The Samaritan's secret

Chapter 8

Sami whispered into his cellular and the muscles of his face relaxed. With the tiny silver phone pressed to his ear, he rose, dropped some coins on the counter and gave Abu Alam a light handshake. He crooked a finger for Omar Yussef to follow and moved into the flow of people through the souk.

Omar Yussef sipped at his tea, but the glass was too hot for him to hold and the mint stuck to his teeth. He put it down before it burned his fingers and picked a flaccid leaf from his lip. The hummus felt heavy in his stomach.

“Did you enjoy the food, ustaz?” Abu Alam shouted above the sizzling of falafel in a blackened frier. He flattened a green ball of mashed fava beans between his palms and slid it into the hot oil.

“Your plan to bring peace to the town by making the gunmen sleepy with hummus may work. It has succeeded with me,” Omar Yussef said. “Leave a big plate outside your door at night and in the morning you’ll find a group of contented Israeli soldiers snoozing in the street.”

“I could poison the hummus, but I doubt the soldiers would notice the difference. Have you ever tasted Israeli hummus, ustaz? You can tell it’s made industrially. There’s not enough lemon and the chickpeas are ground too fine, as though it was meant to be eaten by little babies.”

“Whereas your hummus merely makes me want to sleep like a baby.” Omar Yussef turned to the street. Sami was edging away through the crowd, waving to someone over the heads of the shoppers. “Thank you for your food. The avocado was very good.”

“To your double health, ustaz. Thank you.” Abu Alam smiled. “May Allah grant you good health.”

Omar Yussef peered along the passage, looking for Sami. Dusty pillars of sunlight from ventilation grates in the ceiling illuminated the crowd, but all the men had identical short, black hair and every woman covered her head in a cream scarf.

A stocky tradesman with gray stubble and a dark mustache leaned over his handcart and lifted a quartered watermelon. “Come on, watermelon, watermelon, it’s almost free,” he bellowed. Omar Yussef flinched at the volume of the man’s sudden call and glared at him. The vendor caught Omar Yussef’s indignant eye, but only raised his chin and his volume: “O Allah, it’s free.”

A hand reached up out of the crowd, and another next to it. Someone was waving to him. Then he saw Sami’s face below the raised hands, and he started through the throng.

His wife emerged from the crowd of Nablus women in their long gowns and headscarfs. Maryam’s head was uncovered and she wore black slacks and a thin black sweater. On her shoulder, she carried a dark blue handbag with gold clasps that Omar Yussef had bought for her in Morocco. She lifted her arms and hugged Omar Yussef, her plastic shopping bags slapping his back.

Sami guided him out of the flow of the crowd and into the entrance of a shop selling gaudy housecoats for women. He opened his palm to present a slight young woman. “Abu Ramiz, you remember Meisoun?”

Though her head was draped with the scarf of a religious woman, Meisoun dropped her chin to one side coquettishly and fluttered her long, delicate lashes at Omar Yussef. When they had first met, Meisoun had been working at a hotel in Gaza and was kind enough to respond with good humor to Omar Yussef’s innocent flirting. I’m sure she considered me just a harmless old man, Omar Yussef thought, and she probably still does. He felt more regret than he would have expected for the passing of the days when women might have described him as charming, handsome and even dangerous. Now I’m only charming-provided I’m in a good mood.

“Miss Meisoun, I came to Nablus solely to see you,” Omar Yussef said. “The West Bank needs Gazan beauties like you to make life more bearable here. But you betrayed me and agreed to marry another man.”

“I have several unmarried sisters in Gaza, ustaz.” Meisoun smiled at Sami to show that she enjoyed teasing Omar Yussef. “They would be glad to meet an accom-plished man of intelligence like you.”

“He’s not so smart.” Maryam slapped Omar Yussef’s wrist and wagged a finger at her husband. “Omar, it’s only peasant men in the villages who take more than one wife these days. Anyway, why would you want a second wife? You always complain that one is too many.”

