O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [55]
—BAEDEKER’S Palestine and Syria,
1912 EDITION
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In the morning we made our farewells to the village and turned east. Before we left, I saw Ali take Farash aside, no doubt to press into the mans hand a piece of paper containing the names of six Turkish officers to be delivered to the spymaster Joshua. Heaven only knew where the answer would catch up with us. When the last of the children dropped, or was driven, from our tail, I turned to Holmes.
“Why do we go in this direction?” I demanded, in Arabic.
“You heard the talk last night, when Ali asked about the Wadi Estemoa. We are continuing to investigate the death of Mikhail the Druse,”
“I did catch the word haramiyeh, did I not? Bandits? To the south-east?”
“You heard correctly.”
“You think bandits murdered Mikhail?” I asked doubtfully. “But he wasn’t robbed.”
“They may or may not have been responsible, but if there are bandits, they will surely know who was moving through their territory at the time Mikhail was shot. Bandits are territorial creatures. They take careful note of who moves through their land.”
“They may know, but will they tell us?” I wondered.
He did not reply.
As soon as we were out of sight of the village we shifted direction, heading due south. That whole day we saw only innocent forms of life: women tending goats, a few clusters of black tents, once on the horizon a long caravan of camels wavering in the heat, going north towards Jerusalem. In the afternoon we dropped into a wadi to return to the lowlands, on the theory that robbers must eventually go where there are people to rob, and half an hour later a piece of rock in front of my feet popped into the air, followed in an instant by the crack of a rifle echoing hugely down the canyon walls.
The mules squealed in terror and sent me flying as they shot away down the wadi, and would have trampled the men in front of me had they not already leapt as one for the protection of boulders.
I followed their example with alacrity, and we all cowered in silence, except for Ali, who cursed the mules bitterly until Mahmoud shouted at him to shut his mouth. Another bullet pinged off a rock and another gunshot boomed through the wadi. A few minutes later a third one came, with no result other than to keep us pinned down.
I began to hear voices then, and thought at first that they came from above our heads, which would have meant real trouble, until I identified the lower tones as those of Mahmoud. I inched around to the back of my rock and could see the two Arabs arguing around the backs of their respective boulders. Actually, they did not seem to be arguing so much as Ali pleading for something and Mahmoud refusing to give permission. After six or eight minutes of this, punctuated by the odd bullet from above, Ali wore his partner down; Mahmoud, with the incongruous air of a parent giving in to a child’s peremptory demands, flipped the back of his hand in the direction in which the mules had fled, then reached into his robe and pulled out his authoritative American pistol. He rose, pointed the long barrel in the general direction of our assailant, and commenced to fire.
Ali took off, racing down the rough wadi floor in the wake of our mules, his robes and huffiyah whipping around him. However, the ploy was only marginally successful. After Mahmoud’s fourth round, the man above must have risked a look and seen the fleeing Ali. Fortunately he was a terrible shot: none of his rounds came anywhere near the fleet-footed Arab.
After Ali had disappeared and the excitement died down, I wondered how long we had before the man above summoned reinforcements. One rifle we could hide from; two or three could prove uncomfortable. I could only hope Ali found the mules quickly and returned with our Lee Enfield, or else darkness fell, before the bandits regrouped.
“Holmes,” I whispered loudly.
“Oui,” came his reply. Yes, that would certainly confuse any listeners, to speak in French. I asked in that same language: “I think I am in a better