A grave in Gaza oy-2

by Matt Beynon Rees

  Omar Yussef nodded and stretched his lips into some kind of a smile. He was glad Maki was enjoying his cultured evening discussion.

  The Sri Lankan maid brought a platter of grilled, fatty lamb chops and kebab on metal skewers and charred chicken flecked with red grains of sumac. Maki slid the kebab from the skewers with a folded piece of bread and filled Omar Yussef’s plate. He picked up a roasted onion and pulled it apart with his fingers.

  “The invaders continued to come. Saladin fought the Crusaders here, and then came the Turks.” Maki made circles in the air with the onion pieces, daintily, like a conductor with his baton. “The British fought three battles here before they took Gaza in 1917. Can you imagine? Do you suppose the British people know this, riding the London Underground and shaking their heads with a tut-tut as they read stories about Gaza’s violence in The Daily Telegraph?” Maki waved a segment of onion dismissively. “As they see it, the violence here is all about our immediate conflict with the Jews-we could have peace, if only we were reasonable, like the British. They don’t understand our three thousand years of oppression.”

  “The problem isn’t that the Telegraph readers don’t know our history, Abu Nabil,” Omar Yussef said. “Our own people don’t know it, either. They learn history only in nasty cartoon form or from the mouths of politicians. How many people who claim to fight in the name of Saladin know anything about him, except that he was a hero who fought the Christians? They probably think he was a Palestinian, rather than a Kurd.”

  Maki stared over the top of his wineglass. He made his voice serious and quiet. “As a historian, I should like to sit in on your classes, Abu Ramiz,” Maki said. “But I’m also a politician. I’d like to talk to you now about politics.”

  “I welcome the opportunity to be your student.”

  “The situation with Masharawi is very delicate,” Maki said. He rolled his wine around in his glass and watched the light of the chandelier filter through it. “I must appeal to you as a brother Palestinian that this case should go no further.”

  “That’s not up to me.”

  “I think it is.”

  “Did I arrest him? I didn’t report him to Colonel al-Fara. Oh, and I forgot to bring the keys of his jail cell with me tonight.”

  Maki stared at his wine.

  Omar Yussef reminded himself to stay calm. He needed Maki on his side if he was to secure Masharawi’s release. He made his voice sweet. “Forgive me. Do you have any new information about the investigation into Masharawi, Abu Nabil?”

  “It’s a very serious case, Abu Ramiz. There’s evidence of his involvement in espionage.”

  “How could a teacher possibly help a spy agency?”

  “By disrupting the work of our university and poisoning the minds of our best students against the government and the security forces.”

  “What evidence is there of this?”

  “He has signed a confession.”

  “He signed?”

  Maki lifted his chin and held his palms forward in a gesture of finality. “Confessing everything.”

  “Under torture.”

  “We don’t torture prisoners.”

  “We? I’m not referring to the university, Abu Nabil.”

  “Neither am I. I mean that we Palestinians do not torture prisoners.”

  Omar Yussef waited as the Sri Lankan slid a platter of fruit onto the table. The professor took a paring knife to an orange and cut it into sections.

  “Then he will be put on trial?” Omar Yussef said.

  “If the security forces brought him to trial, it would only allow him to spread his false propaganda once more.”

  “Then what do you intend to do with him?”

  “That depends on whether the UN makes a big deal out of it. If the UN remains quiet, then it’s possible that we might be able to allow Masharawi to go free.”

  “Release a spy?”

  “After a suitable period in jail undergoing some punishment for his crimes.”

  “More torture.”

  “Punishment.” Maki raised his eyebrows and waved a segment of orange at Omar Yussef. “But it would be necessary to persuade the UN to remain quiet. If it becomes a diplomatic issue, it will be difficult for Colonel al-Fara to back down. Masharawi might have to be executed, as a traitor.”

  “Wallender already has been told that Masharawi was tortured. He won’t just let that go.”

