A grave in Gaza oy-2

by Matt Beynon Rees

  “I don’t like cellphones,” Omar Yussef said. “They make you sick.” He tapped the unbruised side of his head and tried to push the phone back into Khamis Zeydan’s hand.

  “It can’t give you brain cancer unless you actually have some brains,” Khamis Zeydan said. “By Allah, it’s just for keeping in touch while things are dangerous. Put it in your pocket and forget about it.”

  “What if I get a call for Sami?”

  “Tell them he couldn’t afford a prettier secretary and have them call him on his other phone.”

  “His other phone? Is that the number I wrote down earlier?” Omar Yussef remembered the digits scribbled across the back of the Saladin Brigades leaflet in his breast pocket.

  “No, that’s the number of the phone you’re holding,” Sami said. “My other number is written on the label stuck to the back of that phone, Abu Ramiz.”

  Omar Yussef waved as the Jeep reversed out of the lane. He felt exhausted. It was all he could do to lift his arm. He let it flop to his side and watched the taillights turn out of sight.

  The alley was dark. A blue fluorescence glimmered from the house beyond the olive grove. Naji’s doves were silent. The spray-painted Dome of the Rock was indistinct on the whitewashed wall. Omar Yussef rested his forehead against the rough cinderblock. He closed his eyes and saw the burned corpse of James Cree, Odwan’s tortured body, the dusty old skeleton in the morgue. He thought of Magnus’s voice, his inquisitive Scandinavian accent, his laughter. Omar Yussef’s breath was heavy. He heard someone whimper and he realized it was him. He reached a finger behind the bent frames of his glasses and wiped away a tear.

  At the door of the Masharawi home, Naji greeted him with a shy smile. Salwa came from the salon at the back of the house. She looked expectantly at Omar Yussef. Then as he shambled into the light her face fell.

  “Don’t worry, my daughter,” he said. “I’m not here with bad news about your husband.”

  “Abu Ramiz, you look…”

  “Like a donkey’s backside after too much whipping?”

  Naji giggled and Salwa covered her mouth with her hand, smiling. “Welcome, Abu Ramiz. Come and sit with us.” She led him to the salon and Naji went to the kitchen to make coffee.

  Umm Rateb rose from an armchair as Omar Yussef entered the room. She pointed a remote control at the television to mute the volume. “Abu Ramiz, I’m happy to see you. Please sit down.” She gestured to the armchair. “Salwa and I were watching the news to see if there’s any report of Abu Naji.”

  Omar Yussef sat and the two women went to the couch. Sami’s cellphone dug into his hip. He adjusted his posture so that his weight wasn’t on it. I hate these stupid things, he thought. I’ll probably get bowel cancer from sitting on it like this. I wonder if even the phones are more lethal in Gaza.

  Salwa smiled at her guest. “Who has been beating this donkey, Abu Ramiz?”

  “Only other donkeys,” he said. He touched the bruise on his temple. It seemed like ages since Magnus was kidnapped. “My Swedish colleague was taken by the Saladin Brigades. As a hostage.”

  Umm Rateb took Salwa’s hand. “Abu Ramiz, did they kidnap him because he wanted to free Salwa’s husband?”

  Omar Yussef had no proof of a connection, but he remembered once more what Khamis Zeydan had said about each crime being linked to many others in Gaza. Even so, he didn’t want to add to the two women’s worries. “I expect it’s something else. They want one of their men released by the authorities in return for Magnus’s freedom.”

  “If Allah wills it, he will be freed soon,” Umm Rateb said.

  The desperation he had felt in the alley left Omar Yussef. With these two women, he experienced a little of the calm and warmth he knew at home. He missed his wife, and he felt guilty about spending time with another woman to whom he was attracted. But he needed to get out of the lonely, violent worlds of hotels and jails, and Salwa Masharawi’s living room now seemed like the most relaxed place on earth.

  Naji brought coffee. Omar Yussef thanked him. The boy was about to leave the room when he stopped in front of the television. “ Ustaz, isn’t that your friend, the foreigner?”

