The Collaborator of Bethlehem

by Matt Beynon Rees

  As Omar Yussef approached Manger Square, women filled the streets of the souk, buying the food with which they would prepare the evening iftar. The village women sat in the shade at the side of the street with plastic baskets of coriander and tomatoes. Their breasts were massive and low, their black robes embroidered on the front with scarlet in the patterns specific to the Bethlehem area, and their faces were mauled by the sun and the dust so that their cheeks hung like the jowls of a bulldog. This was the tradition, the authenticity that Omar Yussef loved about his town. Yet the women sat in the dirt, desperate for a little shade while they traded for a few shekels. Afterwards they would bypass the checkpoints, crossing the stony hillside to their villages. Prosperity was reserved for those who scorned all tradition and toil. For Hussein Tamari and his men, this town was no different from the empty wastes of the desert they came from. It was a place that belonged to the one who would use the greatest force, and if there was an oasis within it, then it was they and no one else to whom access would be given.

  Omar Yussef crossed Manger Square. As he passed Khamis Zeydan’s police station, a woman went by him with a baby. He remembered then that Maryam had told him Khaled Shukri had become a father. No wonder he was so cheerful. Omar Yussef wondered why his former pupil hadn’t mentioned the birth. Maryam had told him about it more than a month ago, so perhaps Shukri no longer considered it news. Omar Yussef descended the steps at the side of the Church of the Nativity, resting his hand on the mottled, brown stones of the basilica wall as he did so because the steep flight made him dizzy, and went down the hill. He must stop in and see Khaled Shukri to make it clear that he hadn’t forgotten about the birth. No doubt he would find a young man, doused in thin vomit, still too happy with the new arrival to wonder how he would provide for it in a destroyed town that no longer needed an architect.

  Omar Yussef saw the row of expensive cars parked on the roadside. They belonged to the Martyrs Brigades. He approached the building next to the cars.

  It occurred to him that, with his first baby, Khaled Shukri would still be at the stage of laughing each time his child vomited. A baby is happy after it spews up, smiling with a sense of relief. Perhaps that ought to be our natural, unconstrained reaction to the world around us, Omar Yussef thought. We learn to restrain ourselves, because we are taught that there is something disgusting about vomit. Imagine all the bile I should have heaved out that instead sat inside me, entering my bloodstream, carried to my brain and through my heart. It’s becoming too much for my system. I will have to heave, to cleanse myself of all the hate and frustration and disgust. He thought of Shukri’s baby once more. It would vomit and scream. Both were genuine, wild, real. Yes, he thought, it’s time for me to scream.

  Omar Yussef stepped into the stairwell. Two gunmen looked toward him from the landing. The sign on the wall, which bore an official crest with a standing eagle and a national flag, said that this was the office of a government ministry. Like everyone else in Bethlehem, Omar Yussef knew that this was where the Martyrs Brigades spent their lazy days.

  “Who are you?” said the older of the two guards, who was in his thirties, lifting his Kalashnikov and slinging it over his shoulder.

  “I’m here to see Abu Walid.”

  The younger gunman leaned against the banister. He regarded Omar Yussef sullenly. Omar Yussef recognized him as the boy who had tried to prevent him from parking his car outside George Saba’s house the previous morning.

  “Oh, you’re the detective,” the young man said. “Are you here to investigate Abu Walid?”

  Omar Yussef wondered if the gunman had checked up on him and discovered that he was only a schoolteacher. He couldn’t tell if the youth’s tone had a sarcasm aimed directly at him, or if he was merely insolent to everyone.

  “Well, I’m not here to check the records of the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation,” Omar Yussef said, gesturing to the sign on the wall. He mounted the steps.

  The other gunman, who seemed disconcerted by the rudeness of his colleague toward an older man, stopped Omar Yussef politely. “Let me see your papers, uncle.”

  Omar Yussef made his choking, spitting laugh. “Is this an Israeli checkpoint? Abu Walid will recognize me.”

