Exodus - Leon Uris [130]
Kammal fought a losing battle. The Turks would not give him a school or medical facilities or any social services. Conditions in the village were just about as they had been a thousand years before. Most heartbreaking for the Arab was the fact that he was unable to translate what he had learned into practical applications for his villagers; they were so illiterate and so backward that they simply could not comprehend.
Since he had become muktar, Abu Yesha had fared better than any Arab village in the Galilee, but conditions there were still primitive.
Kammal was puzzled by the strange coming of the Jews to Palestine. Because he wanted to learn its meaning, he intentionally cultivated the friendship of Jossi Rabinsky.
Jossi tried to get Kammal to sell him a parcel of land which was not being worked to begin a colony, but Kammal balked. These Jews confused him. He did not know whether they could be trusted or not, for certainly they were not all like Jossi Rabinsky. Besides, he was not going to be the first effendi to sell land in the Huleh Valley.
Just as Kammal learned from Jossi, so Jossi learned from Kammal. Despite Kammal’s enlightenment he was heart and soul an Arab. He never spoke of his three wives, for the servitude of woman was traditional. Kammal was always polite, but he was a great man to bicker when bartering. Jossi watched him exercising his authority. Although he had compassion for his people he could not comprehend any means of rule that was not absolute. On occasion Kammal even consulted Jossi in some typical double-dealing scheme which seemed perfectly legitimate to the Arab.
Through Kammal, Jossi Rabinsky learned about the magnificent and tragic history of the Arab people.
In the seventh century the dogma of Islam had erupted upon the wild semicivilized Bedouin tribes in the deserts. Inspired by Mohammed’s divine teachings, they swept out of the sand and with fire and sword spread their gospel from the doorsteps of China to the gates of Paris. During a hundred years of holy persuasion, hundreds of millions of the world’s peoples had gathered to the banner of Islam. The heart and soul of Islam were the Arabs, who were bound together by a common language and a common religion of submission to God’s will. During the meteoric rise of Islam, Jews held the highest positions of esteem in the Arab-speaking world.
A magnificent civilization arose from the deserts. It was the light of all mankind while the Western world wallowed in the morass of the Dark Ages and feudalism. Bagdad and Damascus became the Athens of their day. The Moslem culture was dazzling. For five hundred years the most advanced thinking, the greatest scientific efforts, the most magnificent artisans belonged to the Arab-speaking world.
Then came the Holy Wars of the Crusaders, who sacked and raped and killed in the name of the very same God who was shared by Moslem and Christian.
After the Crusaders came a century—one hundred unrelieved years—of Mongol invasions. The Mongols swooped in from Asia and the wars were so cruel and so bloody that they defied any known bounds of brutality. Pyramids of Arab skulls stood as the monuments of the Mongols.
The Arabs so exhausted themselves in ten decades of fighting that their once mighty cities were decimated and a dry rot fell on the flowering oases. The beautiful islands of fruit and plenty were eaten up by seas of sand and erosion. The Arabs turned more and more against themselves and a bitter and desperate struggle ensued in which blood feuds pitted brother against brother. Divided against themselves, their land ruined, and their culture all but destroyed, they were unprepared to defend themselves against the final disaster.
This time it was brought about by fellow Moslems as the mighty Ottomans gobbled up their lands. Five centuries of corruption and feudalism followed.
A drop of water became more precious than gold or spices in the unfertile