Leon Uris (57 page)

‘Why did a man of your wisdom flee Haifa?’ Ibrahim asked Charles Maan.

‘Do you think you Moslems cornered the market on Jew-hating? I was too arrogant to sit down with a Jew and negotiate. Again I ask you who will recognize us, our rights, our claims. Out of this whole catastrophe, only the Jews will sit down and talk to us. Why can’t we bring ourselves to say that terrible word, Israel?’

They pecked at their coffee, then filled the chamber with tobacco smoke.

‘I have spoken too much. I am afraid I have offended you, Ahmed Taji,’ Maan said.

‘No, no, no, no,’ he answered. ‘It is difficult for us to eat this bitter fruit, then digest it.’

‘The biggest lie of all was that the Jews would murder everyone who did not flee. What has happened to our brothers who stayed ... in ... Israel? Were they thrown into the sea as we swore we would do to the Jews? Were they eaten? Were they sacrificed at the altar? Who were the fools, the ones who fled or the ones who stayed?’

‘I fled because those mother-whore Egyptians forced me out to make way for their magnificent army. And you, Haj?’

‘My older brother rules my village. I was tricked into leaving, and not by the Jews. So, we are three fools who admit to being fools. But we are among a half-million fools who will not admit it.’

Sheik Taji began to breathe heavily and unevenly. He closed his eyes and his voice quivered with emotion. ‘I do not want to die in that camp,’ he whispered. ‘What is it we must do, Charles Maan?’

‘We must go at it one step at a time. First we must form a high committee to establish that the refugees have a voice of their own.’

‘Ha!’ Taji cried. ‘When will you get a committee of Arabs to agree on anything?’

‘Let Charles speak,’ Ibrahim prodded.

‘We are the higher committee, the three of us,’ Maan answered.

‘That begins to make sense,’ the sheik said.

‘And we call for a democratic convention of the West Bank refugees,’ Maan continued.

‘Democratic convention. We have just been to one in Amman,’ Ibrahim said sarcastically.

‘Let Charles speak,’ Sheik Taji said.

‘So, speak, Charles,’ Ibrahim said.

Charles Maan lit a new smoke, more thoughtfully than he had lit the others. ‘Do we agree among the three of us that life in the Jewish state is preferable and that we can take the humiliation of living in there without being swept up in this madness for revenge?’

‘I agree that things can be no worse,’ Ibrahim said.

‘I do not want to die in that camp,’ Taji repeated.

‘Do either of you brothers have reason to believe the Jews will negotiate or that they won’t negotiate?’ Maan asked.

Ibrahim and the sheik went silent, Ibrahim had the secret knowledge that the Jews were willing to take back a hundred thousand refugees at once. He wondered if Charles Maan had the same information and who Taji was in contact with. And they wondered about each other, as well.

‘Do you have any such information?’ Ibrahim fenced with Maan.

‘Yes, I have reason to believe we will get a better deal from the Jews than from the Egyptians and Syrians, to say nothing of Abdullah,’ Maan answered.

‘How sound is your information?’ Ibrahim asked suspiciously.

‘I have contacts in Haifa among my own relatives,’ he said. ‘They have spoken to certain Jewish officials. The door is definitely open.’

‘Do you have numbers?’ Ibrahim probed.

‘No,’ Maan answered with enough directness to convince Ibrahim. Maan apparently did not know about the hundred thousand figure.

‘And you, Ahmed Taji?’ Ibrahim asked.

‘I have heard from your own uncle, the great Sheik Walid Azziz, who now roams the Negev Desert freely. He has gotten information to me that the Jews would not object if I and my tribe return to our lands, provided we do not make trouble.’

‘What of you, Haj?’ Maan asked.

‘Well, let me say we have all the same information. My belief is that they will negotiate.’

‘We realize that if we accept this undertaking we will have to do so in the face of Arab outrage. We will be denounced as traitors,’ Maan said.

‘That is not enough to blackmail me into dying in that cursed camp,’ Taji said.

‘Nor me,’ Ibrahim added.

‘Then here is what we must do. We must hold a convention of West Bank refugees. I repeat, refugees only. Not the wealthy who fled. Not those who sold their asses to Abdullah. We must pass a resolution to negotiate a return with the Jews and, most important, we must send a delegation to the International Arbitration Commission in Zurich.’

