The Haj - Leon Uris [192]
‘So, my little Avenging Leopard wishes to have some sport! Good! Good!’ And with that, Father opened his arms, then brought the heels of his hands in a clap against Jamil’s ears. Jamil shrieked, crumpled, and lay quivering.
‘Jamil, my son,’ Father said again, not lifting his voice, ‘go outside and come in again and show me that you have respect for your father.’
‘Nooooo,’ Jamil rasped.
Ibrahim’s foot caught him in the pit of the stomach. Jamil’s body was disarrayed into a grotesque shape. Father planted his foot on Jamil’s chest and once again repeated the instruction.
‘Father, stop or you’ll kill him!’ I cried.
‘No, no,’ Father said, ‘I am only teaching him respect. Have you learned it, Jamil?’
‘No more,’ he gasped.
‘No more what?’
‘I quit.’ He mustered his strength, crawled out on all fours, turned at the door and crawled to Father’s feet, reached up and grasped his hand and kissed it.
‘Now you hear me very well, my dear little Avenging Leopard. What I have just contributed to your education is but a tiny drop in the sea of what you will receive if any person in the Tabah section is ever set upon for any reason. Is that very clear?’
‘Yes, Father,’ he whimpered.
‘Now, Jamil, if you touch a single one of our weapons, for any reason, I am going to kill you the same way you brave martyrs of the revenge kill little chickens. I am going to tear your throat out with my teeth. You go to the home of Daoud al Hamdan and return what has been taken and humiliate yourself before him.’
Father reached down, grabbed Jamil by the scruff of the neck, and hurled him outside.
Jamil was clever enough to realize that his great day of respect had not yet come and that the Avenging Leopards were not going to replace the old authority without spilling their own blood. He licked his wounds, then took another approach by becoming the ‘protector’ of the Tabah section and endearing himself to the families as the fine son of Haj Ibrahim.
Within himself, though, Jamil had turned forever. From then on he wore an expression of the Blaze, with a rage in his eyes that revealed him to be saturated with hatred and always just a fraction away from an explosion of violence. He was a bit crazy now but not so crazy as to challenge Father’s word. In fact, Jamil now delighted in groveling before Father to try to prove his worth.
A few weeks after the fight we received an announcement that King Abdullah had ordered a celebration of the West Bank merger with Jordan. This so-called festive occasion had been forced on the king by the powerful reaction of the Arab League, which had denounced the annexation in the saltiest of terms.
The king’s ministers had waited for nations of the West to recognize the annexation. Abdullah continued to claim innocence. Allah forbid that he had coerced the Palestinians. After all, his ministers proclaimed, the unity conference had been a democratic expression of Palestinian desires.
The recognition Jordan sought came only from Britain and Pakistan. The British were still Abdullah’s master and controlled the Arab Legion by subsidy and through its British officers. Although they were also leery of Abdullah’s ambitions, they were forced by their marriage to the little king to go along with the charade.
The failure of the Arab world as well as the world at large to recognize his acquisition did not dissuade him. He felt that a holy endowed ruler such as himself was entitled to keep his divine marching order toward a Greater Syria. The foibles of mere mortals could not stop a king on a mission decreed by Allah. Deeper still, he believed that the Palestinian people would rally to his banner and make fools of the rest of the world, and he intended to demonstrate that his had been a popular move.
It was immediately suggested by his British colleagues that a plebiscite be held on the West Bank to confirm the decision of the unity conference. Abdullah did not like the idea of a vote that he could not cancel by a personal veto. Surely, he felt, the Palestinians