Leon Uris (68 page)

There was a shortage of qualified teachers, but the doctor had already considered that possibility. Members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood, thinly disguised as Palestinian refugees, had infiltrated the West Bank camps. Most had some experience as religious teachers; they were literate and knew their Koran, which was the basic element in our education.

I was made an upperclassman in a group of ten boys who were also used as part-time instructors. Dr. Mohammed came and left with only a slight tinge of gossip in his wake. The curriculum was something else.

Although the Koran spoke for itself on matters concerning the Jews, the Moslem Brotherhood teachers made my old schoolmaster, Mr. Salmi in Ramle, seem like mild stuff by comparison.

Our history and geography lessons had no maps showing Israel. The only mention of the word ‘Israel’ always carried a slander with it. We were taught that Canaan was an Arab land before Joshua stole it from the Arab people. For four thousand years Palestine had been stolen land.

After Islam arose to remove the Crusaders, the Turkish Ottomans perverted and weakened Islam, robbing the Arab people of their true role as leaders of the world. In recent times the British conspired to install the Jews in Palestine as advance agents of imperialism. The Jews went on to destroy Palestine as part of their wanton pact with the devil.

At not time were the Arabs responsible for the series of calamities that had befallen them. When we Arabs lost a battle, it was merely Allah’s way of reminding us we had not been perfect Moslems.

In the math class the younger grades were taught addition and subtraction: ‘If you had ten dead Zionists and killed six more, how many dead Zionists would you have altogether?’ Multiplying and dividing dead Zionists became more intricate as the grade level increased.

Every classroom had a piece of art by every student pinned to the walls. They overwhelmingly depicted bloodthirsty hooknosed Jews maiming and killing Arab children, Zionist airplanes attacking helpless refugee camps, glorious fedayeen goring Jews with bayonets, glorious fedayeen stomping on Jews whose pockets bulged with blood money, glorious fedayeen chasing fleeing Jewish cowards, glorious fedayeen standing atop a mound of Jewish skulls in Tel Aviv, glorious fedayeen reading sweet poems to Arab children.

There was the occasional picture of flowers, tents, water wells, trees, birds, and animals, but such pictures were discouraged and never won a prize.

Each month there was a poetry contest. The theme never varied.

The Zionist is the assassin of the world.

Children and trees and birds die before his bullets,

All the poor people cry,

For their homes have been destroyed,

And the world will pay.

As the grades grew higher, the words grew hotter.

Whip me!

Bring more whips!

More executioners!

By the thousands!

Beat my skin to shoe soles!

Rub salt into every wound!

Old wounds and new wounds.

With my blood I shall write

A million songs of protest.

We had a variety of textbooks from many different lands. In the upper grades we read from the
Egyptian High School Reader:

O MOTHER OF ISRAEL

O mother of Israel! Dry your tears, your children’s blood which is being spilled in the desert will produce naught but thorn and wormwood. Wipe off your blood, O mother of Israel, have mercy and spare the desert your filthy blood, O mother of Israel Remove your slain, for their flesh has caused the ravens bellyache and their stink causes vomit. Cry, O mother of Israel, and wail. Let every house be the Wailing Wall of the Jews.

Slogans wrapped around the walls of every classroom, vowing death and destruction. Jokes were told in the schoolyard.

‘How many Jews fit in a Volkswagen?’

‘Thirty. Four in the seats and twenty-six in the ashtrays.’

Our physical education was actually a program of military training. We hiked out of the school grounds for ‘nature study,’ to comply with UNRWA rules. We marched to secret fedayeen training sites. Our courses consisted of learning to live in the field, tracking, hand and knife fighting, crawling under barbed wire, leaping through fires, grenade throwing, and strangling live animals to prove courage. We worked very hard for the privilege of being allowed to fire live ammunition. Shooting a machine gun filled us with a tremendous feeling of power and exultation. A nine-year-old was our best marksman.