  The gunman stepped aside and Omar Yussef entered what had been the foyer of the government office. There were a dozen men on a series of low, black sofas. They sprawled uncomfortably, as only men who spent most of their nights awake would do at one in the afternoon. It was cold in the unheated room and the men wore their olive parkas and camouflage jackets zipped up. Their weapons lay on the shiny coffee tables and on the floor next to the couches. The air smelled of cigarettes, a scent carried constantly in the men’s clothing.

  Omar Yussef noticed Hussein Tamari in the corner. He leaned on the arm of a sofa, talking quietly to Jihad Awdeh. The gray Astrakhan hat obscured Awdeh’s face. He was looking at his hands, rubbing his fingernails against his knuckles.

  As Omar Yussef picked his way past the extended legs of snoozing gunmen, careful not to step on their rifles, Hussein Tamari looked up.

  “Greetings, uncle,” he said.

  “Double greetings,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Omar Yussef, the history teacher at the UNRWA Girls School and the father of Ramiz Sirhan, who had a visit from you today at his cellular telephone store.”

  Hussein Tamari’s eyebrows rose. His broad, tanned cheeks rolled, as he dropped his jaw. He sat upright and rubbed the narrow crown of his head in surprise.

  Omar Yussef noticed Hussein Tamari’s MAG machine gun. It lay beside the sofa. It had been hidden by Tamari’s slouching torso, until Omar Yussef’s arrival made him sit up. His tongue was dry, but he wouldn’t let it stop him from talking.

  “I came to see you because I want you to know that I am available any time you have anything to say. You don’t need to go to my son. You can come to me at home or at the school.”

  The Astrakhan hat lifted. Unlike Hussein Tamari, Jihad Awdeh was not taken aback by Omar Yussef’s appearance in the room. “At the school? I thought you retired.”

  Damn Steadman, Omar Yussef thought. “The information about my retirement is as flawed as the story you told my son today.”

  Hussein Tamari put a hand on Jihad Awdeh’s shoulder and addressed Omar Yussef. “Don’t be angry, my brother. We only wanted to be sure that everyone understood the situation. Please sit, Abu Ramiz. I wish I could offer you coffee, but in view of the holy month . . . I hope you will sit and talk in friendship.” He stood and held out his hand.

  This man surely wants me dead, but he can’t attack me in front of all these people, even if they are his gang, Omar Yussef thought. It would leak out and he would find himself at war with all my relatives among the Sirhans. How real is this handshake, though? What does it mean? Is it really only a sign of hospitality, a formal requirement upon him to welcome a man who has come into his domain, even if he considers him an enemy? Or is he somehow drawing me onto his side? Omar Yussef decided he had defused the immediate threat by his direct approach to Tamari. It had been easier than he expected.

  Then it occurred to him that this could be the hand that killed Dima Abdel Rahman. There might be traces of her skin under those dirty fingernails where Hussein Tamari had scratched at her buttocks. But he couldn’t decline to shake that hand without making things worse than they had been before he entered Tamari’s headquarters. He took Tamari’s hand. It was thick and the skin was gritty with dirt, but Tamari’s grasp was mild. It carried no unusual strength, no attempt to intimidate. He asked Omar Yussef to sit beside him on the couch and kept hold of his hand as he questioned him about the effect of the curfews on the school.

  As they talked, Omar Yussef saw that Jihad Awdeh watched him keenly. Awdeh slouched low on his sofa, his hips balanced at the front edge and his shoulders nestled deep and flat in the back cushion. He rested his elbow on the arm of the sofa and held his head with his hand, sp
reading his fingers into the curls of the Astrakhan hat so that his face could barely be seen.

  Omar Yussef almost forgot the tension with which he had entered the room. He found it hard to maintain his anger toward Hussein Tamari. The man was stupid and brutal, but he behaved with a traditional politeness that appealed to Omar Yussef. It was as though Omar Yussef came to Tamari’s tent in a previous era, emerging from the desert and begging the hospitality that tribes commanded of each other in emulation of the Prophet’s generosity to strangers.

  Tamari repeated the report that Omar Yussef had retired. With an ingratiating smile, he said he hoped it wasn’t so, because Palestine needed to educate its children well and good teachers were in short supply.

