The Haj - Leon Uris [245]
‘Father cares about my preserving his honor and that’s all,’ Nada said. ‘Anyhow, I don’t care whether Father cares.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t care whether Father cares!’
‘That’s what I said.’
Of course I knew that Nada had spice but was rarely able to show it. Maybe I was the only one who knew of the fires in her. Well, perhaps Sabri knew a little of it. When she was home, even among the women, she scarcely said a word and always did her tasks without complaint.
‘We must have a serious discussion,’ I said at my manly best. ‘You’re going to get into bad trouble with this crowd.’
‘I’ll always listen to you, Ishmael, but I have made up my mind about certain things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Maybe we’re never getting out of this place.’
We became quiet.
‘It is a distressing situation,’ I said at last. ‘But don’t be crazy.’
‘I know what you think of the fedayeen, but they are the first people who have treated me as an equal human being—as a person with pride and dignity. So I am their nightingale and Hala is their dove and Sana is their bluebird. We were never told anything like that before. We all sing together. We tell stories. We laugh. The boys learn they are not dogs and they soon become men.’
‘Oh, I’ve seen how manly they are,’ I said snidely. ‘They ride around in open trucks before going out on a raid and shoot up all their ammunition into the air to prop up their courage. By the time they get to the Israeli border they throw down their guns and flee to another camp.’
‘Time will show how brave they will become. Who do you think is going to get us out of Aqbat Jabar? Father? He is turning old before our eyes. No, Ishmael, only the fedayeen will liberate us. They will return us to our true place.’
‘What true place? Who do you think we are?’
‘The Palestinians are the most educated, the most intelligent in the Arab world—’
‘Shit! Any educated Palestinian with two dollars abandoned us long ago and fled. Look down there, Nada, what do you see? A proud and dignified people?’
‘That is exactly why we must turn to the fedayeen.’
I clamped my hands over my ears. Nada was excited and glared into my eyes. I calmed myself and shook her shoulders slightly.
‘Nada, you said you would listen to me. Please listen. I hear these slogans at school every day, all day. Because of our terrible misery it is easy for us to believe words without meaning. Who are these fedayeen who are trying to lead us? What do they know of government? What do they know of freedom? What do they know of reason, of truth? They steal from widows and cripples. They run the black market. They deal in hashish. So they wrap up their gangsterism in a flag of revolution, and this is supposed to make them noble?’
It was her turn to clamp her hands over her ears. I pulled them down.
‘They are sending boys my age over into Israel in suicide squads. They go without maps, without knowing their targets, without proper training. Find a stray Jew, an old Jew, a child, a woman, and murder them. Do you believe that will get us back to Tabah?’
‘The Zionist dogs stole our homeland!’
‘Now you shut up and hear me good, Nada. You know Waddie, the photographer? Well, do you know him?’
‘Of course I know him!’
‘So do I. He works for the fedayeen. A boy goes into the suicide squads because his family sells him for a hundred dollars or he is forced because he is pressured and his manhood is questioned. When he enters training his photograph is taken. Why? Because even as he trains for a mission, they are printing posters of him to put up on the walls so that the instant he is killed in Israel, he is a new martyr.’
‘I don’t believe it!’
‘Oh, there’s much more, Nada. The last three weeks before his mission he is sent to Nablus or Bethlehem to live with a whore and is kept in a stupor on hashish. He is thrown over the border like a piece of dog meat because the fedayeen don’t want him back. They want martyrs. Is that your revolution?
‘And your noble fedayeen commanders. Do you see them leading any raids? Hell no. They are cynics sending dumb peasant boys to their deaths to keep