The Haj - Leon Uris [190]
‘Abdullah lies in his beard,’ my father mumbled. ‘He has not regained an inch of that contested land.’
As Father stood to protest the report, the men seated near him inched away and the Legion inched in. Once again my mouth went dry. Only the Arab tradition of protecting a guest could save us now! A miracle happened! By some fate Charles Maan was close to us and caught Father’s eye. In that instant Ibrahim regained his temper and sat down quietly.
The final report from the Committee for Democratic Unity came as an anticlimax. It was announced that the Jordanian Parliament had passed a Bill of National Merger. A chorus of cheers arose from Abdullah’s lackeys. This was followed by a democratic vote in which the conference approved the ‘Greater Palestine’ by 970 votes to 20.
A closing announcement was made that a Conference on Refugee Claims and Rights had been called for Zurich, Switzerland. The refugees’ case would be presented before an International Arbitration Commission of neutral nations. Jordan would send a delegation to protect all refugee interests. I grabbed my father’s hand, which shook with rage. With all the strength I could muster, I half pulled him out of the amphitheater.
We left Amman with the taste of ashes in our mouths.
8
RUNNING SEWERS AND UNCOLLECTED hills of rotting garbage breed voluminous flies and mosquitoes, and the stink from them is deafening. When you add that to total idleness and the constant prodding of bent and fanciful old men pretending to instill a pride and courage they never really owned, you have the birth of the Avenging Leopards.
My brother Jamil was a leader among them. They wore no uniforms because abject poverty was our heritage, so they identified themselves with headbands of bright orange cloth.
At the Ein es-Sultan Camp situated by Elisha’s Spring, the gang was the Liberating Sharks. At the Bedouin Camp farther up the highway they were the Desert Wolves, and at the small Nuweimeh Camp farther north the Black May Gang was named for the awful date on which the Jews declared their independence. All of the gangs were prodded on by slothful, stagnating elders and by fanatical Egyptians of the Moslem Brotherhood.
A level of fear grew in Aqbat Jabar over the Avenging Leopards. They stalked about looking for boys like myself to recruit. Join or take a bad thrashing. I was able to stay clear because of Jamil. I think he didn’t want me in because he suspected I might take over the leadership from him.
By night the gangs would climb up into Mount Temptation, where they conducted weird rituals on new recruits, including bloodletting. They had secret signs and swore an oath of revenge filled with ogreish promises of dismemberment and skull crushing and hot pokers in the eyes of the Jews.
‘Blood, guts, entrails, balls, death!’ we could hear them chant down the mountain on the leaden night air. They tested each other’s courage with stick jousts, jumping from high ledges, running past a line of stone throwers, leaping over fires, biting off the heads of live chickens and snakes, and strangling cats bare-handed. Their illusions of bravery and manhood, the ultimate Arab product, were perpetuated all day, every day, to alleviate their monotony.
Haj Ibrahim and the other old-time muktars and sheiks saw these gangs as a growing threat to their own rule, but they had to tread lightly in curbing them, for they offered no alternative. There were no schools or organized games, no movies, just a whining radio. The only lectures they heard were from the Brotherhood, glorifications of martyrdom and death.
‘You are the great young soldiers of Allah preparing to become martyrs of the revenge!’
Revenge they heard in Jericho.
Revenge they heard in the sordid little cafés of the camp.
Revenge they heard in their homes.
And they grew ugly. None of them worked or tried to look for work, even during harvest time when some field hands were needed. Their mothers and sisters did that labor. Instead, they began to hire themselves out to ‘protect’ the farmers