“Punished? How?”
“Hamas must retract the slander or face the consequences.”
“Does that mean civil war?”
“We who loved the former president cannot back down. Even so, be assured we will not draw blood, unless they do so first.”
The servant who had shown Omar Yussef into the salon appeared on the patio and waited a few yards behind the cameraman.
“Palestinian media report that people are upset. They think Hamas shouldn’t have publicized this allegation,” the reporter said. “Does this weaken Hamas politically?”
“Hamas will pay a price for its slander,” Kanaan said. “I hope it will only be at the polls, because the Palestinian people love democracy.”
The reporter glanced at the sound technician, who gave him a nod. “Okay, we’ve got it,” he said, shaking hands with Kanaan.
Not exactly a grilling, Omar Yussef thought. The sheikh made a tactical error. People are starting to resent him for making them face this possible cause of the president’s demise. No one wants to think badly of a dead man, no matter what they would’ve believed about him when he was alive. As chief of the late president’s party in Nablus, Kanaan only has to keep this story bubbling for Hamas to look worse and worse.
Kanaan waved the news crew around the mansion toward their jeep. The servant stood on his toes and whispered into Kanaan’s ear. Omar Yussef stepped out onto the red-tiled patio. Kanaan smiled at him.
Amin Kanaan appeared both coarse and cultured, like a peasant made good. He had a wide, thick nose, pitted and rough, as though it had been modeled quickly from clay between two thumbs. His skin was uniformly brown, tanned by a better class of sunshine than the intense rays scouring the people of Nablus. His gray hair seemed at once to drift on the breeze in a debonair wave and to be locked in place by lacquer. When he shook Omar Yussef’s hand, Kanaan left a delicate residue of jasmine on it.
“I haven’t come across that cologne before,” Omar Yussef said.
Kanaan smoothed his hair back from his brow. “It’s Le Vainqueur. Napoleon used to wear it.”
“In the Empress Josephine’s boudoir, perhaps. Surely not during his campaign in Palestine.”
“I expect that here he would have had even greater need to disguise the foul smells all around him.”
“Is that why you wear it?”
Kanaan rocked his head back and laughed. Jamie King came outside and shook the wealthy man’s hand. “It’s good to see you again, Jamie,” Kanaan said.
He led them to a shaded gazebo at the edge of the lawn. Pink clusters of wisteria dangled from the slatted roof. The servant brought cold carob cordials in tall glasses. Mint leaves floated among the ice cubes.
“You told the foreign journalist that Hamas must be punished,” Omar Yussef said, in Arabic.
“Journalists.” Kanaan spoke in English and waved a disdainful hand. King smiled obsequiously. The businessman gestured to his guests to sit in the low wicker chairs arranged to face the view.
“Punished as Nouri Awwadi was?” Omar Yussef slurped the carob juice and felt immediately cooler.
Kanaan lifted his glass and watched the light come burgundy red through the cordial. “This is very good for your digestion, Jamie,” he said.
“Delicious.” The American took a small sip and glanced nervously at Omar Yussef.
She’s worried I’m starting a fight with Kanaan, he thought. He tried to reassure her with a smile.
Kanaan switched to Arabic. “I heard Awwadi was killed by a jealous boyfriend.” His lips twitched, eager to spill someone else’s secret.
“The rejected suitor of his new wife? That’s what his father says, but I don’t believe it.”
A hot breeze rustled the wisteria. “I didn’t say it was his wife’s boyfriend.” Kanaan winked.
“Whose boyfriend, then?” Omar Yussef froze with the cordial halfway to his mouth. “Are you saying Awwadi was homosexual?”
“I apologize for our Arabic chatter, Jamie, we’re just gossiping about mutual acquaintances here in Nablus,” Kanaan said in English.
King disturbed her fixed smile long enough to take another sip of her cordial.
“Do you remember the classical Andalucian poem by Walladah about a homosexual fellow?” Kanaan said, in Arabic. “It says that ‘if he saw a penis up a palm tree, he’d turn into a whole flock of birds’ in his eagerness to reach it. That was Awwadi, despite his impressive wedding to a casbah girl on the back of a white horse.”
Could Awwadi have been Ishaq’s lover? Omar Yussef wondered. He seemed disturbed when I told him of the Samaritan’s death.
Kanaan grinned. “Don’t look so shocked. Why do you think a man in Nablus goes to the Turkish baths?”
“I imagine you have your own private bathhouse up here,” Omar Yussef said. He had seen Awwadi’s corpse. It wasn’t something to laugh about.
Kanaan’s smile faded and he looked out across the valley, where Nablus spread like so many broken white teeth. He cleared his throat and spoke to Jamie King in his punctilious English. “I’m delighted to welcome you to my home, Jamie.”
“I’ve been in Nablus a few days and every time I look up I see these great houses,” King said. “It’s amazing to be able to visit one.”
“Treat it as if it were your own home, please.” Kanaan bowed. “Have you been to see the progress on the new school I’m funding in the casbah?”
“I have.”
“I hope it gave you a good feeling about your work. If it weren’t for the World Bank loan you organized for local infrastructure, even I wouldn’t be able to build such a school.”
“It’s a wonderful project. It’s unfortunate that the money may be about to come to an end.” King sipped her cordial. “If the former president’s secret accounts can’t be traced by Friday, the bank is planning to cut off aid to the Palestinians.”
Kanaan shook his head and stroked his broad chin. “By Friday? I was told about this possibility on my last trip to Washington, but I didn’t know a decision was so close.”
“It’s only two days away.”
“It would be a disaster.”
Omar Yussef thought the World Bank’s boycott would be less of a catastrophe for the millionaires along the ridge than for the poor inhabitants of the casbah. He cooled his palms with the condensation on his glass.
“Are you perhaps close to uncovering the whereabouts of the secret accounts, Jamie?” Kanaan spoke quietly, looking at his fingernails.
Omar Yussef watched the American. Does she see through Kanaan’s show of nonchalance? he thought.
“I’m expecting a report any time now from one of my investigators in Geneva,” Jamie said. “I hope it will give us some new ideas.”
“But here in Palestine, you have made no progress?”
Jamie shook her head. “No leads. To be frank, it seems to me that many Palestinian officials are not eager to see this money recovered.”
“Why would that be?”
“They were recipients of the former president’s under-the-table payments. The less that’s known about all that, the better, as far as they’re concerned.”
Kanaan shook his head. “So people aren’t being helpful?”
“Those that try to be of assistance,” Omar Yussef said, in English, “find themselves dead.”
Jamie looked sharply at Omar Yussef. Her cell phone rang in her briefcase. She took it out and glanced at the screen. “It’s from Geneva. Maybe there’s some news. Excuse me.” She walked out of earshot with the phone.
Kanaan ran his finger around the rim of his glass. “Isn’t it a bit boring, ustaz, to work for these foreigners?”
“The people I work with are fascinating,” Omar Yussef said.
Kanaan puffed out his lips. “If you say so. I find Americans too serious and literal minded. In any case, I like your atti-tude, ustaz.”