Martyrs’ Crossing by Amy Wilentz Page B

see Hassan at al-Moscobiyyeh, the lockup in downtown Jerusalem, when he realized that she didn’t need documents, special plates, VIP papers, or an okay from the Chairman now. She could just take a taxi to the checkpoint, walk across, and take another taxi into town. No one at the checkpoint minded now who her husband was, not after what had happened. The closure was still on, but the Israelis would not stop her again.
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    I N THE CORNER of the cemetery, a shadow flickered between two of the grand old Arab cenotaphs. Doron was trying to hide himself, here in alien territory. Just a few days ago, he had been a good soldier, in a smart uniform. Today, he was the unnamed baby-killer, dressed in civilian clothes. He huddled in a corner and tightened his blue-jean jacket. This was the kind of place he had never been to, a place where he would never go: in Arab Jerusalem, among the enemy. But Doron couldn’t help himself, he had to be there, it was an obligation. He still couldn’t believe what had happened; he had never seen a dead child before, not in all his days on the checkpoints, not in Lebanon, even.
    Doron did not know what to do with himself. He fidgeted, smoked a cigarette. He hoped he could not be seen over here, kicking at a stone, stepping over sage and sorrel plants, half hidden behind a big gray mausoleum and a dusty, swaying willow. He did not think any Israeli would survive being discovered in this place right now. He could just make out the individual mourners—the boy’s grandfather was there, he saw, a dark young man at his side. Doron watched the procession coming down that hill toward him. He remembered the back of the mother’s bent head as she sobbed over her boy. Her whole life came to an end right there in front of him, and he could do nothing for her. “Please help me,” she’d said toward the very end. He’d had an impulse to console her, to offer kind platitudes, the way he was used to doing with the bereaved. Instead, he had to stand there like a soldier, and take it. When he finally touched her arm, after, she recoiled. He remembered that. Well, she was right.
    Tomorrow he was to appear before a military investigator. Headquarters would stand by him, of course. He would tell them about the man he finally reached somewhere, working late in some office in the high tower of the Defense Department in Tel Aviv, who had ordered him not to allow the Hajimi family to cross. Maybe he could even show them the secure number. He might have it somewhere, stuffed into a pocket.
    His mother had tried to console him, as if that were possible. He could hear the worry in her voice over the phone.
    â€œLook,” she’d said to him. “The army will stand by you if you stand by them. They believe that protecting your name is the same as protecting theirs.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œYou did your best,” she said. “Poor little child.”
    How had the boy ended up dead? Doron didn’t understand it. Someone on the phone in a distant city by the sea had told him not to let them in, but he didn’t even get the man’s name. And in any case, you didn’t always have to follow orders. Well, he hadn’t really. The ambulance had come, he had contacted headquarters, they had refused her request, he had been about to let them in anyway, over Zvili’s indignant protest, and it was fate alone that had brought help there only after the boy was beyond saving. He told himself all this. But he knew he should have let them through the minute they appeared at the trailer door.
    He still wasn’t hungry. He had barely eaten since he left the checkpoint. When he focused on the graveyard crowd again, he thought he might be hallucinating, there were so many people flowing down to the graveyard, covering the hillside, too many for a funeral by far. Too many. With flags and banners. Flags and banners, so unkind, so festive