Matt Rees - The Samaritan's secret

“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.”

Omar Yussef touched his friend’s arm lightly. He knew Khamis Zeydan’s destructive boozing had started after his injuries in Lebanon.

“By the time I returned to Beirut,” Khamis Zeydan said, “Liana was no longer around.”

“Where did she go?”

Khamis Zeydan’s pale eyes darted toward the mansions on the ridge.

“Kanaan?” Omar Yussef asked.

“That bastard used to come to Beirut to do dirty financial deals with the Old Man. He’d waft into the bunker in a Saville Row suit, trailing eau de cologne and primping his long hair. While I was in the hospital, he married her and sent her back here to his hometown.”

“She didn’t visit you in the hospital?”

“She wrote to me later that she had come once and I hadn’t recognized her. I suppose it’s possible. I was badly wounded, drugged up and depressed. Maybe I even told her to fuck off. You know my temper.” Khamis Zeydan raised his good hand, palm upward.

Omar Yussef laughed. “It’s an old acquaintance of mine.”

“I’ve seen her at official functions from time to time,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Only ever really across a room.”

“But you’ve never been to see her at her home?”

They passed the first of the mansions and fell silent once more. Omar Yussef was accustomed to the poverty of his people and it shocked him that there were Palestinians with the resources to build such palaces. Their designs reminded him of the Taj Mahal, the Topkapi in Istanbul, and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. In the electric light shining from their tall windows, the grass threw off a hectic green like the Saudi flag. Elsewhere in Palestine, water had to be saved for the olive trees and the cabbages; here thin cypresses lined the lawns, a ravishing, wasteful opulence that was in contrast to the jagged rocks and garbage strewn over every open area in Nablus.

They came to Kanaan’s mansion, a rectangular three-story building with massive pillars topped by a Greek pediment. The house stood in a formal garden built into the slope of the ridge, its terraces supported by tall buttressing walls. A peacock fanned its tail on the floodlit lawn and strutted into the trees.

Khamis Zeydan pulled up and beckoned to a man in a leather jacket leaning against the gilded gate. The guard slouched toward them, spitting the shells of sunflower seeds into his palm. When Khamis Zeydan broke the wondering silence in the car, it was to answer the question Omar Yussef had asked him before they reached the row of mansions. “Here?” he said, looking along the avenue of cypresses that led to the house. “No, I haven’t been to see her here. I’ve never been anywhere like this.”

A servant in a collarless blue tunic with gold buttons and a brocaded hem showed them into a spacious salon and tiptoed out as though he were getting away with some-thing. His dainty steps made a subdued patter on the pink marble.

Inlaid mother-of-pearl shone coral and white from the Syrian chairs, like teeth snarling through bared lips of teak. The wrought-iron coffee tables were patterned with Armenian ceramic tiles, figured with fruit and fish in yellow and brown. In the corner, a gaudy palm tree had been painted onto a thick board and cut out, so that it stood up like a six-foot exercise from a children’s book. The artist had signed the tree across the roots.

Omar Yussef gestured toward the painting of the palm tree. “Surely there’s room in here for a real one.”

“A real one wouldn’t cost a hundred grand.” Khamis Zeydan lit a cigarette. His good hand shook and he glanced at Omar Yussef to see if he had noticed.