The Samaritan's Secret

by Matt Beynon Rees

  Liana looked sharply at Omar Yussef. Her eyes were wide and fierce. “It was undoubtedly one of my husband’s closest relationships,” she said, her bright lips quivering. “Brother Abu . . . ?”

  “Abu Ramiz,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Brother Abu Ramiz, I would like to discuss something privately for a few moments with my old friend Abu Adel,” Liana said. “If Allah wills it, we shall meet again soon, at your friend’s wedding perhaps.”

  “If Allah wills it,” Omar Yussef said.

  Dismissed, he raised himself from the couch. Khamis Zeydan lifted his hand hesitantly, as though he might pull Omar Yussef back onto the sofa for protection. Protection from himself, Omar Yussef thought. He gave a peremptory grin to his nervous friend and made for the door.

  Omar Yussef crossed the hall to a pair of high glass-paneled doors at the back of the house. He touched a smooth pillar of green Indian marble and looked down at the scattered lights of Nablus in the valley. Dull and orange, they nestled between the mountains like the final glowing coals of a dying campfire. In five days, even those few lights will be turned off, if the World Bank flips the switch, he thought. Face it, Omar, there’s nothing you can do about it. It isn’t that you don’t care, but you’re just a schoolteacher. If you try to keep the lights on, it could easily be you who’s snuffed out.

  Something moved in the darkness outside the window, flickering in front of the distant city lights. Omar Yussef put his face close to the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes to block out the lights of the hall. Among the cypresses bordering the lawn, a group of men was gathered. Omar Yussef watched for a minute, but could make out very little in the dim radiance cast from the mansion. Within a minute, most of the men moved away from the house into the dark and went over the buttresses at the edge of the garden. As they jumped, one of them lifted his arm for balance and Omar Yussef saw that he was holding an assault rifle.

  The last man turned and strode across the grass to the house. He was tall and his thick white hair fluttered back from a wide forehead, swept by the wind that came over the hilltop. He padded quickly up the steps. Omar Yussef hid behind the pillar, but the man turned along the terrace toward the mansion’s northern wing without looking around. Omar Yussef had seen him clearly enough to recognize a face familiar from the newspaper’s business page.

  It was Amin Kanaan.

  The door opened behind Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan came into the hall. Omar Yussef folded his arms and leaned against the pillar, as though he had been waiting casually for his friend to emerge.

  Khamis Zeydan waved his arm impatiently and headed for the door.

  “What was the secret chat about?” Omar Yussef asked.

  “She wanted to sing me a few lines from our favorite old love song. She’s sentimental like that,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Let’s go. I need a drink.”

  They drove in silence along the avenue of cypresses to the gate. Khamis Zeydan unscrewed the cap of his Johnnie Walker but he didn’t drink until they were on the road. Does he wish to present a dignified front while still on Kanaan’s property? Omar Yussef wondered. Khamis Zeydan turned downhill, sped up and slugged hard from the bottle, his gulping throat working rhythmically, like a part of the engine.

  He wiped his hand across his mustache. “What do you think you’re doing, grilling Liana about some dead Samaritan?”

  “He wasn’t just any Samaritan. You seemed to know exactly who he was when I told you about him earlier.” Omar Yussef grabbed for the whisky, wrested it with both hands from Khamis Zeydan’s grip and tossed it in the glove compartment. “You must have met Ishaq on your visits to the Old Man’s office in Ramallah.”

  “I’m not finished with that bottle,” the policeman said.

  “You can drink after you’ve negotiated this dangerous road.” Omar Yussef swept his hand toward the boulders at the roadside, menacing in the stark beams of the headlights. “I asked her about the Samaritan, because I wanted to help Sami with his investigation.”

  Khamis Zeydan sighed, impatiently. “Help Sami? If you want to help Sami, keep your mouth shut.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sami’s not investigating. He’s in danger.”

  “He’s a policeman. Even Palestinian policemen are supposed to trace criminals.”

  “Not if it means ending up dead.”

  “If those men wanted to kill him, they could have done it in the alley.”

