The Fourth Assassin

Chapter 10

A guard patted Omar Yussef down and ushered him through a chipped metal door painted the soapy blue of swimming-pool tiles. Behind him, the guard found Khamis Zeydan’s cigarettes and took them away. The Bethlehem police chief cursed under his breath and rubbed the back of his prosthetic hand nervously.

“You don’t like being in somebody else’s jail for a change?” Omar Yussef said.

“My station house only has a few cells,” Khamis Zeydan muttered. “It’s not much of a jail. This place is the real thing. You can smell it.”

Omar Yussef inhaled a rough undertone of body odor, clashing with the chemical scent of disinfectant. It bore the disconsolate heaviness of mass sanitation, as though the inmates were bugs or bacilli to be exterminated with industrial acids from a bucket.

A bulky guard awaited them beyond the metal door, his shoulders filling the corridor. Omar Yussef caught a trace of cheap cologne emanating from the guard’s dark blue uniform. He seized upon it to block out the disinfectant, but it came with a hint of the dried sweat it was intended to disguise. He sniffed the French toilet water he always placed on the back of his hand to counter unpleasant odors.

The guard reached for a clipboard passed through the doorway by his colleague. He looked it over with the sleepy eyes of a man who has eaten heavily, and belched. “You’re here to see Sirhan?”

“You’re quite correct, my dear sir,” Omar Yussef said, standing as straight as his little paunch allowed and speaking with a formality born of nervousness.

The guard’s eyes flicked up from the clipboard, as though he thought Omar Yussef were mocking him. “Related to the guy who killed Bobby Kennedy?”

“I see you know your assassins,” Omar Yussef said. “Sirhan Sirhan was from an entirely different clan. I’m sure that the actions of the senator’s killer would be shocking to my son. He’s never been a violent boy.”

The guard rolled his tongue under his bottom lip and turned the clipboard toward Omar Yussef. “Sign here,” he said, “both of you.”

As Omar Yussef handed the clipboard to Khamis Zeydan, he noticed a pin on the guard’s breast pocket. It bore the date of the infamous attack with the digits of the “eleven” thickened and topped by a radio mast so that they resembled the Twin Towers. The Stars and Stripes ran along the bottom of the design.

“My son would never have approved of that attack, either.” Omar Yussef pointed at the pin.

The tall guard came close enough to Omar Yussef that his big, hard belly touched the schoolteacher’s diaphragm. “I lost a brother in the Trade Center. He was a cop, and he was trying to save people from what you Arabs did to us.”

Omar Yussef breathed slowly. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

“You going to tell me the Nine-Eleven terrorists weren’t ‘really Muslims’? Like all those stories in the papers making excuses for the Arabs?”

“No, they were Muslims, and it’s true that many Muslims approved of what they did.” Omar Yussef looked up at the guard’s double chin, pale, shiny, and smooth. “But I was not among their supporters, and neither was my son.”

“Sure about that?”

“As sure as you are that your brother was a hero.”

The double chin quivered, and the guard stepped back. With the clipboard, he gestured toward an open door down the corridor. “In there,” he grunted.

Behind a Plexiglas screen, Ala leaned his elbows on a counter. Tiredness seemed to have spread from his red eyes through new lines in his face, sucking the color from his skin. He had the desperate drowsiness of an insomniac after another failed night of sleep, a long day of terrible fatigue ahead of him. He lifted the handset beside the screen, as Omar Yussef sat down.

“Morning of joy, Dad.” His voice was cracked and dry. He smiled weakly at Khamis Zeydan. The police chief folded his arms and inclined his head.

“Morning of light, my son.” Omar Yussef noticed that Ala wore the same dress shirt in which he had been arrested. He had half-expected to see the boy in an orange jumpsuit and thought perhaps it was a good sign that he hadn’t been forced into the anonymity of a prison uniform. “How’ve you been?”

