The Haj - Leon Uris [195]
Sheik Ahmed Taji tugged at his beard while Ibrahim gnawed at his moustache with his fingertips. Charles Maan got to his feet to answer a knock on the door, spilling ashes as he went. He took a tray of coffee from his daughter and closed the door, then poured for the three.
‘Why did a man of your wisdom flee Haifa?’ Ibrahim asked Charles Maan.
‘Do you think you Moslems cornered the market on Jew-hating? I was too arrogant to sit down with a Jew and negotiate. Again I ask you who will recognize us, our rights, our claims. Out of this whole catastrophe, only the Jews will sit down and talk to us. Why can’t we bring ourselves to say that terrible word, Israel?’
They pecked at their coffee, then filled the chamber with tobacco smoke.
‘I have spoken too much. I am afraid I have offended you, Ahmed Taji,’ Maan said.
‘No, no, no, no,’ he answered. ‘It is difficult for us to eat this bitter fruit, then digest it.’
‘The biggest lie of all was that the Jews would murder everyone who did not flee. What has happened to our brothers who stayed ... in ... Israel? Were they thrown into the sea as we swore we would do to the Jews? Were they eaten? Were they sacrificed at the altar? Who were the fools, the ones who fled or the ones who stayed?’
‘I fled because those mother-whore Egyptians forced me out to make way for their magnificent army. And you, Haj?’
‘My older brother rules my village. I was tricked into leaving, and not by the Jews. So, we are three fools who admit to being fools. But we are among a half-million fools who will not admit it.’
Sheik Taji began to breathe heavily and unevenly. He closed his eyes and his voice quivered with emotion. ‘I do not want to die in that camp,’ he whispered. ‘What is it we must do, Charles Maan?’
‘We must go at it one step at a time. First we must form a high committee to establish that the refugees have a voice of their own.’
‘Ha!’ Taji cried. ‘When will you get a committee of Arabs to agree on anything?’
‘Let Charles speak,’ Ibrahim prodded.
‘We are the higher committee, the three of us,’ Maan answered.
‘That begins to make sense,’ the sheik said.
‘And we call for a democratic convention of the West Bank refugees,’ Maan continued.
‘Democratic convention. We have just been to one in Amman,’ Ibrahim said sarcastically.
‘Let Charles speak,’ Sheik Taji said.
‘So, speak, Charles,’ Ibrahim said.
Charles Maan lit a new smoke, more thoughtfully than he had lit the others. ‘Do we agree among the three of us that life in the Jewish state is preferable and that we can take the humiliation of living in there without being swept up in this madness for revenge?’
‘I agree that things can be no worse,’ Ibrahim said.
‘I do not want to die in that camp,’ Taji repeated.
‘Do either of you brothers have reason to believe the Jews will negotiate or that they won’t negotiate?’ Maan asked.
Ibrahim and the sheik went silent, Ibrahim had the secret knowledge that the Jews were willing to take back a hundred thousand refugees at once. He wondered if Charles Maan had the same information and who Taji was in contact with. And they wondered about each other, as well.
‘Do you have any such information?’ Ibrahim fenced with Maan.
‘Yes, I have reason to believe we will get a better deal from the Jews than from the Egyptians and Syrians, to say nothing of Abdullah,’ Maan answered.
‘How sound is