by Matt Rees
“Why did you go to the roof, George?”
George Saba smiled. “Abu Ramiz, I went up there because you told me to do so.”
Omar Yussef looked perplexed.
“In your class on the Arab Revolt of 1936, you said that the so-called Arab heroes were really just gangs. They went about robbing villagers of their food and killing those who resisted, and all the time no one could take them on, because these killers were portrayed as the brave men standing up against the Zionists and the army. They ended up killing more Palestinians than Jewish farmers or British soldiers. You said that if the people had stood up to them early on, the gangs would have backed down and there could have been peace.”
“But I didn’t mean . . .”
“When you’re a stimulating teacher, you had better be careful. You never know what you might inspire people to do.” George laughed and put his hand on Omar Yussef’s. “Don’t worry, Abu Ramiz. It’s not your fault. I thought about it for days, every time they came to the neighborhood to shoot across the valley. Finally I knew I had to act. You see, I thought I understood the gunmen better than you, better than my Dad. In South America, I saw thugs like them. They were cowards when they were confronted. Remember, I lived in Chile when the military dictatorship was forced to give up power. But unfortunately there is no one here to back people up, no law. The criminals have made themselves the law. They shoot at some soldiers, and it transforms them into the representatives of the national struggle. That makes them unassailable and they can abuse anyone they want, particularly Christians who are weak already. That was my mistake. I didn’t see that clearly enough. But I don’t regret it.”
“Our town has changed terribly since you first went to Chile, George.”
“I’ve lived a life of many changes. I learned that change is a good thing. But here in Palestine change is always for the worse. Christian villages are overrun by new Muslim residents, and instead of living together in tranquility, it becomes a bad place for Christians. Even to change a situation of hatred, they only make still more hatred. Love is not an option. It’s the choice of an idiot who wants to end with nothing, robbed and abused and humiliated. The result is that, in the end, everyone’s convinced that the only way to alter the bad relations between Christians and Muslims, or between Israelis and Palestinians for that matter, is to wipe out the other side. To kill them all. Like they’ll kill me, now.”
Omar Yussef had seen that coming. “No, they won’t, George. They can’t.”
George Saba inclined his head, almost as though he pitied Omar Yussef. “When they bring a collaborator to this cell, it’s all over for him. It will be a public execution, like the ones they held in Gaza.”
“I will stop it, George,” Omar Yussef said. “I know that you’ve been set up by Hussein. I just need to prove it, and I will.”
“Abu Ramiz, don’t get into trouble.”
“I already have some proof. I will get more, and I will save you.”
“I have no desire to join the ranks of the martyrs, and of course as a collaborator I won’t get such a title. There will be no Paradise for me. But if there were, I wouldn’t expect to see you there for a long time yet. I warn you not to place yourself in danger. It will only result in two deaths, where these bastards would be satisfied with one.” George laughed. “Maybe I should rethink. If I’m going to die, it might be better to think of myself as a martyr, after all. I’m dying because of my religion, aren’t I?”
“You’re a Christian. You don’t believe in martyrdom.”
“Abu Ramiz, that isn’t true. All right, so we don’t believe like the Muslims do that anyone who’s killed just now goes up to claim his bliss with seventy-two beautiful black-eyed virgins. But even if we don’t believe in those lovely houris, we Christians have our martyrs, nonetheless. I traveled in Europe. The cathedrals there are full of paintings of Christian martyrs. My namesake, Saint George, you know, was a martyr, not just a dragonslayer. I suppose the difference is that we Christians accept martyrdom, but we don’t seek it.” George Saba paused. He continued, slowly. “I want you to go to my family. Tell them to leave. Even now, while I’m still in jail. I don’t want them to live here as outcasts, and I’m worried that someone will try to harm them, too. Tell them to go to Sofia’s family in Chile.” He put his hand on Omar Yussef’s arm and turned away to hide his tears. “Make sure that my father goes with them. He listens to your advice.”
“I don’t think he’ll go. Not without you.”
“Abu Ramiz, for Heaven’s sake, they’re all in danger, too. You don’t know what those men will do.”
