The Collaborator of Bethlehem

Chapter 24

When Nadia stepped away from the window, Omar Yussef wanted to hold her, comfort her, strangle the worry that kept her on watch for him the entire time he was with Jihad Awdeh. He felt that urge almost as a physical force, lifting his feet toward home and raising his arms to clasp her. But he knew he must make one last attempt to free George Saba from jail. He wondered if his granddaughter might have a better grasp on reality and the dangers he faced than he did himself.

Omar Yussef turned right along the main road, cut up toward the souk, and headed for Manger Square. The streets were empty, except for occasional jeeps filled with Martyrs Brigades men heading toward the funeral. They poked their rifles out of the windows and fired into the air. Each report from the guns made Omar Yussef jump. It was as though they wished to be certain that their celebration of Hussein’s martyrdom should jar him to his very soul. He breathed heavily as he labored up the hill to the souk and down through the empty alleys of the old town toward the church.

At Manger Square, there was silence. The broad piazza, resurfaced with a pattern of pink and white bricks a few years before for a visit from the pope, glowed faintly in the moonlight and the dim aura of the faux-Parisian gaslamps erected during the renovation. The firing continued in the distance. They would be burying Hussein now at his village, a few miles to the east, near the conical hill of Herodion. Omar Yussef was glad to be in the quietness, instead of the fury that would eat through everyone at the funeral, biting into their core with the irresistibility of pure, communal hatred and vengefulness. He crossed the northern edge of the empty square toward the police station. He glanced over at the Church of the Nativity. Two priests in brown Franciscan surplices bowed their way through the Gate of Humility. They passed along the front of the church, keeping close to the foot of the wall, where it curved inward like the base of a massive fortress.

The guard at the entrance to the police station greeted Omar Yussef. The policeman’s face was bony and undernourished. His eyes were jumpy.

“Is Abu Adel here?”

“Yes, go up to the top of the stairs. His office is there.”

“I know.”

Omar Yussef needed to make one last appeal to Khamis Zey-dan. Perhaps his friend did pass information about Dima Abdel Rahman to Hussein Tamari. Maybe he had caused her death. He might even be an Israeli collaborator who had engineered the killing of Tamari, as Jihad Awdeh suggested. But he was the only contact Omar Yussef had. He was the sole person he knew who held the key to the jail in his hand. There must be some way to persuade him to turn that key in the lock and look the other way while Omar Yussef smuggled George out of Bethlehem.

Khamis Zeydan’s office was dark, except for the light from a single desk lamp. The pool of yellow light illuminated the police chief’s gloved prosthesis. It lay so still on the desktop when Omar Yussef came to the door that he wondered if Khamis Zeydan had detached the hand and left it there out of forgetfulness. The police chief’s pistol lay in the light next to the hand. When he saw the gun, the scene immediately made Omar Yussef think of suicide, the quiet drunken moment of self-contempt in the darkness that would precede death at one’s own hand. He spoke, doubtfully: “Abu Adel?”

The glove lifted and turned the lamp toward Omar Yussef. He raised his hand to block the glare.

“Abu Adel, I’ve come to ask you to forgive me.”

There was silence from the desk. The lamp turned downward, deflecting the light away from Omar Yussef’s face. Its beam guided him to a chair on the other side of the desk. He sat on the edge of the seat.

“I apologize for my earlier anger. I should not have accused you when you called to tell me about Hussein Tamari’s death. I’ve been desperate with worry about George Saba.”

“You ought to think about someone other than George for a change.” Khamis Zeydan’s voice was thick and slurred and self-pitying. Omar Yussef knew that the darkness in the office was intended to prevent any subordinate who might blunder in from witnessing the boss with his whisky bottle.

“You’re right. Abu Adel, you’ve been a good friend to me. I mean that. Right up to this very moment, you’ve been a great friend, and I haven’t always responded. But please understand that it’s only because I’m not used to dealing with the dangers and deceits of these kinds of events. I’m just a schoolteacher.”

“Stick to teaching, I told you.”

“Yes, you did, and you were right.”