‘Now it is you who is the dreamer,’ Taji declared. ‘How do we get five hundred refugees to agree to such resolutions?’

‘By inviting only the right people,’ Charles Maan retorted. ‘I can control who is in the delegation from every camp north of Ramallah.’

Taji’s white beard took a number of keen strokes and he narrowed his eyes. He rolled his hand with a maybe yes, maybe no gesture. ‘If I had some funds to pass around, it would be no problem.’

‘What you must do, Sheik Taji, is give each delegate the promise that he and his family will be the first to return. Believe me, they will run back even faster than they fled.’

‘It has possibilities,’ Taji answered, already going over his alliances in his mind.

‘Haj?’

‘Jericho has strange camps. We have collected all the leftovers, the broken tribes, the broken villages. There is less than no unity. My best approach is to simply announce a list of delegates and see to it that no opposition forms.’

‘How?’

‘We have a lot of young boys running loose in gangs terrorizing everyone. I can put them to proper use.’

‘Good enough,’ Maan said. ‘Keep the date a secret so the Jordanians do not get wind of it. We will announce the convention one or two days before it takes place. The main trick is to have all the resolutions passed in a single day and adjourn before the Jordanians know what hit them.’

‘Yes, that is good,’ Haj Ibrahim concurred.

‘We will convene the conference in Hebron,’ Taji said.

‘Hebron would be a mistake,’ Charles Maan said quickly. ‘Your camp is isolated in the south in the middle of Abdullah’s greatest West Bank stronghold. Why go into a lion’s den?’

‘Charles is right,’ Ibrahim said. ‘Hebron would be a trap waiting to spring. As for me, Jericho is just too damned close to the Allenby Bridge. Your people in Ramallah are the best-organized refugee group. What of Ramallah?’

‘Ramallah! It is scarcely in Palestine,’ Taji roared.

‘Brothers,’ Charles Maan said in a soft manner, to indicate he had already thought the problem over. ‘I propose Bethlehem.’

‘Bethlehem?’

‘Bethlehem?’

‘Bethlehem?’

The sheik covered his heart with his hand in a flourish to denote sincerity. ‘Bethlehem is a city of divine holiness for you, my brother Charles. However, except for its one day of purity a year, it has always had a reputation for the worst prostitutes in Palestine.’

‘What a terrible thing to say!’ Ibrahim snapped.

‘But he speaks the truth,’ Maan said. ‘The whores of Bethlehem are a known fact. Fortunately it is only known in Palestine. To the outside world, to whom we must appeal, the name of Bethlehem has a sacred ring and an immediate identity. I assure you that it will arouse the curiosity of the foreign press.’

Taji tugged on his beard and deliberated with himself. He looked over to Ibrahim, who nodded in approval. ‘So it is! One month from now in Bethlehem. Let us go back and select our delegates with great care, then hold a democratic convention.’

Charles Maan’s nicotine-stained hand shot out to be taken in a deal. Sheik Taji grasped it, then Haj Ibrahim added his hand. All three put their free hands atop the other three and shook six hands in rhythm, and for the first time in months, they broke into laughter.

H
AJ
I
BRAHIM AND HIS
co-conspirators went about their task of delegate selection as subtly as a desert mirage. No one was assigned a specific number of delegates. The object was to select only those who would swear to an oath that they would vote for the convention’s ‘resolution of the return.’

My father summoned Jamil and gave him a chance to redeem himself. The Avenging Leopards were assigned to see to it that no opposition was allowed to form after Father’s delegate list was announced. Jamil was thirsting for action and received the idea like a blood transfusion. Indeed, there were a number of vocal complaints, and each of the complainers got a ‘kiss’ from the Leopards in the form of a not too subtle warning: a dead animal, a cat, dog, rat, snake, nailed to the doorpost.

With nearly seven hundred presworn delegates in place, Charles Maan called a news conference in East Jerusalem, where the Western and Arab press had bureaus. He made a short announcement that a West Bank Refugee Convention, with seven hundred democratically selected delegates, would convene in two days in Bethlehem. Maan then declined to name the delegates publicly.

The Jordanians had been caught off guard. They were still reeling from the rioting that had greeted their parades. That, plus their failure to get world recognition of the annexation, had driven them into temporary timidity. When the press questioned Jordanian ministers in Amman, they had no choice but to declare they had no objection to a refugee meeting.

