The Haj - Leon Uris [235]
5. Islam is superior. Its grandeur guarantees its ultimate triumph over all religions and peoples. Arab defeats throughout history were designed by Allah to teach the Moslems a lesson to renew their purity and purpose.
We were out of sight of those administrators with blue eyes and blond hair who buried themselves behind walled villas in Amman. All teaching was left to the Arabs. When UNRWA personnel did come to inspect us, we were always forewarned. A select few of us knew the school’s great secret. Guns and ammunition were being stored in our basement.
Dr. Mohammed K. Mohammed returned before our first anniversary. We were assembled in the broiling sun in the school yard, where a number of speakers praised our progress and dedication to the revolution. As future fedayeen, we had come a long way in our spiritual development. Our Arab brothers, solidly united, were just over the border and girding for the war of extermination. Many of us would be heroes.
We were wilting by the time Dr. Mohammed K. Mohammed stepped forward to speak.
‘Today is the second of November by the Christian calendar,’ he bellowed into the microphone with his fist rising. ‘Do any of you know what this means?’
‘No,’ we replied in unison.
‘It is one of the blackest days in all of Arab history.’
‘Oh,’ we mumbled.
‘It is the day the British imperialist dogs sold our birthright to the Jews by giving them false claims to our sacred lands in Palestine.’
‘Oh.’
‘It is the day they issued the infamous Balfour Declaration. Down with the Balfour!’
Our teachers, on a small raised platform behind the doctor, stood in unison. ‘Down with the Balfour!’ they cried.
We, the upperclassmen, sprang to our feet. ‘Down with the Balfour!’
Dr. Mohammed K. Mohammed came down, formed us up, and led us out of the school yard chanting in unison.
‘Down with the Balfour!’
We swarmed outside to a small line of kiosks and acafé that held a fill of older loafers. As we passed them, they got up and joined us.
‘Down with the Balfour!’ they cried.
We were out on the highway. Over the road several hundred women and girls were lined up awaiting the water tanker. They broke ranks excitedly. ‘Down with the Balfour!’ They marched behind us as we headed toward the camp at Ein es-Sultan. More hundreds of people swarmed down from Aqbat Jabar. The highway was soon flooded with humanity.
‘Down with the Balfour!’
We came to a small two-story isolated house belonging to a shoemaker, an Armenian named Tomasian, who had lived in Jericho all his life.
‘What is going on?’ he shouted down from his balcony.
‘Down with the balcony!’ someone cried up to him.
‘Down with the balcony!’ became the new chant.
‘Down with the one upstairs!’
A peddler with a donkey cart was shooed off the highway as we surrounded him.
‘Down with the donkey cart!’
‘Down with Abdullah’s corpse!’
‘Down with the United Nations!’
‘Down with the American criminals!’
The mob was now being orchestrated by the Moslem Brotherhood. People broke off and tore into the Armenian’s house, plundered it, and cried in rhythm that Tomasian was a traitor.
‘Jihad!’
‘Holy war!’
‘Down with the Armenians!’
Obviously, someone had coordinated our growing riot, for a Brotherhood teacher came toward us from Ein es-Sultan with a hundred boys running at full steam behind him. As they joined us, we could see that they were exhausted from the heat, sweaty and shaky. As they merged with us, one of the boys began to throw up, then another and another. In a moment mass vomiting broke out.
‘The Zionists have poisoned the springs!’
‘Down with the Zionists!’
People began dropping to their knees in dozens, gagging and vomiting all over the highway.
‘We have been poisoned!’
Hundreds of people collapsed on the ground, writhing and screaming. Some began to see Mohammed. Others saw Allah!
The few Red Crescent ambulances up from Jericho were inadequate to handle what had become a universal outburst of hysteria. Women fainted. Men ran in circles frothing.
Automobiles and trucks that had been