Exile: a novel (72 page)

On Sunday, he met with Nisreen Awad, to rehearse her testimony as a character witness for Hana. Though she greeted him warmly, David remained detached and business like, going through the questions and answers with little affect or digression. The question that consumed him was the one he could not ask.

Monday morning found him restless. Arriving in court, he passed through the media gauntlet without pausing, except to murmur, “It’s going well.” He sat at the defense table in a cocoon of his own thoughts, staring at Judge Taylor’s empty bench as the cacophony of spectators grew louder. He ignored Sharpe entirely. When Hana entered and sat beside him, asking how he was, he looked at her in silence, his gaze unblinking and intense.

Her eyes widened slightly. “Is something wrong, David?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said, and turned away.

As a witness, Nisreen Awad was precise and firm, far less emotive than the woman he had dined with in Ramallah. She had known Hana for a decade, Nisreen told the jury, as a colleague in talks with Israel, and as her closest friend. She had seen Hana under stress, in the quiet of her home, and, most
important, as a mother. “Above everything,” she told the jury, “Munira is Hana’s reason for being.”

“Given all you know about Hana Arif,” David asked her, “do you believe that Hana is capable of participating in the assassination of Amos Ben-Aron?”

For a long moment, Nisreen gazed toward Hana. “Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “So many reasons make such a thing impossible.”

“Such as?”

Nisreen spread her hands. “Where to start? For one thing, Hana has come to believe—and has told me many times—that yet more violence is not only pointless but an invitation for Israeli soldiers to stay in the West Bank. Look at what’s happened there since this man was murdered—more deaths, more reprisals, more repression. It’s utterly predictable, and the last thing Hana wanted.

“She’s deeply angry with Israeli policy—that’s why she resigned from our negotiating team. But this crime has sent us backward.” Nisreen softened her voice. “Once again, we hear the sound of bombs and gunships. These are the sounds that gave Munira the nightmares she still suffers. I remember Hana saying, ‘If I could erase her memories of explosions and death, no price would be too great.’ More than anything she wishes for her daughter to be healthy in her mind and soul. Everyone else comes second.”

For an instant, David had the bitter, intrusive thought that Nisreen Awad might not know just how true this was. “In your observation of Hana’s marriage,” David asked, “did you learn things that further persuaded you that she’s incapable of risking imprisonment or death?”

Listening, Sharpe gave David a look of suspicion and surprise; on the witness stand, Nisreen Awad glanced uncomfortably at Saeb. “As to Munira,” she said at last, “there was great disagreement between Hana and her husband. Saeb wished to make Munira an Islamic woman in the most traditional sense—making her cover, not allowing her to go anywhere she might meet boys, arranging her marriage, and even limiting her education. Hana has a visceral aversion to such things: she fiercely wanted for Munira to have the freedom and opportunity to become an independent woman.

“This led to bitter fights. I overheard the end of one—Saeb telling Hana that a cat would make a better mother than a woman who was American in everything but name.” Nisreen paused, clearly still troubled by the memory. “Soon after, Hana discovered a lump in her breast and thought she might have cancer. The lump turned out to be benign, but I can still remember the fear in Hana’s eyes. ‘I cannot die,’ she told me. ‘I cannot let this man ruin everything Munira is.’ ”

In the jury box, David saw Ardelle Washington, a divorced mother of three, wince involuntarily. The courtroom felt even more still than usual; Taylor barely seemed to move, as though transfixed by what she was hearing. David had to will himself not to steal a look at Saeb. Softly, Nisreen continued, “Hana could not choose whether to die of cancer. But she could choose not to risk dying for an act of murder, which—in any event—is wholly contrary to her character. The prosecutor could show me far better evidence than this, and I would tell her that for Hana to be guilty is impossible in the deepest fiber of her being. A guilty verdict would separate her from Munira forever. Only her worst enemy could imagine a punishment this cruel.”

David was quiet, letting Nisreen’s last statement echo in the courtroom. “Thank you, Ms. Awad. I have no further questions.”

