The Haj - Leon Uris [143]
‘Bring this Sabri to me. I will speak to him.’
It was fortunate that my father used common sense over pride. Sabri Salma proved to be not only an excellent driver, but was the difference in our making it. We opted to leave early in the morning instead of night, for the night has eyes watching us that we cannot see. If there were to be a breakdown, it would be far better to make repairs by daylight.
We had our eyes on a newly repaired truck, but it was snatched from our hands at the last moment. We had to settle for a truck that had just made the grueling run from Baghdad. When the truck was loaded, we were packed in so tight that a belch could have been disastrous. We broke down four times between Nablus and Jericho, a distance of less than fifty miles through mountain roads. At each stop we nervously staked out a guard while Sabri dove under the hood or beneath the truck. Fortunately he seemed to have the answer and the spare part every time. His was an awesome display.
Directly below Jericho, we drove over bone-breaking ground along the Dead Sea. My father began to smell the place in remembrance.
‘We are close. We are close. Keep an eye out for the ruins.’
‘There,’ Omar cried.
We had come to ancient Qumran, which was now no more than a pile of rubble. My father’s eyes scanned the forbidding wall of cliffs and canyons inland from the sea. He chose the first wadi bed to enter because a dry gulch would offer us some kind of road. We inched in. Within a half mile, we were stopped quite close to a canyon entrance. The truck dropped dead and we, likewise, were almost as dead from being jarred around and choked by dust and the feverish heat.
It was quickly turning dark. We would have to await daylight before setting out to find a perfect hideaway. I was only twelve years old, but already I was an Arab general.
5
WE AROSE WITH THE SUN. Sabri went to work immediately, repairing the truck. He reckoned that the vehicle was very sick.
Jamil was left to guard the provisions, the women, and Sabri. The four remaining men—I call myself a man cautiously—started climbing a long steep slope toward the canyon opening in search of a proper cave. It was a great day for me: I got to carry a rifle for the first time.
Several hundred feet up, the wadi bed leveled off onto a higher plateau. We moved into the canyon with its great cliffs, many thousand feet in height, hovering over both sides of us. A quarter to a half-mile inland, we found an entrance to a second canyon and split the party into two sections. I stayed with my father, while Omar and Kamal took the fork.
I had the watch which Gideon Asch had given me and Kamal also had one, courtesy of the Iraqis. I suggested we coordinate a time to meet later, but Ibrahim did not trust timepieces. He pointed to the sun and indicated that when it reached the midday position in the sky, we retrace our steps to the fork and discuss our findings.
Within another half mile, my father and I began to run into caves, but nothing was suitable. Most of them were several hundred feet up the cliffs, making access extremely difficult or impossible. We came to another fork. My father opted to continue down the main wadi bed, while I would go into a mini-canyon that appeared to dead end. It was a serious mistake for us to split up. As I approached the apparent dead end, it suddenly opened up into another branch of the canyon and when I tried to retrace my steps I discovered I was in a labyrinth.
As the sun seared down, the canyon walls seemed to close in. I nipped at my canteen of water and told myself not to panic. After an hour I realized I was stumbling around in a circle, unable to get my bearings and unable to find the opening.
Perhaps I said I was a man too quickly because I felt like a little boy. Do not panic, I kept telling myself. The sun slipped into the afternoon sky. I began to shout and whistle, but my own voice