The ten upperclassmen which included myself, were honored to have a ranking holy man from the Brotherhood to teach us. Our course was on the publication of the Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research in Cairo, a gathering of fifty of the world’s leading Moslem scholars and holy men from all over Islam. In addition to delegates from the Arab nations, there had been some from such diverse places as Togoland, Russia, Indonesia, India, Yugoslavia, China, and Japan. These were the muftis, the professors, the ministers of religion. There had been dozens of speeches, lectures, scholarly papers, forums, and resolutions. All dealt with the ‘Five Great Themes’:

1. The Jews are the enemies of God and humanity.

2. Jews have been evil throughout history. Their Bible is filled with scandals and debauchery that reveal the true nature of their religion. It is a counterfeit work falsifying God’s message.

3. Jews are scum and do not constitute a legitimate nation.

4. The State of Israel must be destroyed, for it is the culmination of the historical and cultural depravity of the Jews. Their state is a total contradiction to Allah’s ‘abode of Islam.’

5. Islam is superior. Its grandeur guarantees its ultimate triumph over all religions and peoples. Arab defeats throughout history were designed by Allah to teach the Moslems a lesson to renew their purity and purpose.

We were out of sight of those administrators with blue eyes and blond hair who buried themselves behind walled villas in Amman. All teaching was left to the Arabs. When UNRWA personnel did come to inspect us, we were always forewarned. A select few of us knew the school’s great secret. Guns and ammunition were being stored in our basement.

Dr. Mohammed K. Mohammed returned before our first anniversary. We were assembled in the broiling sun in the school yard, where a number of speakers praised our progress and dedication to the revolution. As future fedayeen, we had come a long way in our spiritual development. Our Arab brothers, solidly united, were just over the border and girding for the war of extermination. Many of us would be heroes.

We were wilting by the time Dr. Mohammed K. Mohammed stepped forward to speak.

‘Today is the second of November by the Christian calendar,’ he bellowed into the microphone with his fist rising. ‘Do any of you know what this means?’

‘No,’ we replied in unison.

‘It is one of the blackest days in all of Arab history.’

‘Oh,’ we mumbled.

‘It is the day the British imperialist dogs sold our birthright to the Jews by giving them false claims to our sacred lands in Palestine.’

‘Oh.’

‘It is the day they issued the infamous Balfour Declaration. Down with the Balfour!’

Our teachers, on a small raised platform behind the doctor, stood in unison. ‘Down with the Balfour!’ they cried.

We, the upperclassmen, sprang to our feet. ‘Down with the Balfour!’

Dr. Mohammed K. Mohammed came down, formed us up, and led us out of the school yard chanting in unison.

‘Down with the Balfour!’

We swarmed outside to a small line of kiosks and acafé that held a fill of older loafers. As we passed them, they got up and joined us.

‘Down with the Balfour!’ they cried.

We were out on the highway. Over the road several hundred women and girls were lined up awaiting the water tanker. They broke ranks excitedly. ‘Down with the Balfour!’ They marched behind us as we headed toward the camp at Ein es-Sultan. More hundreds of people swarmed down from Aqbat Jabar. The highway was soon flooded with humanity.

‘Down with the Balfour!’

We came to a small two-story isolated house belonging to a shoemaker, an Armenian named Tomasian, who had lived in Jericho all his life.

‘What is going on?’ he shouted down from his balcony.

‘Down with the balcony!’ someone cried up to him.

‘Down with the balcony!’ became the new chant.

‘Down with the one upstairs!’

A peddler with a donkey cart was shooed off the highway as we surrounded him.

‘Down with the donkey cart!’

‘Down with Abdullah’s corpse!’

‘Down with the United Nations!’

‘Down with the American criminals!’

The mob was now being orchestrated by the Moslem Brotherhood. People broke off and tore into the Armenian’s house, plundered it, and cried in rhythm that Tomasian was a traitor.

‘Jihad!’

‘Holy war!’

‘Down with the Armenians!’

Obviously, someone had coordinated our growing riot, for a Brotherhood teacher came toward us from Ein es-Sultan with a hundred boys running at full steam behind him. As they joined us, we could see that they were exhausted from the heat, sweaty and shaky. As they merged with us, one of the boys began to throw up, then another and another. In a moment mass vomiting broke out.

‘The Zionists have poisoned the springs!’

