Leon Uris (55 page)

‘This will bring Sheik Taji to us later,’ my father said. ‘What did you learn about the camp here?’

I cleared my throat importantly. ‘Schneller and all the camps around Amman are much worse off than Aqbat Jabar,’ I said. ‘They live or die here by one rule. Abdullah has enlisted all the important old muktars and given them and their families all the Red Crescent jobs. If you are against the king, you do not eat and you do not protest. There have been many assassinations and imprisonments, so that all dissidents have been removed.’

‘It is as I thought,’ Father said.

‘The same goes for the jobs in Amman. Only those cooperating with Abdullah can find work in the city. I am told that all the camps in Jordan are being similarly run.’

On the third evening, I was able to report to Father that I had discovered another strong dissident, who, unlike Ibrahim, had kept quiet about his feelings.

‘His name is Charles Maan. He was a teacher at the gymnasium in Haifa. He is very prominent in the Ramallah Committee.’

‘I have heard of him,’ Father answered. ‘The Ramallah group is strong. He can be trusted?’

‘Yes, on all matters except one,’ I said.

‘Aha, what is that?’ he asked.

‘He is a Christian, and you know how they lied about Jesus being their lord and savior.’

‘Is that the only thing?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Nonsense,’ my father said, startling me. ‘The Christians and the Moslems have lived in Palestine for centuries without real trouble. Religious fighting around here is Lebanese madness. We even got along with the Jews until the Mufti.’ Haj Ibrahim’s revelation confused me.

Charles Maan was also in the Schneller Camp, only a few streets away.

‘Stay near his tent and observe without being observed,’ Father ordered. ‘When he is alone, approach him with great care and introduce yourself either by speaking to him or by giving him a note. Tell him I would like a quick, passing meeting.’

‘Where, Father?’

We both pondered for a moment. ‘At the latrine, where we do our business,’ he said.

I waited for over two hours near Charles Maan’s tent, but delegates were coming and going endlessly. I decided to write a note. When there was a break in the line of visitors, I stepped in quickly and handed it to him.

He was a man older than Father, with bags of weariness under his eyes. He took the note in a hand with fingers yellow from tobacco stains.

I am Ishmael, son of Haj Ibrahim al Soukori al Wahhabi. My father would like to meet with you at the latrine at two o’clock in the morning.

He tore the note into shreds and nodded yes to me. The latrine was a long corrugated-tin shed built atop a running ditch that carried the open sewage to a series of collection pits. A few moments before two o’clock Father and I left our tent with great caution. It was extremely dark and quiet, and we hoped it would stay that way. We waited in the shadows until the tired, rumpled figure of Charles Maan, dressed in a worn Western suit, came down the path. He looked about and entered. Ibrahim followed him inside while I posted myself at the entrance to warn them if anyone came. He stood over the ditch, pretending to urinate.

‘We must meet on the other side,’ Father said.

‘I agree,’ Charles Maan answered.

‘Do you know Sheik Taji in the Hebron Camp?’

‘Yes, he is very dependable. A good man.’

‘I will bring him also,’ Father said.

‘I agree.’

‘How do we make contact?’ Father asked.

‘When you and Taji are ready, send your son Ishmael up to Ramallah. I am in the Birah Camp. I have been able to open a small classroom. He will have no trouble finding me.’

‘Our meeting should be carefully concealed,’ Father said.

‘I have a safe place in the Old City of Jerusalem. Do you know the Sisters of Zion Convent?’

‘No,’ Father answered.

‘Enter the Old City through the Lions’ Gate. It is on the Via Dolorosa at the Ecco Homo Arch between the second and third Stations of the Cross. Ask for Sister Mary Amelia. She runs the school and will be aware of the exact time to expect you.’

‘I do not mean to offend you, but she is a woman. Is she entirely trustworthy?’

‘She is my daughter,’ Charles Maan said.

‘Someone is coming,’ I whispered.

My father arranged himself quickly as Mr. Maan buttoned up his trousers. ‘In a few weeks,’ Ibrahim said and left quickly with me.

The afternoon of the final day of the conference saw a parade of chairmen of the various committees present their resolutions for approval of all the delegates at the Roman amphitheater.

