The Samaritan's secret

Chapter 7

At the entrance to the souk, Omar Yussef detected something savory in the air. He twitched his nostrils, searching beyond the aroma of walnuts and dates from the ma’amoul shortbread pyramided on wide trays outside a sweetshop. Sami pointed into the half-light of the market. “You’ve picked up the scent of Abu Alam’s restaurant,” he said. “Now I’ll prove to you that I’m not marrying Meisoun just so that I’ll have someone to fry my eggs in the morning.”

They weaved between the women in the souk. The presence of the crowd calmed Omar Yussef. In the empty casbah, there always seemed to be some man, menacing and solitary, sloping along close to the wall on the shadowed side of the alley. As the women milled past the small stores, the brush of their shoulders against Omar Yussef felt like a soothing caress. I could almost forget that I saw a dead man today, he thought.

Just past a toy shop selling bright plastic machine guns and tricycles, Sami dodged into a storefront, its door and window the width of a man’s arm span and open to the street. The sizzling of oil in a frying pan drew Omar Yussef inside. He could rarely stomach food that wasn’t prepared by his wife, but his exertions at the summit of Mount Jerizim and his walk around the casbah had made him hungry. He noticed that he was salivating.

Sami reached over the counter to slap hands with the owner, who was making hummus in a bucket-sized mixer. Abu Alam squeezed two large lemons over the chickpeas, tehina and garlic. He wiped the juice from his fingers on his soiled shirt, before reaching out a thick forearm to grasp Sami’s hand. His fat face glistened with perspiration.

“So you’re a pal of Sami’s from Bethlehem?” Abu Alam’s voice was hoarse from shouting orders to his cook over the din of the busy souk. “Welcome, ustaz. Things down there aren’t violent enough for you, so you decided to come and see what life is like in a real war zone?”

“Thanks for your welcome.” Omar Yussef raised a finger and smiled. “How do you know I’m not on the run from the Israelis? Maybe I decided to take refuge here where they can’t get at me.”

“You may see gunmen walking freely around our casbah in the afternoon, it’s true, ustaz. But believe me they’re not out of reach of the Israelis, even here. Only last night, the Israelis came right to the door of my restaurant.” Abu Alam pointed toward a metal concertina shutter folded back from the entrance. The light green paint was smeared a cloudy black. “That’s from a grenade or some other explosive, and it wasn’t like that when I locked up yesterday.”

Omar Yussef touched a finger to the blackness. It came away dirty, with a smell of burnt plastic. “What happened?”

“The Israeli special forces come in every night to arrest some gunmen. We’re not very deep in the casbah here, so the Israelis can enter this far and still know where they stand.” Abu Alam waved a big hand at the door. “But they don’t like to go further. They’re at a disadvantage in the alleys and the old tunnels. The streets are too twisty for their tanks, and our gunmen know their way around much better than they do.”

“In Bethlehem the army comes at night once or twice a week,” Omar Yussef said.

“Nablus isn’t like Bethlehem or the rest of the West Bank. It’s more like Gaza, ustaz,” Abu Alam said. “We used to run the most prosperous businesses in Palestine and produce its greatest poets. Now our casbah is a factory for gunmen and the only literature is written on posters advertising the latest martyr.”

“Most of the gunmen in Bethlehem have been arrested by now.”

“No matter how many the Israelis kill or capture, Nablus still has a good supply.”

“Maybe if you gave the gunmen free eggs and hummus, they’d be too fat to run away from the Israelis and then your town could get some peace.”

“I’m doing my best. The men of the resistance eat free here, ustaz, and you know that hummus makes you sleepy.” Abu Alam wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist.

“What about the police?” Omar Yussef squeezed Sami’s shoulder. “Do they eat free of charge?”

“The brother Sami will never get fat, and my prices are affordable, even for a man on a police salary.” Abu Alam smiled. “The usual, Sami?”

“Yes, and the same for Abu Ramiz.”

