Omar Yussef glanced back into the lounge where Zuheir talked animatedly to the American woman. If my son is as religious as I think he is, why is he sitting alone with a woman? Maybe he can’t stop himself from setting her straight, even though he would consider it more appropriate to ignore her presence.
He put his arm on Khamis Zeydan’s shoulder. “Your son takes after you,” he said. “Argumentative.”
“No, he’s just like his damned mother. He’s stupid and self-righteous and he never says what he really means.” Khamis Zeydan took Omar Yussef’s hand. “Please, let’s go.”
Omar Yussef felt like a sordid accomplice to adultery. But Ishaq’s wife had said that the dead man was working with Kanaan. This visit might be a good pretext to enter Kanaan’s home and see what he could uncover there to help Sami’s investigation.
The electronic bell of the elevator sounded and Nadia stepped into the lobby. “Uncle Khamis,” she called, running to the policeman. Khamis Zeydan gave her a hug. “I’m writing a detective story about Nablus and there’s a character based on you, Uncle Khamis.”
“Is he a good guy or a bad guy?” Khamis Zeydan grinned.
“That depends on whether you take me to the casbah to taste the qanafi,” she said.
“That’s my job.” Omar Yussef reached for his grand-daughter’s hand. “Nadia, Abu Adel is a diabetic. If he eats sweet desserts like qanafi, his feet will go numb and he won’t be able to walk. Besides, he’s probably too busy to take you to the casbah.”
“How can he be busy? He’s a Palestinian policeman.” Nadia giggled and Khamis Zeydan raised his arms in mock outrage. “Grandma wants to eat dinner in an hour.”
“Tell her I’ll be back in two hours and apologize on my behalf,” Omar Yussef said. “I’m going on a mission of the heart.”
Chapter 10
The last scattered houses on the outskirts of Nablus receded, pale in the first glimmering of the moon. Khamis Zeydan sped up the twisting road across the steep flank of the mountain. His fingers tight on the gearshift, he wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform and swerved to avoid an old rockslide. He swore under his breath.
“The Hill of Cursing is on the other side of the valley,” Omar Yussef said. “The Jewish Torah gives that name to Mount Ebal over there. Jerizim was called the Hill of Blessing.”
“Then it’s lucky I’m not a Jew, because I curse every stone on this mountain.”
Omar Yussef put his hand on Khamis Zeydan’s shoulder. “I’ve seen you face terrible dangers without flinching,” he said. “But here you are, sweating with fear over a woman.”
Khamis Zeydan leaned across to the glove compartment and took out a half-pint of Johnnie Walker. “In battle, I know how to handle myself,” he said, wedging the bottle between his legs while he unscrewed the cap.
“In love, you’re all at sea?”
The policeman tossed back a hard swig and put the bottle between his legs again. He sucked at the ends of his white mustache. “They say, ‘A man with a plan carries it out. A man with two plans gets confused.’ I know how to fight. I never learned anything else.”
“Am I supposed to stand at the door, like a bodyguard, and drag you away if things get out of control?” Omar Yussef said. He averted his eyes from his friend’s bottle. The smell of the forbidden alcohol made him resentful and irritable. “Or do you want me to recite love poetry to her on your behalf, if the man of action gets tongue-tied?”
“Do you want to walk all the way back down to the hotel?”
“You demanded that I come with you, remember? Why can’t you be a bit more likeable?”
Khamis Zeydan took another drink, rattled some phlegm in his throat, and spat out of the window. “I try to be likeable, but it’s just not me,” he said. “The more likeable I am, the more I hate myself. I feel dishonest. Smiling makes my face hurt.”
“So tell me your history with this woman.”
The red and white communication towers of the Israeli base on the ridge took shape in the darkness up the slope. Omar Yussef and Khamis Zeydan fell silent. When they reached the next curve, the mountain hid the Israeli camp and they saw the mansions again, like short men puffing out their chests on the lip of the mountain.
Khamis Zeydan spoke in a whisper no louder than the sound of his exhalation. “It was in Beirut in 1981. I was one of the Old Man’s special operations people, when I met Liana. She was beautiful, but most important she was free.”
“What do you mean?”
The policeman snorted and shook his head. “My dear old friend, you’re a wonderful, educated man with an open mind about the world. Your only problem is that you’ve only seen that world in books. By Allah, you’ve lived your whole life in Bethlehem, a town which has remained provincial and conservative despite all the changes around it.”
Omar Yussef stiffened his jaw and glared ahead at the mansions. “You forget our student days in Damascus. That was enough action for an entire lifetime.”
“Okay, we were hard-living students. But I graduated to Beirut, which was an entirely different class of wildness. I was at the heart of our people’s liberation movement. I traveled to Rome, Brussels, Amsterdam, on operations for the Old Man.”
“Call them what they were-cold-blooded murders.” Omar Yussef slapped the dashboard hard.
“Calm down. Not always murders, no. But if you insist, you can call some of them murders.” Khamis Zeydan bit his thumbnail. “I was young, just thirty-three, and she was the same age. My wife was much younger than me and very traditional. My dear father chose her for me and I’d never have gone against his wishes, may Allah have mercy upon him. But he picked me a simple girl from a refugee camp with whom I had nothing to talk about. Liana was so worldly in comparison.”
“You don’t need to make excuses. Just tell me what happened.”
“We slept together; that’s what happened. But it isn’t the whole story.” Khamis Zeydan turned his pleading eyes toward his friend.
Omar Yussef breathed deeply. He was pressing him too hard. “This road winds a lot on the way to the top of the hill. I took it this morning to get to the Samaritan village, so I know we still have some distance to go. Carry on with your tale.”
Khamis Zeydan stared hard at Omar Yussef.
“Just try to keep your eyes on the road, while you’re talking to me, will you?” Omar Yussef said. “Your driving is making me nervous on this mountain.”
“Liana is from Ramallah, but she grew up in Europe. Her father worked there for King Hussein. She had experienced some of the freedoms of life in the West.” Khamis Zeydan wiggled his hand at Omar Yussef. “You know what I mean?”
“I’m unworldly, as you note, but I can guess what you mean.”
“I had never met that kind of woman, at least not among Palestinians. Suddenly I could experience all the intelligence and progressiveness of a Western woman, while also sharing the bond of Palestinian culture, of our struggle against the Israelis.”
“So you had an affair?”
“Her job with the party newspaper brought her to the Old Man’s bunker all the time. We often saw each other there. I was close to him in those days.”
“What attracted her to you? Your pretty blue eyes? Or your gun?”
Khamis Zeydan bared his teeth as though he had bitten down on the pit of an olive. “If you were forced into proximity and comradeship with such a woman, you’d have done the same thing. I was in love, and so was she,” he said. “I even considered divorcing my wife.”
The police chief was quiet. The engine bawled as the Jeep climbed a steep section of road. Omar Yussef stared ahead, waiting for him to continue.
“When the Israelis invaded in 1982, I went to fight them from the refugee camps in southern Lebanon. Liana stayed in Beirut. I lost my hand in the fighting and was in a hospital for a while with some other injuries. I don’t remember much about that time. I was very depressed.”