The Samaritan's secret

adorned with gold jewelry and Parisian couture.

“It’s a shame you’re unable to mourn as you should for the loss of your husband’s associate Ishaq. But you can at least take comfort that his murderer is now dead.”

Liana appeared to be short of breath for a moment. “Who was it?” she gasped.

“Jibril the priest. He was shot by our friend Abu Adel.”

The woman’s eyes flamed briefly, a lick of passion and pride amid her frozen features.

Omar Yussef looked hard at Liana. “I wonder for whom Abu Adel fired that shot?” he said.

Her features became cautious and stony again.

“Did he shoot a criminal in the act of committing an offense? Did he kill him to protect your secret?”

“My secret?”

“Or did he do it for the boy?” Omar Yussef thought of the pale blue eyes staring out of Ishaq’s corpse and the queer feeling of recognition he had experienced in that moment. He remembered the pain with which Liana’s wealthy husband recounted her infidelity. He recalled that, when he had told her of Ishaq’s murder, she had wanted to be alone with Khamis Zeydan.

Liana inclined her head toward the corner of the room and Omar Yussef followed her.

She stood with her back to a tall potted plant and scanned the room. She spoke without moving her lips. “What is it you want, ustaz?”

“Want?”

“For your silence.”

Though she took him for a blackmailer, Omar Yussef sighed with pity for Liana. “Dear lady,” he said, “your husband has already bought my silence.”

The kohl ran in a tear from Liana’s eye, but she caught it quickly with a tissue. She twitched her face taut and cleaned up the black streak. She looked expectantly at Omar Yussef. He blinked, signaling that the track of her tear had been erased, and she put the tissue in her handbag.

“What was the boy like?” he asked.

“He was handsome, brave and impulsive, with a great capacity for tenderness. But he also had an explosive temper. Like his father.”

Omar Yussef recognized the traits. “Did you tell him? When I left you together in your salon on the evening that I told you Ishaq was dead?”

“I thought I would, but I just couldn’t.” Liana covered her eyes. “I wanted to be with him in my moment of loss, but after the boy’s murder it was too late to tell him.”

“I’ll never speak of it to him.”

Two musicians wearing white shirts and baggy white cotton pants pranced into the building. The first of them played a trilling, breathy melody on a shabbabah flute. The second held a circular darbouka and beat a rhythm with his fingertips.

Sami and Meisoun came in from the sunshine behind the musicians. Sami’s black jacket was draped over his shoulders and his broken arm slung across his blue dress shirt. His dark skin shone with sweat and he smiled broadly. Meisoun’s white lace dress was tight around her slim torso. Under her veil, her head rocked from side to side with the rhythm. The women in the hall ululated, and the men who arrived with Sami clapped their hands and swayed to the eight-four time of the zaffah wedding march.

Khamis Zeydan danced behind Sami, snapping his fingers above his head. His foot must be feeling better, Omar Yussef thought. The police chief turned his smile toward Omar Yussef. He noticed Liana, who dropped her eyes to the potted plant, rubbing one of its leaves between her fingers. Khamis Zeydan followed Sami into the men’s hall, as the women led Meisoun next door. He glanced over his shoulder, but Omar Yussef avoided his eye.

“I couldn’t wait for him,” Liana said. “When I saw Abu Adel in the hospital after he was wounded, the doctors told me he would die. I wanted to tell him I was pregnant, but he was too drugged up to recognize me and, in any case, he was already married. All my silly fantasies about escaping to Europe or America disappeared. You understand the disgrace I faced? My family would have disowned me. Amin had been courting me and I convinced him the child was his. I accepted his offer of marriage.”

“Did you try to think of a way to raise the child as your own?”

“Even if we married in a hurry, he would have been born too soon afterward. My father was a prominent diplomat and there was Amin’s career to think about-and my honor. Despite all my supposed radicalism, I realized that I was ashamed to go against our traditions. I couldn’t allow people to think I had such intimate relations with my fiance.”

“You had no other choice, dear lady.” Omar Yussef glanced toward the men’s hall. “Do you still love him?”

The foyer was almost empty. The final guests were entering the halls to celebrate with the bride or the groom.

“It’s different now,” Liana said.

Her love for Khamis Zeydan was passionate in Beirut, Omar Yussef thought, but its memory has been made melancholy by years of lies.

“I hate Amin like a donkey hates the man who rides it, no matter how well fed and watered its master keeps it,” Liana said. “But I’m afraid to leave my husband.”

“Why?”

Liana split a leaf from the stem of the potted plant. “He knows too many of my secrets,” she said.

She caught another streak of kohl and smiled so that her tears would end. Omar Yussef looked into her brown eyes, and he remembered the sky blue irises in the dead face of her son. Why are all our eyes colored with one of these two sad hues? he wondered.

As she went into the women’s hall, Liana pulled her shoulders back and lifted her chin. The canary yellow suit merged with the somber robes of the other women. Omar Yussef crossed to the men’s hall.

The dance moved around Sami. Ramiz and Zuheir laid their arms across Sami’s shoulders and the three men stepped side to side, shaking their hips and rolling their necks. At the fringe of the crowd, Sheikh Bader stood, sullen and still. Across the hall, Amin Kanaan wiggled his head to the music, though it would have been beneath his dignity to dance with the mob. The sides of his mouth lifted in a smooth grin, accepting the greetings of those who approached him.

The music came to an end and Sami climbed onto a dais. He smiled at the faces in the crowd, holding each man’s eyes a moment. He sat in a comfortable armchair, as Khamis Zeydan ascended the platform and reached down for a radio microphone. The police chief tapped the head to be certain it worked and waved his hand for the men’s attention.

“Peace be with you,” he said. “May you experience abundance from Allah, O Sami.”

Some in the crowd returned the wish loudly. “With the protection of Allah,” said the man next to Omar Yussef.

“Sami Jaffari has a wonderful family,” Khamis Zeydan said, “and Hassan is an admirable father.”

Sami’s father raised his hand near the front of the crowd to acknowledge the cheers.

“But I’ve always felt Sami to be like a son to me, because I’m the father of Lieutenant Sami the policeman,” Khamis Zeydan said.

The laughter was warm. Khamis Zeydan waited for quiet. “Sometimes I worry about the risks Sami takes.”

Sami grinned and raised his broken arm.

“But I know that he faces these dangers because he wants to enforce the law and protect our community. I’m proud of the way he carries out his duty.”

Omar Yussef thought of the boy Khamis Zeydan had sired in Beirut. A son is linked to his father as the Turkish buildings of the casbah are bound to the Roman remains far underground, he thought. Even when they’re unaware of each other’s existence, the blood beneath the skin is shared. Though he had never known his true father, Ishaq had moved in the same treacherous circles as Khamis Zeydan. After Ishaq’s death, the police chief had unwittingly avenged his boy with the bullet that killed the priest in the synagogue. A war separated this father and son. A murder reunited them.