The Haj - Leon Uris [253]
As they passed through Jericho, a sense of relief filled her. She caught Hamdi Othman’s eye. His look was one of studied boredom. Obviously so high a personage would not have come over for her personally except for her father’s stature. He ordered the chauffeur to bypass the waiting line of vehicles at the roadblock before the Allenby Bridge with the authority of a head of state.
‘Stop the car!’ Nada cried suddenly.
‘What!’
‘Please, it is my brother, Ishmael.’
Othman made a magnanimous gesture as Nada flung the door open and threw herself into her brother’s arms.
‘Oh, I thought you were not going to say good-bye.’
‘I could not bear to be around the others,’ Ishmael said.
‘I love you, Ishmael.’
‘Oh God, your hair ...’
‘What is the difference if I lost my hair, so long as I still have my head. Don’t be sad, my brother. I am not sad. Do you understand? I am not sad.’
Nada watched Ishmael grow smaller while the car drove noisily over the flapping timbers of the bridge. As they made for Amman she felt no sorrow. In fact, she was filled with anticipation and the sudden sense of freedom. A terrible burden was gone.
‘Charming’ was the word heard most about Hamdi Othman. A Syrian, Othman had developed his charm when the French governed his country and educated him. Charm was a paramount requisite for an aspiring diplomat.
When the United Nations unleashed its new bureaucracy, an army of middling functionaries swarmed to the bonanza. Each nation claimed its share of the lucrative posts, where quota, not quality, was the criterion. Hamdi Othman was one of Syria’s questionable gifts to the new world order.
As a professional United Nations official, he crafted his way quickly through a mediocre corps, wiggling into a top-echelon position. Othman, as one of the UNRWA heads in Jordan and on the West Bank, wielded power and controlled large funds in a small kingdom of scores of refugee camps.
Personal involvement in the scenes and smells of privation in the camps belonged to the middle- and lower-rank UNRWA officials. Hamdi Othman’s self-imposed status dictated an expansive villa on one of the bleak hills that crowned Amman.
Although the city was the capital of an Islamic state, its long British legacy had eroded the Moslem ban on alcohol. Life was boorish in this forsaken outpost, and the smattering of embassies, the United Nations agencies, and other foreign entities clung together desperately and isolated themselves from the hot dusty unpleasantness of Amman. Their modus operandi was the endless cocktail party.
There were cocktail parties to welcome or say farewell to ambassadors, first and second secretaries, consul generals, consuls, military attaches, and United Nations officials. There were cocktail parties celebrating Bastille Day, the Fourth of July, and the liberation, freedom, and independence days of every nation in Jordan with diplomatic representation. Managing directors of foreign corporations, visiting dignitaries, the airlines and tourist industry, leading Jordanian businessmen, all had a place in the pecking order of cocktail parties.
It was the same old troupe of wandering drinkers whose faces wore dull-eyed masks. The conversation was either equally dull or made up of slashing gossip, for the news of who was whoing whom was the only real excitement except for an occasional royal falcon hunt. The hand-kissing and the stifled yawns and the cast of players seldom varied.
Hamdi Othman was a product of the cocktail party. Even in Amman he thrived on it. His was one of the more ‘interesting’ invitations. His villa was sumptuous; his larder bulged with tax-free, duty-free liquors and French delicacies. The mounds of gourmet food were prepared by his French chef and a battery of kitchen workers. All of this befitted the head of a relief organization.
Amman was still an Arab capital and Hamdi Othman was still an Arab, and despite all that charm the sexes separated themselves, with the women herding together in one room and the men in another.
Madame Othman represented the liberated Arab woman, educated in