The sky was clear blue, but Omar Yussef knew it was filling with dirt. He felt the first grains of the dust storm on his tongue and it left him short of breath. He stopped to blow his nose, then shuffled on through the hot yard of al-Azhar University behind Magnus Wallender and James Cree. The campus was a snaking collection of three-story rectangles, like a giant game of dominoes washed to the color of milky coffee. Palestinian flags twitched on the roof of the administrative building in the brief stirrings of the wind.
Ahead, Cree held the door open for Wallender, who waited for Omar Yussef to catch up. The door was entirely covered in posters. Most were decorated with the fervent, apprehensive faces of suicide bombers preparing to depart on their missions.
At the end of the hall, they entered an anteroom with two desks, each seating one secretary. Salwa Masharawi’s friend Umm Rateb rose and welcomed them. She smiled, with her head lilting to the left. “Peace be upon you, ustaz.”
“And upon you, peace,” Omar Yussef responded.
“Professor Maki has just arrived from his home after lunch,” she said in English.
Omar Yussef noticed Wallender glance up at the clock on the wall. It was 4:30 p.m.
“I will tell him you’re here,” Umm Rateb continued. “Please take a seat.”
Wallender and Cree sat. Omar Yussef leaned against a filing cabinet. He read the label on the top drawer. Degree Records: Alif to Ha. He thought of Nadia and her computer: Palestinians always want things on paper. Computers will never really catch on here. The other secretary tapped at her keyboard and the printer next to her desk hummed.
Umm Rateb returned from the inner office. “Please come in,” she said.
Omar Yussef followed the foreigners into the office. The shades were down, but the overhead light was bright, and the air-conditioning was stealthily effective. Professor Adnan Maki stood behind a desk designed to look stylish and expensive. Varnished to the color of strong tea, it swept in a curve that took it ninety degrees from the flashy black telephone at one end to a computer at the other, its shiny surface uninterrupted by papers or any other sign that work was performed upon it. Behind the desk, a Palestinian flag was draped from an upright pole. On either side of the flag, Maki had hung photographs of himself, smiling with the current president on the left and, on the right, embracing the old president.
Maki had a long, protruding upper lip and a receding chin that made him look equine, but not thoroughbred. Deep lines ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. He was about the same age as Omar Yussef, but he carried no paunch and moved quickly. His small, greedy eyes were so black and wet, they looked like tadpoles spawning.
“Welcome, welcome,” Maki said, eagerly, in English.
He bent forward, almost flat across the desk, to shake hands as they introduced themselves. He smelled strongly of expensive cologne. When he asked Umm Rateb to bring drinks, he leaned still closer to his guests and reached out an arm with the palm quizzically opened. “Tea or coffee?” He looked at his watch. “Or is it late enough for something a little stronger?” He giggled and put his hand to his mouth, exuberant to the point of clownishness.
Umm Rateb wagged a finger. “Hamas will come and burn down your office for your bad morals, Abu Nabil.”
Maki laughed loudly. “Umm Rateb, Mister Cree is English-”
“Scottish,” Cree said.
“Even better. The land of whisky. Surely, Umm Rateb, you will allow me to welcome my guests as their culture sees fit. Where are you from, Mister-”
“Wallender. I’m from Sweden.”
“Sweden? You are all drunk all the time in Sweden.”
Wallender flinched.
“Umm Rateb, you see? I know what our friends would like. And I’m sure that our brother here”-he gestured to Omar Yussef-“is no Islamist.”
“I no longer drink alcohol,” Omar Yussef said.
“A hellraiser in your younger days, were you, Abu Ramiz?”
“The hell was all on the inside,” Omar Yussef replied.
“I will have tea, please,” Wallender said.
“Very well, tea for everyone, Umm Rateb, and for me a coffee.”
Wallender watched the secretary go. “Is it acceptable to drink alcohol in Gaza?”
