The Haj - Leon Uris [216]
Emma fussed over him during his one or two visits a week, filled his constantly empty stomach a bit less blandly than he got fed at the boardinghouse, and proved a warm and pleasant bedmate. She had those great slappable and bitable buttocks that could drive Ibrahim into fits of primitive passion, and her outsized breasts proved to be a lullaby. In fact, she was not all that dull for a fat Swiss widow, and it kept him from the prostitutes for whom he had no budget at all.
The most important part of the friendship was that she wanted Ibrahim’s favors quite a lot more than he wanted hers, so he had a controllable margin to work with.
Ibrahim hovered at the corner of Schmelzbergstrasse and Sternwartstrasse and peered down the lane to Frau Müller’s dormitory. On an impulse he wheeled around and walked back to the neo-Baroque, neo-castle-like giganticness of the university building, to a line of pay phones near the entrance.
‘Hello, Frau Dorfmann speaking.’
‘Emma, this is Ibrahim.’
‘Oh, I am excited to hear from you. You are fine?’
Ibrahim allowed the longest sigh of his life to whisper out of him. ‘I would like to come over.’
‘My goodness, Ibrahim, why you didn’t call me earlier? Because you were here last night, I surely did not expect you to call again so soon. I am afraid my mother and sister have come all the way from Sellenbüren. You will come tomorrow?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Ibrahim, you are all right?’
‘I am fine.’
‘I am so sorry, Ibrahim.’
He squeezed his eyes together, clenched his teeth, and almost let out a tear. ‘I am very lonely,’ he said, not able to stop himself. ‘I need you.’
She had never heard such words from him, for he had never spoken them to her, or anyone else. ‘Ibrahim, give me an hour to send them off, then please, hurry over.’
‘Thank you, Emma.’
Ibrahim allowed himself to be cuddled, and this made Emma feel very happy. He just pressed next to her and sighed repeatedly, and she soothed him without questions. At last he fell into a deep snoring sleep, but this was broken by the ring of the telephone.
‘It is for you,’ Emma said.
‘Forgive me for not meeting you today and forgive the hour. Have you seen tonight’s newspapers or heard the radio?’ Charles Maan asked.
‘No.’
‘Taji has defected.’
Ibrahim flung the covers back and sat up fuzzy-brained.
‘Where is that motherwhore?’
‘He’s already out of the country. He showed up with Fawzi Kabir and Prince Rahman at the airport. He told the press that he had accepted an appointment as the adviser to the Saudi royal family on refugee affairs. He’s leaving behind his tribe, his family, everyone. He mentions you and me as having brought a corrupt influence to the conference, and so forth. He flew off on Rahman’s private plane.’
‘What does this mean to us, Charles?’
‘It means you had better start thinking about yourself.’
‘I’m staying,’ Ibrahim cried. ‘I’m staying until they throw me out or kill me!
14
THE HAJ ROARED. FOR a month that followed Ahmed Taji’s defection he pounded his fist on any and all committee room tables. He demanded answers to embarrassing questions. He spoke to sympathetic reporters and questioned the honesty of numerous delegates. He gave a lecture at the university to an overflow crowd of students and teachers, denouncing the Arab delegations’ deliberate torpedoing of the conference, and he used the forbidden word ‘Israel.’ He went before the International Arbitration Commission alone and demanded permission to negotiate directly for the return of the first hundred thousand and the