Matt Rees - A grave in Gaza

“We can’t do that. Where will the soldier’s bones rest?”

Sami was working up a sweat, down to his chest in the sandy earth, the bandage on his shoulder bloody. Omar Yussef felt the air growing warm as the sun came up.

He thought of Lieutenant Fathi Salah, a good student and later a decent officer, but a poor man with a bad brother who pressured him to make the missile deal with the Saladin Brigades. Fathi couldn’t carry out Yasser’s dirty trade and lost his nerve. When Fathi blurted the location of the missile to Odwan, his brother shot him dead. Omar Yussef remembered Professor Adnan Maki’s dinner lecture about the alien invaders who had come to Gaza over the centuries, including these British men in the graves under his feet. But it wasn’t the outsiders who exacted the highest cost in blood from Gaza; it was the men like Yasser Salah who killed their brothers.

“Abu Ramiz.” Sami tossed the shovel out of the grave. He lifted a plywood box onto its end. It was the length of a coffin, but it was bound with wire and the wood was bright and new.

Wallender helped Sami lift the box onto the grass. Sami sent Jouda back to his yard for wire clippers. He smiled at Omar Yussef, admiring and puzzled. When Jouda returned, Sami cut the wire and beat open the nailed lid of the box with the handle of the spade.

The missile was gray and surprisingly narrow-no wider than a toddler’s torso. A yellow stripe circled it near its pointed tip and another by the fins at its base. Three foam inserts held it in place and it was packed tight with plastic ballast bags.

“Suleiman, call the hospital and talk to Doctor Najjar, the pathologist. Tell him you’ve found where the missing bones belong,” Omar Yussef said. “Tell him I’ll call the morgue to explain, as soon as I can.”

The caretaker hurried toward his house.

Omar Yussef bent to close the lid of the missile crate.

“What’s this all about?” Wallender asked.

“This is the Saladin I,” Omar Yussef said. He knocked the lid into place with the heel of his hand.

Sami came close to Omar Yussef. “How are you intending to destroy this missile, Abu Ramiz?”

“Destroy it?” Omar Yussef laughed. “We’re going to sell it.”

As the wind dropped, the dust cloud settled in a final gritty film over Emile Zola Street. Omar Yussef blinked at the sky. A deep blue came through the dirt for the first time in four days. The tricolor at the French Cultural Center, next door to Maki’s house, dangled from its pole as though it were wilting in the early morning heat. Sami idled the Jeep at the curb. He rapped his fist on the plywood missile crate, which rested over the folded rear-seats, and gave a thumbs-up. Omar Yussef nodded to him and pressed the buzzer at the professor’s gate.

The blue metal door swung open and Omar Yussef entered the garden of luxuriant bushes and tall palms. He calmed himself with a deep breath and noted that it was the first time in days he had inhaled without also swallowing a handful of sand. By the fountain, the plastic doe stretched her neck from behind a bush, and Omar Yussef let her snout nuzzle into the crust of blood and sweat on his bandaged palm.

The Sri Lankan maid awaited him at the wide mahogany door. She paid no attention to the dirt that covered his face and hair, or the blood smeared across the belly of his shirt where he had stanched the flow from his slashed palms. He wondered what strange people came through this entrance that the tiny woman could take in, with a polite smile, such a horrific apparition as he must surely have presented.

“Professor Adnan is not yet up,” she said. “But, if you’re in a hurry, I will tell him you’re here.”

“Please do. Thank you.”

The maid went to fetch Adnan Maki. Omar Yussef pulled one of the bentwood chairs from under the dining table, so as not to dirty the sofa and make work for her. His back ached and his head pounded. Magnus would be washing and shaving back at the Sands Hotel now, and he wondered how soon he would be able to do the same thing. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and it showered a dusting of dirt onto the shiny tabletop. He wiped the earth away with the edge of his hand. His bandage left a damp smear on the polished surface. He drew in his breath and shook his head.

The Sri Lankan returned. She smiled and suggested a coffee. Omar Yussef asked her to make it without sugar and she went to the kitchen. He was listening to the muted sounds of her preparations, when he noticed Maki watching him from beside the Chinese cloisonne screen that masked the hallway. Maki wore a red silk dressing gown and cream silk pajamas. His gray hair was tousled. Omar Yussef looked at his wristwatch. It was eight-thirty.

“Morning of light, Abu Nabil,” he said.

“Morning of joy,” Maki said. His voice was quiet. He stared at Omar Yussef, yawned and rubbed his hands across his face to wake himself up.

“I’m sorry to disturb you.”

Maki seemed to shake off his sleepiness in an instant. He was as loud and vivacious as ever. “Not at all, Abu Ramiz. I welcome you to breakfast with me. If good company is rare in Gaza at dinnertime, then at breakfast it’s something never to be experienced.” He leered.

Omar Yussef wondered what kind of company Maki kept at breakfast in his Paris apartment, away from the conservative watchers of Gaza. It probably wasn’t much more classy than Omar Yussef must have looked at the moment. “I apologize for my appearance.”

“Would you like to clean up in the bathroom? What on earth has happened to you?”

The Sri Lankan brought the coffee. Maki told her to bring out a plate of croissants and toast.

“I’m really not hungry, Abu Nabil,” Omar Yussef said.

“No, no, I insist we enjoy an unhurried breakfast, the two of us.” Maki sat at the table. “I very much welcome your excellent company. The Revolutionary Council meetings are over. My cultured friends among the delegates are returning to the West Bank. All is once again deathly quiet in Gaza. Deathly, deathly, deathly.”

Omar Yussef detected a deeper layer of meaning in the repetition of Maki’s last word. Perhaps Maki had seen Omar Yussef’s notes on the back of the Saladin Brigades leaflet after all. But it didn’t matter now. Omar Yussef held the trump card.

“I didn’t come for cultured talk. I want to do business,” he said.

Maki tilted his head and opened his hand.

“I have something to offer, as a trade,” Omar Yussef said.

The Sri Lankan came with a plate of pastries. Maki pushed it across the table to Omar Yussef, smiling. “Is this another deal for the freedom of your friend Professor Masharawi?” he said.

“You know as well as I do that Masharawi’s dead,” Omar Yussef said.

The smile was gone from Maki’s face. He pulled the plate back across the table and bit into a chocolate croissant. As he chewed, the wet, black, tadpole eyes narrowed until they were hard and cunning. He wiped a few flakes of pastry from his wide upper lip. “I don’t know that quite as well as you do, but it’s true that I do know it.”

“I have the Saladin I.”

“The what?”

“The prototype missile that you and Yasser Salah stole from the Saladin Brigades.”

“I don’t know what you mean. Who is Yasser Salah?” Maki lowered his chin like a dog preparing to pounce.

Omar Yussef fought against his tiredness for concentration. “Yasser Salah was a Preventive Security officer in Rafah. You sold him his university degrees, so he could obtain promotion.”

“He was a Preventive Security officer, you said?”

“He’s dead now. Buried alive in his smuggling tunnel beneath the Egyptian border. I went to his house last night and found my kidnapped Swedish colleague there, thankfully still in good shape.”