  “You think it’s a small step to kill? Even for thugs like that? If you exhumed all the murdered police investigators in the world, I bet you’d find that none of them had a broken arm. No one’s stupid enough to push on after that kind of warning.”

  Omar Yussef tapped Khamis Zeydan on the shoulder. “That’s what Liana wanted to talk to you about alone, isn’t it?” he said. “She’s big in Fatah, so she wants the Party to have the money, not the World Bank. Her husband was close to the dead Samaritan. Was he involved in the murder? She told you to make sure Sami hushes up the murder, didn’t she? Well, he won’t.”

  “What money?” Khamis Zeydan looked thirstily at the glove compartment and bit his lip.

  Omar Yussef hesitated.

  “Shall I beat it out of you?” Khamis Zeydan said. “Come on, let’s hear it.”

  “The American woman at the hotel works for the World Bank. She reckons Ishaq hid three hundred million dollars in secret accounts around the world for the Old Man, and she’s trying to track these funds. Ishaq was about to talk to her, when he was killed.”

  “Obviously she’s not the only one who was looking for that money.”

  “Then we have to find it first. If the World Bank can’t trace the money by Friday, all Palestinian aid money is going to be cut off.”

  “What? Now I’m going to beat you just for being a stupid bastard.” Khamis Zeydan punched his fist against the steering wheel. “Whoever is trying to get hold of that three hundred million dollars isn’t going to share it with you. They’re going to kill anyone who attempts to beat them to it.”

  “But the aid—”

  “It’s the World Bank’s job to find the money, not yours. It’s better for the aid to be terminated than your life. Didn’t you think of that?”

  Omar Yussef considered lying that he hadn’t, but instead he turned away.

  Khamis Zeydan whistled. “My dear brother, I despair of you sometimes.”

  Omar Yussef stared at the road dropping toward Nablus. Lurking among the dim lights on the valley floor, there were men who would kill him for three hundred dollars, let alone three hundred million. He’s right. I have to leave this to the American woman, he thought.

  “I took the business card of the World Bank lady,” he said. “You’re right that I shouldn’t be involved in this. I’ll give her card to Sami. He doesn’t know about the money. But maybe he’ll have an idea of how to trace it.”

  “Sami’s already dropped the case,” Khamis Zeydan said. “When I saw him in the sick bay at police headquarters, he told me the broken arm wasn’t the only threat he’d received.”

  “I know. The sheikh warned him off.”

  “Which sheikh? The Hamas guy? Sheikh Bader?” Khamis Zeydan shook his head. “This was something else. He got a phone call. A threat to kidnap Meisoun.”

  “So put her under the protection of the police.”

  “What good would that do? The kidnappers might also be policemen. This is Palestine. The men with the guns don’t carry them out of civic duty.” The police chief reached out, gave a gentle slap to Omar Yussef’s face, and rested his hand on the back of his friend’s neck. “You remember the old story about the Arab conquest of Egypt? The caliph decided to name one of his generals as military governor and planned to put someone else in charge of the treasury.”

  Omar Yussef knew where this was going.

  “The general refused, saying that it would be as though he held the horns of a cow, while the other guy milked it. That’s how it is here. The men who beat Sami were hold
ing the horns of the cow, but they were sent by the guy who’s milking it.”

  The jeep jolted through a pothole. Omar Yussef spread his hands against the dashboard to brace himself.

  “I can’t let this case be dropped,” he said.

  Khamis Zeydan looked at him with fierce eyes. Omar Yussef knew the police chief had heard the desperate strain in his voice. He had to explain himself, though the more he talked, the shriller and more wretched he sounded. “The stakes are very high. All our people’s aid money, cut off, and you don’t seem to care.”

  “Are you surprised that the Palestinians should get screwed again?”

  “If Sami won’t do it, you must.”

  “Not me.” Khamis Zeydan waved his prosthesis. “I’ve only got one hand. If they break my other arm, I’m out to pasture.”

  “Well, I can’t do it. I can’t.” Omar Yussef’s cheek throbbed where the masked man had slapped him. His stomach convulsed with shame and fear. A trickle of sweat ran from his palm down the dirty black dashboard.

