The Haj - Leon Uris [181]
‘They are only trying to humiliate us,’ Haj Ibrahim answered.
‘You do not like this whole business of dealing with the Jews,’ Professor Doctor Nuri Mudhil said. ‘And you like me even less because I cooperate with them.’
The silence had gone from awkward to terrible as Haj Ibrahim wrestled with his guilt and fear of being branded a traitor.
‘It is very difficult to deal with the Jews in this atmosphere of perfect hatred we have created,’ Nuri Mudhil said. Then the crippled man held his arms apart and stood as straight as his wasted body was able. ‘Let me tell you about this creature before you, Haj Ibrahim, so you will wonder no more.’
‘I did not mean to offend you,’ my father said coarsely.
‘I was born as you see me,’ Nuri Mudhil said. ‘My mother and father were first cousins and this is the result. It is a scourge in the entire Arab world, this marriage between cousins. It has given birth to a million other warped bodies like mine. Did you have them in your village, Haj Ibrahim?’
We did indeed. My father’s lips were tight.
‘You came to me to seek out the Jews,’ Mudhil continued. ‘Now you are being sanctimonious about it. Why did you come to me? To seek out a better life for that boy because you know if we follow our leaders you will die a wretched death after a wretched life in that miserable camp. Or did you come because you take issue with the Syrian prime minister, who said last week that it would be better for all the Palestinian refugees to be exterminated than to agree to give up one inch of land. At least, he said, by the death of a half-million Palestinians we will have created martyrs to keep our hatred boiling for a thousand years.’
He turned and limped back into his office and crumpled behind his desk, wheezing. My father and I followed cautiously. ‘Sit down!’ he ordered. ‘You too, Ishmael.’
‘I was the middle son of nine boys,’ he said in a voice that spoke as though we were not in the room. ‘My father was a man who traded in goats and sheep. At the age of four, he put me at the Allenby Bridge as a beggar. Be proud, he told me. Begging is an honorable profession and if you make yourself grotesque enough, no Moslem can refuse to give you alms. Charity is a pillar of Islam, he said. So, when the buses stopped for inspection at the bridge, I and a dozen other beggars, all terrible cripples, poured on the bus and screamed for baksheesh. My face was filled with ugly sores, as well, so my earnings were substantial.
‘When I was nine, I knew nothing but begging at the Allenby Bridge. That was the year that the great Dr. Farber came to Jericho to dig. I hung around trying to make myself useful to him, but I was so ill that I needed hospitalization or faced certain death. When my father learned that Dr. Farber had taken me to the Hadassah Hospital, he dragged me from my ward and beat me into unconsciousness and warned me never to leave the bridge again. It was then that Dr. Farber purchased me for a hundred pounds, money he had to borrow.
‘He took me to his home and made me well and taught me to read and write....’ He stopped and fought off tears.
‘I am very sorry to have offended you,’ my father repeated.
‘No, hear the rest of it. When the dig closed for the season, I pleaded to stay and guard it. And I dug and dug. All summer I dug till my hands bled. I, Nuri, found a Neolithic skull, the wonder of the dig! Do you know what it meant when I handed this to Dr. Farber? You see that,’ he cried, pointing to the diploma over his desk. ‘That is from Hebrew University—and you can take your shit and peddle it among the thieves!’
My father nodded for me to leave and I did.
‘What can I say?’ Ibrahim said.
‘We are a people living in hate, despair, and darkness,’ Mudhil said. ‘The Jews are our