Omar Yussef shook his head. Take care of your own responsibilities, he thought. Let the Israelis teach what they like.
Abdel Hadi’s reading grew more fluent as his subject became harsher. “But it isn’t only these shadowy Zionist groups that threaten our children. Within our schools, there are dangerous agents who pervert our children’s minds with divisive propaganda.” He cast his eyes over the delegates until they rested on Omar Yussef. “Later this week, you will hear from one such man. I will be present to rebut his accusations against the honor of the Palestinian people. I hope you will join me in rejecting his ideas.”
Abdel Hadi descended from the podium to lackluster applause. Omar Yussef felt a loop of tension squeeze his skull. At least I know now what I’ll be talking about when I address this august body in three days’ time, he thought.
“In UN-speak, we would say we ‘appreciate Mister Abdel Hadi’s involvement,’ but those comments were ‘not productive,’” Wallander said.
Omar Yussef gave a bitter laugh that rolled in his throat. I came six thousand miles to discuss our children’s future, he thought, and this bastard Abdel Hadi brings the same petty quarrels and grudges that occupy him at home. I can’t escape this stupidity. No Palestinian can.
It was time he headed for Brooklyn. With a low curse for Abdel Hadi he rose and moved through a crowd of delegates who were eager to escape before the next speech. At first he carried his coat folded over his arm, but it puffed into the flow of oncoming diplomats, catching their arms in its hood and sleeves as they pushed past. He clutched it to his belly with both hands and made for the exit.
Beside the door, a group of men in dark suits chatted at a bench that bore a small Lebanese flag. When one of them turned, Omar Yussef recognized the same face he had seen fleetingly illuminated by headlights in Little Palestine the previous evening. Ismail is with the Lebanese delegation, he thought, sighing with relief. He’s here as a diplomat. May Allah be thanked, I was wrong even to suspect a connection to the murder.
Edging sideways through the crowd, he clutched his coat tightly, but its volume still hampered his progress. Each time he looked up, he feared Ismail would be gone. The young man had aged badly-Omar Yussef would have said he was two decades older than his twenty-four years. His hair was thin and graying, and his olive skin had a sickly yellow undertone. But it was unmistakably Ismail.
When Omar Yussef was almost free of the crowd, he caught Ismail’s eye. He detected a moment of panic in the face of his former pupil. Then Ismail’s gaze narrowed. Omar Yussef raised his hand to wave, but the boy turned and went through the door.
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.