“Why did you murder him?”
Nizar drained his champagne and watched Rania fill his glass. “I lost interest in sacrificing myself. I found my dark-eyed houri right here.” He touched her hand.
“Allah is most great,” she murmured, with a sardonic smile.
He slapped her hand playfully and clicked his tongue. “The streets of Brooklyn at first disgusted me with their commercialism and immorality. But then I walked the same avenues with Rania. She sprinkled the streets with magic. I couldn’t hate the place any longer, because some part of it was hers, and she was all beauty.”
Omar Yussef said, “Rashid didn’t like that, I suppose?”
“It displeased him quite spectacularly.”
“You could simply have taken one of these trains. Gone away with Rania and disappeared in America.”
“And sent my letter of resignation to the men who recruited me? Ustaz, they would kill my brothers and make my mother’s life hell back in Bethlehem if I sabotaged their operation. I had to make them believe I was dead.”
“So you murdered Rashid, dressed him in your clothes, and left your identity cards on him.”
“Rashid threatened me, my family, and Rania.” Nizar watched the bubbles streaming to the surface of his glass. “I realized it wasn’t the Americans or the Israelis I hated; it was us, the Arabs. I despised the mess we’ve made of our struggle, the way we fight each other. My father died at the hands of another Palestinian. After a lifetime of struggle for our freedom, it wasn’t the enemy, the Israelis, who killed him. He was murdered by one of his comrades.”
“Killing your friend doesn’t exactly stop that cycle.”
“Hear me out, ustaz,” Nizar said. “I can’t blame the Israelis for wanting Palestine. It’s a beautiful land. Neither can I fault the Americans for living like pigs-what else would you expect from infidels? But we Palestinians are destroying ourselves, and it makes me sick. So I abandoned our cause.”
“Very fine reasons. But you decapitated your friend and carried off his head. Now you’re sitting here for a Valentine’s Day celebration?” Omar Yussef said. “Are you mad?”
“I was prepared to do anything to be free of Islamic Jihad. I wanted them to think Rashid was psychotic-too crazy to carry out his mission. That way, they’d call everything off, and I’d be in the clear.”
Omar Yussef thought bitterly of the civil war among the Palestinians at the end of the intifada. In Bethlehem, people had tortured each other, because they belonged to one faction or another-people who had grown up together in the same village or refugee camp. Our politics is so extreme, he thought, it drives us to do disgusting things that are against our true nature. Nizar was following our political traditions.
“After you slaughtered Rashid, why didn’t you stay undercover?” he asked.
Nizar touched the end of his finger to the condensation on his champagne flute. “Slaughtered him? It gave me no pleasure. It made me-” He closed his eyes.
Omar Yussef continued: “Why did you reveal yourself to me at Coney Island?”
A waiter swung his hips between the tables to bring the crab cakes. Omar Yussef watched Nizar gather himself, take a bite, and wipe his mouth with his napkin. He was chewing as he replied: “I killed Rania’s father.”
The girl bowed her head, pushing a crab cake across her plate with her fork.
Omar Yussef let out a small wheeze of shock. “Because of the drug business?” he said.
“The drug proceeds were intended to finance the assassination. An operation like that costs money, whether it’s for equipment or bribing people to give you access to secure locations. When I got rid of Rashid, I had to tidy up that last loose end.”
“I still don’t see why you came back from the dead.”
“I feared the police would suspect Rania of killing her father. He often beat her. I thought they might accuse her of murdering him to prevent further abuse.”
Rania covered her face with her hands.
“I didn’t want to give myself up to the police, but I thought that if I confessed to you about Marwan’s murder, you’d tell the cops and they might leave Rania alone,” Nizar said.
“Don’t believe him, ustaz,” Rania said. “I don’t know why he’d tell you this, but it isn’t true.”
You just don’t want it to be true, Omar Yussef thought. I’m starting to think I’d believe this boy capable of any horror.
Nizar’s lips stretched in a tight grin. “It’s true, all the same. I intended to tell you at Coney Island.”
“That was the flaw in your plan-that the police might suspect Rania. Why didn’t you think of that before you killed her father?”
“I made a mistake. Like I said, I was only pretending to be the Mahdi. I’m not really divine.”
“Now Islamic Jihad will be on your trail again.”
“It was me or Rania. I had to sacrifice myself for her sake.” Nizar pulled at a shred of crab between his front teeth. “I only wanted to talk to you, ustaz. I didn’t expect the gunfire. I really don’t know who shot at us.”
“Maybe it was the true Mahdi?” Omar Yussef sneered.
Nizar extracted the crab and rubbed it into his napkin.
“The Prophet Muhammad came to bestow mercy,” Omar Yussef said, “but the Mahdi is a bringer of vengeance.”
“You think the shooting at Coney Island was supposed to be vengeance for killing Rashid?” Nizar’s eyes became disturbed and small. “Forget about the Mahdi stuff. It was just my joke.”
“Who was Rashid intending to assassinate?”
“Our president.” Nizar announced the title with jocular pomposity, like the identity of a lottery winner. “Rashid intended to kill him this week when he speaks at your UN conference. Islamic Jihad wants him dead because he’s been arresting our boys back in Palestine. The secret police SWAT teams making the arrests were trained by the CIA. Killing him in the U.S. was supposed to deliver a message to Washington to keep out of Palestinian affairs.”
Omar Yussef sipped his water and grimaced as it chilled his gums.
“I knew that if Rashid went ahead with the hit, it’d bring down the full force of the police and the Feds right on my head,” Nizar said. “I’d either go to jail for life or be on the run forever. I’d never be with Rania.”
“May Allah forbid it,” Rania said.
Nizar’s good humor dissolved into morose despair. He emptied his glass and brought it down fast, chipping the stem against his plate. “Nothing’s more important to me than her. Nothing.”
Rania took Nizar’s hand. His long fingers quivered with adrenaline as she kissed them.
“My boy, you have to give yourself up,” Omar Yussef said.
Nizar squeezed Rania’s fingers and shook his head.
“Whatever one might say about your methods, you prevented the assassination of the Palestinian president,” Omar Yussef said. “Perhaps you can give the police other leads, too, about the drug ring. About Islamic Jihad’s activities in America. If you help them, they might forget what you’ve done. What’s more important to them-two dead Arabs in Brooklyn, or an entire terrorist network?”
Nizar crooked his lip sarcastically. “They’ll give me a new identity with a season ticket to commute from this station to my beautiful wife and delightful American family in Pleasantville?”
“Where? Stop kidding me. This is serious.”
“It’s a real place. Can you believe it?” Nizar jerked his chin toward the Departures board. “It’s on the Harlem Line.”
“At the very least let me talk to Abu Adel. Maybe he can secure you a deal.”
“Who?” Nizar’s face became stony.
“Brigadier Khamis Zeydan. He’s the president’s security adviser in the consultations with the Americans and at the UN.”
Nizar stared distantly into his champagne.
“He’s a friend of mine. If you tell him everything, I’m sure he’d be willing to help do a deal with the Americans so that you wouldn’t be prosecuted for what you’ve done.”