Omar Yussef put down his coffee cup and broke an almond cookie in two. As he tasted it, he turned fully toward Habib Saba. “What happened, Abu George?”
The older man sighed. “I was in the back of the house. It was around dawn. I remember that the muezzins had just finished their call to dawn prayers. I was in bed, but I wasn’t asleep. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the shooting began in this valley. Even when I’m asleep I dream about the gunfire. I heard an explosion. The police had blown the front door out of its frame. You can see the damage there, where I nailed what was left of the door back in place. The police came in and took George. Sofia screamed at them, so they knocked her out—you saw the bruises on her head. They held the rest of us at gunpoint.”
“But before that. Three nights ago, after George and I ate at the Orthodox Club. There was shooting. He left me to come and see what was happening. What took place then?”
Habib Saba looked very weary. He crushed his cigarette in the lip of a coral-pink conch shell. “They were shooting at the Israelis from our roof, directly above where we are sitting now. George took an old pistol, an antique that was hanging on the wall. It wasn’t even loaded, and if it were, I’m sure it wouldn’t fire. But it looked dangerous enough. He went onto the roof and he chased them off.”
“Who were they?”
“You know, these Martyrs Brigades swine.”
“Which ones?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did George know them?”
“He didn’t say. Anyway, what do you mean ‘know them’? He doesn’t mix with those people.”
“No, but most people in town would recognize the leaders. They don’t try to hide, unless the Israelis come, of course.”
“George didn’t say anything. He didn’t mention any names. He seemed very anxious and excited.”
“Where is the gun he used against them?”
Habib Saba crossed the room stiffly. He opened the drawer of a French roll-top desk, pulled out the old Webley and gave it to Omar Yussef. The gun was heavier than it looked, almost three pounds. The metal was partially oxidized and the butt was worn, but at night it would have been impossible to detect the revolver’s flaws. Omar Yussef pulled on the trigger. It was stuck by rust and dirt.
“You could soak it in oil for a week and I doubt that those parts would move,” Habib Saba said. “It was a British officer’s gun that was kept by Ghassan Shubeki after he retired from the Jordanian Legion. You remember Shubeki, Abu Ramiz? That gun must be a half century old.”
George was braver and more desperate than Omar Yussef had thought to have confronted the gunmen with this old piece of junk.
“I would like to take this with me,” Omar Yussef said.
“You are welcome to it. It makes me sick to see it.”
Omar Yussef put the gun in his jacket pocket. It weighted the material so heavily that he felt almost as though he were wearing it on a strap over his shoulder. He wondered if it would damage his jacket or spoil the cut, but for the sake of his investigation he put aside his concerns about his clothing.
“Did you see nothing that night when George went to the roof to confront the gunmen?”
“I looked out of the bedroom window at the street after the shooting stopped,” Habib said. “I saw two men getting into a big car. One of these jeeps they make these days, you know the type that looks like it’s half car and half jeep. The expensive type, although I assume it was stolen. One of them was smoking, because all I could really see was the light at the tip of his cigarette. One of them carried a big gun.”
“What kind of big gun?”
“Abu Ramiz, I make wedding dresses. I don’t know one gun from another. All I can tell you is that it was a big gun.”
Omar Yussef tried to picture the MAG that Hussein Tamari fired into the air at the wake for Louai Abdel Rahman. It was certainly a big gun. Could Hussein Tamari himself have been on the roof when George went up there with his defunct pistol? “Did it have a big, long barrel, with a wooden butt, about a meter and a quarter long altogether, a bipod to support the end of the long barrel, and a chain of bullets so that they could be fed through and shot very fast?”
“Abu Ramiz, it was dark. I was very scared and concerned for my son. If the gunman had been wearing a wedding dress, I could describe to you the style of the pearl beading, even in such darkness. But not a gun. In any case, why do you ask about that gun? And why do you want George’s Webley revolver? What are you up to?”
“I’m preparing for retirement, Abu George.”
Habib Saba shifted forward on his chair, nervously. “Are you going to do something risky?”
When he left Habib Saba, Omar Yussef climbed the steps at the side of the house to the roof. He paused at the top, breathing hard. He looked at the flat roof. Perhaps the Israelis kept it under observation in case the gunmen returned. They might shoot him with one of their sniper rifles from all the way across the valley. Ramiz had told him they had rifles that could shoot with shocking accuracy at distances greater than a kilometer. The soldiers might even be able to tell that there was a gun in the pocket of his jacket from the way the material was pulling. He shrugged to shift the weight. He had to check the scene of the confrontation between George and the gunmen, so he took the last step onto the roof.
Rain gathered in a puddle near the shot-out water tank. Omar Yussef assumed the gunmen had positioned themselves at the edge of the building. Perhaps they lay down to take advantage of the cover provided by the small wall that ran around the roof. He made his way to the far side of the roof, glancing over the valley, wondering if some Israeli sniper had a nervous, slouching middle-aged man wearing a flat cap in his sights. His feet crunched on the slivers of the destroyed solar panels from the water tank.
