Khamis Zeydan lit another Rothman’s. “Abu Ramiz, a detective is a little like a psychiatrist. When you treat a mental illness, you had better know the workings of your own mind, or you risk becoming sicker than your patients. The disease can spread from one mind to another. That’s how it is for a policeman. To catch a villain, you have to think like a villain, and when you think like a villain, perhaps you already are a villain. The problem is that if a psychiatrist makes the wrong diagnosis, it’s the patient who pays. When a detective commits an error, the villain makes him pay for it.”
“Abu Adel, I want to find the real collaborator.”
“Are you listening to me? I’m trying to warn you that this is dangerous.”
“I don’t need to be a detective to understand that.”
“I may be a police officer now, but I was, for many years, what the world chooses to call a terrorist. In Beirut, in Rome, Paris. Wherever the Old Man sent me. You know that. We were all terrorists, the people who now govern you. That gives me an advantage over you. I know what it is to face danger.”
Omar Yussef sat forward. “You were all terrorists, you and your PLO buddies in exile. Now what? Now you are terrorized. By people like Hussein Tamari. I was never a terrorist, and I won’t be terrorized, either.”
Khamis Zeydan grimaced, as though it was hard to swallow what he had to say. “Get me another drink.”
Omar Yussef got the bottle of Black Label and put it on the table before his friend. The policeman poured a large shot as he spoke. “Louai Abdel Rahman worked for me, supposedly. He was a sergeant at the Irtas police station. But you know how things are now. Everybody is a general. Everybody is a military genius. Everybody has to have a crack at the Israelis. No one gets to be a hero writing parking tickets and solving domestic disputes, but if you fire off a few shots at an Israeli car you’re an instant resistance champion. Louai Abdel Rahman was not a bad guy. But he wasn’t prepared to be a policeman. He was another fucking immature outlaw of the type that we’re so good at breeding.”
“Why would anyone want him dead?”
“The Israelis would want to kill him because he shot a settler on the tunnel road last month.”
“He killed someone?”
“There’s a lot of it about. Don’t sound so surprised.”
“But who else would want him dead? A Palestinian, maybe?”
Khamis Zeydan was silent. His face was blank and cold. He drank the rest of the whisky in a single pull and crushed his cigarette in the crystal ashtray on the coffee table. “I really must go, Abu Ramiz.”
“Wait, there’s something you aren’t telling me.”
“The only thing I have to tell you, Abu Ramiz, is this: whoever fired this bullet whose casing you found is sure to have many more bullets, and he probably doesn’t care who he has to shoot to get what he wants. Do you understand?” Khamis Zeydan stood.
Omar Yussef rose, too. “Give me that bullet. I want to keep it anyway.”
Khamis Zeydan pressed the cartridge casing into Omar Yussef’s palm. “You’re a determined man, and I know you can be stubborn. But I’m your friend, and I really must tell you that this is not a matter for a schoolteacher to get involved in.”
“A schoolteacher? You said I’d be a good detective.”
Khamis Zeydan stopped in the doorway. “In Palestine, there’s no such thing as a good detective.”
Chapter 7
Hurrying along Dehaisha’s main street, Omar Yussef headed for the UN school. The cold dawn wind lanced sharply through the valley, north toward Jerusalem, carrying the taint of diesel fumes. Omar Yussef had woken with a headache that grew worse now as he walked. He didn’t doubt that it was the result of the stress brought on by Khamis Zey-dan’s warnings. He had barely slept that night after the policeman left his home.
Omar Yussef considered himself an independent thinker, a man who challenged the way most people in his community saw the world. But that night he had doubted himself. He lay awake thinking, You’re all talk, Omar. When it comes time for action, you’re paralysed by worry, bullied by the thought that someone will hurt you. When he did fall asleep, he jolted upright in fear. He thought Hussein Tamari was in the room. His heart was thundering, even as he told himself that there was no one there, no sound except Maryam’s wheezy, light snoring. Did he really think Hussein Tamari had been present when Louai was killed, just because of the cartridges he had found? Why would the leader of the resistance in Bethlehem collaborate with the Israelis? Why would he want Louai dead? Khamis Zeydan had told him that Israeli soldiers used that big machine gun, too. Perhaps Louai Abdel Rahman was mistaken when he spoke to a man he believed was named Abu Walid. Maybe Louai only thought he recognized the person lying in wait for him. It had been dark already, according to Dima. It could just as easily have been a soldier from some Israeli hit squad, lying in wait between the pines.
When the first light came and Omar Yussef got out of bed, he returned to that thought. If I get close to finding out who Abu Walid is, there’s a danger he might try to stop me, even to hurt me, no matter how much protection I have from my clan and its connections with tough guys in Hamas and Fatah. But if there’s no Abu Walid, if Louai Abdel Rahman simply made a mistake, then there’s no one out there who’ll feel threatened by me. I could be placing myself in danger, but only if I’m on the trail of the man who truly has framed George Saba, in which case I’m doing the right thing and this man deserves to be unmasked.
That moment clarified for Omar Yussef what he must do. He tried to keep those thoughts foremost in his mind as he walked to the school.
A Blackhawk chopped southward above Omar Yussef’s head. The Israeli helicopter flew in and out of the low, dark clouds on a reconnaissance mission over the camp. The resonant thudding spooked a mentally handicapped boy in his early twenties whom Omar Yussef often saw when he was on his way to the school. Usually the boy, whose name was Nayif, bounded along the street with exaggeratedly long strides, talking animatedly to himself and wagging an admonitory finger at approaching taxis. When he heard the baritone flutter of the helicopter, the boy panicked. He put his hands on his elongated, egg-shaped head and wailed incoherently. Omar Yussef approached him. He smiled at the boy and held out his hand with the palm upwards, as if testing for rain. The boy did the same, looking up at the clouds. After a moment he grinned and, in his slurred speech, said, “It’s only raining, uncle.”
Omar Yussef nodded and put his hand on Nayif’s shoulder reassuringly before he walked on.
It was true that it would rain soon from the clouds that licked the Blackhawk. It would come hard. The streets would be mud where the tanks had cut them up. The dusty topsoil would tinge the rain the color of urine and, where it gushed down the slopes, it would ride over the top of Omar Yussef’s wing tips and leave them sprinkled with grit that would take him careful hours to polish away. Omar Yussef was not a believer, he usually had trouble remembering Koranic quotations, but the words of that book on the subject of rain came to him as he left the handicapped boy: “Know that Allah restores the earth to life after its death.” Allah, of course, claimed that he would perform the same restoration to the believers on the Day of Judgment. Omar Yussef looked about him as he approached the UN school. The dirty alleys of the camp seemed most desolate in the first, flat light of a winter’s day. Allah didn’t restore life to earth. He multiplied the number of lives on earth, but allowed their quality to diminish and their essence to drain away. Omar Yussef had never thought that life was a waste—what true educator could think that way? He wondered when it would be that Allah would restore life to him. Hell, he would have to do it for himself, and the case of George Saba would be his vehicle.