  “You’re right about that, my brother,” Khamis Zeydan said. Quickly, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out the bottle before Omar Yussef could react. He grinned. “Even someone as stubborn as you can’t save the Palestinians. Everyone has to figure out a way to save them-selves. This is my way.” He brandished the whisky.

  “You talk as though you and I weren’t Palestinian.”

  “Palestine? It’s up there on that ridge, inside all those mansions. It’s nothing but a corrupt business deal. Sometimes the P.R. is good and the world shovels in the cash. Sometimes it’s bad and the peasants suffer. But people like Liana still visit conferences in Europe on the rights of refugees and stay in the most expensive hotels. Save Palestine? Let it go to hell.” He swigged from the bottle.

  Down the slope in Nablus, a meager fluorescence glim-mered from the narrow, arched windows of the old quarter. Omar Yussef shuddered. Khamis Zeydan might find the reality of his people’s struggle in the mansions above them, but Omar Yussef knew that it was below him, in the hidden alleys of the casbah.

  Chapter 12

  A hundred years ago, on the periphery of the casbah, the Turks had built a tapering clock tower rising sixty feet to a cinquefoil window. Omar Yussef admired the simplicity of the design, as much as he regretted the undignified atmosphere around the structure’s base. The bleached stones were draped with green Hamas flags and a pair of loudspeakers on the roof of an old, olive drab Volkswagen van blasted Islamic songs at a volume so thunderous that he feared the tower might collapse.

  He wrinkled his nose at the ripeness of the men packed into the square and hunched his shoulders against their jostling. The men at the back of the crowd strained over the heads of those in front to see the dais at the foot of the clock tower. Omar Yussef felt dizzy. He stuck a finger in his ear, worried that the loud music might have damaged it.

  Sami slipped his left hand beneath Omar Yussef’s upper arm and guided him to the edge of the square, where they could observe without being pummelled by the shoving newcomers. Sami wore a brown leather flying jacket, its right side loose over his shoulder, his broken arm slung tight against his body in a bulky cast. Khamis Zeydan pushed level with them. He was also out of uniform, wearing a checked sport jacket and blue tie. His eyes were watery and his skin was almost as pale as his white mustache.

  “This is no place for a man with a fucking hangover,” he said.

  “Perhaps instead of drowning your problems in drunken silence all night, you ought to confide more in your friends,” Omar Yussef said.

  “You have problems enough of your own. Don’t try to take on other people’s woes, my brother. Whoever pats scorpions with the hand of compassion gets stung.”

  “Are you going to sting me if I suggest you should have had a bigger breakfast to settle your stomach?”

  Khamis Zeydan pinched the slack, liver-spotted skin on the back of Omar Yussef’s wrist. “I’m not ready to sting yet, but I’m warning you.”

  Omar Yussef smiled and rubbed his hand.

  Sami laid his good arm across Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “Over there, Abu Ramiz, is where they’ll celebrate the big wedding. On that dais by the tower. Then everyone will go to a big party in the social club at this end of the square.”

  “Where’s the women’s celebration?”

  “Somewhere down that way, farther into the casbah. The brides will be there already.”

  “As Meisoun said, on another planet.”

  A cheer went up among the men at the entrance to the mosque. Bearded youngsters leaned out of the upstairs windows, hammering the air with their fists and chanting. Their words competed indistinctly with the song from the loudspeakers, but soon Omar Yussef picked out the rhyming declaration that there was no god but Allah and that Muhammad was his prophet.

  Sheikh Bader made his way from the mosque to the dais. He stepped up to the platform and took his place at its center, drawing his robe together in front of his abdomen and lowering his bearded chin to his chest. He appeared unaware of the crowd, but commanded it merely by the mastery he had over himself.

