The Collaborator of Bethlehem (7 page)

The Bethlehem police chief removed the blue beret that, in silhouette, had frightened Omar Yussef and smoothed his white hair, cut short and combed forward. He folded the hat and wedged it under his epaulette, which bore a white eagle, on the shoulder of his dark blue shirt.

Khamis Zeydan was the same age as Omar Yussef. They had known each other since their time as students in Damascus. In those days, they had been opponents in the bad-tempered politics of the university. Khamis Zeydan was an early devotee of Palestinian nationalism. He scorned Omar Yussef’s faith that the Arabs would unite and liberate Palestine. Well, he was right about that. In Damascus, Omar Yussef and Khamis Zey-dan had grown close, not over politics but over whisky. The two did their drinking and womanizing together, though Khamis Zeydan, taller and blessed with blue eyes as rich as lapis, was more successful with girls. Khamis Zeydan followed the PLO around the Mediterranean from Jordan to Syria, to Lebanon and Tunis. He lost touch with Omar Yussef because of the communication restrictions of the Israelis, and he lost his left hand to a grenade in Beirut. When he came to Bethlehem as chief of police their friendship was renewed.

Omar Yussef had been delighted by his friend’s coming. Khamis Zeydan seemed to have changed so little, at first. But he soon saw that his friend the Police Brigadier Khamis Zeydan was dreadfully disillusioned and, as a result, often self-destructively drunk. Sometimes, when Omar Yussef stopped in at his office in the new police station on the corner of Manger Square, the reek of scotch in the warm room had turned the air stale and urinous.

When Khamis Zeydan came through the front door at the end of the
iftar
, the aura of alcohol about him was thick enough that Omar Yussef wondered if his friend would treat the children to one of his angry, foul-mouthed tirades about the government and his corrupt police colleagues. The amusement in the policeman’s eyes suggested he wasn’t far enough into his drunk to have uncovered his rage, but Omar Yussef didn’t want to take the chance. With his hand on his friend’s firm shoulder, he guided Khamis Zeydan into the salon.

The two settled into the heavy gold-embroidered armchairs. Maryam looked in through the door. “Abu Adel, what would you like? Can I bring you some sweets?” she said, smiling at Khamis Zeydan.

“Maryam, our friend is diabetic,” Omar Yussef said. “Bring him a
qahweh sa’ada
, and the same for me.” He turned to Khamis Zeydan and shook his finger. “I won’t let her corrupt you.”

“I am corrupt to the core,” Khamis Zeydan said, laughing. “Umm Ramiz, I will eat whatever you set before me. I’m sure it will be the tastiest food with which a man may break his fast.”

“You haven’t eaten since the fast?” Maryam was shocked. “Come to the table. There’s plenty of
ma’alubeh
left. You have to eat.” She turned to Omar Yussef and added, firmly: “
Particularly
if you are diabetic.”

“No, I had something with the guys up at the station just now, thank you.” There was embarrassment in Zeydan’s voice. Omar Yussef understood that his friend needed no food so long as his hip-flask was full.

The Brigadier looked undernourished, thin. His face was almost as white as his hair, so that one might not notice the neat moustache against the puffy paleness of his cheeks, if it weren’t for the streak of nicotine that stained it below the nostrils. He lit a cigarette with his good hand. His left hand, a delicate prosthesis, rested on the arm of the chair, inside the tight shiny black leather glove that he kept over it at all times. Omar Yussef had once called on his friend at home in the morning and surprised him before he had dressed. He saw then that the false hand was made of a strangely washed-out green plastic, as though it were a bar of medicated soap or the flimsy limb of an alien creature. If he hadn’t seen the ugly evidence of his friend’s debilitation, Omar Yussef often thought, the glove would seem somehow sinister on a policeman, as though it were there to protect Khamis Zeydan’s knuckles when he beat a suspect. Instead, it struck him that the glove undercut the toughness his friend needed to do his job, a reminder that he was less than a man of full power. Sometimes when Khamis Zeydan was very drunk, he would stare at the false hand, full of hate. When sober, he was self-conscious and would place the hand unobtrusively in his lap. So with the prosthesis now unregarded in its glove on the armrest, Omar Yussef figured Khamis Zeydan must be only half drunk.

Maryam brought the coffees and a plate of baklava for the guest.

“I didn’t make it
sa’ada
for you, Abu Adel. I know you prefer it
masbuta
, so here it is, with a little sugar, just right.” She glanced at Omar Yussef, as though he had been rude to bring up Khamis Zeydan’s diabetes.