When he returned to the defense table, looking directly at Hana’s husband, Saeb’s eyes glinted with hatred and humiliation. Hana stared at the table.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have done that,” she murmured listlessly.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have married him,” David snapped under his breath. “But maybe that’s your sole defense.”

Hana looked away.

Sharpe cross-examined Nisreen as David would have, her tone dispassionate and ever so slightly belittling. Yes, Nisreen would do anything to save her friend—anything, Nisreen added, but lie. And no, Nisreen conceded, she could not explain the evidence. She admitted that there were no witnesses to the private conversations she had related, and was forced to acknowledge hearing Hana’s angry denunciations of Amos Ben-Aron as a pious hypocrite, talking peace while stealing land and water. By the time Nisreen left the stand, Sharpe had blunted her impact, and David was moving closer to a conclusion filled with risk: that Sharpe was forcing him to call Hana as a witness on her own behalf.

David did not say this to Hana. At noon, he hurried to his office, noting as he left that Hana could no longer look at her husband.

Steve Levy had called. Sitting in his chair, David took a deep breath and then returned the call.

Levy was at lunch. For thirty minutes, David paced his office, pausing to take distracted bites of a pastrami sandwich he could not finish. When Angel knocked on his door, David shooed him away, insisting that he needed time to think.

Minutes before he had to leave, his telephone rang.

It was Levy. “I’ve run the test,” he said.

David sat down heavily. “And?”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove. But the results are clear enough. You already know that B is a genetic match with C, while A is a match with neither.” Levy paused, as though gazing at his notes. “The hair sample you sent me—which I’ll call sample D—matches neither A nor B. The genetic match is between that person and sample C.”

It was seconds before David could ask, “And so?”

“My conclusion, David, is that B and D are genetically reflected in the person represented by sample C. That’s really all it could be.”

David managed to thank Steve Levy and get off the phone, overcome by how profoundly the meaning of his life had changed. And, if he and Hana could bear it, the trial itself.

David Wolfe was Munira Khalid’s father.

Twenty minutes later, Sharpe and David were sequestered in Judge Taylor’s chambers, the judge appraising the lawyers from behind her desk. “The jury’s waiting for us,” she said to David. “You requested this conference.”

David felt the tingle of his nerve ends. “I need a recess,” he said baldly. “Over the noon hour, I learned about a new piece of evidence, potentially transformative of my client’s defense. It also may affect my status as her lawyer.”

Taylor’s eyebrows shot up. David watched her mentally catalog the possibilities, including that David had just discovered that Hana Arif had lied to him about her innocence. “Can you favor us with a more elaborate explanation?”

“I can’t, Your Honor. Not before I discuss it with my client.”

Though wary, Sharpe regarded him with the trace of a smile: she plainly suspected, as David would have in her place, that whatever had shaken him so badly could only serve her case. “Ms. Sharpe?” Taylor asked.

The prosecutor shrugged. “On behalf of the United States, I don’t want
any
delay. But I suppose we can spare one afternoon.”

“That’s all I’m giving you,” the judge told David. “So meet with your client straightaway.”

When David entered the courtroom, the jury was assembled and Hana waited at the defense table. He walked past Saeb without acknowledging his presence.

Hana looked up at him anxiously. “What’s happening?”

For all David thought he knew about her, he felt as though he were seeing a different person. Slowly sitting down beside her, he answered, “I’ve asked the judge for a recess. Her clerk is looking for a witness room, so we can talk.”

Worry stole through her eyes. “Concerning what?”

David inhaled. “Thirteen years of deception. Yours, to be precise.”

“Our daughter.”

Hana was still, her eyes widening slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Do not do this.”
David spoke the words slowly and emphatically. “One more lie, one more evasion, and I’ll petition Taylor for leave to withdraw as your counsel. When I tell her why, she’ll have no choice but to grant it.”

Hana’s throat pulsed. “How can you know that you’re her father?”

“The same way as Saeb. He had three hair samples tested for DNA— his, yours, and Munira’s. I just added mine to the mix.”

“Please, I don’t understand.”