  “It’s true that I told the American director I might retire, but I haven’t made a decision,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Why did you tell him that?” Jihad Awdeh’s voice was low. He spoke without removing his hand from his face, so that the words seemed to come from the dark, hard eyes that looked out from between his fingers.

  Omar Yussef realized that he could think of no good excuse for his talk of retirement. He had been carried away by the formal warmth of Hussein Tamari. Certainly he couldn’t say that it was because he wanted time to clear George Saba of the charge of collaboration in murder. “It’s not a matter of any importance,” he said. “Once you have been a teacher as long as I have, you will teach until you die.”

  “In that case, if you are planning retirement from teaching, perhaps that means you are planning to die,” Jihad Awdeh said.

  Hussein Tamari looked at Awdeh quickly.

  “I only meant that once you begin to teach, you will always be a teacher,” Omar Yussef said. He sharpened his voice. “Just as once you have killed, you will always be a killer.”

  Jihad Awdeh took the hand away from his face. He smiled, but his eyes were lidded. “You mean that they are both ways of life, teaching and killing? Things that we do for money?”

  “Do you kill for money?” Omar Yussef said.

  He saw Hussein Tamari sit forward as if to interrupt, but Jihad Awdeh seemed to relish the opportunity to flourish his own nastiness. “I kill for money when it’s strictly a matter of business between strangers.” Awdeh lifted himself out of his slouch and reached a finger toward Omar Yussef. “But you’re my brother, so I’d have to kill you free of charge.”

  Hussein Tamari turned aside Jihad Awdeh’s finger. He gave Awdeh a glance of annoyance.

  Omar Yussef realized that he couldn’t allow Awdeh to intimidate him. If they saw his weakness, they would soon come after him, in spite of the necessarily pleasant reception tradition demanded Hussein Tamari give him now. He had to punch back.

  “I want you to see to it that George Saba is freed,” Omar Yussef said. “I believe you know that he is not a collaborator. He is a friend of mine and I have come to you to ask that you free him.”

  “That’s a matter for the courts,” Hussein Tamari said.

  “Let’s be realistic, Abu Walid,” Omar Yussef said. “George Saba confronted you and Jihad Awdeh on his roof. Two days later he was arrested. There is a connection that I prefer not to spell out. I ask only that you use the same influence with which you put him in jail to get him out of there.”

  Omar Yussef was surprised that Hussein Tamari didn’t respond, nor did he seem upset at the accusation. Perhaps he considered framing George Saba a minor infraction compared to his other activities and thought it was nothing to get angry about.

  “How could you know that he’s not a collaborator, unless you were working with the Israelis?” Awdeh said.

  “How is it possible that you discovered he is an Israeli collaborator, unless you are working for the Israelis?” Omar Yussef said. He felt the strength that he had sensed in himself earlier when he had sat with Ramiz growing, and he pressed his hands together. “An innocent man’s life is at stake. Don’t waste my time with your cheap accusations.”

  “No one’s time will be wasted any longer,” Jihad Awdeh said. “In fact, it’ll all be sorted out tonight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The trial of your friend George Saba is set for tonight at eleven o’clock.”

  “When was this scheduled?”

  “You’d have to ask the judge. Apparently, he became interested in moving quickly.”

  Hussein Tamari rested his hand on Omar Yussef’s arm, and this time he gripped it tightly, with command. “You see that this matter is out of my hands.”

  Omar Yussef rose. What use was the strength he had felt? He was powerless in the face of the world. Even if he believed he carried some inner, moral toughness, it was no use to his friend. As he walked to the door, he felt the gunmen’s eyes burning the flesh on his back.

  Chapter 15

  Attorney Marwan Natsha decorated the entryway to his office with gaudily framed Koranic calligraphy and copies of his diplomas. Omar Yussef stopped to cast his eye over them, welcoming the opportunity to catch his breath after three flights of stairs. The degrees were in thick, black Gothic script. They were from Hebron University and issued in the mid-eighties. The segments from the Koran were in slashy kufic characters, curling the names of the Prophet and his followers around the edges, as lush as the stitching on an embroidered cushion. The extracts from the Muslim holy book suggested to Omar Yussef that the man might be religious, perhaps even a supporter of Hamas. It gave him some hope. Omar Yussef was no believer, but he had observed that, among his compatriots, the more a man followed the way of Allah, the less likely he was to accede in the corruption of the law. Maybe this lawyer would put up a good defense for George.