“I was at the precinct house for a long time with the Indian lieutenant and that meathead bastard, the Palestinian sergeant.” Ala’s eyes darted about urgently, as though he were being hunted. “Then they brought me here.”

Omar Yussef was surprised at the force of his son’s anger toward Hamza. “What’s it like?” He lifted his chin. “In there?”

“I’m in a small cell with a lot of other men. Everyone tries to stay close to the bars, staring down the corridor, waiting for someone to come and release them. They look like the people on the street watching anxiously for a bus. Everybody is nervous and irritable and talkative. They all want to describe how they were arrested and keep telling the others they’re sure someone will bail them out. Everything stinks and something in the air is making my asthma act up.” Ala wheezed and scratched the stubble on his face almost vindictively. “And I’m itching all over. It’s driving me crazy.”

“My boy, you can end this now,” Omar Yussef said. “Tell the police where you were when Nizar was killed.”

“I can’t do that, Dad.”

The bruise on the back of Omar Yussef’s head throbbed.

“Don’t you think the police have been asking me that all night?” Ala continued. “That bastard Sergeant Abayat thinks I killed Nizar.”

“Surely not.”

“He’s badgering me to confess. ‘Tell us the real story; tell us how you did it; you went out to get rid of the murder weapon, and when you came back your father was there, so where did you hide it?’ America’s full of Arabs like him. They want to show their American patriotism, so they make out that other Arabs are all bad guys. Why not hang the murder on me? I’m just a stinking Arab, after all.”

“You’re letting your animosity toward that man obscure what you ought to be focusing on. You need to reveal your alibi.”

“I’m sorry to try your patience, Dad, but there’s somebody I must protect.”

“By Allah, you mean that you really know who committed this murder?”

Khamis Zeydan leaned forward and took the second handset. He lifted an eyebrow to indicate that Ala should continue.

“That isn’t what I mean by protecting someone.” Ala rocked his head from side to side. “I was with a woman when the killing happened. I’m worried about her reputation.”

“Her good name is worth more than your freedom?”

“I’ve already told the meathead detective that I waive my right to a lawyer. I don’t want to have to admit where I was, and there’s no other way out of this for me.” Ala sucked his upper lip.

“Without a lawyer, they’ll pin this murder on you. They could put you away forever.” Omar Yussef slammed his palms onto the counter before him. The guard stuck his head around the door with a warning look.

Ala’s voice softened. “I love her. I’m ready to sacrifice for her.” His face was beatific, but his lower lip twitched.

“She’ll surely be prepared to let you tell your story. She’ll corroborate your alibi.”

“She’s an Arab woman, Dad. She can’t just say, ‘Sure, I was with him.’” Ala scratched at his curly black hair and groaned.

He’s worried someone will kill her. To punish her for besmirching the honor of her family by meeting alone with an unmarried man, Omar Yussef thought.

“Tell me who she is, my son. I’ll persuade her to let you speak. Then you can go free. I’ll appeal to her love for you.”

“She doesn’t love me, Dad.”

“Why not?”

Ala snorted a tired laugh. “Am I talking to my father or my excessively proud mother? I’m not irresistible to women, you know.” The boy fretted at his lips with his front teeth. The whites of his eyes were shaded blue and green and shot through with red.

She doesn’t love me. Omar Yussef remembered the pink sheet of writing paper in the bony hand of the police lieutenant, the love letter from the corpse’s pocket with the graphic language. He recalled the pain in Ala’s face when the Arab detective read the name “Rania” from that letter. It must have been the same girl, the one Ala was with when Nizar was murdered. But it had been Nizar she had wanted. Omar Yussef felt his son’s desolate loneliness through the Plexiglas. “You and Nizar were rivals for a woman’s love?”

Ala looked up sharply, his haunted, unhealthy eyes wide and defiant. Omar Yussef recognized something of the strength and desperation that must have seen the boy through the long police interrogation. “You think I killed Nizar because he beat me in love, Dad?”

“Of course not. But I want to know the truth. Tell me.”