“Oh, I think you do. You’ve fooled us both, beginning at Harvard. But Saeb’s not quite as dense as I am. Though to be fair, he’s had thirteen years to live with you, and a daughter who became a walking clue.” David’s voice was level, relentless. “What would motivate you, I always wondered, to become part of this assassination? But now it all makes sense.

“In Israel, Zev Ernheit told me the story of a married woman who became a suicide bomber. She was pregnant with her lover’s child. Her brother-in-law gave her a choice: take some Jews with you or become the victim of an honor killing—”

“I didn’t know.”

David ignored this. “Saeb must have given you a choice,” he continued.
“Let him use you as a cutout, or he’d unmask you as the whore whose daughter was fathered by a Jew. So you became his operational protection, insulating him from discovery by communicating with Hassan—”

“Then why would I hire Munira’s father as my lawyer?” Hana’s voice shook, and tears surfaced in her eyes. “Yes, I wondered. And when Munira grew older, and taller, I was afraid. But that is all.”

“Really?” David paused, then quoted her own words back to her, across the years. “ ‘We’re a shame culture, not a guilt culture.’ ”

Hana stared at him. “Do you really know me so little?”

David gave her a cold smile. “I don’t know you at all.”

“Saeb never told me, David. I swear it.”

David felt no pity. “That’s quite a marriage,” he said. “I hope you don’t feel too misled.”

Hana flinched. “I know you’re hurt—”

“‘Hurt’?” David echoed. “Another woman might find a less trivial word.”

“
Stop
it.” Her voice was tight, desperate. “You’re so caught up in my betrayal that you can’t recognize the truth when it’s staring back at you.”

“ ‘The truth’? What is it today?”

“That I had no motive. And that Saeb’s motive is Munira. Tell me how long he has known this.”

Whatever David suspected, the tremor in her voice had the undertone of discovery, terrible in its consequences. “Almost a year now!”

Briefly, Hana closed her eyes, as though struggling to extract sense from memory. “Saeb must have suspected for years before that,” she said slowly. “The more he doubted, the more he turned his own torment—his images of you and me as lovers—into making Munira everything I was not.” Hana massaged her temples. “And when Saeb became certain whose daughter she was, he brooded over a way of punishing me more terrible than a bullet in the head. A Muslim honor killing dressed up as an American murder trial.

“An enlightened Arab would divorce me. A traditional man would murder me. Saeb selected a more useful death.” Hana gazed at David imploringly. “I’m innocent, David. How many more polygraphs do you wish me to take?”

David was buffeted by emotions too complex to unravel. “Then in your version of the truth, Saeb becomes the handler.”

“Yes. He could have taken the paper, and gotten the cell phone from my purse.” Hana’s voice filled with anguish. “What did he mean to do to her, once all this was over? What
will
he do—”

“Don’t use her on me,” David snapped. “All I want from you is the truth.”

“You can choose what truth to believe: Saeb blackmailed me, or he framed me. But either way, Munira is your daughter. Please, she’s not to blame for any of this.”

This caused David to sit back, silent. He had a daughter, a young Arab girl who, for much of her life, had been punished in her parents’ place. And now that fact—and that girl—were the hidden key to her mother’s trial, transforming the inexplicable into a pattern that made its own chilling sense. “What’s between the two of us,” David said at last, “has to wait. The one decision that can’t wait is the role Munira will play in your defense.”

Hana’s face contorted. “I can’t expose her, David. Not in open court.”

“I don’t want you to. I’ll save that revelation for later.”

“And tell Munira and the world that Saeb is not her father? Can’t you see what that would do to her?”

“It might well be devastating.” David answered. “So would you rather be found guilty? Do you think Munira would prefer having a dead mother to having a father who’s a Jew?”

David watched the full implication of his question overcome Hana’s last reserves. She covered her face, shoulders trembling with sobs he could not hear.

“Who gets to survive, Hana? You or Saeb? You can ‘protect’ Munira only by protecting the husband you say is trying to kill you. Or you can try to save yourself and our daughter by letting me nail your husband to the wall.