The Collaborator of Bethlehem

by Matt Rees

  “Omar, you know what I mean.”

  Maryam wagged her finger at him, jokingly. Lines stroked downward from her eyes and mouth, giving her face a sad cast, even as she smiled. She wore her hair in a soft wave, parted at the side and falling a few inches below her ears. She dyed it a stark raven color and always dressed in comfortable black clothing. As she aged, her skin had turned a deep gray, so that she sometimes stood out in a room like a single figure from an old movie inadvertently omitted from the colorization process.

  The feelings of a man for his wife are very complex, Omar Yussef thought. It’s a shame our women can’t acknowledge that their relationships to their men are not so simple, either. It would be a better thing.

  Omar Yussef needed the companionship he found with Maryam. She was born at the same time as he was, but in the north of Palestine, in Nazareth. Her family fled first to Jenin and then to Bethlehem. He had met her when they shared a taxi south from Jenin, where she still had relatives. He was beginning the final stage of his journey home from university in Damascus. They were bound together at first by their political views, their Arab nationalism. Defiantly, Maryam never covered her head as Muslim women do, though motherhood and the responsibility of the home eventually made her politics more simplistic, more average. She gave birth to three sons. Ramiz lived in the apartment downstairs, but the other two had emigrated, to the United States and to Britain. Instead of the politics of her people, Maryam fretted now about when she might see her faraway boys, a concern that could have applied to any mother anywhere in the world. Perhaps it isn’t Maryam who’s become less smart. Maybe everyone was deeper back in my student days, when they didn’t see the threat of a Zionist conspiracy everywhere, Omar Yussef thought. It quietly infuriated him to hear Maryam talk about politics these days, but at least she never spoke of the dead as martyrs.

  In any case, Omar Yussef wanted to talk to his son about George Saba and the thoughts about the case that had come to him after his visit to Dima Abdel Rahman. Ramiz ran a mobile phone business and his customers kept him informed about new developments in the town. Omar Yussef hoped his son might know something that would clear George’s name.

  “I can’t help feeling that George is being set up somehow,” he said. “I just don’t believe that he would collaborate with the Israelis.”

  “People will do very desperate things,” Ramiz said. “George’s business was selling antiques to Israelis on the bypass road. He can’t do that any more, because there’s a siege here, and his Israeli customers are afraid to come. So his business is suffering. Maybe he got desperate. Maybe the Shin Bet got to him and told him they could solve all his problems if he did something for them.”

  “It’s because he’s a Christian that he has been accused. That’s all. It isn’t because he actually collaborated.”

  “Maybe it’s because he’s a Christian that he’s willing to help the other side.”

  Omar Yussef was shocked. “I remind you that you were educated by the Frères. You studied at the very same Christian school as George Saba, the Christian school where I used to teach.”

  “Dad, I’m just saying that people will do things under circumstances like these that we would never expect from them in normal times.”

  “Like accusing all Christians of being traitors?” Omar Yussef leaned forward angrily.

  “That isn’t what I meant. But, look, Christians are already on the outside of our society, these days. Maybe they feel they owe less loyalty than a Muslim does.”

  Omar Yussef put down the paring knife and ate some of the apple. “I saw some of your loyal Muslims firing guns into the air at the mourning tent for Louai Abdel Rahman this afternoon.”

  “I gave that a miss, because I went to the funeral earlier this morning,” Ramiz said. “It was the usual show from the gunmen then. So they turned up at the mourning tent, too?”

  “Yes. But something is strange about what happened at the Abdel Rahman’s place,” Omar Yussef said. He looked around him to be sure the children were out of the room. “You remember that Dima is a former pupil of mine. She told me that she heard Louai talking to someone outside the house just before he was shot. And she saw a red spot of light that seemed to be trying to settle on him.”

  “He spoke to someone?”

  “Yes. He said, ‘Oh, it’s you, Abu Walid.’”

  Ramiz sucked on a segment of orange, slowly. “Dad, let me say two things. First, when the Israelis use collaborators, they get the collaborators to go really close in, just to be completely sure that they’ve got the right man. When the collaborator gives a signal, they know the identification is made and they hit their target.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Uncle Khamis told me when I visited him at the police station. He was reading an intelligence report on one of the Israeli assassinations in Gaza.”

