“Why should Omar be tired? He’s only been loafing around, eating other people’s food.” Maryam wiped at her husband’s stained shirt with the corner of her handkerchief. As they moved into the stream of shoppers, she turned to Omar Yussef. “How was your visit to the Samaritan synagogue? Did they show you their historic scrolls?”
Omar Yussef suddenly felt light-headed and panicky. He thought of Ishaq’s corpse. The busy street around him dissolved into darkness and he slipped on the puddle from the ice melting in the watermelon vendor’s cart. Sami caught him under the arm and maneuvered him into a side alley.
“The car is just here, at the top of the casbah, Umm Ramiz,” he said. “We’d better take your husband to the hotel.”
“I’m fine,” Omar Yussef murmured.
“Sami, I don’t know how you find your way around these alleys,” Maryam said. She looked suspiciously at Omar Yussef.
They rounded a dark corner and pushed into a dim, vaulted stretch, aiming for a bright spot where the tunnel emerged twenty yards away.
“Meisoun, there’s nothing like this in Gaza,” Maryam said. “Are you getting used to it?”
Meisoun wiggled her head. “It’s true, the surviving older buildings of Gaza aren’t as impressive as the casbah here in Nablus. This is one of the most important places in Palestine, historically.”
“Have you been taking lessons from the schoolteacher here?” Maryam jabbed a finger at Omar Yussef.
“I would be honored,” Meisoun said. “But actually I studied the ancient commerce of Palestine for my business degree. Nablus was always much more important as a center of trade than Jerusalem.”
They came into the light. Vivid green weeds fell in thick clusters over the wall.
Sami smiled. “My fiancee is much smarter than me,” he said. “I want her to start a business here in Nablus.”
“With her knowledge of history, she could be a tour guide,” Maryam said.
“That’s not exactly a growing business. You may be the first tourists to reach Nablus in five years. But if you like, I can be your tour guide.” Meisoun smiled, lifted her arm, and marched forward. “Follow my finger, come on, my group.”
Sami fell into step behind her, dropping his shoulders like the indolent tourists who shuffled about Bethlehem on organized tours. Omar and Maryam joined, too.
Meisoun halted at the end of the overgrown wall and cupped her hand beside her mouth like a guide with a bull-horn. “Listen, my group, most of the casbah dates from the last eight centuries. But beneath our feet are remains of the Roman town built for veterans of the legions and called Flavia Neapolis. Nablus is a corruption of the name ‘Neapolis.’ ”
Omar Yussef held up his hand. “Miss, miss, what was the town on this site called before it was rebuilt as Neapolis?”
“Quiet, you troublemaker.” Meisoun put her finger to her lips. “The Jews say they lived here two thousand years ago in a town called Shekhem, but I’m not allowed to say any more about that or I’ll lose my official tour guide license.”
“Perhaps you should choose another business that’s less politically sensitive,” Omar Yussef suggested.
“I’m encouraging her to get into cell phones, in partner-ship with Ramiz,” Sami said. Omar Yussef’s son ran a cell phone business in Bethlehem. “You’re right that it’s best to avoid politically sensitive issues.” He angled his neck toward Omar Yussef to emphasize his warning.
Meisoun put her finger on her lips again. “My interest in cell phones, too, is a secret no less explosive than the ancient Israelite history of Nablus.” She smiled. “Someone else might steal our idea.”
“I’m very discreet, Miss Meisoun,” Omar Yussef said. “Unfortunately, my wife is a chatterbox. If you want to prevent Maryam from exposing your secret, you’d better bury her at least as far down as the Roman remains.”
Maryam slapped Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “Then who would make your hummus?”
They laughed, but Meisoun grew quiet. She stepped closer to the wall and peered into the shadows cast by the falling weeds. She ran her hand across the smooth, tan stone and circled three bullet holes with her forefinger. Powdered limestone came away on her nail when she probed one of them. A flattened slug of lead dropped to the floor. “You see, Umm Ramiz. I’m right at home in Nablus. It’s just like Gaza.”
They walked on in silence. Meisoun rubbed the dust from her finger and reached for Sami’s hand. The young man looked into her eyes with a strained smile.
