The English Teacher by Yiftach Reicher Atir Page B

in English. She read slowly, recognized the stamps of the police department and the high court, and knew she had no choice. “Bring your things with you,” he told her. “If we let you go, we’ll send you to a better hotel.” They stood beside her, and while she packed her things they checkedevery item. They seemed to be looking for something in particular. When she said she needed to go to the bathroom, they told her to leave the door open and promised not to peek. As far as she remembers, she wasn’t afraid. She had a number abroad she could contact and leave a message, and also a local one, which was ostensibly of a friend who lived in Israel. They didn’t suggest she call someone and she didn’t ask. As they were about to leave, the police officer surprised her—he took handcuffs from his belt and signaled to her to hold out her hands. She refused and said she had rights, but the young man told her not to cause problems and not to make them use force. When they got into the vehicle they sat her between them, and their thighs pressed against hers. The long minutes of the car ride she spent reviewing her actions since she allegedly arrived in the country, and preparing for the questions she’d be asked. The car stopped outside a dark and menacing gate, and when it opened with a loud creak, the taciturn driver drove on and stopped by another door. Pale floodlights illuminated the police station, adjacent to an old British building, and Rachel couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that this was a genuine arrest, although at any moment she could tell her jailers to phone her course instructor. The two of them helped her out of the car and walked beside her along a dark and desolate corridor. Only the sounds of their footsteps and the wheels of her suitcase, which the policeman was dragging, broke the hostile silence that pervaded the building.
    A fat policewoman handed her a gray blouse and trousers and a pair of shabby plastic flip-flops and told her to change her clothes. Rachel thought perhaps it was worth arguing, and telling the female cop that detainees don’t wear prison clothing, but at once she realized there was no way a Canadian tourist would know what was and what wasn’t correct procedure in Israel. She held the clothes in her fingers as if they were unclean and it seemed her face expressed the outragethat the policewoman expected to see. The woman pointed silently to a dirty curtain. She went with Rachel to the other side of the curtain and turned away while Rachel quickly undressed and put on the clothes she’d been given. The clothes were too big for her and were smelly, and she tried to fight against the feeling of powerlessness that the tattered jail uniform was imposing on her. “How long will I be here?” she asked in a high and indignant voice, and tried to express all the anger of someone sure she is in the right. The policewoman held her silence and the young man who arrested her said it all depended on her. “You know I have a flight tomorrow?” Rachel said to him, and tried to look angry. He shrugged his shoulders and said this wasn’t his concern.
    When she was put into the cell and the heavy door closed behind her, her stress level rose. The bare walls, the hole in the floor that was the toilet, and the stained tap and basin above the concrete slab with a thin mattress on it all induced the dejection they were designed to create. The thought of having to spend the night in this cell, more than one day, perhaps, was extremely unappealing, and the idea of hammering on the door and speaking Hebrew and explaining to the astounded cops that she was just a Mossad trainee suddenly seemed reasonable to her. All the same, she knew that if she broke and blew her cover, she could say goodbye to the career that awaited her.
    Rachel folded the blanket that was spread over the mattress, made it into a kind of pillow, lay on the bed, and