“Not in public. The Islamists actually burn places down if alcohol is served-the old Windmill Hotel, your UN Club. But I’m only teasing Umm Rateb. She’s religious, you know, with the headscarf. She understands that I don’t open the special bottom drawer of this desk until she goes home for the day.” Maki tapped the wood playfully. “Mister Cree, last year I went to Scotland. An old professor at the University of St. Andrews invited me to lecture about the Jews and the occupation and the suffering of the people in Gaza. A very sympathetic old gentleman. He served me a fine whisky in his office. Now, when my secretaries go home at the end of the day, I imagine that I’m not in Gaza. Instead, I’m transported to the office of that jolly professor in Scotland.”
“I’d rather be in Gaza myself,” Cree said firmly.
That surprised Omar Yussef. He snapped his head around to look at Cree.
“Then you will agree to swap passports with me, Mister Cree,” Maki said.
Cree smiled, but it could just as easily have been a contortion of pain. “Only if I get your VIP card.”
“I don’t have one. The Israelis refuse to give me one. Me, a member of the Revolutionary Council and head of the national university. No VIP card.” Maki lifted both his arms wide to indicate the astonishing and incomprehensible nature of this outrage. “Of course, I should be among the VIPs. All the top officials are issued this card by Israel under the terms of our peace agreement. The VIPs pass easily with their vehicles through the Israeli checkpoints. They don’t have to wait in long lines with the ordinary workers.”
“That doesn’t seem fair to the workers,” Wallender said.
Umm Rateb brought the tea, placing the glasses along the curving edge of the desk.
“Fair, Mister Wallender?” Maki’s arms reached wider still and his voice touched falsetto. “Is it fair that someone like me, with such senior positions and such pressure on his time, should have to wait in the cattle pens with ordinary workers?”
“Cattle pens?”
“Surely on your arrival you passed the metal barriers and the cages? It’s crowded and there’s pushing and shoving. The smell is repulsive.” Maki laughed and slapped the desk top. “Last week, I traveled through the checkpoint. One of the Israeli soldiers, he saw my clothes.” Maki lifted the lapel of his sports coat and rubbed it between his fingers to illustrate its fine cut. “The workers wear dirty old T-shirts and trousers covered in paint and filth from their construction jobs in Israel. So the soldier asked me who I was. When I told him, he lifted his rifle and pushed a path through all the workers for me to pass.” Maki mimed the action of the soldier thrusting aside the laborers with his rifle-butt to make way for him. He laughed and clapped his hands.
Wallender and Cree watched the professor with unsettled smiles. Omar Yussef looked down at his hands.
“Were we processed in the VIP office this morning, Abu Ramiz?” Wallender asked.
“Yes, we were.”
“Ah,” said Maki, jabbing a finger at Omar Yussef, “but you are no VIP.”
Omar Yussef looked at the tiny, wet eyes. This was no time to speak his mind. He lifted the lapel of his jacket and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger as Maki had done.
Maki laughed and reached his hand high. Omar Yussef held out his palm and Maki slapped it in appreciation, then repeated the lapel-rubbing gesture and clapped in delight. “Welcome, welcome,” he said.
Omar Yussef nodded to Wallender. They could move on to business now.
“Thank you for receiving us, Professor,” Wallender said. “Abu Ramiz and I have come to Gaza to inspect the UN schools in the refugee camps.”
“Fine work.”
“But our inspection begins with a troublesome note,” Wallender continued.
“Difficulties with the Israelis at the checkpoint?” Maki flicked his hand at Omar Yussef, whom he clearly assumed would have been the source of any such problem.
“No, one of our teachers has been arrested. He works part-time for you at the university and-”
“This arrest was not to do with his work at the university.”
“You know who I mean?” Wallender sat up straight.
“Yes, yes. This terrible Masharawi fellow.” Maki’s hand flicked once more, this time dismissing the incarcerated husband of Salwa Masharawi.
“Eyad Masharawi,” Wallender said. “He was arrested this morning.”
“It’s nothing to do with the university, as I say.”
“But when he was arrested, the police took away all the exam papers he set for his university students.”
“How do you know this?” Smiling and exuberant, Maki swiveled his head back and forth between Cree and Wallender. “Did the police tell you?”
“We went to see Masharawi’s wife,” Wallender replied.
“How can you believe a word she says? She’s a troublemaker like her husband.” The professor’s nostrils flared, as though confronted with a smell so vile it could penetrate even the wall of cologne around him.
