The Haj - Leon Uris [237]
Six schools were erected, two of them for girls.
A variety of sorely needed medical facilities were built, clinics, a malaria control unit, a chlorination plant, a rehydration building, supplemental feeding centers concentrating on infants and the young who had undergone a terrible mortality rate.
Mosques, a ritual slaughterhouse, stores, a police station, food warehouses, distribution centers, and transportation yards sprang up along the highway.
The activity amounted to nudging us from our deep-seated lethargy, signs that life was replacing death. With Per Olsen using Father as a liaison to the sheiks and muktars, things began smoothly.
One evening, six months after Olsen had arrived, Father and I were in his office, the three of us smoking away on Schimmelpennincks, when he opened his desk drawer with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Here it is,’ Olsen said. ‘The authorization to create a development plan. Factories, mines, industry, agriculture. A pilot scheme that can pave the way for similar plans all over the West Bank.’
‘But won’t that be very costly?’ Father asked.
‘It is primed to pay for itself in five years.’
‘Five years?’
‘You said yourself to go slowly.’
‘Yes, go slowly because life here at the bottom of the world is slow. Slowly, because we cannot absorb too much from the outside that is different. But you say it will take five years to pay off something permanent. Acceptance of permanency here crosses a political boundary. We are not looking to stay in Jericho forever.’
‘However long you stay, you must find self-esteem,’ Per Olsen said. ‘If life is decent, some will remain. If the facility is here, others will come here to work when you leave.’
Ibrahim was disturbed. ‘It might be difficult to sell, Per.’
‘Do you reject the idea yourself?’
‘I lived side by side with the Jews for many years. We could not comprehend what they were doing. We must remain simple and stay with things we know. Oh, perhaps the Saudis believe they can purchase a modern society ... I don’t know, Per, I don’t know.’
‘Stay with me, Haj Ibrahim. If we succeed, we can make things better for a lot of people in many places in the world.’
The Jericho Project was announced with great bravado. A number of world experts made their way to Aqbat Jabar to develop the scheme. Father suddenly found himself a wise man constantly being consulted by scientists, doctors, engineers, teachers. His native wisdom and practical knowledge of the way our world worked made him invaluable.
For the moment he forgot past defeats. Perhaps he also forgot reality. It was a magnificent time for me, reading papers for him, translating in important meetings, being the first son of the great Haj Ibrahim.
‘We are going too fast, Per.’
‘It won’t wait.’
The plan? Oh, by the Prophet’s beard, what a plan!
There were large tracts of barren acreage along the Jordan rift and Dead Sea that had never been farmed because of the lack of rain and below-marginal soil conditions. A huge parcel of land was staked out and destined to become an experimental farm to be irrigated directly from the river. Studies would be undertaken to determine what kinds of crops might succeed and what existing crops might be improved.
Grasslands of tough, proven desert seeds would be sown for sheep and cattle. Orchards would be planted with the hardiest varieties of olives, oranges, bananas, dates, and fields of cotton, peanuts, and strains of desert wheat that had fared well in arid soil.
Glasshouses covering many acres would concentrate on vegetables, while an experimental farm would constantly seek out and introduce crops from low-yield soils.
The agricultural part of the Jericho Project would consist of twenty thousand dunams and employ a thousand people and twice that number during the harvests.
Now to exploit the Dead Sea, known to be rich in potash and other minerals. The Jordan River had flowed into the sea for millennia; but the sea had no outlet and acted as a natural catch basin. The Jews were already working