“The political power of the Islamists is growing, Maryam,” Omar Yussef said. “It’s important to stay in their good books. If I take a second wife, they’ll assume that I’m religious, and I won’t even have to pray to prove it.”

“Would you agree to let Sheikh Bader officiate at the wedding?” Sami smiled, but Omar Yussef detected a hardness in his friend’s eyes.

“All the grooms at the big Hamas wedding will be mounted on white stallions.” Omar Yussef laughed. “Given the condition of my health, if I tried to ride such a horse, Sheikh Bader might have to arrange a white ambulance to bring me to my new bride.”

“And they’d take you away in a coffin,” Maryam said.

Meisoun laughed. “I certainly wouldn’t want my wedding to be like the big one Hamas is planning,” she said. “You know I’m religious, ustaz, but Sheikh Bader has planned more of a political event than a wedding, from what Sami tells me. Men and women should be separated for the sake of decency, but they shouldn’t be celebrating on different planets, like they will at the Hamas event. The women will be at one end of the casbah and the men at the other.”

“My wedding to Meisoun and our married life together-these are the most important things to me.” Sami spoke to Maryam, but Omar Yussef knew this was aimed at him. “I suffered a long time in Gaza away from my family, but perhaps it was Allah’s will that I be sent there to meet this perfect wife and mother.”

Maryam laid a hand on Meisoun’s arm and smiled. “I don’t think we’ll have to wait long,” she said.

Omar Yussef sighed. After the marriage, people would refer to the couple as Abu Hassan and Umm Hassan-the father of Hassan and the mother of Hassan-because most Palestinians considered Sami obliged to name his first child after his father, Hassan. Of course, it had better be a son, Omar Yussef thought, or there’ll be commiserations all around.

At times like this, Omar Yussef found Maryam utterly conventional, but he was never able to maintain his discontent with her for long. That either means I’m also rather conventional, he thought, or I must love her. He recalled the taxi ride from Bethlehem to Nablus. Maryam had chattered all the way about the lace on the bridal gown, how tall the wedding cake might be, and how many children she expected Sami to sire. As the hot breeze had buffeted Omar Yussef through the taxi window, his irritation at her babble had grown and he had wondered what had ever made him marry her. When the taxi finally approached the Hawara checkpoint at the edge of Nablus, she had tidied the few strands of white hair crossing his bald head and touched his cheek with her palm. With that gesture, his resentment had ceased and he had remembered that there was little enough in her life to bring her joy. His eyes tearing, he had taken her hand and kissed it. Sometimes she seemed like the most average woman alive, but it was too late to wonder why he loved her.

“No, we’re not going to have to wait very long at all for a little one to arrive.” Maryam leaned close to Sami and spoke with an excited quaver. “Are we, Abu Hassan?”

Omar Yussef threw his arms wide and let them slap down against his thighs. “Maryam, allow them to enjoy their marriage. Don’t pressure them.”

“Who’s pressuring them? You don’t think children are the greatest pleasure of marriage?”

“Marriage has many benefits, not only children.”

“If you had your way, I’d have given birth to a shelf full of books, instead of three sons.” Maryam examined Omar Yussef’s shirt. She brushed her hand across his chest. “Omar, is that hummus?”

Omar Yussef glanced hopelessly at Sami.

“It’s my fault, Umm Ramiz,” Sami said. “Abu Ramiz didn’t want to eat, but I was very hungry and I forced him to taste the hummus at my favorite restaurant.”

Omar Yussef touched the tips of his mustache, nervously. “It wasn’t as good as yours, my darling,” he said.

Maryam jerked her head back and opened her dark eyes wide. “Of course it wasn’t. Perhaps you want a second wife so that she can make your hummus. She can wash your underwear, too.”

Omar Yussef smiled and put his hand to his wife’s cheek. “Very well, she can wash my underwear. No one but you will make hummus for me, though.” He looked down at Maryam’s bags. “What have you bought?”

