Matt Rees - A grave in Gaza

As Omar Yussef closed in on the jeeps, one of the gunmen looked in his direction and seemed to recognize him. Hoping this was the gunman who had spoken to him earlier, Omar Yussef pointed at the entrance to the hotel drive, to remind him where he was heading. The gunman looked undecided, then the sound of an engine cut through the wind and he turned to face it.

A UN Suburban came to the far end of the hotel strip. Its white bulk showed clearly through the darkness. It seemed somehow naive of the car’s occupants to drive with their headlights on, rather than creeping through these dangerous streets in the dark. The car headed toward the jeeps. Omar Yussef stared. If that was Cree and Wallender, they were driving right into the middle of a gun battle. At the very least, the gunmen would stop them and give them a fright.

The UN car slowed. It moved in second gear past the furthest jeep. Omar Yussef stepped away from the sidewalk and waved both his arms above his head. He felt sure Cree and Wallender were in the car, returning to the hotel. He had to warn them.

The first jeep roared, as loud as a low-flying jet. It jerked across the entrance to the Sands Hotel and blocked the road. At that moment, the second jeep pulled across the back of the Suburban, hemming it in. The gunmen jumped from their vehicles and held their Kalashnikovs on the UN car. Omar Yussef glanced at the Military Intelligence chief’s house. The guards were gone.

He hurried forward, coughing through the dust and waving his arms. The warm wind seemed to rush directly into him, slowing him, suffocating him. He had to get to Wallender and Cree.

The gunmen pulled the two foreigners from their car, their hands in the air. Omar Yussef couldn’t make out the shouts above the wind. Wallender looked terrified. He was bent backward across the hood of the car with a Kalashnikov jutting into his ribs.

Cree refused to bend. He seemed taller even than he had when Omar Yussef first saw him. His hands were in the air, but he was talking calmly and without pause, engaging the two gunmen who faced him.

Omar Yussef reached the first jeep. He put a hand on the driver’s open door to steady himself. He took a breath, ready to shout, but choked on a dusty cough. His face grew hot with frustration. He spewed out a mouthful of bile and rubbed his lips with his handkerchief.

“Stop it,” he yelled. “What’re you doing?”

The gunman who had seemed to recognize him turned, but kept his gun on Cree. He shouted at Omar Yussef, so that he could be heard over the excitable yelling of the other gunmen. “Go to your hotel, uncle.”

“These are my colleagues. They’re innocent. They’re here to help the Palestinian people.”

“Go to your hotel.”

Omar Yussef advanced on the gunman. He managed a smile in Cree’s direction. “It will be okay, James.”

“Don’t get yourself hurt, Abu Ramiz,” Cree said. “They won’t do anything silly with us foreigners, but they might get pissed off at you.”

The gunman put his hand flat against Omar Yussef’s chest. “Uncle, this isn’t your business.”

“I told you, these are my friends.”

“Get out of here, uncle.”

“Is this a kidnapping? Are you taking them somewhere? Then take me.” Omar Yussef tried to hear himself, to measure the calm in his voice. But the words sounded like someone else’s. Someone desperate and shrill.

Cree was talking, stating his role at the UN, and the gunman was shouting and shoving Omar Yussef in the chest and Omar Yussef was pushing himself forward and a gun that had been trained on Cree was turned on Omar Yussef and he looked at the gun and stepped forward onto the barrel and felt it below his collar bone.

“They’re from the UN,” he shouted.

“That’s why we’re taking them, uncle.”

“Then take me. I’m with the UN.”

“We need a foreigner.”

“I’m much more important to the UN than they are. I’m important to the UN’s whole operation in Palestine. Take me.”

“No, uncle.” The gunman growled each word with a thrust of the rifle. His eyes were yellow behind the stocking cap.

“Abu Ramiz, it’s okay. Go to the hotel-” Cree barely had opened his mouth to speak, before the gunman spun and smashed his rifle barrel flat into the Scotsman’s teeth. Cree went to his knees. The gunman pulled his pistol.

He’s going to shoot him. Omar Yussef frantically grabbed the gunman’s arm, but the thickset man shook him off.

The gunman lifted his arm and brought the side of the pistol down flat on the back of Cree’s head. The Scotsman pitched forward toward the dusty blacktop, out cold.

Omar Yussef tried to catch the falling man. He couldn’t hold him, but he lowered him quietly. He stood. “You’re a fool,” he shouted at the gunman. He knew this wasn’t the way to talk yourself out of a hostage situation, but he’d spent an evening dissimulating before Maki for the sake of Eyad Masharawi’s freedom, even hinting that he might be as corrupt as the professor wished him to be. He’d had enough diplomacy. “You’ve killed him. You’ve killed a UN official.”

The other gunmen saw the tall foreigner laid out on the ground and their shouting grew louder with panic. Two of them grabbed Wallender and shoved him into the back of the second jeep. One of them cuffed the Swede across the cheek as he entered the jeep. It roared into the dark, taking four of the gunmen with it. Wallender’s ghostly face glimmered through the window and was gone.

The gunman who had struck Cree stood over the body. He ordered the other gunmen to get going.

Omar Yussef grabbed the gunman’s forearm. “I said, you’ve killed him. Where are you taking the other one?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. This one’s not dead, and I wouldn’t have had to hit him at all if you’d done as you were told, uncle.”

“Don’t call me uncle, you bastard. You’re not from my people. You’re a destroyer of Palestine. Dogs like you disgust me and every decent Palestinian. No one ever tells you how much they hate you to your face, because everyone’s frightened of you. But they hate you nonetheless. I’m not scared, though. I don’t care what you-”

In the dark and the dust and with tears coming to his eyes, Omar Yussef failed to see the pistol, flat in the gunman’s hand. He felt a white flash that shot from the left side of his head through his entire body and exploded out of his eye sockets. The eruption lit Gaza as bright as day and Omar Yussef saw the place clearly. He heard the words Khamis Zeydan had spoken to him in the breakfast room: There is no single, isolated crime in Gaza. Each one is linked to many others, you’ll see. When you touch one of them, it sets off reverberations that will be heard by powerful people, ruthless people. What wickedness had he uncovered that these men should strike back like this? In the split second that the white light flashed around his head, Omar Yussef saw every crime ever committed in Gaza. He would start to solve those crimes when he woke up. He wondered if he would wake up.

The white flash was over and the dust storm had stopped. There was calm inside Omar Yussef. He must have been gone from Gaza.

It was cold and dark when Omar Yussef came to. He shivered and hugged himself, and he heard a voice noting that he had moved. Where is Magnus? he thought. Are they holding us in the same room? He listened for signs that Wallender was there.

Omar Yussef shivered again. A hand lifted his head and fed him water. The movement of his neck was like a spike through his brain and he cried out. The water spilled onto his chin and chest, but he sucked down as much as he could. It tasted like an Alpine spring and he wondered if he was outside in the chilly night. He hoped it was true, because there were no Alps in Gaza, so perhaps he was somewhere else. When he choked, he rolled onto his side. His head gave a single massive pulse of pain with the motion and he bellowed again. A hand rested on his shoulder and patted him. Friendly kidnappers, he thought. Bastards. He pushed the hand away. “Fuck off,” he said.