The Collaborator of Bethlehem

by Matt Beynon Rees

  On the staircase, it occurred to Omar Yussef that the Israelis might try to assassinate Jihad Awdeh tonight, just as they had killed Hussein Tamari. He wondered if the helicopter missile would blast through the window even as he sat with the new chief of the Martyrs Brigades. From the window, Nadia would see the streak of orange from the tail of the missile as it roared in to kill her grandfather, and then the puff of gray smoke from the window, the vaporized remains of the glass and concrete and of Omar Yussef’s body. He breathed deeply as the door of Jihad Awdeh’s apartment opened for him.

  The boy who held the door for Omar Yussef was about Nadia’s age. He pulled the laquered cherrywood door back and stepped aside, giving Omar Yussef a brief glance of contempt and hostility. Across the living room, Jihad Awdeh sat on a sofa. He was surrounded by Martyrs Brigades men. There were at least a dozen and the room seemed very crowded. Omar Yussef was surprised and relieved that Jihad Awdeh appeared to be in good spirits. He had expected that the death of Hussein Tamari might have made Awdeh fearful or angry. Instead, he seemed to be enjoying his new status as the boss of the gang. He laughed loudly at a joke, took a small square of baklava from a tray his daughter carried around the room, and scooped a handful of sunflower seeds from a bowl on the coffee table.

  Jihad Awdeh glanced across the room at the open door. His eyes darkened for a moment when he noticed his visitor, but the smile remained in place and he beckoned Omar Yussef forward. You are my brother. I would have to kill you free of charge. Omar Yussef wondered if that generous offer remained valid. As he approached, Jihad Awdeh whispered to the man on the couch next to him, who vacated his seat. Jihad patted the sofa and the man who had stood came to usher Omar Yussef to his place next to the chief.

  “I’m happy that you have come, and I wish your welcome to be a good one,” Jihad Awdeh said. He moved very close to Omar Yussef, who sat on the edge of the couch.

  “I’m happy to be welcomed at your home,” Omar Yussef muttered. It seemed strange to speak the formulas of politeness in these circumstances.

  Jihad Awdeh picked a piece of baklava from his daughter’s tray and handed it to Omar Yussef, dripping honey and syrup. The sweetness seemed deceptive, excessive, sickly. He told himself to be on his guard against this man’s sudden charm.

  Jihad Awdeh smiled and spat the empty pods of sunflower seeds into his hand. He dropped them in a crystal ashtray and stuffed another couple of seeds into his mouth. His jaw worked on the seeds, pressing their edges between his molars to open the pods, so that his sustained smile seemed to want to consume, like the threateningly bared fangs of an aggressive dog.

  Omar Yussef tried to ease the memory of their confrontation at Hussein Tamari’s headquarters two days ago. “My condolences on the death of the brother Hussein,” he said. “May Allah be merciful to him.”

  Jihad Awdeh nodded and let his smile fade into seriousness for a moment. Then he put his hand on Omar Yussef’s knee and leaned close. “You didn’t like him, Abu Ramiz, did you?” he whispered.

  Omar Yussef stared at the powerful hand on his leg. The nails were long and yellow, like the claws of a wild animal. He said nothing.

  Jihad Awdeh laughed. “Neither did I.” He nodded. “I didn’t like him at all. Now what do you want, Abu Ramiz? My time is limited, as the funeral of the martyr Hussein and his bodyguards is to be held in half an hour.”

  It surprised Omar Yussef that Jihad Awdeh would admit to his dislike of Hussein Tamari, even in a hushed voice. He remembered that Khamis Zeydan had told him Hussein’s men would often scorn Jihad, even to his face, as a member of a small clan of refugees. Hussein had born the confidence of a man who belonged, whose entire village would back him against any threat. Jihad Awdeh’s clan was not powerful, even in the refugee camp on the northern edge of Bethlehem where most of his relatives lived. Omar Yussef wondered if Jihad Awdeh might not be less aggressive toward him tonight because he finally had Tamari’s clan where he wanted them. In that instant, he thought of the Abdel Rahmans, who lost their protection with the death of Louai in the pine grove. Jihad Awdeh still needed to make a show of bereavement, because most of the Martyrs Brigades men belonged to Tamari’s clan, but he had taken over the gang just as surely as Hussein Tamari had robbed the defenseless Abdel Rahmans of their autoshops.