  The quiet anteroom was dark and cold as twilight came on. Omar Yussef flicked the light switch. There were more framed pages from the Koran and a tan leather couch so worn that it looked as though someone had passed a bad night’s sleep on it in sandpaper pajamas. A desk lamp cast a dim glow from within the back office against a frosted glass door. Omar Yussef opened the door.

  A long, thin man looked up from a file of papers through a cloud of cigarette smoke. There was a guilty cast to his gray face. The religious calligraphy was decorative and nothing more, Omar Yussef realized. Hamas supporters didn’t smoke Rothmans during Ramadan. Omar Yussef left the frosted door open to create a fresh draft in the blue air, so that he might breathe a little.

  Marwan Natsha lifted himself from his chair. He moved like a man with a hangover dragging himself out of bed. He gestured questioningly with his cigarette. Omar Yussef waved that it didn’t offend him. There was relief in the attorney’s sad, wet eyes. He flopped back into his seat and pushed the papers away from him across his desk with a bony hand.

  “I am Omar Yussef. I am a friend of George Saba.”

  Marwan Natsha dropped his thin shoulders forward. His slack chin rested on the knot of his gray tie, and his melancholy face became even more desolate.

  “I understand you are to defend George at the hearing tonight. I have information that will help you.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  Omar Yussef paused.

  Marwan Natsha looked up and sighed. His voice sounded like it ached in his throat, as your legs might on the day after a long walk. “Uncle, you don’t understand.”

  “What is there to understand? This is a capital trial. I want to save George Saba.”

  “Nothing can save him, sir.”

  Omar Yussef pulled his chair closer to Marwan Natsha’s desk. The lawyer edged back into his chair as though he were threatened by the advance of the man across the cherrywood from him.

  “I have known George since he was a boy. I was with him a few nights ago when he went to his house to confront some Martyrs Brigades people. He forced them away from his home, but they threatened to return. When they came back, it was to make allegations of collaboration. This whole case is a matter of revenge on their part.”

  There was no sign in Marwan Natsha’s gray face that he found anything encouraging in what Omar Yussef said
. If anything, he seemed deeply discomfited.

  “I also discovered information at the site of Louai Abdel Rahman’s murder that convinces me Hussein Tamari took part in that killing. I believe he returned later to kill Louai’s wife, because he discovered that she gave me information about his role in the shooting. Tamari is also the man who has framed George Saba.” Omar Yussef waited for Marwan Natsha to ask a question. “Are you not interested? We don’t have very long.”

  “We have until eleven tonight.”

  “That’s only six hours.”

  “Six hours. Six days. It makes no difference. I’m afraid he’s going to be found guilty.”

  Omar Yussef was angry. “I found a bullet from Hussein Tamari’s gun at the place where Louai was killed.”

  Marwan Natsha lit another Rothman with a shaky hand and was silent.

  “That means Tamari was there,” Omar Yussef said.

  “But it doesn’t mean he shot Louai Abdel Rahman.” Mar-wan Natsha curved his spine slowly forward over the desk as though testing each vertebrae and picked a photocopied sheet of paper from the file. “This is the ballistics report on Louai Abdel Rahman’s death. The two bullets that killed him were from some kind of American sniper rifle the Israelis use. It’s called an M24, apparently. I don’t really know much about it, but you can read the report if you like. It’s rather technical. In any case, I don’t think that’s the kind of gun Tamari has.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Well, that’s that, then.”

  “No, it isn’t. What motive did George have to collaborate in the death of Louai Abdel Rahman? None. But Tamari had a motive. He wanted to get Louai out of the way so that the family would no longer have anyone among the resistance factions to protect them. As soon as Louai was killed, Hussein Tamari’s brother simply took over the Abdel Rahmans’ autoshops.”

  “And the Israelis didn’t have a motive to murder Louai? He killed a settler recently, I gather.”