Matt Beynon Rees

"The Collaborator of Bethlehem" presents us with an unlikely detective, Omar Yussef. Actually, he's not a detective at all, but a grandfather and a schoolteacher in a UN school in the Palestinian territories. He can be short-tempered and impulsive in the conclusions he draws. He can be cranky, and those he is beloved by some, is considered with suspicion and contempt by others.

Setting a mystery in the complex political context of Palestine adds a lot of flavor to the story. I have spent time show more myself in the so-called "Christian Triangle" where this novel is set (comprised of the three municipalities of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahour), and I could envision all the scenes of the story. All seemed quite plausible and real.

One reservation: I suppose it's difficult to enter any discussion of the Palestinian situation without entering into some kind of political debate--even if what we're talking about is only a murder mystery. But in Matt Rees' allusions to the status of Palestinian Christians, he seems to leave the impression that the decimation of the Christian population in the Holy Land is largely due to hostile Christian-Muslim relations. Unquestionably, those relations have deteriorated over the years. But in my time in Bethlehem and environs, all my interactions were with Christians, and to a person they all told me that the prime reason for the Christian exodus from their ancient homeland was the difficulties posed by the Israeli occupation. Indeed, they perceived many of the tensions that existed between Christians and Muslims were stoked by Israelis, who saw the advantages in dividing the Palestinian community.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and was eager to follow its twists. It conveyed the truth that living in the Occupied Territories today, it is hard to know from day to day whom to trust or believe. show less

Omar Yussef travels with a UN official and a crotchety Scottish military man to find out why a school teacher has been dismissed. Omar Yussef ends up deeply entangled in the messy and corrupt politics of Gaza and a plan to smuggle a powerful weapon in through tunnels. I found this book angrier than his first, and somehow less satisfying because there is less about Palestinian society that balances the greed and corruption (the graciousness of language, the importance of family, etc) that show more were so well brought out in The Collaborator of Bethlehem. Still, a valuable contribution to the genre from an underrepresented perspective. show less

Omar Youssef is in his mid-50s, a teacher at a UN school in Palestine's West Bank. He struggles every day with his conviction that the cult of violence is no way to combat historic injustices, even as he realizes that even in hopes of unmasking a murderer, he can't approach the Israeli authorities for assistance. Indeed, for a novel set in the West Bank, the Israelis are noticeably absent from the drama, which revolves around the tensions within the Palestinian community, all of which Rees show more does a superb job of delineating and distinguishing.

When a young man -- a rebel and 'martyr' -- is gunned down outside his home, all assume that he was betrayed, and that the culprit is a Palestinian Christian, a former student and close friend of Omar's. Omar can't bring himself to believe it, and the plot unfolds from there. Rees is obviously very familiar with life in the Arab West Bank, and does a tremendous job of portraying it from the nuances -- the mannerisms, the phrases -- to the bigger themes, such as the importance of tribe and relationships (the fact that fathers, on the birth of their eldest son, become known as Abu (name of son) as an honorific becomes an important turning point in the narrative).

Rees doesn't shy away from violence or even tragedy, all of which are too much part of the real backdrop in which his fictional characters. Omar Yussef, however, even as he deplores what his students are learning outside the classroom ("there was such violence even in his girls that it shocked him. No matter how he tried to liberate the minds of Dehaisha's children, there were always many others working still more diligently to enslave them") has found himself a mission: being a voice of reason, no matter the cost.

I promptly went out and downloaded onto my Kindle the next three books in the series, as well as an earlier non-fiction book by Rees that I hadn't run across before, but that explores some of the same themes that I saw pop up in this novel.

It's rare to find a mystery novel that transcends its genre and that doesn't avoid the ugly realities of life or somehow 'pretty them up'. There are disturbing moments in this book, but they aren't there for effect, as in some slasher novel, but because that is the reality of the world in which Rees has set his characters. In a way, it's like reading the newspaper or magazine articles -- but really getting inside the lives of the people in the region, and coming to grips with their limited options and understanding some of their conflicts and decisions. We too often see the rest of the world in black and white; here's a book that emphasizes the shades of grey. Even Omar Yussef is no textbook hero -- he's an alcoholic who's been on the wagon for years, but whose hands still shake, to the scorn of the self-righteous and devout Muslims around him.

Recommended very highly to anyone who likes a gritty mystery full of detail and compelling characters; those who appreciate that life has no easy answers. (Not for anyone who is a cozy mystery addict, however...) show less

I stumbled across this book after reading the first in a series of mysteries set on the West Bank and featuring Palestinian schoolteacher Omar Yussef, which was tremendously impressive (one of the great new mystery series discoveries I've made this year.) When downloading the next books in the series onto my Kindle, I found this non-fiction account of life in Palestinian territories and among Israelis that Rees published before he turned his hand to writing mysteries, while he was working as show more a journalist.

Now that I've read it, this nuanced and thoughtful review of the realities of life for both Israelis and Palestinians joins my list of top books of the year. The highlight? The fact that instead of getting bogged down in retreading the same old ground in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, Rees forges new territory. Instead of looking at what divides the two groups, he discovers that what unites them is, ironically, the schisms within each society and the existence of factions that make life on both sides of the great divide complex and divisive in ways that are less familiar to us on the outside.

In the first section of the book, which examines life within the Palestinains, some of these rifts are more familiar, such as that between the PLO and Hamas (Rees's scorn for Arafat is glaring) but many are more intriguing and unexpected, such as the story of the rift between the "Israeli Arabs" who stayed behind in 1948, told through the experience of a filmmaker who is trying to address issues of concern to all Arabs living in the region even though he is technically Israeli. On the Israeli side, the internal are all the more powerful for being relatively little known here who don't have a direct connection to Israel. I, for one, hadn't realized the scope of the division between the growing ranks of the ultra-orthodox and the secular Jews; or understood the nature of the rift between the Sephardic immigrants from North Africa and the dominant Ashkenazim. Most poignant of all, perhaps, is Rees's chronicle of the ways in which many Israelis have shunned psychologically-troubled Holocaust survivors. Despite the fact that the fact of the Holocaust is responsible for the creation of Israel (the Holocaust, and the effort to prevent it from reoccuring, form a powerful argument in favor of Israel's existence for many), many native-born Israelis find the reminder of the fact that their weak coreligionists (in Rees's characterization of their views) allowed themselves to be shuffled off to Auschwitz without protest. (His thoughts on Ben Gurion's attitudes to the survivors are just as forcefully stated as those on Arafat.)

Rees links all his stories and word portraits to the main theme that readers will have on their minds throughout -- each side, he argues, "exists in a fantasy world of blamelessness, shifting guilt to a distant enemy and away from the consequences of the divisions within its own society, the pain Palestinians inflict on Palestinians and Israelis on Israelis." If there's one book you read about the Middle East today, make it this one, even though it's now been out for a few years. It doesn't deserve to overlooked. show less