Matt Rees - A grave in Gaza

Cree swallowed. “I suppose not.” His voice was low and dark.

Omar Yussef cursed and slammed a hand down on the nightstand. The motion bounced him slightly on the bed and his glass of water spilled on the crotch of his pants.

Cree seemed to take pity on him. He put a convivial hand on Khamis Zeydan’s back, pointed at Omar Yussef and lightened his tone. “My Arabic’s not so great, but I made out some of what Abu Ramiz said to the gunmen during the hold up. ‘I’m much more important to the UN than they are. I’m important to the whole UN operation in Palestine,’ he said. Look, here he is, the UN’s big fish, with his trousers underwater.” Cree and Zeydan laughed. Sami squeezed Omar Yussef’s knee, reassuringly.

Khamis Zeydan clinked glasses with Cree to celebrate the joke. “You used to have a nice quiet life, Abu Ramiz,” he said. “These days you seem to attract trouble. Last year with the gunmen in Bethlehem, and now here with the Saladin Brigades and only Allah knows who else. What happened?”

“I’m the same as I ever was,” Omar Yussef said. “There’s just more trouble to go around.”

Khamis Zeydan woke Omar Yussef every two hours, in case he had a concussion. Each time he awoke, Omar Yussef stared in confusion and wondered why James Cree was drinking and humming a tune at the foot of his bed. At eight, the Brigadier roused him as Sami entered the room.

“General Husseini will see us at nine-thirty,” Sami said. “He wants you to have breakfast with him at his home.”

Omar Yussef breathed slowly. I recall who General Husseini is, but why does he want to have breakfast with me? It took him some seconds to remember. He rubbed his head. Clearly it had been a stronger blow than he had realized. He glanced at Khamis Zeydan. He saw from the tension in his friend’s tired eyes that his confusion had been noticed.

“You need to have all your wits about you to handle a snake like Husseini,” Khamis Zeydan said. “You’re in no condition to go up against him.”

“I’ll play the strong silent type and leave the talking to James,” Omar Yussef said. “He seems fine.”

Cree was whistling “ Flowers of the Forest ”. He raised his glass. The whisky was down near the bottom of the label on the bottle. “I’m on top of my game, lads. Fresh as a daisy. You leave it to me.”

Khamis Zeydan whispered to Omar Yussef. “That one phoned the UN people to alert them about Magnus while you were sleeping. He slurred his speech. He’s in no better shape than you.”

“By Allah, I’m not afraid,” Omar Yussef said. He reached out, caught Khamis Zeydan’s elbow and pulled him close. “I just feel as though Gaza is too complicated for me to understand where I’m treading.”

“I warned you.”

Omar Yussef rubbed his eyes and growled. “Military Intelligence, Preventive Security, the Saladin Brigades of Gaza City and their rivals in the Saladin Brigades of Rafah. It’s as though I have to find room in my head for every square kilometer of Gaza and space for every soldier in all these different groups, to keep track of them.”

“Do you want me to draw you a diagram?”

“Magnus’s life depends on these people and I don’t know which of them to trust.” Omar Yussef could hear the desperation in his voice. Am I breaking down? he wondered. I mustn’t. Magnus needs me.

“Let me make it simple for you.” Khamis Zeydan took both of Omar Yussef’s hands and looked hard at him. “Forget all of these groups. Trust none of them. Think only of the man who sits in front of you at any given time. Forget his name and his organization. Just remember that at that moment he’s first in line to eat you alive.”

“It’s a long queue.”

“Gaza is full of nasty gourmands.”

Sami brought newspapers from the lobby. None of them mentioned Wallender’s kidnapping, but Husseini would know their reason for coming. Omar Yussef wondered why the general’s guards had disappeared in the moments before the ambush. What did Husseini know about the kidnapping?

Omar Yussef pushed his legs off the side of the bed. He removed his bandage in front of the bathroom mirror. A lump rose from the end of his jaw to the tip of his eyebrow, black and red and purple. His upper neck was emerald green. He ruffled the white hair above his ear; the skin beneath was the color of pine needles. The wiry gray tufts inside his ear were sticky with drying blood. He stared at his pupils. One seemed bigger than the other-he thought that was a sign of concussion. Well, he was having enough difficulty thinking straight; what more proof did he need that he was concussed? He got into the shower and let the briny water run over his stiff back.

At nine-thirty, Omar Yussef put on a clean, short-sleeved shirt and transferred the notepaper on which he’d written Nadia’s web address to the breast pocket, along with the Saladin Brigades leaflet and the black Mont Blanc fountain pen he usually kept in his jacket. He walked unsteadily down the hotel stairs with Cree and Sami. From behind her computer at the reception desk, Meisoun smiled flirtatiously at Sami, gave Omar Yussef a sympathetic look, and wished him health. He thought of asking her to call up Nadia’s website, but there was no time for that now. It worried him that he could consider such a trifle when Wallender’s life might be at stake. He touched the bruise on his head and wondered if it truly had affected his judgment. He thanked Meisoun for her good wishes.

The moment he stepped into the dust cloud, thicker yet than it had been the day before, he knew this would not be the day of health the receptionist had wished for him. Sami crossed the beach road and clapped a big handshake on the officer in the guard hut outside General Husseini’s house. The other guards, their mouths wrapped with checkered keffiyehs against the dusty air, regarded Omar Yussef and Cree with narrow, suspicious eyes. Sami gestured for them to follow him.

The officer led them into the building, still holding Sami’s hand.

Husseini’s home was laid out like an apartment block. The lower floors were home to the General’s sons and their families. He kept his wife on the sixth floor and saw her as often as anyone would who had been married thirty years and had to climb six flights of stairs to get there. The third floor was where he entertained.

When Omar Yussef caught up to the others at the door of Husseini’s reception room, Cree was staring out of the window, swaying, blowing air through pursed lips like an athlete building concentration before a race. The officer’s hand was poised to knock on the door. He smiled at Omar Yussef, who nodded for him to proceed. The schoolteacher inhaled as much air as he could, but the dust in the staircase was almost as thick as it had been outside. A guard opened the shiny rosewood door.

“Enter, and may Allah grant you a safe entry into Paradise,” the tall officer said, before returning to his post downstairs.

General Husseini’s reception room was the width of the building and occupied almost its whole length. It wasn’t the kind of place you could pick up on a police officer’s salary; this was the fruit of years of corruption. Four sets of lounge furniture each sectioned off a different area of the room in a neat square, so that a large party could divide into smaller conversational groups. The sofas and armchairs in each set were in different pastels, with gaudy whirling patterns like a cheap sweater. The far wall sparkled with crystal glasses and decanters in a glass cabinet. A long dinner table and a dozen bentwood chairs stood along the far side of the room. Above the table, there was a chandelier that looked like it had been made in the same workshop as the louche number in Professor Maki’s dining room. Omar Yussef noticed with an apprehensive stirring in his stomach that the table was, indeed, set for breakfast.