The Collaborator of Bethlehem

by Matt Rees

  George’s wife Sofia leaned out of a window. “Hello, Abu Ramiz, good morning. Can you go to the door at the side of the house? This one is broken and can’t be used. I’m sorry. The police blew it open when they came for George.”

  Omar Yussef waved and took the steps down to the basement. He noted that Sofia’s head was bandaged, though she disguised it with the kind of headscarf women sometimes tie behind their ears to do housework.

  Habib Saba embraced him in the doorway. His eyes were red from two days of tears, and they filled again when he saw Omar Yussef. He excused himself and guided the schoolteacher inside. “Forgive my emotion, Abu Ramiz, but you are the first Muslim who has been to see us since this trouble.”

  “That’s a terrible shame, Abu George.”

  Omar Yussef followed Habib Saba up the stairs to the salon. The room was lit by a single bulb. Sandbags covered the broken windows. It was drafty and cold, and the rain brought out a strangely rank smell of the sea from the dampened sacks of dirt. There were two racks of wedding dresses. Omar Yussef could barely see in the gloomy room. He could just make out that some of the dresses were partially burned. Their thin plastic packing was torn and the hems were smeared with the milky brown of extinguished flames.

  Habib Saba noticed that Omar Yussef squinted in the darkness. “George had some nice, old lamps in here, but the policemen took them.” He smiled. From a teak dresser, splintered by a half-dozen bullet holes, Habib Saba lifted a statuette of a nude woman reclining in a contorted position. “I thought they had taken her, too. But I found her in the corner behind the sofa. I think someone must have thrown her at the wall. She was a little scratched, but she seems to have come through all right. I shined her up, because there was ash or some kind of burned material attached to her. Do you like her?”

  Omar Yussef took the statuette in his hands. The model’s hair swirled beneath her head, her neck stretched painfully, and her left hip jutted unnaturally, as though it would pierce the skin. “It’s a Rodin?”

  Habib Saba nodded. “Well, a copy, of course.”

  “That French fellow always made this young woman pose in positions of such extreme discomfort. I think she must have felt the pose reflected some terrible pain within herself, or she would never have been able to let herself be used like this,” Omar Yussef said. Though the metal of the statuette had already survived being cast onto the floor by one of the policemen, he was nervous holding it. It was the feeling he experienced when cradling a small child, fearful that he might expose its delicacy to damage.

  “The model ended her life confined to an insane asylum, so I imagine you’re right about the pain, Abu Ramiz,” Habib Saba said. “The piece is called The Martyr.”

  Omar Yussef gently replaced the statuette on the dresser. “There really seems to be no way to escape that word, does there?” He laughed with the clipped sound of a man clearing his throat.

  Sofia brought a plate of cookies and coffee. “I made the coffee sa’ada, as you like it, Abu Ramiz,” she said.

  “God bless your hands,” Omar Yussef said. “May there always be coffee in your home.” He put his hand gently to her head, pushing the headscarf back so that he could see in detail the purple and green of a bruise that spread from beneath her bandage. He touched her arm lightly. Sofia gave a pained smile and left the room.

  “Consider yourself with your family and in your home,” Habib Saba said. He tried to make the traditional formula sound contented, but Omar Yussef saw that the old man scratched the back of his hand nervously.

  Omar Yussef drank some coffee. The sofa where they sat was tight against the wall. Omar Yussef gestured to the stone behind him. A half-mile beyond it were the Israeli guns. “I hope this is thick stone, in case the shooting starts.”

  Habib Saba laughed. “We will protect you from all danger, so long as you remain on our couch, drinking our coffee and giving us the pleasure of your company.”

  George’s children came nervously to the doorway. Habib called them over and they greeted Omar Yussef. They were usually warm children, but today their greetings were perfunctory and shy, as though their marrow had been removed and their hearts deadened. Omar Yussef put his hand on the head of the boy, Dahoud, who was seven. George Saba was about as young when Omar Yussef first knew him. He could see George in the boy’s face now. He had always perceived a great nobility in George’s high forehead and his blue eyes, and he recognized the identical elements in the boy’s makeup. “Where do you go to school?” he asked.

