A grave in Gaza

Chapter 10

The darkness stalked Omar Yussef, watchful and predatory. With each indistinct movement he perceived in the blackness, he halted and squinted into the dusty wind until he was sure he was alone. And he was. The streets were as empty as at the loneliest hour of night, though it was not quite eleven.

At the corner of Maki’s street, he looked along the beach road in the direction of his hotel. The dust cloud shivered in the ocher glow of the streetlights, as though all those who passed this way during the day surrounded Omar Yussef now, raising the dirt into the air with their silent tread. The wind sounded in Omar Yussef’s ears with the same heavy rush as the waves of the Mediterranean, a hundred yards beyond the road. It was humid and his shirt stuck to his back. He wondered if he had been sweating throughout dinner, or only since he began to walk. The tension he had felt with Maki had exhausted him. It seemed to have turned his knees to ice, and he swayed like a child standing for the first time. He had to keep moving.

Omar Yussef started along to his hotel. He walked on the roadway, rather than the sidewalk, because there was at least some light down the middle of the street. Gaza City was already an hour in bed, and lights were out on all but the most important thoroughfares so as to deprive Israeli raiders of geographical reference points-whether they lurked above in a helicopter or sped through town in the car of an undercover squad. A few windows glimmered with fluorescent light, but most were blank and shuttered against the hot wind.

He reached the first streetlamp and found himself out of breath. He sat on the high curb of the narrow median and coughed into his handkerchief. He knew this dust storm might not break for another day or two; he cursed it and wished desperately for its end. He wanted to breathe and to see clearly. He wanted the atmospheric pressure to lift and the pain in his temples to stop. He wanted to hear silence and calm, not the hot rumbling pant of the khamsin. He spat gritty phlegm onto the road.

Under the hum of the storm, Omar Yussef heard the sound of engines. Two jeeps came around the corner from Emile Zola Street. Their motors growled so loudly that it seemed as though they might be the source of the moaning wind. Omar Yussef wondered if the center of the storm was about to suck him up and toss him into the skies above Gaza. That would be a turbulent ride, but if it dropped him somewhere outside Gaza, he wouldn’t object.

The jeeps rolled to a halt in front of Omar Yussef. They were dark green and unmarked and their headlights were off. He made out the shapes of four gunmen inside each one, their assault rifles upright between their legs.

The front window of the first jeep slid down to reveal a man wearing a stocking cap over his face, with holes cut for his eyes and mouth. Around his brow, he had tied a black strip of cloth with white writing across it: The Saladin Brigades. Below the stocking cap, there was a camouflage jacket. The arm of the camouflage jacket led to a big hand that trained an automatic pistol on Omar Yussef. The schoolteacher stood, stiffly, and took the handkerchief away from his face. He wanted them to see him.

“Peace be upon you,” he said.

“And upon you, peace,” the man with the pistol said. “Where are you from, uncle?”

“Bethlehem.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

“I’m visiting Gaza. I was walking back to my hotel. I didn’t think the weather would slow me down so much, but I had to sit down. I can’t catch my breath.”

“Which hotel?”

“The Sands. Will you put down the gun, please? It doesn’t help me to breathe any easier.”

The gunman withdrew the pistol. “Sorry, uncle. There are Israeli undercover units on the streets.”

“If I’m one of them, then the rest of my squad left me behind because I was slowing them down. Don’t worry, I imagine I’m a lot less deadly than they are.”

The gunman looked at the man in the seat next to him, who also wore a stocking cap and Saladin Brigades headband, and whispered. He turned back to Omar Yussef. “We would take you to the hotel, uncle, but we’re on a mission.”

“That’s okay. I’ll walk. I’m getting used to the dust now. I’ll be fine.”

“It’s only a five minute walk to your hotel, uncle. But you shouldn’t be in a hurry. Take longer than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our mission is close to the hotel. I don’t want you to be caught in the middle of anything. So don’t rush.”

“Your mission?”

“Allah grant you grace, uncle.” The jeeps howled into motion.

