Leon Uris (8 page)

‘You are a Jew liar and I fart on your beard!’

‘Your great benefactor, Fawzi Effendi Kabir, sold us the water rights to the Brook of Ayalon when he dumped this swampland on us. Tabah will always have sufficient water as long as you behave.’

‘Liar! You will die before anyone else does!’

‘Get on your lovely horse and ride to Lydda, Haj Ibrahim. It is all registered at the land office.’

Ibrahim was dumbstruck and severely shaken. Usually when he was upset he ranted and cursed to cover it up. He groped for some kind of words to hide his shock as his mind raced. He knew that if the Jews really did own the water rights he might have to give up Hani, the would-be rapist, in order to fill the village well!

Gideon suddenly issued a terse command for Ibrahim’s guards to leave. They were startled into turning their horses around. ‘You go as well,’ Gideon said, ‘our meeting is done.’

The Jew had him trapped. He had no choice. He gained control of his rage, for he knew the next moments could be crucial. He also knew Gideon was not of a stripe to be bullied and when one does not give way to intimidation another course must be followed. With a flick of the hand and a few words he ordered his men to leave.

‘Please,’ Gideon said pointing to a pair of large flat rocks suitable for sitting. ‘I come here often, just as you go up to your knoll. We have a great deal to talk about. Do you indulge in a little wine?’

Ibrahim looked about as though he were being spied upon. As a Moslem, he was forbidden to drink. ‘First we talk,’ he said.

Gideon sat on one of the rocks. ‘He who is one day older than you is one day more clever. The Effendi Kabir dealt to you with a crooked hand,’ the Jew said.

Ibrahim stifled the urge to admonish Gideon, for one does not permit a Jew to speak ill of a brother Moslem. In his stomach he knew that Fawzi Kabir had betrayed him by selling the water rights to the Jews. He had done it to force Tabah to fight against the Mufti of Jerusalem. How to get around it? Would the Jews show mercy? Before I eat him for dinner, Ibrahim thought, he may eat me for lunch.

‘I want Hani,’ Gideon said.

‘He was in his fields when he was attacked by a dozen of your men,’ Ibrahim spouted automatically.

Gideon shot back a disarming smile, the same smile of disdain he had shown three years earlier. ‘If that is the case, then let justice take its course. He will get a fair trial.’

‘No. The whole story is an invention for you to have an excuse to cut off our water.’

‘You have two choices,’ Gideon said, ignoring Ibrahim’s litany. ‘I know that Hani is hiding among the Wahhabis. I have eyes and ears in your own village. I also have eyes and ears among the Wahhabis. I have eaten forty days and nights of meals in the tent of Sheik Azziz. We are brothers. Either Hani is returned and faces trial, or my friends among the Wahhabis will see to it he is fed to the desert.’

Ibrahim was fast being maneuvered by the Jew into a position of weakness. He knew that Gideon knew he could never agree to return Hani to be put on trial. Ibrahim would lose face among his people. It would be far better to let Gideon’s Bedouin friends take care of him. That would make him share a secret with Gideon. He would owe the Jew a favor. With the Jews owning his water he would be in double debt to them. You can pass in front of an enemy when you are hungry but not when you are naked. ...

‘Hani can go piss up a rope,’ Ibrahim said. ‘Let the vultures pick at his bones.’

‘The Wahhabis will get the message by tonight,’ Gideon said.

‘No one must know,’ Ibrahim said.

‘The desert hides everything,’ Gideon answered.

‘You cannot take advantage of us because Kabir cheated us,’ Ibrahim pleaded. ‘We have been in Tabah over a thousand years.’ He exaggerated by several centuries.

‘For your water you must pay a price,’ Gideon said firmly.

‘But we are very, very poor.’

‘I understand you have become quite wealthy personally.’

‘I will not pay blackmail,’ Ibrahim said, with his valor slowly seeping out of his pores.

‘Unless you have figured a way to strike water from the rocks, then start packing.’

‘What is your price?’ Ibrahim whispered, with fear crawling all over him.

‘Peace.’

‘Peace?’

‘Peace.’

‘That is all?’

‘That is all. The valve that sends water into Tabah shall remain open so long as you stay out of our fields, stop shooting at us, and never again lay a hand on any of my people.’

Ibrahim quickly regained his valor. ‘What will you give me if I meet your demands?’

‘Just water.’