  Omar Yussef turned to the screen. The channel was broadcasting a fuzzy video clip. A man in a blue shirt sat upright in a plain room before a poster of the Dome of the Rock. His hair was a gray-blonde quiff and his chin was stubbled with a short beard. His glasses slipped down his nose and he lifted his head to slide them back into place, evidently because his hands were bound behind his back. It was Magnus Wallender.

  “Turn up the volume, quickly,” Omar Yussef said.

  “You have the remote control on the arm of your chair,” said Umm Rateb.

  Omar Yussef picked up the remote. He stared hopelessly at the colored buttons. “Naji,” he said, thrusting it at the boy.

  Naji pointed the remote at the television and Magnus’s voice burst into the room. The poor recording quality and the echoing, empty room where he sat blurred his words. Omar Yussef moved to the edge of his armchair. Only then did he notice the masked gunman in the corner of the frame. He wore camouflage fatigues and a black stocking cap pulled over his face with two holes cut for his eyes. He directed the barrel of his Kalashnikov toward Magnus.

  “-the governments of the European Union to secure the release of the brother Bassam Odwan, who is a struggler for the rights and freedom of the Palestinian people.” Magnus paused and glanced sideways at the gunman. The barrel of the Kalashnikov twitched, directing the Swede’s gaze back to the camera. He spoke in a hoarse drone, squinting through his tortoise-shell spectacles to read the message, which appeared to be held by someone next to the camera. “If the brother Odwan is not released, the Saladin Brigades declare that something bad will happen to me in two days.”

  Magnus stopped. His jaw fell open.

  The coffee cup shook in Omar Yussef’s hand. He put it on a side table. He thought of Odwan’s tortured corpse in the morgue. When the Saladin Brigades found out about that, Magnus would be killed. Perhaps this tape was more than a few hours old. They might even know by now. Magnus might already be dead.

  The gunman pushed Magnus to his knees and stood over him. He raised his rifle and shouted Allahu akbar. With his other hand, he grabbed Magnus’s hair and pulled his head back. The gesture exposed the Swede’s sunburned neck. Omar Yussef blinked hard, gasping as he imagined the gunman severing his friend’s head from that neck.

  The video clip ended and a news anchor with a loud tie went into a story about delays at the border crossing between Rafah and Egypt caused by Israeli operations against smugglers’ tunnels. Salwa gave Naji a glance and he muted the television once more.

  James is dead, because of this stinking place, Omar Yussef thought. I can’t let it happen to Magnus, too. He stared at his hands. He was sure the liver spots had grown. His fists shook, even when he pressed them tight together. He was too weak and old to help his friend, too frail to help anyone. He felt ashamed of his self-pity, of his tears in the alley outside Salwa’s house and the homely contentment he had experienced sitting with the two women. “I just don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll save him, I’m sure, Abu Ramiz,” Salwa said.

  “Just as you will free Salwa’s husband.” Umm Rateb held her friend’s hands in both of hers.

  Professor Masharawi, I’d forgotten about him, Omar Yussef thought. He looked at the two women. Salwa’s face was lost and stricken. He felt a wave of protective, fatherly affection for her and took a deep breath to keep from shedding a tear. “You’re right, Umm Rateb,” he said. “I won’t rest until both men are here to eat at Salwa’s table.”

  Salwa looked up. “Wait, did you have dinner, Abu Ramiz?”

  When she asked him, he knew it was why he had come. He wanted to sit with a family and eat food made with love, not for profit. But that had been weakness, he told himself. You don’t have time to sit here, even if it feels good. You can’t pretend you didn’t jus
t see that video of Magnus.

  “I already ate,” Omar Yussef lied. “Now I must go to my hotel. I need to speak to some UN people. Don’t worry about your husband.”

  Umm Rateb followed him to the front door. In the shadows at the front step Omar Yussef smelled her rosewater soap. “These men who took your friend, Abu Ramiz, they make me sick,” she said. “They’re not Muslims.”

  “I’m afraid they are, Umm Rateb.”

  “Not Muslims as they should be.”

  “No, not as they should be.”

  Omar Yussef shuffled through the sand to the main road to find a taxi.

