The Samaritan's secret

turned his eyes swiftly to the flickering fluorescent lights in the ceiling, keeping them there until the elevator doors opened on the lobby and allowed him to escape his reflection.

Jamie King stood in the center of the lobby with her hands resting together in front of her. Her eyes wandered around the room as though she were waiting for someone. She wore her red hair down and Omar Yussef admired its thickness. A surge of purpose overcame his melancholy. I must talk to her before Maryam arrives, he thought. As he approached her, the American straightened her jacket, smiled and extended a firm hand to greet him.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” he said.

“No, in fact, I-”

“Jamie, I need to continue our talk about Ishaq, the Samaritan,” Omar Yussef said, moving close to her. “Ishaq was very young to be in charge of the Old Man’s secret finances, wasn’t he?”

“There weren’t many people the president trusted.” King stroked the soft hairs by her ear. “The people who first told me about Ishaq all used the same phrase: ‘Ishaq was like a son to the Old Man.’ But I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the president simply had something on Ishaq.”

“Some sort of dirt?” His homosexuality, Omar Yussef thought.

“Something that would give him power over Ishaq. So that if Ishaq ever tried to pilfer the cash, the president could ruin his family.”

“He went to Paris with the president, when the Old Man was dying,” Omar Yussef said. “Once the president died, Ishaq could’ve kept all the money.”

The American dipped her head closer to Omar Yussef. “Unless someone else also knew his secret and was in a position to blackmail him.”

“If that were the case, why would he return to Palestine? He was walking right into the arms of his blackmailers.” Omar Yussef shook his head. “What do you think happened to the money?”

“I’ve traced no recent transactions that would suggest the money has been moved. I assume Ishaq still controlled the secret accounts when he was killed.”

“Where’s the money likely to be?”

“What we’ve found so far was in accounts in the Bahamas, Belize, Panama, those kinds of places. There were also investments in companies all over the world. Telecom businesses in Libya, food distribution companies in Saudi Arabia, all sorts of industries. But most of it was in easily accessible cash accounts, to pay for things the president needed quickly. I’ll keep trying to track it all down- my investigators are in Geneva at the moment, following up a couple of leads. But I’m worried. If someone killed Ishaq for the details of the accounts, they might have cleaned them out by the time I catch up.”

“Whatever you discover, perhaps you’ll share it with me?” Omar Yussef whispered. “It might help you to consult someone who knows the culture.”

Jamie King gave a distant smile of politeness that Omar Yussef knew well from years of working with foreigners at the United Nations. I won’t be waiting up for a phone call from her, he thought.

The elevator sounded its electronic tone. When the doors opened, Maryam was close to the mirror, pulling at the bags under her eyes and Nadia was mimicking her grandmother and giggling. The girl hurried across the lobby, beaming at Jamie King. “Grandpa, I invited Miss Jamie to join us for dinner,” she said.

Omar Yussef touched his fingers to his mustache, trying to hide his surprise. “Are you going to talk about your book with her all night, Nadia?”

The girl shook her head. “I won’t give away anything else about it,” she said. “You’re going to have to guess who the bad guy is, first.”

Jamie King shook Maryam’s hand. “Nadia tells me this meal will be a very inferior experience compared with your home cooking, Umm Ramiz,” she said.

Maryam kissed Nadia. Omar Yussef watched the pleasure that overcame her tired face when she held her granddaughter. He couldn’t help but think of his wife as a simple woman whose pleasures were all in the domestic, familial things a woman was supposed to enjoy. Yet, he often felt sure that there were complicated elements of her character about which he knew nothing. He would have enjoyed reading all Maryam’s secrets, if they had been included in the dirt files Awwadi had procured for Hamas.

In the dining room, Nadia spotted her father, Ramiz, and her uncle, Zuheir, near the window and made her way toward them. Maryam stopped to chat with a woman at the next table, where other friends of Sami’s family from Bethlehem were sharing skewers of lamb and chicken.

Omar Yussef greeted the Bethlehem people with some jokes about the rarity of finding Maryam in a restaurant and sat beside his wife. Ramiz stroked his daughter’s long, straight hair and whispered to her. They laughed together and the healthy chubbiness at Ramiz’s jaw rolled. Zuheir cradled a glass of water and stared at the cigarette burns on the white tablecloth. The waiter came over with a wide tray of small salads and spreads. He laid them out on the table.

Ishaq thought he was free, once the president died, Omar Yussef thought. He returned from the safety of France to the village on Mount Jerizim to be with his wife and his adoptive father. He believed the president had taken his secret with him to the grave. But someone knew Ishaq’s shame and used it against him. Could it have been Nouri Awwadi? The Hamas man had told Omar Yussef that Ishaq was gay. He had also managed to obtain the dirt files from Ishaq. Perhaps he had murdered him, after all. Had he squeezed the president’s secret bank accounts out of Ishaq, too, under threat of blackmail? Awwadi may have told me about the scandal dossiers on the Fatah men because he wanted me to believe that they were all he received from Ishaq. Omar Yussef fretted at a small rip in the tablecloth. But when I told Awwadi that Ishaq had the president’s millions, he seemed totally surprised. Unless he’s a very convincing actor, he doesn’t have the money. Not yet.

Sami and Meisoun crossed the dining room. She linked her hands demurely. They were allowed to be together in public before the wedding, but they had to behave with reserve. Sami stopped at the table next to Omar Yussef’s to greet his family friends, grinning sheepishly when they joked about the cast on his arm. He caught Omar Yussef’s eye and his smile wavered. The schoolteacher turned away. Meisoun kissed Maryam. As she hugged Nadia, she quickly appraised Jamie King and spoke to Omar Yussef. “So, ustaz, it seems I’m to be relegated to your third wife.”

Omar Yussef’s face grew hot.

Sami bent to kiss Ramiz and Zuheir, muttering quiet greet-ings. He sat beside them, hunched forward with his eyes on the tablecloth and his broken arm hidden beneath the table.

The poor boy’s ashamed that he isn’t working on Ishaq’s case, Omar Yussef thought.

Maryam dropped a crisp chip of fried flatbread onto her plate, clicked her tongue and folded her arms. “The yoghurt in the huwarna is too thin,” she said in English.

King leaned over the small plates spread across the table. “Which dish is that?”

Maryam pointed at a shallow bowl of plain yoghurt, dotted with tiny dark pods. “All you have to do is wash the mustard seeds and put them in the yoghurt. How difficult can that be? They didn’t even add the slightest bit of mint.” She wanted to be angry, but she couldn’t help smiling as she explained the local food to the foreigner. “I always put fresh mint in my huwarna just before I serve it, to give it a little extra flavor.”

Omar Yussef scooped some of the yoghurt dip onto a bread chip and crunched it in his mouth. “Ignore her, Jamie,” he said. “It’s really quite good.”

Maryam glared.

“It’s not as good as yours, of course, darling,” he said, in English. Then he switched to Arabic. “Nadia, tell your Grandma that she’ll starve in Nablus if she refuses to eat the rotten food in this restaurant.”

Maryam lifted a small dish of greens and spooned some onto King’s plate. “Jamie, try this. It’s jarjeer. It’s a very traditional part of Palestinian meals. It’s a leaf that in English I think you call ‘arugula.’ To make the salad, you add lemon juice and this purple ground spice, which we call sumac. I don’t know what it is in English.”

King ate appreciatively. “It has a very zesty taste.”

“The lemon highlights the fresh flavor of the arugula leaves,” Maryam said.