The Haj - Leon Uris [205]
Jamil’s eyes looked very weird. ‘Do not worry about me, Father. You do what you have to do in Zurich, no matter what becomes of me.’
‘I think you enjoy this whole business,’ Ibrahim said.
‘Enjoy it? I don’t know. I think it makes no difference if I live or die.’
‘Come now, no one wants to die.’
‘I and all my friends will have to die sooner or later for the struggle you have imposed on us. What else is there for us to do except die? We can go no place; we can do nothing; we are told to think of nothing except the vengeance and the return.’
‘I am trying to make a better life for you.’
Jamil erupted with a maddened laugh, tossing his head back and spitting futility. ‘It makes no difference to you if I die, my father. It would even help you if I became a martyr.’
‘Shut up.’
‘So, beat me up again.’
‘Jamil, you are my son. I am trying to get you out of this.’
‘For what? Don’t bother. I am not your son. You have only one son. Ishmael. Isn’t that right, Father?’
Ibrahim slapped his face. Jamil got to his feet. ‘I hit you once, Father, and I still feel the ecstasy from it. Jailer! Jailer! Take me back to my cell!’
A few days after Father returned to Aqbat Jabar, he took me into Jericho, to the office of Professor Doctor Nuri Mudhil.
‘I received eight thousand dollars for your treasures,’ the archaeologist said. ‘Here are the air tickets for yourself and Sheik Taji. We thought it best for you not to go to Amman again, so you will take a small plane from East Jerusalem to Cyprus and then continue on to Zurich. I have had to fly many antiquities out of East Jerusalem and I know the people at the airport well. The air tickets and special attention to certain officials have eaten up over twenty-eight hundred dollars. These here are your travel papers. The visas are attached.’
‘But they are not passports,’ Father said.
Mudhil shook his head. ‘There is no nation of Palestine. There is only Jordan, and Jordan will not give you passports. You must travel on these.’
Father scanned one of the documents and handed it to me. ‘What does it say?’
‘It says you are a stateless person and this is a visa to Switzerland and back, good for thirty days,’ I said.
‘Unfortunately, I had to pass off a thousand dollars for each of these documents,’ Nuri Mudhil said, running his fingertips against the tip of his thumb. ‘Baksheesh, the standard bribe. We could have given you Israeli passports at no cost, but you would never have received credentials for your delegation in Zurich. The Arabs would have blocked any recognition.’
‘How much does that leave?’ Ibrahim asked me.
‘Thirty-two hundred dollars,’ I said.
‘Less another five hundred. It is illegal to carry cash. I had to transfer your money through the church charities. It was necessary to pay one of the priests in the archbishop’s office five hundred dollars. So, with new clothing for yourself and Sheik Taji, that should leave you about a thousand dollars each for room and food.’
‘But this forces me to leave my family penniless except for Sabri’s salary. If they have to depend on Red Crescent rations alone, they might starve. And what if I run out of money in Switzerland?’
Nuri Mudhil opened the drawer of his desk and took out a packet of Jordanian currency. ‘I am making you a personal loan for the expenses of your family. You do not have to worry about paying it back. As for yourself in Zurich, Gideon Asch will keep you floating if you run out of funds.’
‘Beggars, we are beggars,’ Father said, taking the money, tickets, and cash.
‘I am very sorry, Haj. It was the best I could do.’
‘No, no, my friend. You have done too much already.’ Father then turned to me, strangely. ‘Ishmael, you will wait in Dr. Mudhil’s workroom. I wish to have private words with him.’
They spoke for a time. I don’t know how long because I always ascended to heaven when I could walk around Professor Doctor Nuri Mudhil’s studio, filled as it was with wonderments. At his bench was a complex drawing of a Byzantine mosaic he had uncovered