The Collaborator of Bethlehem

“Will you answer that, Nadia?”

Nadia ran out of the room. Omar Yussef sat up, slowly, listening to the slap of her sandals on the flagstones of the hallway. The pain in his back made him purse his lips and puff. He drank the coffee Nadia left him. She came back with the cordless phone.

“It’s Abu Adel,” she said.

Omar Yussef put down his coffee. Nadia left the room.

“Greetings, Abu Adel.” Omar Yussef could hear shouting voices near Khamis Zeydan’s phone.

“Double greetings, Abu Ramiz,” Khamis Zeydan said. “How are you?”

“Thank Allah,” Omar Yussef said.

“I’m down by Shepherds Field. An Israeli helicopter missile struck Hussein Tamari’s jeep. He’s dead.”

“Hussein is dead? Are you sure he was in the jeep?”

“I was following him. I know he was in there.”

“Why were you following him?”

“I was pretending to be a policeman, just for a change of pace, you know. The Israelis must have got him in revenge for the bomb in Jerusalem this morning. You heard the Martyrs Brigades sent Yunis Abdel Rahman to blow himself up.”

“Yes. Why did they send him?”

“I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing is that now George Saba can be freed.”

There was silence from Khamis Zeydan.

“I mean,” said Omar Yussef, “that now the police can acknowledge that Hussein Tamari was the man who either killed Louai Abdel Rahman or who led the Israelis to him, and that he was also the man who killed Dima Abdel Rahman.”

“First, Abu Ramiz, you don’t know that.”

“I know it.”

Khamis Zeydan raised his voice. “You don’t know it for sure, and you certainly don’t know that he killed Dima. Second, Hus-sein Tamari is a martyr now, a big, big, big fucking martyr. Do you think Bethlehem would swap a big martyr for a dirty little collaborator? Does that sound like a good trade to anyone but you, Abu Ramiz?”

Omar Yussef’s forgiving feelings toward Khamis Zeydan for the loss of his hand disappeared. He felt desperate. How could he clear George Saba if the police chief wouldn’t help, particularly now that the real killer was dead and could never be made to confess? His suspicions returned. Khamis Zeydan was following the dead man’s jeep when the missile struck. Perhaps he was a collaborator. The collaborator. Maybe he’d called in the details of Hussein Tamari’s whereabouts to his handler in the Shin Bet and enabled the Israelis to strike, just as he might have done in the case of Louai Abdel Rahman’s death in the pines outside his home. But why would Khamis Zeydan have left a cartridge from a MAG behind at Louai’s murder scene? It wouldn’t benefit him to tag the murder on Hussein Tamari. He would have picked a more powerless fall guy, like George Saba. In any case when Omar Yussef had told Khamis Zeydan that Hussein was Louai’s killer, the police chief had said he should forget about it. He wasn’t eager to pin the murder on Tamari, so clearly he hadn’t tried to frame him, either.

“I called you, Abu Ramiz, to let you know that now there’s nothing more you can do for George Saba,” Khamis Zeydan said. “If it was going to be hard for you to pin the blame on Hussein Tamari when he was alive, it’s impossible now.”

“You can’t just let George die. It’s disgusting. It’s a stain on our entire town.”

“Every house has its sewers, Abu Ramiz.”

“Don’t quote proverbs at me. You have to help me.”

“I’m telling you: Hussein Tamari is untouchable. By you, and by me. The only thing that’s going to happen if you speak up now is that you’ll get yourself lynched. There’s already a crowd here that you can probably hear in the background and they’re very angry. If they find someone they want to accuse of collaboration, they’ll beat him to death on the spot. So I don’t advise you to speak ill of the dead tonight.”

“We only have until tomorrow at noon to prove Tamari’s guilt and to save George.”

Khamis Zeydan waited a moment, took a breath. “No, George Saba only has until tomorrow at noon. We don’t have such a deadline.”

“You’re right. Your time was up a long time ago.” Omar Yussef punched the button on the phone that terminated the call.

In the quiet of the night, Omar Yussef strained to hear the sound of the army helicopter. He recalled the noise of its engine, reverberating above him all week. It rained a deafening rotor thump onto the handicapped boy Nayif. It mirrored the beating of Omar Yussef’s anxious heart when he came out of the school to toss his old personnel reports into the puddle. It must be there now again, the blaze of Hussein Tamari’s destroyed vehicle a flickering spot below it in the blackness of the earth. It hovered above Bethlehem like the famous star that announced the birth of Jesus. It doomed each man it tracked, just as surely as that ancient messianic sign destined the child born in the manger to crucifixion. The sky was silent, but Omar Yussef knew the chopper was up there. Not even if George Saba could fly like a bird would he find escape and safety.

Omar Yussef couldn’t give up now. He must find someone who would refuse to let an innocent man die just for the sake of preserving the memory of this scum Tamari. No one in the police or the judiciary or the government would take that risk. He had to think of someone who might be even more powerful than the memory of Tamari. There was only one person who could possibly chance slurring the martyr’s image. It was risky. Khamis Zeydan was right: they might lynch him. Well, then he would die before George Saba’s execution and his worries would be over. He would go to Jihad Awdeh.