Matt Rees - The Samaritan's secret

Omar Yussef knew where this was going.

“The general refused, saying that it would be as though he held the horns of a cow, while the other guy milked it. That’s how it is here. The men who beat Sami were holding the horns of the cow, but they were sent by the guy who’s milking it.”

The jeep jolted through a pothole. Omar Yussef spread his hands against the dashboard to brace himself.

“I can’t let this case be dropped,” he said.

Khamis Zeydan looked at him with fierce eyes. Omar Yussef knew the police chief had heard the desperate strain in his voice. He had to explain himself, though the more he talked, the shriller and more wretched he sounded. “The stakes are very high. All our people’s aid money, cut off, and you don’t seem to care.”

“Are you surprised that the Palestinians should get screwed again?”

“If Sami won’t do it, you must.”

“Not me.” Khamis Zeydan waved his prosthesis. “I’ve only got one hand. If they break my other arm, I’m out to pasture.”

“Well, I can’t do it. I can’t.” Omar Yussef’s cheek throbbed where the masked man had slapped him. His stomach convulsed with shame and fear. A trickle of sweat ran from his palm down the dirty black dashboard.

“You’re right about that, my brother,” Khamis Zeydan said. Quickly, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out the bottle before Omar Yussef could react. He grinned. “Even someone as stubborn as you can’t save the Palestinians. Everyone has to figure out a way to save them-selves. This is my way.” He brandished the whisky.

“You talk as though you and I weren’t Palestinian.”

“Palestine? It’s up there on that ridge, inside all those mansions. It’s nothing but a corrupt business deal. Sometimes the P.R. is good and the world shovels in the cash. Sometimes it’s bad and the peasants suffer. But people like Liana still visit conferences in Europe on the rights of refugees and stay in the most expensive hotels. Save Palestine? Let it go to hell.” He swigged from the bottle.

Down the slope in Nablus, a meager fluorescence glim-mered from the narrow, arched windows of the old quarter. Omar Yussef shuddered. Khamis Zeydan might find the reality of his people’s struggle in the mansions above them, but Omar Yussef knew that it was below him, in the hidden alleys of the casbah.

A hundred years ago, on the periphery of the casbah, the Turks had built a tapering clock tower rising sixty feet to a cinquefoil window. Omar Yussef admired the simplicity of the design, as much as he regretted the undignified atmosphere around the structure’s base. The bleached stones were draped with green Hamas flags and a pair of loudspeakers on the roof of an old, olive drab Volkswagen van blasted Islamic songs at a volume so thunderous that he feared the tower might collapse.

He wrinkled his nose at the ripeness of the men packed into the square and hunched his shoulders against their jostling. The men at the back of the crowd strained over the heads of those in front to see the dais at the foot of the clock tower. Omar Yussef felt dizzy. He stuck a finger in his ear, worried that the loud music might have damaged it.

Sami slipped his left hand beneath Omar Yussef’s upper arm and guided him to the edge of the square, where they could observe without being pummelled by the shoving newcomers. Sami wore a brown leather flying jacket, its right side loose over his shoulder, his broken arm slung tight against his body in a bulky cast. Khamis Zeydan pushed level with them. He was also out of uniform, wearing a checked sport jacket and blue tie. His eyes were watery and his skin was almost as pale as his white mustache.

“This is no place for a man with a fucking hangover,” he said.

“Perhaps instead of drowning your problems in drunken silence all night, you ought to confide more in your friends,” Omar Yussef said.

“You have problems enough of your own. Don’t try to take on other people’s woes, my brother. Whoever pats scorpions with the hand of compassion gets stung.”

“Are you going to sting me if I suggest you should have had a bigger breakfast to settle your stomach?”

Khamis Zeydan pinched the slack, liver-spotted skin on the back of Omar Yussef’s wrist. “I’m not ready to sting yet, but I’m warning you.”

Omar Yussef smiled and rubbed his hand.

Sami laid his good arm across Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “Over there, Abu Ramiz, is where they’ll celebrate the big wedding. On that dais by the tower. Then everyone will go to a big party in the social club at this end of the square.”

“Where’s the women’s celebration?”

“Somewhere down that way, farther into the casbah. The brides will be there already.”

“As Meisoun said, on another planet.”

A cheer went up among the men at the entrance to the mosque. Bearded youngsters leaned out of the upstairs windows, hammering the air with their fists and chanting. Their words competed indistinctly with the song from the loudspeakers, but soon Omar Yussef picked out the rhyming declaration that there was no god but Allah and that Muhammad was his prophet.

Sheikh Bader made his way from the mosque to the dais. He stepped up to the platform and took his place at its center, drawing his robe together in front of his abdomen and lowering his bearded chin to his chest. He appeared unaware of the crowd, but commanded it merely by the mastery he had over himself.

The attention of the crowd turned to the alley behind the clock tower. The loudspeakers’ volume crept higher. A deep bass and a susurrating tambourine pulsed around the voices of the singers. Nouri Awwadi appeared at the head of the line of grooms, riding on Sharik. The white stallion tossed its head and glared down its long muzzle at the bearded faces around it. The file of young grooms moved through the crowd. Some riders looked around with wide smiles, waving at friends. A few held tight to the reins, as nervous as their shying mounts.

The horsemen formed a rank before the dais and the music was shut off in midchorus. Nouri Awwadi sat very straight on Sharik and stared over the crowd with a proud, stern expression, as though transformed into a statue of some victorious ancient warrior. A statue he’d destroy, because it’d violate the Islamic prohibition against the making of idols, Omar Yussef thought.

Sheikh Bader’s rhythmic speech came through the loud-speakers, beginning the marriage sermon. He read the brief details of the fifteen marriage contracts, the names of the brides and grooms, and exhorted them to a life of piety and mutual love. He recited verses from the Koran and recounted a hadith, one of the sayings of the Prophet, which urged believers to fear Allah, to pray, to fast and to marry a woman.

Omar Yussef recalled his own marriage, more than thirty years before. He remembered that, at this moment in the ceremony, the sheikh had prayed for Omar and Maryam, for their families, their town and the broader Muslim community. He smiled. Omar and Maryam came out just about all right, he thought . On the other hand, their town and their community have had it pretty rough.

Sheikh Bader prayed for the grooms and their families. When he came to the prayer for the Muslims, he halted and raised a finger above his head. “Brothers, the community we pray for here, the community of all the Palestinians, is sinking into a time of ignorance.”

Omar Yussef glanced at Khamis Zeydan. His friend raised an eyebrow. The time of ignorance was the term Muslims used to refer to the days before Islam.

“There’s a rot among the leaders of our people,” the sheikh continued. “Brothers, you know the complaints-the corruption and violence and the collaboration with the Occupation Forces. None of this is new to you. And you know who the men behind it all are. Hamas fights them on your behalf. I call on you all to redouble your own commitment to this fight in the name of Allah, the Master of the Universe.”