  “Perhaps we should talk privately, Jihad,” Omar Yussef said.

  Jihad Awdeh nodded and, taking Omar Yussef’s hand in his, he led him onto the small balcony at the back of the living room. “I won’t turn on the light, Abu Ramiz, in case there are snipers watching for me.”

  Omar Yussef looked out into the darkness, nervously. A rocky slope descended from the next houses to the base of the apartment building. The rocks, white in the moonlight, seemed to move about on the dark earth. Omar Yussef felt the stones scrutinizing him, stalking him, but he knew that the tension he sensed when he looked into the dark was all because of the man who stood beside him.

  Jihad Awdeh lit a cigarette and spat the last of his sunflower seed pods over the balcony. He held his palm upward, gesturing for Omar Yussef to speak.

  “Jihad, I know that Hussein was the one who collaborated with the Israelis in the death of Louai Abdel Rahman.” Omar Yussef waited for a reaction, but Jihad Awdeh took another drag on his cigarette and was silent. Omar Yussef smelled the acrid exhalation and wished he could have taken a smoke himself. “I went to Irtas after Louai was killed. I found a MAG cartridge on the ground. It was in a patch of grass that had been flattened by a man lying there. Louai’s wife Dima told me there had been someone waiting for her husband. She heard Louai say hello to someone called Abu Walid. Then something like a red laser dot appeared on him and he was shot. You know that Hussein was called Abu Walid and that he used a MAG. No one else in Bethlehem has that kind of gun.”

  Jihad Awdeh flicked his cigarette onto the slope behind the apartment building. Its orange tip rested in the darkness a moment. Omar Yussef watched it disappear. He waited again, but Jihad merely rested his elbows on the balcony rail and looked into the darkness.

  “You remember how angry Hussein was when George Saba forced you both off his roof that night, when you went there to fire at the Israelis?” Omar Yussef continued. “Well, I believe that Hussein led the soldiers to Louai, and then had his revenge on George Saba by tagging him as the collaborator. That way he’d also prevent anyone from suspecting that he himself was, in fact, the collaborator. But when he found out what Dima told me, he killed her, too.”

  “How did he discover that she spoke to you?”

  Omar Yussef decided not to mention his suspicion that Khamis Zeydan passed on the details of that meeting to Hus-sein. “I don’t know.”

  “So someone else could’ve killed her.”

  “I suppose so, but I don’t know why anyone else would have done so.” Omar Yussef turned toward Jihad Awdeh. The man’s face was obscured, silhouetted against the light emanating from the room behind them. Omar Yussef didn’t want to touch him, but he needed to make some kind of contact in the darkness. He put his hand on Jihad’s shoulder. “I need your help, Jihad. George Saba is an innocent man. He’ll be executed in seventeen hours. His blood would be on my hands, if I didn’t come here and beg you to help me. The law counts for nothing in this town. You are the power. You are the one who can save a guiltless man.”

  “Do you think someone who holds a gun on me and Hus-sein when we are resisting the occupation forces is a guiltless man?”

  That’s a trap, Omar Yussef thought. Be careful. “George was desperate. He knew that your presence on his roof would draw Israeli fire. He feared for his family. He didn’t know that it was you and Hussein on his roof.”

  Jihad Awdeh lit another cigarette. “Who will be ready to listen to the notion that the martyr Hussein was really a criminal and a collaborator?”

  “You said that you didn’t like him.”

  “That doesn’t mean I believe he was a collaborator. Or that I believe George Saba is innocent.”


  “I told you the evidence.”

  “Hussein Tamari risked his life against the Jews many times. Even this morning, he organized the martyrdom mission in the Jerusalem market. These are things that outweigh your evidence.”

  “Then don’t pin Louai’s murder on Hussein. Let Hussein’s name remain clean, let him be a hero. But set George Saba free, anyway.”

