The Collaborator of Bethlehem (16 page)

“Do you kill for money?” Omar Yussef said.

He saw Hussein Tamari sit forward as if to interrupt, but Jihad Awdeh seemed to relish the opportunity to flourish his own nastiness. “I kill for money when it’s strictly a matter of business between strangers.” Awdeh lifted himself out of his slouch and reached a finger toward Omar Yussef. “But you’re my brother, so I’d have to kill
you
free of charge.”

Hussein Tamari turned aside Jihad Awdeh’s finger. He gave Awdeh a glance of annoyance.

Omar Yussef realized that he couldn’t allow Awdeh to intimidate him. If they saw his weakness, they would soon come after him, in spite of the necessarily pleasant reception tradition demanded Hussein Tamari give him now. He had to punch back.

“I want you to see to it that George Saba is freed,” Omar Yussef said. “I believe you know that he is not a collaborator. He is a friend of mine and I have come to you to ask that you free him.”

“That’s a matter for the courts,” Hussein Tamari said.

“Let’s be realistic, Abu Walid,” Omar Yussef said. “George Saba confronted you and Jihad Awdeh on his roof. Two days later he was arrested. There is a connection that I prefer not to spell out. I ask only that you use the same influence with which you put him in jail to get him out of there.”

Omar Yussef was surprised that Hussein Tamari didn’t respond, nor did he seem upset at the accusation. Perhaps he considered framing George Saba a minor infraction compared to his other activities and thought it was nothing to get angry about.

“How could you know that he’s not a collaborator, unless you were working with the Israelis?” Awdeh said.

“How is it possible that
you
discovered he is an Israeli collaborator, unless
you
are working for the Israelis?” Omar Yussef said. He felt the strength that he had sensed in himself earlier when he had sat with Ramiz growing, and he pressed his hands together. “An innocent man’s life is at stake. Don’t waste my time with your cheap accusations.”

“No one’s time will be wasted any longer,” Jihad Awdeh said. “In fact, it’ll all be sorted out tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“The trial of your friend George Saba is set for tonight at eleven o’clock.”

“When was this scheduled?”

“You’d have to ask the judge. Apparently, he became interested in moving quickly.”

Hussein Tamari rested his hand on Omar Yussef’s arm, and this time he gripped it tightly, with command. “You see that this matter is out of my hands.”

Omar Yussef rose. What use was the strength he had felt? He was powerless in the face of the world. Even if he believed he carried some inner, moral toughness, it was no use to his friend. As he walked to the door, he felt the gunmen’s eyes burning the flesh on his back.

Chapter 15

A
ttorney Marwan Natsha decorated the entryway to his office with gaudily framed Koranic calligraphy and copies of his diplomas. Omar Yussef stopped to cast his eye over them, welcoming the opportunity to catch his breath after three flights of stairs. The degrees were in thick, black Gothic script. They were from Hebron University and issued in the mid-eighties. The segments from the Koran were in slashy kufic characters, curling the names of the Prophet and his followers around the edges, as lush as the stitching on an embroidered cushion. The extracts from the Muslim holy book suggested to Omar Yussef that the man might be religious, perhaps even a supporter of Hamas. It gave him some hope. Omar Yussef was no believer, but he had observed that, among his compatriots, the more a man followed the way of Allah, the less likely he was to accede in the corruption of the law. Maybe this lawyer would put up a good defense for George.

The quiet anteroom was dark and cold as twilight came on. Omar Yussef flicked the light switch. There were more framed pages from the Koran and a tan leather couch so worn that it looked as though someone had passed a bad night’s sleep on it in sandpaper pajamas. A desk lamp cast a dim glow from within the back office against a frosted glass door. Omar Yussef opened the door.

A long, thin man looked up from a file of papers through a cloud of cigarette smoke. There was a guilty cast to his gray face. The religious calligraphy was decorative and nothing more, Omar Yussef realized. Hamas supporters didn’t smoke Rothmans during Ramadan. Omar Yussef left the frosted door open to create a fresh draft in the blue air, so that he might breathe a little.

Marwan Natsha lifted himself from his chair. He moved like a man with a hangover dragging himself out of bed. He gestured questioningly with his cigarette. Omar Yussef waved that it didn’t offend him. There was relief in the attorney’s sad, wet eyes. He flopped back into his seat and pushed the papers away from him across his desk with a bony hand.

