A grave in Gaza oy-2

by Matt Beynon Rees

“It can’t be,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  Husseini’s face was contorted, weeping. One of the gunmen stood behind him, lifted his Kalashnikov and shot him through the neck.

  It was a sudden, single shot. Omar Yussef inhaled quickly.

  The same gunman emptied his magazine into Husseini’s body. The attackers walked briskly to their jeeps and pulled away. Some went down the beach road, while a couple turned up Omar al-Mukhtar Street toward the center of town. General Husseini lay on his face in the road.

  Omar Yussef put his forehead against the window and closed his eyes. Khamis Zeydan laid his hand on Omar Yussef’s shoulder. He tilted his head toward the street. “Come on,” he said.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” Omar Yussef asked.

  Khamis Zeydan shrugged. “Safe or not, unless you want to settle for the official version, we’d better go and check things out.” He hit his shoulder on the wardrobe as he made unsteadily for the door and, when he cursed, he left a cloud of whisky vapor that made Omar Yussef cough.

  They were the first to climb the drive of the hotel and reach the scene. Omar Yussef’s legs felt as though his thigh bones had been turned ninety degrees in his hip sockets- his feet rejected any straight line he commanded them to follow and his pelvis was full of pins and needles. His body was exhausted after the nightmares that had ruined his sleep. But whatever dreams had tormented him, they were surely better than being awake in Gaza.

  Khamis Zeydan knelt by Husseini’s body. The road was empty. “Where are the police?” Omar Yussef said.

  “Husseini must have forgotten to dial the emergency operator.” Khamis Zeydan raised a sarcastic eyebrow. He felt peremptorily for a pulse in Husseini’s neck.

  Omar Yussef looked down at the shattered back of the skull and the gashes in the rear of the plump torso where the gunman had fired on automatic. Excrement filled Husseini’s baggy white underpants and the dust had already settled a gritty layer over the bullet wounds. “How terrible.”

  “At least he died with his fingertips intact,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  Omar Yussef stared at his friend. “Even the worst of men deserves to be respected in death,” he said.

  “Take it easy. You know exactly what I’m saying. Let’s have a look in his house.” They stepped over the dead guard at the entrance to the building and the blood pooling around him.

  The door to the third floor salon was open. The foam in the couches smoldered, filling the room with choking smoke. There was a black blast mark on the center of the ceiling, where the crystal chandelier had been, and glass crunched underfoot.

  “The missile came through the wall and struck the ceiling there,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Anyone in this room would’ve been caught by shrapnel from the missile.”

  “Or pieces of the chandelier.”

  Behind the long dining table, Omar Yussef found the coffee boy on his back, his arms wide and a bullet through his bony, acned cheek. His eyes were open. He looked no more than a little dazed, but he was quite dead. Omar Yussef glanced down the corridor. Two more guards lay twisted and motionless.

  The shelves of crystal along the far wall had collapsed. Husseini’s collection of bottles and glasses and plates lay shattered across the marble tiles. Omar Yussef bent stiffly and picked up the neck of a smashed decanter.

  “Just as all this was starting, Doctor Najjar called me from the morgue,” he said. “He found the stopper from one of these in Bassam Odwan’s throat. The prisoner choked on it.”

  Khamis Zeydan sniffed a dark liquid at the bottom of another piece of partially smashed crystal. “Brandy. Do you suppose Husseini asked Odwan over for a cozy drink?”

  Khamis Zeydan went into the other rooms to look around. Omar Yussef weighed the neck of the decanter in his hand and rolled it against the soft part of his throat below his Adam’s apple. Its cold touch on his sagging skin returned him to the choking moments of his nightmare. He shuddered and he put it on the table.

  A siren approached along the beach road. Omar Yussef felt his pulse tick faster. When you hear a siren, he thought, you can’t help but think that they’re coming for you. A turquoise police jeep rolled to a halt near Husseini’s body. Five policemen jumped from the back of the jeep and an officer joined them from the front seat. They stood in an indecisive huddle a few yards from the corpse. The officer approached Husseini and stood over him. He pushed back his blue beret and scratched his forehead.

