O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [29]
“Even wogs have friends, Charlie.”
“Too true, Davy, especially when they’re pretty as the skinny one.”
It was fortunate that the dye on my skin obscured any blood that rose on my cheeks, because their comments soon escalated, becoming remarkably graphic. Nonetheless, all four of us stood with our eyes on the ground until the two soldiers tired of talk, and one of them strolled over and slipped the point of his bayonet under the pack ropes. The mules skittered backwards to the full extent of their leads as our possessions rained down about their hoofs. In two minutes everything we owned was spread on the ground for the inspection of His Majesty’s troops, who trod up and down and kicked the coffee-pots and tent pegs across the mud. They seemed most disappointed to find nothing more lethal than a paring knife, and I shuddered to think what would have happened to us had we retained our guns.
They were just tiring of this when I became aware of the approach of what Ali and Mahmoud had seen earlier: an entire caravan of Bedouin—men, women, and children, camels, dogs, horses, goats, and sheep. There was even a lone chicken, squawking in agitation from a rough cage tied atop one of the camels. The front of the caravan stopped dead at the check-point but the tail continued to move forward, spreading out until it blocked the roadway in both directions. Lorries ground to a halt, drivers leant out of their windows and shouted curses, and an armoured car, horn blaring, pushed its way through the crowd on the verge, trying to leave the town. The two British soldiers, forced to abandon us before they had finished their fun, contented themselves with loud remarks about the filthy thieving habits of the bloody wogs, then turned away.
Ali bent to retrieve a fragile porcelain cup. As the soldier named Davy walked up the line, before any of us could react, he slipped his rifle from his shoulder and casually swung it around to swat Ali a tremendous crack on the head with the gun’s heavy butt. Ali collapsed amongst the kitchenware. I took one furious step forward, and felt Holmes’ hand freeze like a vice on my upper arm.
Fortunately neither soldier had noticed our movements, and they continued on their way to harass the camel caravan, but Mahmoud had seen my instinctive move and frowned at me thoughtfully for an instant before he bent to help Ali, who was already sitting up, holding his head and moaning loudly.
It seemed to take forever to bundle everything back onto the mules and slip away before the soldiers could return to us, but we made our escape into the streets of the town. Near the Turkish railway station we stopped to tuck a few loose bits back into the tenuous hold of Mahmoud’s knots. The precarious load would not have lasted an hour on the road, but apparently we were not going far. Holmes and I helped Mahmoud by bodily lifting the bulge of one pack while he looped a few more lengths of rope about the whole thing, mule and all. When the knot was tied he paused to look over the mule’s back at me.
“When the soldier hit Ali,” he said in a low voice and with perfect English diction, “it looked as if you meant to attack the man.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“But you would have gone to All’s defence? Physically?”
“Under different circumstances, certainly.”
He did not seem angry at my disobedience, just puzzled. Finally he said, “But women do not fight.”
“This one does,” I answered. He held my gaze, then looked sideways at Holmes.
“This one does,” my mentor confirmed.
“Wallah!” Mahmoud muttered with a shake of his head, recited something in Arabic, and went to help Ali to his feet. I looked at Holmes with a raised eyebrow.
“From the Koran, I believe,” he supplied. “He used the same passage the other day; it seems to be weighing heavily on his mind, for some reason. Loosely translated his words meant, ‘Would Allah make a woman to be covered in ornaments and powerless in a fight?’ A rhetorical question, of course.”
Of course.
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