Legends

Martin shook his head. “My experience has been that you become intimate in order to have sex. Once the sex is out of the way, the intimacy only brings more pain.”

Moving back to her side of the seat, Stella burst out in irritation, “It’s typical of the male of the species to think you become intimate in order to have sex. The female of the species has a more subtle take on the subject—she understands that you have sex in order to become intimate; that intimacy is the ultimate orgasm, since it allows you to get outside of the prison of yourself; get outside your skin and into the skin, the psyche, of another human being. Sex that leads to intimacy is a jailbreak.”

Mustaffah slowed for an Israeli checkpoint, but was waved through when two soldiers peered through the window and mistook the passengers for Jews heading back to one of the settlements. The taxi sped past roadside carts brimming with oranges and zucchinis and restaurants with kabob roasting on spits and garages with cars up on cinder blocks and mechanics flat on their backs underneath them. It slowed again for a flock of sheep that scattered when Mustaffah leaned on the horn. Young Arab women with babies strapped to their backs by a shawl, older women in long robes with heavy bundles balanced on their heads trudged along the side of the road, turning their faces away to avoid the dust kicked up by the Mercedes barreling past.

Half an hour out of Jerusalem, the taxi eased to a stop outside Kiryat Arba next to a sign that read: “Zionist Settlement—‘The more they torture him, the more he will become.’” Martin could see the two guards at the gate in the security fence watching them suspiciously. Both were armed with Uzis, with the ritual tzitzit jutting from under their bullet proof vests. While Stella retrieved the two valises from the trunk of the Mercedes, Martin walked around to the open passenger window to pay Mustaffah. From one of the minarets below, the recorded wail of the muezzin summoning the faithful to midday prayer drifted up to the Jewish settlement. Slipping three ten dollar bills through the window, Martin noticed that the framed license on the glove compartment had a photograph of Mustaffah, but identified him, in English, as Azzam Khouri.

“Why did you tell me your name was Mustaffah?” he asked the driver.

“Mustaffah, he was my brother killed by the Isra’ili army during the Intifada. We was both of us throwing stones at the Jewish tanks and they got mad and started throwing bullets back. Since, my mother calls me Mustaffah to pretend my brother is still being alive. Some days I call myself Mustaffah for the same reason. Somedays I’m not sure who I am. Today is such a day.”

The guards at the gate scrutinized the passports of the visitors. When Stella explained that she was there to see her sister, Ya’ara Ugor-Zhilov, they phoned up to the settlement, a sprawl of stone-faced apartment buildings and one-family houses spilling like lava down several once barren hills toward the Arab city of Hebron. Minutes later a battered pickup appeared at the top of the hill and slowly made its way, its spark plugs misfiring, past the playground teeming with mothers and little children to the gate. A moment later Stella and her sister were clinging to each other. Martin could see Stella talking quietly into the ear of her sister. Elena, or Ya’ara as she was now called, took a step back, shook her head vehemently, then burst into tears and fell back into her sisters arms. The driver of the pickup, a stocky, bearded man in his fifties, wearing black sneakers, a black suit, black tie and black fedora, approached Martin. He inspected him through windowpane-thick bifocals set into wire frames.

“Shalom to you, Mr. Martin Odum,” he said with a distinct Brooklyn accent. “I’m the rabbi Ben Zion. You need to be Stella’s detective friend. I’m right, right?”

“Right on both counts,” Martin said. “I’m a detective and I’m a friend.”

“It’s me, the rabbi who married Ya’ara to Samat,” Ben Zion announced. “If you’re trying to track down Samat and get poor Ya’ara a religious divorce, I’ll give you the time of day. If not, not.”

“How’d you know I was a detective? Or about my tracking down Samat?”

“A little canary told someone in the Shabak, and that someone told yours truly that two tourists who weren’t touring anything but Kiryat Arba could be expected to wash up on our doorstep. Miracle of miracles, here you are.” The rabbi raised a hand to shield his eyes from the noon sun and sized up the Brooklyn detective who had found his way to Kiryat Arba. “So you’re not Jewish, Mr. Odum.”

Behind them the two sisters started to walk up the hill, their arms around each other’s waists. Martin said, “How can you tell?”

Rabbi Ben Zion tossed his head in the direction of Hebron, visible through swells of heat rising from the floor of the valley below them. “You don’t live in the middle of a sea of Arabs without recognizing one of your own when you see him.”