Matt Rees - A grave in Gaza

“Just as all this was starting, Doctor Najjar called me from the morgue,” he said. “He found the stopper from one of these in Bassam Odwan’s throat. The prisoner choked on it.”

Khamis Zeydan sniffed a dark liquid at the bottom of another piece of partially smashed crystal. “Brandy. Do you suppose Husseini asked Odwan over for a cozy drink?”

Khamis Zeydan went into the other rooms to look around. Omar Yussef weighed the neck of the decanter in his hand and rolled it against the soft part of his throat below his Adam’s apple. Its cold touch on his sagging skin returned him to the choking moments of his nightmare. He shuddered and he put it on the table.

A siren approached along the beach road. Omar Yussef felt his pulse tick faster. When you hear a siren, he thought, you can’t help but think that they’re coming for you. A turquoise police jeep rolled to a halt near Husseini’s body. Five policemen jumped from the back of the jeep and an officer joined them from the front seat. They stood in an indecisive huddle a few yards from the corpse. The officer approached Husseini and stood over him. He pushed back his blue beret and scratched his forehead.

Khamis Zeydan came to watch at Omar Yussef’s shoulder. “I look forward to an energetic investigation from the security forces,” he said, smiling.

“Don’t you have a meeting to go to?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Khamis Zeydan said, surprised by his friend’s angry tone.

“You people on the Revolutionary Council, you kill one another and then you hold a meeting and you make peace until the next time you decide to murder each other,” Omar Yussef shouted. “Meanwhile, it’s ordinary people like that poor damned coffee boy on the floor over there who pay the price.”

“You think I like it that way?”

“You seem to do all right from this system, despite your cynicism about it.”

“What do you mean?” Khamis Zeydan put a cigarette in his mouth and reached into his pocket for his lighter.

“Who’s paying for your nice hotel room? And your expensive dinners? And your apartment in Bethlehem? And the booze you reek of right now? And the stupid smokes that are killing you?” Omar Yussef slapped the cigarette from Khamis Zeydan’s mouth.

The police commander on the road below looked up at the third floor window. He pointed and spoke to two of his men, who ran toward Husseini’s building.

“The cigarettes? You’re worried about my health?” Khamis Zeydan took another cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “I didn’t know you cared, my dear.”

“Don’t make a joke of this.”

“Back home in Bethlehem, I admit you’d be right to worry about me,” Khamis Zeydan said. He gripped Omar Yussef’s arm, his eyes wide and excited. “But in Gaza you’ve got it all wrong. In Bethlehem I drink because of depression, loneliness, disgust with my life. In Gaza it’s all action, and I have to admit that I thrive on it. The smoke-filled rooms, the dirty maneuvers, and the violence. In Gaza, I drink because it’s part of the biggest buzz imaginable. Even this incident this morning gives me a kick.”

Omar Yussef pushed the police chief’s hand away.

“It’s true,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Here I am, the man you call your friend. I’m not proud of it and I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but Gaza feels like the good old days, back in Lebanon with the Old Man, before we messed everything up.”

“By Allah, what could be more messed up than Gaza?” Omar Yussef said.

“The truth is, we should’ve stayed underground forever. We can’t govern.”

“This place is governed according to the rules of the Middle Ages.”

“Come on, history teacher. No lectures.”

There were footsteps on the staircase.

“Feuding emirs, unnamable fear you can taste in every particle of dust in this storm, and death,” Omar Yussef said. “Death even for those like Husseini who’re accustomed to wielding it.” Omar Yussef grabbed his friend’s shoulders so that their faces were close. “That’s not history. That’s the present.”

One of the policemen arrived in the doorway, panting. He leveled his Kalashnikov. Omar Yussef laughed with a rasping exhalation. He walked toward the door.

“Identify yourself,” the policeman said. He was slim and young and his thin mustache twitched.

Omar Yussef glared at him. “I’m the Emir Saladin, that’s who I am. Now get out of my way, I’m going to eat breakfast. There’s a boy in that room who’s dead because you were too busy eating your breakfast to do your job.”

The policeman stepped back and dropped the barrel of his rifle to his knees. A second policeman came up the stairs, breathing heavily. He looked with confusion at Omar Yussef and leaned against the banister to let him pass.

Omar Yussef was into his second serving of scrambled eggs when Khamis Zeydan weaved across the breakfast room, his grim face fixed on the floor to avoid conversation with the Revolutionary Council delegates at the other tables. Though the politicians and their aides occupied almost every chair, the room was subdued in the wake of Husseini’s execution. They fiddled with their napkins, nervous and darkly expectant, staring into their coffees with hunted expressions.

Omar Yussef drained his cup and wiped his lips on his napkin as the Bethlehem police chief reached his table.

“To your double health,” Khamis Zeydan said.

“I may have finally found my appetite, but I can’t associate anything in Gaza, even the food, with health.” Omar Yussef cleared his throat and looked at his plate. “I’m sorry for my outburst back there. After seeing the bodies of Husseini and the guards and the coffee boy, well, it was all too much for me.”

Khamis Zeydan waved his hand and chose to ignore the heart of Omar Yussef’s earlier accusations. “No, you were right. I ought to smoke less.” He sat next to Omar Yussef, though he perched on the seat restlessly. He unfolded a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. “This is the Saladin Brigades leaflet about Husseini’s death,” he whispered.

Omar Yussef raised his eyebrows and buttered his toast. “They type fast, don’t they?”

“It says that Husseini was killed by the Brigades, because he was a collaborator who killed ‘the struggler and brother Bassam Odwan after first administering tortures that were cruel and characteristic.’ That means the Husseini Manicure, doesn’t it? How did they know about that?”

“I told Sami about it,” Omar Yussef said. “He said they have spies in the prisons.”

“The leaflet accuses Husseini of working to undermine the resistance and arresting its most important fighters.” Khamis Zeydan placed the single sheet of paper on the table.

Omar Yussef glanced at the leaflet and ate a triangle of toast in three bites. As he chewed, he peeled a boiled egg with his fingers, cut it in two, salted it and ate one half. After a day and a night without food, he was ravenous.

“You’re eating like a condemned man with his last meal,” Khamis Zeydan said. He waited for Omar Yussef to meet his eye. “There’s an emergency session of the Revolutionary Council in twenty minutes. To discuss the Husseini assassination and to see how the security forces should respond.” Khamis Zeydan looked about the breakfast room. At the other tables, delegates were rising, brushing crumbs from their elegant suits and issuing murmured orders to their aides. “What’re you going to do?”

Omar Yussef swallowed. “What does a condemned man usually do after his last meal?” He ate the second half of the egg.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Khamis Zeydan said. “Ignore that remark. It was a joke. The British call it gallows humor. ”