Kanaan’s chin dipped like a man on the verge of sleep. “He was my son,” he said. He pyramided his fingertips at the end of his clumsy, wide nose and closed his eyes. “Liana and I had relations before our marriage. You should have seen her, ustaz. She was brave and intelligent, the most beautiful woman in Beirut. Were you ever there?”
“Not since I was a student.”
Kanaan smiled dreamily. “The spirit of Beirut back then swept me and Liana into each other’s hearts. She rejected the conservative morality of our culture and even convinced me that I could join this rejection. She had spent time in Europe and seen how young couples lived there.”
“You don’t look like a hippie to me.”
“We were radicals, not hippies. In those days, revolution was something creative and idealistic. Artists and theater people used to visit our headquarters. I met the great English actress Vanessa Redgrave more than once.”
Omar Yussef rolled his eyes, but Kanaan appeared not to notice.
“No one knew who would be alive the next day. You could be killed by the Syrians, the Israelis, the Christian militias, the Shiite gangs, by one of the other Palestinian factions, or even by the Old Man himself.” Kanaan gazed into the sun, glinting off the tall windows of his salon. “If you found someone who would love you, you loved her back with all the life you had, all the life that might be snuffed out the next day, the next hour.”
Omar Yussef sneered. “Liana became pregnant.”
“Shortly after we became engaged, I sent her to Nablus to have our baby,” Kanaan said. “I had to get her out of Beirut, where all the other PLO people were, to avoid a scandal. She couldn’t go to her family in Ramallah, because everyone knew her there. Nablus is my home. When she gave birth here, I paid the Samaritan priest to adopt the boy. I chose to hide my son with people so much on the fringe of the town that no one who knew me would ever discover the truth, but he would still be close enough that we could watch him grow up.”
“Why didn’t you go to live in Europe with him?”
“That’s what Liana wanted. But I realized that it was only she who could live outside our people’s morality and traditions. Only she could leave Palestinian society. I was too weak.” The sickly yellow around Kanaan’s irises glowed with desolation in the fading light. “After our marriage, it was too late to get the boy back without admitting what had happened. It would have been a dreadful slur on my wife’s reputation, to have acknowledged that we had physical relations before our wedding.”
Omar Yussef understood the dilemma. Many women had been killed for staining the honor of their families with even the suspicion of sex outside marriage, let alone an illegitimate birth. Liana’s family might have been a little more modern about it than that, but they could easily have disowned her, he thought. Certainly Kanaan’s business career would have been destroyed by the scandal.
“But I funded Ishaq’s schooling and I promoted him in the party,” Kanaan said. “How else do you think an obscure Samaritan kid became the financial adviser to our president? I propelled Ishaq as I would have my legitimate son.”
Kanaan stared at the shining marble floor. For a moment, Omar Yussef wondered if he was still breathing, then the man covered his face with both hands and groaned. Omar Yussef knew that now, when Kanaan was weak, he had to push him. “Ishaq died as his biblical namesake Isaac was intended to die,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Isaac was bound, ready for sacrifice, on the peak of the mountain where the temple would later be built. His father, the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham, as the Jews call him, was to carry out the killing.”
“You think I’m Ibrahim? Ibrahim didn’t kill Isaac in the end, and anyway that’s just an old story.” A wave of Kanaan’s cologne floated across the coffee table to Omar Yussef. “Ishaq threatened to blackmail me if I made a fuss about him failing to give me the account documents.”
“He put the bite on you?”
“What’re you talking about?”
Omar Yussef thought of Nadia and her American detective story and he hid his smile behind his hand. “He threatened to reveal who his real parents were?”
Kanaan ran his fingers through his hair. “It would have destroyed my wife.”
“And you?”
“By now I’ve made too much money for any dirt to stick. Too many bastards need me on their side. They stifle their moral outrage easily enough. But my wife is more vulnerable than I am. She couldn’t have taken the scandal.”
“How did you respond to Ishaq’s blackmail?”
“I gave in. I agreed that he could keep the secret bank documents. I told him it would be dangerous for him to hold on to that information, that deadly people would discover the truth and force him to hand over the account details. I had paid people to leave the secret funds to me, but if I didn’t get hold of the accounts quickly enough, those same people would consider the field open once more.” Kanaan spread his hands wide and let them slap down onto his tastefully cut linen pants. “And of course they-whoever they are-found him and killed him.”
“Who has the secret account details now?”
“I don’t know. Whoever killed Ishaq, I suppose.”
“And the files of dirt on the Fatah people?”
Kanaan smiled bitterly. “I reclaimed them.”
“You saw no reason to be bound by your agreement with Ishaq once he was dead.”
“I didn’t receive what I was supposed to get out of the deal. I sent my people to Awwadi’s place and took the files back.”
“Why did you have Awwadi killed, too?”
“I only wanted the files. Mareh had some private reason for murdering Awwadi, so he killed him.”
The quarrel over Awwadi’s bride, Omar Yussef thought. He rubbed his chin. “Why didn’t Ishaq stay in Paris?”
“He came back because he thought he was a Samaritan. He was lonely and he wanted to be with them. Even though he didn’t have to hide his sexual proclivity in Europe, he didn’t feel at home. A few weeks ago he discovered the truth about his birth and came here in a rage. He didn’t look like himself at all.” Kanaan winced. “There always used to be something in his eyes at times of action that suggested he enjoyed danger. But not then. His eyes were exploding. It terrified me.”
Omar Yussef frowned and stroked his chin. “I know what you mean,” he said. “How did Ishaq find out?”
“I assume the priest gave us away, because no one else knew. I told Ishaq I had kept his birth a secret for Liana’s sake, but that only made him furious with her, too. The person we loved most in the world turned against us.”
“That leaves you with only one person to love.”
Kanaan flushed beneath his even tan. “I’ll give you anything to keep this quiet.”
“You’re still worried about scandal? The boy is dead.”
“I have to think about my wife. Ishaq’s death has made her-” he looked for the right word “-fragile. I’ll give you anything in my power.”
Omar Yussef stood and stepped toward the French doors. Why does everyone want to conspire with me? he wondered. Do I seem dishonest? Or am I their confessor, like the priests to whom Roman Catholics go for remission of their small, venial sins. A priest can’t forgive mortal sins, though. He tapped his knuckle softly on the glass. Can I?
Khamis Zeydan paced across the lawn with his back to the house. A hoopoe dipped its long, thin beak into the grass and came up with a worm. It skipped a few paces and dropped the worm, picked it up again, extended its wings to show its black and white stripes, and flew into the branches of a sycamore.
Omar Yussef put his hand over his mouth and stroked his chin. He smiled at the stricken face of Amin Kanaan. “There is something I can think of that you can get for me,” he said.