The Haj - Leon Uris [232]
A voice was desperately needed to rally us. I had fully expected Haj Ibrahim to step forward and unite us and provide us with leadership and direction. Instead, he lay low and slipped through the Jordanian backlash unscathed and unnoticed. My brave and noble father, the object of my worship, had been silenced. The fire in his belly had dimmed to nothingness. This came as a terrible blow and disenchantment to me.
While the Arab Legion clamped down crushing dissent, the Haj and what was left of the old leadership fended for themselves, saved their own skins. I began to hate them for their incessant whining about the exile and the return. Whatever pride and dignity they might have had was gone. They were the wronged, entitled to pity, content to live on handouts in stagnation for the injustices inflicted on them.
Now came the United Nations to take over the camps, administrators with blue eyes and golden hair. They would make our decisions for us.
The Jordanians were no longer after my father, for he had demonstrated that he had been pacified. Ibrahim still had stature from his past and recent glory from Jamil’s martyrdom, which he used to wangle a United Nations position to head a committee that was to create industry and promote agriculture in the Jericho region. He quickly got Kamal a job at the UNRWA medical supply depot. It was perfectly tailored for Kamal. He had little to do except doze in a cubbyhole most of the day with an assistant to fetch him coffee and handle any real work. Kamal, never tall in my eyes, had grown completely slovenly.
Once spirited and amusing, Fatima had become drained by Aqbat Jabar. The two of them scarcely bothered to beat the flies off anymore. Kamal would grow old, follow Father’s generation into the café, play backgammon, suck on a water pipe, fantasize about the huge villa in which he had lived in Tabah, and send his children into the fedayeen to regain his freedom from the Zionist dogs.
Omar came as a surprise. He stayed most of the time in Jericho and pestered shop owners until a merchant in a small grocery store finally gave him a job. Omar enhanced the job by brewing coffee and peddling sweets to the waiting lines of vehicles at the Allenby Bridge. He ran errands for the truck drivers and finally created a job for himself at the post office.
Mail to a refugee camp was a confusing piece of business. There was no delivery. If someone was expecting a letter, he would send a child to the post office to spend long hours waiting in line for a letter that most often was not there. Omar made up a delivery route, charging a halfpenny to deliver a letter and a penny for a package. This was difficult, because the hovels were not numbered and he had to learn the vicinity of every family, clan, and tribe by heart.
Haj Ibrahim’s position with the UNRWA gave the family an inside track on rations and other benefits. With Kamal and Omar both working, our fortunes lifted. It managed to take the sting out of ‘Sabri selling our guns and running off with the money.’ Keeping the truth of that vow had become a matter of life and death between Nada and me.
For me, what was there to do? I hated the idleness. I secretly continued to give Nada lessons up on Mount Temptation. I helped Omar with his mail delivery. I hung around Professor Doctor Nuri Mudhil, but he had very little work to do these days except prepare papers that were too difficult for me to work on.
I prayed to Allah mightily for something to come along—and Allah heard me! Can you imagine how elated, how ecstatic, how overjoyed I was to learn that a boy’s school was being opened in Aqbat Jabar? There were places for only three hundred students. Although there were thousands of boys of school age, I knew I would be accepted. Indeed, the students were picked from the sons of former muktars, sheiks, and now UNRWA officials.
Every Arab nation kept pet Palestinians