Leon Uris (66 page)

Perhaps.

A large part of the tribe’s income came from its being the ‘protector’ of a section of the trans-Arabian oil pipeline that ran through its territory. When a new arrangement was offered by the Saudis, for less money, it was time to give them a reminder. I was about to go on my first raid, to sever a section of the line, when word came that I was to return to Aqbat Jabar.

I cannot say I left with sorrow, for I longed to see the Haj and Nada again. Yet I was wiser, for I knew now how the Arab and fatalism were eternally linked together.

I
RETURNED TO
A
QBAT
Jabar to learn that Jamil had won a victory from me in death that he could never have accomplished in life. He had become a martyr. This caused me a great deal of displeasure. I had worked diligently all my life to become my father’s favorite. I was known as the most clever, the bravest, the one who would succeed Haj Ibrahim. I had overcome my oldest brother, Kamal, and brushed aside Omar. I was the light of my father’s life. Now some of that had changed. There were large pictures of Jamil in the cafes in Aqbat Jabar right alongside the photographs of the great Arab leaders.

The Jordanians were recruiting and coercing Avenging Leopards and other gang members into guerrilla units to cross the border and raid the Jews. They had blamed Jamil’s murder on the Zionists and named a battalion of fedayeen in his honor.

My parents, who had scarcely paid attention to him all his life, plunged into mourning. Jamil’s photograph was the centerpiece of our hovel. Flowers, which had never graced our home in Tabah, were placed in little vases alongside his picture and votive candles burned before it.

Hagar now took pride in being called Umm Jamil, the mother of Jamil. Strangest of all was the behavior of my father. Guilt, an emotion Ibrahim had never been burdened with, had slipped into his soul. He had beaten Jamil. He had contributed to Jamil’s murder. Now he grieved. I got an inkling that he wanted to make himself believe it was really the Jews who had killed his son.

Suddenly I was Jamil’s younger brother. My head was patted by everyone. Wasn’t I proud?

You are saying that Ishmael was cruel. Had he no compassion for his slain brother? Don’t fool yourself about me any longer. I might have been a boy in everyone’s eyes, but I was very smart and very strong and you would not want to play around with me. I had come to learn that life is not as important as martyrdom.

I had to regain my position.

If truth be known, it was Nada whom I missed and longed for the most when I was with the al Sirhan Bedouin. We are obsessed with defending the woman’s virtue. We do not do it for the woman but for the man’s pride and honor. I loved Nada differently. I loved her for herself. It was not a sexual love. It was because she was good and she always delighted me.

I loved Nada’s eyes, filled with curiosity. When we were alone together I loved to see those eyes turn to mischief. I loved to watch her wash by the springs and braid her long thick brown hair. I loved the sway of her hips when she walked. I loved her white teeth when she threw her head back and laughed.

I wanted to marry a girl like Nada someday. Until I did, the protection of her virtue was my most important mission in life. So I loved my sister and I did not grieve for my brother. At least I am not a hypocrite like my parents. Hagar I could understand. I could not understand Haj Ibrahim and prayed for his guilt to go away.

Because of my overpowering concern for Nada I was very quick to detect that something had surely been going on between her and Sabri in my absence. Usually Ibrahim would have smelled out something like this, but he had not been the same since he returned from Zurich. A fire inside him had dimmed. Something terrible must have happened to him over there. There was also this thing with Jamil that added to his misery.

Hagar, Ramiza, and Fatima possibly knew about Nada and Sabri. The women keep many secrets among themselves. In Aqbat Jabar, as in Tabah, the women of the clans fought among themselves constantly, and their mouths could be as foul as garbage. Yet there was a line that women did not cross when dealing with one another. Because their own fidelity meant their lives, they rarely gossiped to the men about women’s business.

Sabri Salama’s coming into our life had been a mixed blessing. We might well all have been dead if it hadn’t been for Sabri’s skill and ingenuity.

Father had spent all our money from the sale of the antiquities by going to Europe. True, we still had our cache of guns to fall back on, but we really depended on Sabri’s salary and his side deals for our existence. He never complained about turning everything over to Father.