Omar Yussef reached out and pinched Maryam’s earlobe affectionately. She was stroking his hand, when they heard quick footsteps around the corner.
Four men came into the alley. They wore green fatigues and their faces were disguised by black stocking caps. Two of them held thick lengths of wood. A short, bulky man slapped a tire iron into his palm. They barred the alley, poised on their toes, ready to spring.
Sami pulled Meisoun behind him. Omar Yussef looked back along the passage. It was empty and dark.
The short man chuckled, jeering and mirthless. “You’re Sami Jaffari, aren’t you, you son of a whore?” He stepped toward Sami, the men with the timbers at his elbow.
Sami pushed Meisoun away, ducked his head and charged at the short man, hitting him in the chest with his shoulder. The man went down, but Sami took a two by four across his shoulders and dropped to his knees. Another blow flattened him.
Omar Yussef let go of Maryam’s hand. “Stop this, by Allah, stop it,” he shouted. “Shame on you.”
The fourth masked man was tall and trim. He shoved Omar Yussef on the collar bone with the flat of his hand, but the schoolteacher kept his balance and moved forward.
“Calm down, Little Grandpa.” The tall man leaned close. Omar Yussef smelled cardamom on his breath, as though he had been chewing seed pods.
“Your grandpa would be ashamed of you,” he said, “and I hope he’ll curse you for this.”
The tall man raised his hand and slapped Omar Yussef hard. His glasses fell and he spun toward the wall. He struck it with his shoulder and doubled over.
Maryam spread her arms in front of him. “Don’t touch my husband, you filthy dog,” she said.
Omar Yussef’s myopic eyes were tearful from the blow and his nose was running into his mustache. He saw a blur of green, hooded shapes lifting something from the floor and heard the tall man’s voice: “Consider this a warning, Jaffari, you worthless shit.” An arm swung. Omar Yussef heard a light crunch like cutlery rattling in a drawer, and Sami bellowed.
“Peace be upon you, Lieutenant.” The tall man’s voice was mocking. Omar Yussef heard someone expectorate and saw Sami flinch when the spittle hit him.
The men went back around the corner. Omar Yussef listened to their footsteps recede. Maryam handed him his glasses and stroked his stinging cheek.
Sami was hunched over his knees on the flagstones of the alley. Meisoun hugged his shaking body.
Omar Yussef kneeled beside him. He gave his handker-chief to Meisoun, who wiped the gob of sputum from Sami’s cheek. The young policeman’s face was pale and sweating. He cradled his right arm with his left.
“They’ve broken my arm,” he gasped.
This time Omar Yussef didn’t ask who they were.
Chapter 9
The sun slipped behind the mansions on Mount Jerizim, as though their prodigiously wealthy residents had bought it and stashed it in their gardens. Why not? Omar Yussef thought. Everything’s for sale in Palestine, if you bribe the right people. He gathered his breath for the steps outside his hotel, coughing on the exhaust fumes as his taxi pulled away, and followed Maryam toward the entrance.
Few of the rooms in the Grand Hotel were lit. In the dark, its seventies facade of rippled concrete looked like the exhausted face of a man moments from death. Meisoun, playing the ironic tour guide, had said the violence of Nablus discouraged tourists, and her wedding guests accounted for almost every illuminated window in the hotel. Omar Yussef hoped not to have to be the one
to tell them that the groom was in the sick bay at police head-quarters with his broken forearm in a sling.
As Omar Yussef tracked Maryam across the empty lobby, the hotel manager wrenched a jammed sheet of paper from the fax machine on the reception desk. “Peace be upon you, ustaz,” he said, a little breathlessly.
“And upon you, peace.”
“This might be a reservation.” The manager beamed desperately at Omar Yussef. He had eyes the pale brown tone of cigarette filters and gray skin, so that his face looked like a heavily used ashtray with two new butts stubbed into it. He wore an expression of hopeless fragility that made him look as though he would, indeed, blow away about as easily as a pile of cinders. With the shredded fax close to his face, he struggled to read the text. His mouth tightened and he crushed the sheet into a ball, tossing it hard into a wastepaper basket.