“She showed us where the papers had been. Now they aren’t there.”
“And what papers? Just university papers? Who knows? I believe the security forces are investigating more than the shocking examination questions alone.”
Wallender looked at Cree. Cree nodded.
“Masharawi accused the university of selling fake degrees to policemen,” Wallender said.
“I’m not short of students who wish to pay for an education. Why should I sell fake degrees?”
“I said it was the university that was accused of selling the degrees, not you,” Wallender said.
“I am the university, sir. I’ve built it from nothing since 1991, when the Old Man told me to set up an institution here to rival the Islamic University.” He gestured toward the photo on the wall of himself in a clinch with the deceased president. “We have two hundred teachers. One of them makes complaints-this is Masharawi. One hundred and ninety-nine don’t complain. And we have tens of thousands of students. Are they all to understand that their degrees are devalued by the accusations of one man? It’s a scandalous attack.”
Omar Yussef sipped the last of his tea and put the glass back on Maki’s desk. “Are there students at the university who belong to the security forces?” he asked.
“Yes, and from all the struggling groups.”
“Struggling groups?” Wallender said.
“The professor means the militias that fight the Israelis,” Omar Yussef said.
“You might know them as terrorists.” Maki laughed and shrugged.
“Are there students who are officers in the Preventive Security?” Omar Yussef asked.
“If you bring me a name, I can get the file on that student from the office there where Umm Rateb sits. In the file, you will find his high school certificate, to show that he’s qualified to study for a degree here. Then, when they graduate, you will see the record of all the classes they passed to earn their rightful qualification, as well as the payments they made for tuition.”
“Did the Preventive Security contact you about Professor Masharawi?” Omar Yussef asked.
“Please, he’s not a professor. He’s a part-time lecturer.”
He’s no VIP, either, Omar Yussef thought. “Did they contact you?”
“I went to them. Masharawi made dangerous allegations against the university and against me, and even the government itself. He refused to retract. So I went to the Preventive Security about this.”
“You asked them to arrest Masharawi?” Wallender sat forward on his seat, his back stiff.
“No, they didn’t arrest him for this offense, as I told you. But still, I believe he should be brought to account for this, too.”
“Then why was he arrested?” Wallender asked.
“I asked Colonel al-Fara about Masharawi this morning and he told me there are far more serious allegations against him than the responsibility for distributing scandalous exam papers.” Maki lowered his voice to a whisper. “There’s evidence of a connection between Masharawi and the CIA. I’m as
astonished as you. Yes, perhaps even the CIA.”
Cree blew air through his pursed lips and clicked his tongue. Omar Yussef gripped the arms of his chair. Wallender cleared his throat.
“You understand, Professor Maki, that we must pursue this case, because Masharawi is also an employee of the UN,” Wallender said. “He’s our responsibility.”
“Surely it’s an internal Palestinian matter. You needn’t concern yourselves.”
“The international community will view this very seriously.” Wallender’s voice betrayed some impatience. “For a university administrator to request police intervention in a matter of academic freedom is a shocking development.”
“Academic freedom? It was a slander.”
“You believe the allegations were a slander aimed at you personally?” Wallender said.
“Me and the university. It’s the same thing.” Maki made himself smaller, calmer. He put a hand to his forehead and lowered his voice. “It’s upsetting for me, too, gentlemen. As a gesture of my good faith, let me suggest that I make contact with the people conducting the investigation and report to you tomorrow. Perhaps if the brother Abu Ramiz would consent to come to my house tomorrow night for dinner, I will give him good news about this case. At least, I will be able to impart details of which you are currently ignorant, about the depths of Masharawi’s crimes.”
Omar Yussef knew why Maki wanted to split him away from the foreigners. There would be appeals to him in the name of the Palestinian struggle. There might even be a payoff to persuade him to throw the UN men off the scent. Still, Omar Yussef considered that, just as Maki thought he could better persuade his fellow Palestinian alone, he also might be able to manipulate the university president through the subtleties of their native language. “I would be very happy to come, Abu Nabil.”
“Welcome, welcome,” Maki said, turning up his volume again.