The Haj - Leon Uris [132]
Prostitution has always been the faithless companion of armies and Nablus was filled with hungry women. In addition to the oldtime prostitutes of the casbah, there were hundreds of women now willing to take that final step. It had to be done with great care, so husbands and sons would not know. Widows, women one or two months pregnant, and spinsters were the safest. It meant instant death if one were discovered. The professional pimps could easily blackmail a woman and were avoided. Young boys from another clan proved to be the most skillful and reliable pimps. A clever boy working the camp gates for two or three women was able to feed his family without their knowledge of how he got his money.
The new arrivals came into competition with the established Nablus pimps and prostitutes and there were many killings each week. A young pimp always had his balls cut off when he was murdered. In other instances, fathers and brothers learned of a whoring mother or sister and death followed quickly. Along with the thieves and smugglers and dope fiends, the casbah was a frightening place.
Iraqi soldiers in the ranks were very poor and usually quite stupid. Yet they always managed to have something to trade for a woman: cigarettes, arms, a pair of shoes stolen from a comrade, food from the quartermaster. Low-ranking soldiers were not a bad deal because they got their business over with quickly—in the bushes. The women were always veiled so they could not be identified later and a smart one could service a platoon of men in an hour.
On the other hand, the Iraqi officers were demigods of abnormal power. These were serviced by the established prostitutes, who provided drink, oils, a softly lit room walled with carpets to cover the hideousness of the casbah, radio music, hashish, a well-pillowed bed in a dark corner.
Omar and Jamil were collecting corpses and we were still hungry all the time. I began to think about running a pair of girls. I had not lost my deeply ingrained morality about the honor of women, but honor and starvation have difficulty living side by side. Each time the thought came to me, so did the visions of the rape of the women of my family in Jaffa. Girls liked me very much and approached me many times to pimp for them.
But I always thought about Nada. I would rather see Nada die of starvation than submit. I had sworn to protect her from the moment we left Tabah. She was fourteen and had grown breasts and become alluring. I would not so much as let her walk through the casbah alone. I simply could not pimp for anyone’s sister. I had a final consideration in the matter. If Haj Ibrahim ever knew I pimped, he would beat me to death.
We often finished our meals with our bellies still rumbling and I thought of joining Omar and Jamil on the corpse removal job but decided to try a few more days of hanging around the Iraqi camps.
If you keep your eyes on the street day and night looking for a penny, sooner or later one will show up. My good fortune fell on me from the sky one day. Many of the casbah refugee boys hung around the Iraqi quartermaster compound, waiting for convoys of trucks to be unloaded. The soldiers on the unloading detail would pay us an odd lira or two to do their job. One or two soldiers stayed to watch us so we would not steal and the rest of them either went to sleep under a tree or to the casbah to find a whore.
It never rained in Nablus this time of year, but a freak storm had driven everyone to cover so that there were only a few dozen boys around. By the Prophet’s grace, a convoy of a dozen trucks suddenly showed up and we all had work. The soldiers assigned to the detail disappeared. The officer in charge of the convoy was of high rank—a captain—and he, too, headed into Nablus. Those detailed to keep an eye on us unloading were soon driven into the cabs of the trucks by the rain and within moments were asleep.
So here we were, emptying trucks into a warehouse with no one watching us. The only question was how