The Collaborator of Bethlehem Read Online Free Page B

silent. They knew enough of Omar Yussef’s strictness not to speak in class unless he appeared to be in a very good mood, which rarely applied to the opening of the morning session at 7:30 A.M. But one girl was too animated to hold herself back. Khadija Zubeida entered quickly and excitedly. She was tall and thin with black hair cut in a bob. There was an early bloom of acne high on both of her pale cheeks. Before she sat, she leaned over the desks of two friends: “My dad called me before I came to school,” she told them. “He arrested a collaborator. The one who helped the Israelis kill the martyr in Irtas. He said they’re going to execute the traitor.” She spoke in a whisper, but in the quiet classroom it was audible to all, as was the snigger that punctuated it.
    “Who was it?” one of her friends asked.
    “The collaborator? He’s a damned Christian from Beit Jala. Saba, I think. He led the Jews right to the man in Irtas, who was a great fighter, and he delivered the final blow with a big knife that the Jews gave him.”
    Omar Yussef put down his pen before the shaking of his hand could propel it across the table. He shoved the exercise book away from him and put his head in his hands to gather his thoughts. They had taken George, he was sure of it. He coughed to steady his voice. “Khadija,” he called to the girl, hoarsely. “Which Saba?”
    “I think he’s called George, ustaz . George Saba. My dad says he keeps dirty statues of women in his house and he offered to let the arresting officer take his daughter instead.”
    The girls clicked their tongues and shook their heads.
    “The Christian confessed, too. He said, ‘I know why you came here. You came here because I sold myself to the Jews.’ My dad gave him a good thump after he confessed.”
    Omar Yussef stood and leaned against his desk. “Come here,” he said, sharply. As the girl approached him, a little confused, he considered giving her the same blow her father claimed to have aimed at the collaborator. But he knew he must try harder than that: he was a schoolteacher, not a police thug. He wondered what the girl saw from the other side of the desk. He knew that his own eyes were tearing with rage and the slack fold beneath his chin trembled. He must have seemed pitiful, or deeply unnerving. “What do I teach you to do in this classroom?”
    The girl looked dumbly at Omar Yussef.
    “How do I teach you to look at history?” Omar Yussef waited. He stared closely at the girl. There was no reply, so he went on. “I teach you to look at the evidence and then to decide what you think about a particular sultan, or about the causes of a war.”
    “Yes, that’s right,” the girl said, relieved.
    “So how do you know that this man was a collaborator?”
    “My dad told me.”
    “Who’s your father?”
    “Sergeant Mahmoud Zubeida, General Intelligence, Rapid Reaction Force.”
    “Did he do the investigation, from start to finish?”
    The girl looked perplexed.
    “No, of course, he didn’t,” Omar Yussef said. “So you’d need to talk to all those who did investigate the case before you could come to the conclusion that this man was a collaborator.
    Wouldn’t you?”
    “He confessed.”
    “Did he confess to you? In person? You’d need to talk to him. To understand him. To talk to his friends. Most of all, you’d need to find his motive for collaborating. Did he do it for money? Maybe he already has a lot of money and has no need of more. So then why would he do it? Was there anyone else who might have done it to set him up? Maybe a business rival?”
    The girl shifted from foot to foot and scratched at the spots on her cheek. Omar Yussef saw that Khadija was about to cry. He knew that he was shouting now and leaning very close to the girl across the desk, but he didn’t care. He was infuriated by the ignorance of an entire generation and saw it concentrated in this girl’s thin shoulders and blank face.
    “How could I know all