The Fourth Assassin

Chapter 31

Khamis Zeydan bent to stroke Omar Yussef’s hand and spoke with unaccustomed gentleness. “You don’t have to make this speech if you don’t feel up to it,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Magnus?”

Omar Yussef’s boss nodded with such fervor that his chair creaked. “Stay here in your hotel room and rest,” he said. “You’ve had a dreadful shock. It’s only been a few hours since that poor fellow was shot right in front of you.”

The schoolteacher lay on his bed, propped against the pillows, his shirt open to his navel. The sweats had stopped since he had taken some aspirin, but he couldn’t get enough water down to cut the dryness in his mouth. He tried to talk, but only croaked and choked. He drank another sip from the glass on the nightstand. “I’m determined,” he said, with a cough.

Khamis Zeydan settled on the edge of the bed. “Our president’s already on his way home. His flight left JFK an hour ago. I have no more responsibilities here. I can stay and look after you.”

“I’d prefer a prettier nurse.”

“I have a duty to your wife, who is also my friend, to protect you from such temptations. Even so, I’m not offering to give you a sponge bath.”

The mention of his wife made Omar Yussef think of his family and of his son, who was alone in Brooklyn. “Go to Ala,” he said to Khamis Zeydan. “He’s leaving with me tomorrow. Help him pack his things. He likes you-try to cheer him up.”

Khamis Zeydan patted Omar Yussef’s wrist. “If Allah wills it, your son’ll be on the plane with you.”

“Go now. Magnus can take me over to the conference, after I tidy myself up.”

Khamis Zeydan went to the door. “Come to Ala’s place after you give your speech. I’ll see you there.”

When the police chief was gone, Omar Yussef dressed and allowed Magnus to help him on with his coat. At the entrance to the hotel, he pulled the hood over his feverish head and bent into the wind.

They crossed the plaza at the side of the UN building. The East River was choppy and charcoal all the way across to the opposite bank. A barge glided past a derelict smokestack and an old-fashioned Pepsi-Cola sign on the roof of a red brick factory on the Queens shore. The air was cold on Omar Yussef’s clammy face, and he smiled. For the first time since he had come to New York, he felt comforted by the freezing weather. He took Magnus’s hand as they went toward the low door in the green marble facade.

In the Economic and Social Council, a Moroccan delegate completed his speech with some hopeful cliches. The Egyptian chairman let his bored stare drift over to Magnus Wallander, who gave him a thumbs-up. He called Omar Yussef to the podium.

“Do you have your speech ready?” the Swede said.

Omar Yussef grinned and coughed hard.

He shuffled up the steps to the stage and squinted over the heads of the UN staff in the pit below him. Abdel Hadi leered from the row of Palestinian delegates, his yellow teeth glowing in the low light of his desk lamp. The envoy from Libya picked his nose, and the leader of the Mauritanian delegation was asleep in his colorful robes. Omar Yussef had addressed more attentive groups of twelve-year-olds in his classroom on the last day of a semester.

“We’ve heard this week the political statements of all the Arab countries on the subject of the Palestinians. As a resident of the Dehaisha Refugee Camp, I’ve been asked to tell you about the reality of Palestinian life.” Omar Yussef’s voice sounded thin in his head, but when he heard it through the amplifiers after a moment’s delay it seemed stronger. He laid his hands flat on the podium so that they wouldn’t be seen to shake. “Let me begin by saying that whatever you already know-the suicide bombs; the battles with the Israeli soldiers; the names of the factions, Hamas, PLO, PFLP, DFLP-these are nothing but background. The real story is the smell of cardamom in the sacks outside a spice shop in the casbah. It’s the laughter of little schoolgirls in their blue-and-white-striped smocks going home after a day at an overcrowded school. It’s the noise of the lathe in a single room in Bethlehem where men are making olive-wood beads for tourist rosaries. It’s the life that remains when politics is sluiced away like the filth a stray dog leaves in the street. Let me flush away the rhetoric of the last three days and show you the Palestine I know.”

Abdel Hadi shook his head with disdain. The Syrian delegate rose and, taking a cigarette from his pocket, beckoned for his Lebanese counterpart to follow him to the back of the room. Magnus Wallander smiled his encouragement.

Omar Yussef surveyed the hall. He realized that he wanted very badly to prick the complacency of the diplomats lounging before him. “You wonder how these people, whose lives you think are so full of victimhood and despair, get up in the morning. Perhaps people are killed beside them, or homes are destroyed, or relatives are held without charge for months. But they do rise in the morning, and they work and eat and laugh, and then they sleep. You don’t know how they go on, because you don’t know what’s in their heads. You only know the political cliches, the stereotypes. They don’t spend their days longing for an independent state-they know their politics is too corrupt and divided for that to be achieved. They aren’t all determined to sacrifice their children for this struggle, either. It may be hard for you to understand, but what ordinary Palestinians want and what they battle for every day is precisely what’s denied to most of your citizens in the Arab countries: freedom and economic prosperity.”

The Libyan delegate removed his finger from his nose and flicked it angrily. The Syrian strode down from the rear of the hall, dropping his cigarette. The Lebanese stepped the butt into the carpet as he followed. The Americans glanced toward the translation gallery, fearful that this was another hoax.

“How can you, the Arab countries, dictate a solution for the Palestinians, when you suffer from many of the same problems? In fact, you, the governing class, thrive on the lack of democracy, the inequality of wealth. Take away the Israeli occupation, and the Palestinians would be closer to freedom and a functioning economy than most of your peoples.”

