Leon Uris (77 page)

Nada rekindled her auntship to Fatima’s children. She brought gifts, little nothings that the Othman children had discarded. In a place where toys did not exist, these were like jewels.

‘Come, Nada, your father is waiting for you,’ Hagar said. She felt her mother’s hands nervously edge her out of the kitchen. ‘Please try not to fight this time. I believe Ibrahim has really wanted to see you.’ Nada entered the gathering room. The women followed her in and went quickly to their stools.

Ibrahim postured in his new deep seat as his daughter stepped before him and bowed. She smiled, but it was not a smile of sweetness. There was bitter brew beneath it. Ibrahim drank her in for a long time but squelched any ideas of commenting about her loveliness. He motioned her to bring a stool up closer to him.

‘How was your journey?’

‘The ride does not change between the bus station in Amman and the bus station in Jericho.’

‘I would have sent Ishmael to escort you, but he is racing the weather at Mount Nebo. I know it is not proper to allow you to travel alone, but as long as it is a direct route I felt it was all right this one time. It will not happen again.’

‘There is no need to worry, Father.’

‘Ah, but no woman in my family travels alone.’

‘Of course, Father.’

‘And how is the honorable Hamdi Othman?’

Nada merely nodded.

‘And your position?’

She nodded again.

He was becoming annoyed by her closed behavior.

Her eyes bore down on him in such a manner that he began to feel slightly ill at ease. Ibrahim had occasionally seen a woman act out a protest. It is time that Nada did so. She thinks she is worldly. Well, I will put that in order. Ask her for that stroll? No, not in her sour mood. I shall be patient, he thought.

‘You must have a great many tales to tell,’ he said.

‘There is nothing all that exciting about taking care of three small children. Fatima can vouch for that.’

Fatima giggled at the recognition.

‘Surely it must be exciting to be in such a grand villa with all those important officials coming and going.’

‘I am scarcely part of that, Father. I only go into the living areas on occasion, generally to show the children before their bedtime.’

‘Madame Othman is kind to you?’

‘As kind as she can be under the circumstances.’

‘What circumstances, Nada?’

‘I am a servant. They have many servants.’

‘But you are special.’

‘I don’t feel very special.’

‘Certainly you are. You are the daughter of Haj Ibrahim al Soukori al Wahhabi!’ Ibrahim scratched the back of his hand uncomfortably under her continued hard stare. ‘We must have a talk together during the visit. Yes?’

‘As you wish, Father.’

He flushed a bit at her cold terseness. It was what he was beginning to suspect. Being in a villa like that in a city, she was mingling with girls who did not respect tradition. It might have been a mistake to send her there in the first place. Well, a little rebellion. He certainly did not want to make a fight but he was not going to let her get away with treating him this way.

‘I have a surprise for you, Nada. Since your last visit I have suddenly become aware that you have flown past the usual age when I should have found you a husband. Because of the cruel circumstances of our life here, I was determined not to be too hasty in this matter. Our fortunes have changed for the better. Omar will soon be going to Kuwait, where he will have a job as a clerk in a fine hotel. Ishmael has had good earnings with Dr. Mudhil, and I have reached a position of comfort. It is time to reconsider the matter of your marriage. I have been approached by a number of fathers desirous of entering into an arrangement. I wanted to make certain you have as fine a husband as your sisters have. Seeing how you have matured, your value as a wife has increased greatly. I have waited until offers of substance were made. We need wait no longer.’

The women opened their arms in joy and emitted long ‘ahs.’

‘I am not in a hurry. I am very happy in Amman.’

Aha, Ibrahim thought, now my dear daughter does not act so arrogantly! She knows who her father is again. Of course I am not going to marry her off so soon, but I shall play a bit. I shall keep her guessing ... in her place.

‘We will speak of your marriage possibilities at length while you are here,’ Ibrahim pressed. ‘Since you are my last daughter, I am even going to allow you to be part of the decision ... but depend on me to select exactly the right man. I am very good at that.’

Nada arose from the stool and walked toward him. ‘I will not marry until I am ready,’ she said, firmly speaking the first words of defiance to him in her life. The women shrank back.

