The Haj - Leon Uris [225]
The cats had eventually clawed through to the bone. Face, eyes, sexual parts had been ripped away. All that was left was a blood-soaked mass of flesh so torn it was unrecognizable. The coffin was sealed, and the next day a story was released that Jamil had been serving on a secret mission against the Jews. He stepped on a land mine, the story continued, so his body was too disfigured to allow for an open coffin. The coffin was presented to Haj Ibrahim as he landed in Amman in a formal military ceremony reserved for heroes.
For the moment Aqbat Jabar forgot that Haj Ibrahim had been branded as a traitor, a spy of the Jews, and a man who had apparently sold out for several dunams of orange groves.
Jamil’s funeral became a crush of screaming and weeping refugees, fifty thousand of them, who jammed the highway to Jericho’s mosque, passing his coffin overhead. Hagar wept with suitable hysteria and collapsed a half-dozen times among the mourners. From that day on she would be called Umm Jamil, the mother of Jamil, a title of respect earned by his death.
Hundreds of placards bearing Jamil’s photographs were waved aloft along with other placards holding slogans of the fledgling ‘revolution.’ As Jamil was laid to rest in a place of honor in the mosque courtyard, the former Leopards, now redeemed freedom fighters, shot volleys over his grave and the priest swore vengeance on the Zionists who had killed the boy.
The first martyrdom of the Palestinians had come to pass.
END OF PART FOUR
Part Five
Nada
1
WHILE MY FATHER WAS in Zurich, I passed my time among the al Sirhan Bedouin. The eastern desert of Jordan that bordered on Iraq and Saudi Arabia was so remote that there was no sign of civilization for a hundred miles in any direction. Because of Professor Doctor Nuri Mudhil’s stature, I had been taken in by Sheik al Baqi, the head of a large clan, and was treated as though I were one of his sons.
Sheik al Baqi and his sons taught me horsemanship, falconry, tracking, and, mainly, how to read the desert. Each day began with the sound of coffee being crushed, setting off another cycle of survival, the struggle that dominated our lives.
Until I came to the al Sirhan, I had always been a dreamer. No matter what the fates had imposed—Jaffa, Qumran, Aqbat Jabar—I felt that things would get better, that someday I would end up in a lovely villa back in Tabah or even go beyond to a great university in Cairo or Damascus. The desert and the Bedouin taught me that certain things are final in life.
In the brutal heat and poverty, it became easier to cope by finding some shade, seeing mirages, and allowing fantasy to enter and take over my mind. Through the Bedouin I came to know why the Arab adopted a passive acceptance of the unmercifulness of life. Everything was predestined by fate, and there was little one could do but accept the bitterness of earth and look forward to the relief of the trip to paradise.
The al Sirhan made no pretense of an equal society. One was born, lived, and died locked into a rigid caste system, staying in place from birth to death without protest. Within this ironclad conformity few marriages were arranged between families of different stations.
Sheik al Baqi’s face and body bore a road map of scars to testify to his manhood and leadership. He kept a half-dozen slave boys. Although slavery was outlawed, the al Sirhans were so remote they were beyond the reach and rules of ordinary society. Three of his slaves tended his sheep and another was his personal servant. The other two had been castrated, made into eunuchs to guard his wives and his harem of concubines. Two had been purchased from families within the clan and the others were captured in raids.
I arrived at a time when Sheik al Baqi was making peace with a rival tribe after eight bloody years of tribal warfare. It had started when a frustrated lover had kidnapped a girl from the al Sirhan and fled to a tribe over the border