At first I felt threatened. Sabri would win too much favor with Ibrahim. But that passed. Sabri had his own family in Gaza and spoke constantly of his desire to join them. Fortunately, Ibrahim’s early suspicions always kept him out of our intimate circle.

There had been this business about his sleeping with the Iraqi officer and perhaps other men. At times he had made me physically uneasy. Yet there was really nothing in his behavior that gave us cause to worry.

Nevertheless, I was concerned about him and Nada. Because Ibrahim seemed oblivious of the situation, I decided to look into matters more closely.

Sabri worked in a large garage in Jericho. The building had once been a warehouse from which West Bank crops were shipped into Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The place was abandoned during the war, then taken over as a garage for the steady stream of vehicles crossing the Allenby Bridge to and from Amman.

Wherever there are trucks and goods being moved, there are deals to be made. Sabri did very well by us. There was a small room in the rear of the place where he and another mechanic slept and alternated as night watchman. No one could blame him for not wanting to come back to our crammed place in Aqbat Jabar. The camp was filthy and families fought and yelled every night and all night.

I noticed that Nada generally slipped out of the house before sunset on the days Sabri stayed over in Jericho. It did not take one of the prophets to figure out why.

One evening I waited for fifteen minutes after she had left, then headed into town. The garage was closed for the night. I went around to the back and tried the door. It was locked. I tried a number of windows, but they were all sealed shut by years of grime.

After examining the building for footholds, I found what I was looking for and shinnied up to the roof. Two trapdoors were padlocked. With a stick I was able to pry off the rusted hinges.

I hung by my hands and dropped into the back of a truck, smarted for a few seconds from the fall, then made my way toward Sabri’s room cautiously.

I could hear sounds through his door. Sabri and Nada were making all kinds of lovers’ noises. I tried the knob slowly. It gave. Then I flung the door open.

They were lying side by side on his mat on the floor. PRAISE ALLAH, THEIR CLOTHING WAS ON! Their arms were wrapped around each other and their private parts, through their underclothing, were pressing and moving in rhythm. He had freed a hand to hold her breast while her hands clutched at his back. They were groaning and panting like they were really doing it.

Nada saw me first and screamed as I pounced down on Sabri.

‘I’ll kill you!’ I cried.

I was smaller than Sabri but hardened from the desert and knew no fear. I was all over him, wildly driving my fists into his face.

Sabri had been taken by surprise and could only cover up and try to defend himself. My onslaught had him dazed. I bashed out at him again and again, cursing him as I did. His lip and nose spurted blood. I wrapped my hands around his neck and squeezed.

Something horrendous crashed into my head. Everything spun and became dark. The next I remembered I was looking up from the floor and seeing Nada standing over me, in a blur. She had a wrench in her hand.

‘Stop it!’ she screamed.

I lay there quivering from the smashing blow, reached, and felt blood coming from the back of my scalp. I was weak and gasping and groveled about, trying to brace myself for an attack. My eyes focused. Sabri was bunched up in a corner with his face in his hands and he was crying.

‘Ibrahim will kill me!’ he wept over and over.

I propped myself up on an elbow. Nada poked the wrench in my face, threatening to hit me again. ‘No,’ I pleaded, ‘no ... no.’

Her hand holding the wrench went limp. The weapon fell to the floor and she sank to her knees over me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed.

Nada’s face was distorted with anguish and she erupted into uncontrolled weeping. She threw herself on the floor, clawed at it, and nearly choked on her tears.

‘Ohhhhh shit,’ I moaned.

We all cried in our places. At last she got to her feet, wobbled from the room, and returned with a pail of water and some rags. She wiped the blood from my head, then put her arms about me and rocked me as though I were her doll. After a time she crawled over to Sabri and cleaned his face as well. We fell into a silence that seemed to last forever. Nada looked at me with a pleading in her eyes. In truth, she was begging for her life.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said.

‘Please don’t have us killed,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t hold it in any longer. We really didn’t do it. We were only playing. Don’t have us killed.’

‘Allah, help me,’ I muttered.

‘Ishmael.’ Sabri spoke. ‘You must believe I would not have gone all the way. I honor Nada. I love Nada. What can we do? We were going crazy. We have spoken about going to Ibrahim and getting permission to marry. We are destitute. I have no money. You know he would never agree ... you know that.’

