The Samaritan's Secret

by Matt Beynon Rees

  “I remember the future our leaders told us about when they returned from exile,” Omar Yussef said. “The future as it might have been.”

  “It still might be, if Allah wills it.”

  “If Allah willed it, he would have sent the Palestinians different leaders.” Omar Yussef stepped out of the gazebo and squinted into the sun over Nablus. “And Ishaq would never have met you.”

  Chapter 23

  The manager of the Grand Hotel prodded at the inner workings of his fax machine. He slammed down the cover and rubbed his ashtray-colored face with both hands.

  Omar Yussef entered the empty lobby, while Jamie King parked her Suburban. He passed the desk and pressed the elevator call button. “Peace be upon you,” he said.

  The manager dropped his hands to the pine desk and spoke absently: “Upon you, peace.”

  Omar Yussef waited for the elevator in silence. The manager breathed shallowly, his chin on his chest.

  For a hotel with almost no guests, this elevator is taking a long time, Omar Yussef thought.

  The manager rubbed his wide upper lip and seemed to notice Omar Yussef for the first time. “It’s not working, ustaz,” he said. “The elevator. It’s under maintenance, I mean.”

  Omar Yussef glanced at the staircase without relish.

  “There’s also a message for you.” The manager reached for the only envelope in the pigeonholes behind the desk.

  It was a note from Maryam. She had gone to Sami’s home with Nadia. “Thank you, darling,” Omar Yussef whispered. “You’ve saved me a climb.” He went outside and hailed a taxi.

  Sami’s place was a fourth-floor apartment on a spur of rock above the casbah. Since they had signed their marriage contract, Meisoun was permitted to visit Sami there, provided others were present. Omar Yussef assumed she had requested that Maryam come along to ensure propriety. When he entered, Meisoun greeted him warmly.

  “I thought you were reluctant to visit our home, ustaz,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you to come since you arrived in Nablus.”

  Omar Yussef glanced over Meisoun’s shoulder. Sami smiled at him through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Khamis Zeydan sat beside him on the couch, his head back, eyes closed and mouth open, dozing.

  “Miss Meisoun, I was hoping you would bring some of your sisters to stay in your new apartment,” Omar Yussef said. “You mentioned that they were interested in an intelligent husband. I believe I made a bad impression on Sheikh Bader, so I should like to win him over by taking another wife, as was the custom in the time of the Prophet.”

  Maryam came out of the kitchen. “If you’re willing to pray five times a day and to fast during Ramadan, you infidel, you can have four wives, like the Prophet himself, blessings be upon him.”

  “My darling, the dowry for Meisoun is one camel.” Omar Yussef lifted his hands to his head. “I could manage that. But how could I afford three new wives?”

  Meisoun shook her head. “Sadly, ustaz, the dowry for each of my sisters is seven camels. They’re larger women who will bear many children. That makes them more desirable than me, because of my small build. If it wasn’t for this fact, do you think my father would allow me to marry a troublemaker from the West Bank who has a dangerous job with low pay?”

  Sami grinned. “She’s not much of a catch, it’s true. She’s all I could get.”

  “They say ‘A fat woman is a blanket for winter.’ Unfortunately, you may have high heating bills, Sami.” Khamis Zeydan lifted his head and waved his hand to diffuse the smoke around the couch. “Abu Ramiz, if you want a second wife, take mine. She’ll turn you to religion. One develops a belief in Paradise, when one lives in Hell. You’ll be on your knees five times a day, imploring Allah to shut her mouth and leave you in peace.”

  “Abu Adel, you should be ashamed of yourself,” Maryam laughed.

  Omar Yussef coughed and wiped his stinging eyes. “Have you been smoking cigarettes, or setting fire to the sofa?”

  Khamis Zeydan beckoned Omar Yussef to the couch and pointed at the television. “Someone has been setting fires, for sure.”

  The local station was showing the interview Amin Kanaan had given to the foreign news crew, subtitled in Arabic. When it was over, the anchor announced that he had Kanaan on the phone and the businessman proceeded to confirm the threats he had made against Hamas, in his own language this time.

  “This is going to be bad,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Kanaan’s setting up a confrontation with Hamas. I expect he’ll send out a few gunmen to put the frighteners on them.”