Resolutions rolled like heads being chopped off by an executioner.

Resolved. What was gained by blood will be regained by blood.

Resolved. Infidels corrupt Islamic values and are not fit to exist in Islamic lands.

Resolved. All Arab nations are one and never before so unified.

Resolved. Arabs who remained in the Zionist entity have committed enormous sin. Such Arabs, who carry passports of the Zionist entity, will not be permitted to enter Arab nations.

Resolved. Arabs who remained in the Zionist entity are leprous in nature and are forbidden to make the Haj to Mecca and Medina.

Resolved. Arabs who remained in the Zionist entity have been contaminated and are unfit to pray at the Al Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock and will be forbidden entry.

Resolved. Arabs who remained in the Zionist entity are treacherous at heart and cannot reunite or otherwise visit members of their exiled families.

Thus the clergy and the committees on aspects of Islam had two dozen resolutions passed with only a smattering of opposition, soon subdued.

By evening over a hundred resolutions had been passed establishing the principle of eternal war against the Jews. When they were done, the final three major committees brought the conference to its predestined crescendo.

The Committee on Refugees, to which my father had been assigned, put forth a glowing report on how well things were being run in the Jordanian camps in contrast to the West Bank camps. The intent was to give the illusion that life would get much better for everyone under the national banner of Jordan. Father and I knew by now that Jordan had not delivered on the jobs, land, rehabilitation, or opportunities that had been promised. The only Palestinians who prospered were those who threw themselves to the Jordanians. Otherwise, one side of the river was as destitute as the other.

The vital Armistice Line Committee then gave its report. The end of the war had seen a zigzag truce line become a semi-permanent boundary, for the troops merely froze in place, making an impossible common border of three hundred miles. This put hundreds of thousands of dunams of former Arab fields on the Zionist side of the line. A Jordanian Border Commission had been established to try to retrieve as much land as possible.

The report of the Armistice Line Committee was that all claims had been resolved in favor of the refugees’ being able to regain their lands. Individual claims as well as group or village claims would be honored as soon as the matter of West Bank and Jordanian unity was resolved.

‘Abdullah lies in his beard,’ my father mumbled. ‘He has not regained an inch of that contested land.’

As Father stood to protest the report, the men seated near him inched away and the Legion inched in. Once again my mouth went dry. Only the Arab tradition of protecting a guest could save us now! A miracle happened! By some fate Charles Maan was close to us and caught Father’s eye. In that instant Ibrahim regained his temper and sat down quietly.

The final report from the Committee for Democratic Unity came as an anticlimax. It was announced that the Jordanian Parliament had passed a Bill of National Merger. A chorus of cheers arose from Abdullah’s lackeys. This was followed by a democratic vote in which the conference approved the ‘Greater Palestine’ by 970 votes to 20.

A closing announcement was made that a Conference on Refugee Claims and Rights had been called for Zurich, Switzerland. The refugees’ case would be presented before an International Arbitration Commission of neutral nations. Jordan would send a delegation to protect all refugee interests. I grabbed my father’s hand, which shook with rage. With all the strength I could muster, I half pulled him out of the amphitheater.

We left Amman with the taste of ashes in our mouths.

R
UNNING SEWERS AND UNCOLLECTED
hills of rotting garbage breed voluminous flies and mosquitoes, and the stink from them is deafening. When you add that to total idleness and the constant prodding of bent and fanciful old men pretending to instill a pride and courage they never really owned, you have the birth of the Avenging Leopards.

My brother Jamil was a leader among them. They wore no uniforms because abject poverty was our heritage, so they identified themselves with headbands of bright orange cloth.

At the Ein es-Sultan Camp situated by Elisha’s Spring, the gang was the Liberating Sharks. At the Bedouin Camp farther up the highway they were the Desert Wolves, and at the small Nuweimeh Camp farther north the Black May Gang was named for the awful date on which the Jews declared their independence. All of the gangs were prodded on by slothful, stagnating elders and by fanatical Egyptians of the Moslem Brotherhood.

A level of fear grew in Aqbat Jabar over the Avenging Leopards. They stalked about looking for boys like myself to recruit. Join or take a bad thrashing. I was able to stay clear because of Jamil. I think he didn’t want me in because he suspected I might take over the leadership from him.