“A nice new shirt for Nadia to wear to the wedding.” Maryam opened one of the plastic bags and Omar Yussef looked inside. The shirt was pink and lacy. Maryam held up the other bag. “I also picked up some American T-shirts for Miral and Dahoud.”

“Nadia will love it.” He smiled approvingly and kissed his wife’s cheek. “So will our newest little pair.” He had adopted Miral and Dahoud after the death of their parents, friends of his, little more than a year ago, and found in them a delight that made him feel young once more. He thought of the Samaritan priest, robbed of his adopted son by a murderer, and shivered at the thought of losing either of his new charges.

“Can I take you both back to the hotel?” Sami asked. He tilted his head and stared hard at Omar Yussef as he spoke. “You must be tired, Umm Ramiz. You too, Abu Ramiz. You’ve done enough for one day.”

He doesn’t want me arguing with him about the investigation into Ishaq’s murder, Omar Yussef thought. I can’t force him to face down the powerful people he says are involved in this case, but I know Sami’s a good policeman. He’ll come around, if I don’t push him too hard.

“Why should Omar be tired? He’s only been loafing around, eating other people’s food.” Maryam wiped at her husband’s stained shirt with the corner of her handkerchief. As they moved into the stream of shoppers, she turned to Omar Yussef. “How was your visit to the Samaritan synagogue? Did they show you their historic scrolls?”

Omar Yussef suddenly felt light-headed and panicky. He thought of Ishaq’s corpse. The busy street around him dissolved into darkness and he slipped on the puddle from the ice melting in the watermelon vendor’s cart. Sami caught him under the arm and maneuvered him into a side alley.

“The car is just here, at the top of the casbah, Umm Ramiz,” he said. “We’d better take your husband to the hotel.”

“I’m fine,” Omar Yussef murmured.

“Sami, I don’t know how you find your way around these alleys,” Maryam said. She looked suspiciously at Omar Yussef.

They rounded a dark corner and pushed into a dim, vaulted stretch, aiming for a bright spot where the tunnel emerged twenty yards away.

“Meisoun, there’s nothing like this in Gaza,” Maryam said. “Are you getting used to it?”

Meisoun wiggled her head. “It’s true, the surviving older buildings of Gaza aren’t as impressive as the casbah here in Nablus. This is one of the most important places in Palestine, historically.”

“Have you been taking lessons from the schoolteacher here?” Maryam jabbed a finger at Omar Yussef.

“I would be honored,” Meisoun said. “But actually I studied the ancient commerce of Palestine for my business degree. Nablus was always much more important as a center of trade than Jerusalem.”

They came into the light. Vivid green weeds fell in thick clusters over the wall.

Sami smiled. “My fiancee is much smarter than me,” he said. “I want her to start a business here in Nablus.”

“With her knowledge of history, she could be a tour guide,” Maryam said.

“That’s not exactly a growing business. You may be the first tourists to reach Nablus in five years. But if you like, I can be your tour guide.” Meisoun smiled, lifted her arm, and marched forward. “Follow my finger, come on, my group.”

Sami fell into step behind her, dropping his shoulders like the indolent tourists who shuffled about Bethlehem on organized tours. Omar and Maryam joined, too.

Meisoun halted at the end of the overgrown wall and cupped her hand beside her mouth like a guide with a bull-horn. “Listen, my group, most of the casbah dates from the last eight centuries. But beneath our feet are remains of the Roman town built for veterans of the legions and called Flavia Neapolis. Nablus is a corruption of the name ‘Neapolis.’ ”

Omar Yussef held up his hand. “Miss, miss, what was the town on this site called before it was rebuilt as Neapolis?”

“Quiet, you troublemaker.” Meisoun put her finger to her lips. “The Jews say they lived here two thousand years ago in a town called Shekhem, but I’m not allowed to say any more about that or I’ll lose my official tour guide license.”

