O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [14]
Holmes chose a remarkably similar means of dealing with the frustration, impatience, and resentment of having been relegated to the side-lines, only instead of string and inert paper, he worked with words and fools. He sat on his heels, rolling and smoking one cigarette after another, while our visitors (except for the chicken) climbed out of carts or divested themselves of burdens and settled in for a long talk. Holmes nodded and grunted and wagged his head or chuckled dutifully as the conversation demanded, and the only time he even came close to leaving his scrupulously assumed position on the side-lines was when he asked the old man (on the cart’s return journey) if things were peaceful in Jaffa. I pricked up my ears, but it was obvious the man knew nothing about Jaffa and was interested only in equine hoof problems—his donkey’s and our mules’.
By dusk, Holmes and I were ready respectively to strangle a visitor and shred a notebook. He stood up abruptly, and with uncharacteristic rudeness all but lifted the garrulous old man back onto his cart, waved an irritable arm at the stray chicken to dislodge it from its roost on the heap of our possessions, threw some wood on the fire, and slumped down beside it. I tossed my ridiculously precise drawings onto the ground, took out my pocket-sized Koran, and went to sit beside him. I was physically tired and mentally frazzled, but I positively welcomed submitting to the lessons that followed.
Holmes had learnt Arabic nearly thirty years earlier during a sojourn to Mecca, and I had begun intensive lessons upon leaving London ten days before. I did not know if I would be able to absorb enough of the language in the time at my disposal to be of use, but I was determined to try, and Holmes, as always, was a demanding teacher. Our every spare moment of the past days had been given over to the lessons, in language, manners, and deportment. I knew to use only my right hand for eating, I had the most useful verb forms and the most basic vocabulary under control, and I was learning to adopt the small, tight hand motions and the head and body movements of the native Arab speaker.
I had also received a quick tutorial concerning the society into which we were moving, Arab (both hadari, “settled,” and bedawi, “nomadic”), Jew (some of whom had ancestors here in the days of Temple sacrifice), and myriad splintered varieties of Christian. Until the war, with the Turk on all their backs, these disparate groups had existed as more or less amicable neighbours; but since the Turkish surrender, the cap was off, the long-building pressure threatening to erupt—complicated further by British attempts at even-handedness, the rise of Arab nationalism, and the growing number of brash Jewish immigrants, both Zionist and refugee.
The British government looked to have its hands full with this tiny country in the next few years.
None of which explained why Ali and Mahmoud had been so fearful of detection on the night we arrived. I looked up from the small leather book I had been puzzling at.
“Holmes?”
“Yes, Russell.”
“You referred to Ali and Mahmoud’s ‘little games.’ Was that whole demonstration of caution a façade?”
“Not all, no. Certainly if we’d been caught by a patrol at that hour of the night we’d have had a most unpleasant time of it. I do think, however, that the good brothers were attempting to illustrate how very awkward our presence here will be. A fact of which any sensible person would be aware.”
“You don’t think they wanted us here? Then why did Mycroft—”
“I don’t think they wanted us here, no. Two young soldiers trained in desert warfare they might have tolerated, although even that I doubt.”
Lovely, I thought morosely. I was on the verge of my twentieth year, I had worked with Holmes for four of those, and I had just in the last few weeks succeeded in convincing him of my competence and my right to be treated as a responsible adult. Now I would have to start all over again with