They heard quick footsteps along the corridor. Khamis Zey-dan came to the door and unlocked it.
“I’m not finished,” Omar Yussef said.
Khamis Zeydan concentrated on the final key. “I must leave the station now, so I’ll have to lock him up. Unless you want to spend the next twenty-four hours shivering in here with George, I suggest you get out of the cell now. Come on. I have to hurry.”
George stood up. He kissed Omar Yussef’s cheeks. “Tell my family what I said, uncle.”
“Allah lengthen your life,” Omar Yussef said. He touched George Saba’s face. The beard was prickly.
Khamis Zeydan called from the doorway and Omar Yussef went out. As the policeman locked the door, Omar Yussef looked through the bars at George. The coat he had left behind seemed pathetic, inadequate, stretching across the broad shoulders of his friend. He wished he had brought food or a book to leave with the prisoner. Then he followed Khamis Zeydan slowly along the corridor.
“Hurry up, Abu Ramiz, please. I have to go.”
“What’s the rush?” Omar Yussef was irritated to have his time with George cut short. The emotion of his meeting burst out of him now. “Can’t you have any decency?” he yelled at Khamis Zeydan. “Can’t you let me be with that boy a little longer, that innocent fucking victim?” He lowered his voice in case George could still hear, but he spat out the words angrily. “You bastards are going to kill the best student I ever had.”
Khamis Zeydan stepped close. He was about to speak. A police officer came to the head of the stairs. “Abu Adel,” the policeman said, “the squad is ready.”
Khamis Zeydan called back that he was on his way and the junior officer rushed out of sight. “It’s an emergency, as you can see,” he said to Omar Yussef.
“What is it? The Israelis have invaded Bethlehem once more and you have to run away?” Omar Yussef’s voice was bitter.
Khamis Zeydan looked grim. “No, Abu Ramiz. Someone has killed Dima Abdel Rahman.”
Omar Yussef couldn’t speak. He looked with disbelief at Khamis Zeydan.
“None of us will survive except Allah,” the policeman said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 11
The wind drove cold through the open sides of the jeep. The policemen hunched their shoulders inside their parkas. One of them made his teeth chatter loudly to amuse the others. From the front seat, Khamis Zeydan turned and silenced his men with a disapproving click of his tongue. Omar Yussef shivered in his tweed jacket. He almost regretted the coat he had left with George, but he could stand a little chill for a short time if it made his friend more comfortable in that bare cell.
The freezing drive to Irtas seemed to go on forever. In the time it took the jeep to leave Bethlehem and cross the hill to the Abdel Rahman family’s house, Omar Yussef felt that his mind raced a distance ten times further. Who could have killed Dima Abdel Rahman? He felt sure her end was connected to that of her husband. It occurred to him that Louai’s killing might perhaps not even be linked to his status as a resistance figure. If Louai had died at the hands of the Israelis for his actions against them, Omar Yussef couldn’t see how that would lead to Dima’s murder. Even if they targeted him as a terrorist, they wouldn’t care about his wife. Only if Louai were killed in some criminal conspiracy did it seem possible that his murder would also bring this girl into the compass of death.
Omar Yuss
ef rubbed his hands and blew on them. He grabbed the side of the jeep as a sharp corner threatened to toss him from the bench. It was as though the sudden bend snapped his mind into a new channel. The road sloped down toward the valley of Irtas and Omar Yussef could see the Abdel Rahman house and the glade where he had stood with Dima, and then it hit him: it was because of him that Dima died. Someone had seen her talking to him. Someone noticed her gesturing toward the spot where Louai died and telling the story of how it happened. The cause of her death could be that she had talked to Omar Yussef.
Nauseating pain gripped him in his guts. Wedged between two policemen on the benchseat of the jeep, he wanted to sway side to side in grief. Had he killed her? His stupid ideas about investigating Louai’s death and saving George Saba had only accomplished the death of an innocent girl. He closed his eyes and saw himself in his classroom making a joke, and Dima was laughing. She was such a pretty girl, with a serious face, which was only more beautiful when laughter crossed it. In that way, she reminded him of his granddaughter Nadia. What would he give now to be back in that classroom listening to Dima reading aloud her homework paper on Suleiman the Magnificent, rather than bouncing down the hillside in a police jeep to see where she died? He heard her voice, deep and gentle even when she had been a child, telling him about her husband’s death, and he wondered what the last words had been that she spoke in her precise, intelligent diction.
