we first learned in your class, Dad. He might have believed Nizar had betrayed him somehow. If he killed him, he could’ve left the veil as a sign.”
“Knowing that only you would understand it.”
“Or you, Dad. He knew you were coming to visit.”
Omar Yussef’s jaw shook.
Ala winced. “I think that was what he and Nizar used to fight about,” he said.
“Killing?”
“I didn’t hear enough to know any more than that for certain. But I believe they planned to kill someone.”
Chapter 11
Khamis Zeydan glowered at the Arabic signs above the shopfronts and the thick-set women bustling along the street, their round faces framed by cream polyester
“That’s the cafe.” Omar Yussef pointed out the smoked-glass window and heavy brown drapes. In English and Arabic, the purple awning announced the Cafe al-Quds. In Arabic, it promised tea, coffee, fruit juices, pastries, and
“
“All right, then we have to-persuade her.” Omar Yussef heard the sinister edge to his words. He evaded Khamis Zeydan’s smile with a guilty flicker of his eyes. “Let’s get out of the cold.”
The air in the empty cafe was stale with lingering traces of apple-scented
The music was loud, as though the staff didn’t expect customers and had turned up the volume to listen to the song while they worked in another room. Omar Yussef went behind the bar to a door that leaked a dim light into the cafe. He knocked against the cheap wooden frame.
The Lebanese star sang on:
A young woman answered Omar Yussef’s knock in Arabic. Wiping her hands on a dishcloth, she came out of the kitchen, wearing tight jeans, a black T-shirt, and a short purple smock that dropped loosely from her breasts to her hips. Her black
“Greetings,
“Greetings, my daughter,” Omar Yussef said. “I’m Abu Ramiz, the father of Ala Sirhan.”
She put her hand to her breastbone. “You’re with your family and as if in your own home,
“You’re Rania?”
Her eyes were deep and big, haughty and critical behind long lashes, but the whites were a blurred pink, tired and recently tearful. They closed slowly to indicate that Omar Yussef had been correct. A lick of hair so black that it seemed polished had escaped her headscarf. It stroked softly against her pale throat. She smiled briefly with her wide, shapeless mouth.
“I need to speak to you about Ala. He refuses to tell the police that he was with you when Nizar was killed.” Omar Yussef saw the big eyes wince at the name of the dead man. “The police may blame him for the killing unless he reveals your meeting. Won’t you go to the police station and confirm his alibi?”
The girl raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me,
“Of course I’m his father. Try to imagine my face thirty years ago.” Omar Yussef removed his spectacles. “With more hair and better eyesight. I think you’ll see the resemblance.”
“Imagine he’d never developed a taste for whisky and blown his health on bad living.” Khamis Zeydan laughed, beating his hand on the bar to the four-four time of the song. “Come on, my daughter. We need to be serious here. If you don’t go to the police, the police will come to you.”
The girl pushed out her lips, affronted by the police chief’s bluntness.
“We’re asking you politely,” Khamis Zeydan said. “But do you think we’re going to let Ala go to jail just to save your blushes?”
“I can’t help you,” she said.
Khamis Zeydan looked at her hard. “You have no choice.” Omar Yussef saw a flicker of fear on her face. Then came an angry twitch of her long lips, and Rania blew out an exasperated breath. “A moment,
Khamis Zeydan picked a green olive from a bowl on the bar and ate it with a nod of approval. “Reckon this place is a front?”
“What?”
He dropped the olive pit tinkling into a ceramic ashtray. “I know it’s still not yet noon, but they aren’t exactly fighting off the customers, are they?”
“A front for what?”
The girl returned with an older, shaven-headed man who wore a blue apron.
He pushed the OFF button on the stereo, switched on the lights above the bar, and wiped his thick hands on the apron. He looked with narrowed eyes at Omar Yussef and rubbed the fleshy grooves that ran from his wide nose to the corners of his mouth. His lips were purple and pursed and disapproving, like a sybaritic pharaoh. When he turned to take in Khamis Zeydan, Omar Yussef saw that short black hairs grew in the fat fold where his scalp met the back of his neck, out of reach of his razor.
“Greetings, my dear sirs,” he said. “I’m Rania’s father, Marwan Hammiya. Please sit while we prepare coffee for you.” Marwan muttered to his daughter and invited his guests to the table nearest the bar.
On the wall above the table, an Ottoman sultan and his courtiers chased a stag through a clearing, and six tall Corinthian columns rose over the ruins of Jupiter’s Temple at Baalbek. Omar Yussef leaned forward to admire the prints before he sat.
“Forgive me,” Marwan said, running his thick, hairy fingers over the chips in the Formica, “but may I see your identification?”
Khamis Zeydan opened his mouth to protest, but Omar Yussef halted him with a hand on his knee. He took his passport from the inside pocket of his windbreaker and handed it to Marwan Hammiya. The cafe owner bowed his head as he returned it.
“I apologize, gentlemen. Please understand the suspicion. During the last few years, the FBI has sent many people into our neighborhood pretending to be someone else. They were very keen to prove all kinds of bad things about us Arabs.”
“If the FBI had half an hour with my friend here-” Omar Yussef waved at Khamis Zeydan “-they’d have plenty