Ibrahim’s eyes narrowed. ‘It is as I suspected. I believe you are cavorting with indecent girls who do not have the proper respect for their fathers. You will never speak to me in that tone again and you will marry where, when, and whom I tell you.’ He clapped his hands for his wives and Fatima to leave.

‘Wait!’ Nada commanded them. They froze in astonishment. ‘I will not marry until I am ready,’ she repeated, ‘and I will marry whom I wish.’

Ibrahim arose authoritatively. He slapped her face.

‘Have you veiled yourself in public as I ordered?’

‘No.’

He slapped her again and jerked the scarf from her head. ‘You have grown back too much hair. I find it offensive. Hagar, get the scissors.’

‘No, Father, you will not cut my hair.’

‘Hagar! Bring the scissors at once. Let me tell you, Nada, that the honor and virtue of this family are going to be kept!’

‘You need not worry about your honor and my virtue any longer,’ she said.

‘Be quiet, Nada!’ her mother cried.

Ibrahim glowered in disbelief. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I am no longer a virgin.’

Wails rose from the women. Ramiza swooned and fainted. Ibrahim’s eyes widened crazily.

‘You are lying!’ he screamed grotesquely. He waved his hands about in a quandary. ‘Is it true what you say!’

‘Yes.’

‘You were raped, forced against your will. Is that not what happened!’

‘No, Father, I was willing.’

‘You ... you are with child!’

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. What does it matter?’

‘Who is he!’

‘They, Father.’

‘You have done this to deliberately humiliate me!’

‘Yes, I did, Father.’

‘Deliberately ... to humiliate me ... to destroy my honor. ... You did it ...’

‘I have heard you ask many times, Who will tell the lion his breath smells bad? You are a savage, Father. If you feel pain now, feel it deep and hard because it is the pain you have made me bear every day of my life. I do not fear for my life because it never really began. It never really happened. I never lived for me, only for you. So do your noble duty.’

‘Nada, come back here!’

‘Go to hell, Father.’

‘Nada!’

‘Ishmael once read to me about the whore of Jericho who hid the spies of Joshua. So avenge the shame your daughter, the whore, has brought upon you. I will be walking in the alleys of Jericho. You will find me.’

As she left, Ibrahim stormed into his bedroom and returned strapping his belt and dagger on. He tore for the entrance. Hagar blocked the way, fell on her knees, and threw her arms about him.

‘No, Ibrahim! Send her away. We will never speak her name!’

Ramiza flung herself at him and clutched him. He threw them off violently, then kicked them back. They writhed on the floor rending their hair as he staggered out.

Nada’s body was found the next morning in a gutter of Jericho. Her neck had been broken and her throat slashed. Her hair had been crudely hacked off.

T
HE MOMENT
I
SAW
Dr. Mudhil at the Allenby Bridge and the agony on his face, I knew what had happened without being told.

‘Nada,’ he said and nothing more.

How strange. I did not cry. Dr. Mudhil begged me not to go to my father’s house. He begged me to come with him to London.

‘No, I am going home now.’

Strange ... I could not cry ... and I was not frightened. ...

I could feel the terrified eyes of my mother riveted to me as I pushed past a fearful knot of neighbors. I entered the gathering room.

Haj Ibrahim sat in his great chair awaiting me. His eyes bulged twice the size of normal and red veins flooded through them. His face echoed weird shadows from the flickering light before the photographs of Omar and Jamil. I stared at him, probably for an hour. Nothing could be heard but our grunting breathing.

‘Speak! Speak! I command you to speak!’ he said in a voice foreign to me.

Another hour passed. His eyes rolled back in his head. He fought his way out of his seat and walked unevenly to the table. He opened his robes, took out his dagger, still with Nada’s blood on it, and sank it into the tabletop.

‘You ... you were once my hope ...’ he rasped. ‘But you do not have the courage of a woman.’ He came to me and bared his throat. ‘Go on, Ishmael, do it!’

‘Oh yes, yes. I am going to kill you, Father, but I’ll do it my own way. I don’t need your dagger. I’m just going to talk. I’m going to talk you to death. So open your ears, Father, and listen very carefully.’ He stared at me. I began. ‘In Jaffa, I witnessed both of your wives and Fatima being raped by Iraqi soldiers!’

‘You are a liar,’ he snarled.

‘No, Father, I do not lie. There were eight or ten of them, and one after the other they came at the women and I saw their big wet slimy pricks coming inside them!’

