The Haj - Leon Uris [168]
We had to climb the cliffs carefully, for there were many observation points around the monastery. Our months at Qumran had taught us much about following wadi beds and tiny canyons. Jamil and I used that skill to slither about unseen like a pair of rock-colored lizards. On the fourth day, Jamil called me over to a crevice, an opening of perhaps two feet in height. It looked promising. No path or trail ran near it, it could not be seen from the monastery above, and we could coax our donkey Absalom up to it. We wiggled our way inside. The opening was too small to hold all our arms, but a fissure formed a narrow tunnel eighteen to twenty inches wide. It led us back to a second crevice, an opening of several square feet. We examined it for possible rain leaks but found none.
That night we loaded Absalom for the first of four trips it would take to move the arsenal. Again we worked our way into position before daylight, then struggled for many hours, crawling back and forth to the second crevice with only inches to spare.
When the cache was secured, we emptied the cave at Qumran of anything that still had value. Most of the supplies were carried on the backs of the men or wrapped in large bundles and balanced on the heads of the women. Even Fatima, who had a two-year-old baby in her arms and was six months pregnant, took a load.
Absalom was lightly loaded to make room for my father to ride. He did not appear quite so noble as he had aboard el-Buraq. The rest of us, trailing behind him, formed a threadbare, pathetic line of spiritually dehydrated human beings. Our shoe soles were stuffed with newspapers. Omar and Kamal had to wrap their feet in rags. After a mile, all our feet, except Father’s, were bleeding. I marveled at Fatima, who was as strong as the men, despite her condition, and at Nada, who actually walked as tall and regal as a queen as we straggled toward Jericho. Actually, it was more of a crawl than a walk. Hagar had lost most of her plumpness to a sagging skin and was very weak. After the second time she fainted, my father mercifully allowed her to ride for short periods on Absalom.
There were two main tent cities forming about Jericho. At the northern tip of the town were the ruins of ancient Jericho and a spring called Ein es-Sultan, whose flow made the oasis that allowed Jericho to come into existence nearly ten thousand years earlier. The spring now supplied water for thousands of displaced persons. Two more camps were rising a bit farther north on the highway.
A second area south of Jericho, Aqbat Jabar, stepped up the sloping barren hills toward the base of Mount Temptation. The camp forming here was much closer to our arms cache, so we settled for it.
No one was in charge and nothing was organized. Tens of thousands of people simply milled about aimlessly. There were no toilets, kitchens, or clinics. Red Crescent trucks arrived from Amman sporadically. Those in charge of distributing tents, food, blankets, and medicine had created an impossible bureaucracy that was already dominated by black marketeers. Food was flung at us as though we were a flock of chickens. Getting water meant standing in line most of the day awaiting a water truck that often never arrived and often ran dry with half the line still waiting. For the first fortnight, we slept on the ground and had to endure two heavy downpours.
At last a convoy filled with supplies arrived from Damascus. We were forced to line the streets and cheer as they drove through while a film crew recorded the arrival. Before anything was doled out, we had to listen to three hours of speeches about how the Zionists had brought us to this and how our Arab brothers were rushing to our rescue. Children were placed around the food trucks and when the cameraman signaled we all had to hold up our hands and scream like beggars.
We managed to get sleeping mats and two six-man army tents and discovered that none of the cargo came from an Arab country but were gifts from the