‘I must have a paper to show everyone. Give me a paper and I will agree.’

‘We have already legalized your rights. They are on file at the land office. Your water depends on you keeping the agreement. Is there anything we don’t understand?’

‘I understand,’ Ibrahim capitulated. He was so relieved he shook Gideon’s hands in a manner that consummates a bargain. ‘How do we know there will be enough water. The stream runs low in the hot months and we see you are building one of those gigantic water towers.’

‘We have been measuring the brook for two years. There is enough for present needs. However, we are opening new acreage and plan to experiment with overhead sprinkling irrigation. Below the terracing we will be building a dam and reservoir. With the winter flash floods there will be enough water—for peaceful neighbors—for this century.’

A dam! A reservoir! These were staggering things to contemplate. The Jews were ingenious!

‘As long as you are here ... Your shepherds have broken the fence on your south pasture where it meets our northern fields. Your goats are ruinous. They dig for water with their hooves and destroy the fragile vegetation.’

Ibrahim was careful not to be offensive.... ‘But these goats have survived here for thousands of years.’

‘The goats have but the land hasn’t,’ Gideon said. ‘I notice you have been drying up swamp and I understand it is your personal land. If you are looking for high profit I suggest you get rid of the goats entirely and try some of the cattle we have brought in.’

Ibrahim came to his feet determinedly. ‘Understand this, Gideon Asch. I have made a bargain with you because I have no choice. We want nothing but our share of the water that was stolen from us. We do not want your cattle, your machinery, your medicine. You are deceiving yourself if you really think this is a land of milk and honey, just as the spies of Moses deceived him. Canaan has always been dust. The ancient Hebrews fled Canaan to Egypt because of drought.’

‘Perhaps we’ve learned something in the last three thousand years,’ Gideon said, ‘and perhaps it’s time you started learning.’

‘And perhaps you will learn that what the Prophet has willed to dust, will be dust. Wait until there is no water for any of us. Wait till the earthquakes come. Wait till your medicine cannot cure the scourges. Wait till the sun breaks the rocks. They will break your spirit as well.’

‘Perhaps even Allah needs a little help,’ Gideon answered. ‘It is time you stopped picking at the bones of dead earth.’

‘You are a fool, Gideon Asch.’

‘We’re going to be neighbors for a long time, Haj Ibrahim. I was hoping you wanted something better for your people.’

‘Not from you,’ Ibrahim answered, and mounted his horse.

‘We must meet. We must agree to talk about things like fences and pestilence. Things that concern us both,’ Gideon said.

‘How can I meet when you select a woman as your muktar?’

‘We choose our leaders. Our leaders do not choose us,’ Gideon said.

‘It is a very bad system. It will never work,’ Ibrahim said. ‘I will meet, but only with you and only at my knoll.’

‘Once at the knoll. Once here at the stream,’ Gideon answered.

As Ibrahim rode off he wondered why he was more angry with the Jew than he was at the Effendi Kabir. From Kabir this kind of trickery was expected and understood. But charity from the Jews? Never!

Ibrahim rode into a terrified assemblage at the café. He sat calmly at his table outside the door as Farouk groveled and put a finjan of coffee before him. He poured it deliriously slowly and sipped as he studied the fear-filled eyes before him. ‘The Effendi has sold our water to the Jews,’ he said. He held up his hand before mass hysteria could break out. ‘However, I told the Jew to have our well filled by the time the sun is high or fifty English warships won’t save his ass.’

‘What happened!’

‘The Jew got the message. I gave him a choice of having the hairs of his beard pulled out one at a time or by the handful.’

‘Is it war?’

‘No. He pleaded for peace. I gave him mercy!’

‘Haj Ibrahim!’ someone called from the back of the crowd. ‘Water is filling up in the well!’

Cheers and whistles of joy and triumph ascended.

‘Haj Ibrahim is great!’

The father of Hani pushed through to the table. ‘My son, Ibrahim. What of Hani?’

‘Oh yes. I told him that a fine boy like Hani could not do such a thing. He is merely visiting relatives. The Jew agreed to remain quiet on the subject and after a time Hani can slip back into Tabah.’

‘May Allah bless your every breath and footstep, Haj Ibrahim.’

Ibrahim went to the knoll after evening prayer. With all the trees he could no longer see into Shemesh Kibbutz. Damned, but he liked Gideon Asch! If only his son, Kamal, turned out like Gideon ... why ... why ... the two of them could conquer all of Palestine.

