The Collaborator of Bethlehem

his anger at the gunmen. Here was a boy who had worked hard at the Freres School and become a professional. Khaled Shukri’s intention was to build his hometown into something lovely, to replace the neglected refugee slums with functional new homes and to refurbish decrepit Ottoman mansions as hotels and restaurants. The curfews and gunfights had destroyed his career, murdered his father and made his mother suicidal. This was the reward for his goodness. Yet the gunmen thrived, they whose accomplishments and talents were of the basest nature, they who would have been obliterated had there been law and order and honor in the town. Perhaps Bethlehem was their town, after all, and it was Omar Yussef who was the outlaw interloper here, peddling contraband decency and running a clandestine trade in morality.

As Omar Yussef approached Manger Square, women filled the streets of the souk, buying the food with which they would prepare the evening iftar. The village women sat in the shade at the side of the street with plastic baskets of coriander and tomatoes. Their breasts were massive and low, their black robes embroidered on the front with scarlet in the patterns specific to the Bethlehem area, and their faces were mauled by the sun and the dust so that their cheeks hung like the jowls of a bulldog. This was the tradition, the authenticity that Omar Yussef loved about his town. Yet the women sat in the dirt, desperate for a little shade while they traded for a few shekels. Afterwards they would bypass the checkpoints, crossing the stony hillside to their villages. Prosperity was reserved for those who scorned all tradition and toil. For Hussein Tamari and his men, this town was no different from the empty wastes of the desert they came from. It was a place that belonged to the one who would use the greatest force, and if there was an oasis within it, then it was they and no one else to whom access would be given.

Omar Yussef crossed Manger Square. As he passed Khamis Zeydan’s police station, a woman went by him with a baby. He remembered then that Maryam had told him Khaled Shukri had become a father. No wonder he was so cheerful. Omar Yussef wondered why his former pupil hadn’t mentioned the birth. Maryam had told him about it more than a month ago, so perhaps Shukri no longer considered it news. Omar Yussef descended the steps at the side of the Church of the Nativity, resting his hand on the mottled, brown stones of the basilica wall as he did so because the steep flight made him dizzy, and went down the hill. He must stop in and see Khaled Shukri to make it clear that he hadn’t forgotten about the birth. No doubt he would find a young man, doused in thin vomit, still too happy with the new arrival to wonder how he would provide for it in a destroyed town that no longer needed an architect.

Omar Yussef saw the row of expensive cars parked on the roadside. They belonged to the Martyrs Brigades. He approached the building next to the cars.

It occurred to him that, with his first baby, Khaled Shukri would still be at the stage of laughing each time his child vomited. A baby is happy after it spews up, smiling with a sense of relief. Perhaps that ought to be our natural, unconstrained reaction to the world around us, Omar Yussef thought. We learn to restrain ourselves, because we are taught that there is something disgusting about vomit. Imagine all the bile I should have heaved out that instead sat inside me, entering my bloodstream, carried to my brain and through my heart. It’s becoming too much for my system. I will have to heave, to cleanse myself of all the hate and frustration and disgust. He thought of Shukri’s baby once more. It would vomit and scream. Both were genuine, wild, real. Yes, he thought, it’s time for me to scream.

Omar Yussef stepped into the stairwell. Two gunmen looked toward him from the landing. The sign on the wall, which bore an official crest with a standing eagle and a national flag, said that this was the office of a government ministry. Like everyone else in Bethlehem, Omar Yussef knew that this was where the Martyrs Brigades spent their lazy days.

“Who are you?” said the older of the two guards, who was in his thirties, lifting his Kalashnikov and slinging it over his shoulder.

“I’m here to see Abu Walid.”

The younger gunman leaned against the banister. He regarded Omar Yussef sullenly. Omar Yussef recognized him as the boy who had tried to prevent him from parking his car outside George Saba’s house the previous morning.

“Oh, you’re the detective,” the young man said. “Are you here to investigate Abu Walid?”

Omar Yussef wondered if the gunman had checked up on him and discovered that he was only a schoolteacher. He couldn’t tell if the youth’s tone had a sarcasm aimed directly at him, or if he was merely insolent to everyone.

“Well, I’m not here to check the records of the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation,” Omar Yussef said, gesturing to the sign on the wall. He mounted the steps.

The other gunman, who seemed disconcerted by the rudeness of his colleague toward an older man, stopped Omar Yussef politely. “Let me see your papers, uncle.”

Omar Yussef made his choking, spitting laugh. “Is this an Israeli checkpoint? Abu Walid will recognize me.”

The gunman stepped aside and Omar Yussef entered what had been the foyer of the government office. There were a dozen men on a series of low, black sofas. They sprawled uncomfortably, as only men who spent most of their nights awake would do at one in the afternoon. It was cold in the unheated room and the men wore their olive parkas and camouflage jackets zipped up. Their weapons lay on the shiny coffee tables and on the floor next to the couches. The air smelled of cigarettes, a scent carried constantly in the men’s clothing.

Omar Yussef noticed Hussein Tamari in the corner. He leaned on the arm of a sofa, talking quietly to Jihad Awdeh. The gray Astrakhan hat obscured Awdeh’s face. He was looking at his hands, rubbing his fingernails against his knuckles.

As Omar Yussef picked his way past the extended legs of snoozing gunmen, careful not to step on their rifles, Hussein Tamari looked up.

“Greetings, uncle,” he said.

“Double greetings,” Omar Yussef said.

“Who are you?”

“I am Omar Yussef, the history teacher at the UNRWA Girls School and the father of Ramiz Sirhan, who had a visit from you today at his cellular telephone store.”

Hussein Tamari’s eyebrows rose. His broad, tanned cheeks rolled, as he dropped his jaw. He sat upright and rubbed the narrow crown of his head in surprise.

Omar Yussef noticed Hussein Tamari’s MAG machine gun. It lay beside the sofa. It had been hidden by