The Samaritan's secret
( Omar Yussef - 3 )
Matt Beynon Rees
Matt Beynon Rees
The Samaritan's Secret
Chapter 1
Lime green paint on the domes of the neighborhood mosques punctuated the khaki limestone in the Nablus casbah. Like tarnished copper tacks, they seemed to pin the Ottoman souk and the Mamluk caravanserai to the floor of the valley. Otherwise even the stones might get up and run away from this dirty town, Omar Yussef thought.
The distant siren of an ambulance rumbled in the stomach of the city and Omar Yussef felt the last crispness of dawn burn away in the sun. With his habitually shaky hand, he stroked the meager white hairs covering his bald-ness and clicked his tongue. These few strands wouldn’t save his scalp from sunburn, and he could see that the day would be hot. Sweat itched behind his tidy gray mustache. He scratched his upper lip petulantly.
He turned from the valley and contemplated the sparse spring grass stippling the rocky flank of Mount Jerizim. Let’s see who gets burned worse-you or me, he thought. The mountain arced, sullen and taut, to the row of mansions on its ridge, as though tensing its shoulders to endure the heat of the day.
A turquoise police car pulled up. The driver’s window lowered and a smoldering cigarette butt spun onto the side-walk. “Greetings, ustaz,” Sami Jaffari said. “Get in.”
Omar Yussef left the paltry shade of the lacquered pinewood canopy outside his hotel, opened the door of the patrol car and stretched a stiff leg into the passenger’s side.
“Grandpa, morning of joy.”
Bracing himself against the car door, Omar Yussef looked up. From the balcony of a second floor room, his granddaughter waved. In her other hand, she clutched a book. He wiggled his fingers to her in greeting. “Morning of light, Nadia, my darling,” he said.
“Don’t forget, you’re taking me to eat qanafi today.”
Omar Yussef’s mustache curled downward. Sweet things were not to his taste. But Nablus was famous for this dessert of goat cheese and syrupy shredded wheat, and this was Nadia’s first time in the town. He anticipated that the inquisitive, methodical thirteen-year-old would want to compare the qanafi from a range of bakeries and he would have to gulp it all down and grin indulgently. Even his considerable prejudice in culinary matters couldn’t outweigh his love for this girl. He waved to her again. “If Allah wills it, we’ll eat qanafi soon,” he said.
“Sami, make sure you bring my grandpa back in time for a midmorning snack in the casbah,” Nadia called.
“He’s on official police business now,” Sami shouted. “We have to investigate the theft of a valuable historical relic.”
“I’m warning you. I’ll tell Meisoun to call off the wedding, if you don’t bring him back in time. She won’t marry you if I tell her you’re not nice to little girls.”
Sami stuck out his tongue and put a thumb to his nose. Nadia giggled as the car pulled away from the curb. “You’re going to get fat in Nablus, Abu Ramiz,” Sami said, slapping Omar Yussef on the knee.
“It’s you who’ll start to gain weight, because by the end of this week you’ll have a wife to cook for you.”
Sami swerved to avoid a long, yellow taxi that drifted languidly out of a side street. He rummaged for a pack of Dunhills in the glove compartment. “Police work in Palestine keeps me thin,” he said, shaking a cigarette loose and lighting it. “It’s four parts nervous tension and one part genuine danger. I burn more calories thinking about my day than most people would by running a marathon.”
Sami had become leaner since Omar Yussef last saw him in Gaza almost a year earlier. In the police car, Omar’s initial impression was of a healthy, contented young man, but as he looked harder he sensed this was a mask for some-thing apprehensive and angry. It was as though the police officer had been forced to swallow the criminal outrages of Nablus and had found that they ate away his muscle and left his flesh tight on his bones.
Sami picked his teeth, discolored almost to the shade of his tan by the thick coffee he drank to stay awake on long shifts. “I’m looking forward to seeing my old childhood friends at my wedding,” he said. “I’m very lucky that you and your sons were able to get permits to pass through the checkpoints. It’s been years since I spent time with Ramiz and even longer since I saw Zuheir.”