“I am Omar Yussef. I am a friend of George Saba.”

Marwan Natsha dropped his thin shoulders forward. His slack chin rested on the knot of his gray tie, and his melancholy face became even more desolate.

“I understand you are to defend George at the hearing tonight. I have information that will help you.”

“Oh, dear.”

Omar Yussef paused.

Marwan Natsha looked up and sighed. His voice sounded like it ached in his throat, as your legs might on the day after a long walk. “Uncle, you don’t understand.”

“What is there to understand? This is a capital trial. I want to save George Saba.”

“Nothing can save him, sir.”

Omar Yussef pulled his chair closer to Marwan Natsha’s desk. The lawyer edged back into his chair as though he were threatened by the advance of the man across the cherrywood from him.

“I have known George since he was a boy. I was with him a few nights ago when he went to his house to confront some Martyrs Brigades people. He forced them away from his home, but they threatened to return. When they came back, it was to make allegations of collaboration. This whole case is a matter of revenge on their part.”

There was no sign in Marwan Natsha’s gray face that he found anything encouraging in what Omar Yussef said. If anything, he seemed deeply discomfited.

“I also discovered information at the site of Louai Abdel Rahman’s murder that convinces me Hussein Tamari took part in that killing. I believe he returned later to kill Louai’s wife, because he discovered that she gave me information about his role in the shooting. Tamari is also the man who has framed George Saba.” Omar Yussef waited for Marwan Natsha to ask a question. “Are you not interested? We don’t have very long.”

“We have until eleven tonight.”

“That’s only six hours.”

“Six hours. Six days. It makes no difference. I’m afraid he’s going to be found guilty.”

Omar Yussef was angry. “I found a bullet from Hussein Tamari’s gun at the place where Louai was killed.”

Marwan Natsha lit another Rothman with a shaky hand and was silent.

“That means Tamari was there,” Omar Yussef said.

“But it doesn’t mean he shot Louai Abdel Rahman.” Mar-wan Natsha curved his spine slowly forward over the desk as though testing each vertebrae and picked a photocopied sheet of paper from the file. “This is the ballistics report on Louai Abdel Rahman’s death. The two bullets that killed him were from some kind of American sniper rifle the Israelis use. It’s called an M24, apparently. I don’t really know much about it, but you can read the report if you like. It’s rather technical. In any case, I don’t think that’s the kind of gun Tamari has.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Well, that’s that, then.”

“No, it isn’t. What motive did George have to collaborate in the death of Louai Abdel Rahman? None. But Tamari had a motive. He wanted to get Louai out of the way so that the family would no longer have anyone among the resistance factions to protect them. As soon as Louai was killed, Hussein Tamari’s brother simply took over the Abdel Rahmans’ autoshops.”

“And the Israelis didn’t have a motive to murder Louai? He killed a settler recently, I gather.”

“Of course the Israelis have a motive. But what motive did George have to be their collaborator? Hussein Tamari had a motive to collaborate, but not George.”

Marwan Natsha cleared his throat with a rattle like a snare roll. “If you think I’m going to enter the court and tell the bench that the head of the resistance in Bethlehem is an Israeli collaborator, you’d better think again, Abu . . . ?”

“Ramiz.”

“Abu Ramiz.”

Omar Yussef felt himself growing hot. “Then there is the death of Louai’s wife. She was killed after George Saba’s arrest. He couldn’t have been involved.”

“Who said he was?”

“No one. I just mean that it’s more likely that Louai and his wife were killed by the same person.”

“Why is that more likely?”

“Do you think there are two people out there who’d want to kill someone from the Abdel Rahman family? Two random, unconnected people who decide to murder someone in the same family? The two deaths are connected. If George Saba was part of the first death, he couldn’t have been involved in the second since he was in jail. Therefore, George is not the connection. Someone else is. That makes George innocent of Louai’s death.”

“As I heard, the lady in question was raped. Clearly there are many men in this town who, to put it bluntly, would have an incentive to do that, particularly to a woman with no husband to protect her. In any event, it’s not my case, and I couldn’t bring it up tonight with the judges. It wouldn’t be admissible.” Marwan Natsha shuffled through the pages before him on the desk. “Do you read Hebrew, Abu Ramiz?”