  “The Frères School,” the boy mumbled.

  “Just like your father. I used to be his teacher there, you know. He was very clever. I expect you are clever, and so is your sister, just like your Daddy.”

  Habib asked the boy to bring his cigarettes. The girl retreated toward the kitchen. “She won’t leave her mother’s side for more than a moment,” Habib Saba said, quietly. The boy gave him his Dunhills and followed his sister out of the room. Habib watched the space where the boy had stood, as though he thought that by concentration he could fill it with the presence of his own son.

  “When George wanted to leave for Chile all those years ago, I tried to change his mind. Do you remember, Abu Ramiz?” Habib Saba lit a cigarette and inhaled sharply. “I was so selfish. I wanted my son to be here, with me. I didn’t care even that his prospects were obviously quite limited here. I just wanted him close. But you convinced me to let him have his own life, his freedom. Abu Ramiz, you were right then. But I kept telling him that he should come back. I never let him rest in Chile. To my shame, I used to write to him about my loneliness after his dear mother died. I was quite aware that he would not be able to stand the guilt. So in the end he gave in to me, and now look at the result. He’ll be punished for this thing, this crime that he could never truly have committed. He’s a Christian, an outsider. Even the other Christians will be frightened to stand up for him. He is alone, as all Christians are when they come up against authority in our town. It’s my fault for wanting what a traditional father would have wanted, to have his son near him. You are much more modern than I, Abu Ramiz.”

  “It’s not wrong to love your son and to want to enjoy his presence,” Omar Yussef said.

  “Now I won’t have his presence and perhaps I won’t have a son, either.”

  “One day of George is better than a lifetime with a more ordinary son.”

  “But each day without him is a lifetime.”

  Omar Yussef put down his coffee cup and broke an almond cookie in two. As he tasted it, he turned fully toward Habib Saba. “What happened, Abu George?”

  The older man sighed. “I was in the back of the house. It was around dawn. I remember that the muezzins had just finished their call to dawn prayers. I was in bed, but I wasn’t asleep. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the shooting began in this valley. Even when I’m asleep I dream about the gunfire. I heard an explosion. The police had blown the front door out of its frame. You can see the damage there, where I nailed what was left of the door back in place. The police came in and took George. Sofia screamed at them, so they knocked her out—you saw the bruises on her head. They held the rest of us at gunpoint.”

  “But before that. Three nights ago, after George and I ate at the Orthodox Club. There was shooting. He left me to come and see what was happening. What took place then?”

  Habib Saba looked very weary. He crushed his cigarette in the lip of a coral-pink conch shell. “They were shooting at the Israelis from our roof, directly above where we are sitting now. George took an old pistol, an antique that was hanging on the wall. It wasn’t even loaded, and if it were, I’m sure it wouldn’t fire. But it looked dangerous enough. He went onto the roof and he chased them off.”

  “Who were they?”

  “You know, these Martyrs Brigades swine.”

  “Which ones?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did George know them?”

  “He didn’t say. Anyway, what do you mean ‘kno
w them’? He doesn’t mix with those people.”

  “No, but most people in town would recognize the leaders. They don’t try to hide, unless the Israelis come, of course.”

  “George didn’t say anything. He didn’t mention any names. He seemed very anxious and excited.”

  “Where is the gun he used against them?”

  Habib Saba crossed the room stiffly. He opened the drawer of a French roll-top desk, pulled out the old Webley and gave it to Omar Yussef. The gun was heavier than it looked, almost three pounds. The metal was partially oxidized and the butt was worn, but at night it would have been impossible to detect the revolver’s flaws. Omar Yussef pulled on the trigger. It was stuck by rust and dirt.

  “You could soak it in oil for a week and I doubt that those parts would move,” Habib Saba said. “It was a British officer’s gun that was kept by Ghassan Shubeki after he retired from the Jordanian Legion. You remember Shubeki, Abu Ramiz? That gun must be a half century old.”

