The Collaborator of Bethlehem (15 page)

It was no good, though; that was how he always had been and he wouldn’t change that, even if he could. He only had to look at the expensive cars driven about town by the dumbest of his ex-pupils to know that integrity and knowledge were worthless in the world. But they were precious to him. If he had a soul, he thought, its core would be warmed by the love of his sons and his wife and his grandchildren. But its fringes were insulated against the slime of Bethlehem by his morality and his principles. If Ramiz didn’t see that now, he would understand in the end.

Omar Yussef went to the coat rack by the front door. He put on a beige parka.

“Dad, where are you going?”

Omar Yussef opened the door and felt the freshness of the cold air. “I’m going to talk this over with someone.” He stepped outside.

Chapter 14

O
mar Yussef walked up the hill toward the
souk
. He felt at once furious and calm. These gunmen scum of the Martyrs Brigades threatened him, but they chose not to do so to his face. They went to work on his son, instead. Why was everyone going behind his back? The gunmen went to Ramiz; Steadman connived with the schools inspector. It seemed to Omar Yussef that if anything was to be brought out into the open, it would be up to him to accomplish it. Naturally, he would do so alone.

In spite of his anger, Omar Yussef felt a sense of composure. It was based on the strength of belonging. He belonged in this town more than these gangsters. Hussein Tamari’s clan was living in filthy tents on the periphery of the desert back when Omar Yussef’s dear father was an admired figure whose opinion the leading families of Jerusalem respected. In his father’s world, there was law and gentility. But in the desert, the traditions by which life was lived were as absolute and harsh as the sun. Tamari’s people now congregated in the village of Teqoa, just south of Bethlehem, but they were still as brutal as their nomadic fathers.

“Peace be upon you,
ustaz.
”

Omar Yussef stopped. “And upon you, peace.”

“How are you?” The greeting was from one of his old pupils who worked now as an architect. Omar Yussef couldn’t remember the name of the man, who was in his mid-twenties.

“I’m as well as can be expected,” Omar Yussef said. “How is your business?”

“Well, not so good. In all this fighting a lot of buildings are being knocked down, but not many are being built.” The man laughed. “Times are bad for architects. And I can’t get into Jerusalem to my office, of course. All the checkpoints are closed and I have no permission to pass through them.”

Omar Yussef parted with the man and savored the friendly simplicity of the exchange. He remembered his name now— Khaled Shukri. His father had been killed in crossfire outside the hospital two years earlier. He wished he had remembered the name sooner, so that he might have inquired about his former pupil’s mother. He had heard that she became chronically depressed after her husband’s sudden death.

The calmness Omar Yussef had sensed in himself, the feeling of belonging in Bethlehem, was overwhelmed by his anger at the gunmen. Here was a boy who had worked hard at the Frères School and become a professional. Khaled Shukri’s intention was to build his hometown into something lovely, to replace the neglected refugee slums with functional new homes and to refurbish decrepit Ottoman mansions as hotels and restaurants. The curfews and gunfights had destroyed his career, murdered his father and made his mother suicidal. This was the reward for his goodness. Yet the gunmen thrived, they whose accomplishments and talents were of the basest nature, they who would have been obliterated had there been law and order and honor in the town. Perhaps Bethlehem was their town, after all, and it was Omar Yussef who was the outlaw interloper here, peddling contraband decency and running a clandestine trade in morality.

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, spreading 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?”