In the public gallery, the school groups left gray blotches on the carpet where snow melted from their shoes. Omar Yussef led Ismail to the tall windows.
“There’s an assassin here in New York,” Omar Yussef said. “The police know he’s going to try to kill the president during his speech tomorrow. For that assassin, whoever he is, it would be a suicidal mission.”
“So?”
“Consider this a warning.”
“Ustaz, do I look like a trained killer?”
“I’ve met men with blood on their hands. I’ve even shaken those hands in some cases. But I still don’t know how to recognize them by their faces. I always imagine they must give themselves away with some trace of horror and disgust, but they can just as easily look amiable and kind.”
Ismail watched another group of schoolchildren ramble along the gallery. “What do you see in the faces of these American students visiting the UN today? They’re just as guilty of murder as the American soldiers shooting tank shells at crowds of Iraqi civilians.”
Omar Yussef’s fingers felt cold in the boy’s grip. “When I was young, I, too, blamed America for all the problems of the Arab people. But as I matured, I saw that our biggest trouble is our determination to accuse others-to play the victim.”
“This is an unholy place.” Ismail threw his arm toward the yellow taxis jamming the avenue and the buildings vanishing into the descending snow. “Who among the believers would lament if it were destroyed today?”
“Perhaps the believers who live in Little Palestine.”
“What’s that?”
“Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You were there. I saw you when I came out of the basement mosque.”
“Little Palestine?” Ismail grinned. “As if Palestine itself wasn’t already little enough.”
Omar Yussef felt separated from Ismail by the angry cynicism of the zealot. He struggled to find a language the boy might comprehend. “You think Allah is known only in the places where everyone already submits to his will? Allah is here. Allah lives in New York.”
“That’s blasphemous. Allah lives in Mecca.”
Omar Yussef laughed. “I’m surprised at you. You think like a peasant. Allah exists where he’s needed.”
“But you’re not even a believer, ustaz.”
“I believe that Allah is a mystery. Do you really think he sits on top of the Kaba in Mecca? Doesn’t he feel compassion for the people of New York, even though they’re physically far away from him?”
They came to the empty General Assembly and passed into the visitors’ area at the back. A map of the world, spreading out from the North Pole, shone in gold leaf above the dais.
As he stared down the long aisles toward the futuristic podium, Ismail seemed transformed to Omar Yussef. Gone was the delicate, wounded clerk, and in his place stood a killer, ready to put his faith in truths so simple that nothing could be easier than to die for them, because they made of death something facile too. He had ceased to be one of Omar Yussef’s little group of Assassins. He had become simply an assassin.
“If you carry out your plan, then this is where Allah dies,” Omar Yussef said. “Wherever he has lived-Mecca, New York-he dies here.”
Ismail glanced along the back row of desks in the Assembly Hall, each marked with the name of its national delegation. “My plan?”
“It’s suicidal.”
“How could it be done in such a closely guarded place?”
“I’m not an assassin. I can’t give you details. Who knows what components could’ve been sneaked in here? Perhaps you used money from Nizar’s drug sales to bribe a cleaner, who smuggled in a rifle, piece by piece. It could be hidden in this very room.”
“You’re not as purely academic as you pretend to be.” Ismail stroked his beard and smirked. “Maybe I’ll recruit you for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, ustaz.”
“I don’t like the retirement plan. I’m not interested in Paradise.”
“If you aren’t careful, someone might try to retire you very soon.” Ismail strolled behind the empty desks of the delegations.
“As you already did. You shot at me in Coney Island. Or were you trying to hit Nizar, because he backed out on your operation?”
“Ustaz, I’m a diplomat.”
“Let’s say you did try to kill me and that I forgave you. How would you feel about that? Because I do forgive you, my boy.”
The corners of Ismail’s mouth twitched into a fragile sneer. Omar Yussef grabbed his shoulder. “I forgive you, do you hear me?” he said. Ismail blinked and looked away.
“In the days of the Assassins, ustaz, their suicidal attacks were reviled. It was seen as unnatural to die that way.” Ismail scanned the names of the small, unimportant countries arranged in rotating alphabetical order at the delegates’ desks. “Today, suicide attacks are accepted by everyone in the Muslim world. We have no other weapon against the power of the West. You’re out of step. Your thinking belongs to another time, another world.”
“Ismail, I won’t believe that my world and yours are as separate as you suggest,” Omar Yussef said.
They reached the final desk in the back row. Ismail raised his chin and pointed to the single word PALESTINE, its white letters pinned to a black plastic rectangle ten inches long.
“You see our place in your world? Right at the back and on the edge.” Ismail turned a circle with his arms wide. “Everyone is more important than us. There are one hundred and ninety-two member states with desks closer to the front than us. Who can we see from here? Oh, look, there’s Kiribati. And Kyrgyzstan. Over there, Vanuatu, and Zambia. Superpowers on the world stage, indeed. But here at the back, we find Palestine, with only observer status-not even a full member. Poor little Palestine.”
“So when we are accorded the right to speak, you think we should refuse it?” Omar Yussef said. “We should kill the president at the podium of the UN while he’s trying to remind the world that this desk at the back of the hall exists?”
“They know we exist. They just don’t know the power we’re prepared to wield.”
“The power to die?” Omar Yussef shook his head and sat in one of the visitors’ seats. “This desk at the back is the place in the world Palestine has found for itself. Perhaps it’s all we deserve. What about your world? There was a time when I knew you better than you knew yourself. As I listen to you now, I believe I still do.”
Ismail dropped his head and knitted his fingers tightly.
“O Ismail, I’m sorry to see what’s happened to you. I don’t blame you, my boy. You suffered so much in the jail during the intifada, then being away from your family and alone in Lebanon.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. I found my belief in Islam, ustaz. My love for Allah.”
“You only love Allah this way because you haven’t loved anyone here on earth,” Omar Yussef said. He reached out a hand for Ismail. The boy sat beside his old schoolteacher, his eyes narrow and bitter.
“What happened in the jail made me scared and angry with everyone and everything. Except you, ustaz.” Ismail stroked the back of Omar Yussef’s thin hand.
“Angry enough to listen to some bloodthirsty imam? To be convinced that murder is a part of politics?”
“I didn’t kill Rashid.”
“That’s not what I meant. The president?”
“You’re the only one I’m not angry with, ustaz.” He gave Omar Yussef’s fingers a final squeeze and rose. “I have to go to my colleagues now.”
“I’ll see you later?”
Ismail shook his head and blinked hard to stop his tears. “Give my love to Umm Ramiz when you get back to Bethlehem. And to my friend Ala.”
“Ismail, wait.”
“May Allah grant you grace, ustaz.”
Ismail went quickly through a group of tourists who were settling into the ragged corduroy of the public seats to hear their guide describe the General Assembly Hall.