The boy leaned back in his cheap plastic chair, gazing around at the whitewashed walls and the posters advising prisoners’ relatives of their visiting rights. “You remember Nizar and Rashid as bright young students, Dad, but they changed.”

“Why?”

Ala gave a vague wave of his hand. “You know, the intifada.”

“I know about your intifada.”

“It wasn’t much, was it? Going out with the guys to throw stones at the Israelis. The Assassins, as we used to call ourselves, all four of us.” Ala turned to Khamis Zeydan. “We stoned an army jeep at the edge of the camp.”

“I don’t know why you did it,” Omar Yussef muttered. “It just wasn’t like you, or the other boys.”

“Everyone did it.”

“Other kids at least would’ve run away before the second army jeep came up behind them and arrested them.”

Ala bit the nail of his thumb. “Somehow I think we wanted to be arrested. So we could feel part of the struggle like everyone else. Throwing stones? Well, as you say, it wasn’t like us.”

Arrested and held in a tent on a cold hillside near Ramallah, Omar Yussef thought. The cells here in the Detention Complex must seem like a hotel room with a mint on the pillow compared to the Israeli camp. “It was a terrible time, my son. But you said that it changed Nizar and Rashid. How?”

“In the Israeli jail, they became close to a sheikh from Hebron. The Israelis had picked him up for running an Islamic Jihad mosque.”

“The boys joined Islamic Jihad?”

“I don’t know that.”

But it’s what you think. “It made them radical?”

Ala shook his head. “It made them religious. It was something else that made them radical.”

“What?”

“Ismail.”

Ala’s classmate, my old pupil, Omar Yussef thought. The fourth Assassin. “I don’t understand.”

“The Israelis offered Ismail a deal.”

“I see where this is going.” Khamis Zeydan clicked his tongue.

“They told Ismail that if he informed on the sheikh, they’d let the four of us go free,” Ala said. “You remember what Ismail was like, Dad. It was easy to sway him. He loved The Assassins. He’d have done anything for us.”

Omar Yussef remembered Ismail as a shy boy who’d always been on the periphery of the class and of the games in the schoolyard, until he had come into the circle of The Assassins. He recalled the habitual trace of fear and nervous supplication in Ismail’s eyes, even when he was smiling; the way he trained his attention on Nizar and Rashid, the gregarious leaders of the gang, laughing at their jokes a beat too late and just a little too loudly.

“So Ismail did what the Israelis demanded?”

“In prison, he talked with the sheikh every day,” Ala said. “We all thought he was becoming religious too. Then suddenly the sheikh was gone. The Israelis put him on trial and sent him away for life.”

“Using Ismail’s evidence?”

Ala’s nod was reluctant, as though he were acceding to a sentence of death against his friend. “That’s why the Israelis released the four of us.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“After our release, Ismail confessed to us. He was ashamed, but he thought we’d understand. I hugged him and told him that it wasn’t his fault, that the interrogators had put him under impossible pressure. But Rashid and Nizar called him dirty names and refused ever to speak to him.”

“What happened to Ismail?”

Ala puffed out his cheeks and lifted his eyebrows. “I lost track of him when I came to New York.”

“Did Nizar and Rashid ever forgive him?”

“They never mentioned his name again. They were too busy praying five times a day.” Ala’s eyes drifted to the damp-stained ceiling, struggling against his fatigue to keep track of his story. “But after a while Nizar changed.”

“How?”

“He started dressing more fashionably. You remember the nice boots he was wearing when he-when he was killed?”

Omar Yussef recalled the luscious black of the leather on the dead body and winced.

“He stayed out late every night,” Ala said. “Rashid was often angry with him and accused him of betraying his religion for a good time.”

“A good time? What was Nizar up to?”

“He told me once, with great relish, that he was having sex with ladies.”

Khamis Zeydan grinned. “That’s more fun than praying, may Allah be praised.”

Omar Yussef scowled at his friend.