  “The Swede is at your mercy, Abu Ramiz. He doesn’t speak Arabic, right? He doesn’t understand the culture or the players. He knows only what you let him know.” Maki smiled like a contented man sinking into a hot bath. “I don’t expect your cooperation just because of my beautiful eyes, Abu Ramiz. I can offer you incentives.”

  Omar Yussef glanced around the room. He thought of the furnishings in his own home. He and Maryam were comfortable, but there was something seductive about a room of such lavish excess. The Sri Lankan brought a coffee and put it before him. She smelled of spices and kitchen sweat.

  Maki grinned and nodded toward the Sri Lankan as she left. “Incentives of whatever taste you may have.”

  “She’s too skinny for me,” Omar Yussef said. Keep a grip, he thought. Don’t let him know that you won’t help him. “I shall do what I can, Abu Nabil. But you have to give me something I can offer the Swede. Some way for him to feel he saved Masharawi. Perhaps if Masharawi were simply suspended from teaching for a semester.”

  “He would have to be suspended from opening his mouth. The fool can’t help but broadcast ugly accusations every time he talks.”

  “If Colonel al-Fara allowed me and Wallender to visit Masharawi, we might be able to persuade him to reach a deal. To keep his mouth shut.”

  “I would prefer to make you happy in some way.”

  “We shall discuss that, of course, but you must give me a little help, so that I can persuade Wallender.”

  “We understand each other?”

  Omar Yussef nodded. He looked at his watch and rose to say goodbye.

  “Shall I call a car for you?” Maki asked.

  “No, thanks. I must walk off some of this excellent food you’ve presented to me tonight. It’s not far to my hotel.”

  When Maki saw Omar Yussef to the door, he held his hand and kissed him. The dust blew in and Omar Yussef stifled a cough. Maki looked at him closely and all the softness of the evening was gone from his face. His eyes were hard in the half-light. He doesn’t believe me, Omar Yussef thought.

  He went down the steps. At the fountain, the plastic doe nuzzled his hand again. He came to the gate. Maki was in the doorway, silhouetted against the gleam of the big chandelier. The professor buzzed the gate and it swung open in the wind, faster than Omar Yussef expected. It caught him painfully on the wrist as he reached for it. Out on the street, the dust storm had picked up.

  Chapter 10

  The darkness stalked Omar Yussef, watchful and predatory. With each indistinct movement he perceived in the blackness, he halted and squinted into the dusty wind until he was sure he was alone. And he was. The streets were as empty as at the loneliest hour of night, though it was not quite eleven.

  At the corner of Maki’s street, he looked along the beach road in the direction of his hotel. The dust cloud shivered in the ocher glow of the streetlights, as though all those who passed this way during the day surrounded Omar Yussef now, raising the dirt into the air with their silent tread. The wind sounded in Omar Yussef’s ears with the same heavy rush as the waves of the Mediterranean, a hundred yards beyond the road. It was humid and his shirt stuck to his back. He wondered if he had been sweating throughout dinner, or only since he began to walk. The tension he had felt with Maki had exhausted him. It seemed to have turned his knees to ice, and he swayed like a child standing for the first time. He had to keep moving.

  Omar Yussef started along to his hotel. He walked on the roadway, rather than the sidewalk, because there was at least some light down the middle of the street. Gaza City was already an hour in b
ed, and lights were out on all but the most important thoroughfares so as to deprive Israeli raiders of geographical reference points-whether they lurked above in a helicopter or sped through town in the car of an undercover squad. A few windows glimmered with fluorescent light, but most were blank and shuttered against the hot wind.

  He reached the first streetlamp and found himself out of breath. He sat on the high curb of the narrow median and coughed into his handkerchief. He knew this dust storm might not break for another day or two; he cursed it and wished desperately for its end. He wanted to breathe and to see clearly. He wanted the atmospheric pressure to lift and the pain in his temples to stop. He wanted to hear silence and calm, not the hot rumbling pant of the khamsin. He spat gritty phlegm onto the road.