“Maryam is very generous. She will also pay for your medical fees when the diabetes gets worse,” Omar Yussef said.

“Maryam’s baklava is the best medicine,” Khamis Zeydan replied.

“I prescribe a long course of treatment,” Maryam said, with a gracious lowering of her head.

“Thank you, Doctor Maryam. Now please, I have to talk with our friend about something very important,” said Omar Yussef.

Maryam stared at him.
She knows I intend to discuss George’s case,
Omar Yussef thought. Khamis Zeydan was a policeman as well as a friend. Omar Yussef was about to make his concerns somehow official and his wife stood, stumped, unsure how to stop him now that the Brigadier was in the room.

“Abu Adel,” she said, “how are your wife and children in Amman?”

That’s all she can come up with?
Omar Yussef was not impressed.

“They’re doing all right, thank you.”

“Maryam.” Omar Yussef glanced at the door.

“I’ll leave you alone,” she said. “But Abu Adel, don’t let my husband do anything foolish.”

“These days, I believe it is Abu Ramiz who prevents me from foolishness,” Khamis Zeydan said.

Maryam closed the door.

Khamis Zeydan held out his good hand, palm upwards. “What was that about?”

“She thinks I don’t want to be a schoolteacher any more.”

“Did that bastard American persuade you to retire?”

“No, it’s worse than that. She thinks I’d rather be a detective.”

“You’d make a very good detective. No one would ever be scared of you. They’d trust you, because you’re like the wise, honest uncle everyone wishes they had.”

“Then why don’t you hire me?”

“There’s no place for honesty in our police force.”

Khamis Zeydan nodded conspiratorially toward the sideboard. Omar Yussef stood and took out a bottle of Johhny Walker Black Label. He poured a big tumbler for Khamis Zey-dan and put the bottle away. He handed the tumbler to his friend, who immediately took a stinging gulp and cleared his throat, clamorously. Omar Yussef sat and drank his coffee.

“I want to talk to you about George Saba,” he said.

Khamis Zeydan paused with the glass already on its way to his lips for a second slug. He looked hard at Omar Yussef. “Are you going to tell me he’s innocent?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you don’t need to be a detective to know that.”

“You know?”

“Come on, he’s a harmless guy.”

“But he’s in your jail.”

“Preventive Security brought him in. He’s in my jail, but he’s not my prisoner.”

“How can you keep an innocent man in jail?”

“The jail is in Bethlehem, Palestine. It’s not in Copenhagen or Amsterdam. I hope that answers your question.”

“There’s something else. Look at this.” Omar Yussef took the bullet casing from his pocket and handed it to Khamis Zey-dan. The policeman examined it for a moment. His pale face became stern.

“Where did you get this?” Khamis Zeydan asked.

“What type of gun does that come from?”

“Where did you get it?”

“Answer me first.”

“You don’t want to know the answer. Neither do I, although unfortunately I already do.”

Omar Yussef sat quietly. They stared each other down.

Khamis Zeydan broke the silence first. “It’s the casing from a 7.62 millimeter bullet. Now where did you get it?”

“What kind of gun would fire a bullet like that?”

“A heavy machine gun.”

“A heavy machine gun like Hussein Tamari uses?”

“Yes, the kind Hussein Tamari uses,” Khamis Zeydan said, irritably. “It’s called a MAG.”

“How do you know?”

“Most of the guns in this town are Kalashnikovs. They fire 7.62 caliber bullets, too. But Kalashnikov bullets are only 39 millimeters long. This one was 51 millimeters long, before it was fired. That’s the ammo for a MAG.” Khamis Zeydan glared at Omar Yussef. The playfulness was gone from his eyes. He looked very sober.

“Why are you staring at me so sternly?” Omar Yussef said. “Look, tell me about Tamari. All I know is what circulates by gossip about town.”

“You’ve been in Bethlehem longer than I have, so you know his tribe,” Khamis Zeydan said.

“The Ta’amra.”

“Right. Until fifty years ago, these Ta’amra were desert nomads. They settled in villages east of town, but they still follow the old tribal codes. All the top Martyrs Brigades guys are Ta’amra. They’re thugs and they run the place as a family racket.”

“All of the gunmen are relatives of Hussein Tamari?”

“All except one other guy, Jihad Awdeh,” said Khamis Zey-dan. “His family is from the Aida Camp, refugees of 1948 from a village on the plain toward Ramla, a small clan. Among the Ta’amra, he’s an outsider, and they never let him forget it. So he’s almost as much of a nasty piece of work as Hussein—he always feels the need to prove that he’s more ruthless than the Ta’amra. It’s the brutal zeal of the newly converted.”