  The attention of the crowd turned to the alley behind the clock tower. The loudspeakers’ volume crept higher. A deep bass and a susurrating tambourine pulsed around the voices of the singers. Nouri Awwadi appeared at the head of the line of grooms, riding on Sharik. The white stallion tossed its head and glared down its long muzzle at the bearded faces around it. The file of young grooms moved through the crowd. Some riders looked around with wide smiles, waving at friends. A few held tight to the reins, as nervous as their shying mounts.

  The horsemen formed a rank before the dais and the music was shut off in midchorus. Nouri Awwadi sat very straight on Sharik and stared over the crowd with a proud, stern expression, as though transformed into a statue of some victorious ancient warrior. A statue he’d destroy, because it’d violate the Islamic prohibition against the making of idols, Omar Yussef thought.

  Sheikh Bader’s rhythmic speech came through the loud-speakers, beginning the marriage sermon. He read the brief details of the fifteen marriage contracts, the names of the brides and grooms, and exhorted them to a life of piety and mutual love. He recited verses from the Koran and recounted a hadith, one of the sayings of the Prophet, which urged believers to fear Allah, to pray, to fast and to marry a woman.

  Omar Yussef recalled his own marriage, more than thirty years before. He remembered that, at this moment in the ceremony, the sheikh had prayed for Omar and Maryam, for their families, their town and the broader Muslim community. He smiled. Omar and Maryam came out just about all right, he thought. On the other hand, their town and their community have had it pretty rough.

  Sheikh Bader prayed for the grooms and their families. When he came to the prayer for the Muslims, he halted and raised a finger above his head. “Brothers, the community we pray for here, the community of all the Palestinians, is sinking into a time of ignorance.”

  Omar Yussef glanced at Khamis Zeydan. His friend raised an eyebrow. The time of ignorance was the term Muslims used to refer to the days before Islam.

  “There’s a rot among the leaders of our people,” the sheikh continued. “Brothers, you know the complaints—the corruption and violence and the collaboration with the Occupation Forces. None of this is new to you. And you know who the men behind it all are. Hamas fights them on your behalf. I call on you all to redouble your own commitment to this fight in the name of Allah, the Master of the Universe.”

  Though the loudspeakers were at full volume, the sheikh barked himself hoarse, his voice cracking and his fist punctuating the swinging cadence of his speech. “What more urging does a man need than the commandments of the Prophet, blessings be upon him? You should require nothing more to impel you to oppose the present leaders of our people. Yet men say to me, does not the holy Koran also command us to obey the government? It’s true. But what kind of shameful government do we have, and must it still be obeyed in its shamefulness?
”

  The crowd murmured angry agreement.

  “O Muslims, how far have our rulers deviated from the path of the rightly guided caliphs who were the companions of the Prophet, may Allah bless him with peace and still more peace? Today I offer you new evidence that the men of a certain political party are devils and monkeys who live their lives in contravention of all the proscriptions of the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.”

  Khamis Zeydan gave a little whistle. “I’m glad Sami and I didn’t wear our uniforms today. This speech would’ve made us unpopular.”

  The sheikh lowered his voice. “The man who led that certain political party, the man who purported to lead the Palestinian people for decades, the man who cast the founders of Hamas into his jails—that man died of a shameful disease.”

  “By Allah,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  The men in the crowd stirred.

  “Brothers, you’ll tell me that you have heard this rumor and that it’s a lie spread by the Jews and that in fact the Israelis poisoned him. While no evil is beyond the Jews, I tell you that this is not the case. We have obtained proof, documentary proof of the cause of this man’s end. This man, who was our president and who dared to call himself the symbol of our suffering—this man was autopsied in a foreign hospital and the leaders of his faction suppressed the results. But Hamas has obtained the autopsy report and we have learned that he did, indeed, die of the shameful disease whose name you all know and which is the result of immorality and forbidden acts.”

  The murmur in the crowd grew. Nouri Awwadi’s horse shied and bumped the next stallion with his flanks. His iron shoes rattled on the stones of the square.

  “Hamas knows what to do with this information,” the sheikh said. “When we pray now for our community, for the Muslims and for Palestine, think of these men whose only creed is immorality. Think of the power they wield over our honorable Palestinian people, and let us wrest that power from them. Allah is most great.”