Omar Yussef watched them fade into the dust cloud. Their mission was near the Sands Hotel? It must have had something to do with General Husseini. Perhaps he had boosted his guard for the night because he knew these gunmen were coming for him. But why? And what were the Saladin Brigades?

He waited in the orange glow. There could be a shootout in front of his hotel. He knew he ought to remain at a distance, but he wanted to see what was going to happen. He noticed that he was firm on his feet, his exhaustion erased by adrenaline. He moved along the beach road toward the hotel.

With each step, he expected to hear gunfire. There were only eight men in the two jeeps; they would be outnumbered by the guard at General Husseini’s house. But they might not be the only gunmen heading for the battle, if indeed it was to be a battle. He laughed to think that, if they hadn’t been on an operation, they might have given him a ride to his hotel. I don’t have change for a tip, he thought.

He came to the end of the row of hotels along the beach. Perhaps it would be safest to wait where he was. If there was to be a gun battle, he wouldn’t want to be in the open when the two sides started to fire. He looked along the strip of hotels. Each was set back from the road, down its own short drive. Bright neon lights flickered over the driveways, smoldering in ugly pink and green through the dirty air. Where were the gunmen and their jeeps? Perhaps their mission was inside the Sands Hotel. They might be in there already. The Revolutionary Council was at the hotel. The delegates might be the gunmen’s target, rather than General Husseini. He moved forward.

Omar Yussef was less than two hundred yards from the hotel when at last he made out the set-up through the dirt and wind. The two jeeps were outside the entrance to the drive of the Sands Hotel. One idled in front of the gate and the other sat in the middle of the road. As he approached, he saw the guards outside General Husseini’s house, quiet and still. He moved more quickly. Perhaps he could get past them before anything started, whatever it might be. If he stopped where he was, they’d be suspicious. He didn’t want a gun held on him twice in one night.

As Omar Yussef closed in on the jeeps, one of the gunmen looked in his direction and seemed to recognize him. Hoping this was the gunman who had spoken to him earlier, Omar Yussef pointed at the entrance to the hotel drive, to remind him where he was heading. The gunman looked undecided, then the sound of an engine cut through the wind and he turned to face it.

A UN Suburban came to the far end of the hotel strip. Its white bulk showed clearly through the darkness. It seemed somehow naive of the car’s occupants to drive with their headlights on, rather than creeping through these dangerous streets in the dark. The car headed toward the jeeps. Omar Yussef stared. If that was Cree and Wallender, they were driving right into the middle of a gun battle. At the very least, the gunmen would stop them and give them a fright.

The UN car slowed. It moved in second gear past the furthest jeep. Omar Yussef stepped away from the sidewalk and waved both his arms above his head. He felt sure Cree and Wallender were in the car, returning to the hotel. He had to warn them.

The first jeep roared, as loud as a low-flying jet. It jerked across the entrance to the Sands Hotel and blocked the road. At that moment, the second jeep pulled across the back of the Suburban, hemming it in. The gunmen jumped from their vehicles and held their Kalashnikovs on the UN car. Omar Yussef glanced at the Military Intelligence chief’s house. The guards were gone.

He hurried forward, coughing through the dust and waving his arms. The warm wind seemed to rush directly into him, slowing him, suffocating him. He had to get to Wallender and Cree.

The gunmen pulled the two foreigners from their car, their hands in the air. Omar Yussef couldn’t make out the shouts above the wind. Wallender looked terrified. He was bent backward across the hood of the car with a Kalashnikov jutting into his ribs.

Cree refused to bend. He seemed taller even than he had when Omar Yussef first saw him. His hands were in the air, but he was talking calmly and without pause, engaging the two gunmen who faced him.

Omar Yussef reached the first jeep. He put a hand on the driver’s open door to steady himself. He took a breath, ready to shout, but choked on a dusty cough. His face grew hot with frustration. He spewed out a mouthful of bile and rubbed his lips with his handkerchief.

“Stop it,” he yelled. “What’re you doing?”

The gunman who had seemed to recognize him turned, but kept his gun on Cree. He shouted at Omar Yussef, so that he could be heard over the excitable yelling of the other gunmen. “Go to your hotel, uncle.”

