The Haj - Leon Uris [214]
The afternoon band concert on the quay floated out the notes of a Strauss waltz to the ears of older strollers and listeners whose faces were uniformly fixed in concrete. Laughter and lovers seldom came.
The double trams moved as though they were on cushions of air and the people moved around the traffic with exquisite precision. No horns blared, for everyone was patient. No aromas of cardamom and spices, no arguments between buyer and seller. The price was the price. Everything else was in order as well. The potted geraniums, the clipped trees, the gleaming benches, the gleaming awnings of the cafes, the gleaming trash cans and five-story flat-fronted buildings neatly lined both sides of the river. Water taxis glided silently with not much more than the flutter of the Swiss flag to be heard. Even the ducks paddled along in formation.
Everything was completed here. No slums, no castles. Every blade of grass was in order. The country was done, immaculately finished.
Ibrahim reached the Münster Bridge, second in a line of fifteen that stitched the two sides of the river together. On either side of the bridge the steeples of the two cathedrals pierced a low skyline. Lady Cathedral and her mighty clock bordered the Old Town, the ancient walled city. Just across the way from Ibrahim stood the twin phallic towers of the Grossmünster. The cathedrals appeared like rival fortresses ready to disgorge regiments of mace, pike, and halberd bearers to clash in the center of the bridge for its possession.
Ibrahim took a familiar table at a familiar café and ordered his daily coffee from a sympathetic waiter who adopted him for this hour each day. Sheik Taji, who had no committee meetings today, was not there again. This made three days in a row he had not shown up. Nor had the sheik come home at night to their rooming house. From the beginning, Ahmed Taji had made a bit of a sensation in Zurich in his desert gowns and with his rippling wisdoms. He had found his home away from home in the Old Town, the Niederdorf, a well-run tenderloin neatly set aside for sinning.
That was where Fawzi Kabir had found him. It was only a short Rolls-Royce ride from the genteel poverty of the Universitätstrasse rooming houses to the manor in Zollikon.
This son of the desert who had built many of his philosophies on parables dedicated to patience had lost his own by the end of the fifteenth meeting of his committee. And who could blame him? Ibrahim saw him begin to tilt but could not stop him. For Ibrahim, Palestine was a sudden pang, a hurt, a hunger. For Sheik Taji, Palestine became veiled in a mist and grew more vague as fantasies were whispered into an ear that became willing.
One day Taji sported a new gold watch. He and Ibrahim argued, drew daggers, wept, cursed, and were almost evicted. Then talk between them became strained. The next week a tailored suit, and one night he spent several hundred dollars.
When they left the Congress Hall each day, lines of limousines awaited the outer delegates. Ibrahim, on a suspicion, followed the sheik around the corner and up Beethovenstrasse to a waiting Rolls. It was now only a question of when their fragile coalition would be splintered. Taji’s defection would be a brutal blow. Ibrahim begged Allah for the wisdom to make one grand appeal, and that time was at hand.
The Haj looked about mournfully as his waiter and new friend, Franz, set down the contents of his tray. Franz set out four different slices of sumptuous cake, which were not ordered but always spirited out of the day-old counter. Ibrahim smiled in gratitude and Franz fluttered his eyes bashfully, the decent Christian, the pious man with leftovers. They spoke pedantically in pidgin Arabic and pidgin German.
He waited and nibbled. Tick, tock, tick, tock, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. Six o’clock. Charles Maan was due.
Ibrahim looked about at the women with their stiff layered hats on their stiff layered hairdos. And the men in their stiff