  Under the hum of the storm, Omar Yussef heard the sound of engines. Two jeeps came around the corner from Emile Zola Street. Their motors growled so loudly that it seemed as though they might be the source of the moaning wind. Omar Yussef wondered if the center of the storm was about to suck him up and toss him into the skies above Gaza. That would be a turbulent ride, but if it dropped him somewhere outside Gaza, he wouldn’t object.

  The jeeps rolled to a halt in front of Omar Yussef. They were dark green and unmarked and their headlights were off. He made out the shapes of four gunmen inside each one, their assault rifles upright between their legs.

  The front window of the first jeep slid down to reveal a man wearing a stocking cap over his face, with holes cut for his eyes and mouth. Around his brow, he had tied a black strip of cloth with white writing across it: The Saladin Brigades. Below the stocking cap, there was a camouflage jacket. The arm of the camouflage jacket led to a big hand that trained an automatic pistol on Omar Yussef. The schoolteacher stood, stiffly, and took the handkerchief away from his face. He wanted them to see him.

  “Peace be upon you,” he said.

  “And upon you, peace,” the man with the pistol said. “Where are you from, uncle?”

  “Bethlehem.”

  “You’re a long way from home.”

  “I’m visiting Gaza. I was walking back to my hotel. I didn’t think the weather would slow me down so much, but I had to sit down. I can’t catch my breath.”

  “Which hotel?”

  “The Sands. Will you put down the gun, please? It doesn’t help me to breathe any easier.”

  The gunman withdrew the pistol. “Sorry, uncle. There are Israeli undercover units on the streets.”

  “If I’m one of them, then the rest of my squad left me behind because I was slowing them down. Don’t worry, I imagine I’m a lot less deadly than they are.”

  The gunman looked at the man in the seat next to him, who also wore a stocking cap and Saladin Brigades headband, and whispered. He turned back to Omar Yussef. “We would take you to the hotel, uncle, but we’re on a mission.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll walk. I’m getting used to the dust now. I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s only a five minute walk to your hotel, uncle. But you shouldn’t be in a hurry. Take longer than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our mission is close to the hotel. I don’t want you to be caught in the middle of anything. So don’t rush.”

  “Your mission?”

  “Allah grant you grace, uncle.” The jeeps howled into motion.

  Omar Yussef watched them fade into the dust cloud. Their mission was near the Sands Hotel? It must have had something to do with General Husseini. Perhaps he had boosted his guard for the night because he knew these gunmen were coming for him. But why? And what were the Saladin Brigades?

  He waited in the orange glow. There could be a shootout in front of his hotel. He knew he ought to remain at a distance, but he wanted to see what was going to happen. He noticed that he was firm on his feet, his exhaustion erased by adrenaline. He moved along the beach road toward the hotel.

  With each step, he expected to hear gunfire. There were only eight men in the two jeeps; they would be outnumbered by the guard at General Husseini’s house. But they might not be the only gunmen heading for the battle, if indeed it was to be a battle. He laughed to think that, if they hadn’t been on an operation, they might have given him a ride to his hotel. I don’t have change for a tip, he thought.

  He came to the end of the row of hotels along the beach. Perhaps it would be safest to wait where he was. If there was to be a gun battle, he wouldn’t want to be in the open when the two sides started to fire. He looked along the strip of hotels. Each was set back from the road, down its own short drive. Bright neon lights flickered over the driveways, smoldering in ugly pink and green through the dirty air. Where were the gunmen and their jeeps? Perhaps their mission was inside the Sands Hotel. They might be in there already. The Revolutionary Council was at the hotel. The delegates might be the gunmen’s target, rather than General Husseini. He moved forward.