Sami took Omar Yussef’s elbow, led him down the single row of tables, and sat facing the door. Against the opposite wall, a thin youth in baggy jeans took a few eggs from a cardboard pannier and cracked them one-handed into a charred frying pan. He turned up the heat on a row of gas burners, wiping a smear of egg yolk onto his white apron. Behind Sami, another youngster was wedged between a deep stainless steel sink and a waist-high cooking-gas canister in the violet glow of an electric fly trap. He split a baked eggplant, scraped out its pulpy innards, and tossed the skin onto a pile of trash, where it lay, bruise-black and limp, like a gutted crow. Abu Alam shouted to the boy, who went quickly to the counter and ferried a few small plates to Sami and Omar Yussef.

Sami curled a wedge of flatbread around his forefinger and scooped some khilta into his mouth. He wiped a dribble of the yoghurt from his chin. “Try it. It’s good,” he said. “Even your dear wife wouldn’t object to this place.”

“I think she might take issue with their cleanliness,” Omar Yussef said, glancing at the charred gobbets of egg on the gas burners.

The yoghurt was appealing, though, dotted with the brightness of finely chopped tomatoes and red peppers. He ate, enjoying the freshness of the dish. When he tried the soft slices of avocado soaked in olive oil, he sensed himself relaxing. He was supposed to be on vacation and he hadn’t planned for dead bodies in his itinerary, so it was comfort-ing to taste hearty, traditional food prepared simply and to forget about the corpse on the mountain. It’s Sami who has to worry about the dead Samaritan, Omar Yussef thought, and his killer.

The young man who had been working the burners laid an omelette, glistening with oil, on the table and grinned at Omar Yussef with betel-stained teeth. In the kitchen, a jagged crackle and a stutter of violet light marked the sudden demise of a fly.

Omar Yussef took some hummus, but as he brought it to his mouth, a dollop slipped off the bread onto his shirt. He cursed quietly and held up his hands, while Sami wiped at the stain with a wet paper napkin. The men at the other tables smoked and drank tea and talked, bending low over their plates when they ate. Omar Yussef leaned close to Sami.

“Ishaq was homosexual,” he whispered. “Awwadi told me.”

“You’ve been interrogating Awwadi?” Sami mumbled through a mouthful of hummus. He scrubbed once more at Omar Yussef’s stained shirt, looking sharply at his friend. “You’re supposed to be in Nablus for my wedding, not to play detective.”

“Weddings depress me. I need to focus on a murder to cheer myself up.”

Sami dropped the damp napkin in the ashtray and exam-ined the hummus stain on Omar Yussef’s shirt with suspicion.

“Will the stain come out?” Omar Yussef said.

Sami shrugged. “You think Ishaq’s death is connected to his homosexuality?”

“Ishaq may have had access to money hidden by the old president in the foreign accounts people always talk about. He also had a personal secret that could shame him before his community. Sounds like a good basis for blackmail.”

“But he was murdered. Why kill someone you want to blackmail?” Sami swirled the hummus with his bread.

“Blackmailers are like anyone else-they make mistakes.” Omar Yussef rooted for a sesame seed trapped between his teeth. “Even your great Sheikh Bader isn’t right all the time. Eventually someone will refuse to follow his sacred rules.”

Sami cut a piece of omelette with the edge of his fork. He held it with a small piece of bread and rolled it in a hot dish of fava bean foule. “Mistake or not, it’s a mystery, and that’s that.” He shoved the omelette into his mouth and wiped his fingers on his combat pants.

“It’s not just a mystery. It’s a murder case.” Omar Yussef’s eyes widened.

Sami chewed his food. “You’re a good friend, Abu Ramiz, so I’m going to be straight with you. Nablus has many murders, but it has very few murder trials.”

“What do you mean?”

The young policeman sucked the last remnants of bread from his back teeth. “You know that I don’t follow the sheikh’s sacred rules, as you call them. I have my own guidelines in life, and accordingly there’s only so far I can go with this case.”

