The Haj - Leon Uris [218]
‘Ibrahim, I strongly suggest you make your own plans to leave. There is no longer a purpose for you to remain in Zurich.’
‘I will stay. I will not give up. Someone will listen to me, sometime.’
‘It’s over, go back.’
‘To what! To Aqbat Jabar?’
‘To Israel,’ Charles Maan said.
‘I have thought of that many nights, Charles. I have prayed for the strength to do so. Yet it is not possible, somehow. It is every day for the rest of my life I worry about. Haj Ibrahim, the traitor.’
‘Traitor to what?’
‘Myself.’
‘Your Arab brothers have imprisoned you for life. Those camps will be turned into madhouses. Ibrahim, you know and I know that the Jews are easier to deal with and eminently more fair, but if you are waiting for them to disappear from the region because we insult them or try to humiliate them, then you are mistaken. The trees will grow tall in Israel, but they will never grow in Aqbat Jabar.’
‘Charles, you asked for my blessing,’ Ibrahim said unevenly. ‘You have it. I am honest about this. I give you leave to go. You have been more than a brother. Now please leave. Do not stay and look upon me weeping.’
‘You have refused to see Gideon Asch,’ Maan pressed. ‘I beg you to think about it. Here is the name of a Swiss factory owner. He is only twenty minutes by train from Zurich. He is a Jew but an honorable man. He has arranged most of the clandestine meetings between Asch and the various Arab delegations.’ Charles scribbled out a name and phone number and placed it carefully under the wine bottle. He patted Ibrahim’s back and left.
The Haj put his face in his hands and wept.
15
GOETHE ATE HERE AT the Golden Head. One might say that that was the beginning and the end of Bülach’s history. The major crime of the past several months had been when someone was caught tossing a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk. Bülach, so insignificant it rarely made the Swiss guidebooks, had a second distinction. It was between Zurich and the airport and acted as a landmark for incoming aircraft.
Ibrahim had whizzed on precision Swiss rails through twenty minutes of immaculate rolling countryside to the Bülach Bahnhof. He detrained, looked about, and was recognized immediately.
‘Haj Ibrahim.’
‘Yes.’
‘Heir Schlosberg,’ his contact said, offering a hand while guiding Ibrahim into a waiting automobile. Schlosberg, one of Bülach’s two Jews, owned a small but exquisite factory for cutting and polishing those perfect little jewels that went into Swiss watches.
He drove through the flawlessly preserved Old Town, a six-by-six-block circular configuration that had once been encompassed by the wall required to preserve the feudal order that was honed over the centuries into an immaculate Swiss sense of neutrality.
‘Goethe ate here,’ Schlosberg said as they passed the Golden Head Hotel and Restaurant. Ibrahim nodded. Schlosberg pulled up before his modestly affluent home in a wooded area called the Brüder Knoll and led Ibrahim to the library and closed the door behind him.
Gideon Asch sat behind Schlosberg’s desk. ‘You rotten son of a bitch,’ he said angrily. ‘Why haven’t you contacted me before this?’ He shot out of the chair, turned his back, and glared out to the rolling vista.
Ibrahim came up behind him and they stared together. At last they turned toward each other and embraced hard and wordlessly. Out came the whiskey.
‘Only a drop,’ Ibrahim admonished.
‘What the hell were you thinking of?’ Gideon asked. ‘Three months ago I might have been able to work some kind of deal, a trade-off, something. Anyhow, you’re really fucked now.’
‘So is Israel,’ Ibrahim retorted.
‘I’d rather be in Tel Aviv than Aqbat Jabar.’
‘I would too, if I were a Jew.’
Gideon’s age showed suddenly as he emptied his glass and drew another drink from the bottle.
‘We were fools, of course,’ Ibrahim said, ‘but we had