‘Liar!’

‘They jerked off on the naked bodies of your wives. They laughed and slapped their asses! They had a wonderful time!’

‘Liar!’

‘Go on, Father! Pull your dagger out of the table and kill me. Kill us all!’

Ibrahim suddenly grasped his chest and screamed as an awful pain hit him. He gasped for air: ‘My heart ... my heart ...’ He reeled about the room, bumping into everything. He fell. I stood above him.

‘Can’t you get your knife out of the table, Father? No? Too bad. I watched Mother being fucked on the floor by a half-dozen of them! Fucked on the floor!’

‘YAHHHHHHH!’

He was on his hands and knees, crawling and wheezing and gagging, with slobber coming from his nose and eyes and mouth.

‘YAHHHHHHH!’

He reached the table and tried to pull himself up. He put his hand around the hilt of the dagger and tugged. It would not come out. The table toppled over. He lay and gurgled, screamed, and then was very still.

T
HE FAMILY CREPT BACK
into the house, chilled with terror. I expected them to rant and rage at the sight of Ibrahim’s dead body at my feet. Oddly, they did not. They stared at me, then shrank back in fear. It suddenly occurred to me that in that instant they completely accepted me as their new master. I remained impassive, almost removed. And then, a flush of elation. I had avenged my beloved sister and I had done so by bringing down the most powerful and awesome man I had ever known. I could have screamed for joy at the way I killed him. He died in pain with a thousand ants eating his armpits.

But God ... I still loved him ... can you understand that?
I loved him.

As whispers quickly rampaged into excited news, the cafés and hovels emptied and a huge gathering took place before our home. I went out to the veranda, unafraid, and glowered at them. There were hundreds and more were coming. Yet no words were shouted against me. There was no contesting what had happened. Of course it all followed, didn’t it? If there was one thing these people knew it was that I, Ishmael, had done in the Haj in our time-honored tradition and that I, Ishmael, was now the power to be reckoned with.

‘Haj Ibrahim has left us,’ I announced almost blandly. ‘He died of the heart.’

The most glorious moment in the story of Haj Ibrahim came after his death. The outpouring of humanity and their display of grief at his funeral was of a nature usually reserved for high holy men or great heads of state. They came from every camp in the West Bank and Jordan, hundreds of thousands of them. In the end the Arabs venerated, adored, worshipped him, but they never really knew why. All they knew at this moment was that Haj Ibrahim was gone and they were naked without him.

A tomb and a small mosque were already being built in the foothills of Mount Temptation overlooking Aqbat Jabar. It was here that he was set down and vengeance was sworn against the Jews, although I don’t understand why. I kept my composure, my aloof silence, throughout the ordeal. Although many foul things were whispered behind my back, no one dared speak out in accusation to my face. They understood who their new leader was when they confronted him, They knew of my power. They groveled before me, expressing their grief. They kissed my cheeks and the slovenly among them kissed my hand.

Future generations would come to consider his tomb as a holy place and with the passage of time the Haj would become a saint.

When the funeral was done and they departed, going back to their hellholes, a horrible nausea overcame me. I had to be away. I went to the one place and to the one man who gave me warmth and comfort, I could see that Nuri Mudhil was frightened for me. I mumbled over and over that I still loved Ibrahim. He seemed to know that I was due to break. You see, I had not spoken of Nada since her murder. I had forced myself not to think of her. And then I mentioned her name and collapsed in his arms.

‘Tell me where she is, Dr. Mudhil. I must take her to where she can be in peace.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you cannot.’

‘But I must.’

‘You cannot,’ he repeated firmly.

‘What are you trying to tell me?’

‘Not now, Ishmael, later ...’

‘Tell me. I demand that you tell me!’

‘There is nothing left of her. She is strewn about in a hundred places in that awful disposal pit near the river. Please, ask nothing further.

I screamed, ‘I will avenge!’

He sighed painfully. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘of course you will avenge ... of course you will avenge ...’

I stormed about the room, longing to burst. I stood before him and shook.... ‘Why can I not weep ... I want to weep ... Why can I not weep!’ I fell to my knees and clutched at him. ‘What have we done!’ I shrieked. ‘Why! Why! Why! Why!’