“Then suddenly Nizar’s bad behavior stopped.” Ala’s face bore a look of strain as though he had experienced the twinge of a forgotten pain.

“There’s only one thing that can stop a young man wanting to have sex with everyone in sight,” Khamis Zeydan said. “The poor slob must’ve fallen in love.”

“At the Arab social club in Bay Ridge, Nizar and I were on the same dabka team,” Ala said. “Some of the younger kids liked to inject break-dancing and other strange American stuff into the traditional Palestinian dances, but Nizar said we should keep our dabka slow, just the way we did it back home. There was a girl who liked that attitude, because she’s also relatively new to the U.S.”

Omar Yussef imagined the hunched, twitching boy behind the Plexiglas standing straight in a circle of dancers, performing the skipping, kicking, stomping motions of the dabka, lifting his hand to twirl a kerchief above his head. He wondered what it must be like to dance a traditional step in exile. I imagine it might move me to tears, he thought. Lucky I don’t have the breath for it. Ala and his friend Nizar had danced with the same girl, and Nizar had won her. “Rania?” Omar Yussef said.

Ala’s energy seemed to drain away, and his gaze was as dead as a Ramadan afternoon. “I used to visit her father’s cafe. It’s right next to our apartment building. I became friendly with her father, and he invited me to dinner. It was the beginning of our courtship.”

“So you had the father’s approval?”

Ala brightened, but his smile died quickly. “Nizar also started to go to the cafe. He knew that I was courting Rania. He told me he wasn’t interested in her. He was just glad to drink mint tea, smoke a water pipe, and talk to her father about Middle Eastern politics and the Koran and Egyptian football. I didn’t object, because it kept him from his wild ways. But then I saw how he and Rania looked at each other. I couldn’t compete with him. He’s handsome. He has that long hair. He’s so charming.”

“My son, I don’t wish to seem unfeeling, but Nizar is gone. Things have changed. You have your alibi, and perhaps you can still be with Rania after she has mourned for Nizar. Don’t lose hope. You must tell the police where you were and leave this jail so you can claim her.”

“She’ll never be mine. I saw how it was between her and Nizar. In comparison, she felt nothing for me.” Ala scratched his scalp with both hands. “When Nizar was being murdered, I was with her. But only to tell her that she should go with him. I intended to inform her father too. He was looking forward to meeting you and settling all the details of our engagement. I couldn’t bear to break it off, so I delayed until the last minute, right before you arrived. Then I went to their apartment above the cafe and I told her that there would be no arrangement between us.”

“How did she react?”

Ala sucked in a breath and was silent.

“Did Nizar ask to marry Rania?”

“I’m sure he didn’t. Rania’s father would’ve told me. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think the friendship between Rania’s father and Nizar was not entirely simple.”

“Could Rania’s father have found out about the secret relationship and killed Nizar for the sake of family honor?”

Ala shook his head. “I never heard bad words between them. With our roommate Rashid, on the other hand, Nizar argued every day, even after he stopped his bad behavior with girls and alcohol.”

“What were the fights about?”

“They always spoke in urgent whispers. When I tried to ask them what they were talking about, they told me to mind my own business.” Ala stared distantly beyond his father’s shoulder, as though he were chasing through the permutations that might lie behind the murder, tracking each sign to a point where the death would make sense. “There’s also the veil.”

The Veiled Man, Omar Yussef thought. The betrayer who must be killed by the messiah.

“Rashid was fascinated by all the Islamic mythology of the Assassins. He read and reread those stories that we first learned in your class, Dad. He might have believed Nizar had betrayed him somehow. If he killed him, he could’ve left the veil as a sign.”

“Knowing that only you would understand it.”

“Or you, Dad. He knew you were coming to visit.”

Omar Yussef’s jaw shook. A sign for me to interpret, he thought. But why? “Could Rashid really kill a man?”

Ala winced. “I think that was what he and Nizar used to fight about,” he said.

“Killing?”

“I didn’t hear enough to know any more than that for certain. But I believe they planned to kill someone.”