Omar Yussef forced a smile.
Sami lifted his palm, questioningly. “What’s wrong?”
“Zuheir is much changed.” Omar Yussef looked at his feet. “He’s become very religious.”
“Then he’ll be at home in Nablus. This place is one big mosque.”
“He’s very different from the boy who went off to study in Britain a few years ago.” He thought of the square-cut beard and the loose white cotton his son had taken to wearing, the regular prayers and the stern disapproving face. He didn’t know how far his son had ventured into the unbending world of indignant imams, but the question disturbed him.
“It’s lucky you gave up alcohol, or Zuheir would be trying to force some major lifestyle changes on you,” Sami said with a smile.
“If I hadn’t given up alcohol, it would’ve killed me and I might not have lived long enough to see my son become an adherent of a crazy, hard-line version of our religion.”
“May Allah forbid it.” Sami slapped Omar Yussef’s thigh. “Enough of such thoughts. This is a day of pleasures. I have to go down to the casbah later to finalize arrangements for the wedding with the sheikh. Then we’ll have a reunion with your sons at the hotel.”
“After we’ve checked on the theft at the Samaritan syna-gogue and talked to their priest.”
Sami shrugged. “Crime is also one of the pleasures of Nablus.”
“I’m a connoisseur. Thank you for bringing me.”
“I knew you’d be intrigued, as a history teacher who’s knowledgeable about all elements of Palestinian culture.” Sami sucked in some smoke. “They are part of Palestinian culture, aren’t they?”
“The Samaritans? They’ve been here longer than we have, Sami. They claim to be descended from some biblical Israelites who remained in this area when their brethren were exiled to Babylon. In a way, they’re Palestinians and Jews and neither, all at the same time.”
Sami pulled over and peered out of the window. “I think it’s in here,” he said.
Omar Yussef raised himself out of the passenger seat with a grunt. His back ached after the long ride from Bethlehem the previous day, squashed into a taxi with his wife, his granddaughter and two of his sons. To bypass the security checks around Jerusalem, they had taken the desert backroads. He was fifty-seven and unfit, so the bumpy ride and the heat had exhausted him.
On the sidewalk, Omar Yussef straightened his spine. He pushed his remaining hair into place with his palm and nudged his gold-framed glasses to the bridge of his nose with the tip of his index finger.
He looked up a walkway of cracked steps between two apartment buildings, bright green weeds cutting through the polished stone paving, creeping over the railings at each side of the path. The door of the Samaritan synagogue, set forty yards back from the road, was a tasteless metal panel painted brown to look like wood. Seven bulbous lights on long, upright stems surmounted the stone canopy at the entrance. The building was a low square faced in the same limestone as the apartment blocks around it. Its basement level was painted pink.
“I thought it would be older than this,” Sami said. He stamped out his cigarette and set off up the steps.
“They had a much older synagogue down in the casbah,” Omar Yussef said, “but they left the old town fifty years ago, because their Muslim neighbors wouldn’t sell them land to expand their homes as their community grew.
So they moved up here.”
Sami waited at the top of the first flight of steps. “But they don’t even live here anymore.” He pointed above the roof of the synagogue to a cluster of buildings on the ridge of Mount Jerizim. “They went up there, out of the way of everyone.”
“Out of the way of the first intifada, Sami. Those were violent times in Nablus. You can’t blame people for trying to get away.”
They reached the final set of steps. To their left, grilles of curling black metal guarded the six arched windows of the synagogue.
“The bars on that first window are new,” Omar Yussef said. “They’re the only ones that aren’t rusty.”
Sami leaned over the railing at the side of the entrance and examined the bars. “You’re right, Abu Ramiz. The window has been scorched by something, too.”
Omar Yussef glanced at the ledge. Jagged black smudges slashed the polished stone. In the yard below, a square frame of rusty metal leaned against the pink wall, its bottom edge ripped away. “The original bars.” He turned to Sami and smiled with one side of his mouth. “As the representative of the police, I think perhaps you might draw some conclusions from this.”