  “So Abu Walid is the name of the collaborator? The one the Israelis needed to lead them to Louai?”

  “Yes, that sounds like it. Someone who knew Louai would have to make the identification, obviously. He would need to be close enough to recognize Louai, even in the dark.”

  “Well, George Saba wouldn’t recognize Louai. And George is Abu Dahoud, not Abu Walid. So there’s the proof of his innocence.” Omar Yussef put down his food and threw his hands wide in excitement.

  Ramiz hesitated. “That brings me to my second point. Dad, please don’t get involved in this. If you try to tell someone in the security forces about this, you might find they’re working for the Israelis. They could silence you because you threaten to expose one of their agents. Also, the people who arrested George Saba wouldn’t have just picked him up without reason. This was a good excuse to even a score with someone who must have crossed them. That’s how it works these days.”

  Omar Yussef thought of the night he had watched George Saba rush into the darkness toward the gunmen firing from his house. Someone who must have crossed them. He cursed himself for walking homeward down the hill, instead of helping George. Perhaps George ran into men that night whose ghastly revenge was now under way.

  Maryam put her hand on Omar Yussef’s arm. “Don’t do anything risky. You always criticize me for saying how bad these swine are. But the Israelis could come right in here and take you away, if they think you’re trying to expose one of their collaborators.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” Omar Yussef said, irritated. “The Israelis aren’t coming for me.”

  “Don’t even think about doing anything. Please, Dad,” Ramiz said.

  Omar Yussef was about to reply, but Ramiz raised his eyebrows and gestured with his head toward the kitchen door. Nadia was leaning against the doorframe, looking concerned. She held her index and middle fingers in her mouth, nervously. Sara came past the girl from the kitchen, carrying the tea. Omar Yussef wondered if Nadia had listened for long. He cursed the weakness he had shown. Because he thought he could save George Saba and protect the legacy of his teaching, he risked bringing his family into contact with the dirty side of the intifada. If he wanted a legacy, it was standing in the doorway, looking frightened, and it was he who scared it. He was a schoolteacher. He was not a detective. He could feel the bullet casing in his jacket pocket even now. It felt like a ton of molten metal. He wondered how soon he might get rid of it.

  He held up a slice of apple. Nadia came forward with a half smile and reached for it. As she did so, her eyes caught something in the frosted glass of the front door. Omar Yussef turned to follow her gaze. There was someone there, silhouetted by the streetlamp and wearing a military beret. He felt a flash of fright and dropped the apple, before Nadia could take it.

  The figure reached out and knocked on the door.

  Chapter 6

  Keeping his eyes on the door, Omar Yussef rose slowly from his seat. He felt a little nauseous. The silhouette outside rocked from left to right, as though it were trying to keep warm in the night chill. It knocked again. Maryam stood. She gave her husband a look o
f concern before she went to the door and opened it.

  “Ah, Abu Adel,” Maryam said, warmly. “Come in, come in.”

  Omar Yussef felt his legs weaken with relief. He rested his hands on the table for support. He didn’t have the constitution for a dangerous life.

  The man at the door gave a bluff laugh. “I just stopped in to say, All the year, may you be well.”

  The family replied with other traditional Ramadan formulas. “May Allah accept from us and from you,” Omar Yussef said.

  Nadia reached around her grandfather and took another slice of apple. She smiled at him as she bit into it, and the grin returned to him a little of his strength. He went down to the other end of the table to greet Khamis Zeydan.

  “Consider yourself with your family and at home,” Omar Yussef said, in welcome.

  Khamis Zeydan acknowledged the greeting and gave his friend five kisses on his cheeks. His face was scratchy with gray unshaven bristles. His eyes showed crafty amusement, relaxing from the accustomed state of high alert Omar Yussef noticed in them each time he ran into his friend about town. From the playful glint in those eyes, he figured Khamis Zeydan was already into the sauce pretty far tonight.

