He kissed her and entered the lounge. Lit a ghostly blue by glimmering fluorescent tubes, the room was noisy with the sententious voice of a presenter on the Abu Dhabi cable news channel resonating from a big-screen television on the far wall. At a breakfast bar of the same pale pine as the reception desk, a waiter in a white shirt and flashy striped vest leaned over a newspaper. As Omar Yussef approached, he shoved himself off his elbows and straightened the bottom of his vest over his paunch.
“Evening of joy,” Omar Yussef said.
“Evening of light, ustaz,” the waiter mumbled. He looked nervous and defeated, as though he already knew he wouldn’t be able to fulfill any order to Omar Yussef’s satisfaction.
“A coffee, please. Prepare it sa’ada.” Omar Yussef always took his coffee without sugar.
The waiter ducked below the counter.
“Please turn the volume down on the television, too,” Omar Yussef said. “The news is always bad enough without it having to be loud, as well.”
The waiter remained on his haunches, reaching up to a shelf behind him for the remote control.
The room had been recently whitewashed, but its furniture was a decade old. The couches were low squares of foam covered in nylon and corduroy with no armrests or support. Omar Yussef winced, wondering how he’d ever be able to get up, once he had sunk into one of them.
With the hotel almost empty, there was only one group in the lounge. In the far corner, Nadia balanced on the edge of a couch of spongy cushions upholstered with a russet fabric in an angular pattern. She was in conversation with her uncle Zuheir and a red-haired foreigner in her late thirties. Omar Yussef would have preferred to sit alone, letting the adrenaline that still thundered through him after the attack by the masked men dissipate. But if he didn’t join them, Nadia would want to know why and he preferred not to talk to her about Sami’s beating.
By the way Zuheir’s lips puckered and his thick beard twitched, Omar Yussef sensed that he was suppressing a powerful anger. The schoolteacher’s second son was twenty-eight years old. He wore a white dress shirt buttoned to the neck, its tails falling outside white cotton pants. It was the clothing of a religious zealot and Omar Yussef searched beneath it for the excitable, curly-haired boy he had secretly favored over his other sons, when they were children. Zuheir’s dark eyes flitted between the foreigner and Nadia. If his niece weren’t here, Omar Yussef thought, I suspect he’d give that red-haired woman a mouthful. He smiled. He was suspicious of Zuheir’s newly devout demeanor, but he was happy that the boy’s habitual trucu-lence hadn’t deserted him.
Nadia noticed Omar Yussef picking his way between the empty couches and waved. His favorite grandchild was skinny and tall and so pale that her grandmother’s main mission in life was to force food upon her in the hope of adding color and size. Her mischievious intelligence impressed Omar Yussef more every month. As he came close, she suppressed a smile. I know that look, he thought. She has a surprise for me. He bent to kiss her smooth fore-head. Her hair had a clean bubble-gum scent and Omar Yussef felt embarrassed by the sweat on his shirt and socks from the scuffle in the casbah.
“Grandpa, this is Miss Jamie King,” Nadia said, in English. She gestured to the foreigner with the spine of a paperback, keeping her place in the book with her forefinger. “Miss King, this is Omar Yussef Sirhan from Bethlehem. He’s a schoolteacher- with a secret life.” She opened her black eyes wide.
The red-haired woman stood and shook Omar Yussef’s hand with a strong yank that started at her hips. She wore a blue chalk-striped suit and a thin gold chain over the freckled, sunburned skin at her collar bone. “What secret life is that?” she asked.
“He’s a detective,” Nadia said.
“In my granddaughter’s imagination.” Omar Yussef raised his eyebrows and lifted a finger to caution Nadia. “I work for the United Nations, as a school principal.”
“That’s an excellent cover for a detective.” The American moved closer to Omar Yussef. “Actually I’ve come across your name before, ustaz. I’m based in Jerusalem and I’m a good friend of your boss, Magnus Wallender. He told me how helpful you’ve been to him in his job running the UN Relief and Works Agency schools.”
Omar Yussef smiled. “Magnus is a good man.”
“Miss King is from Los Angeles,” Nadia said. “We’re planning a crime together.”
Zuheir grunted testily and tugged on his beard. Nadia grinned at him and he averted his eyes.
Omar Yussef lowered himself onto a short sofa. The foam was even softer than he expected and he felt himself falling backward. He needed both arms to right himself, and the muscles in his back and abdomen twinged. “My granddaughter is corrupting you, Miss King,” he said, breathing heavily.
“I’m impressed that she’s already reading in English,” King said.
Nadia flashed the cover of her book at Omar Yussef. He only had time to notice that it was by a man named Chandler. “Miss King is going to help me to write a novel in the style of my favorite American detective writer,” she said. “I started it today, because I was bored waiting for my grandfather to come and take me to eat qanafi.”
Omar Yussef gave a thin smile. The waiter brought a small coffee cup and set it on the low table. “May Allah bless your hands,” Omar Yussef said.
“Blessings,” the waiter said, putting a plastic ashtray and a glass of water beside the coffee cup.
“Nablus is famous for qanafi, Miss King,” Nadia said. “It’s a very sweet dessert made with wheat and cheese and- Grandpa, what do you call fustoq halabi in English?”
Omar Yussef scratched his chin. “I don’t know. Aleppo peanuts?”
From behind his hand, Zuheir murmured: “Pistachios.”
“Ah, pistachios. Nablus is famous for this dessert and for making soap in old factories in the casbah. They make the soap out of olive oil.” Nadia giggled. “If my grandfather ever takes me out of this hotel, I expect to find the people of Nablus are very fat and very clean.”
“What’s the title of the book you’re writing, Nadia, my darling?” Omar Yussef asked.
“The Curse of the Casbah.” Nadia shared a smile with Jamie King.
Omar Yussef noticed that the American tapped her finger impatiently against her chair, despite her grin. “That sounds exciting,” he said.
“The murder victim in my book is going to be killed with poisoned qanafi.”
Omar Yussef tasted his coffee. Its bitterness pleased him, but it was too weak, so the grounds floated in it, instead of sinking to the bottom. He turned to frown at the waiter, but the man was leaning on his elbows, staring at his newspaper.
He twisted toward the American. “Miss King, I believe I saw you on the road today,” he said. “Do you work for the World Bank?”
“Do I stick out that much?” King said. “With this security situation, I guess there aren’t a lot of foreigners around Nablus.”
“Not driving in big cars with IBRD plates.” He put down his coffee cup and sucked the grounds off his teeth. “You looked like you were on your way to the Samaritan village on Mount Jerizim, when I saw you in your car. I was on my way back from there.”
King looked grave. “For me, it didn’t quite work out as planned,” she said.
“I was returning from a visit to a Samaritan woman named Roween.”
King grimaced.
Omar Yussef smiled at Nadia. “My darling, will you go upstairs and ask Grandma what time she wants to eat dinner?”
Nadia bit her lower lip. She knows I’m getting her out of the way and that she’s about to miss something interesting, he thought. Reluctantly the girl left the lounge.
“She’s very bright,” King said.