Sami tapped the new black grille. “The thieves got in through this window.”
Omar Yussef rubbed his chin. “Thieves who had enough explosives to blow away those bars.”
“Nablus isn’t short of explosives experts.”
“But it is short of Samaritans, and even shorter of their priceless historical documents.”
Sami lit another cigarette and took in some smoke with a sharp breath. “Let’s go and see this priest.”
Chapter 2
Along each jaundice-yellow wall inside the synagogue, ragged prayer books were wedged tight or stacked haphazardly on their sides behind the glass of their book-cases. A curtain of blue velvet embroidered with Hebrew characters in gold thread hung behind a dais at the head of the hall. The thick walls preserved the chill of night in the air. Omar Yussef shivered and pulled his French collar higher, pressing it to the slack skin of his jaw.
“It’s as cold as a cellar in here,” Sami said.
“Or a grave.” Omar Yussef caught Sami’s frown. “Don’t worry. I may not be certain that this truly is a day of pleasures, as you put it, but by the time of your wedding, I’ll be cheeriness personified.”
Sami walked down the aisle toward the blue curtain. Between the Hebrew characters, the outline of two stone tablets had been stitched into the material. “Can you read this, Abu Ramiz?” Sami asked.
“No, but the tablets are a representation of the command-ments given to the Prophet Moussa, I think. The ones that contained the Jewish law.”
“The Samaritan law.”
A man of about seventy years approached from a stairwell at the back of the room. He was tall and slender, like an evening shadow. He wore a white ankle-length cotton robe, a long vest of coarse gray wool, unfastened at the front, and a fez wrapped with a red cloth so that it resembled a turban.
“The Jewish law is very similar to ours, gentlemen,” the old man said, “but their holy texts include seven thousand mistakes. The books of the Samaritans are without error.”
“Then you are without excuses for your mistakes.” Omar Yussef smiled. “That’s a terrible fate.”
“No one is ever short of justification for their sins in this part of the world.” The man’s mild eyes appeared unfocused and bemused, like cafe habitues Omar Yussef had met in Morocco who smoked too much kif. He shook hands with Omar Yussef. “I’m Jibril Ben-Tabia, a priest of the Samaritan people. Welcome to our synagogue.”
Sami stepped forward. “Lieutenant Sami Jaffari of the National Police. This is my colleague Abu Ramiz.”
“From Bethlehem,” Omar Yussef said. He glanced at Sami. His granddaughter had been trying to make a detective of him since he had been forced to investigate accusations of murder against a favorite former pupil over a year ago. Despite his insistence that he was happy as a history teacher in the Dehaisha refugee camp, Sami seemed now to have made his change of career official.
The priest tilted his head as though wondering why an investigating officer should have been brought from Bethlehem. He kept Omar Yussef’s hand in his.
“The lieutenant asked me to join him because I have a special interest in Palestinian history,” Omar Yussef said. He raised an eyebrow at the young officer. “I understand the crime relates to one of your historical documents.”
“It did.” Ben-Tabia let go of Omar Yussef’s hand and raised his arms in a shrug. “But I must apologize, honored gentle-men, particularly to you, Abu Ramiz, for bringing you all the way from Bethlehem for nothing. The crime is solved.”
Sami dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his heel. “Solved?”
The priest glanced sharply at the cigarette butt on the floor and rolled his lower lip over the edge of his mustache. “Yes, there was a theft, but the stolen object has been returned. So, you see, your intervention is unnecessary.”
“Has the criminal been apprehended?”
“Everything has been sorted out to my satisfaction.”
“I’m here now, so my satisfaction enters into this, too, your honor,” Sami said. He held the priest’s gaze.
“Very well,” Ben-Tabia said. “Please, let’s sit. I’m not so strong these days.”
Omar Yussef and Sami sat on the front bench. The priest took a seat in the second row.