“No.”

Marwan Natsha gave Omar Yussef a pitying look. “This is a report in
Yediot Aharonoth
. It’s an Israeli newspaper. It’s dated two days after Louai Abdel Rahman’s death. It’s the story of how the Shin Bet used a Palestinian collaborator to guide them to Louai and to identify the victim. There’s a lot of stuff about Louai’s resistance activities in the article. It calls him one of the most dangerous terrorists in the Bethlehem area— that’s the precise wording. Then it goes on to detail the role of the collaborator in making sure that the Israelis killed the right guy. Apparently, it’s absolutely essential to these kinds of assassinations. Without a collaborator on the ground, they can’t assassinate anyone from the resistance. So, the article says, there was a collaborator up close to Louai Abdel Rahman who identified him to the Israeli sniper. You see?”

“Yes, I understand that.”

“I don’t think you do. Someone has to be guilty here. There
is
a collaborator. Even the Israelis admit it in their newspaper. Now, our police don’t seem to be capable of producing such strong detective work as you’ve done on this case. But I’m sure they’d tell you that if the results of an investigation led them to the most dangerous man in town, Hussein Tamari, they’d let the fall guy—take the fall.” Marwan Natsha opened his bony hands wide. “That’s George Saba.”

“You’re telling me you don’t even believe George Saba is guilty?”

“There isn’t so much evidence against him. It’s true.”

“Then your job is simple.”

“Well, that’s also true. But not in the way you mean. My job would be simple whether the case against George was weak or strong. My job is to keep my head down. In State Security Court, defense attorneys are, by definition, supposed to consider the state and its security first. If a collaborator gets away with it, the Israelis will find it easy to recruit more. If someone is seen to be punished for collaboration, it makes it harder for Israel to get others to betray their comrades.”

“Even if the man who pays the penalty isn’t really a collaborator? He just dies as a symbol of all the real collaborators who’re out there but can’t be detected by our security forces? You can’t be serious?”

Marwan Natsha shrugged.

Omar Yussef pulled off his flat cap and ran a hand across his wisps of hair. “You’re not from Bethlehem, are you, Mister Nat-sha?”

“No, I’m from Hebron.” Natsha smiled at the mention of his hometown. He seemed relieved, as though the conversation had moved on from the tiresome business of the trial to polite smalltalk.

“Then imagine how you would feel if some gang took over
your
town. Would you not do what George Saba did?”

“My brother Abu Ramiz, they
have
taken over my hometown. That’s why I don’t care what they do in Bethlehem. It’s the same everywhere in Palestine. It’s too big to fight.”

“Then we all have the same problem. It should unite us. We have a common cause, all Palestinians against these gunmen.”

“It’s only in the most superficial way that we Palestinians manage to be united even against the Israelis. Do you think we’re capable of unity at all? People aren’t like that. I ran away from what the gunmen are doing in my hometown of Hebron. Why would I make a stand against them in Bethlehem?”

Omar Yussef pitied this man. He wondered what made Nat-sha flee his home. With what outrage might the Martyrs Brigades have sucked the will out of him?

“I’m very sorry, uncle,” Marwan Natsha said, “but I have to lock up and go to an
iftar
now.”

“Will you pray for George Saba, before you break the fast?”

“No, I’ll be thinking of the food, because I’m hungry, and I’ll be trying to forget that I have to go before this damned court later tonight.
You
can pray for George Saba.”

“I’ll be praying for you.”

Marwan Natsha held Omar Yussef’s gaze a moment, as though he were weighing whether he was, after all, a more promising recipient of someone’s devotions than a condemned man. Coughing, he stood and gathered the papers from his desk. He stubbed out his cigarette and picked up his briefcase. He was down the stairs so quickly on his long legs that he left Omar Yussef behind in the dark.

In the corridor, Omar Yussef lifted one of Marwan Natsha’s legal diplomas off the wall. The frame shook in his hand. He flung it down the first flight of stairs. The glass shattered against the wall. Three flights below, Marwan Natsha’s steps halted for a moment, then he moved on.