“Morning of joy, Deputy Director-General Abdel Hadi,” Omar Yussef said.
“Morning of light, Abu Ramiz.” The schools inspector approached Omar Yussef and reached out to touch his quilted coat. “This isn’t up to your usual fashionable standards.”
“Perhaps I could borrow one of your polyester suits, instead.”
“Or your son could lend you some prison fatigues.”
Omar Yussef’s head went back as though he had been jabbed on the nose.
“Your friend Khamis Zeydan was trying to get the president to intervene with the New York police last night. On behalf of your son. I just happened to be in the president’s suite at the time.” Smug at his proximity to power, Abdel Hadi’s breath shivered sensuously, like a cat’s purr. “Sadly, the president decided there was nothing he could do.”
“There’s no need for interventions. My son will soon be released.”
“Perhaps your UN pals would do something for the boy. I’m sure it would interest them to learn that their keynote speaker is the father of a murder suspect.”
Even if we were part of the same delegation, this man might undermine me. That’s the way of Palestinian politics, Omar Yussef thought. With me attending as a UN delegate, I’m truly fair game. “My son isn’t a suspect.”
“How do they put it-he’s helping the police with their inquiries? Is that it?”
Omar Yussef clicked his tongue.
“As he once helped the Israelis?” Abdel Hadi said.
“He did nothing of the sort. The Israelis arrested him along with hundreds of other youths from Bethlehem. It was a big intifada sweep. Almost every male below the age of thirty was taken in. There was nothing to it. You know that.”
Abdel Hadi flattened a lick of black hair over his dark, bald scalp. He brushed the dandruff that adhered to his fingers onto the tail of his jacket and licked his lips with the tip of his yellowish tongue. “Your son is accused of murder-”
“Not accused of anything-”
“-yet you maintain that circumstances will soon enough reveal him to be harmless.”
“Of course he is.”
“Perhaps he’s even been framed. Does that sound familiar?”
Omar Yussef clenched his fists in the deep pockets of his coat.
“My government work has led me to examine the archives of the old Jordanian administration. Mainly documents concerning education,” Abdel Hadi said. “But I also came across a police report from 1965 regarding the arrest on a murder charge of a young Ba’ath Party activist from Bethlehem. He was expected to go on to great things, to be a leader of his generation, but he lost his nerve and ended up teaching in a backwater UN school.”
Son of a whore, Omar Yussef thought. I didn’t think anyone knew about that old case. “Maybe his generation was polluted by back-stabbers like you, so he turned his focus to the next generation-the one that’ll shape a better future.”
Abdel Hadi sneered at Omar Yussef with triumphal calm. “Your son may escape justice this time, just as you did forty years ago. But one day I shall use this information to protect our schoolchildren from your wicked ideas. Perhaps this week. Perhaps even today.”
Omar Yussef tasted a splash of bile at the back of his tongue. “You should be in a profession more appropriate to your talents than education,” he said. “Try the secret police.”
Abdel Hadi dropped his hand as though waving away a compliment. “In a spirit of solidarity between Palestinian brothers, I hope for the best for your son.” He gave a smile of compassion, as if he had felt some dull pain. Then he peeled away the expression like a price tag stamped over an earlier, outdated one, revealing a cheaper smirk beneath it.
The schools inspector pushed through the hazelwood doors of the Economic and Social Council. Omar Yussef held out his palm as the door swung back at him. It jarred his elbow, and he winced. Leaning a shoulder against the door, he entered the conference room.
An observers’ gallery ten rows deep sloped down to the delegates’ area. The chairman’s table faced the hall, beneath a wall decorated with white concentric ovals on a dark wooden background, like a magnified section from an inlaid Syrian table. It rose to a ceiling that had been left incomplete to represent the UN’s unfinished work in poor countries. Below the chairman, the recorders and clerks huddled, absorbed in their preparations with the businesslike energy of an orchestra in its pit. The delegates sat at long tables, and behind them were five rows of staff seats. From one of these rows, Magnus Wallander waved to Omar Yussef and gestured him toward a seat of ragged lime-green corduroy.
“What did I miss yesterday?” Omar Yussef asked when he reached his seat.
“The first day of the conference was what you Palestinians call heki fadi, empty talk,” Wallander said. “It’s only during the breaks that one can have interesting conversations and make some progress.”
“Progress has no place in the Committee on Palestine.”
The Swede slapped Omar Yussef’s shoulder as the chairman brought the meeting to order. He was a thick-featured Egyptian diplomat in an expensive gray suit with the lazily watchful eyes of a bazaar trader. He rested his forefinger across his mouth even as he spoke into his microphone, as though he might later deny his words and challenge anyone to claim they had seen his lips move.
Omar Yussef blocked out the Egyptian’s hard consonants and procedural ramblings. Focusing on his next steps to help Ala, he thought through his conversation with Hantash at the mosque. At first, it had been hard for him to accept that Nizar had been dealing drugs, but as he ran over his memories of the boy, he realized the revelation made sense. Nizar had always been intelligent, but not solely in an academic way. There had been something of the raffish con man about him. His sharpness had led him to understand that New York held no place for anyone who wasn’t on the way up, on the make. So he had gone for fast, illegal money. Like the girl Rania, drugs were forbidden to Nizar, and Omar Yussef recalled the mischievous student who had always wanted what he wasn’t allowed to have.
He came out of his reverie when he heard the chairman call on Abdel Hadi. He glanced at Wallander in surprise. The Swede fiddled sheepishly with the dial on the arm of his chair that controlled the choice of language for the simultaneous translation. “He is part of the Palestinian delegation, Abu Ramiz. I couldn’t really stop him speaking,” he said.
Abdel Hadi stammered through his introductory remarks. Omar Yussef swore he could hear static from the man’s cheap suit crackle over the microphone. Some of the delegates left the room. A smoke break and a chat about the fun at the belly-dancing club last night, no doubt, Omar Yussef thought. He almost felt pity for the stuttering functionary at the podium.
“Our new Palestinian Curriculum Plan at the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education is the result of five years of brainstorming, the collection of much data, reviewing of the data, and the exploration of experiences with curricula in other countries in the region,” Abdel Hadi read from his notes.
With material like this, I’ll soon be the only one in the room, Omar Yussef thought.
In a monotone, Abdel Hadi recited the details of the education plan he had designed. Omar Yussef had read the curriculum and hadn’t been enthused. He was even less impressed now that he knew it had been Abdel Hadi’s work.
“The pressure of the international community is constantly applied to the Palestinian curriculum, through the activism of sinister Jewish groups which accuse our schools of inciting children to hatred of Israel and Jews,” Abdel Hadi said. “We ask, why is this pressure applied only to the Palestinian side, and why is an examination not made of what is taught in Israeli schools?”