  Khamis Zeydan came to watch at Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “I look forward to an energetic investigation from the security forces,” he said, smiling.

  “Don’t you have a meeting to go to?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Khamis Zeydan said, surprised by his friend’s angry tone.

  “You people on the Revolutionary Council, you kill one another and then you hold a meeting and you make peace until the next time you decide to murder each other,” Omar Yussef shouted. “Meanwhile, it’s ordinary people like that poor damned coffee boy on the floor over there who pay the price.”

  “You think I like it that way?”

  “You seem to do all right from this system, despite your cynicism about it.”

  “What do you mean?” Khamis Zeydan put a cigarette in his mouth and reached into his pocket for his lighter.

  “Who’s paying for your nice hotel room? And your expensive dinners? And your apartment in Bethlehem? And the booze you reek of right now? And the stupid smokes that are killing you?” Omar Yussef slapped the cigarette from Khamis Zeydan’s mouth.

  The police commander on the road below looked up at the third floor window. He pointed and spoke to two of his men, who ran toward Husseini’s building.

  “The cigarettes? You’re worried about my health?” Khamis Zeydan took another cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “I didn’t know you cared, my dear.”

  “Don’t make a joke of this.”

  “Back home in Bethlehem, I admit you’d be right to worry about me,” Khamis Zeydan said. He gripped Omar Yussef’s arm, his eyes wide and excited. “But in Gaza you’ve got it all wrong. In Bethlehem I drink because of depression, loneliness, disgust with my life. In Gaza it’s all action, and I have to admit that I thrive on it. The smoke-filled rooms, the dirty maneuvers, and the violence. In Gaza, I drink because it’s part of the biggest buzz imaginable. Even this incident this morning gives me a kick.”

  Omar Yussef pushed the police chief’s hand away.

  “It’s true,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Here I am, the man you call your friend. I’m not proud of it and I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but Gaza feels like the good old days, back in Lebanon with the Old Man, before we messed everything up.”

  “By Allah, what could be more messed up than Gaza?” Omar Yussef said.

  “The truth is, we should’ve stayed underground forever. We can’t govern.”

  “This place is governed according to the rules of the Middle Ages.”

  “Come on, history teacher. No lectures.”

  There were footsteps on the staircase.

  “Feuding emirs, unnamable fear you can taste in every particle of dust in this storm, and death,” Omar Yussef said. “Death even for those like Husseini who’re accustomed to wielding it.” Omar Yussef grabbed his friend’s shoulders so that their faces were close. “That’s not history. That’s the present.”

  One of the policemen arrived in the doorway, panting. He leveled his Kalashnikov. Omar Yussef laughed with a rasping exhalation. He walked toward the door.

  “Identify yourself,” the policeman said. He was slim and young and his thin mustache twitched.

  Omar Yussef glared at him. “I’m the Emir Saladin, that’s who I am. Now get out of my way, I’m going to eat breakfast. There’s a boy in that room who’s dead because you were too busy eating your breakfast to do your job.”

  The policeman stepped back and dropped the barrel of his rifle to his knees. A second policeman came up the stairs, breathing heavily. He looked with confusion at Omar Yussef and leaned ag
ainst the banister to let him pass.

  Chapter 21

  Omar Yussef was into his second serving of scrambled eggs when Khamis Zeydan weaved across the breakfast room, his grim face fixed on the floor to avoid conversation with the Revolutionary Council delegates at the other tables. Though the politicians and their aides occupied almost every chair, the room was subdued in the wake of Husseini’s execution. They fiddled with their napkins, nervous and darkly expectant, staring into their coffees with hunted expressions.

  Omar Yussef drained his cup and wiped his lips on his napkin as the Bethlehem police chief reached his table.

  “To your double health,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  “I may have finally found my appetite, but I can’t associate anything in Gaza, even the food, with health.” Omar Yussef cleared his throat and looked at his plate. “I’m sorry for my outburst back there. After seeing the bodies of Husseini and the guards and the coffee boy, well, it was all too much for me.”

