The Haj - Leon Uris [11]
Although he was in an adversary position, the respect grew between Gideon and the Arabs, particularly the Bedouin. He saw them as a continuation of the People of the Book. Often as he rode alone through the Galilee, it was three thousand years ago and he might have been one of Solomon’s captains coming upon a Canaanite village. Sensing that he had no fear of them, many Arabs developed a strange loyalty toward him. Whether in a muktar’s village home or in the tent of a sheik, the blue-eyed horseman was entirely at home.
Gideon knew many Arab women. Of course this was dangerous for him, but he was young and reckless and, above all, entirely discreet. While no Arab man ever knew or suspected, Gideon had a fairly large contingent of well-wishers among the women all over the Galilee.
How could such a thing happen? Well, it is a known truth that jails were built for men, and few Arab villages of any size did not have two or three of their members serving a sentence, generally for stealing, smuggling, or a knifing. As often as not, they left a wife a few months pregnant. There were others, widows and poor souls unable to bear children. These were safe.
Every village had a nearby cave or hiding place where Gideon would go out to rest and soon be ‘found,’ frequently a half a dozen times a day. He had the strength of youth. They were very natural with him and for the moment seemed released from the eternal shadow of shame. He seldom failed to ride off content and they seldom failed to giggle and to smile inwardly as they watched out of the corner of an eye as Gideon galloped away.
By the onset of the First World War, Britain and France were casting an envious eye on Turkish-held territories in the Middle East. The two emerging international imperial powers saw the region as a crossroads. Key to that power was the securing of the Suez Canal. British control stopped at Egypt and at the Canal itself. Turkish control began on the opposite bank in the Sinai and Palestine. That the Sinai was to become a battlefield was predestined.
In Turkish-held Palestine, Jewish aspirations for a national homeland had been growing rapidly and had gained the support of world Jewry and the attention of the world’s capitals. Although it was perilous for the Jews of Palestine to stand against the Turks, they did so en masse, by enlisting in the British Army. In order to lock world Jewry into the Allied cause, the British foreign secretary issued the Balfour Declaration, favoring the establishment of the homeland in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was later canonized into international law and recognized by the entire world, save the Arabs. By the eve of the First World War, the Arabs had formulated a nationalism of their own, to commence when the yoke of the Ottomans could be shaken.
British Intelligence agents slipped into Palestine to set up espionage networks in advance of their armies and to find men to engage in highly specialized work.
Gideon Asch was secretly commissioned as a lieutenant in the British Army; his mission was to go into the Negev and Sinai deserts to chart the wadis, the water holes, the sparse patches of shade, the sheer passes—all for the coming battle against the Turks. Asch was born a desert rat, able to disappear among the Bedouin and sink deeply into the vast brooding reaches of the wilderness of Zin and Paran, where Moses and the Hebrew Tribes had wandered for forty biblical years. He followed those routes of the Bible through the parched dry beds, piecing bits and clues together of how one can survive and travel in such a landscape.