Khamis Zeydan turned to his squad and issued orders to cordon off the Abdel Rahman house, as the jeep reached the floor of the valley and sped toward the murder scene. When he sat back, his eye caught Omar Yussef’s for a second. It scared the schoolteacher, because it was such a severe, intent, dark glance.
Omar Yussef watched the police chief. Perhaps no one had seen him with Dima at the mourning tent after all or, if they did, no one thought it suspicious for an old teacher to console his former pupil. Who had Omar Yussef told about that conversation with Dima? Who knew that she had told him about “Abu Walid”? He felt confused. He thought he had told his son and his wife, but he couldn’t quite remember. The only person he was sure he had told was Khamis Zeydan.
The police chief looked back at him again, but Omar Yussef glanced away immediately. Could it be that his old friend had betrayed him? Had Khamis Zeydan informed Abu Walid that Dima was able to incriminate him? If so, that meant the policeman knew who Abu Walid was. But why would he tip him off? It wouldn’t have been the first time Khamis Zeydan was involved in a double game. He had followed his people’s leaders all over the Arab world and Europe, assassinating rivals, murdering innocent people who got in his way. I was, for many years, what the world chooses to call a terrorist. Yet this was worse. This was his old friend Omar Yussef whom he had betrayed.
The jeep pulled into the field outside the Abdel Rahman family’s home. The officers piled out noisily, stamping their feet to get their bodies moving again after the cramped ride. Khamis Zeydan distributed them around the house with a clap on each shoulder and the point of a finger. He reached up to help Omar Yussef down from the jeep, holding out his prosthetic hand in its tight black leather glove.
“I can get down myself,” Omar Yussef said.
Khamis Zeydan turned and strode toward the family, which was gathered by the cabbage patch in front of the house. Omar Yussef stepped stiffly off the back of the jeep and landed awkwardly on a clump of grass that disguised a small rock. His ankle twisted. He shook his foot and grimaced. He followed Khamis Zeydan and noted that his friend seemed to move with greater power now that he was on an operation, in command. Or perhaps he just seems stronger now that I believe he played some part in the death of an innocent girl. She may even have died while I was in his company this morning.
One of the policemen went to the glade where Louai had died. He stood sentry over a lumpy object covered in a white sheet. Omar Yussef stopped. That must be Dima’s body. He choked on a gulp of bile and coughed to get his breath. He turned his eyes to the ground, but he swayed, dizzily. He looked up at the gray sky and spread his legs to steady himself. He breathed deeply until he felt able to follow Khamis Zeydan.
The police chief was listening to Muhammad Abdel Rah-man describe how his daughter-in-law’s body was found. The old man went silent as Omar Yussef approached and stared suspiciously at him with his black eyes, but Khamis Zeydan told him to continue.
“I awoke for the dawn prayer and found my son Yunis downstairs. He told me that he saw something through the window. We came out to look, and over there, we found her, just where her body remains now. We put a white sheet over her. From the position in which we discovered her, I believe some sex pervert must have killed her.”
“Did you see anyone else?” Khamis Zeydan said.
“No one. It must have happened during the night. We all turned off the lights at the same time last night.”
“What time was that?”
“Just before twelve. We are all up late for Ramadan these days. We have a lot of family visitors, as well as people wishing us their condolences for the death of my son Louai.”
“Did anyone visit you last night? Was there anyone in the house who didn’t usually stay here?”
“No, our guests left at least half an hour before we went to sleep. Dima went to her room at the same time as the rest of the family.”
There was something unemotional and organized about Muhammad Abdel Rahman’s answers that disturbed Omar Yussef. He spoke up: “Did Abu Walid come to see you last night?”