  George was braver and more desperate than Omar Yussef had thought to have confronted the gunmen with this old piece of junk.

  “I would like to take this with me,” Omar Yussef said.

  “You are welcome to it. It makes me sick to see it.”

  Omar Yussef put the gun in his jacket pocket. It weighted the material so heavily that he felt almost as though he were wearing it on a strap over his shoulder. He wondered if it would damage his jacket or spoil the cut, but for the sake of his investigation he put aside his concerns about his clothing.

  “Did you see nothing that night when George went to the roof to confront the gunmen?”

  “I looked out of the bedroom window at the street after the shooting stopped,” Habib said. “I saw two men getting into a big car. One of these jeeps they make these days, you know the type that looks like it’s half car and half jeep. The expensive type, although I assume it was stolen. One of them was smoking, because all I could really see was the light at the tip of his cigarette. One of them carried a big gun.”

  “What kind of big gun?”

  “Abu Ramiz, I make wedding dresses. I don’t know one gun from another. All I can tell you is that it was a big gun.”

  Omar Yussef tried to picture the MAG that Hussein Tamari fired into the air at the wake for Louai Abdel Rahman. It was certainly a big gun. Could Hussein Tamari himself have been on the roof when George went up there with his defunct pistol? “Did it have a big, long barrel, with a wooden butt, about a meter and a quarter long altogether, a bipod to support the end of the long barrel, and a chain of bullets so that they could be fed through and shot very fast?”

  “Abu Ramiz, it was dark. I was very scared and concerned for my son. If the gunman had been wearing a wedding dress, I could describe to you the style of the pearl beading, even in such darkness. But not a gun. In any case, why do you ask about that gun? And why do you want George’s Webley revolver? What are you up to?”

  “I’m preparing for retirement, Abu George.”

  Habib Saba shifted forward on his chair, nervously. “Are you going to do something risky?”

  I already have, Omar Yussef thought.

  When he left Habib Saba, Omar Yussef climbed the steps at the side of the house to the roof. He paused at the top, breathing hard. He looked at the flat roof. Perhaps the Israelis kept it under observation in case the gunmen returned. They might shoot him with one of their sniper rifles from all the way across the valley. Ramiz had told him they had rifles that could shoot with shocking accuracy at distances greater than a kilometer. The soldiers might even be able to tell that there was a gun in the pocket of his jacket from the way the material was pulling. He shrugged to shift the weight. He had to check the scene of the confrontation between George and the gunmen, so he took the last step onto the roof.

  Rain gathered in a puddle near the shot-out water tank. Omar Yussef assumed the gunmen had positioned themselves at the edge of the building. Perhaps they lay down to take advantage of the cover provided by the small wall that ran around the roof. He made his way to the far side of the roof, glancing over the valley, wondering if some Israeli sniper had a nervous, slouching middle-aged man wearing a flat cap in his sights. His feet crunched on the slivers of the destroyed solar panels from the water tank.

  Something glimmered in a puddle by the wall. Omar Yussef bent and picked out an empty cartridge. Shaking the water off it, he felt in his pocket and took out the cartridge he had found in the grass where Louai Abdel Rahman died. He compared the two. They were identical as far as he could tell, bigger and longer than rifle bullets. He had seen rifle bullets before, lying on the desk in Khamis Zeydan’s office; they would be like pinkies next to a ring finger if you placed them side by side with one of the casings in Omar Yussef’s hand. Khamis Zeydan had identified the first cartridge as belonging to a MAG and also said that there were no other such guns in Bethlehem, so Tamari’s famous machine gun must have been on this roof. Unless Hussein Tamari lent it to someone that night, the head of the Martyrs Brigades must have been here when George Saba confronted them.

  Omar Yussef could see nothing else on the roof. He slipped the two cartridges into his pocket. They tinkled against the Webley. The Israelis have excellent surveillance equipment, he thought. Maybe they can see right through my jacket and pick out two spent cartridges and a uselessly antiquated gun in my pocket. As he left the roof, he thought that the Israelis would care nothing about the Webley or the MAG casings. Only he understood just how dangerous those objects were.

