echoed around the room like the sound of feet walking inside a mud swamp. Thirty seconds passed, then, with******* irritated he got up and, while warning the man that if he tried something funny he would make his other eyes black, worse, then leave the room. He returned a short while later with a bunch of keys and, bending over, removed the handcuffs. The Palestinian straightened his body, rubbing his wrists. Ben-Roi sits back down and opens the burning file of the house he accidentally brought.

“I have some questions,” he said, looking at his notes. “Same rules as before: you act in front of me, I will hurt you. Clear?” The Palestinian is still massaging his wrists.

Ben-Roi raised his face. “Clear?”

The Palestinians nodded. “Good. On March 10, 1990 you and two others went to the Jewish Territory and burned down the apartment there.remember?”

Hani-Jamal muttered his Affirmation. Ben-Roi thrusts his body forward.

“Why?”

IN THE END, Ben-Roi doesn't get much out of it. The Palestinian is nervous and evasive, convinced that Ben-Roi is trying to trap him into a guilty plea.

This was not really the case, but the fact that he did not seem to know too much. His brother, Majdi, one of the two boys who had actually been charged with arson attacks, had tied him to the grand undertaking, promise him twenty dollars if he participates and acts as a man watching the surroundings.

He himself did not climb into the flat, just waiting in the alley below, while the others climbed upstairs and lit a fire on the old woman's property.why they did that and what, he said, if anything, what they did to that woman, she doesn't know. Ben-Roi forces, persuades and digs deeper, but to no avail and eventually realizes he will get nothing more from the man. He immediately finished his interrogation.

“Majdi's...” he opened the file page in front of him. “He is alive and living in Al-Amari camp? Number two, Al-Din Road?”

The Palestinian looked at his feet, silent. “Come, don't convolve.”

The man said raucous. “I don't have any informants.”

“I didn't ask you to tell, idiot. I have the address right here in front of me. I just need you to confirm it.” The Palestinian looked up, eyes filled with mistrust and uncertainty, then gave a weak nod. Ben-Roi crossed the note for himself, closed the file, and stood up, went towards the door and shouted in the corridor that he had finished.

When he returned to the room again the Palestinian had been circling in his chair and was staring at him.

“Why did you open it?” The man pointed at the opened handcuffs lying on the table. Ben-Roi doesn't answer, just heads to the table and picks up the file.

“Why are you doing this?” Hani-Jamal. Outside, the sound of footsteps approaching echoed in the corridor.

“You feel sorry for me?”

“No, I don't feel sorry for you,” grumbled Ben-Roi, upset by that question.

“Then, why did you do it?” Ben-Roi stared at him, the file in his grasp, his fingers scraping through the thick paper.Why did he take off the handcuffs? He really can't explain. There was a voice inside her head that woman's voice, and her voice as well, the old Arieh, that was forgotten. Arieh in his mind who has been lost forever.

“Because if you want to defecate again, I don't want you to do it in front of me,” he replied accordingly. “I didn't come all the way here just to sit smelling your Arab shit.”

He headed for the door and, giving a small nod towards the police who had just arrived, then went down the corridor. The Palestinian question bothered him more than the fact that his interview was a waste of time.