him.”
Omar Yussef wondered if Elias Bishara already was thinking ahead to George’s last rites. He wasn’t ready to accept that, yet. “I will let him know.” He shook Elias’s hand.
Khamis Zeydan met Omar Yussef at the door of the police station and walked him down the rough steps to the cells. It was cold in the corridor, though Omar Yussef was sure that the chill he felt was as much because of the location as the winter morning. Khamis Zeydan glanced sideways at his friend as he unlocked a metal gate and ushered him through. They passed two cells that were empty except for old, cheap prayer mats laid out on the beds.
“This was where I kept the Hamas people, back when we actually used to arrest those types,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Then we received orders to free them. Now there’s no one here except your friend.”
At the end of the corridor, he unlocked another grille. It was George’s cell. “I’ll wait at the end of the row here,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Just call me. But don’t be too long, for Heaven’s sake.” Omar Yussef could tell the gruffness was a screen for his friend’s nervousness. He wasn’t sure if that was because the policeman didn’t want to be discovered allowing a visitor to the collaborator or because he feared that Omar Yussef’s investigation would lead to trouble and now he was implicated in it.
George Saba stood up from the sagging camp bed in the corner of the bare room. His face was puffy, unwashed. Omar Yussef saw that the stubble of George’s beard was surprisingly thick with gray, though white only touched his head around the temples. His hair was tangled and stuck out from his head at strange angles. He looked like a man who had slept for years, but without resting soundly. George Saba embraced Omar Yussef, who could not help but wrinkle his nose at the stale smell of his friend’s neglected body.
“Abu Ramiz, I’m so happy to see you.”
Omar Yussef found himself at a loss. It saddened him to the point of tears to feel George’s shirt against his face. The cotton was cold and so were the hands that now held his fingers.
“George, it’s freezing in here.”
George nodded toward the cell window, barred and glassless. He tried to smile, but it was a sad attempt.
“Take my coat,” Omar Yussef said, pulling off his short herringbone overcoat.
“I really can’t, Abu Ramiz. You’ll get cold.”
“I’ve got a jacket on underneath. See? Take it.”
“I don’t think it’ll fit.”
Omar Yussef made him try the coat. It was ridiculously tight around the bigger man’s arms and barely closed across his belly, but it was clear that George felt the overcoat was a reprieve from a terrible torture.
“May God compensate you for this,” he said.
Omar Yussef immediately shivered in his tweed jacket. He gestured to George to sit with him on the bed.
“What happened on the roof, George, after you left me at the Orthodox Club?”
“I took an antique British pistol that I was intending to sell in my shop and went onto the roof. There were two gunmen up there firing a massive machine gun. I told them to get off the roof, but they only cursed me. So I held the gun on them. They weren’t sure about it, but in the darkness it looked threatening enough, I guess. I only recognized them when they were leaving. One wore a fur hat. His name’s Jihad Awdeh. The other one carried the big gun.”
“Hussein Tamari?”
“That’s him.”
“The two men at the top of the Martyrs Brigades in Bethlehem. You picked a prize pair to face off with, George.”
George smiled, bitterly. “Hussein Tamari did all the shooting. I thought I should watch Hussein Tamari more closely. He was the one with the gun after all. But there was something that drew my eyes to Jihad Awdeh. He seemed so menacing. I can’t really describe it. There was a moment just before they went down from the roof: Jihad bent to pick something up and stuff it into his jacket. It was more than one thing, in fact, metal things, I think, that were spread on the roof. He gave me such an evil look. It would chill me even now, if I weren’t already too cold to feel anything. Then the two of them went down the stairs and left.”
“Perhaps Jihad was picking up the empty cartridges from the bullets, for some reason. You see, I found only one on the roof when I went up there yesterday. He must have missed it.”
“Why were you on the roof of my house? What are you up to, Abu Ramiz?”
Omar Yussef didn’t answer the question. “Do you have any enemies who would set you up?” he said.
“Just those two, as far as I can tell. This is hardly the way some customer would avenge himself on me for overcharging on an antique chesterfield, is it? Tamari and Awdeh said they’d get me. But I figured they would just come and beat me, or even kill me on the street. I didn’t think they’d shame me like this.”
“Did either one of them threaten to kill you?”
“I think they both did. No, I believe it was only Hussein who actually said he would make me pay. But then as they left Jihad made a gesture like he was cutting a throat.”
Omar Yussef looked about at the bare walls of the cell. The mustard paint was covered in small graffiti, the scribblings of bored men venting their anger or doodling about their dreams of a good meal. The toilet bucket in the corner suffused the cell with a rank odor, despite the open window. The wall and floor beneath the window were damp where yesterday’s rain had come in. Omar Yussef sighed, and his breath made a steamy path from his mouth into the freezing air.
“Why did you go to the roof, George?”
George Saba smiled. “Abu Ramiz, I went up there because you told me to do so.”
Omar Yussef looked perplexed.