  “Someone has to pay. If it isn’t Hussein, it’ll have to be the Christian.”

  Omar Yussef moved closer. He smelled Jihad Awdeh’s sweat beneath the aura of his cigarettes. “I came to you, Jihad, because I know that you aren’t one of them. You haven’t become leader of the Martyrs Brigades just because you happen to be a member of the right family. You’re clever. You’ve made it to the top of the Martyrs Brigades, in spite of the fact that the others treat you as an outsider. For the rest of them,” Omar Yussef gestured beyond the glass door to the gunmen milling about the living room, “Hussein was some kind of hero and saint, because he’s their blood. But you’re able to think independently. You can see what he really was. Don’t let George die for the sake of someone else’s image. This is flesh and blood that will be destroyed tomorrow, not someone’s reputation.”

  Jihad Awdeh was silent.

  “Look, you have to admit that George Saba can’t be the collaborator,” Omar Yussef said. “Hussein was assassinated tonight while George was in jail. Could he have led the Israelis to Hus-sein from inside his prison cell?”

  “Since the Israelis killed Hussein,” Jihad said, “doesn’t that prove that he was no collaborator? Your accusation against him doesn’t make sense. Why would they kill their own agent?”

  The Martyrs Brigades leader looked about him, as though making sure no one could overhear. It seemed to Omar Yussef that a tinge of regret passed over Jihad Awdeh’s face as he looked at the crowd of gunmen inside. Quietly, he spoke. “Just before Hussein left his headquarters for the iftar, Khamis Zeydan was with him. Hussein told the police chief where he was going.”

  Omar Yussef remembered Khamis Zeydan’s phone call from the side of Hussein Tamari’s burning vehicle. The policeman had told him that he knew Hussein was in the destroyed jeep because he was following him when the missile struck. Omar Yussef felt a deep horror. Already he suspected his friend of betraying Dima Abdel Rahman. Certainly he knew that Khamis Zeydan hated the Martyrs Brigades boss who scorned and humiliated his authority as police chief even to his face. He had wondered why Khamis Zeydan was at the scene of Hussein’s death when he received the phone call. Jihad Awdeh wondered, too.

  Jihad opened the balcony door. Voices spilled out. The living room was filling with gunmen who would depart from here to Hussein Tamari’s funeral. “I have to go now. We’re burying the martyrs.”

  Omar Yussef nodded. He shook the hand that Jihad Awdeh proferred. It was cold, but Omar Yussef, too, found it chilly on the balcony. He passed through the crowd of burly men in their sweaty camouflage jackets. They carried their Kalash-nikovs, which they would fire into the air as they took what was left of the martyr Hussein to his final rest.

  Omar Yussef ran his suspicions about Khamis Zeydan through his head again as he went down the stairs. If Jihad Awdeh believed the police chief was guilty, Khamis Zeydan was in danger. Omar Yussef wanted to call his friend immediately. But if Khamis Zeydan was prepared to let George Saba die for something he hadn’t done, could Omar Yussef count him as a friend any more? Was he even a man whose life was worth protecting?

  As he crossed the street Omar Yussef briefly saw the silhouette of his granddaughter Nadia, still watching from the window of his house. Then she was gone.

  Chapter 24

  When Nadia stepped away from the window, Omar Yussef wanted to hold her, comfort her, strangle the worry that kept her on watch for him the entire time he was with Jihad Awdeh. He felt that urge almost as a physical force, lifting his feet toward home and raising his arms to clasp her. But he knew he must make one last attempt to free George Saba from jail. He wondered if his granddaughter might have a better grasp on reality and the dangers he faced than he did himself.

  Omar Yussef turned right along the main road, cut up toward the souk, and headed for Manger Square. The streets were empty, except for occasional jeeps filled with Martyrs Brigades men heading toward the funeral. They poked their rifles out of the windows and fired into the air. Each report from the guns made Omar Yussef jump. It was as though they wished to be certain that their celebration of Hussein’s martyrdom should jar him to his very soul. He breathed heavily as he labored up the hill to the souk and down through the empty alleys of the old town toward the church.