Maryam caressed Omar Yussef’s face as they waited for the elevator. While they had watched the doctor set Sami’s arm, Omar Yussef had felt the sting in his cheek and wished the masked man in the alley had punched him instead. The slap had been contemptuous, as though he were a woman or an infant. He couldn’t help but resent Maryam’s sympathy.
“Darling, I’ll wait down here while you change for dinner,” he said.
He kissed her and entered the lounge. Lit a ghostly blue by glimmering fluorescent tubes, the room was noisy with the sententious voice of a presenter on the Abu Dhabi cable news channel resonating from a big-screen television on the far wall. At a breakfast bar of the same pale pine as the reception desk, a waiter in a white shirt and flashy striped vest leaned over a newspaper. As Omar Yussef approached, he shoved himself off his elbows and straightened the bottom of his vest over his paunch.
“Evening of joy,” Omar Yussef said.
“Evening of light, ustaz,” the waiter mumbled. He looked nervous and defeated, as though he already knew he wouldn’t be able to fulfill any order to Omar Yussef’s satisfaction.
“A coffee, please. Prepare it sa’ada.” Omar Yussef always took his coffee without sugar.
The waiter ducked below the counter.
“Please turn the volume down on the television, too,” Omar Yussef said. “The news is always bad enough without it having to be loud, as well.”
The waiter remained on his haunches, reaching up to a shelf behind him for the remote control.
The room had been recently whitewashed, but its furniture was a decade old. The couches were low squares of foam covered in nylon and corduroy with no armrests or support. Omar Yussef winced, wondering how he’d ever be able to get up, once he had sunk into one of them.
With the hotel almost empty, there was only one group in the lounge. In the far corner, Nadia balanced on the edge of a couch of spongy cushions upholstered with a russet fabric in an angular pattern. She was in conversation with her uncle Zuheir and a red-haired foreigner in her late thirties. Omar Yussef would have preferred to sit alone, letting the adrenaline that still thundered through him after the attack by the masked men dissipate. But if he didn’t join them, Nadia would want to know why and he preferred not to talk to her about Sami’s beating.
By the way Zuheir’s lips puckered and his thick beard twitched, Omar Yussef sensed that he was suppressing a powerful anger. The schoolteacher’s second son was twenty-eight years old. He wore a white dress shirt buttoned to the neck, its tails falling outside white cotton pants. It was the clothing of a religious zealot and Omar Yussef searched beneath it for the excitable, curly-haired boy he had secretly favored over his other sons, when they were children. Zuheir’s dark eyes flitted between the foreigner and Nadia. If his niece weren’t here, Omar Yussef thought, I suspect he’d give that red-haired woman a mouthful. He smiled. He was suspicious of Zuheir’s newly devout demeanor, but he was happy that the boy’s habitual trucu-lence hadn’t deserted him.
Nadia noticed Omar Yussef picking his way between the empty couches and waved. His favorite grandchild was skinny and tall and so pale that her grandmother’s main mission in life was to force food upon her in the hope of adding color and size. Her mischievious intelligence impressed Omar Yussef more every month. As he came close, she suppressed a smile. I know that look, he thought. She has a surprise for me. He bent to kiss her smooth fore-head. Her hair had a clean bubble-gum scent and Omar Yussef felt embarrassed by the sweat on his shirt and socks from the scuffle in the casbah.
“Grandpa, this is Miss Jamie King,” Nadia said, in English. She gestured to the foreigner with the spine of a paperback, keeping her place in the book with her forefinger. “Miss King, this is Omar Yussef Sirhan from Bethlehem. He’s a schoolteacher- with a secret life.” She opened her black eyes wide.
The red-haired woman stood and shook Omar Yussef’s hand with a strong yank that started at her hips. She wore a blue chalk-striped suit and a thin gold chain over the freckled, sunburned skin at her collar bone. “What secret life is that?” she asked.
“He’s a detective,” Nadia said.
“In my granddaughter’s imagination.” Omar Yussef raised his eyebrows and lifted a finger to caution Nadia. “I work for the United Nations, as a school principal.”
“That’s an excellent cover for a detective.” The American moved closer to Omar Yussef. “Actually I’ve come across your name before, ustaz. I’m based in Jerusalem and I’m a good friend of your boss, Magnus Wallender. He told me how helpful you’ve been to him in his job running the UN Relief and Works Agency schools.”
