Chapter 12
In his Iraqi dialect, the young man who gave them directions to the police precinct house cautioned that it was ten blocks away. Omar Yussef stared through the rain and clenched his fists. He was filled with apprehension about the likely treatment of an Arab in the Brooklyn Detention Complex, and every delay in passing on the information about Ala’s alibi extended his son’s incarceration there. The immensity of the city frustrated him, even as its rain mocked his inadequate clothing and its justice system imprisoned his innocent son.
“It’s a long walk, ustaz,” the young man said, looking Omar Yussef up and down.
“You don’t think I’m healthy enough to walk so far?” Omar Yussef shoved his chin forward and edged his voice with aggression. The Iraqi flinched. All these things I’m having to deal with have made me angry, Omar Yussef thought, and this boy might just be the one to catch it. He turned to Khamis Zeydan. “I must look particularly frail today. Nobody thinks I can make it to my destination.”
“Cool it,” Khamis Zeydan said.
“What do I have to be calm about?” Omar Yussef shoved Khamis Zeydan’s shoulder with the flat of his hand. “Am I the only one who wants my son to get out of jail?”
“You’re being ridiculous. This weather has frozen your brain. You need a decent coat so you can warm up and start thinking straight.”
“May Allah curse this rain.” Omar Yussef stamped in a puddle. The cold water flooded his loafer and chilled his toes.
The young Iraqi stroked his thin mustache and flicked away the rainwater gathering there. “I wasn’t referring to your health, uncle. It’s just that the weather is so bad. Maybe you should take a bus.”
“I’ll freeze standing at a bus stop.”
“The buses are frequent. You won’t have to wait long. But if you insist, walk straight up the avenue. You’ll find yourself underneath a raised highway on big concrete supports. Follow the street beside it and you’ll reach the precinct house. May Allah give you his aid.”
“May Allah turn you into a monkey.”
Khamis Zeydan sniggered at his friend’s ill humor and gave the young man a consoling pat on the shoulder. “Beg the pardon of Allah,” he said to Omar Yussef.
As he stumbled along the roadside, Omar Yussef felt ashamed to have yelled at the youth. The longer he spent in this alien city, the further he veered from reactions he would normally expect of himself. Every circumstance seemed set against him, and he had nothing secure to fall back on, so cut off was he from the things he knew.
“You really ought to buy a better coat,” Khamis Zeydan said, “and that woolen cap isn’t much good in this wet weather.”
“We don’t have time. We have to get Ala out of jail.”
“Did you bring your magic carpet to break him out?”
“We’ll tell the detective about Rania. She’ll give him the alibi.”
“Don’t be so sure the girl will play along.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Nizar was fucking the daughter-”
“Don’t be so crude.”
“-of a man who may have been in jail in Lebanon for a drug offense and who now runs a cafe with no apparent customers. The third roommate is still unaccounted for, too: remember that. It may not be as simple as it seems.”
Sleet crackled against the shoulders of Omar Yussef’s windbreaker with a sound like a fusillade. He felt his spine stiffening. After another block, he stopped and gave Khamis Zeydan a mournful look.
The police chief smiled. “Ready to make a new fashion statement?”
They went into a store that announced itself as “The Chic Bazaar.” Khamis Zeydan approached a short Arab man with a belly like a watermelon, a receding forehead, and a thin gray mustache. “My friend isn’t equipped for the New York winter,” Khamis Zeydan said. “What can you do for him?”
“Quickly,” Omar Yussef said. “We’re in a rush.”
The man simpered and rubbed his hands. He pulled a long black quilted coat from a rack and held it open for Omar Yussef. The schoolteacher removed his windbreaker and handed it dripping to Khamis Zeydan. His tweed jacket was damp and musty, like a sheep in need of shearing, so he removed it too. The walk had made him sweat, and a trace of steam rose from within the jacket.
When the storekeeper dropped the big coat onto Omar Yussef’s shoulders and flipped the hood onto his head, he was surprised by its light weight. The zipper buzzed up to the end of his nose.
“It’s perfect, ustaz,” the storekeeper said, turning Omar Yussef toward a full-length mirror.
All his life, he had worn the finest clothes, European styles that made him feel as though he were a Parisian or a Milanese, not an inhabitant of a Bethlehem refugee camp. Now he was forced to dress himself in the outlandish garments of another kind of ghetto. “I feel ridiculous,” he said.
Khamis Zeydan pulled the zipper down a few inches. “We didn’t hear what you said. It was too muffled.”
Omar Yussef looked in the mirror. The coat came to his knees, and his hands were lost in the enormous sleeves. He had to admit that he already felt warm. If I do up the zipper and wear the hood, no one will even know it’s me in this coat, he thought. I’ll look like any New Yorker wrapped up against the elements.
When they left the shop, they saw a bulky man in a wide-brimmed hat hurrying along the other side of the road, his arms flailing as he tried to propel himself faster. He noticed Omar Yussef and crossed the street.
“Is it you, ustaz?” Marwan Hammiya came close to Omar Yussef. “May Allah grant you grace, my dear sir.”
Omar Yussef pushed the hood of his new coat off his head and ran a palm across his thin hair. “Greetings, Marwan.”
The Lebanese gripped Omar Yussef’s elbow and drew him toward the curb. He leered with an awkwardness that exposed his crooked lower teeth and gave a brief wave to Khamis Zeydan, indicating that he needed to speak to Omar Yussef alone.
“I’m so happy to have caught up with you, ustaz. You’re going to the police station?”
“With the news of Rania’s alibi for my son.”
Marwan’s pressure on Omar Yussef’s arm grew stronger, as though he intended to drag him in the opposite direction, away from the precinct house. “I followed you because I wished to apologize for the scene in my cafe. Don’t be offended by my Rania. You know how girls can be?”
“It’s nothing.”
“After you left, she calmed down and agreed to my proposition. She consents to Ala.”
“Consents?”
“To resume the engagement.”
Omar Yussef blinked. “I’ll see what he thinks once he’s out of jail. Thanks to her evidence.”
“In good time, ustaz.”
Omar Yussef tried to pull his elbow away, but Marwan held onto it and his leer widened.
“You understand that I have fatherly feelings toward your boy, as we may hope that I will soon be his father-in-law. Fatherly, protective feelings. For that reason, I must say that now may not be the right time to free him, my dear Abu Ramiz.”
“Rania can hardly marry him in jail.”
“Maybe not.” Marwan rubbed his face. “She certainly can’t marry him if he’s dead.”
Omar Yussef ceased to resist the cafe owner’s grip.
“If he leaves the jail, ustaz,” Marwan said, “he may be an easier target.”
“A target for whom?”
Marwan watched Khamis Zeydan smoking a Rothmans under the awning of the clothing store. “I can’t-” He sobbed. “They have their teeth into me. I can’t help Ala any more than this.”
“Who’re they?” Omar Yussef pulled the big man’s collar. “Who?”
“Leave him where he is, ustaz. He’ll make a good husband for my Rania. He’ll look after her when I’m gone, and he’s honest-”
“Gone?”
“-and he isn’t involved in bad things.”