“Shame, shame on you,” the Syrian called out.

One of the Egyptian delegates stood and yelled, “Collaborator.” His colleague hauled him back into his seat with a simpering glance at the Americans.

Omar Yussef hammered the podium. “It is not only the Israelis-it is you who drive Palestinians into violence and poverty. You, who take no responsibility for the lives of your Arab brothers.” He lifted his hand to point at the American delegation and spoke in English. “And you, gentlemen of the United States, when you send your money to these corrupt Arab governments, pause to ask yourselves: Would I be willing to live there as a citizen? Would I live in a mud shack raising beets in the Jordan Valley for no reward? Or sit in the heat to sell a few orange sodas for ten cents on a desert highway in Syria? This week I’ve seen how people battle against the difficulties of life in New York. They fight to attain goals that may be of doubtful worth-the prosperity that brings a bigger house, a shinier car, or more luxuries at home. But at least they have aims and the possibility of achieving them. We Arabs are aimless. We wander like our forefathers in the desert, seeking water, waiting for some fanatic to come and enslave us.”

Omar Yussef paused. Colors danced in front of his eyes. He heard the blast of Colonel Khatib’s revolver over and over. Then he realized that it was his pulse sounding in his head. He gripped the podium. When he reached for the water glass, the Egyptian chairman dropped his gavel and, with relief, declared the day’s proceedings at an end. The chairman nudged his aide, who immediately came to Omar Yussef with a congratulatory handshake and bore him away from the microphone toward the steps.

“Fabulous, Abu Ramiz.” Magnus Wallander took Omar Yussef’s hand in both of his as he descended from the stage.

“You’re the only one who seems to think so. I don’t feel so good. I’m a little dizzy.”

“I’ll get you some more water.” Magnus hurried to the back of the room.

Abdel Hadi approached with a facetious sneer. “I thought you were about to blow yourself up, ustaz,” he said. “That was a suicide speech.”

“Today there has been no need for suicide.” Omar Yussef heard Khatib’s gun in his head again. “It has been a day for executioners.”

“You mean that animal who tried to shoot the president.”

“He wasn’t going to shoot him.”

“He was a suicide attacker. He knew he’d die, but he wanted to take the president with him.”

Anger drew Omar Yussef up straight. “He was killed in cold blood.”

“Nonsense. Khatib shot him as he was taking aim at the president. A suicidal attack by an animal, not a human being.”

“No animal would seek its own death. An animal doesn’t expect to elevate itself by dying. It’s our civilization that leads down the disgusting course to the suicidal assassin. Our search for meanings higher than mere existence, life after death. It’s the ultimate achievement of our dreadful civilization.”

Magnus returned with a glass of water.

Abdel Hadi wagged a finger at Omar Yussef. “For a schoolteacher, ustaz, you seem to find it hard to learn a lesson.”

“I’m a Palestinian. If I learned from my errors, I might run out of mistakes to make, and then I’d have to change nationality.” Omar Yussef drank some water. “What’s the lesson?”

“Suicide is the entire basis of our politics.”

“You’re forgetting murder.”

“Either way, we always seem to find new ways to destroy each other.”

“Not such new ways,” Omar Yussef said. He recalled the classes in medieval history that had inspired Nizar to decapitate his old friend.

“The assassination of the president by another Palestinian here would’ve been a first, would it not?” Abdel Hadi said. “Many Palestinians were killed by rival factions during the seventies and eighties in Europe and the Arab world, but never, I believe, in New York.”

Omar Yussef thought of Nizar’s father. “There was one. A writer named Fayez Jado.”

“Who told you about that? Was it your old friend the police chief of Bethlehem?”

Omar Yussef’s head cleared, and his eyes snapped to Abdel Hadi’s face.

“I see the former PLO hit man has been reminiscing,” Abdel Hadi said. “If only he was as good at doing his job today.”

Omar Yussef’s thoughts came in a rush. Nizar’s father was the only Palestinian official assassinated in New York during the eighties. What did Khamis Zeydan say? It was difficult to organize a hit in New York, but he managed it anyhow. It was him. When he was a PLO assassin, he killed Nizar’s father, and Nizar knows it. That’s why he agreed to come with me after I found him at Grand Central-to see the man who shot his father. Now he’ll try to murder him. What if Nizar goes back to Ala’s place as Hamza thought he would? He’ll find my friend there, and he’ll kill him.

Omar Yussef jogged to the chair where he had left his coat. Water spilled over his wrist. He drank the remainder quickly, put the glass on the chair, and picked up his coat. He hurried to the exit.

He stumbled along First Avenue, searching the steady traffic for a vacant taxi. He needed to get to Khamis Zeydan to warn him. There was no time to take the subway. A cab pulled over, and Omar Yussef dived inside. The driver, a Sikh in a black turban, leaned toward the divider for instructions. “Brooklyn, Bay Ridge,” Omar Yussef said.

The cab raced down the FDR Drive to the Manhattan Bridge. Omar Yussef blinked into the dark as the driver dodged between the brake lights from lane to lane.

They came off the bridge in Brooklyn and turned onto the Interstate that followed the shoreline. Across the bay, the Statue of Liberty bent her head under the dark clouds moving in from New Jersey. It’ll rain soon, Omar Yussef thought. That’s all right. Finally I’ve started to like this cold weather. It reminds me that my body is warm and alive.

As he reached Bay Ridge, the rain was coming down hard and thick, like blood from a sheep gutted for the ’Eid. It was six o’clock. The day, which had never been bright, was dark and gone.