The Samaritan's secret

“Uncle Sami says you haven’t told him everything you know about the murder of the Samaritan. He says good detectives always keep something for themselves, even from the people who’re helping them.” Nadia grinned mischievously. “You can tell me, though.”

“But you’ll write all my secrets in your book.”

Nadia ran her fingers along her tight lips and shook her head.

Omar Yussef rested his hand on her shoulder. “The poor Samaritan’s murder is linked to information about dirty things done by important people-information that could be used to blackmail them.” He glanced down an alley and recognized it as the entrance to the baths where Awwadi had been killed. He picked up his pace.

Nadia nodded gravely. “To put the bite on them.”

“Bite them?”

“‘Put the bite on them.’ It’s what Mister Chandler writes when he means someone blackmailed someone else.”

“Let’s put the bite on some qanafi. The most famous place to eat it is around this next corner.”

The broad alley where Aksa Sweets sold its celebrated dessert was empty. On the coppery green shutters of the store, an old poster commemorating the death of a gunman in a fight with Israeli soldiers flapped in the breeze.

“Grandpa, why is everything closed?”

Omar Yussef remembered what Khamis Zeydan had said about spitting before asking why. He swallowed hard, but he had no spit. “I’ve been told that the very best qanafi is actually not made in the casbah these days,” he said. “There’re some good restaurants just south of the old town. Let’s go there for our dessert, my darling.”

Nadia’s footsteps became quiet and cautious. “Grandpa, maybe we should turn back. I know you said you’d walk through bullets to get me some qanafi today, but I hope you didn’t really mean it. It seems like something bad is about to happen.”

“The author of The Curse of the Casbah can’t be turned back so easily, can she? Aren’t you hungry any more?” Omar Yussef said.

“I don’t want to eat qanafi because I’m hungry. Thanks to Grandma, I’m never short of food. I want to try the qanafi because they make it better in Nablus than back home in Bethlehem. But we don’t have to get it right now.”

“We’ll be all right,” he said. He let go of Nadia’s hand, so she wouldn’t feel the sweat in his palm.

Omar and Nadia emerged from the casbah into a wide square that was usually noisy with belligerent yellow taxis. It was empty now, except for three dozen figures in camouflage fatigues with Kalashnikovs slung across their chests. The men clustered around a few jeeps at the base of a twentyfoot statue of a coffeepot, a symbol of the town’s hospitality. Omar Yussef realized that the stores had closed because these gunmen were assembling to enter the casbah.

The men smoked intensely and shifted from foot to foot, like athletes before a race. This is what Khamis Zeydan predicted, Omar Yussef thought. And I’ve walked into the middle of it with my favorite grandchild.

A tall man in camouflage pants and a black leather jacket climbed onto the back of one of the jeeps. He lifted his arms to signal silence. “Brothers, you heard the slanders against our chief and our symbol, the Old Man,” he called out. “Now it’s time to cut out the deceitful tongues and punish the liars. Allah is most great.”

The gunmen started for the casbah. Omar Yussef stared at the tall man on the jeep-he knew him from somewhere.

Nadia tugged on his sleeve. “I’m not hungry,” she said. Her face looked whiter than ever and Omar Yussef cursed himself for not turning back earlier.

He put his arm across her shoulder to hurry from the square, just as the man on the jeep noticed him. When the gunman’s hard gaze turned toward him, Omar Yussef recognized Halim Mareh, whose hostile glare he had seen directed at Nouri Awwadi outside the spice store in the casbah. Mareh bared his teeth and jumped from his jeep, jogging toward Omar Yussef.

Mareh would know these streets well. Omar Yussef couldn’t outpace him, but he had to lose him somehow. As he passed Aksa Sweets, the martyrdom poster seemed to flap more urgently in the wind. Omar Yussef’s breath was quick. He squeezed Nadia’s bony shoulder.

“Don’t worry, my darling,” he said. “I’ve been walking these alleys for days. I know my way around. I’ll get you home without any trouble.”

Nadia’s eyes flickered up and down the alley. The gunmen’s heavy boots echoed through the casbah.

They’ll head for the Touqan Palace at the center of the casbah, Omar Yussef thought, to trap the Hamas people who are probably gathered there with Awwadi’s father for his battle against Mareh’s family. “Let’s go this way, Nadia,” he said. He’d circle around to the north and come to Sami’s apartment from that direction.

He pulled his granddaughter along the main commercial alley, past the old tombs where he had hidden from the man who had tried to kill him and through the square where Nouri Awwadi had ridden his white horse to marriage. He cut uphill and plunged along a covered way so dark that he couldn’t see Nadia, though he held her hand. His pulse drummed in his ears when he heard the first shots. He had been correct: the gunmen were south of him, approaching the Touqan Palace.

He glimpsed a slice of light to his right, alive with a cloud of midges. He stepped toward the glow and stumbled over a bottle. It rolled away noisily on the flagstones. He staggered, off balance, and bent double in the darkness. He reached for the wall to right himself and felt the cool stone against his hands. Both hands. Nadia, he thought. I let go of her when I slipped.

He called her name, but his voice fell dead and echoless in the dark alley, and there was no answer.

Heavy boots came closer, running in a group. Someone shouted something that Omar Yussef couldn’t make out, a harsh call that could have been a command to a subordinate or a warning for an enemy to surrender.

Omar Yussef retreated into the darkness. When he had dodged to the right, it had been a wrong turn, taking him toward the gunmen and the Touqan Palace. Nadia must have kept going straight ahead, after he let go of her hand. His mouth filled with midges. He tried to spit them out, but his tongue was dry. He groped through the darkness, panting and coughing.

Nadia called to him. She seemed a long way off. He responded with a whisper, in case the gunmen should hear him, and tried to pick up his pace. He came up a short flight of stairs and into a small courtyard. It was empty.

“No, not Nadia,” he said. “Not Nadia.” He put his hand on his forehead.

He heard a light footstep and turned. Nadia peered out from a deep stone doorway. She recognized Omar Yussef as he stepped out of the dark stairwell and ran toward him. He was surprised that her thin arms could hold him so tightly.

“This isn’t a book, Grandpa,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “It’s real.”

“Don’t worry. It’s good research for The Curse of the Casbah, my darling,” he said, stroking her long black hair.

She shook her head and nuzzled against his sweating neck. Then he felt her shoulders grow tense. He followed her eyes and saw Halim Mareh framed by a low arch, his Kalashnikov across his chest.

The gunman’s lazy, blank eyes chilled Omar Yussef. He stepped toward Mareh, gently pushing Nadia toward the edge of the courtyard.

“I didn’t read any of those files,” he said.

Mareh tipped his head to the left and was quiet.

“The files in Awwadi’s storeroom. When I went to find them, they were gone.”

Mareh shrugged.

“I mean, if someone wants to silence me so that I don’t reveal the contents of those files, it’s unnecessary. I know nothing.”

The gunman licked his lips. “I can’t argue with that.”

“Let me take my granddaughter home and I’ll be happy to come to see you later. We can talk about this.”