The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [136]
The noncommissioned officer in charge of the post didn’t believe the pathetic story about the dying mother. Ramses had not expected he would; they then proceeded to the next stage of negotiation, which left him without a certain percentage of his money and his merchandise. It wasn’t an outrageously high percentage; the NCO knew that if his victim started howling protests, it would have brought an officer to investigate—and demand his share.
Ramses had been in Gaza only once, in the summer of 1912, but he knew the place fairly well; he’d spent several days wandering around, enjoying the amenities of the suk and admiring the fine old mosques and making a brief, informal survey of the ancient remains, since he knew his father would expect one. There weren’t many. For almost four thousand years the area between the Sinai and the Euphrates had been fought over, conquered and reconquered, destroyed and rebuilt. Egyptians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, and Crusaders had occupied Gaza in turn. It had been one of the five cities of the Philistines, the site of the great temple of Dagon, pulled down by Samson in his last and mightiest feat. (He’d got that information from his mother; his father didn’t give much credence to anything in Scripture unless it could be confirmed by archaeological sources.) The most recent conquest had been by the Ottoman Sultan, Selim the First, in the sixteenth century; in revenge for the city’s stubborn resistance he had let his troops sack and destroy a large part of it. However, by 1912 Gaza had become a prosperous town with almost forty thousand inhabitants. The population had spilled out beyond the walls, to north and south and east; the central city, raised on the accumulated debris of various levels of destruction, contained the administrative and commercial buildings, as well as the homes of wealthier citizens.
On the hill that rose from the center of the upper town stood the Great Mosque, formerly a Christian church built in the twelfth century. He had spent an enjoyable afternoon admiring the carvings and the magnificent gray marble columns. It was now being used as a powder magazine.
So much for the Great Mosque, Ramses thought. So much for the other architectural treasures of Gaza—the little church of St. Porphyry, an exquisite example of early Christian architecture, the beautiful ancient mosque of Hashim, even the remains of the old walls and their seven gates. Modern weapons were much more efficient than the older variety. One well-placed shell and the Great Mosque, with its delicate octagonal minaret, would be gone.
And so would hundreds, maybe thousands, of people.
The suk appeared to be as prosperous as ever, with stalls selling everything from handmade lace and the fine black pottery of the region to a variety of mouthwatering fruits and nuts and vegetables, whose discarded rinds and husks littered the ground. Ramses found a popular café, squatted genteelly, and ordered mint tea. The habitués were an inquisitive lot; they put him through a merciless but friendly interrogation, not leaving off until they had determined his name, place of origin, business, and ancestry, and had commiserated with him on the condition of his poor young brother. “He has blue eyes,” said one observant man.
“His mother was Circassian,” Ramses explained. “My father’s favorite, until she died giving birth to him. My mother . . .”
It did not take long for Ramses to establish his bona fides as a seller of desirable merchandise. The town was full of men in uniform, strutting through the street with the arrogance of Europeans among natives. The most loquacious of their newfound friends, a middle-aged man with only one eye and a stump where his right hand had been, had a few pungent epithets for the Germans. “But,” he added, “they are no worse than the Turks. God curse this war! Whoever wins we will be the losers. If Gaza is defended, our homes and livelihoods will be destroyed.”
It was a good opening, and Ramses took advantage of it. His questions and comments