  Omar Yussef shifted anxiously.

  Sami sucked on the last of his cigarette. “It’ll be pretty hard to scare those Hamas guys,” he said. “Particularly just now. They’re angry about the killing of Awwadi. He was their main military chief in Nablus and they’re ready to fight for revenge.”

  “Kanaan must be counting on the public to support him because of Sheikh Bader’s nasty claim about the old Chief,” Khamis Zeydan said. “He’ll look like he’s acting on behalf of the outraged public, but in reality he’ll be taking advantage of the sheikh’s strategic error to boost his power in Nablus with a quick fight.”

  “Why does there have to be any fighting at all?” Omar Yussef shook his head.

  Sami and Khamis Zeydan stared at him in surprise. “Go back to your classroom, ustaz Abu Ramiz, before the real world pollutes you,” the police chief said. “What kind of question is that? Why? When a Palestinian asks ‘why,’ he should spit first, because the answer is sure to be dirty.”

  “I’ve felt like spitting in disgust ever since I arrived in Nablus. I’m sure this impending fight is linked to the deaths of Ishaq and Awwadi,” Omar Yussef said. He lowered his voice so the women in the kitchen wouldn’t hear him. “Ishaq was killed after he gave those files of political dirt to Awwadi. Sheikh Bader made an announcement about the president’s death that apparently came from those files. Then Awwadi was killed and the files disappeared.” He gestured at the television. “This new thing with Kanaan is just another round in that dirty sequence.”

  “If Hamas doesn’t back off when Kanaan goes up against them,” Khamis Zeydan said, “we might have more than just two dead bodies on our hands.”

  You might have had my corpse to bury, too, if I hadn’t been lucky, Omar Yussef thought. Khamis Zeydan had warned him to keep away from the mystery of Ishaq’s death, so he had remained silent about the man who had tried to kill him in the casbah, because he hated to acknowledge that his friend was right. Now he wanted to recount the chase and feel protected by the police chief’s presence. He wished to be told once more to leave the murder case alone—so forcefully this time that he would be compelled to remain in the apartment, safe with his family and friends, until Sami’s wedding.

  “I was with Kanaan this morning,” he said.

  Khamis Zeydan turned wide, disapproving eyes toward his friend.

  “I think he’s after the secret accounts, too,” Omar Yussef said. “He made a show of willingness to help the World Bank woman track down the funds, but you know how easy it is to pull the wool over an American’s eyes.”

  The police chief opened his mouth to speak, but held back when Nadia emerged from the kitchen with a small cup of coffee for her grandfather.

  “May Allah bless your hands,” he said, as he lifted the cup by its rim.

  “Blessings,” Nadia said. She put her hands on her slim hips. “I made it bitter, the way you like it. I’m starting to wonder if that’s why you won’t take me to eat qanafi— because you refuse to taste anything sweet.”

  “Give me a chance to rest, my darling, and then I’ll take you for some qanafi,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Grandma told me the secret of why the qanafi here in Nablus is so good. They mix cheese made from the milk of local black goats with the sweet cheese of white Syrian goats, which is very expensive. In Bethlehem and everywhere else they use massproduced Israeli cheese.”

  “That’s very interesting. I didn’t
know that.” Omar Yussef grinned, weakly. He felt confused. Had Awwadi used the dirt files to blackmail Kanaan? He had said there was no file on Kanaan. Was he lying? Had Kanaan and Ishaq had some kind of lovers’ argument?

  He realized that he couldn’t sort out the different possibilities. He was too absorbed with fear about the dangers of the case. He chewed on the knuckle of his index finger. Awwadi and Kanaan and Ishaq aren’t my concern, he thought. I can’t face this wickedness on my own. It isn’t my job. I’m a schoolteacher and a grandfather. It’s time I focused on those responsibilities.

  He took a long breath to steady himself. “Nadia, you’ve piqued my interest with your fascinating information about the Syrian goats. Let’s go and see about that qanafi.” He drank down his coffee. It burned his tongue, but he wanted to leave quickly and put the whole episode of the Samaritan’s death behind him.

