The Samaritan's secret

slow and grave. “It keeps men away from illegal sex and bad influences and perversions.”

“Illegal sex?” Omar Yussef jerked his head as though contemplating something inconceivable. “You don’t mean that there are prostitutes in Nablus?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you must mean homosexuality?” Ishaq could have told you that marriage doesn’t put an end to forbidden desires, Omar Yussef thought. Only death can stop those urges, and Ishaq would know about that, too.

The sheikh frowned. “The cost of a dowry is very high. Men have been putting off their weddings for lack of funds, due to the economic problems of our town during the intifada.” He hesitated. “Their physical needs were satisfied in desperate moments, instead of being fulfilled by their family life. Many of them made mistakes.”

“Our Honored Sheikh, wouldn’t it be better if we allowed young men to be intimate with women, instead of forcing them to seek release with other youths?”

“Woman is seduction itself and must be hidden. You know our saying, ‘Women are the devil,’ ” the sheikh said. “Yet keeping them hidden is a delicate balance. Men must have women to protect them from immoral acts with each other. Still, failure to keep women separate leads to other transgressions of our religious commandments. There have been weddings in Nablus where men and women danced together and drank alcohol.”

“So the Chastity Committee isn’t just there to make marriage affordable,” Omar Yussef said. “It’s to prevent people celebrating.”

“If the style of the celebration is against Islam.” The sheikh lifted his chin. Omar Yussef saw the hairs in his broad nostrils quiver.

Omar Yussef gestured around the mosque. “From the poster on the door, it’s clear this is a Hamas mosque. The joint wedding is a big Hamas rally, isn’t it?”

Sheikh Bader smiled, but his eyes maintained their superior, fierce cast. “My charitable work is in the cause of Islam. If it’s funded by Hamas, it’s still for Islam.”

“The wedding will bring political gain, though.”

“I will make a speech at the wedding about morality. But the morality I speak of won’t rest solely on the responsibility of young men to follow a healthy, family path with their wives.” The sheikh’s brows squeezed down above his dark eyes. Here comes the thunder, Omar Yussef thought. “I shall make an important disclosure during my address- hitherto secret information about a failure of morality that will have tremendous political significance for Nablus and for the future of all the Palestinian people.”

I was waiting for thunder and he gives me lightning, Omar Yussef thought. “If that speech makes people support Hamas, then it’s all in the cause of Islam?”

Sami cleared his throat. “Abu Ramiz-”

Sheikh Bader raised his hand. “It’s all right, Sami. Your friend is a modern teacher. He demands logical reasoning.”

“But I also don’t condemn some of the illogical things people do when their bodies demand it of them,” Omar Yussef said. “For them to do otherwise is to court depression and suicide, and that’s certainly against Islamic law.”

“You can’t mean you see nothing wrong in homosexuality? The holy Koran condemns homosexuals as Loutis, the people of Lot from Sodom.”

“Homosexuals suffer enough in our society without me hating them, too.”

“What if you learned that one of your sons was such a pervert?”

Omar Yussef gave a rasping laugh. “I’d blame his mother. But he’d still be my son.”

The sheikh looked him up and down with disdain. His eyes left Omar Yussef self-conscious about his physical frailty. I’m paying the price now for what my body demanded of me over the years, for all the drinking and smoking, Omar Yussef thought. He’s older than me, but he’s dignified and strong. He wants society to look like him, not like me. “A society is an accumulation of experience, Our Honored Sheikh,” he said. “Life can’t be parroted the way you teach children to memorize the Koran. When the experience of a society is broad, everyone’s happiness can be taken into account in a spirit of tolerance.”

“That’s a dangerous path, ustaz.” The contempt in Sheikh Bader’s black eyes reminded Omar Yussef of the arrogant cockerel in the Touqan Palace.

“Danger lies in denial. As a teacher I can tell you that when you order children to learn by rote, it’s soon forgotten, because they don’t understand why it should be remembered. They grow up not knowing how to think for themselves and then they’re easy to manipulate.”

“In the sura of The Poets, the holy Koran says, ‘Will you fornicate with males and eschew the wives whom Allah has created for you? Surely you are great transgressors.’ My pupils are obedient to Allah and to the holy Koran.”

“Obedient to you, above all.” Omar Yussef’s finger shot out, pointing shakily at Bader.

One of the armed men in black came out of his snooze and rose slowly in the corner of the mosque. The shoulder strap of his assault rifle clicked against the darkened metal barrel. Sheikh Bader lifted his hand and the man sat down, but his eyes remained open, watching Omar Yussef. “Evidently obedience was not part of your education,” the sheikh said.

“My dear father taught me to think for myself.” Omar Yussef had a sudden remembrance of the stern sheikhs who used to come to his father’s house when he was a boy, urging the old man to join the new political groups campaigning for Palestinian rights. They always entered the room purposefully, hurrying as though their political cause might spoil in the sun. At the time, Omar had thought his father weak for refusing them. Now he saw how wise he had been.

He withdrew his finger and looked at Sami. The policeman raised an eyebrow, glanced at the two gunmen in the corner and dipped his head toward the door of the mosque. Time to go, Omar Yussef thought. “My dear father also taught me to show respect. I hope you don’t mistake my bluntness for disrespect, Our Honored Sheikh.”

“May Allah forbid it,” Sheikh Bader said. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to finish the arrangements for tomorrow’s wedding. We must be sure that Nouri Awwadi isn’t the only one riding a horse. I have to get fourteen more such mounts into the casbah by the end of the day. May Allah grant you grace.”

In the small plaza outside the mosque, Sami gave Omar Yussef a smile. “Are you so opposed to marriage, Abu Ramiz, that you want to insult the sheikh until he refuses to carry out the ceremony for me?”

“As a matter of fact, I think you and Meisoun are a perfect pair. But men like him make me angry.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the mosque. “Many years ago, when I was still a drinker, I once told a particularly self- important sheikh to go screw himself. Evidently he took my advice, because he has given birth to many others like him and now we’re inundated with arrogant, self-righteous religious leaders.”

Sami grinned. They turned toward the shops along the casbah’s main street.

Chapter 7

At the entrance to the souk, Omar Yussef detected something savory in the air. He twitched his nostrils, searching beyond the aroma of walnuts and dates from the ma’amoul shortbread pyramided on wide trays outside a sweetshop. Sami pointed into the half-light of the market. “You’ve picked up the scent of Abu Alam’s restaurant,” he said. “Now I’ll prove to you that I’m not marrying Meisoun just so that I’ll have someone to fry my eggs in the morning.”

They weaved between the women in the souk. The presence of the crowd calmed Omar Yussef. In the empty casbah, there always seemed to be some man, menacing and solitary, sloping along close to the wall on the shadowed side of the alley. As the women milled past the small stores, the brush of their shoulders against Omar Yussef felt like a soothing caress. I could almost forget that I saw a dead man today, he thought.

Just past a toy shop selling bright plastic machine guns and tricycles, Sami dodged into a storefront, its door and window the width of a man’s arm span and open to the street. The sizzling of oil in a frying pan drew Omar Yussef inside. He could rarely stomach food that wasn’t prepared by his wife, but his exertions at the summit of