Omar Yussef smiled. “Magnus is a good man.”
“Miss King is from Los Angeles,” Nadia said. “We’re planning a crime together.”
Zuheir grunted testily and tugged on his beard. Nadia grinned at him and he averted his eyes.
Omar Yussef lowered himself onto a short sofa. The foam was even softer than he expected and he felt himself falling backward. He needed both arms to right himself, and the muscles in his back and abdomen twinged. “My granddaughter is corrupting you, Miss King,” he said, breathing heavily.
“I’m impressed that she’s already reading in English,” King said.
Nadia flashed the cover of her book at Omar Yussef. He only had time to notice that it was by a man named Chandler. “Miss King is going to help me to write a novel in the style of my favorite American detective writer,” she said. “I started it today, because I was bored waiting for my grandfather to come and take me to eat qanafi.”
Omar Yussef gave a thin smile. The waiter brought a small coffee cup and set it on the low table. “May Allah bless your hands,” Omar Yussef said.
“Blessings,” the waiter said, putting a plastic ashtray and a glass of water beside the coffee cup.
“Nablus is famous for qanafi, Miss King,” Nadia said. “It’s a very sweet dessert made with wheat and cheese and- Grandpa, what do you call fustoq halabi in English?”
Omar Yussef scratched his chin. “I don’t know. Aleppo peanuts?”
From behind his hand, Zuheir murmured: “Pistachios.”
“Ah, pistachios. Nablus is famous for this dessert and for making soap in old factories in the casbah. They make the soap out of olive oil.” Nadia giggled. “If my grandfather ever takes me out of this hotel, I expect to find the people of Nablus are very fat and very clean.”
“What’s the title of the book you’re writing, Nadia, my darling?” Omar Yussef asked.
“The Curse of the Casbah.” Nadia shared a smile with Jamie King.
Omar Yussef noticed that the American tapped her finger impatiently against her chair, despite her grin. “That sounds exciting,” he said.
“The murder victim in my book is going to be killed with poisoned qanafi.”
Omar Yussef tasted his coffee. Its bitterness pleased him, but it was too weak, so the grounds floated in it, instead of sinking to the bottom. He turned to frown at the waiter, but the man was leaning on his elbows, staring at his newspaper.
He twisted toward the American. “Miss King, I believe I saw you on the road today,” he said.
“Do you work for the World Bank?”
“Do I stick out that much?” King said. “With this security situation, I guess there aren’t a lot of foreigners around Nablus.”
“Not driving in big cars with IBRD plates.” He put down his coffee cup and sucked the grounds off his teeth. “You looked like you were on your way to the Samaritan village on Mount Jerizim, when I saw you in your car. I was on my way back from there.”
King looked grave. “For me, it didn’t quite work out as planned,” she said.
“I was returning from a visit to a Samaritan woman named Roween.”
King grimaced.
Omar Yussef smiled at Nadia. “My darling, will you go upstairs and ask Grandma what time she wants to eat dinner?”
Nadia bit her lower lip. She knows I’m getting her out of the way and that she’s about to miss something interesting, he thought. Reluctantly the girl left the lounge.
“She’s very bright,” King said.
Omar Yussef watched through the glass wall of the lounge as Nadia blew him a kiss from the lobby and entered the elevator.
Zuheir sat forward and spoke quietly in Arabic. “Don’t you think it’s a waste for Nadia to spend so much time reading these American detective stories?”
Omar Yussef smiled awkwardly at Jamie King and reached out to grasp his son’s knee. “Whatever excites us when we are young eventually turns to ice, Zuheir,” he said. “Later we look back with contempt on our early enthusiasms.”
Zuheir pulled his knee away.
“Many of us in Palestine pour that youthful idealism into an uncompromising hatred.” Omar Yussef looked intently at Zuheir, but the young man averted his eyes toward the television. “So let Nadia enjoy this harmless pleasure of hers. Perhaps it will stay with her and not freeze inside her, as politics does.”
“And religion, too?”
“I’m not talking about you, my son. Only about Nadia.”
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