The Haj - Leon Uris [155]
You can imagine my surprise when I realized that Sabri and Nada had started to give each other those looks and close passing brushes. There is that certain way an Arab girl gives a look that can only mean one thing.
At first I was surprisingly hurt at the notion that another boy could bring out that look in Nada. But why not? She was of an age when a woman can start being aroused and there was no one around but Sabri to arouse her. Still, it was painful. I wished she didn’t like Sabri, just as I wished Sabri weren’t so clever. Although I loved him, I didn’t completely trust Sabri’s intentions. He was an outsider and not truly bound to protect Nada’s honor. I believed that he might have done something with her—kissed her, rolled around, or even worse. Fortunately, we lived in very close quarters and when they were out of the cave we saw to it that they did not go off together. One of my brothers or I were always on the watch. The women giggled about it and whispered behind our backs and didn’t take it as seriously as we did.
Haj Ibrahim’s favorite place was our guard post, a deep crevice in the cliffside set inside a beautifully shaded alcove. From here we had a perfect view down the canyon’s only entrance, so that no one could enter or leave without passing directly under our machine gun.
Several times Jordanian patrols came within several hundred yards but did not enter the tricky labyrinth of canyons. It was the Bedouin we feared and it was night when we feared him most. We knew their unseen eyes were on us all the time. Once again Sabri had the answer. Each night we set some simple booby traps, using grenades. Anyone attempting to enter our sub-canyon would have to trip one of a dozen wires that set off the explosive.
The Bedouin waited until there was no moon and had a sandstorm for cover. We sensed a raid and prepared for it. When a wire was tripped and the grenade exploded, the blast reverberated through the hollow passageways of rock, sounding like a battery of artillery. We lay down a tremendous fusillade of fire and they quickly melted back into the crevices of the mountains. By dawn there was no trace of them.
Our next fear was that they would try to catch us coming out of the canyon on our way to the springs or to Jericho, so we traveled in pairs, with one of us always carrying an automatic weapon.
Haj Ibrahim felt it was only a matter of time until they would set siege to us, hide in the rocks around us, and try to pick us off one at a time. He prepared for this eventuality by moving a second guard post closer to the sea, so we could observe all movement from miles away during the day. The eyes of the Bedouin became our first break in paradise.
The second break was my recurring nightmare. I was unable to erase the scene of my mother and the other women being raped in Jaffa. I was grateful to Allah that Nada had been spared and that she had no knowledge of it. More nights than not, I awakened close to tears or rage and always in a heart-pounding sweat. The eyes of those Iraqis never left my mind. I would meet one of them again. I had to.
Aside from the terror of the scene, the most frightening part of it was keeping a lifelong secret from my father. This gave me an awesome power over the three women and forced them into an alliance with me. I believe they trusted me, but when one holds such a secret above another, there certainly must be some suspicions.
My father and I also shared a secret that Sabri had had a homosexual affair with an Iraqi officer.
There was no doubt Sabri and Nada had some secrets between them. We couldn’t watch them all the time, no matter how hard we tried. At times we would see her walking down a path alone and in ten minutes observe Sabri coming down the same path. Both of them gave themselves away through their telltale silence.
The women had