Hamza rocked his head from side to side on his thick neck. “I don’t seem familiar to you?”

Omar Yussef swallowed. “You do look like someone with whom I had a run-in a couple of years ago.”

“Hussein Tamari.”

“The gunman. The head of the Martyrs Brigades in Bethlehem.”

“He was my uncle, may Allah have mercy upon him.”

“May his lost years be added to yours by Allah to lengthen your life,” Omar Yussef mumbled. “Your uncle and I-”

“It’s in the past, ustaz.”

Omar Yussef examined the damp, dark eyes of the big detective and wondered if his conflict with the man’s uncle was truly forgotten.

“I hadn’t seen him for years, anyway,” Hamza said. “My father brought me to Brooklyn when I was barely a teenager. All those things, the intifada, the Israeli occupation, they seem so far away.”

“Lucky for you.”

Hamza sucked his back teeth and tapped his fingernail against his notebook. “If you don’t mind, ustaz?”

Omar Yussef gestured with his open palm for the detective to continue.

“What time did you arrive at the apartment?”

“It was noon. I checked my watch, because I couldn’t believe that the sun would be so obscured at that hour.” Omar Yussef glanced at his wristwatch and noticed that Nizar’s blood still smeared its face. He took out his handkerchief and rubbed it away.

“Where were you before you came here?”

“My hotel in Manhattan. I’m here for a conference at the UN.”

Hamza raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not so important,” Omar Yussef said. “It’s a conference on the ‘situation in Palestine.’ I’m supposed to give a talk on the UN school system in the refugee camps. I dropped off my bags at my hotel and came here to see my son.”

“And before you got to the hotel?”

“I took a taxi to Manhattan from the airport,” Omar Yussef said.

“What time did your flight land?”