  Omar Yussef took his granddaughter’s hand as they stepped out into the darkening alley below Sami’s apartment. Energy and anticipation seemed to pulse along Nadia’s arm and into Omar Yussef’s body, as though she already had consumed the sugary qanafi. He feared that his trepidation about the battle between Fatah and Hamas might be transmitted to her in the same way, so he let go of her hand and put his fingers in his pockets, pretending that the dusk air had chilled them.

  “Are you making progress with the book you’re writing, my darling?” he asked.

  “I haven’t written much. Mostly I’ve been reading Mister Chandler.”

  The evening breeze swept the scent of sesame through the casbah, but the doors of the halva factories were closed. Omar Yussef grew suspicious of the shuttered shops and the silence.

  “Uncle Sami told me about the murder of the Samaritan fellow, may Allah have mercy upon him,” Nadia said.

  Her pale skin was ghostly in the twilight. Omar Yussef thought of his mother, who had looked so much like this girl. He wondered if Nadia’s youthful enthusiasms would end in the same depression that had gripped his mother after the family had fled their village during the first war with Israel. He took his hand from his pocket and held her fingers, sensing how fragile she was, fearing that he couldn’t protect her from the awful world into which she had been born.

  “Uncle Sami says you haven’t told him everything you know about the murder of the Samaritan. He says good detectives always keep something for themselves, even from the people who’re helping them.” Nadia grinned mischievously. “You can tell me, though.”

  “But you’ll write all my secrets in your book.”

  Nadia ran her fingers along her tight lips and shook her head.

  Omar Yussef rested his hand on her shoulder. “The poor Samaritan’s murder is linked to information about dirty things done by important people—information that could be used to blackmail them.” He glanced down an alley and recognized it as the entrance to the baths where Awwadi had been killed. He picked up his pace.

  Nadia nodded gravely. “To put the bite on them.”

  “Bite them?”

  “‘Put the bite on them.’ It’s what Mister Chandler writes when he means someone blackmailed someone else.”

  “Let’s put the bite on some qanafi. The most famous place to eat it is around this next corner.”

  The broad alley where Aksa Sweets sold its celebrated dessert was empty. On the coppery green shutters of the store, an old poster commemorating the death of a gunman in a fight with Israeli soldiers flapped in the breeze.

  “Grandpa, why is everything closed?”

  Omar Yussef remembered what Khamis Zeydan had said about spitting before asking why. He swallowed hard, but he had no spit. “I’ve been told that the very best qanafi is actually not made in the casbah these days,” he said. “There’re some good restaurants just south of the old town. Let’s go there for our dessert, my darling.”

  Nadia’s footsteps became quiet and cautious. “Grandpa, maybe we should turn back. I know you said you’d walk through bullets to get me some qanafi today, but I hope you didn’t really mean it. It seems like something bad is about to happen.”

  “The author of The Curse of the Casbah can’t be turned back so easily, can she? Aren’t you hungry any more?” Omar Yussef said.

  “I don’t want to eat qanafi because I’m hungry. Thanks to Grandma, I’m never short of food. I want to try the qanafi because they make it better in Nablus than back home in Bethlehem. But we don’t have to get it right now.”

  “We’ll be all right,” he said. He let go of Nadia’s hand, so she wouldn’t feel the sweat in his palm.

  Omar and Nadia emerged from the casbah into a wide square that was usually noisy with belligerent yellow taxis. It was empty now, except for three dozen figures in camouflage fatigues with Kalashnikovs slung across their chests. The men clustered around a few jeeps at the base of a twentyfoot statue of a coffeepot, a symbol of the town’s hospitality. Omar Yussef realized that the stores had closed because these gunmen were assembling to enter the casbah.

  The men smoked intensely and shifted from foot to foot, like athletes before a race. This is what Khamis Zeydan predicted, Omar Yussef thought. And I’ve walked into the middle of it with my favorite grandchild.

  A tall man in camouflage pants and a black leather jacket climbed onto the back of one of the jeeps. He lifted his arms to signal silence. “Brothers, you heard the slanders against our chief and our symbol, the Old Man,” he called out. “Now it’s time to cut out the deceitful tongues and punish the liars. Allah is most great.”

  The gunmen started for the casbah. Omar Yussef stared at the tall man on the jeep—he knew him from somewhere.