  At Manger Square, there was silence. The broad piazza, resurfaced with a pattern of pink and white bricks a few years before for a visit from the pope, glowed faintly in the moonlight and the dim aura of the faux-Parisian gaslamps erected during the renovation. The firing continued in the distance. They would be burying Hussein now at his village, a few miles to the east, near the conical hill of Herodion. Omar Yussef was glad to be in the quietness, instead of the fury that would eat through everyone at the funeral, biting into their core with the irresistibility of pure, communal hatred and vengefulness. He crossed the northern edge of the empty square toward the police station. He glanced over at the Church of the Nativity. Two priests in brown Franciscan surplices bowed their way through the Gate of Humility. They passed along the front of the church, keeping close to the foot of the wall, where it curved inward like the base of a massive fortress.

  The guard at the entrance to the police station greeted Omar Yussef. The policeman’s face was bony and undernourished. His eyes were jumpy.

  “Is Abu Adel here?”

  “Yes, go up to the top of the stairs. His office is there.”

  “I know.”

  Omar Yussef needed to make one last appeal to Khamis Zey-dan. Perhaps his friend did pass information about Dima Abdel Rahman to Hussein Tamari. Maybe he had caused her death. He might even be an Israeli collaborator who had engineered the killing of Tamari, as Jihad Awdeh suggested. But he was the only contact Omar Yussef had. He was the sole person he knew who held the key to the jail in his hand. There must be some way to persuade him to turn that key in the lock and look the other way while Omar Yussef smuggled George out of Bethlehem.

  Khamis Zeydan’s office was dark, except for the light from a single desk lamp. The pool of yellow light illuminated the police chief’s gloved prosthesis. It lay so still on the desktop when Omar Yussef came to the door that he wondered if Khamis Zeydan had detached the hand and left it there out of forgetfulness. The police chief’s pistol lay in the light next to the hand. When he saw the gun, the scene immediately made Omar Yussef think of suicide, the quiet drunken moment of self-contempt in the darkness that would precede death at one’s own hand. He spoke, doubtfully: “Abu Adel?”

  The glove lifted and turned the lamp toward Omar Yussef. He raised his hand to block the glare.

  “Abu Adel, I’ve come to ask you to forgive me.”

  There was silence from the desk. The lamp turned downward, deflecting the light away from Omar Yussef’s face. Its beam guided him to a chair on the other side of the desk. He sat on the edge of the seat.

  “I apologize for my earlier anger. I should not have accused you when you called to tell me about Hussein Tamari’s death. I’ve been desperate with worry about George Saba.”

  “You ought to think about someone other than George for a change.” Khamis Zeydan’s voice was thick and slurred and self-pitying. Omar Yussef knew that the darkness in the office was intended to prevent any subordinate who might blunder in from witnessing the boss with his whisky bottle.

  “You’re right. Abu Adel, you’ve been a good friend to me. I mean that. Right up to this very moment, you’ve been a great friend, and I haven’t always responded. But please understand that it’s only because I’m not used to dealing with the dangers and deceits of these kinds of events. I’m just a schoolteacher.”

  “Stic
k to teaching, I told you.”

  “Yes, you did, and you were right.”

  “Yeah, I told you, all right. Stick to—”

  “I just spoke with Jihad Awdeh.” Even through the darkness of the room, Omar Yussef sensed a change in Khamis Zeydan’s alertness. The mumbling stopped. He was waiting.

  Omar Yussef went around the desk. “Jihad believed me when I told him how Hussein Tamari killed Louai and Dima, and how he framed George.”

  The shades snapped open. The cloudy moonlight cast strips across Khamis Zeydan’s face. He was upright in his seat with his hand on the cord of the shades. His eyes were intense, narrow, vicious where the light caught them. The shadows looked like tattoos or camouflage.

  “You listen to me, Abu Ramiz,” Khamis Zeydan said. He coughed and gathered himself. Omar Yussef saw that the policeman was still drunk, but desperately trying to control himself. “Don’t trust a word Jihad said to you. He’s a crook and a liar. Don’t trust a word. Not a word.”

  “He’s the only hope I have.”

  “Then you’re lost.”

  “I would have preferred to rely on you.”