  The Bethlehem police chief removed the blue beret that, in silhouette, had frightened Omar Yussef and smoothed his white hair, cut short and combed forward. He folded the hat and wedged it under his epaulette, which bore a white eagle, on the shoulder of his dark blue shirt.

  Khamis Zeydan was the same age as Omar Yussef. They had known each other since their time as students in Damascus. In those days, they had been opponents in the bad-tempered politics of the university. Khamis Zeydan was an early devotee of Palestinian nationalism. He scorned Omar Yussef’s faith that the Arabs would unite and liberate Palestine. Well, he was right about that. In Damascus, Omar Yussef and Khamis Zey-dan had grown close, not over politics but over whisky. The two did their drinking and womanizing together, though Khamis Zeydan, taller and blessed with blue eyes as rich as lapis, was more successful with girls. Khamis Zeydan followed the PLO around the Mediterranean from Jordan to Syria, to Lebanon and Tunis. He lost touch with Omar Yussef because of the communication restrictions of the Israelis, and he lost his left hand to a grenade in Beirut. When he came to Bethlehem as chief of police their friendship was renewed.

  Omar Yussef had been delighted by his friend’s coming. Khamis Zeydan seemed to have changed so little, at first. But he soon saw that his friend the Police Brigadier Khamis Zeydan was dreadfully disillusioned and, as a result, often self-destructively drunk. Sometimes, when Omar Yussef stopped in at his office in the new police station on the corner of Manger Square, the reek of scotch in the warm room had turned the air stale and urinous.

  When Khamis Zeydan came through the front door at the end of the iftar, the aura of alcohol about him was thick enough that Omar Yussef wondered if his friend would treat the children to one of his angry, foul-mouthed tirades about the government and his corrupt police colleagues. The amusement in the policeman’s eyes suggested he wasn’t far enough into his drunk to have uncovered his rage, but Omar Yussef didn’t want to take the chance. With his hand on his friend’s firm shoulder, he guided Khamis Zeydan into the salon.

  The two settled into the heavy gold-embroidered armchairs. Maryam looked in through the door. “Abu Adel, what would you like? Can I bring you some sweets?” she said, smiling at Khamis Zeydan.

  “Maryam, our friend is diabetic,” Omar Yussef said. “Bring him a qahweh sa’ada, and the same for me.” He turned to Khamis Zeydan and shook his finger. “I won’t let her corrupt you.”

  “I am corrupt to the core,” Khamis Zeydan said, laughing. “Umm Ramiz, I will eat whatever you set before me. I’m sure it will be the tastiest food with which a man may break his fast.”

  “You haven’t eaten since the fast?” Maryam was shocked. “Come to the table. There’s plenty of ma’alubeh left. You have to eat.” She turned to Omar Yussef and added, firmly: “Particularly if you are diabetic.”

  “No, I had something with the guys up at the station just now, thank you.” There was embarrassment in Zeydan’s voice. Omar Yussef understood that his friend needed no food so long as his hip-flask was full.

  The Brigadier looked undernourished, thin. His face was almost as white as his hair, so that one might not notice the neat moustache against the puffy paleness of his cheeks, if it weren’t for the streak of nicotine that stained it below the nostrils. He lit a cigarette with his good hand. His left hand, a delicate prosthesis, rested on the arm of the chair, inside the tight shiny black leather glove that he kept over it at all times. Omar Yussef had once called on his friend at home in the morning and surprised him before he had dressed. He saw then that the false hand was made of a strangely washed-out green plastic, as though it were a bar of medicated soap or the flimsy limb of an alien creature. If he hadn’t seen the ugly evidence of his friend’s debilitation, Omar Yussef often thought, the glove would seem somehow sinister on a policeman, as though it were there to protect Khamis Zeydan’s knuckles when he beat a suspect. Instead, it struck him that the glove undercut the toughness his friend needed to do his job, a reminder that he was less than a man of full power. Sometimes when Khamis Zeydan was very drunk, he would stare at the false hand, full of hate. When sober, he was self-conscious and would place the hand unobtrusively in his lap. So with the prosthesis now unregarded in its glove on the armrest, Omar Yussef figured Khamis Zeydan must be only half drunk.