  Chapter 9

  When Omar Yussef reached his car, the sullen, young gunman who had tried to intimidate him glared suspiciously. Omar Yussef wondered how long this kid would last. The youngster surely would run as soon as he heard the growl of a tank coming over the hill from the settlement, but the soldiers might get him anyway. Or he might become lazy and step out where a sniper could pick him off. It was no wonder he was aggressive and tense, but that didn’t make Omar Yussef any more sympathetic toward him. He started his old Peugeot and spun the car around on the narrow road. The gunman jumped out of the way. Omar Yussef watched him step off the curb and glower after the car as it dropped down the hill.

  Before he left Beit Jala, Omar Yussef pulled into a parking lot fronting a row of shops. A group of gunmen clustered before the grilled chicken restaurant on the corner. The restaurant was shuttered and wouldn’t open until the end of the day’s Ramadan fasting. Omar Yussef gave the gunmen a scornful glance and mounted the steps to the platform that ran along the shopfronts. As he passed through the clutch of gunmen, they stepped aside politely. “Joyful morning, uncle,” one of them said.

  Before Omar Yussef could think, he returned the greeting: “Morning of light.”

  The gunmen went on talking quietly. Omar Yussef wondered at himself. He was so angry with their general rudeness that his resentment was particularly acute at a rare moment such as this when they behaved well. Do I need so much to blame them for all the things that are wrong in our society that I can’t even see them as human beings any more? Perhaps they’ve been up all night on patrol, he thought. Some of them, at least, are willing to sacrifice their family lives for what they consider to be their duty. Some of them die for it, too.

  Omar Yussef came to a dingy storefront. The picture window was covered by a gray venetian blind. He opened the door. A middle-aged woman rose from behind her desk when she saw him. She was thick around the middle, but well dressed. She wore an Yves St. Laurent scarf around her neck, and earrings by the same designer gleamed from her fleshy lobes.

  “Welcome, Abu Ramiz,” she said. She reached out her hands to hold his shoulders and kissed Omar Yussef on each cheek.

  “Nasra, you have a new haircut,” Omar Yussef said.

  The woman’s hair was short at the sides, blow-dried and combed back. It was a deep red, though Omar Yussef knew that this was not her natural color.

  “Do you like it, Abu Ramiz? I have to keep looking young or Abu Jeriez will fire me and hir
e a pretty little girl.”

  “That will be the day his business fails. He always tells me you run everything.”

  Nasra gave a deep, smoky laugh and guided Omar Yussef to the office at the back of the room. The door opened and Charles Halloun looked out.

  “Abu Ramiz, I knew it must be you. No one makes Nasra laugh as you do,” he said. He grasped Omar Yussef’s hand and pulled him into the office. He nodded at Nasra to prepare coffee.

  Charles Halloun seated Omar Yussef on the couch and only then did he sit at its other end. His hair was black and trim. He had a long, shapeless nose and thick, agile eyebrows. He wore a check tweed sport coat, a brown cardigan, and a brown woolen tie. He looked like a bumbling old Oxford don.

  Halloun’s father had been accountant to Omar Yussef’s father. The sons now kept the same relationship.

  “You just missed your son, Abu Ramiz. He was here to deliver some papers. His account is fast becoming one of my biggest jobs.” Halloun rubbed the bulbous end of his nose. “Ramiz inherited your brains, I must say. Mobile phones are an amazing business.”

  “Ramiz is very smart. But I can’t claim so much credit for that. I don’t understand at all how these phones work.”

  “As long as the cash isn’t counterfeit, who cares where it comes from?” Charles Halloun laughed, twirling the pointed end of his eyebrow.

  Nasra brought in two coffees and a glass of water. Like the Sabas, Nasra and Halloun were Christians who knew that Omar Yussef didn’t observe Ramadan and would enjoy a drink.