Despite every precaution, a number of Abdullah’s people had infiltrated the delegate lists.

Father gave Jamil the task of having the Leopards and their counterparts from other camps act as stewards inside the hall. Outside, they would ring Manger Square and provide security. The air had an ominous scent to it as we departed from Bethlehem.

As we approached the town, we could see Arab Legion soldiers just off a highway that twisted through precipitous terraced terrain. Delegates were arriving in every kind of broken-down conveyance available on the West Bank. We reached Manger Square to see it flooded with Avenging Leopards and other gangs. However, the rooftops were filled with Arab Legion and they were highly visible.

A meager encampment had been set up in Shepherds’ Field. The refugees came with their prayer rugs and some sort of tenting gear and carried their own bread and drink. It was truly a convocation of the destitute.

Bethlehem, like Jericho, had seen greater glory. Everything centered around the Church of the Nativity and the Grotto of Jesus’ birth. The square was bordered by shops that catered to the busloads of pilgrims: counters filled with olive-wood carvings of crucifixes, Christian symbols, and works of Bethlehem lace and embroidery. In the square a battalion of peddlers, beggars, and hustlers mixed with pilgrims and Avenging Leopards under the watchful eyes of the Arab Legion.

At the far side of the square stood a battered and defunct old movie house, the Eastern Star, which was the location of the convention. Father felt the theater should be safe from possible Jordanian attack because so many foreign reporters were present. Although the building was made of stone, its interior was highly flammable, and he was certain that the notion of burning us alive had passed through the minds of more than one Jordanian official. As they entered, all the delegates had to unroll their prayer rugs and the security gangs searched for bombs, incendiaries, submachine guns, and other lethal paraphernalia.

The theater filled as technicians struggled with the faulty sound system. When it finally connected, it blared off the stone walls with an intensity that forced me to cover my ears. The theater was peeling and had bad smells that somehow befitted a meeting of refugees. Just as the leaders took their places behind a long table on the stage, Father took me aside.

‘Find a place in the theater where you will be very small. There may be trouble. If there is, don’t try to reach me but get back to Aqbat Jabar to defend the women.’

I found a narrow stone stair behind a door and groped my way upstairs to a hallway and a small room. I had been in a movie house a few times in Ramle and knew from its size and shape that this was once the projection room. Through the little openings I could look down on the entire hall. There was also a window to the outside overlooking Manger Square. From here I could see Jamil and his ‘troops.’ I knew the new seeds of hatred that had been planted in the camps were in Bethlehem in the form of these gangs. It was not hard to tell what the future would be like if Father did not succeed.

‘Hear, O brothers,’ Sheik Ahmed Taji began, appearing potent in new borrowed flowing robes, ‘we are gathered here in democratic brotherhood because we know full well that the lone man belongs to the wolf and that one hand cannot applaud. Revenge is sacred and hatred is noble. Yet what we long for must be delayed by certain realities. We will not return to our land just because the Jews are willing to take us back. No, that will not lure us. We will not return because they will give us schools and hospitals. We will never submit to such obvious crude briberies. We will only return so we can work silently for the moment of vengeance. We shall lure the enemy until our strength has grown to insurmountable proportions, then we shall prod him with a hot poker.’

Sheik Ahmed Taji was in rare form. He spoke not to reason but to persuade, and the value of his words could be measured only by their quantity.

‘Patience dries up oceans and erodes mountains. Allah is with the patient. Patience is the key to salvation. We, the victims, must modify our great lust until we are again planted on our sacred soil. Then and only then shall we begin appropriate actions. So let us return and dwell among the jackals until we are ready.’

His tongue rolled off words without meaning and he spoke now only to incite the senses ...

‘We have been the victims of bad luck, and when bad luck humiliates a man, everyone steps on his feet and the ways of the wrongdoers grow like mountains. We roll in the dust. Our stomachs are empty. With each small meal there is a great quarrel. With each bite there is a worry. Poverty makes us ill-tempered.

‘Show your teeth, O my brothers, and everyone will fear you. They are chewing us but they cannot swallow us. We know what each other feels, for we are like one single brother and nothing knows the trunk of the tree better than its bark. What fate has befallen you has also befallen me. None of us are immune and protected from the fate of bad luck. If the time comes for us to weep, we will see that there are less fortunate brothers who have been blinded. If the time comes for us to run, others have no legs.