  Khamis Zeydan waved his hand and chose to ignore the heart of Omar Yussef’s earlier accusations. “No, you were right. I ought to smoke less.” He sat next to Omar Yussef, though he perched on the seat restlessly. He unfolded a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. “This is the Saladin Brigades leaflet about Husseini’s death,” he whispered.

  Omar Yussef raised his eyebrows and buttered his toast. “They type fast, don’t they?”

  “It says that Husseini was killed by the Brigades, because he was a collaborator who killed ‘the struggler and brother Bassam Odwan after first administering tortures that were cruel and characteristic.’ That means the Husseini Manicure, doesn’t it? How did they know about that?”

  “I told Sami about it,” Omar Yussef said. “He said they have spies in the prisons.”

  “The leaflet accuses Husseini of working to undermine the resistance and arresting its most important fighters.” Khamis Zeydan placed the single sheet of paper on the table.

  Omar Yussef glanced at the leaflet and ate a triangle of toast in three bites. As he chewed, he peeled a boiled egg with his fingers, cut it in two, salted it and ate one half. After a day and a night without food, he was ravenous.

  “You’re eating like a condemned man with his last meal,” Khamis Zeydan said. He waited for Omar Yussef to meet his eye. “There’s an emergency session of the Revolutionary Council in twenty minutes. To discuss the Husseini assassination and to see how the security forces should respond.” Khamis Zeydan looked about the breakfast room. At the other tables, delegates were rising, brushing crumbs from their elegant suits and issuing murmured orders to their aides. “What’re you going to do?”

  Omar Yussef swallowed. “What does a condemned man usually do after his last meal?” He ate the second half of the egg.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Ignore that remark. It was a joke. The British call it gallows humor. ”

  “Fortunately there’s no hanging in Gaza. I expect to be beheaded when the time comes.” Omar Yussef tapped a forefinger against the two crossed scimitars of the Saladin Brigades’ crest. He looked more closely at the leaflet.

  “My point is this: after the Revolutionary Council meeting, there’ll be some kind of response against the Saladin Brigades,” Khamis Zeydan said. “A military response. Arrests. Maybe the Brigades’ll fight back. It could get nasty on the streets today. We can’t let it look like they’re getting away with the assassination of one of our own, no matter that we all thought Husseini was a son of a bitch. Don’t get caught in the crossfire, okay.”

  Omar Yussef popped the top off a miniature pot of honey and drizzled it over a croissant. “If self-protection was my main priority, I wouldn’t even be in Gaza.”

  Khamis Zeydan drew an impatient breath. “The atmosphere today is very, very dangerous. You need to be careful.”

  “You told me you love this dirt, this intrigue and deceit, this violence,” Omar Yussef said. “But those pleasures are reserved for members of your select club? I want to join in the fun.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You know you hate all this. You damn near broke down yesterday when you couldn’t keep the different security forces and the various gunmen straight in your head.”

  “I took the advice you gave me then: I’m not trying to keep track of their organizations, only their intentions.” Omar Yussef bit into the croissant. “They want to eat me alive.”

  “That was only a turn of phrase.” Khamis Zeydan leaned close. “They don’t really care if you’re alive.”

  Omar Yussef smiled and waved the croissant. “How long will this meeting of the Revolutionary Council go on?”

  “Everyone will say how shocked they are and pretend that Husseini wasn’t a bastard. That should take about two hours, I’d say. Then add a little time for someone, probably al-Fara, to say that such things can’t be allowed in Gaza and to order the arrest of those responsible. Two hours fifteen.”

  Omar Yussef nodded and bit the croissant. The honey ran into his mustache. He sucked it away with his lower lip.

  “I have to go,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Why don’t you just walk on the beach and keep out of trouble?”

  Omar Yussef looked out of the breakfast room window at the dust in the wind along the narrow strand. “It’s a lovely day for it,” he said.

  Khamis Zeydan sighed, rapped the table in exasperation with his gloved prosthesis and went to the door.

  On the beach, a boy with his head and face hidden by a red and white keffiyeh laid out a net. The hot wind ruffled his ripped T-shirt. The first time Omar Yussef sat in this breakfast room, three boys had been fighting on that beach. He wondered if this was one of them and where the other two boys were. He hoped they were only keeping out of the dust storm.