H
AJ
A
MIN
A
L
H
EUSSEINI,
the Mufti of Jerusalem, assumed the pulpit. The mosque stood on a great plaza that had been the Temple Mount of Solomon and Herod. Since Islam it had been the site of Al Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, where Mohammed made his legendary ascension to heaven. Known now as the Haram esh Sharif, the Most Noble Sanctuary, it was considered the third most sacred site in all of Islam.

‘The criminal Jews are going to take the Haram esh Sharif by a signal of a ram’s horn blowing on Yom Kippur. They are going to destroy the Dome of the Rock and this mosque and rebuild their temple!’ the mufti shouted.

‘Death to the Jews!’ the congregation responded.

‘Hatred of the Jews is sacred!’ cried the mufti.

‘Death to the Jews!’ they chanted.

Out they poured, brandishing knives, clubs, and hidden pistols from beneath their robes. Frothing, enraged by the sermon, the Arab mob fell upon the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City nearby, a quarter inhabited by defenseless Hassidim. They tore into the little room-sized synagogues and burned Jewish holy books, smashed up shops, urinated and defecated on Torah scrolls, pulled beards, clubbed and garroted, and when it was done, thirty Jews had been murdered.

‘The Jews have destroyed Al Aksa!’

The word roared over Palestine from mosque to mosque accompanied by crudely faked photographs.

‘Death to the Jews!’

In the holy city of Safed in the Galilee, where the oriental Jewish scholars studied the mystical books of Cabala, eighteen were massacred.

‘Death to the Jews!’

In Abraham’s city of Hebron, where Jew and Moslem jointly worshiped at the tombs of the patriarchs, the burial place of Abraham and many biblical characters, the Arab mob murdered and dismembered sixty-seven unarmed and undefended men, women, and children.

Other attacks were coordinated as the Arabs spilled out of their mosques in Jaffa, Haifa, Beer Tuvia, and Hulda, spurred by the infamous lie that the Jews were taking over the Haram esh Sharif.

Using the pulpit and the power and position of his title as Mufti, Haj Amin al Heusseini moved through the decade of the 1920s and spread his tentacles into every corner of Palestine. He was a landowner of enormous properties, which were sharecropped in a feudal tradition. The Mufti’s domain was a destitute, illiterate fiefdom of desperate serfs who were easily aroused and manipulated into religious frenzy inside the mosque.

While the Jewish Agency flourished, the Mufti blocked creation of an Arab Agency, which would have caused him to cooperate with rival clans and diminish his personal ambitions. This left the Arab community with an impoverished and ineffectual health and education system and no plans for future progress.

Instead, the Mufti maneuvered. Arab life was completely centered around the Moslem religion. A Supreme Moslem Council was the major body controlling religious funds, religious courts, the mosques, moneys for orphans and education. Haj Amin al Heusseini seized the presidency of the Council, which, in addition to his title as Mufti, gave him a hammerlock on the Arab community.

As president of the Supreme Moslem Council he had vast funds at his disposal without having to make a public accounting. He likewise controlled the appointment of preachers, mosque officials, teachers, and judges. So broad and dominating had the Mufti’s powers become that he immodestly added the word ‘Grand’ to his title and thus became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The calm of the decade had been deliberately broken when he turned loose his ragged legions in a raw play for absolute power.

Although the carnage had been great in undefended Jewish holy cities, the Mufti’s gains had been limited. He had struck at isolated pockets of pious scholars and rabbis and against rival Arab clans. The rioters, however, gave wide berth to the Jewish farming settlements, which were simply too tough to be attacked.

The Mufti tried and got nowhere in the Valley of Ayalon against the Jewish kibbutzim. Gideon Asch, the Haganah commander, had secretly armed and trained all males and females of fighting age. His area remained very quiet during the 1929 riots. A good part of the relative calm in Ayalon was due to the Muktar of Tabah, who ordered his people not to get involved in the Mufti’s ‘holy war.’

Although Shemesh and Tabah did not cooperate in or coordinate defensive matters, there was always ongoing business to discuss and most of the original coolness changed.

Haj Ibrahim personally did not set foot in the kibbutz proper. On those occasions when he visited Gideon he would enter the gate and ride through the fields to their rendezvous point by the stream. Likewise, Gideon visited him at the knoll but never at the muktar’s home.