nearest barrel and the roof suddenly blacked, and the dark half-moon of that gun’s upper curve grew slightly. A person, casting a shadow. Without thinking twice, Jamil aimed at the gap and squeezed the trigger. The gun reported with a slap.
“Shu!” said Basil. “What are you doing?”
A cry: a body slumped over the gun and into view. Jamil shot the bolt back and forth and the spent cartridge rang on the tiles. He took aim again.
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“Shit,” said Basil through the binoculars. “That was perfect.”
The man’s hand dangled. His five white fingers, visible even to Jamil’s naked eyes, did not stir. Something else moved on the Sports Club roof. It slid along the ledge, a slender brown extension of the stone. The arm of a soldier in uniform. Jamil aligned the sights, fired.
“Stop!” Basil hissed.
“Did I get him?”
Jamil reached for the binoculars, dragging Basil towards him by the lanyard around his neck, and turned the lenses on the place where the second soldier’s arm had been. Drips of red glanced down the stone. His heart jumped: no sign of the dead man’s hand, nor his mate’s. Yes, that was foolish.
Basil slumped against the wall, careful with his boots on the bed. The bags under his eyes cast dark shadows, doubled by his glasses.
A loud crack in the hall shot him to his feet. Jamil pulled the butt of his rifle against his shoulder. The door opened.
“Bravo, ya shabab,” said Madame. She ignored the gun and crouched to set a tray between them. Two yellow glasses of mint tea, a pile of hot bread, a plate of cheese. She rubbed her hands on her apron, and wavered. “How long do you need to stay?”
“Half an hour,” said Jamil. He reached for tea. “Maybe an hour.”
“Thank you so much, Madame,” said Basil. “Really, God keep you safe.”
“Not at all. Sahtayn.”
Basil cleaned his spectacles on his shirt, and ripped a piece of bread.
Jamil and Basil considered themselves crossover figures. Crossed between town and country, Nabulsi and fellah, strike and rebellion. Some newspaper editorials argued that where the civil disobedience of the general strike was the urban struggle, the armed uprising was the rural one, and the separation between the two both inevitable and lamentable. Jamil was determined to rectify this misconception. Young men from noble families had indeed taken up arms, and more were doing so by the day—especially in Nablus. Sure, most of the major battles were still in the mountains, but that was a question of terrain, of playing to their advantages as an agile people on the known crags, where the British blundered with their boots and bad maps. Until last week, was not Jaffa, that city of indecipherable streets, a rebel stronghold? A question of terrain: the British could not infiltrate. Ergo, they bombed it. Sure, some new reluctance was sprouting among the wealthy, some resentment at being ordered around by peasants, who were starting to threaten landowners and merchants with defamation and damage to property unless they handed over funds that only a month ago they had been donating with pride. If only they were being helped by the Italians: they were strung out on the dregs of their resources, grain stores ran low, Nablus was hungry. But since the army had made this incursion the townspeople were not waiting to be saved. The roads of Nablus were strewn with nails and broken glass to puncture English tyres. Under the arcades of the old city, people looked alert and touched their holsters. These two were not the only ones firing from upper bedrooms.
Among other notables, Jamil and Basil were original members of the Nablus Strike Committee when it first convened in April. They still helped coordinate with committees in other towns, and with ancillary local ones that distributed grain, rice, and sugar across Nablus, that funded the poor, prevented bankruptcy, monitored strike exemptions—including the cafés that opened at night for exchanging news, and pharmacies, which rotated so that one was available every twenty-four hours. But they also bore weapons. Jamil Kamal and Basil Murad were thuwwar. This was their third sniping operation, undertaken at their own initiative. Chief among the tactics they had learned from those refined veterans flowing in from Syria and Jordan and Lebanon was: after the shot, don’t move. They are watching for movement. Jamil had taken a big risk by shooting twice.
Basil wrapped half a round of bread over a slice of cheese and resumed his vigil at the window, looking through