“Yeah, I told you, all right. Stick to—”

“I just spoke with Jihad Awdeh.” Even through the darkness of the room, Omar Yussef sensed a change in Khamis Zeydan’s alertness. The mumbling stopped. He was waiting.

Omar Yussef went around the desk. “Jihad believed me when I told him how Hussein Tamari killed Louai and Dima, and how he framed George.”

The shades snapped open. The cloudy moonlight cast strips across Khamis Zeydan’s face. He was upright in his seat with his hand on the cord of the shades. His eyes were intense, narrow, vicious where the light caught them. The shadows looked like tattoos or camouflage.

“You listen to me, Abu Ramiz,” Khamis Zeydan said. He coughed and gathered himself. Omar Yussef saw that the policeman was still drunk, but desperately trying to control himself. “Don’t trust a word Jihad said to you. He’s a crook and a liar. Don’t trust a word. Not a word.”

“He’s the only hope I have.”

“Then you’re lost.”

“I would have preferred to rely on you.”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“So don’t tell me not to appeal to Jihad, if you won’t help. You have the key to the jail. Let’s go and free George now. We can hide him somewhere until we convince the court that he’s innocent. Maybe Jihad will help us.”

“I don’t know which part of what you just said is the most idiotic. First, I’m still a policeman, so I won’t release a convicted man from his cell. Second, you won’t get into the courtroom, let alone convince them that Hussein Tamari was really the collaborator and killer. Do you think the judges are as eager to get themselves killed as you appear to be? Third, Jihad isn’t going to help you. He helps himself. He blew you off, that’s all, Abu Ramiz, stalling until he gets a chance to finish you off quietly.”

Omar Yussef struggled to think of a way to persuade the police chief. He could grab Khamis Zeydan’s gun from where it lay on the table. With the gun held on him, Khamis Zeydan would lead him to the cells and release George. But Omar Yussef knew it would be an empty gesture. He had heard of something called a safety catch and he wouldn’t know how to disengage it. Even if he did, he could never use the gun on his friend. Khamis Zeydan would simply take it out of his hand and he would let him do so.

The police chief glanced toward the window. He stood and slid the glass open. Omar Yussef suddenly heard what his friend’s keener ear had detected. The gunfire was growing nearer.

“Is the funeral coming here?” Omar Yussef asked.

“The burial was in Teqoa. This noise must be something else.”

The firing grew more intense. It approached up the hill behind the Church of the Nativity. Omar Yussef leaned out of the window. A row of jeeps pulled around the corner and stopped in front of the police station. There must have been more of them out of sight, by the entrance, because even as the armed men piled out below, he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs behind him. Khamis Zeydan turned.

“They’re coming up here,” Omar Yussef said.

“No. They’re going down. To the jail.”

Khamis Zeydan picked up his gun from the desk and holstered it. “Stay here, Abu Ramiz.” He went to the door.

“Why are they going to the jail?” Even as he spoke, Omar Yussef knew the answer. George. “I’m coming with you.”

Khamis Zeydan was already on the stairs. Omar Yussef could see how shaky the police chief’s legs were from the drink. Both men descended the steps slowly, despite their despairing efforts to move quicker. Omar Yussef cursed his aging body and Khamis Zeydan muttered about the whisky in his bloodstream. At the entrance, the guard stood against a wall with his hands in the air. Two Martyrs Brigades men held their Kalashnikovs on him. There were at least a dozen of them in the small hallway, and more outside.

From below came the sound of an explosion. Falling metal rang through a corridor. They must have blown the door off George’s cell.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Khamis Zeydan walked straight to the gunmen holding his nervous guard against the wall. He pushed their rifles aside. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Get out of here now, or you’ll pay a terrible price.”

Khamis Zeydan’s determined arrival seemed to puncture the resolve of the gunmen in the lobby. But they were revived by the sight of their leader a moment later. Jihad Awdeh came up the stairs with a raised Kalashnikov in one hand and George Saba’s hair grasped in the other.