  Maryam brought the coffees and a plate of baklava for the guest.

  “I didn’t make it sa’ada for you, Abu Adel. I know you prefer it masbuta, so here it is, with a little sugar, just right.” She glanced at Omar Yussef, as though he had been rude to bring up Khamis Zeydan’s diabetes.

  “Maryam is very generous. She will also pay for your medical fees when the diabetes gets worse,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Maryam’s baklava is the best medicine,” Khamis Zeydan replied.

  “I prescribe a long course of treatment,” Maryam said, with a gracious lowering of her head.

  “Thank you, Doctor Maryam. Now please, I have to talk with our friend about something very important,” said Omar Yussef.

  Maryam stared at him. She knows I intend to discuss George’s case, Omar Yussef thought. Khamis Zeydan was a policeman as well as a friend. Omar Yussef was about to make his concerns somehow official and his wife stood, stumped, unsure how to stop him now that the Brigadier was in the room.

  “Abu Adel,” she said, “how are your wife and children in Amman?”

  That’s all she can come up with? Omar Yussef was not impressed.

  “They’re doing all right, thank you.”

  “Maryam.” Omar Yussef glanced at the door.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” she said. “But Abu Adel, don’t let my husband do anything foolish.”

  “These days, I believe it is Abu Ramiz who prevents me from foolishness,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  Maryam closed the door.

  Khamis Zeydan held out his good hand, palm upwards. “What was that about?”

  “She thinks I don’t want to be a schoolteacher any more.”

  “Did that bastard American persuade you to retire?”

  “No, it’s worse than that. She thinks I’d rather be a detective.”

  “You’d make a very good detective. No one would ever be scared of you. They’d trust you, because you’re like the wise, honest uncle everyone wishes they had.”

  “Then why don’t you hire me?”

  “There’s no place for honesty in our police force.”

  Khamis Zeydan nodded conspiratorially toward the sideboard. Omar Yussef stood and took out a bottle of Johhny Walker Black Label. He poured a big tumbler for Khamis Zey-dan and put the bottle away. He handed the tumbler to his friend, who immediately took a stinging gulp and cleared his throat, clamorously. Omar Yussef sat and drank his coffee.

  “I want to talk to you about George Saba,” he said.
>
  Khamis Zeydan paused with the glass already on its way to his lips for a second slug. He looked hard at Omar Yussef. “Are you going to tell me he’s innocent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you don’t need to be a detective to know that.”

  “You know?”

  “Come on, he’s a harmless guy.”

  “But he’s in your jail.”

  “Preventive Security brought him in. He’s in my jail, but he’s not my prisoner.”

  “How can you keep an innocent man in jail?”

  “The jail is in Bethlehem, Palestine. It’s not in Copenhagen or Amsterdam. I hope that answers your question.”

  “There’s something else. Look at this.” Omar Yussef took the bullet casing from his pocket and handed it to Khamis Zey-dan. The policeman examined it for a moment. His pale face became stern.

  “Where did you get this?” Khamis Zeydan asked.

  “What type of gun does that come from?”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Answer me first.”

  “You don’t want to know the answer. Neither do I, although unfortunately I already do.”

  Omar Yussef sat quietly. They stared each other down.

  Khamis Zeydan broke the silence first. “It’s the casing from a 7.62 millimeter bullet. Now where did you get it?”

  “What kind of gun would fire a bullet like that?”

  “A heavy machine gun.”

  “A heavy machine gun like Hussein Tamari uses?”

  “Yes, the kind Hussein Tamari uses,” Khamis Zeydan said, irritably. “It’s called a MAG.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Most of the guns in this town are Kalashnikovs. They fire 7.62 caliber bullets, too. But Kalashnikov bullets are only 39 millimeters long. This one was 51 millimeters long, before it was fired. That’s the ammo for a MAG.” Khamis Zeydan glared at Omar Yussef. The playfulness was gone from his eyes. He looked very sober.

  “Why are you staring at me so sternly?” Omar Yussef said. “Look, tell me about Tamari. All I know is what circulates by gossip about town.”