“That’s a myth. They seemed so unafraid of death that others thought they must have taken hashish and so called them the Hashishine. ‘Assassin’ is a corruption of that word. But in reality they were like the people from Hamas and Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda today. They did insane things because they believed they would be rewarded in Paradise.”
“The virgins, the dark-eyed houris, and all that?”
Omar Yussef bit into a piece of baklava and crunched the pistachios between his back teeth. “Everything isn’t always about sex, Sergeant Abayat.”
Hamza waved his hand. “Sure, they receive a seat next to Allah, and they get a free pass into Paradise for their relatives too. But I think most young men are more interested in the virgins, no matter how much they love the Master of the Universe or their mama’s cooking.”
“I see that you’re no sheikh.”
“And I see that you’re no Assassin.”
“Neither is my son.”
“Nizar probably wasn’t killed by someone looking for the rewards of Paradise. Most of the killings around here are simply related to the drug trade.”
Omar Yussef stiffened. “My son isn’t involved in such things. How dare you?”
“Even if it wasn’t true, the reputation of the Assassins was that they were stoned on hashish. Maybe these boys revived the name of their teenage gang as a joke, as you say. But perhaps the joke was a private reference to the fact that they were dealing drugs.”
“You’re trying to provoke me. That’s crazy.”
“Forgive me, but even in Brooklyn we don’t see headless corpses every day. That is crazy.” Hamza leaned over the table, and Omar Yussef pressed himself back against his chair. “It also happens to be a craziness that involves you somehow, ustaz.”
Omar Yussef struggled to hold Hamza’s gaze. He worried that he had been too open with the policeman, and he felt panic chill him. Maybe he’ll use this information about the Assassins to pin the killing on Ala, or even on me as revenge for what happened between me and his uncle back in Bethlehem, he thought.
“They were intelligent boys. That’s why they based their little club around their interest in history. They didn’t go out to throw stones at the Israelis. Study was their reward, not Paradise.” Omar Yussef played with the triangle of baklava on his plate. In Bethlehem, the intifada turned people who had previously seemed peaceful to violence and martyrdom. But not these boys, he thought. I’m sure of it.
A police siren approached. Hamza watched the blue and red lights streak past the window, then looked hard at Omar Yussef. “After Nine-Eleven, the FBI woke up to the fact that Bay Ridge had turned into Little Palestine. They sent agents to investigate all the community leaders. They found a few who were married to people whose cousins back in Ramallah were neighbors of someone who was in jail for being in Hamas. That kind of nonsense. But it made people very suspicious here. It made the cops suspect Arabs, and it made Arabs resent the cops and the FBI and ultimately America itself. One day that’s going to result in something bad, ustaz.”
“Do the people here resent you, too?”
“The police brass is suspicious of all Arabs. The INS, the FBI, everyone in law enforcement is down on the Arab community, and that goes for Arab cops too. And the Arabs on the street see me as a traitor working for their persecutors.” Hamza struck the table with the side of his heavy fist. “I’m not scared of any of them. My only fear is that someone from Palestine will come here and use this place as a base for terrible acts. If that happens, the Feds will come back, and then, may it be displeasing to Allah, they’ll stomp Little Palestine into the ground.”
The syrup in the baklava coated Omar Yussef’s esophagus, and for a moment he felt smothered. He sipped from his water. “Thank you for this meal,” he said. “It was very good.”
“May you enjoy it with double health deep in your heart.” Hamza took a business card from his wallet and handed it to Omar Yussef. “My cell-phone number. In case you think of anything important, ustaz.”
Hamza walked Omar Yussef back along the avenue toward the subway station. The clouds remained featureless and uniform, blanking out the sky, but the fawn bricks on the side-street row houses looked bright. The detective gestured down a street lined with trees. “The homes on these streets are expensive,” he said. “There’re a lot of Greeks on that block. The Arabs mostly live here on the avenue, above the shops, where the apartments are cheap.”
“Where do you live?”
“The end of that block. For my wife to be near the church.”
Clad in dark granite, the square tower of a church cut across the flat gray sky.
“She’s a Christian?”
Hamza grunted and pulled some chicken from between his teeth.
“What did your tribe back in Bethlehem have to say about you marrying a Christian?” Omar Yussef asked.
“It’s better than marrying a refugee from the camp where you live.” Hamza pointed to the red ribbons on the trees. “It’s Valentine’s Day this week. You remember the Christians in Beit Jala used to celebrate it back home?”
Omar Yussef nodded. “You’re supposed to give a card to your wife or your fiancee.”
“In America, the whole thing is commercialized, ustaz. In the schools, the children give Valentine’s Day cards and little bags of chocolate to everyone in their class.”
“And everyone has to put a red ribbon on the tree outside their house?”
“Not everywhere, but the neighborhood association organizes it here. It’s better than graffiti about dead martyrs, isn’t it?” Hamza smiled. “What about the unfortunate Nizar’s Valentine? Who’s Rania?”
Omar Yussef remembered his son’s anxious glance at the love letter, the recognition he seemed to show at the sight of the pink stationery in the evidence bag. “It’s a fairly common name. Rania could be anyone.”
“I don’t think it was a letter from the Queen of Jordan.” Hamza frowned. “Here’s your station, ustaz.”
“I want to go and see my son.”
“If Allah wills it, you’ll be able to talk to him tomorrow. But not now.”
“Don’t hide behind Allah. Why don’t you will it?”
“I may be an American, but we’re speaking Arabic and it’d be rude of me to come right out and tell you that the answer’s no.”
Omar Yussef lifted his jaw in anger. “You said yourself that this isn’t the Middle East. My son has rights, and so do I. I’m asking you as an American to give me the right to see my son.”
The detective grinned mirthlessly. “If Allah wills it.”
“Damn it, Hamza. I want to see him.”
“Take the R train one stop and change to the N,” Hamza said. “It’ll get you back to Manhattan quicker.”
“Do you think I’m so eager to escape Brooklyn?”
As Omar Yussef descended the grimy steps beneath the subway-station sign, he heard Hamza’s voice, slow and deep: “No, ustaz. In any case, you certainly can’t escape me.”
At the bottom of the steps, Omar Yussef considered that he might have to make a number of trips out to Brooklyn to see his son. He decided to buy ten rides. He pushed a twenty-dollar bill into the tray of the token booth and received a yellow-and-blue ticket in return. There was something familiar about the ticket clerk, who dropped his eyes when Omar Yussef wished him a good day.
Omar Yussef swiped the card at the turnstile. As he pushed through to the other side, he noticed the little electronic screen read “$2.00/$16.00 Bal.” The machine had deducted the two-dollar fare, but there were only sixteen dollars remaining on the card. Omar Yussef stopped and looked back at the clerk in his booth. The man held Omar Yussef’s glare. He was in late middle age with a pinched sour face and a thin, mean mouth. He wore thick, black-framed glasses, and his gray hair was slicked back. He looks like the man who used to be the American Defense Secretary, Omar Yussef thought, the one who blew the war in Iraq.