  Chapter 19

  Meisoun gave Omar Yussef a phone message on a slip of paper when he arrived at the Sands Hotel. “It was a lady named Nirnberger,” she said. “She spoke very fast in English, so I didn’t understand the other details, ustaz. I hope I wrote the number correctly. Perhaps she too is a secret agent.” Her friendly smile made him feel weak. He wanted to collapse onto the reception desk and tell her the disturbing story of his day. He decided to call his wife, instead, as soon as he had dealt with the message.

  As he mounted the stairs, he caught the scent of grilled chicken wafting from the breakfast room. “Meisoun, that shish tawouk smells good. Please have the kitchen send some up to my room, and a plate of hummus. ” He felt a stab of guilt that he could be consumed by the commonplace sensation of hunger so soon after seeing Cree’s corpse.

  “Of course. To your health, ustaz,” she said.

  The corridor outside his room was quiet. The hotel’s occupants were with Khamis Zeydan at the president’s office for the Revolutionary Council meeting. Omar Yussef listened to his slow feet on the carpet. It seemed a foolish thought, but he felt that death remained on his trail, no more than a few paces behind, as it had been throughout his days in Gaza. He heard its footfalls in the silence as he walked, dropping with a hiss like words of warning.

  Omar Yussef’s room was hot and stuffy. He searched near the door for the switch Sami had used to shut off the air-conditioning, so that he could reactivate it. He found a digital gauge, a small dial and tiny, colored icons of a red sun and a blue snowflake. He fiddled with the dial, elicited some electronic bleeps, and waited, but nothing happened. He undid the buttons of his shirt, went to the telephone and dialed the number on Meisoun’s note. The line connected to a cellphone surrounded by the low, rushing sound of a speeding car’s interior.

  “This is Nancy,” said a voice in the car in English.

  It was a hands-free phone, like the one Omar Yussef’s son Ramiz had in his car. It gave him an uneasy feeling of talking into nothingness. “Missus Nirnberger?” Omar Yussef said.

  “ Miz Nirnberger.”

  Omar Yussef wondered what that meant. “This is Omar Yussef speaking.”

  “Mister Yussef, thank you for calling me back.” Nancy Nirnberger sounded American to Omar Yussef. She spoke with a deliberate excitement, as though it were delightful to receive a call, and whose call could be more unexpected and agreeable than one from the principal of the UN girls’ school in Dehaisha camp? “I’m heading up the negotiating team that was on its way to the checkpoint when James was hit.”

  Omar Yussef nodded at the phone. Then he remembered that she couldn’t see him. “Yes, of course,” he said.

  “We’ve talked through the situation with our guys in Jerusalem and New York, and we’re inclined to think that it’s too risky for foreign nationals to be in the Gaza Strip right now. In light of what happened to James. So we turned around at the checkpoint and we’re en route to Jerusalem again. As we speak, all other foreign employees at our Gaza City office are on their way out of the Strip.” Then, as if she were holding up a new dress for him to admire, Nirnberger added: “What do you think?”

  I think it’s too risky for me, too, even if I’m not a foreigner who’s worth keeping out of harm’s way. “I agree that it’s very dangerous.”

  “We’ll coordinate negotiations for Magnus’s release from the office in Jerusalem. We feel that from there we’ll be able to manage contacts with senior government and security guys on the Palestinian side. But we need for you to remain on the ground in Gaza to provide situation assessments and to make material contacts.”

  “To make what?”

  “To meet the guys who have Magnus, if they want to set a meeting.”

  Omar Yussef gripped the receiver tightly. “I see.”

  “None of the local hires in our Gaza City office are as close to this as you, so you’re the man on this one, Mister Yussef.” Nirnberger’s tone reminded Omar Yussef of the American politicians he had seen in television interviews. He imagined her with her head held to the side, nodding archly, a knowing smile slightly suppressed, as though she had heard all the secrets. “Is there anything you need, in the meantime? Just name it.”

  “The hospital would like James’s details so they can notify the next of kin and transport the body.”

  “Taken care of, Mister Yussef. Already done. We haven’t just been sitting around. Don’t worry. We’re behind you.”

  You certainly are. “Did James have close family?”

  “I don’t know, really. I didn’t personally handle that.”

