“Our town has changed terribly since you first went to Chile, George.”
“I’ve lived a life of many changes. I learned that change is a good thing. But here in Palestine change is always for the worse. Christian villages are overrun by new Muslim residents, and instead of living together in tranquility, it becomes a bad place for Christians. Even to change a situation of hatred, they only make still more hatred. Love is not an option. It’s the choice of an idiot who wants to end with nothing, robbed and abused and humiliated. The result is that, in the end, everyone’s convinced that the only way to alter the bad relations between Christians and Muslims, or between Israelis and Palestinians for that matter, is to wipe out the other side. To kill them all. Like they’ll kill me, now.”
Omar Yussef had seen that coming. “No, they won’t, George. They can’t.”
George Saba inclined his head, almost as though he pitied Omar Yussef. “When they bring a collaborator to this cell, it’s all over for him. It will be a public execution, like the ones they held in Gaza.”
“I will stop it, George,” Omar Yussef said. “I know that you’ve been set up by Hussein. I just need to prove it, and I will.”
“Abu Ramiz, don’t get into trouble.”
“I already have some proof. I will get more, and I will save you.”
“I have no desire to join the ranks of the martyrs, and of course as a collaborator I won’t get such a title. There will be no Paradise for me. But if there were, I wouldn’t expect to see you there for a long time yet. I warn you not to place yourself in danger. It will only result in two deaths, where these bastards would be satisfied with one.” George laughed. “Maybe I should rethink. If I’m going to die, it might be better to think of myself as a martyr, after all. I’m dying because of my religion, aren’t I?”
“You’re a Christian. You don’t believe in martyrdom.”
“Abu Ramiz, that isn’t true. All right, so we don’t believe like the Muslims do that anyone who’s killed just now goes up to claim his bliss with seventy-two beautiful black-eyed virgins. But even if we don’t believe in those lovely houris, we Christians have our martyrs, nonetheless. I traveled in Europe. The cathedrals there are full of paintings of Christian martyrs. My namesake, Saint George, you know, was a martyr, not just a dragonslayer. I suppose the difference is that we Christians accept martyrdom, but we don’t seek it.” George Saba paused. He continued, slowly. “I want you to go to my family. Tell them to leave. Even now, while I’m still in jail. I don’t want them to live here as outcasts, and I’m worried that someone will try to harm them, too. Tell them to go to Sofia’s family in Chile.” He put his hand on Omar Yussef’s arm and turned away to hide his tears. “Make sure that my father goes with them. He listens to your advice.”
“I don’t think he’ll go. Not without you.”
“Abu Ramiz, for Heaven’s sake, they’re all in danger, too. You don’t know what those men will do.”
They heard quick footsteps along the corridor. Khamis Zey-dan came to the door and unlocked it.
“I’m not finished,” Omar Yussef said.
Khamis Zeydan concentrated on the final key. “I must leave the station now, so I’ll have to lock him up. Unless you want to spend the next twenty-four hours shivering in here with George, I suggest you get out of the cell now. Come on. I have to hurry.”
George stood up. He kissed Omar Yussef’s cheeks. “Tell my family what I said, uncle.”
“Allah lengthen your life,” Omar Yussef said. He touched George Saba’s face. The beard was prickly.
Khamis Zeydan called from the doorway and Omar Yussef went out. As the policeman locked the door, Omar Yussef looked through the bars at George. The coat he had left behind seemed pathetic, inadequate, stretching across the broad shoulders of his friend. He wished he had brought food or a book to leave with the prisoner. Then he followed Khamis Zeydan slowly along the corridor.
“Hurry up, Abu Ramiz, please. I have to go.”
“What’s the rush?” Omar Yussef was irritated to have his time with George cut short. The emotion of his meeting burst out of him now. “Can’t you have any decency?” he yelled at Khamis Zeydan. “Can’t you let me be with that boy a little longer, that innocent fucking victim?” He lowered his voice in case George could still hear, but he spat out the words angrily. “You bastards are going to kill the best student I ever had.”
Khamis Zeydan stepped close. He was about to speak. A police officer came to the head of the stairs. “Abu Adel,” the policeman said, “the squad is ready.”
Khamis Zeydan called back that he was on his way and the junior officer rushed out of sight. “It’s an emergency, as you can see,” he said to Omar Yussef.
“What is it? The Israelis have invaded Bethlehem once more and you have to run away?” Omar Yussef’s voice was bitter.
Khamis Zeydan looked grim. “No, Abu Ramiz. Someone has killed Dima Abdel Rahman.”
Omar Yussef couldn’t speak. He looked with disbelief at Khamis Zeydan.
“None of us will survive except Allah,” the policeman said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 11
The wind drove cold through the open sides of the jeep. The policemen hunched their shoulders inside their parkas. One of them made his teeth chatter loudly to amuse the others. From the front seat, Khamis Zeydan turned and silenced his men with a disapproving click of his tongue. Omar Yussef shivered in his tweed jacket. He almost regretted the coat he had left with George, but he could stand a little chill for a short time if it made his friend more comfortable in that bare cell.
The freezing drive to Irtas seemed to go on forever. In the time it took the jeep to leave Bethlehem and cross the hill to the Abdel Rahman family’s house, Omar Yussef felt that his mind raced a distance ten times further. Who could have killed Dima Abdel Rahman? He felt sure her end was connected to that of her husband. It occurred to him that Louai’s killing might perhaps not even be linked to his status as a resistance figure. If Louai had died at the hands of the Israelis for his actions against them, Omar Yussef couldn’t see how that would lead to Dima’s murder. Even if they targeted him as a terrorist, they wouldn’t care about his wife. Only if Louai were killed in some criminal conspiracy did it seem possible that his murder would also bring this girl into the compass of death.
Omar Yussef rubbed his hands and blew on them. He grabbed the side of the jeep as a sharp corner threatened to toss him from the bench. It was as though the sudden bend snapped his mind into a new channel. The road sloped down toward the valley of Irtas and Omar Yussef could see the Abdel Rahman house and the glade where he had stood with Dima, and then it hit him: it was because of him that Dima died. Someone had seen her talking to him. Someone noticed her gesturing toward the spot where Louai died and telling the story of how it happened. The cause of her death could be that she had talked to Omar Yussef.
Nauseating pain gripped him in his guts. Wedged between two policemen on the benchseat of the jeep, he wanted to sway side to side in grief. Had he killed her? His stupid ideas about investigating Louai’s death and saving George Saba had only accomplished the death of an innocent girl. He closed his eyes and saw himself in his classroom making a joke, and Dima was laughing. She was such a pretty girl, with a serious face, which was only more beautiful when laughter crossed it. In that way, she reminded him of his granddaughter Nadia. What would he give now to be back in that classroom listening to Dima reading aloud her homework paper on Suleiman the Magnificent, rather than bouncing down the hillside in a police jeep to see where she died? He heard her voice, deep and gentle even when she had been a child, telling him about her husband’s death, and he wondered what the last words had been that she spoke in her precise, intelligent diction.