  Omar Yussef was less than two hundred yards from the hotel when at last he made out the set-up through the dirt and wind. The two jeeps were outside the entrance to the drive of the Sands Hotel. One idled in front of the gate and the other sat in the middle of the road. As he approached, he saw the guards outside General Husseini’s house, quiet and still. He moved more quickly. Perhaps he could get past them before anything started, whatever it might be. If he stopped where he was, they’d be suspicious. He didn’t want a gun held on him twice in one night.

  As Omar Yussef closed in on the jeeps, one of the gunmen looked in his direction and seemed to recognize him. Hoping this was the gunman who had spoken to him earlier, Omar Yussef pointed at the entrance to the hotel drive, to remind him where he was heading. The gunman looked undecided, then the sound of an engine cut through the wind and he turned to face it.

  A UN Suburban came to the far end of the hotel strip. Its white bulk showed clearly through the darkness. It seemed somehow naive of the car’s occupants to drive with their headlights on, rather than creeping through these dangerous streets in the dark. The car headed toward the jeeps. Omar Yussef stared. If that was Cree and Wallender, they were driving right into the middle of a gun battle. At the very least, the gunmen would stop them and give them a fright.

  The UN car slowed. It moved in second gear past the furthest jeep. Omar Yussef stepped away from the sidewalk and waved both his arms above his head. He felt sure Cree and Wallender were in the car, returning to the hotel. He had to warn them.

  The first jeep roared, as loud as a low-flying jet. It jerked across the entrance to the Sands Hotel and blocked the road. At that moment, the second jeep pulled across the back of the Suburban, hemming it in. The gunmen jumped from their vehicles and held their Kalashnikovs on the UN car. Omar Yussef glanced at the Military Intelligence chief’s house. The guards were gone.

  He hurried forward, coughing through the dust and waving his arms. The warm wind seemed to rush directly into him, slowing him, suffocating him. He had to get to Wallender and Cree.

  The gunmen pulled the two foreigners from their car, their hands in the air. Omar Yussef couldn’t make out the shouts above the wind. Wallender looked terrified. He was bent backward across the hood of the car with a Kalashnikov jutting into his ribs.

  Cree refused to bend. He seemed taller even than he had when Omar Yussef first saw him. His hands were in the air, but he was talking calmly and without pause, engaging the two gunmen who faced him.

  Omar Yussef reached the first jeep. He put a hand on the driver’s open door to steady himself. He took a breath, ready to shout, but choked on a dusty cough. His face grew hot with frustration. He spewed out a mouthful of bile and rubbed his lips with his handkerchief.

  “Stop it,” he yelled. “What’re you doing?”

  The gunman who had seemed to recognize him turned, but kept his gun on Cree. He shouted at Omar Yussef, so that he could be heard over the excitable yelling of the other gunmen. “Go to your hotel, uncle.”

  “These are my colleagues. They’re innocent. They’re here to help th
e Palestinian people.”

  “Go to your hotel.”

  Omar Yussef advanced on the gunman. He managed a smile in Cree’s direction. “It will be okay, James.”

  “Don’t get yourself hurt, Abu Ramiz,” Cree said. “They won’t do anything silly with us foreigners, but they might get pissed off at you.”

  The gunman put his hand flat against Omar Yussef’s chest. “Uncle, this isn’t your business.”

  “I told you, these are my friends.”

  “Get out of here, uncle.”

  “Is this a kidnapping? Are you taking them somewhere? Then take me.” Omar Yussef tried to hear himself, to measure the calm in his voice. But the words sounded like someone else’s. Someone desperate and shrill.

  Cree was talking, stating his role at the UN, and the gunman was shouting and shoving Omar Yussef in the chest and Omar Yussef was pushing himself forward and a gun that had been trained on Cree was turned on Omar Yussef and he looked at the gun and stepped forward onto the barrel and felt it below his collar bone.

  “They’re from the UN,” he shouted.

  “That’s why we’re taking them, uncle.”

  “Then take me. I’m with the UN.”

  “We need a foreigner.”

  “I’m much more important to the UN than they are. I’m important to the UN’s whole operation in Palestine. Take me.”