The Samaritan's secret

The priest dropped the curtain. “If you would like to see the Abisha Scroll itself, not just its box, please come to our Passover celebration on Jerizim later this week. I am happy to invite you.”

“Do we have to convert to Samaritanism to attend?” Omar Yussef laughed with a short, coughing exhalation. “Neither Sami nor I are particularly committed to Islam.”

“Conversion to our religion is only possible for women who wish to marry our men, pasha,” the priest said. “But we should be honored to have men like you share our celebration.” He laid his hand over his heart. “People come from all around the world-foreign journalists and international academics-to watch our ancient rites.”

“It’ll be a great pleasure, Your Honor,” Omar Yussef said.

The priest went out onto the wide top step at the entrance to the synagogue. As Omar Yussef and Sami followed him to the door, they heard footsteps hurrying outside. Ben-Tabia froze, his eyes wide.

A breathless voice called to the priest from the steps: “Long life to you.” Ben-Tabia looked quickly at Sami, then dropped his eyes to the floor. Omar Yussef took a short breath and felt the muscles in his back tighten. The traditional greeting meant someone else’s life had ended. The voice came again: “Your Honor, we have to call the police.”

Sami stepped through the door. Omar Yussef followed. A tall young man with a thick mustache stood at the foot of the last flight of steps. His thin chest heaved with the effort of running from the street. He flinched when he saw Sami’s uniform.

“Who’s dead?” Sami spoke sharply.

The young man glanced at the priest, but Sami descended a few steps and leaned toward him.

“Come on, what’s happened?”

The breathless man looked over Sami’s shoulder and called to the priest. “It’s Ishaq, Your Honor. Ishaq is up on top of Mount Jerizim, at the temple.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?” The priest spoke slowly, as though his tongue were prodding through a minefield.

The young man coughed hard. “Your Honor, Ishaq has been murdered.”

Chapter 3

A shepherd in baggy Turkish pants and an old blue seer-sucker jacket drove his herd toward the scanty pasture on Mount Jerizim. He maneuvered the goats to the side of the road, making way for Sami’s patrol car. A small black kid sprang stiff-legged from a rock and landed on the shaggy brown backs of the others. Omar Yussef smiled at the little goat’s exuberance. He caught the mustiness of the herd on the cool air of the mountain, an inviting scent after the exhaust fumes and trash-can stink of Nablus. But there had been a murder on this mountain and Omar Yussef narrowed his eyes to look beyond the lively animals toward the ridge where someone lay dead.

Sami called police headquarters to report that he was en route to a murder scene. He held his walkie-talkie with his left hand, steering and changing gear with his right. The car veered toward the drop at the edge of the road when-ever he reached for the gearshift.

The old Samaritan watched Sami cautiously from the back seat with his dazed, faded eyes. Maybe he lied to us simply because he doesn’t trust the police, Omar Yussef thought. By Allah, the law around here doesn’t usually inspire confidence. The priest couldn’t know that Sami’s an honest officer. The odds, after all, would be against it.

Sami slipped the walkie-talkie into its dashboard mounting and looked at the priest in the rearview mirror. “You’re all related up here, aren’t you? All you Samaritans?” he said. “Does this Ishaq have a big family?”

The priest flinched and put his hand over his mouth.

“Well?” Sami turned in his seat. “His family?”

Ben-Tabia leaned forward. “Are you the Sami Jaffari who was one of the Bethlehem deportees exiled to Gaza by the Israelis?” he said.

Omar Yussef saw Sami’s jaw tighten.

“How did you manage to get a job back here in the West Bank?” the priest asked.

“I got a permit,” Sami said. He took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it out of the window.

“From the Israelis?”

“Obviously.”

“But they deported you to Gaza because they said you were a dangerous gunman.”

Sami ground the gears down into first as the road ribboned around a steep curve.

The priest persisted. “How did you change their minds?”

Omar Yussef knew how. His friend Khamis Zeydan, Bethlehem’s police chief, had convinced the Israelis of the truth about Sami-the young officer had been working undercover among the town’s gunmen when the Israelis arrested him. Khamis Zeydan had even obtained a permit for Sami’s Gazan fiancee Meisoun to join him in the West Bank.

“Don’t you think a job on the Nablus police force is a continuation of Sami’s punishment?” Omar Yussef said to Ben-Tabia.

Sami clicked his tongue. “Abu Ramiz, please, let it rest.”

The priest’s voice became surly. “He must have connections,” he said. “That’s all I mean.”

And connections are suspect, Omar Yussef thought. Tainted links to the crooks at the top, even to the Israelis. “Sami’s like you,” he said. “You have a Torah like the Jews. But you’re defined by the seven thousand differences between your holy text and theirs. It’s the same with Sami and his connections. It’s the differences that’re important.”

The priest folded his arms across his chest, sat back in his seat and stared out of the window.

They reached the Samaritan houses on the ridge. The well-maintained streets were neater than a Palestinian village and empty, except for a few teenagers playing basketball in a small concrete lot. They stopped their game to watch the police car pass. Blinking into the sun, the children bore the unmistakable signs of inbreeding. Their bullet-shaped heads sat askew on their necks and their big ears stuck out.

“Which way from here?” Sami said, quietly.

The priest directed Sami straight through the village. They came around a knoll at the shoulder of the ridge and up to a gravel parking lot. Signs in Hebrew and English welcomed tourists to the Samaritan holy place. Sami cut the engine and a deep silence enveloped them.

A group of five men loitered, peering down a steep slope into a glade of trees. One of them waved when he saw the priest emerge from the police car. Behind the men, the low walls of an old fortress and its domed inner buildings were silvery in the sunshine.

Beyond the Samaritan village, the ridge extended toward the mansions that had been visible from Nablus and, further away, the red and white communication towers of the Israeli army base at Tel Haras.

Omar Yussef shuffled along behind Sami and the priest. Though he was younger than Ben-Tabia, he was conscious that his movements were stiffer, his pace slower. In the silence of this remote peak, without the background racket of the town, his panting sounded prodigious. Sweat formed in his mustache, as he tried to keep up with the others. He promised himself he would take a walk every day to improve his fitness, when he returned to Bethlehem.

The men gathered around the priest as he reached them. Each shook Ben-Tabia’s hand without looking at his face and kissed his cheeks three times, mumbling something to him. A slight hum rolled out of the valley. Omar Yussef heard the regular, echoing beat of a distant pile driver and the call of a single muezzin.

Among the pines on the slope, a lumpy blue and white object was wrapped around the foot of a tree. Omar Yussef pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and squinted at the lifeless body of a man. “Sami, let’s go and look,” he murmured.

Sami put his hand on Omar Yussef’s shoulder and whis-pered. “Abu Ramiz, I took you to the synagogue because I thought you’d be interested in the scroll. I brought you up here because I was in too much of a hurry to drop you at your hotel. But-”