The Haj - Leon Uris [109]
The Kastel was firmly in Jewish hands and Tabah, once neutral, was now an enemy village. They were no longer immune. What was taking place all over Palestine was now happening to them. They dreaded the thought of the moment when the British would withdraw from Latrun. They would be naked, with a powerful Jewish settlement a stone’s throw away.
Every day the talk was of Arab villages, towns, even cities being abandoned. The families of Tabah began to break and run.
Haj Ibrahim could no longer merely ponder. People were leaving; he was under pressure from the Irregulars to establish observation and sniping posts. No money had arrived from Fawzi Kabir. The moment when he would receive orders to abandon Tabah was close at hand. The weight of it crushed him. Was there a chance—any chance—that they could ride it out without being destroyed by one side or the other?
He donned his finery, walked down the hill, crossed the highway, and stood before the guard post of Shemesh Kibbutz and asked to see Gideon Asch.
11
April 1948
ONE COULD TELL GIDEON Asch’s cottage apart from the others. As one of the few remaining founders of the kibbutz, he was accorded the distinction of having his own hot water storage tank on the roof. The cottage was a Spartan two-room affair—a small bedroom and a larger multipurpose living, dining, and office room. His hours away from the kibbutz did not allow him to eat often at the communal dining room, so the members had voted him a small kitchen. A final note of his importance was a pair of private telephones on his desk.
Gideon responded to a knock on the door by lifting his eyes from the eternal stack of papers.
‘Come in.’
A guard held the door open as Haj Ibrahim entered. He asked Ibrahim to hold his arms apart and started to frisk him.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Gideon said.
The two men had not seen each other for almost three years and an awkwardness prevailed. Gideon arose and extended his hand. As Ibrahim took it, they went into a bear hug and slapped one another on the shoulder. Gideon waved him to a seat opposite his own at the desk.
‘Your sons are faring well?’
Ibrahim nodded. They became quiet. Aside from the austerity of the place, Ibrahim was taken by the fact that every available space held books, hundreds of them, crammed into every corner.
‘I have often wondered how you lived,’ Ibrahim said.
There are many books here. I even see books in Arabic. How many languages do you read?’
Gideon shrugged. ‘Five ... six ... seven.’
‘That is very impressive. Ishmael reads to me from the Palestine Post.’
Gideon smelled the tension but remained patient as the Arab tried to pick up the elusive threads. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a bottle of Scotch whiskey and shoved a glass over the desk.
‘Compliments of our British protectors.’
Ibrahim held up his hand in protest. ‘You know that stuff will destroy me.’
‘Some wine?’
The muktar declined. Gideon opened another drawer, poked around and found a stick of hashish, and tossed it toward Ibrahim. ‘You smoke. I’ll drink,’ Gideon said.
‘The guards?’
‘They don’t know hashish from horseshit.’
Two belts and two puffs later, the tension had melted. Ibrahim groaned and dropped his head into his hands. ‘This whole thing is like trying to pave the sea.’
‘What can I say? We don’t want this war, Ibrahim.’
‘I wish I were a Bedouin. They know every trick of survival.’ His mind floated after another draw on the pipe. ‘I saw Rosh Pinna. I was passing through.’
‘On your way to Damascus, where you met with Fawzi Kabir, Kaukji, and Abdul Kadar, who is, for better or worse, no longer with us. I assume they didn’t summon you to wish you well with your olive crop.’
‘It is so humiliating seeing my people run like this. Perhaps humiliation is not so important to the Jews. After all, you have been humiliated in many places in many times. To us this humiliation is crushing.’
‘What