The Haj - Leon Uris [135]
Haj Ibrahim nodded an acknowledgment. ‘I am not the kind of man to lead you over the desert following camel turds,’ Ibrahim said. ‘I have serious things on my mind, other than my personal condition.’
‘Even so far away as Nablus, we have heard of Haj Ibrahim’s notable candor,’ the mayor replied.
‘I am bitterly pained by the behavior of the people. I never believed I would live to see our great tradition of hospitality suddenly fall from honour.’
‘Nor did I,’ Clovis Bakshir agreed.
‘We are not foreigners. We are not Turks. We are not Jews,’ Ibrahim said pointedly.
‘You must understand that this entire refugee situation crashed down on us like a sudden storm and has all but drowned us.’
‘Refugee? What do you mean, refugee?’ Ibrahim said. ‘My village is less than two hours from here. I am a Palestinian in my own country among my own people. I am not a refugee!’
Clovis Bakshir remained professionally unflappable. ‘Victims of war,’ he corrected, ‘displaced on a temporary basis.’
‘I am a Palestinian and I am in Palestine,’ Ibrahim repeated.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Be it known I was forced from my village—and not by Jewish gunfire. For months the entire Arab world spoke to us with one single voice. Get out. No one had a different opinion.’
‘What other opinion could there be with this Zionist monster growing right inside our bellies?’ Clovis asked.
‘We have chairs, we have tables, we have coffee, we have men. Men can come and sit in the chairs, drink coffee at the tables and discuss the possibilities of peace. I have lived half my life next to a Jewish settlement and only occasionally found them unreasonable. Let me say in my well-known candor that the Jews have never done to me and my people what has happened in the last two months at the hands of our own brothers.’
‘Fortunately your village was not Deir Yassin.’
‘Yes. I did not permit Tabah to be used indiscriminately to draw us into such a reprisal.’
‘Perhaps, in the beginning, there were different opinions,’ Clovis Bakshir said. ‘The voices of moderation and peace were too small and too weak. The obsession of destroying the Jews swept over every town and village in the Arab world down to the smallest peasant. It was a tidal wave.’
A silence fell that was so great the sound of the small waterfall a distance away imposed itself onto the scene.
‘Mayor Bakshir. The deepest hurt of my life has been the manner in which we have been treated. Not a crust of bread, not a blanket, not a cup of water has been offered us. And Nablus is not among the least innocent in this matter.’
‘I also am painfully aware of the matter, Haj Ibrahim. This is not the normal behavior of our people. One morning we suddenly awake to find our whole population fleeing. Even though we are here in safe Arab territory, we have been terrified by events. First Kaukji came and stripped our fields. Afterward the Iraqi Army treated us very rudely. The Iraqis have fed and supplied their army largely from our crops and our shops without payment. Are we patriotic Arabs or not? they ask. Our few police cannot cope with armies. By the time the refugees ... forgive me ... the displaced persons began pouring ... flooding ... engulfing this part of Palestine, everyone here was in a state of panic.’
‘I cannot accept these excuses,’ Ibrahim retorted. ‘The behavior of our troops has been a disgrace to Arab manhood. As for me, for a quarter of a century I was the Muktar of Tabah and never once in that time did we turn a stranger from our doors.’
‘But you never woke up one morning to discover fifty thousand people camped in your square. The catastrophe was simply too great and came too quickly.’
‘What do you mean by suddenly? We have been planning this war for ten years. It did not come suddenly. Months have passed since the United Nations resolution. Month after month we have been told that we are to abandon our villages to make way for our armies. The leaders who insisted that we leave are damned well responsible to see that we were welcomed,