threatened for a week. Omar Yussef looked at his shoes. The rain washed them until the buckles were bright in the light from the lamppost. The water took the pool of blood and swirled it across the cobbles to the drain in front of the dark Church of the Nativity.
Omar Yussef turned from the shadows of the church’s spartan facade toward George Saba on the lamppost. The dead man looked as though he might be descending from the light, his hands above his head in a dive from the radiance of a star to the hard earth. George had brought that brightness to Omar Yussef, who had watched him transform from a little boy to a grown man to a punctured sack of meat. Omar Yussef spun away, looking back toward the church.
There was only one reason not to feel overwhelmed by that fear and that was the belief in the legacy we leave, the positive changes we bring to the world. Omar Yussef had hoped George Saba would be his legacy, living after him as proof that the schoolteacher made the world better. He had hoped that Dima Abdel Rahman would be part of that gift, too. As he looked at the body swinging above him, he fought against the urge to feel that all his life’s work was just so much destroyed hope and goodness befouled. Instead,
He picked at the big knot the gunmen had tied around the base of the lamppost to secure the body high in the air. The corpse dropped a little. As he freed the knot, he lost his grip on the wet rope and it slipped from his hands. He reached out to grab the falling body. George’s elbow caught him painfully on the side of the head as the body came down. Omar Yussef grabbed the shoulders to break the fall and went to the ground on top of the dead man. He lay still. If he was going to weep, now would be when it would happen, he thought.
There was a hand on his shoulder, lifting him. When he came up, Muhammad Abdel Rahman stood beside him. Both men were bereaved, but Omar Yussef thought perhaps he would be the one who might draw the greatest strength from these terrible days, not the man before him.
Shots came from the west, distant, their reverberations threading between the raindrops.
“They are firing up at Beit Jala,” Muhammad Abdel Rahman said. “They are destroying this Christian’s house. In revenge.”
“For the death of your son?”
Muhammad Abdel Rahman shook his head. He looked no more alive than the corpse at their feet. “No, my son wasn’t their concern, truly. They are taking revenge for Hussein Tamari, the martyr.”
Omar Yussef felt angry, despite the frailty of the old man who had lost his sons. Hussein Tamari was a murderer and gangster. He was no martyr. Omar Yussef pointed at George’s body. “There is your martyr,” he said. “There. There is your martyr.”
A police jeep squealed around the corner, throwing up spray from the rain that rushed down the slope. Six policemen jumped out at the entrance to the station. Omar Yussef saw a staggering Khamis Zeydan step among them. They rushed across the square toward George Saba’s body. Four of them picked up the corpse roughly by the legs and arms, and hauled it toward the police station. The others shoved the few onlookers who remained and told them to clear the square.
One of the policemen pushed Omar Yussef with his rifle butt and told him to go home.
“Fuck you,” Omar Yussef shouted. He pushed the policeman back. “Where were you ten minutes ago, when they were killing your prisoner? Don’t touch me.”
Khamis Zeydan came to Omar Yussef. He thrust the police- man aside and took his old friend by the arm. The police chief’s upper lip swelled beneath his nicotine-stained moustache, and his teeth were bloody from Jihad Awdeh’s blow. The two men stared at each other. Omar Yussef wondered if Khamis Zeydan felt shame, or simply confusion after the impact of the rifle-butt on his head and all the whisky.
Khamis Zeydan looked up when a shot sounded through the rain. There were more percussions, spattering randomly through the air like the first raindrops of a storm. “What the fuck is that?”
“The Martyrs Brigades went to Beit Jala. They’ve gone to destroy George’s house,” Omar Yussef said.
“He has a wife and family, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Khamis Zeydan took Omar Yussef by the arm and pulled him toward his jeep. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 25
Omar Yussef climbed stiffly from the back of Khamis Zey- dan’s jeep. The rain penetrated his coat and seeped through his flat cap. It washed over the tops of his loafers. His bare fingers were icy and swollen. He shook himself to get the blood moving through his arms and legs, as he looked toward George Saba’s home.
The Martyrs Brigades surrounded the house. A half dozen of them kneeled on the roof. With their assault rifles, they aimed at the Israelis across the valley. It was hopeless to expect that they would hit anyone except by the most random of chances at this distance and with their view obscured by low rainclouds. Omar Yussef followed the Israeli tracer as it came toward the gunmen on the roof, striping the stormy valley, slapping into the side of the Saba home or overshooting it and striking the house across the street. Between Omar Yussef and the Saba house there were a dozen Martyrs Brigades men. Some of them watched the arrival of Khamis Zeydan’s police jeep, but most were intent on the doorway and windows of the house. From where they milled about, they must be able to see inside, Omar Yussef figured. Sheltered from the gunfire by the walls of the house, the gunmen seemed to find something highly amusing about whatever was happening in the bedroom that fronted the street.
The policemen advanced toward the house with Khamis Zey-dan at their head. They dashed across the exposed gaps between buildings. When they reached the cordon of gunmen, Khamis Zeydan ordered them to let him through. Someone called out an insult about the police chief’s sister. The police and the gunmen shoved each other. As they jostled, Omar Yussef passed along the edge of the street. In the darkness, he sidled past the