“These are my colleagues. They’re innocent. They’re here to help the Palestinian people.”

“Go to your hotel.”

Omar Yussef advanced on the gunman. He managed a smile in Cree’s direction. “It will be okay, James.”

“Don’t get yourself hurt, Abu Ramiz,” Cree said. “They won’t do anything silly with us foreigners, but they might get pissed off at you.”

The gunman put his hand flat against Omar Yussef’s chest. “Uncle, this isn’t your business.”

“I told you, these are my friends.”

“Get out of here, uncle.”

“Is this a kidnapping? Are you taking them somewhere? Then take me.” Omar Yussef tried to hear himself, to measure the calm in his voice. But the words sounded like someone else’s. Someone desperate and shrill.

Cree was talking, stating his role at the UN, and the gunman was shouting and shoving Omar Yussef in the chest and Omar Yussef was pushing himself forward and a gun that had been trained on Cree was turned on Omar Yussef and he looked at the gun and stepped forward onto the barrel and felt it below his collar bone.

“They’re from the UN,” he shouted.

“That’s why we’re taking them, uncle.”

“Then take me. I’m with the UN.”

“We need a foreigner.”

“I’m much more important to the UN than they are. I’m important to the UN’s whole operation in Palestine. Take me.”

“No, uncle.” The gunman growled each word with a thrust of the rifle. His eyes were yellow behind the stocking cap.

“Abu Ramiz, it’s okay. Go to the hotel-” Cree barely had opened his mouth to speak, before the gunman spun and smashed his rifle barrel flat into the Scotsman’s teeth. Cree went to his knees. The gunman pulled his pistol.

He’s going to shoot him. Omar Yussef frantically grabbed the gunman’s arm, but the thickset man shook him off.

The gunman lifted his arm and brought the side of the pistol down flat on the back of Cree’s head. The Scotsman pitched forward toward the dusty blacktop, out cold.

Omar Yussef tried to catch the falling man. He couldn’t hold him, but he lowered him quietly. He stood. “You’re a fool,” he shouted at the gunman. He knew this wasn’t the way to talk yourself out of a hostage situation, but he’d spent an evening dissimulating before Maki for the sake of Eyad Masharawi’s freedom, even hinting that he might be as corrupt as the professor wished him to be. He’d had enough diplomacy. “You’ve killed him. You’ve killed a UN official.”

The other gunmen saw the tall foreigner laid out on the ground and their shouting grew louder with panic. Two of them grabbed Wallender and shoved him into the back of the second jeep. One of them cuffed the Swede across the cheek as he entered the jeep. It roared into the dark, taking four of the gunmen with it. Wallender’s ghostly face glimmered through the window and was gone.

The gunman who had struck Cree stood over the body. He ordered the other gunmen to get going.

Omar Yussef grabbed the gunman’s forearm. “I said, you’ve killed him. Where are you taking the other one?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. This one’s not dead, and I wouldn’t have had to hit him at all if you’d done as you were told, uncle.”

“Don’t call me uncle, you bastard. You’re not from my people. You’re a destroyer of Palestine. Dogs like you disgust me and every decent Palestinian. No one ever tells you how much they hate you to your face, because everyone’s frightened of you. But they hate you nonetheless. I’m not scared, though. I don’t care what you-”

In the dark and the dust and with tears coming to his eyes, Omar Yussef failed to see the pistol, flat in the gunman’s hand. He felt a white flash that shot from the left side of his head through his entire body and exploded out of his eye sockets. The eruption lit Gaza as bright as day and Omar Yussef saw the place clearly. He heard the words Khamis Zeydan had spoken to him in the breakfast room: There is no single, isolated crime in Gaza. Each one is linked to many others, you’ll see. When you touch one of them, it sets off reverberations that will be heard by powerful people, ruthless people. What wickedness had he uncovered that these men should strike back like this? In the split second that the white light flashed around his head, Omar Yussef saw every crime ever committed in Gaza. He would start to solve those crimes when he woke up. He wondered if he would wake up.

The white flash was over and the dust storm had stopped. There was calm inside Omar Yussef. He must have been gone from Gaza.