  He could go no further with his investigation of the Saladin Brigades and the fate of Odwan’s stolen missile until he heard from Sami. If Sami arranged a meeting for him with the Saladin Brigades men, he would need to have something to give them in return for Wallender’s freedom. The Brigades had wanted to exchange Odwan for Wallender; now Odwan was dead, they would demand something else, if Wallender was still alive. Sami was right: he couldn’t offer them the missile. Even if he found it, he knew he would have to destroy it-or bring it to someone decent, who would disable it and wouldn’t sell it back to the militias. He wouldn’t give them a new toy for their murderous game.

  With the Odwan end of the puzzle blocked, Omar Yussef turned to the plight of Professor Eyad Masharawi. Masharawi was held in a Preventive Security jail. He didn’t think the professor’s case could really be connected to Wallender’s kidnapping or Odwan’s death. But he surmised that if he pursued the Masharawi case, any dirt he unearthed about the Preventive Security would at least interest the Saladin Brigades, particularly since the Revolutionary Council-now dominated by al-Fara-was about to set the security forces on them in revenge for the Husseini hit. In exchange for Wallender’s release, he could offer the gunmen information they might use against the Preventive Security head.

  He thought back to the efforts he and Magnus had made to free Masharawi. Before the Swede’s kidnapping, he had dined with Professor Maki and discussed the case. He should investigate Maki’s real reasons for calling down the security forces on a troublesome teacher. Omar Yussef recalled the degree certificates from al-Azhar hanging behind Colonel al-Fara’s desk and on the wall of the Salah home in Rafah. He had suspected that al-Fara’s degree was phony. Perhaps the Salah brothers’ degrees also were fakes.

  Omar Yussef pushed another croissant into his cheek and chewed, thoughtfully. He folded the Saladin Brigades leaflet and slipped it into his shirt pocket next to the other one. Professor Maki would be at the Revolutionary Council meeting that morning. Omar Yussef decided to go to the professor’s office and ask his secretary to show him the files on the Salah brothers. If they had bought their degrees, it might be information worth offering the Saladin Brigades: some dirt on the dead lieutenant who had been held up as a hero
and in revenge for whose death their man Odwan had been murdered.

  At the front desk, he asked Meisoun to call him a taxi. “Where to, ustaz?” she asked, as she dialed the cab company.

  “I prefer not to say.”

  She leaned forward, smiling. “Do you have another girlfriend? My father is waiting for his camel. Are you going to disappoint him?”

  He coughed. “I’m on my way to steal the camel now, as promised.”

  “I await you. But don’t get caught. They’ll put you in a special jail for camel thieves. There’s a special jail for everyone in Gaza. Even for unfortunate lovers.”

  Omar Yussef stroked his mustache awkwardly. It was still sticky with honey.

  He paid the taxi driver at the gate of al-Azhar and walked past the posters of the suicide bombers into the main building.

  Umm Rateb rose with an exclamation of pleasure when Omar Yussef reached the open door to Maki’s suite of offices. “Morning of joy, ustaz Abu Ramiz,” she cried.

  “Morning of light, dear Umm Rateb.” Omar Yussef tried to take his eyes off the smile on her wide, sensual mouth.

  “Sit and drink coffee.”

  “Allah bless you, but I enjoyed a big breakfast only a short while ago.”

  “To your double health, ustaz, in your very heart.”

  “Thank you, thank you.” Omar Yussef glanced toward Maki’s personal office.

  “But Professor Maki is not here.” She gestured toward the blinds dropped over the window between her office and Maki’s inner sanctum. “He’s at the Revolutionary Council. They’re having a special meeting to discuss the assassination of General Husseini.”

  “I know,” he said. “I came about something else.” Umm Rateb looked blank. Then she smiled. “What’re you up to, Abu Ramiz?” She wagged a finger at him.

  “I need to look at the files of a couple of students.”

  “They’re supposed to be private.” The finger continued to wag.

  “It’s okay. When I was here the other day, Professor Maki discussed certain issues with me and my colleagues from the United Nations. In fact, his very words were that we could ask Umm Rateb to bring the file of any student and we would be able to see their records, and so on.”