Muhammad Abdel Rahman looked angrily at Omar Yussef. “You are not a detective and I’m not a schoolboy. Why should I answer a schoolteacher’s questions? Fuck you. This is not your classroom. Go and order someone else around. I’m not one of your refugee children.”
Khamis Zeydan put his hand on Muhammad Abdel Rah-man’s chest and gave it a warning tap. “Watch your mouth, Abu Louai. I brought ustaz Omar Yussef here as my friend. You had best be civil to him. But it is true that he’s not authorized to investigate.” He looked sharply at Omar Yussef.
“Then you ask him that question,” Omar Yussef said to Khamis Zeydan. “Ask him what I just asked.”
Khamis Zeydan took Omar Yussef aside. “I think he’s already answered it, quite clearly, don’t you?” he whispered, firmly. He turned back to the family. “Let’s go and see the body. There’s no need for you to go through this again Abu Louai. Please wait here.”
Under the pines, Khamis Zeydan looked at Omar Yussef, hard and questioningly. Omar Yussef nodded. The policeman lifted the white sheet.
The body lay on its side. Black hair spread around the head, as though the corpse were drifting in still water. A spray of that hair fell across the face. Khamis Zeydan lifted it and Omar Yussef recognized Dima Abdel Rahman. She was pale and her lips were the color of a bruise. Her eyes were open only slightly, as though she were rousing herself from a long sleep. Her tortuous posture reminded Omar Yussef of the Rodin statuette in George Saba’s living room. He had held that bronze of a prone woman tenderly in his two hands, fearing to let a work of art drop to the ground. He wanted to lift the body of Dima Abdel Rahman, to cradle her as he had the statuette and to discover that she was merely posing for a sculptor. Omar Yussef cursed himself. He had held her just as securely as he did that naked objet d’art. She was his pupil and her father was his friend. He encouraged her to come to this house because he believed she would find love here. Instead, it was a place of death. He had dropped something much more fragile than a bronze cast. He punched a frustrated fist into the palm of his hand.
“Her throat has been cut,” Khamis Zeydan said. “There’s something shoved in her mouth.” He pulled at the end of a piece of cloth until a few damp inches of it dangled from between her teeth. “She’s been gagged.”
Only then did Omar Yussef notice the gash across the jugular and the coagulated blood on Dima’s shoulder and outstretched arm. He experienced the choking sensation once more. The coldness of the morning left him and he was very hot. He removed his fl
at cap and let the wind chill the sweat on his scalp. He shivered.
Khamis Zeydan lifted the sheet further. Dima’s nightdress was ripped from the hem as far up as her shoulder blades. There were scratches on her naked buttocks.
“Has she been raped?” Omar Yussef asked.
Khamis Zeydan covered the girl with the sheet. “It looks like it, but she’ll have to be examined.”
Omar Yussef came close to Khamis Zeydan. “They are involved, aren’t they? It’s them.”
“The father and brother? Yes, I expect they are the ones who did it.”
Omar Yussef had meant the Martyrs Brigades. He frowned.
“No one could come out here and take a woman from inside the house without the family hearing,” Khamis Zeydan continued. “It had to be the father and brother. It might be an honor killing, or maybe she knew something about them that made them want to silence her.”
“But the father more or less admitted that Abu Walid had been here. That’s why he got so angry when I asked him about it. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was Abu Walid again.”
Khamis Zeydan looked hard at Omar Yussef. “We don’t know who Abu Walid is.”
“I think we do.”
“But we don’t. Not for sure.” There was a warning in Khamis Zeydan’s eyes. “Abu Walid could be any number of different people.”
“There’s only one Abu Walid who could have left behind the bullet casing I showed you.”
“That bullet casing was from a massive machine gun. It’s too bulky to bring on an ambush here.”
“You told me Abu Walid takes that machine gun with him everywhere. It’s his symbol, you said, his emblem. You said he probably even took it to the bathroom with him. So maybe he would bring it to an ambush like this.”
“The Abu Walid to whom you’re referring is a murderer, I agree. But he hasn’t killed anyone without what he, at least, would think of as a good reason.”
“Then we have to find the reason he killed Dima.”