“Perhaps you should choose another business that’s less politically sensitive,” Omar Yussef suggested.

“I’m encouraging her to get into cell phones, in partner-ship with Ramiz,” Sami said. Omar Yussef’s son ran a cell phone business in Bethlehem. “You’re right that it’s best to avoid politically sensitive issues.” He angled his neck toward Omar Yussef to emphasize his warning.

Meisoun put her finger on her lips again. “My interest in cell phones, too, is a secret no less explosive than the ancient Israelite history of Nablus.” She smiled. “Someone else might steal our idea.”

“I’m very discreet, Miss Meisoun,” Omar Yussef said. “Unfortunately, my wife is a chatterbox. If you want to prevent Maryam from exposing your secret, you’d better bury her at least as far down as the Roman remains.”

Maryam slapped Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “Then who would make your hummus?”

They laughed, but Meisoun grew quiet. She stepped closer to the wall and peered into the shadows cast by the falling weeds. She ran her hand across the smooth, tan stone and circled three bullet holes with her forefinger. Powdered limestone came away on her nail when she probed one of them. A flattened slug of lead dropped to the floor. “You see, Umm Ramiz. I’m right at home in Nablus. It’s just like Gaza.”

They walked on in silence. Meisoun rubbed the dust from her finger and reached for Sami’s hand. The young man looked into her eyes with a strained smile.

Omar Yussef reached out and pinched Maryam’s earlobe affectionately. She was stroking his hand, when they heard quick footsteps around the corner.

Four men came into the alley. They wore green fatigues and their faces were disguised by black stocking caps. Two of them held thick lengths of wood. A short, bulky man slapped a tire iron into his palm. They barred the alley, poised on their toes, ready to spring.

Sami pulled Meisoun behind him. Omar Yussef looked back along the passage. It was empty and dark.

The short man chuckled, jeering and mirthless. “You’re Sami Jaffari, aren’t you, you son of a whore?” He stepped toward Sami, the men with the timbers at his elbow.

Sami pushed Meisoun away, ducked his head and charged at the short man, hitting him in the chest with his shoulder. The man went down, but Sami took a two by four across his shoulders and dropped to his knees. Another blow flattened him.

Omar Yussef let go of Maryam’s hand. “Stop this, by Allah, stop it,” he shouted. “Shame on you.”

The fourth masked man was tall and trim. He shoved Omar Yussef on the collar bone with the flat of his hand, but the schoolteacher kept his balance and moved forward.

“Calm down, Little Grandpa.” The tall man leaned close. Omar Yussef smelled cardamom on his breath, as though he had been chewing seed pods.

“Your grandpa would be ashamed of you,” he said, “and I hope he’ll curse you for this.”

The tall man raised his hand and slapped Omar Yussef hard. His glasses fell and he spun toward the wall. He struck it with his shoulder and doubled over.

Maryam spread her arms in front of him. “Don’t touch my husband, you filthy dog,” she said.

Omar Yussef’s myopic eyes were tearful from the blow and his nose was running into his mustache. He saw a blur of green, hooded shapes lifting something from the floor and heard the tall man’s voice: “Consider this a warning, Jaffari, you worthless shit.” An arm swung. Omar Yussef heard a light crunch like cutlery rattling in a drawer, and Sami bellowed.

“Peace be upon you, Lieutenant.” The tall man’s voice was mocking. Omar Yussef heard someone expectorate and saw Sami flinch when the spittle hit him.

The men went back around the corner. Omar Yussef listened to their footsteps recede. Maryam handed him his glasses and stroked his stinging cheek.

Sami was hunched over his knees on the flagstones of the alley. Meisoun hugged his shaking body.

Omar Yussef kneeled beside him. He gave his handker-chief to Meisoun, who wiped the gob of sputum from Sami’s cheek. The young policeman’s face was pale and sweating. He cradled his right arm with his left.

“They’ve broken my arm,” he gasped.

This time Omar Yussef didn’t ask who they were.