The Haj - Leon Uris [213]
It is not that they are vicious liars, Ibrahim thought as the hours ground away. It is that they are natural liars, honest liars. Ideas that emerge from torrents of words are as vacant as a desert without an oasis.
It changes now, for we are out of committee and in the open before the International Arbitration Commission and the mouths have suddenly become dumbstruck.
‘Has your committee reached any conclusions about what the boundaries of the Palestinian state should be?’ Dr. Bunche asked.
‘We still have a few disagreements to iron out.’
‘I have asked you a thousand times to come before this commission, one at a time, and put forward your individual ideas.’
‘But we cannot do that. We have signed a pact of unity.’
‘Has your committee reached a unified position on the status of Jerusalem?’
‘We are working on it.’
‘Dr. Bunche, we are bogged down in a swampland of words!’ Ibrahim cried out in disgust.
‘We are not in a jungle,’ the Egyptian delegate answered. ‘We must follow the rules of orderly debate. Do not force us to reexamine your credentials, Haj Ibrahim.’
‘So you have no position on these matters?’ Dr. Bunche pressed.
‘We are working on it in committee.’
‘The International Arbitration Commission is called to order,’ Dr. Bunche said. ‘I have asked that you comment on the various proposals put forth by the State of Israel; namely, it has expressed a willingness to negotiate the repatriation of separated families and has agreed to an initial number of a hundred thousand persons. The State of Israel has no quarrel about paying compensation for abandoned Arab lands that were cultivated before the outbreak of war and it has agreed to release frozen accounts as well as securities and precious possessions being held in Israeli banks. Now, what position has your committee reached on these various proposals?’
‘To clarify the matter, Dr. Bunche: We do not recognize the existence of the Zionist entity. Therefore we cannot speak to someone whose existence we do not recognize.’
Ah, but they are talking to the Jews, one at a time, in secret places all over Zurich!
‘How are the issues going to be resolved without face-to-face negotiations?’
‘We cannot speak to someone who has no face. Either the Zionist entity will accept our demands or there will be eternal war.’
‘But what are your demands?’
Silence.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, bong, bong, bong.
‘I wish to negotiate a return!’ Ibrahim answered.
‘I consider that a step forward,’ Dr. Bunche answered.
All the delegates were on their feet. ‘This is an insult to the legitimate Arab governments! You are giving these intruders unjust rights. We demand their credentials be removed.’
‘But I did not sign your fucking unity pact.’
‘That is just the point! You are illegal!’
‘We have already agreed to the credentials of every delegation here,’ Dr. Bunche said, ‘and none will be revoked. The West Bank refugees have every right to be at this conference.’
‘You see! He takes the side of Zionists and traitors!’
Haj Ibrahim clasped his hands behind him and strolled to the first bridge where the Limmat River flowed grandly out of the jewel-like Lake of Zurich. Once a Roman customs station stood on the site. Once Lenin and Einstein and Jung and James Joyce and Goethe and Richard Wagner walked the same path.
One would think this was a city of great thinkers and patriots, but mostly such men were only passing through from some place to some place else. It was no Paris, only a convenient refuge for the dispossessed, a passing sanctuary for the disenchanted.
The heaping plates of food had warmed his hungry belly at first. Even in a student’s boardinghouse there were great mounds of potatoes and beef. Ibrahim beseeched Allah to forgive him, but he could not refrain from partaking of the thick slices of Swiss ham, a conscious profanation