George’s eyes were closed by fresh bruises and his nose wept blood. As Jihad Awdeh hauled him up the steps by his scalp, blood rolled across George’s forehead and he bawled in pain.

Omar Yussef made the last few steps, clinging to the banister. In his panic, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to stand without support. He called out to George Saba, but the gunmen chanted that they would revenge the martyr Hussein Tamari, and George didn’t hear his old schoolteacher.

Jihad Awdeh let go of George’s hair long enough to lift his rifle butt and club Khamis Zeydan in the face. The police chief crumpled. The policeman who had been guarding the door bent to catch his commander. Khamis Zeydan appeared to be out cold. Jihad Awdeh called above the laughter and cheers: “This way the godless bastard achieves oblivion without having to waste all his whisky.”

Omar Yussef jostled with the gunmen as they pushed toward the small doorway. He caught sight of George wearing his small herringbone coat. Its shoulders were drenched with blood. The gunmen took swings at the prisoner whenever they were close enough.

Omar Yussef was almost the last through the door. Outside on the sidewalk, he saw Muhammad Abdel Rahman. The gunmen must have brought the old man to see them exact their justice on the Christian who had led the Israelis to kill his son. Muhammad’s face was blank, deathly. Omar Yussef wondered what it was that he knew about the way Louai died, about Abu Walid, about the killing of Dima, his daughter-in-law. Then he thought that the knowledge of having lost two sons in a few days, one to an assassination and another who took his own life in the act of destroying ordinary people with a bomb strapped to his midriff, would be enough to make a man seem almost dead himself. Muhammad noticed Omar Yussef stumbling out of the police station at the back of the crowd. He turned away and wrapped his face in the end of his keffiyeh.

The mob of gunmen moved to the edge of the square. From the center of the crowd, someone tossed a rope over the arm of one of the fake gaslamps. Oh, God, it’s happening, Omar Yussef thought. He rushed toward the group, barely able to breathe. How could he stop them? He would get to the center of the crowd and throw himself over George. He reached the back of the melee. He shoved between two of the gunmen, screaming to them to make way.

There came a cheer and Omar Yussef saw George hauled halfway up the lamppost by his ankles. The tails of the herringbone coat fell over his face, so that at first Omar Yussef believed he was dead already. Then his arms moved, flailing desperately toward the crowd below as though he might catch hold of it and anchor himself to the earth. The gunmen yanked him higher until he was almost at the top of the post. Then there was a single shot, and it unleashed a full volley from the crowd of men. George Saba’s body jerked with each fatal impact.

Until it stopped. The deafening noise of the guns ended, and it seemed to Omar Yussef that there was perfect silence everywhere. No one seemed to move, even though the crowd of gunmen was joined by others coming from the funeral. They chanted the glory of God for the death of the traitor and their joyful, jostling number grew every moment. But Omar Yussef was alone on the square, staring above him at the swinging corpse of George Saba. He shoved into the center of the crowd, but they were not men surrounding him; they were empty of humanity and he was solitary among them with all he had lost. Below George Saba there was a slick of blood on the new cobbles. Omar Yussef felt the blood in the air, as though it were a light drizzle that would begore the surface of everything. Then he realized that it was rain.

The crowd moved away. Someone called out that they were going to the traitor’s house to destroy it, as the Israelis would obliterate Hussein Tamari’s house and the home of Yunis Abdel Rahman, the suicide bomber.

In only a few moments, Omar Yussef was almost truly alone beneath the corpse of George Saba. He reached up, but the body was strung too high for him to touch. The rain came more heavily. It was the downpour that had threatened for a week. Omar Yussef looked at his shoes. The rain washed them until the buckles were bright in the light from the lamppost. The water took the pool of blood and swirled it across the cobbles to the drain in front of the dark Church of the Nativity.

Omar Yussef turned from the shadows of the church’s spartan façade toward George Saba on the lamppost. The dead man looked as though he might be descending from the light, his hands above his head in a dive from the radiance of a star to the hard earth. George had brought that brightness to Omar Yussef, who had watched him transform from a little boy to a grown man to a punctured sack of meat. Omar Yussef spun away, looking back toward the church.