“I must apologize,” he said. “I would offer you coffee in greeting, but this synagogue is only used for the first prayers of every month and no one but me is here to prepare a drink for you today.”
Omar Yussef waved his hand. “Coffee is unnecessary. Your regular place of prayer is on top of the mountain?”
“As you surely know, Brother Abu Ramiz, the Samaritans have a long history in Palestine.” The priest’s face became grave and proud. “We have lived here in the shadow of our holy mountain, Jerizim, since the Israelites entered the land of Canaan. Our community has dwindled to little more than six hundred, but we remain, protected by Allah and our adherence to the ways of our people.”
“It’s one of the greatest traditions of Palestine,” Omar Yussef said.
The priest bowed his head. “During the violence of the eighties, we moved out of this neighborhood and created a new village on top of Jerizim, including, of course, a synagogue.” He lifted a long finger and pointed out of the window toward the ridge. “We wanted to be close to our holiest place.”
“I’m new to Nablus,” Sami said. “I’ve never been up there.”
“Welcome to our city.” Ben-Tabia lowered his head, closed his eyes and placed his palm over his heart. “The site of our ancient temple is just beyond the crest of the ridge, the smooth flat stone where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. It’s where Adam and Eve lived when they were expelled from Eden. It’s the home of Allah.”
“Quite an address.” Sami smiled. “I’d like to come up and see it.”
Omar Yussef thought the priest hesitated before he said, “You will be most welcome, Lieutenant.”
“What exactly was stolen from you, sir?” Omar Yussef asked. “It was an old religious document of some kind, I understand.”
“Though we moved our community to the mountain, we maintained this synagogue and we continued to keep our most precious documents here. It was one of these that was stolen.”
“From where?” Sami said.
“From a safe in the basement.”
“The safe was blown?”
“Blown? Ah, yes, with some kind of explosive. But the safe has been replaced. There’s nothing for you to examine.”
“When was the theft?”
“A week ago. Yes, or perhaps a little more.”
“You didn’t report it immediately?”
The priest fidgeted with the ends of the gray vest. “I was ordered not to do so. By the thieves. They told me that if I involved the authorities, they would destroy the scroll.”
“The scroll?” Omar Yussef twisted toward the priest.
“Our greatest treasure was stolen, Abu Ramiz,” Ben-Tabia said. He lifted the tips of his fingers to his beard, as though he might pull it out in despair at the thought of such a calamity. “I felt terrible shame that it should be during my tenure as a priest here in our synagogue that the Abisha Scroll might be lost.”
“The Abisha?” Omar Yussef’s voice was low and reverent.
“What’s that?” Sami said.
“A famous Torah scroll,” Omar Yussef said. “The oldest book in the world, they say.”
The priest raised his eyes to the ceiling. “The five books of Moses, written on sheepskin three thousand six hundred and forty-five years ago. It was written by Abisha, son of Pinchas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron who was the brother of Moses, in the thirteenth year after the Israelites entered the land of Canaan. Every year, we bring it out of the safe only once, for our Passover ceremony on Mount Jerizim.”
“It must be very valuable,” Sami said.
“It’s beyond all value. Without this scroll, our Messiah can never return to us. Without this scroll, we cannot carry out the annual Passover sacrifice, and if we fail to sacrifice on Passover we cease to be Samaritans and the entire tradition of our religion comes to a terrible close.” The priest’s eyes were moist.
“You said the thieves told you to keep quiet?” Omar Yussef spoke softly.
“I was blindfolded and taken to a place where I was shown the stolen scroll. They took me because they knew I would be able to recognize it and tell the rest of the community that it was safe. Then they demanded a million dollars for its return.”
“Did you pay?” Sami asked.
“We don’t have a million dollars.”
“But the Abisha Scroll has been returned?”
“We asked for help from all our friends in Nablus.” The priest lifted his hand in front of him, fingers pointing upward. “Perhaps one of them was able to influence the thieves.”
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