Nada came to me again. ‘When I knew we weren’t going to be able to control ourselves, I wanted Sabri to leave here and find his parents in Gaza.’

‘I wanted to go so I would not dishonor your family,’ Sabri said. ‘How can I leave? I have no money and no papers.’

I could see how desperate they were.

‘Will you spare us, Ishmael?’ she begged, grasping my hands and kissing them.

I made the mistake of looking into her eyes again. ‘I won’t tell. But Sabri must leave.’

Both of them flung themselves into my arms and I held them. And we all cried again. Then we sat as we had done on the ledge of the cliff when we had found the treasure. We held hands in a circle and made our vow. But the vow did not solve Sabri’s problem.

‘I want to stay because of Nada, but I realize that I am bringing shame to her,’ he said. ‘I have given your father every penny I have earned. I’ve kept nothing for myself. It will take over a thousand dollars to bribe the right official for travel papers. To find my parents, I must cross into Jordan, go up through Syria, and catch a ship from Lebanon to Gaza. My passage will cost as much as my papers. I’m going crazy!’

I prayed. As I felt Nada’s hand grasping mine, I remembered the time she reached down, took my hand, and pulled me up over the ledge to the treasure cave. I knew what I had to do.

‘I know where I can get you the money,’ I said unevenly.’

‘Two thousand dollars?’

‘Yes. You certainly remember our guns. Jamil and I hid them up in Mount Temptation. I will sell them.’

‘But when Father finds them missing he will beat you to death.’

I was fully in control now. ‘Sabri must write a letter to Ibrahim. The letter must say that before Jamil died he bragged about the guns and told you where they were hidden. Ibrahim will believe that, because he was always suspicious that Jamil would reveal the location. If I get the guns tomorrow, can you find a buyer?’

‘Yes,’ Sabri whispered.

‘It’s dangerous for you, Ishmael,’ Nada protested.

‘We all have secrets,’ I said. ‘We must keep this one, too.’

‘But, Ishmael—’ Sabri began to argue.

I cut him off. ‘That is what we will do. Write me the letter tonight.’

I stumbled to my feet, left the room, and waited in the garage. I did not look back. They had many things to say to each other.

At last they came out. Sabri embraced me once more and tried to speak, but was too choked up. He spun out of my arms and returned to his room, closing the door after him.

Nada poked around the lump on my head. ‘It has stopped bleeding.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s not too bad.’

We washed our wounds and our sorrows and were soon on the road to Aqbat Jabar. When we saw the camp, we stood with each other in the darkness, hand in hand, and stared from the highway at that awful array of mud-bricked misery. Then we climbed to Mount Temptation and watched the stars.

‘Don’t ask me how I know,’ she said, after a time, ‘but I know what happened to Mother and Fatima and Ramiza in Jaffa.’

‘But—’

‘It is too much for you to hold such a terrible secret by yourself. I want to share it with you. I’ve wanted to for a long time. I knew that by your silence you would become a wonderful man.’

A great burden had been lifted from me.

‘I love you, Ishmael,’ Nada said. ‘I love you more than Sabri, in a different way.’

‘You don’t have to say that.’

‘You are a better man than Father because you can love more than you can hate.’

‘I worship Father. I have always wanted to be like him.’

‘You are different from Father and from all of them, even Sabri.’ She smiled at me in the moonlight, her white teeth like stars. ‘I love you because you cannot kill what you love.’

T
HE MURDER OF
C
HARLES
Maan came as a blow from which my father never really recovered.

The plans to resettle the Christians had soon reached the hostile ears of the Arab leaders. In order to prove a unity of hatred, the Christians had to be kept in the camps along with their Moslem brothers. Charles Maan’s death went out as a clear-cut message.

He had been kidnapped in East Jerusalem after leaving a meeting. His body was found in a garbage dump near Ramallah a few days later. The assassins had shoved a three-inch pipe far up his rectum, placed small diseased rats into the pipe, and forced them up into Maan’s intestines. His legs were tightly bound so the rats could not be disgorged.