The Samaritan's secret

“Perhaps you should choose another business that’s less politically sensitive,” Omar Yussef suggested.

“I’m encouraging her to get into cell phones, in partner-ship with Ramiz,” Sami said. Omar Yussef’s son ran a cell phone business in Bethlehem. “You’re right that it’s best to avoid politically sensitive issues.” He angled his neck toward Omar Yussef to emphasize his warning.

Meisoun put her finger on her lips again. “My interest in cell phones, too, is a secret no less explosive than the ancient Israelite history of Nablus.” She smiled. “Someone else might steal our idea.”

“I’m very discreet, Miss Meisoun,” Omar Yussef said. “Unfortunately, my wife is a chatterbox. If you want to prevent Maryam from exposing your secret, you’d better bury her at least as far down as the Roman remains.”

Maryam slapped Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “Then who would make your hummus?”

They laughed, but Meisoun grew quiet. She stepped closer to the wall and peered into the shadows cast by the falling weeds. She ran her hand across the smooth, tan stone and circled three bullet holes with her forefinger. Powdered limestone came away on her nail when she probed one of them. A flattened slug of lead dropped to the floor. “You see, Umm Ramiz. I’m right at home in Nablus. It’s just like Gaza.”

They walked on in silence. Meisoun rubbed the dust from her finger and reached for Sami’s hand. The young man looked into her eyes with a strained smile.

Omar Yussef reached out and pinched Maryam’s earlobe affectionately. She was stroking his hand, when they heard quick footsteps around the corner.

Four men came into the alley. They wore green fatigues and their faces were disguised by black stocking caps. Two of them held thick lengths of wood. A short, bulky man slapped a tire iron into his palm. They barred the alley, poised on their toes, ready to spring.

Sami pulled Meisoun behind him. Omar Yussef looked back along the passage. It was empty and dark.

The short man chuckled, jeering and mirthless. “You’re Sami Jaffari, aren’t you, you son of a whore?” He stepped toward Sami, the men with the timbers at his elbow.

Sami pushed Meisoun away, ducked his head and charged at the short man, hitting him in the chest with his shoulder. The man went down, but Sami took a two by four across his shoulders and dropped to his knees. Another blow flattened him.

Omar Yussef let go of Maryam’s hand. “Stop this, by Allah, stop it,” he shouted. “Shame on you.”

The fourth masked man was tall and trim. He shoved Omar Yussef on the collar bone with the flat of his hand, but the schoolteacher kept his balance and moved forward.

“Calm down, Little Grandpa.” The tall man leaned close. Omar Yussef smelled cardamom on his breath, as though he had been chewing seed pods.

“Your grandpa would be ashamed of you,” he said, “and I hope he’ll curse you for this.”

The tall man raised his hand and slapped Omar Yussef hard. His glasses fell and he spun toward the wall. He struck it with his shoulder and doubled over.

Maryam spread her arms in front of him. “Don’t touch my husband, you filthy dog,” she said.

Omar Yussef’s myopic eyes were tearful from the blow and his nose was running into his mustache. He saw a blur of green, hooded shapes lifting something from the floor and heard the tall man’s voice: “Consider this a warning, Jaffari, you worthless shit.” An arm swung. Omar Yussef heard a light crunch like cutlery rattling in a drawer, and Sami bellowed.

“Peace be upon you, Lieutenant.” The tall man’s voice was mocking. Omar Yussef heard someone expectorate and saw Sami flinch when the spittle hit him.

The men went back around the corner. Omar Yussef listened to their footsteps recede. Maryam handed him his glasses and stroked his stinging cheek.

Sami was hunched over his knees on the flagstones of the alley. Meisoun hugged his shaking body.

Omar Yussef kneeled beside him. He gave his handker-chief to Meisoun, who wiped the gob of sputum from Sami’s cheek. The young policeman’s face was pale and sweating. He cradled his right arm with his left.

“They’ve broken my arm,” he gasped.

This time Omar Yussef didn’t ask who they were.

Chapter 9

The sun slipped behind the mansions on Mount Jerizim, as though their prodigiously wealthy residents had bought it and stashed it in their gardens. Why not? Omar Yussef thought. Everything’s for sale in Palestine, if you bribe the right people. He gathered his breath for the steps outside his hotel, coughing on the exhaust fumes as his taxi pulled away, and followed Maryam toward the entrance.

Few of the rooms in the Grand Hotel were lit. In the dark, its seventies facade of rippled concrete looked like the exhausted face of a man moments from death. Meisoun, playing the ironic tour guide, had said the violence of Nablus discouraged tourists, and her wedding guests accounted for almost every illuminated window in the hotel. Omar Yussef hoped not to have to be the one to tell them that the groom was in the sick bay at police head- quarters with his broken forearm in a sling.

As Omar Yussef tracked Maryam across the empty lobby, the hotel manager wrenched a jammed sheet of paper from the fax machine on the reception desk. “Peace be upon you, ustaz,” he said, a little breathlessly.

“And upon you, peace.”

“This might be a reservation.” The manager beamed desperately at Omar Yussef. He had eyes the pale brown tone of cigarette filters and gray skin, so that his face looked like a heavily used ashtray with two new butts stubbed into it. He wore an expression of hopeless fragility that made him look as though he would, indeed, blow away about as easily as a pile of cinders. With the shredded fax close to his face, he struggled to read the text. His mouth tightened and he crushed the sheet into a ball, tossing it hard into a wastepaper basket.

Maryam caressed Omar Yussef’s face as they waited for the elevator. While they had watched the doctor set Sami’s arm, Omar Yussef had felt the sting in his cheek and wished the masked man in the alley had punched him instead. The slap had been contemptuous, as though he were a woman or an infant. He couldn’t help but resent Maryam’s sympathy.

“Darling, I’ll wait down here while you change for dinner,” he said.

He kissed her and entered the lounge. Lit a ghostly blue by glimmering fluorescent tubes, the room was noisy with the sententious voice of a presenter on the Abu Dhabi cable news channel resonating from a big-screen television on the far wall. At a breakfast bar of the same pale pine as the reception desk, a waiter in a white shirt and flashy striped vest leaned over a newspaper. As Omar Yussef approached, he shoved himself off his elbows and straightened the bottom of his vest over his paunch.

“Evening of joy,” Omar Yussef said.

“Evening of light, ustaz,” the waiter mumbled. He looked nervous and defeated, as though he already knew he wouldn’t be able to fulfill any order to Omar Yussef’s satisfaction.

“A coffee, please. Prepare it sa’ada.” Omar Yussef always took his coffee without sugar.

The waiter ducked below the counter.

“Please turn the volume down on the television, too,” Omar Yussef said. “The news is always bad enough without it having to be loud, as well.”

The waiter remained on his haunches, reaching up to a shelf behind him for the remote control.

The room had been recently whitewashed, but its furniture was a decade old. The couches were low squares of foam covered in nylon and corduroy with no armrests or support. Omar Yussef winced, wondering how he’d ever be able to get up, once he had sunk into one of them.

With the hotel almost empty, there was only one group in the lounge. In the far corner, Nadia balanced on the edge of a couch of spongy cushions upholstered with a russet fabric in an angular pattern. She was in conversation with her uncle Zuheir and a red-haired foreigner in her late thirties. Omar Yussef would have preferred to sit alone, letting the adrenaline that still thundered through him after the attack by the masked men dissipate.