  Nadia tugged on his sleeve. “I’m not hungry,” she said. Her face looked whiter than ever and Omar Yussef cursed himself for not turning back earlier.

  He put his arm across her shoulder to hurry from the square, just as the man on the jeep noticed him. When the gunman’s hard gaze turned toward him, Omar Yussef recognized Halim Mareh, whose hostile glare he had seen directed at Nouri Awwadi outside the spice store in the casbah. Mareh bared his teeth and jumped from his jeep, jogging toward Omar Yussef.

  Mareh would know these streets well. Omar Yussef couldn’t outpace him, but he had to lose him somehow. As he passed Aksa Sweets, the martyrdom poster seemed to flap more urgently in the wind. Omar Yussef’s breath was quick. He squeezed Nadia’s bony shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, my darling,” he said. “I’ve been walking these alleys for days. I know my way around. I’ll get you home without any trouble.”

  Nadia’s eyes flickered up and down the alley. The gunmen’s heavy boots echoed through the casbah.

  They’ll head for the Touqan Palace at the center of the casbah, Omar Yussef thought, to trap the Hamas people who are probably gathered there with Awwadi’s father for his battle against Mareh’s family. “Let’s go this way, Nadia,” he said. He’d circle around to the north and come to Sami’s apartment from that direction.

  He pulled his granddaughter along the main commercial alley, past the old tombs where he had hidden from the man who had tried to kill him and through the square where Nouri Awwadi had ridden his white horse to marriage. He cut uphill and plunged along a covered way so dark that he couldn’t see Nadia, though he held her hand. His pulse drummed in his ears when he heard the first shots. He had been correct: the gunmen were south of him, approaching the Touqan Palace.

  He glimpsed a slice of light to his right, alive with a cloud of midges. He stepped toward the glow and stumbled over a bottle. It rolled away noisily on the flagstones. He staggered, off balance, and bent double in the darkness. He reached for the wall to right himself and felt the cool stone against his hands. Both hands. Nadia, he thought. I let go of her when I slipped.

  He called her name, but his voice fell dead and echoless in the dark alley, and there was no answer.

  Heavy boots came closer, running in a group. Someone shouted something that Omar Yussef couldn’t make out, a harsh call that could have been a command to a subo
rdinate or a warning for an enemy to surrender.

  Omar Yussef retreated into the darkness. When he had dodged to the right, it had been a wrong turn, taking him toward the gunmen and the Touqan Palace. Nadia must have kept going straight ahead, after he let go of her hand. His mouth filled with midges. He tried to spit them out, but his tongue was dry. He groped through the darkness, panting and coughing.

  Nadia called to him. She seemed a long way off. He responded with a whisper, in case the gunmen should hear him, and tried to pick up his pace. He came up a short flight of stairs and into a small courtyard. It was empty.

  “No, not Nadia,” he said. “Not Nadia.” He put his hand on his forehead.

  He heard a light footstep and turned. Nadia peered out from a deep stone doorway. She recognized Omar Yussef as he stepped out of the dark stairwell and ran toward him. He was surprised that her thin arms could hold him so tightly.

  “This isn’t a book, Grandpa,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “It’s real.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s good research for The Curse of the Casbah, my darling,” he said, stroking her long black hair.

  She shook her head and nuzzled against his sweating neck. Then he felt her shoulders grow tense. He followed her eyes and saw Halim Mareh framed by a low arch, his Kalashnikov across his chest.

  The gunman’s lazy, blank eyes chilled Omar Yussef. He stepped toward Mareh, gently pushing Nadia toward the edge of the courtyard.

  “I didn’t read any of those files,” he said.

  Mareh tipped his head to the left and was quiet.

  “The files in Awwadi’s storeroom. When I went to find them, they were gone.”

  Mareh shrugged.

  “I mean, if someone wants to silence me so that I don’t reveal the contents of those files, it’s unnecessary. I know nothing.”

  The gunman licked his lips. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “Let me take my granddaughter home and I’ll be happy to come to see you later. We can talk about this.”

  “We must thank Allah, because that really puts my mind at rest,” said Mareh, mocking and scornful. He raised his weapon. “But you’ll understand that I need to put you to rest, too.”