  “He had a great-grandfather who’s buried in the British War Cemetery here in Deir el-Balah. I know the grave meant a lot to him. Perhaps his family would like him to be buried there, because of his personal bond with the place.”

  Nirnberger dropped the bonhomie. She sounded as though she were speaking without moving her jaw. “Well, we can put that to them, but I think it’d be a mistake to set up a new tomb that might be the focus of anti-UN demonstrations down there.” She cleared her throat and reverted to her cheery tone. “So there’s a British cemetery in Gaza, huh? What’s up with that?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Who’d have thought there’d be a bunch of dead Brits buried way the heck down in Gaza?”

  “Gaza has a special relationship with the dead.” Omar Yussef’s grip grew tighter still. “I will keep you informed of what I learn here, Missus Nirnberger.”

  She let the missus go this time. “Don’t worry. We’re going to get Magnus out of there.”

  “If Allah wills it.”

  “You bet.”

  The hotel room was dark. Omar Yussef flicked the switch on the nightstand lamp. He rubbed his shoulder where the stone had hit him in the riot at Cree’s burning car. He gave a rasping laugh when he realized that the shoulder hurt so much he’d almost forgotten the wide bruise on the side of his head. The idea of food had made him nauseous all day, but now he was famished. He put the shish tawouk out of his mind; it only made him more ravenous to think of it being prepared downstairs. He dialed his home. Once again, Nadia answered.

  “Hello, Nadia. What’s happening there? Everything all right?”

  “Grandpa, did you see the website?”

  “I was only able to have a very quick look at it.”

  “What did you think?”

  Nadia’s voice was reedy with excitement. Omar Yussef wondered how much he could tell her about the reality of what her Agent O had gone through since she last saw him. He feared that the filth surrounding him like the dust on the air would harm her. “I liked the website,” he said. “The lady who showed it to me on the computer was very impressed, except that now she thinks I’m a spy.”

  Nadia laughed.

  “When I come home, I want you to show me how you do the design,” Omar Yussef said, “and how you put it into the computer so that it comes out in a computer on this end, too.”

  “It’s easy, Grandpa.”

  “Only because you’re very clever. Is Grandma there?”

  When Maryam came to the phone, a child was whimpering in the background. “It’s Dahoud,” she said. “He misses you. He saw something about Gaza on the news and he’s been crying all evening. He said he wouldn’t go to bed ‘until uncle calls.’”

  Maryam and Omar Yussef had adopted Dahoud and
his sister Miral at the turn of the year, after the violence of Bethlehem took their parents. The boy’s concern for him touched Omar Yussef. The poor little fellow had already lost a beloved father and no doubt feared the death of the man who had stepped into his place. “Tell him I’m fine, he can go to bed now, and I’ll see him soon.”

  “When will that be, Omar?”

  “I don’t know.” He cleared his throat and tried to sound nonchalant. “You saw the news?”

  “No, I told you, Dahoud saw it. But I can’t get any sense out of him. Why? What happened?” Maryam’s voice was edgy and loud, as though she had dived suddenly into the phone.

  Omar Yussef hesitated. “Well, Magnus was kidnapped by the Saladin Brigades and another UN fellow who was working with me was blown up in his car-”

  Maryam gave a high-pitched gasp. “By Allah, Omar, you have to get out of there.”

  “I have to see to Magnus’s release, Maryam. The UN won’t send anyone else. They’re scared to have a foreigner here.”

  “Don’t they have local Gazan staff?”

  “I assume they’re keeping their heads down.”

  “So should you. Are you to be sacrificed?”

  “Maryam, I can handle this.” He could imagine her shaking her head at the other end of the line.

  “You’re not so tough, Omar. Just because you stood up to the gangs in Bethlehem last year, doesn’t mean you can do the same thing in a strange town. Gaza is a terrible place.”

  “I can take care of myself. And Abu Adel is here too. He won’t let me do anything risky.”

  “Abu Adel may be police chief in Bethlehem, but in Gaza he’s nothing. They’ll kill him as though they were squashing an insect. And he can be just as rash as you, Omar.”

  “Who are they, Maryam?”

  “Whoever it was who kidnapped Magnus and blew up this other man.”

  “It might not be the same group.”

  “That only doubles the threat.”