By night the gangs would climb up into Mount Temptation, where they conducted weird rituals on new recruits, including bloodletting. They had secret signs and swore an oath of revenge filled with ogreish promises of dismemberment and skull crushing and hot pokers in the eyes of the Jews.

‘Blood, guts, entrails, balls, death!’ we could hear them chant down the mountain on the leaden night air. They tested each other’s courage with stick jousts, jumping from high ledges, running past a line of stone throwers, leaping over fires, biting off the heads of live chickens and snakes, and strangling cats bare-handed. Their illusions of bravery and manhood, the ultimate Arab product, were perpetuated all day, every day, to alleviate their monotony.

Haj Ibrahim and the other old-time muktars and sheiks saw these gangs as a growing threat to their own rule, but they had to tread lightly in curbing them, for they offered no alternative. There were no schools or organized games, no movies, just a whining radio. The only lectures they heard were from the Brotherhood, glorifications of martyrdom and death.

‘You are the great young soldiers of Allah preparing to become martyrs of the revenge!’

Revenge they heard in Jericho.

Revenge they heard in the sordid little cafés of the camp.

Revenge they heard in their homes.

And they grew ugly. None of them worked or tried to look for work, even during harvest time when some field hands were needed. Their mothers and sisters did that labor. Instead, they began to hire themselves out to ‘protect’ the farmers’ fields.

If a man in the camp had a run-in with a Leopard, he could expect his hovel to be broken into and looted and his oldest son to be beaten up. Avenging Leopards were out in numbers down at the Allenby Bridge, where there was always a line of trucks awaiting inspection by Jordanian customs officials. If a driver dozed off or left his truck, the Leopards would quickly empty its contents.

They and the other gangs became a major factor in the raging black market. In order to do so, they worked out a tacit cooperation with the ineffectual and corrupt Jordanian-controlled camp police. With little curb on their activities, the Leopards prowled around Jericho and blackmailed merchants who had been fingered for them by the police. They routinely raided and robbed Red Crescent supply depots.

When things became outrageously bad, the Arab Legion would conduct a sweep and take a number of boys off to prison in Amman, but this always provoked a riot by protesting parents.

Things began to come to Jamil: a battery-operated radio, a wristwatch, new shoes, trinkets to give to the girls, hashish, and foods that were so sorely missing from our mushy diets. Father did not question him, but both of us became apprehensive about our arms cache. We feared Jamil might sell off our guns, or worse, give them to the Leopards.

As we accepted in silence the fact that Jamil had become a gangster and a thief, he grew more brazen. He had money in his pocket, gifts for his mother, tobacco for his father, food for the family table. He was quick to get around to thinking he was indispensable to the family, and perhaps he even harbored the notion he was the equal of Haj Ibrahim.

His boldness peaked when the Leopards broke into the house of a friend of Father’s in our Tabah section of the camp. I did not realize when I met Jamil coming up our street at mealtime that Ibrahim had ordered everyone out of our home.

‘Jamil, wait,’ I called, running up alongside him. ‘You had better take care. Father is very upset about the robbery at the home of Daoud al Hamdan.’

‘So, what about it?’

I had never heard words from sister, mother, or brothers that challenged Father’s authority. I wondered if Jamil had gone crazy. I grabbed his arm to stop him but he jerked himself free.

‘Father’s day is over,’ Jamil lashed out. ‘He and all the other old men here are finished. There is a new order.’

I blinked in disbelief, but then I suddenly realized that, at eighteen, Jamil was as tall as Father and very strongly built.

‘Jamil, you speak crazy.’

‘Oh, do I? Well, Father brought us to this filthy life. Why did he not stay and fight for our land? Who is going to regain it? Him? My friends and I are the ones destined to return our honor and it is time I was respected for it.’

I wanted to run to warn Father but only watched Jamil walk away. I followed him cautiously as he entered the house. Ibrahim was sitting in the one decent chair, fingering his worry beads, as Jamil entered. I observed from the doorway as Jamil committed the terrible sin of not kneeling and kissing Father’s hand.