The Haj - Leon Uris [182]
Ibrahim sunk into a chair, exhausted from further fight. ‘You can trust Ishmael,’ he mumbled. ‘He keeps a secret unlike anyone I have ever known. He keeps secrets from me. You will never be in danger because of him. Take the artifacts and get the best price you can.’
‘Only on the condition that Ishmael is not punished for taking his sister with him. She had the courage to keep climbing when another boy stopped out of fear. She had rendered a great service to humanity. You must swear on your father’s honor.’
Ibrahim heaved a number of sighs that diminished from determination to nothingness. ‘I will overlook my son’s indiscretion this time,’ he said finally. ‘Now what do you hear from Gideon Asch?’
There are going to be a number of conferences between Abdullah and the Palestinians. Your views on him are known. For the moment, he will not move against any Palestinians of stature, such as yourself. He wants to give every appearance that the Palestinians want him and not the other way around. It is a case, I believe, of a goldfish trying to swallow a shark. This is my advice. You should be a delegate to these conferences. There are other men who think as you do. You will find them.’
Ibrahim listened and pondered for a time. ‘I want only one thing of life. I want to return to Tabah and reunite my people there. They are somewhere in Lebanon. I will not return to Tabah alone or even at the head of my people. I will not be a traitor to the Arabs. Right or wrong, I cannot do that. I can only return to Tabah at the head of a line of many thousands of Palestinians as a vanguard to a full resettlement.’
‘I am about to reveal to you the most important secret of your life. You and you alone will go into these conferences knowing that Ben-Gurion and the Jews will agree to the immediate return of a hundred thousand Arabs, with the balance to be negotiated with a peace treaty.’
‘A hundred thousand,’ Ibrahim whispered in astonishment.
‘A hundred thousand as a start,’ Nuri Mudhil said.
6
IT IS ISHMAEL SPEAKING to you again, honored reader. We were, in truth, prisoners of the Jordanians. It is necessary that you know of King Abdullah and his insane ambitions.
He came from the Hashem family of Mecca. Hashem was the great-grandfather of Mohammed, and the Hashemites were very important to the early rise of Islam. However, when Islam kept moving its center from Arabia to Damascus to Baghdad, the Hashemite family was gradually reduced to petty functionaries, keepers of the holy places in Mecca and Medina.
Centuries passed.
The head of the Hashemites, known as the Sharif of Mecca, cast his lot with the British in the First World War against the Ottoman Empire. He had hoped to end up as King of the Greater Arab Nation. Instead, he was tossed a few bones and was ultimately run out of Arabia by his archrivals, the Saudis, and lived the balance of his life in exile.
His son Abdullah was granted puppet status over Eastern Palestine, a beleaguered desert in the Trans-Jordan area. Its only purpose for ‘nationhood’ was to serve as a British military base.
The Emirate of Trans-Jordan was a wretched wasteland largely inhabited by Bedouin tribes who lived off the camel, which provided the basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing. They drank the camel’s milk and ate the camel’s flesh. They lived beneath tents of camel’s skin and wore clothing woven of camel’s hair. Heat was provided by the camel’s dung and transportation by the camel’s back. This was an ill-tempered, ugly, smelly beast but one that knew how to survive in the desert, as did its Bedouin master. Life in Trans-Jordan was primitive and brutal, with endless tribal warfare. Abdullah was loathed by other Arab leaders, for he was under complete control of his British master.
A clever Englishman, John Bagot Glubb, transformed the Arab Legion and united the hostile tribes under a single banner loyal to Abdullah. He forged a fighting force blending modern weapons and tactics with gaudy uniforms and the pomp that appealed to the Bedouin. The Arab Legion became