honorable, proud man entirely because he was insulated from the corrupting world in which his compatriots lived. Already, he could feel his grip on himself weakening, and it was only five days since he had dined with George Saba—days in which death and suspicion and fear were all around him as never before. He sensed that he wanted revenge for Dima’s death. He didn’t care who might suffer or die, so long as someone’s body could pay and he could be reasonably sure that the new victim bore something related to guilt for the girl’s killing. It was this thought that scared him most, that he might be just like everyone else after all, weak and vindictive and murderously righteous.
There seemed to be only one way out. He would stop his investigation. He was a schoolteacher. George Saba required help and Dima needed revenge, but Omar Yussef was not the man to provide either. He had to protect himself from the darkness deep in his soul. He thought of the night he had parted from George at the restaurant in Beit Jala, how he had stumbled home down the hill and how shapes in the dark alleys had taken on the forms of men and animals, nightmarish and insubstantial. This was how he thought of his own mind now, its shadows gathering until they became parasitic phantoms that breathed inside him just as surely as he lived. It occurred to him that the shadowy figures he imagined that night might have been impelling him to return to George. Who knew, if he had turned, he might have prevented the disastrous confrontation with the gunmen on the roof. But Omar Yussef had made his way quickly home that night and, though he hated to think of it that way, it was what he decided to do now.
Khamis Zeydan came out of the house and walked wearily toward the jeep. Omar Yussef came to the side of the vehicle.
“Can you drop me at the school?” he said, quietly.
Khamis Zeydan yawned. “I thought you retired from teaching.”
“You already said that. I don’t know where you heard it.” Omar Yussef said, raising his voice.
“Are you telling me it’s not true?”
“Where did you hear it?”
“It’s going around. Someone I know has kids in your class. He spoke to the American at your school, Steadman, about his kids. He was told you retired.”
“Someone who went to complain about my lack of support for the intifada? My criticism of the martyrs?”
“Why else would anyone take the time to go to see a school director these days? And why else would your name come up?”
Omar Yussef climbed into the back of the jeep. He grunted as he pushed up with his injured ankle. “I’m going back to the school,” he said.
Khamis Zeydan looked at him. There was suspicion and power and knowledge in his eyes, and they made Omar Yussef look away. Khamis Zeydan slammed the back door of the jeep.
As they jogged up the hill and came around toward Dehaisha, Omar Yussef watched the side of Khamis Zeydan’s face. The officer stared out of the front of the jeep.
Omar Yussef stepped from the jeep in silence outside the UN school. It pulled away down the uneven, puddled road, leaving the scent of gasoline, alluring and poisonous in the damp cold. Omar Yussef held his breath until the wind cleared the air. He stopped outside a classroom window to listen to children reciting a multiplication table. He smiled when they stumbled over nine times eight: that always tripped them. At the entrance he greeted the janitor and noticed that the man, surprised to see him, sat hastily upright, as though a senior military officer or a forbidding uncle had passed.
Through the glass in the door of his classroom, Omar Yussef saw a young woman sitting silently at his desk while his students worked in their notebooks. He couldn’t see the woman’s face, because she was bent forward over a book. The substitute teacher wore a white headscarf and a loose mustard robe, but he could tell from the clear skin of her hands that she was probably in her early twenties. He paused and considered entering, but the class was quiet and concentrated. He would not disturb them.
Omar Yussef went to the end of the corridor and smiled at Wafa.
“Morning of joy, Abu Ramiz,” the school secretary said.
Omar Yussef noticed that Wafa’s lips showed a mischievious pleasure at his arrival. “Morning of light, Umm Khaled,” he said. He nodded at Christopher Steadman’s office and Wafa gave him a be-my-guest shrug. He entered.
The heat felt stifling in Steadman’s room, even though Omar Yussef had frozen once again without his coat on the ride back from Irtas. The air seemed thick with dust. The American looked up from his papers. His face flushed, but he said nothing. He tilted his head quizzically to the left, as though he had trouble remembering the identity of this man with the gray moustache and flat, beige cap.
“I have changed my mind,” Omar Yussef said. He pronounced each word crisply and precisely in English.
Christopher Steadman merely increased the inclination of his head. He pursed his lips and looked angry.
“I no longer wish to retire.”
“You have until the end of the month to decide,” Stead-man said.
“I don’t need that long. I already decided.”
“I would prefer that you take until the end of the month. In any case, I’ve taken on a replacement. She has been paid until the end of the month, so you have nowhere to come.” Stead-man lifted his head so that it was straight and jutted forward on his neck. “Until then, at least.”
Omar Yussef could see that he would have to wait a few weeks before he could take over his classroom once more. He decided on a delaying tactic. “I must insist that you do not tell people that I have retired. It is damaging to my reputation.”