Omar Yussef straightened in surprise. “I smell corruption on your breath.”

“Don’t be dramatic. Abu Alam’s hummus just has too much garlic,” Sami grinned. “Corruption makes me choke just as hard as you.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Sami picked at his thumbnail. “The sheikh warned me not to pursue this case.”

“Then start your investigation with him. Why would he want the case of a dead Samaritan to be dropped? He must be involved.”

“Abu Ramiz, I was just transferred back to the West Bank after five years in Gaza, in exile,” said Sami. “I’m about to be married to the woman I love and I want to have a family. My deportation already delayed these things and I can’t afford to take risks.”

“Risks?” Omar Yussef’s hands shook. He gripped the edge of the table to steady them.

“This isn’t just a case of the murder of some anonymous Samaritan.”

“Are you saying you don’t care about his death because he was homosexual?”

“I’m saying I care very much about his death and I certainly don’t intend to drop the case completely. But there may be limits to how far I can take my inquiries.” Sami picked up a strip of cheese and pretended to roll it in the dish of khilta. He spoke quietly, urgently. “The case isn’t simple. It’s obvious to me that it reaches far into the politics of Nablus. It’ll surely concern influential people.”

“I agree,” Omar Yussef said. “After all, Ishaq managed the Old Man’s money.”

“The money suggests this wasn’t just a crime of passion, even perverted passion. Someone powerful was after all that cash. If they have the money now, they won’t be happy with anyone who investigates it, and if not, they may kill again to find it.” Sami squashed the spongy finger of cheese onto his plate as though it were a cigarette. “The political leaders of Nablus are violent, ruthless men. I can’t go up against them.”

“You fear the sheikh will kill you, if you ignore his warning?”

“Someone might have Meisoun’s permit revoked, sending her back to Gaza. They could even harm her, or have me posted to Gaza again.”

“Who are they?” Omar Yussef brought his hand down on the table. The plates rattled. He looked about him, but the noise of cooking and conversation went on as before.

Sami lit a cigarette and called to Abu Alam for two glasses of tea. He expelled twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. “You know me well enough to understand that I uphold my principles as much as possible, Abu Ramiz. But in this society, where does it get me?”

“Am I wrong to stand up for my principles?”

“With respect, Abu Ramiz, lecturing the little girls at the UN school isn’t as tough as confronting the corrupt polit-ical establishment of Nablus.”

“How do you know you’d have to go up against the entire political system? What did the Sheikh tell you?”

“You saw the photograph on Ishaq’s wall. The Old Man was kissing him.”

The tension in Sami’s jaw betrayed his shame to Omar Yussef. He’s a fine boy and a good policeman, he thought. He has sacrificed so much for a rotten system. He only wants to do something for himself now.

Omar Yussef wondered whose side his friend, Bethlehem’s police chief, would take, when he arrived for the wedding. Probably he’d defer to Sami, he thought. He’d tell me that Sami has an instinct for danger, knowing when to charge the guns and when to take cover. My instincts, on the other hand, are less practical.

“If I help you identify the killer, will you arrest him?” he said.

Sami puffed out his cheeks. “If Allah wills it, of course. I’ll even pay for your tombstone.”

“My sons can cover that.”

Omar Yussef knew that Ramiz, his eldest, would agree with Sami. He always avoided trouble. Zuheir, however, was principled and combative, like Omar Yussef. He would want his father to seek justice, even when the law failed. Omar Yussef noticed that Zuheir’s approval was important to him.

“A good tombstone is expensive,” Sami said.

“I’ll tell my boys to start saving.”

“For some things, you never finish paying.”

Sami’s mobile phone vibrated on the tabletop. Abu Alam set their tea beside it. Sami put his finger on the phone to stop it wandering across the Formica. His tired, yellowy eyes stared hard at Omar Yussef and his lips were tight with irritation. He picked up the phone.