As they came toward him, the man brought his palm to his heart and bowed his head. “Peace be upon you,” he whispered, hoarse and calm, with the accent of Palestine.
“Upon you, peace,” Omar Yussef said. “Are you his Honor Nahid?”
The man held up his hands modestly. He wore a light suede baseball jacket, baggy jeans, and white socks. A blue stocking cap was pulled low on his brow and over his ears. He had shaved his facial hair into a thin line along his jaw and around his mouth, as though it were the scaffolding upon which a beard would later be constructed. In one eyebrow, a small scar, pale and hairless, made his eyes look ready for a scrap.
“May you feel as though you were with your family and in your own home,” Nahid Hantash murmured.
“Your family is with you.” Omar Yussef sat on the floor in front of Hantash. “Brother Nahid, I’m the father of Ala Sirhan, a friend of Nizar Jado.”
“Ah, Nizar, may Allah have mercy upon him.”
“May Allah grant you long life.”
“I’ve met your son.”
“Here in the mosque?”
Hantash’s smile was forbearing. “You don’t need to pretend that your boy is religious, nor will you have to quote the Koran to make me like you, ustaz. If you’re Ala’s father, you must be from Dehaisha Camp. I know it well. You and I are linked by our struggle to liberate Islamic land from the Occupation. That’s all that counts.”
“I saw your posters in the corridor.”
“We still must play our part, even if we’re thousands of miles from home.”
“It has more to do with playing a part than with reality.”
Hantash twitched his head with puzzlement.
“Those posters have no place in a house of worship,” Omar Yussef said. “Such images are no good for the soul. It’s sick.”
“O Allah,” Khamis Zeydan sighed.
“They’re the truth,” Hantash said. “Facts.”
Omar Yussef had vented his frustrations on the young Iraqi in the street, but he couldn’t afford to be so harsh with Hantash. Calm down, Abu Ramiz, he told himself. You need this man on your side. “What would you expect an American to think if he saw your posters?”
“Americans don’t come here.” Hantash swung a languid arm around the basement. “They wish we didn’t exist. We aren’t even allowed to broadcast the call to prayer on loudspeakers, because of their noise laws. But if they did come, I’m sure these images of martyrdom would remind them of their Christian churches. They have a big model there of a man being tortured to death. They call it a crucifix. Some of them hang it over their beds when they sleep-and you say I’m sick?”
Hantash drew his legs up and linked his fingers around his shins. The knuckles were pink and white and scarred, like the skinned knee of a child, reminding Omar Yussef that the man had done battle with the gangs of Brooklyn.
“Americans aren’t innocent of crimes against Muslims,” Hantash said. “In Iraq, they kill thousands. The U.S. government’s secret jails are full of men whose only offense is to have obeyed Allah. On the streets, Islam is mocked and hated. It’s hard for us to live here.”
Khamis Zeydan offered a cigarette to Hantash, who waved it away with a gesture that showed he didn’t object to his guest smoking. “Where are you from, Brother Nahid?” the police chief said.
“I was born in Hebron. My family left the West Bank when I was a teenager.”
Hard-headed and stubborn by reputation, the Hebronites, Omar Yussef thought, and violent.
“May Allah bless your town. Forgive my friend for his ill humor,” Khamis Zeydan said. “His son has been arrested, and he’s very nervous about him.”
“Arrested?”
“He won’t give an alibi for the time when his roommate was killed.”
“He’s a suspect? That’s ridiculous,” Hantash said. “Ala wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
Omar Yussef forgot his antagonism and warmed to Hantash with a desperate swiftness. “I want to find out more about Nizar and Rashid,” he said. “My son tells me there was some sort of conflict between them.”
Hantash was silent. His eyelids were low and lazy.
“The police also think Nizar’s death may have had something to do with drugs,” Omar Yussef said, “and that you might be able to give us some leads.”
The young man’s eyes flickered with hostility.
Khamis Zeydan whistled impatiently. “My friend means that, as a community leader, you know what happens on the streets,” he said. “Certainly he doesn’t mean that you’re involved in drugs.”
“No, of course.” Omar Yussef cringed and wrung his hands.
Hantash focused hard on his scabbed knuckles. “The police have been here already,” he said. “We’re accustomed to their harassment.”
“Do they suspect you?”
“The Arab detective Abayat suspects all Arabs. You ought to remember that, ustaz. Don’t trust him just because he calls you ‘uncle.’” Hantash stroked his fingers across the carpet. “In truth, the police have no reason to suspect me. I used to be a gang leader. I led the PLO. We thought that was a good joke- to name ourselves after another gang of Palestinian hard men. But I put an end to it after the attack on the Twin Towers.”
“Why?”
Hantash held up his index fingers, parallel to each other, almost touching. “The hour of Doom is drawing near, and the moon is cleft in two,” he said, parting his fingers. “In the Holy Koran the splitting of the moon into two is a sign of the Day of Judgment. When I saw the two towers explode, they were like the sun and the moon, and their destruction was an image of the end of the world. And everything happened twice- both towers exploded, both fell, and there were attacks in two cities, here and in Washington.”
“A sign?” Omar Yussef couldn’t disguise the doubt in his voice.
“Call it a reminder, if you prefer. The same verse says: We have made the Koran easy to remember; but will anyone take heed? I took heed of that day. I brought the gang to an end. The boys of the PLO became active in the community, instead of running around at night doing unwholesome things. My part was to found this mosque.”
“You built this yourself?” Omar Yussef said.
“I raised the money and led the work.”
“By Allah, that’s impressive.”
“I told you there’s no need to pretend that you’re a believer. You have no bump on your forehead from prostrating yourself in prayer.” Hantash lifted the edge of his stocking cap to show a dark notch like a rough knuckle at the center of his brow. He grinned slowly, so that the black hairs along his jaw seemed to rise one by one as his skin drew back from his mouth. “But I’m proud of this place. Our population is growing, and it needs more mosques.”
Omar Yussef remembered the sheet printed with prayer times in Ala’s apartment. “Where’s the Alamut Mosque?”
“I haven’t heard of it, ustaz.”
“I think it must be nearby.”
“That’d be a strange name for a mosque around here.”
“Would it? Why?”
“Are you telling me you don’t know, or are you pretending once again?” Hantash lifted a finger and faked a frown. “Alamut was the castle of the Assassins-a Shiite sect. Almost everyone in Little Palestine is a follower of Sunni Islam. I don’t see why anyone would name a mosque here after a castle from someone else’s tradition.”
Is the Alamut Mosque just a joke by my little gang of Assassins? Omar Yussef wondered. Or does it connect them to Marwan Hammiya, a Shiite with his roots in the Lebanese region where drugs are produced? “You don’t know any Shiites in this neighborhood?”
Hantash gave Omar Yussef a long look through narrowed eyes. “There’s Marwan, who runs the cafe.”