The body is like this Church of the Nativity, he thought. It’s warmed by some divine breath at first, but sustained by worldly impulses. All the time this breath slowly chills, until death. Every exhalation is an expulsion of some part of our finite store of life, and also a sigh of relief that the grave is closer by one tedious, depressing pulse. The body is abused and renovated and squabbled over, like this church, where they say Jesus was born. But there is only a crypt where that famous birth is supposed to have taken place. There is nothing there, just as we find nothing but an emptiness left to mark where each of us was alive. Here in Bethlehem there was a Messiah who left the job unfinished. In this church, there’s no glowing spirit, no redemption. Each time we breathe, we fear that it’s our last breath and it will chill us all the way to the void.

There was only one reason not to feel overwhelmed by that fear and that was the belief in the legacy we leave, the positive changes we bring to the world. Omar Yussef had hoped George Saba would be his legacy, living after him as proof that the schoolteacher made the world better. He had hoped that Dima Abdel Rahman would be part of that gift, too. As he looked at the body swinging above him, he fought against the urge to feel that all his life’s work was just so much destroyed hope and goodness befouled. Instead, he could be George Saba’s legacy, giving the dead man life in his every decent, kind, intelligent deed.

He picked at the big knot the gunmen had tied around the base of the lamppost to secure the body high in the air. The corpse dropped a little. As he freed the knot, he lost his grip on the wet rope and it slipped from his hands. He reached out to grab the falling body. George’s elbow caught him painfully on the side of the head as the body came down. Omar Yussef grabbed the shoulders to break the fall and went to the ground on top of the dead man. He lay still. If he was going to weep, now would be when it would happen, he thought.

There was a hand on his shoulder, lifting him. When he came up, Muhammad Abdel Rahman stood beside him. Both men were bereaved, but Omar Yussef thought perhaps he would be the one who might draw the greatest strength from these terrible days, not the man before him.

Shots came from the west, distant, their reverberations threading between the raindrops.

“They are firing up at Beit Jala,” Muhammad Abdel Rahman said. “They are destroying this Christian’s house. In revenge.”

“For the death of your son?”

Muhammad Abdel Rahman shook his head. He looked no more alive than the corpse at their feet. “No, my son wasn’t their concern, truly. They are taking revenge for Hussein Tamari, the martyr.”

Omar Yussef felt angry, despite the frailty of the old man who had lost his sons. Hussein Tamari was a murderer and gangster. He was no martyr. Omar Yussef pointed at George’s body. “There is your martyr,” he said. “There. There is your martyr.”

A police jeep squealed around the corner, throwing up spray from the rain that rushed down the slope. Six policemen jumped out at the entrance to the station. Omar Yussef saw a staggering Khamis Zeydan step among them. They rushed across the square toward George Saba’s body. Four of them picked up the corpse roughly by the legs and arms, and hauled it toward the police station. The others shoved the few onlookers who remained and told them to clear the square.

One of the policemen pushed Omar Yussef with his rifle butt and told him to go home.

“Fuck you,” Omar Yussef shouted. He pushed the policeman back. “Where were you ten minutes ago, when they were killing your prisoner? Don’t touch me.”

Khamis Zeydan came to Omar Yussef. He thrust the police- man aside and took his old friend by the arm. The police chief’s upper lip swelled beneath his nicotine-stained moustache, and his teeth were bloody from Jihad Awdeh’s blow. The two men stared at each other. Omar Yussef wondered if Khamis Zeydan felt shame, or simply confusion after the impact of the rifle-butt on his head and all the whisky.

Khamis Zeydan looked up when a shot sounded through the rain. There were more percussions, spattering randomly through the air like the first raindrops of a storm. “What the fuck is that?”

“The Martyrs Brigades went to Beit Jala. They’ve gone to destroy George’s house,” Omar Yussef said.

“He has a wife and family, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Khamis Zeydan took Omar Yussef by the arm and pulled him toward his jeep. “Let’s go.”