The Samaritan's secret

“The scroll was left on the priest’s doorstep and at the same time a body turned up on the edge of his village.” Omar Yussef lifted his finger at the young policeman. “Come on, Sami. You promised me an investigation into the theft of a historic document, but that particular intrigue has been resolved. You owe me a mystery and that body is it.”

Sami shook his head with a gloomy smile and stepped down the rocky slope toward the trees. Omar Yussef followed awkwardly. He bent to support himself with his arm and descended sideways. Slipping in the loose dirt, he struck his knee on a rock. His elbow shook, taking his weight. He sensed the group of Samaritans watching him, but he didn’t look up. He was sweating with embarrassment at his frail condition. When he reached Sami, he wiped his forehead and neck with his handkerchief.

The dead man was of medium height and wore a white shirt and blue slacks. His feet were bare. His midriff folded around the tree trunk, his legs falling down the hill on one side of the pine and his torso curved around the other. His hands and knees were bound with electrical wire. Omar Yussef breathed heavily. He caught Sami’s eye. The young man whispered: “He’s been tortured, Abu Ramiz.”

Sami pointed out the contusions around the corpse’s neck and head. The thin chest was purpled with bruising where the bloodied shirt had been pulled open. The finger-tips had been scorched.

The dead man was probably in his midtwenties. His sky blue eyes were open and stared at Omar Yussef with some-thing that looked like recognition. Omar Yussef had the feeling that he had seen them before, but that didn’t seem possible. He blinked and averted his face, unnerved by the familiarity in those eyes. He cleared his throat and examined the bruises. “Was he beaten to death?”

“I don’t see any other wounds, at least not the kind that would be fatal. There could have been internal bleeding. Perhaps the beating damaged his organs.” Sami leaned closer to the man’s head. “I suppose the neck could be broken. It’s at an awkward angle.”

Omar Yussef pointed to where the Samaritans stood. “He either fell or was thrown from up there. This tree blocked his fall.”

“There’s no blood around,” Sami said. “I expect he was killed before he dropped down here.”

They made their way back to the ridge, Sami following behind. Omar Yussef was grateful to him for waiting. By the time they reached the group of Samaritans, his shirt was heavy with sweat and the wind across the mountain chilled it against his shoulders and belly.

“Who found the body?” Sami said.

A short, thick man in a dirty blue shirt and a baseball cap that bore the logo of a cheap Israeli cigarette brand raised his hand. “I came up here to open the site for the tourists and I saw it,” he mumbled.

“What time?”

“A little before eight. It wasn’t there last night, I’m sure of that. An American arrived just before I left- someone who works with one of the international organizations-and she was surprised that there are pine trees up here.” The caretaker smiled. “You know these foreigners; they only expect to see olive groves, real Middle Eastern stuff. I told her the pines were planted not long ago to reduce the wind on the mountaintop and we both looked very closely at them. I would’ve seen the body.”

“When were you and the foreigner looking at the trees?”

“Just before sunset. About six o’clock.”

“So you came along the ridge this morning and looked over the edge of the path and saw the body?”

The short man shook his head. “I saw blood on the Eternal Hill first. I thought a jackal had brought its prey here, so I looked around because I didn’t want the tourists to stumble onto a half-eaten goat. Then I found Ishaq dead in the trees.”

“Where’s the Eternal Hill?”

The caretaker pointed across the path to a sloping rock ten yards square. Sami and Omar Yussef stepped toward it. Blood puddled black at its center. A gory trickle ran to the bottom of the gentle, rippling slope of granite. Thicker daubs led up to the top.

“He was tortured there in the middle of the rock,” Sami said quietly. “These other marks must be where the body was dragged over the rock, before he was thrown into the trees. Some time during the night.”

Omar Yussef turned to the priest. “The Eternal Hill is where the ancient Samaritan temple stood?”

“This rock is the peak of the mountain,” the priest stammered, “the home of Allah.”

“It looks just like the stone inside the Dome of the Rock,” Omar Yussef said.

“The Jews say that Abraham bound Isaac there on the peak of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. You Muslims just took over their tradition. But Mount Jerizim is where it really took place and that’s why we built our temple here and made it the center of our faith.”

Omar Yussef stared at the priest. “And now it’s covered in blood.”

The priest made a sound that was both a gasp and a sob.

A police jeep pulled into the parking lot and six officers got out. One of the officers pulled a rucksack from the jeep and walked purposefully toward Sami.

“Who was this Ishaq?” Omar Yussef said. “He was one of you? A Samaritan?”

“He’s one of us,” the priest said.

“What did he do?”

“He works-worked for the Palestinian Authority. He lived in the village with his wife.”

The policeman with the rucksack went down the slope toward the body. He slipped in the dirt and landed heavily on his backside. The other officers laughed as they followed him over the lip of the incline. The embarrassed policeman grabbed at one of his colleagues and tried to trip him. Sami called to him sharply.

Omar Yussef rubbed his chin. “Who would want Ishaq dead?”

The priest lifted his arms and let them drop to his sides. “No one, no one.”

“That can’t quite be true, can it?” Omar Yussef sucked one end of his mustache. “What does the Samaritan religion say about evil things such as murder, Your Honor?”

The priest looked at the blood on the broad rock. “One of our holy books says, ‘The sinner goes to the flames and I have no compassion for him.’”

Omar Yussef raised an eyebrow. “You mean the dead man was a sinner?”

“What?” Jibril Ben-Tabia blinked. “No, I mean the murderer. The murderer goes to the flames.”

“He’ll have to die first. The only one in danger of the flames right now is Ishaq. Do you have compassion for him?”

The priest’s head dropped forward. In the quiet of the mountaintop, he whispered: “Compassion? Yes. He was my son.”

Chapter 4

The priest fretted his white beard with shaking fingers. He ran his toe along the edge of the broad rock where the ancient temple once stood and stared at the blood of his son.

“Allah will be merciful upon him,” Omar Yussef said.

The priest removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes hard. “Do you have a son, pasha?”

“I have three,” Omar Yussef said. He glanced at the Samaritan men. Hands in pockets, they had the uneasy listlessness of teenagers at their first family funeral. But their eyes were alert and trained on the priest’s back.

“What a blessing, pasha.” Ben-Tabia returned his thick glasses to his nose and his eyes seemed to shrink away behind them.

Omar Yussef recalled his awkward reunion with Zuheir and his son’s new religious dedication. “Thanks to Allah,” he said.

He moved to the priest’s side. His back ached and he would have rested his foot on the rock, but some sense of propriety prevented him. Perhaps it’s the rock’s holiness, he thought. No, it’s the blood.

The priest’s eyebrows twitched. “I don’t know what friction usually passes between a father and his son, pasha. I know only that there was tension between me and Ishaq. I have nothing to