The Fourth Assassin

Chapter 16

Shivering and hugging his coat to his midriff, Omar Yussef slithered across the plaza outside the UN building as the snowfall lightened. With a shake of his head to free himself of the strange trance that had come over him since he had left the conference hall, he remembered to put the coat on. He was preoccupied with Ismail. Was the boy so ashamed of his betrayal in the Israeli detention camp that he would twice avoid his beloved former teacher? Or could he have some other reason for his flight? Maybe I’m not so beloved after all, Omar Yussef thought.

He meandered away from the conference, from the banal chatter of the delegates and the overheated rooms that made his head feel fuzzy. He tried to find innocent excuses for Ismail, but with reluctance he acknowledged that the boy had acted suspiciously. Omar Yussef’s loafers slipped in the slush, and he had to throw his arms up to regain his balance. He stood still, breathing hard, sensing the aversion of the passing New Yorkers to a stranger who couldn’t walk on the snow. The UN building disappeared into the low cloud. Surely Ismail’s here on official business, to talk and talk and talk, nothing more than that.

Omar Yussef made his way across First Avenue. The involvement in this affair of The Assassins, his favorite pupils, bewildered him. It upset the contentment with which he was accustomed to recalling his years as a teacher. How many other pupils whom he had thought innocent had since grown into criminals, gunmen, wife-beaters? Could any of them now be killers? Ala had told him his roommates, two of Omar Yussef’s dearest students, might have been planning to kill. Where had they learned even to consider such things? His classroom was a place of warmth and intellectual inquiry, but when his students emerged into the world, they became infected by its wickedness. It was a corruption that could no more be avoided than the flakes alighting quietly on his coat.

What good are my teachings? he thought. History was supposed to give his pupils insights into the damage violence had inflicted upon the Arab people through the centuries. He always hoped this knowledge would lead them to reject the ugliness of present Palestinian politics. In spite of himself, he returned to his suspicions about The Assassins and found he was angry that the learning he had passed on in his classroom seemed to be the basis for a conspiracy, perhaps even a murder.

He reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street and blew out a furious breath. Its tall buildings like the precipitous walls of a canyon, the avenue extended uptown and downtown, gaping into nothingness at each end as though it gave out onto the limits of the earth. Everything in New York seemed alien and outrageous to him. Before he took the subway to Brooklyn, he decided, he needed to reassure himself that there was a place where his relationships were uncomplicated and loving. He went back to the hotel and rode the elevator to his floor, assaulted by a raucous cartoon playing on a video screen above the door. In his room, he sat on the edge of the bed and dialed his wife.

“Omar, why didn’t you call me?” Maryam said. “I left you a message yesterday.”

Omar Yussef glanced at a flashing red light on the phone. Now I know what that means, he thought. “I didn’t receive the message, my darling, but I’m so very happy to hear your voice.”

“I’ve been worried.”

He was about to ask how things were at home when Maryam spoke again, with an excited quaver: “But tell me, how’s my dear son?”

Omar Yussef touched his fingers to his brow. I’m an idiot, he thought. I didn’t prepare a reply to this question. All I considered was my own loneliness. I shouldn’t even have called her. “Thanks be to Allah, he’s well, my darling. I visited him in Brooklyn, and I expect to see him again soon.”

“What’s his news, may Allah bless him?”

“It’s snowing here, Maryam. Sometimes very heavy snow. I’m up high in my hotel and looking down on the snow as it settles on the street.”

Maryam giggled. “Looking down on the snow. You must be in a skyscraper. But I asked about Ala’s news.”

“Abu Adel is here, too, with the president.”

“Don’t let him take our Ala to a bar, and make sure Abu Adel eats correctly. He has to take care of his diabetes. What have you been eating, Omar?”

He sighed, relieved that he had diverted her from their son. “I had Lebanese food. It wasn’t so bad.”

“How did you find a Lebanese restaurant in New York?”

I went with the man who put our boy in jail, he thought. “An acquaintance of Ala’s took me. How’re the kids?”

“Miral and Dahoud are downstairs with Nadia. She’s helping them with their homework.”

He smiled fondly at the mention of his granddaughter and the two children he had adopted after the death of their parents during the intifada. When he returned to Bethlehem, he would give Nadia the NYPD cap. She loved detective stories, and she would be excited by the gift. He felt less foolish for buying it now. “I have a present for Nadia,” he said.

“I should hope so, but don’t forget to buy something for Miral and Dahoud, too, and for Ramiz’s other two. I know she’s your favorite, but you have to be fair.”

“You’re my favorite. Shall I find something to bring back for you, my darling?”

“Just a husband hungry for his wife’s cooking after eating American fast food for a week. Did you give Ala the present I sent with you?”

Omar Yussef coughed. “Not yet. Later today, if Allah wills it. I’m sure I shall see him.”

“If Allah wills it. Give him my love, and tell him I want to speak to him and to see him soon.”

When Omar Yussef hung up, he let his wife’s soothing voice linger in his head. But the comforting words faded, and he heard her speaking the name of their son like a guilty mantra, Ala, Ala, Ala, rebuking him for his deception. The message light on the phone seemed to blink out the boy’s name, an alarming semaphore. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

The phone trilled. Startled, Omar Yussef stared at it a moment. He picked up. “Maryam?”

“Ustaz Abu Ramiz? May merciful Allah bless you, O ustaz. This is Nahid Hantash. How’re you?”

“Thanks be to Allah, O Nahid.”

The PLO gang leader ran through a series of blessings and good wishes. He’s been a long time in America, where they always get right to the point, Omar Yussef thought, but when he speaks Arabic he’s as formal and courtly as the mukhtar of a village back in Palestine. “May Allah bring you peace,” Omar Yussef said.

“Have you heard from Sergeant Hamza Abayat today?” Nahid asked.

Down to business, Omar Yussef thought. “No.”

“He didn’t call you?” Nahid chuckled. “I thought perhaps he wouldn’t.”

“What has happened? Is it something to do with my son?”

“It’s connected to our discussion yesterday.”

“Nahid, please. Spit it out.”

“You could say the Cafe al-Quds is under new ownership. Marwan Hammiya is dead.”

Chapter 17

Trees reached up from the road to hedge the elevated section of the subway, their bare silvery branches stark against the flat white sky, like a diagram of a bronchitic lung in a medical textbook. Through the trees, Omar Yussef stared out at the apartment buildings on the avenues and their rooftop water towers decorated with bulbous graffiti. The colorful characters seemed to puff out their chests, posturing like the writers who made them declarations of individuality. The houses on the side streets, their yellow planks layered like baklava, were shrunken and shunted close, parodies of spacious American suburbia. In the distance, the towers of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, stern and monstrous, rose over the low Brooklyn skyline.