The Haj - Leon Uris [267]
‘You are a liar,’ he snarled.
‘No, Father, I do not lie. There were eight or ten of them, and one after the other they came at the women and I saw their big wet slimy pricks coming inside them!’
‘Liar!’
‘They jerked off on the naked bodies of your wives. They laughed and slapped their asses! They had a wonderful time!’
‘Liar!’
‘Go on, Father! Pull your dagger out of the table and kill me. Kill us all!’
Ibrahim suddenly grasped his chest and screamed as an awful pain hit him. He gasped for air: ‘My heart ... my heart ...’ He reeled about the room, bumping into everything. He fell. I stood above him.
‘Can’t you get your knife out of the table, Father? No? Too bad. I watched Mother being fucked on the floor by a half-dozen of them! Fucked on the floor!’
‘YAHHHHHHH!’
He was on his hands and knees, crawling and wheezing and gagging, with slobber coming from his nose and eyes and mouth.
‘YAHHHHHHH!’
He reached the table and tried to pull himself up. He put his hand around the hilt of the dagger and tugged. It would not come out. The table toppled over. He lay and gurgled, screamed, and then was very still.
14
THE FAMILY CREPT BACK into the house, chilled with terror. I expected them to rant and rage at the sight of Ibrahim’s dead body at my feet. Oddly, they did not. They stared at me, then shrank back in fear. It suddenly occurred to me that in that instant they completely accepted me as their new master. I remained impassive, almost removed. And then, a flush of elation. I had avenged my beloved sister and I had done so by bringing down the most powerful and awesome man I had ever known. I could have screamed for joy at the way I killed him. He died in pain with a thousand ants eating his armpits.
But God ... I still loved him ... can you understand that? I loved him.
As whispers quickly rampaged into excited news, the cafés and hovels emptied and a huge gathering took place before our home. I went out to the veranda, unafraid, and glowered at them. There were hundreds and more were coming. Yet no words were shouted against me. There was no contesting what had happened. Of course it all followed, didn’t it? If there was one thing these people knew it was that I, Ishmael, had done in the Haj in our time-honored tradition and that I, Ishmael, was now the power to be reckoned with.
‘Haj Ibrahim has left us,’ I announced almost blandly. ‘He died of the heart.’
The most glorious moment in the story of Haj Ibrahim came after his death. The outpouring of humanity and their display of grief at his funeral was of a nature usually reserved for high holy men or great heads of state. They came from every camp in the West Bank and Jordan, hundreds of thousands of them. In the end the Arabs venerated, adored, worshipped him, but they never really knew why. All they knew at this moment was that Haj Ibrahim was gone and they were naked without him.
A tomb and a small mosque were already being built in the foothills of Mount Temptation overlooking Aqbat Jabar. It was here that he was set down and vengeance was sworn against the Jews, although I don’t understand why. I kept my composure, my aloof silence, throughout the ordeal. Although many foul things were whispered behind my back, no one dared speak out in accusation to my face. They understood who their new leader was when they confronted him, They knew of my power. They groveled before me, expressing their grief. They kissed my cheeks and the slovenly among them kissed my hand.
Future generations would come to consider his tomb as a holy place and with the passage of time the Haj would become a saint.
When the funeral was done and they departed, going back to their hellholes, a horrible nausea overcame me. I had to be away. I went to the one place and to the one man who gave me warmth and comfort, I could see that Nuri Mudhil was frightened for me. I mumbled over and