‘Down with the Zionists!’

People began dropping to their knees in dozens, gagging and vomiting all over the highway.

‘We have been poisoned!’

Hundreds of people collapsed on the ground, writhing and screaming. Some began to see Mohammed. Others saw Allah!

The few Red Crescent ambulances up from Jericho were inadequate to handle what had become a universal outburst of hysteria. Women fainted. Men ran in circles frothing.

Automobiles and trucks that had been blocked sounded their horns angrily. The vehicles were stormed, turned over, and burned. The air was soon filled with stone missiles flung aimlessly. Blood joined the vomit.

‘DOWN WITH THE BALCONY!’

‘DOWN WITH THE BALCONY!’

F
ROM THE MOMENT
P
ER
Olsen entered our hovel, we could tell that he was different from the usual breed of bureaucrat. Our new UNRWA administrator was Danish, about fifty, but had neither blue eyes nor blond hair. He was an infectiously decent man with that good humour that quickly overcomes the feeling of formality one has with most foreigners.

Per Olsen had earned his credentials in the backwash of one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, one between the Moslems and Hindus in India. In the exchange of populations following the creation of Pakistan some twenty million refugees came into being almost overnight. Olsen won high acclaim for humanitarian work among them. For him to come to Jericho spelled something more than an ordinary rotation of positions.

My father had been impressed with Per Olsen from the beginning, when the Dane called in his Arab associates for a series of meetings.

‘This is an excellent man,’ Ibrahim told me. ‘I am certain he has special business here.’

I had turned seventeen and had become proficient in English. In addition to a regular teaching position at the Wadi Bakkah School, I acted as the translator for my father. Thus, I was part of the friendship between him and Per Olsen from the beginning.

After getting his feet on the ground and sorting out the capabilities of his Arab staff, Olsen called on us at our home.

‘I want to be able to depend on you as a personal adviser, Haj Ibrahim.’

‘I am but a humble employee of the United Nations. My services are always at your wish and command.’

‘We are going to have an interesting time here,’ Olsen said, whipping out a long, thin Schimmelpenninck cigar from a packet in his shirt pocket. My father tried one.

‘Hummm, different,’ Father said. ‘Quite nice.’

‘Now that we have billowed smoke in your home for the required forty seconds, let me speak to you, not quite as a brother, but as a man I must have on my side.’

Father smiled.

‘What do you want to know about me?’ Per Olsen continued.

‘Your title and prestige have preceded you,’ Father said.

‘I have seen the worst of it on the borders between India and Pakistan. Do you need the details to know that I know what I am doing?’

‘Only time will tell if India can be translated into Palestine.’

‘I have witnessed too much of man’s depravity to be lulled into any sense of false security. To be brief,’ Per Olsen said, ‘I am from neither wealth nor poverty. I am not interested in Jewish and Arab politics. My first wife was a Jewess, killed by the Nazis in Dachau. No children, thank God. My wife now is a Moslem, a nurse who worked with me in India. We have three children. So you see, I am totally mixed up.’

‘Excellent cigar,’ Father said, luxuriating in it.

The two men engaged in a long silence that tried to cut through time, space, cultures, suspicions.

‘What is it you want?’ Father asked.

‘I agreed to come to the Jericho area because I could go forward with a special mission. As you know, idleness and despair are the twin curses of the refugees. Hunger and disease can be coped with. All of it together breeds the crime, the terror, the madness. If I have a God, it is the principle of self-help. I am in a position to help you start helping yourselves. I want to do something in Aqbat Jabar that will startle others in the refugee situation from their lethargy.’

‘What do you know of the Arabs?’

‘I am not a fool, Haj Ibrahim. That is why I have come to you. I first learned of you from Monsignor Grenelli, the Vatican observer on refugees. He told me at great length of your one-man war in Zurich. I made it a point to learn as much about your background as possible. Well, what do you say? I have funds and I have plans.’

‘My first advice, Per Olsen, is to move slowly. Very slowly.’

My father seemed to undergo a spiritual resurgence as Olsen and UNRWA triggered a rash of activities. The sound of building was heard in the Jericho Valley.