Omar Yussef smiled. His eldest grandchild was twelve and so much like his own mother had been that he couldn’t help but favor her over his other grandchildren. He imagined her sitting now with Dahoud and Miral. He had taken in the two children last year, at Nadia’s suggestion, after the deaths of their parents, who were friends of his. He could hear her voice in the background, modulated and expressive, not droning and bored like the children in his classroom at the UN Girls’ School in Dehaisha when they read aloud. “Let me speak to her, Maryam.”
While the line was quiet, Omar Yussef thought of Salwa and Eyad Masharawi, separated by a sudden arrest. He wondered what it would be like for Maryam if she didn’t know when he would return to their old, stone house on the edge of Bethlehem. Or for him, if he were unsure when next he would eat her food and listen to her good-humored scolding. He felt lonely and cold. He looked about for the control to the air-conditioning to turn it off, but he didn’t see it.
Nadia came on the line. “Grandpa, it’s me.” She sounded far away from him.
Omar Yussef swallowed his loneliness. “No, it’s me,” he said.
Nadia laughed. “You can try that joke with my little brother, but I know how to use a phone, Grandpa.”
“Evidently.”
“In fact, I know how to use a computer, too.”
“Daddy’s computer?”
“That’s just for playing. I’m taking a new class at school in computers. I’ve decided to build you a website.”
“A what? Ah, one of those things. What for?”
“Daddy has one already for his business, so I can’t make one for him.”
Omar Yussef didn’t understand computers, but he wanted to be encouraging. “Go ahead. I’m sure it’ll be the best website in Bethlehem.”
“The best website on the web.”
“Where?”
“Grandpa, even Grandma knows about the web.”
Did she really? Omar Yussef often felt discontented with his wife’s perception of the world. He thought her simple and conventional, though he couldn’t help but treasure the bond that had formed between them over the years. Could Maryam really know of things that were beyond him? It was true that sometimes she seemed to know his thoughts, even when he wanted to hide them from her. He recalled Salwa Masharawi’s friend, the university secretary Umm Rateb, and wondered if Maryam would detect in his voice some trace of the sexual attraction he had felt for another woman.
Maryam came to the phone. “Omar, did you eat lunch? Make sure you don’t let Magnus work you too hard without eating.”
Omar Yussef relaxed and sensed his love for his wife as surely as if her voice were a hand caressing his skin. “I’ll look after myself, Maryam.”
Chapter 4
The sky was clear blue, but Omar Yussef knew it was filling with dirt. He felt the first grains of the dust storm on his tongue and it left him short of breath. He stopped to blow his nose, then shuffled on through the hot yard of al-Azhar University behind Magnus Wallender and James Cree. The campus was a snaking collection of three-story rectangles, like a giant game of dominoes washed to the color of milky coffee. Palestinian flags twitched on the roof of the administrative building in the brief stirrings of the wind.
Ahead, Cree held the door open for Wallender, who waited for Omar Yussef to catch up. The door was entirely covered in posters. Most were decorated with the fervent, apprehensive faces of suicide bombers preparing to depart on their missions.
At the end of the hall, they entered an anteroom with two desks, each seating one secretary. Salwa Masharawi’s friend Umm Rateb rose and welcomed them. She smiled, with her head lilting to the left. “Peace be upon you, ustaz.”
“And upon you, peace,” Omar Yussef responded.
“Professor Maki has just arrived from his home after lunch,” she said in English.
Omar Yussef noticed Wallender glance up at the clock on the wall. It was 4:30 p.m.
“I will tell him you’re here,” Umm Rateb continued. “Please take a seat.”
Wallender and Cree sat. Omar Yussef leaned against a filing cabinet. He read the label on the top drawer. Degree Records: Alif to Ha. He thought of Nadia and her computer: Palestinians always want things on paper. Computers will never really catch on here. The other secretary tapped at her keyboard and the printer next to her desk hummed.
Umm Rateb returned from the inner office. “Please come in,” she said.
Omar Yussef followed the foreigners into the office. The shades were down, but the overhead light was bright, and the air-conditioning was stealthily effective. Professor Adnan Maki stood behind a desk designed to look stylish and expensive. Varnished to the color of strong tea, it swept in a curve that took it ninety degrees from the flashy black telephone at one end to a computer at the other, its shiny surface uninterrupted by papers or any other sign that work was performed upon it. Behind the desk, a Palestinian flag was draped from an upright pole. On either side of the flag, Maki had hung photographs of himself, smiling with the current president on the left and, on the right, embracing the old president.
Maki had a long, protruding upper lip and a receding chin that made him look equine, but not thoroughbred. Deep lines ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. He was about the same age as Omar Yussef, but he carried no paunch and moved quickly. His small, greedy eyes were so black and wet, they looked like tadpoles spawning.
“Welcome, welcome,” Maki said, eagerly, in English.
He bent forward, almost flat across the desk, to shake hands as they introduced themselves. He smelled strongly of expensive cologne. When he asked Umm Rateb to bring drinks, he leaned still closer to his guests and reached out an arm with the palm quizzically opened. “Tea or coffee?” He looked at his watch. “Or is it late enough for something a little stronger?” He giggled and put his hand to his mouth, exuberant to the point of clownishness.
Umm Rateb wagged a finger. “Hamas will come and burn down your office for your bad morals, Abu Nabil.”
Maki laughed loudly. “Umm Rateb, Mister Cree is English-”
“Scottish,” Cree said.
“Even better. The land of whisky. Surely, Umm Rateb, you will allow me to welcome my guests as their culture sees fit. Where are you from, Mister-”
“Wallender. I’m from Sweden.”
“Sweden? You are all drunk all the time in Sweden.”
Wallender flinched.
“Umm Rateb, you see? I know what our friends would like. And I’m sure that our brother here”-he gestured to Omar Yussef-“is no Islamist.”
“I no longer drink alcohol,” Omar Yussef said.
“A hellraiser in your younger days, were you, Abu Ramiz?”
“The hell was all on the inside,” Omar Yussef replied.
“I will have tea, please,” Wallender said.
“Very well, tea for everyone, Umm Rateb, and for me a coffee.”
Wallender watched the secretary go. “Is it acceptable to drink alcohol in Gaza?”
“Not in public. The Islamists actually burn places down if alcohol is served-the old Windmill Hotel, your UN Club. But I’m only teasing Umm Rateb. She’s religious, you know, with the headscarf. She understands that I don’t open the special bottom drawer of this desk until she goes home for the day.” Maki tapped the wood playfully. “Mister Cree, last year I went to Scotland. An old professor at the University of St. Andrews invited me to lecture about the Jews and the occupation and the suffering of the people in Gaza. A very sympathetic old gentleman. He served me a fine whisky in his office. Now, when my secretaries go home at the end of the day, I imagine that I’m not in Gaza. Instead, I’m transported to the office of that jolly professor in Scotland.”
“I’d rather be in Gaza myself,” Cree said firmly.
That surprised Omar Yussef. He snapped his head around to look at Cree.
“Then you will agree to swap passports with me, Mister Cree,” Maki said.