“In the Bethlehem area, who has a gun that would use those cartridges?”

“A hundred or so Israeli soldiers.” Khamis Zeydan sounded angry. “And Hussein Tamari. It’s his symbol, as you know. He carries it on his hip everywhere, even when it’d be more convenient to use a pistol. He probably takes it to the bathroom with him. Now, Abu Ramiz, my old friend, tell me where you got this bullet.”

Omar Yussef recounted Dima’s recollection of the murder and his discovery of the bullet casing in the flattened grass. “Who would want to kill Louai Abdel Rahman?” Omar Yussef said. “Because the one who did that is the real collaborator, not George Saba. George doesn’t own a MAG heavy machine gun. I don’t think he could even lift one. Before the shots that killed Louai, his wife heard him speak to someone out in the darkness. He called him Abu Walid. Who could Abu Walid be?”

Khamis Zeydan lit another Rothman’s. “Abu Ramiz, a detective is a little like a psychiatrist. When you treat a mental illness, you had better know the workings of your own mind, or you risk becoming sicker than your patients. The disease can spread from one mind to another. That’s how it is for a policeman. To catch a villain, you have to think like a villain, and when you think like a villain, perhaps you already are a villain. The problem is that if a psychiatrist makes the wrong diagnosis, it’s the patient who pays. When a detective commits an error, the villain makes him pay for it.”

“Abu Adel, I want to find the real collaborator.”

“Are you listening to me? I’m trying to warn you that this is dangerous.”

“I don’t need to be a detective to understand that.”

“I may be a police officer now, but I was, for many years, what the world chooses to call a terrorist. In Beirut, in Rome, Paris. Wherever the Old Man sent me. You know that. We were all terrorists, the people who now govern you. That gives me an advantage over you. I know what it is to face danger.”

Omar Yussef sat forward. “You were all terrorists, you and your PLO buddies in exile. Now what? Now you are terrorized. By people like Hussein Tamari. I was never a terrorist, and I won’t be terrorized, either.”

Khamis Zeydan grimaced, as though it was hard to swallow what he had to say. “Get me another drink.”

Omar Yussef got the bottle of Black Label and put it on the table before his friend. The policeman poured a large shot as he spoke. “Louai Abdel Rahman worked for me, supposedly. He was a sergeant at the Irtas police station. But you know how things are now. Everybody is a general. Everybody is a military genius. Everybody has to have a crack at the Israelis. No one gets to be a hero writing parking tickets and solving domestic disputes, but if you fire off a few shots at an Israeli car you’re an instant resistance champion. Louai Abdel Rahman was not a bad guy. But he wasn’t prepared to be a policeman. He was another fucking immature outlaw of the type that we’re so good at breeding.”

“Why would anyone want him dead?”

“The Israelis would want to kill him because he shot a settler on the tunnel road last month.”

“He killed someone?”

“There’s a lot of it about. Don’t sound so surprised.”

“But who else would want him dead? A Palestinian, maybe?”

Khamis Zeydan was silent. His face was blank and cold. He drank the rest of the whisky in a single pull and crushed his cigarette in the crystal ashtray on the coffee table. “I really must go, Abu Ramiz.”

“Wait, there’s something you aren’t telling me.”

“The only thing I have to tell you, Abu Ramiz, is this: whoever fired this bullet whose casing you found is sure to have many more bullets, and he probably doesn’t care who he has to shoot to get what he wants. Do you understand?” Khamis Zeydan stood.

Omar Yussef rose, too. “Give me that bullet. I want to keep it anyway.”

Khamis Zeydan pressed the cartridge casing into Omar Yussef’s palm. “You’re a determined man, and I know you can be stubborn. But I’m your friend, and I really must tell you that this is not a matter for a schoolteacher to get involved in.”

“A schoolteacher? You said I’d be a good detective.”

Khamis Zeydan stopped in the doorway. “In Palestine, there’s no such thing as a good detective.”

Chapter 7

H
urrying along Dehaisha’s main street, Omar Yussef headed for the UN school. The cold dawn wind lanced sharply through the valley, north toward Jerusalem, carrying the taint of diesel fumes. Omar Yussef had woken with a headache that grew worse now as he walked. He didn’t doubt that it was the result of the stress brought on by Khamis Zey-dan’s warnings. He had barely slept that night after the policeman left his home.