The Samaritan's secret

Mount Jerizim and his walk around the casbah had made him hungry. He noticed that he was salivating.

Sami reached over the counter to slap hands with the owner, who was making hummus in a bucket-sized mixer. Abu Alam squeezed two large lemons over the chickpeas, tehina and garlic. He wiped the juice from his fingers on his soiled shirt, before reaching out a thick forearm to grasp Sami’s hand. His fat face glistened with perspiration.

“So you’re a pal of Sami’s from Bethlehem?” Abu Alam’s voice was hoarse from shouting orders to his cook over the din of the busy souk. “Welcome, ustaz. Things down there aren’t violent enough for you, so you decided to come and see what life is like in a real war zone?”

“Thanks for your welcome.” Omar Yussef raised a finger and smiled. “How do you know I’m not on the run from the Israelis? Maybe I decided to take refuge here where they can’t get at me.”

“You may see gunmen walking freely around our casbah in the afternoon, it’s true, ustaz. But believe me they’re not out of reach of the Israelis, even here. Only last night, the Israelis came right to the door of my restaurant.” Abu Alam pointed toward a metal concertina shutter folded back from the entrance. The light green paint was smeared a cloudy black. “That’s from a grenade or some other explosive, and it wasn’t like that when I locked up yesterday.”

Omar Yussef touched a finger to the blackness. It came away dirty, with a smell of burnt plastic. “What happened?”

“The Israeli special forces come in every night to arrest some gunmen. We’re not very deep in the casbah here, so the Israelis can enter this far and still know where they stand.” Abu Alam waved a big hand at the door. “But they don’t like to go further. They’re at a disadvantage in the alleys and the old tunnels. The streets are too twisty for their tanks, and our gunmen know their way around much better than they do.”

“In Bethlehem the army comes at night once or twice a week,” Omar Yussef said.

“Nablus isn’t like Bethlehem or the rest of the West Bank. It’s more like Gaza, ustaz,” Abu Alam said. “We used to run the most prosperous businesses in Palestine and produce its greatest poets. Now our casbah is a factory for gunmen and the only literature is written on posters advertising the latest martyr.”

“Most of the gunmen in Bethlehem have been arrested by now.”

“No matter how many the Israelis kill or capture, Nablus still has a good supply.”

“Maybe if you gave the gunmen free eggs and hummus, they’d be too fat to run away from the Israelis and then your town could get some peace.”

“I’m doing my best. The men of the resistance eat free here, ustaz, and you know that hummus makes you sleepy.” Abu Alam wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist.

“What about the police?” Omar Yussef squeezed Sami’s shoulder. “Do they eat free of charge?”

“The brother Sami will never get fat, and my prices are affordable, even for a man on a police salary.” Abu Alam smiled. “The usual, Sami?”

“Yes, and the same for Abu Ramiz.”

Sami took Omar Yussef’s elbow, led him down the single row of tables, and sat facing the door. Against the opposite wall, a thin youth in baggy jeans took a few eggs from a cardboard pannier and cracked them one-handed into a charred frying pan. He turned up the heat on a row of gas burners, wiping a smear of egg yolk onto his white apron. Behind Sami, another youngster was wedged between a deep stainless steel sink and a waist-high cooking- gas canister in the violet glow of an electric fly trap. He split a baked eggplant, scraped out its pulpy innards, and tossed the skin onto a pile of trash, where it lay, bruise-black and limp, like a gutted crow. Abu Alam shouted to the boy, who went quickly to the counter and ferried a few small plates to Sami and Omar Yussef.

Sami curled a wedge of flatbread around his forefinger and scooped some khilta into his mouth. He wiped a dribble of the yoghurt from his chin. “Try it. It’s good,” he said. “Even your dear wife wouldn’t object to this place.”

“I think she might take issue with their cleanliness,” Omar Yussef said, glancing at the charred gobbets of egg on the gas burners.

The yoghurt was appealing, though, dotted with the brightness of finely chopped tomatoes and red peppers. He ate, enjoying the freshness of the dish. When he tried the soft slices of avocado soaked in olive oil, he sensed himself relaxing. He was supposed to be on vacation and he hadn’t planned for dead bodies in his itinerary, so it was comfort-ing to taste hearty, traditional food prepared simply and to forget about the corpse on the mountain. It’s Sami who has to worry about the dead Samaritan, Omar Yussef thought, and his killer.

The young man who had been working the burners laid an omelette, glistening with oil, on the table and grinned at Omar Yussef with betel-stained teeth. In the kitchen, a jagged crackle and a stutter of violet light marked the sudden demise of a fly.

Omar Yussef took some hummus, but as he brought it to his mouth, a dollop slipped off the bread onto his shirt. He cursed quietly and held up his hands, while Sami wiped at the stain with a wet paper napkin. The men at the other tables smoked and drank tea and talked, bending low over their plates when they ate. Omar Yussef leaned close to Sami.

“Ishaq was homosexual,” he whispered. “Awwadi told me.”

“You’ve been interrogating Awwadi?” Sami mumbled through a mouthful of hummus. He scrubbed once more at Omar Yussef’s stained shirt, looking sharply at his friend. “You’re supposed to be in Nablus for my wedding, not to play detective.”

“Weddings depress me. I need to focus on a murder to cheer myself up.”

Sami dropped the damp napkin in the ashtray and exam-ined the hummus stain on Omar Yussef’s shirt with suspicion.

“Will the stain come out?” Omar Yussef said.

Sami shrugged. “You think Ishaq’s death is connected to his homosexuality?”

“Ishaq may have had access to money hidden by the old president in the foreign accounts people always talk about. He also had a personal secret that could shame him before his community. Sounds like a good basis for blackmail.”

“But he was murdered. Why kill someone you want to blackmail?” Sami swirled the hummus with his bread.

“Blackmailers are like anyone else-they make mistakes.” Omar Yussef rooted for a sesame seed trapped between his teeth. “Even your great Sheikh Bader isn’t right all the time. Eventually someone will refuse to follow his sacred rules.”

Sami cut a piece of omelette with the edge of his fork. He held it with a small piece of bread and rolled it in a hot dish of fava bean foule. “Mistake or not, it’s a mystery, and that’s that.” He shoved the omelette into his mouth and wiped his fingers on his combat pants.

“It’s not just a mystery. It’s a murder case.” Omar Yussef’s eyes widened.

Sami chewed his food. “You’re a good friend, Abu Ramiz, so I’m going to be straight with you. Nablus has many murders, but it has very few murder trials.”

“What do you mean?”

The young policeman sucked the last remnants of bread from his back teeth. “You know that I don’t follow the sheikh’s sacred rules, as you call them. I have my own guidelines in life, and accordingly there’s only so far I can go with this case.”

Omar Yussef straightened in surprise. “I smell corruption on your breath.”

“Don’t be dramatic. Abu Alam’s hummus just has too much garlic,” Sami grinned. “Corruption makes me choke just as hard as you.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Sami picked at his thumbnail. “The sheikh warned me not to pursue this case.”

“Then start your investigation with him. Why would he want the case of a dead Samaritan to be dropped? He must be involved.”

“Abu Ramiz, I was just transferred back to the West Bank after five years in Gaza, in exile,” said Sami. “I’m about to be married to the woman I love and I want to have a family. My deportation already delayed these things and I can’t afford to take risks.”

“Risks?” Omar Yussef’s hands shook. He gripped the edge of the table to steady them.