'And the next time you saw her was when?'
'As I said, three or four days later. I was returning from late Mass, heard sobs from the Bab el Jadid side, went to take a look, and saw her sitting in the gutter, crying. I asked her what the matter was-in English. I don't speak Arabic. But she just continued to sob. I didn't know if she understood me, so I tried in Hebrew-my Hebrew's broken but it's better than my Arabic. Still no answer. Then I noticed that she looked thinner than the first time I'd seen her-it was dark, but even in the moonlight the difference was pronounced. Which made me suspect she hadn't eaten for days. I asked her if she wanted food, pantomimed eating, and she stopped crying and nodded. So I gestured for her to wait, woke up Father Bernardo, and he told me to bring her in. The next morning she was up working, and Father Bernardo agreed to let her stay on until we found her more suitable lodgings.'
'What led her to drift through the Old City?'
'I don't know,' said Roselli. He stopped watering, examining the dirt beneath his fingernails, then lowered the can again.
'Did you ask her about it?'
'No. The language barrier.' Roselli flushed, shielded his face with his hand again, and looked at the vegetables.
More to it than that, thought Daniel. The girl had affected him, maybe sexually, and he wasn't equipped to deal with it.
Or perhaps he'd dealt with it in an unhealthy way.
Nodding reassuringly, Daniel said, 'Father Bernardo said she was frightened about having her family contacted. Do you know why?'
'I assumed there'd been some sort of abuse.'
'Why's that?'
'Sociologically it made sense-an Arab girl cut off from her family like that. And she reminded me of the kids I used to counsel-nervous, a little too eager to please. Afraid to be spontaneous or step out of bounds, as if doing or saying the wrong thing would get them punished. There's a look they all have-maybe you've seen it. Weary and bruised.'
Daniel remembered the girl's body. Smooth and unblemished except for the butchery.
'Where was she bruised?' he asked.
'Not literal bruises,' said Roselli. 'I meant it in a psychological sense. She had frightened eyes, like a wounded animal.'
The same phrase Bernardo had used-Fatma had been a subject of discussion between the two Franciscans.
'How long were you a social worker?' Daniel asked.
'Seventeen years.'
'In America?'
The monk nodded. 'Seattle, Washington.'
'Puget Sound,' said Daniel.
'You've been there?' Roselli was surprised.
Daniel smiled, shook his head.
'My wife's an artist. She did a painting last summer, using photographs from a calendar. Puget Sound-big boats, silver water. A beautiful place.'
'Plenty of ugliness,' said Roselli, 'if you know where to look.' He extended his arm over the rim of the roof, pointed down at the jumble of alleys and courtyards. 'That,' he said, 'is beauty. Sacred beauty. The core of civilization.'
'True,' said Daniel, but he thought the comment naive, the sweetened perception of the born-again. The core, as the monk called it, had been consecrated in blood for thirty centuries. Wave after wave of pillage and massacre, all in the name of something sacred.
Roselli looked upward and Daniel followed his gaze. The blue of the sky was beginning to deepen under a slowly descending sun. A passing cloud cast platinum shadows over the Dome of the Rock. The bells of Saint Saviour's rang but again, trailed by a muezzin's call from a nearby minaret.
Daniel pulled himself away, returned to his questions.
'Do you have any idea how Fatma ended up in the Old City?'
'No. At first I thought she may have gravitated toward The Little Sisters of Charles Foucauld-they wipe the faces of the poor, and their chapel is near where I saw her. But I went there and asked and they'd never seen her.'
They'd come to the last of the casks. Roselli put down the watering can and faced Daniel.
'I've been blessed, Inspector,' he said, urgently. Eager to convince. 'Given the chance for a new life. I try to do as much thinking and as little talking as possible. There's really nothing more I can tell you.'
But even as he said it, his face seemed to weaken, as if buckling under the weight of a burdensome thought. A troubled man. Daniel wasn't ready to let go of him just yet.
'Can you think of anything that would help me, Brother Roselli? Anything that Fatma said or did that would lead me to understand her?'
The monk rubbed his hands together. Freckled hands, the knuckles soil-browned, the fingernails yellowed and cracked. He looked at the vegetables, down at the ground, then back at the vegetables.
