The Haj - Leon Uris [45]
Time and time again Cairo was bedecked in Nazi swastikas to greet the ‘liberators.’ It was not until October of 1942 when the British General Montgomery and the German Rommel faced off for the second time at an oasis called El Alamein a short distance from Alexandria.
The Afrika Korps was being beaten despite inflicting massive losses on the British. Rommel called for an orderly retreat to a position where he would be able to make a firm defense. Hitler, seeing his dream of the Suez Canal slipping, ordered his general to stand at El Alamein. By the time Rommel was able to withdraw, it had turned into a rout.
15
1944
THE VIRILITY OF SHEIK Walid Azziz, chief of the Wahhabi tribe, was legend. No one knew his age for certain, but it was said that he was born during the great American Civil War. He had been a widower many times and each time replaced the deceased with a younger woman of child-bearing age. The last wife he took was under twenty as he passed seventy, and in the following ten years she bore him a brood of eight. He still had two living wives and an unknown number of concubines. Many of the tribe’s widows looked to him as a surrogate husband and gladly came under his tent. Walid Azziz’s total production was supposed to have been twenty-five sons and an equal number of daughters. His children formed the cement of many alliances through intermarriage. His sons and daughters also stocked the clans of the Wahhabis and assured his continued leadership.
For Walid Azziz the selling of daughters was a lucrative source of income. If a man had enough money he could buy the daughter of a sultan. He knew the exact value of all his women. He also knew how to keep a white coin for a black day by holding back those daughters who would bring the greatest price.
Ramiza was sixteen, the perfect age for marriage, and would unquestionably bring top lira. The son of a prominent clan chief had been a prime prospect. Unfortunately, after checking with the old midwives, it was ascertained that Ramiza had shared the same wet nurse as the boy when they were infants and marriage was therefore out of the question. Blood was one thing, for a great part of the Arab race is cousin marrying cousin. Milk was something else.
Haj Ibrahim had everything to make a man comfortable in life: sons, a large house, an obedient wife, and a fast horse. Yet he was not fully content. Hagar had acquitted herself well, but Ibrahim seemed to grow more lusty as his wife grew more weary. After Ishmael it was certain she would bear no more children. He had four sons but was not pleased with three of them and Ishmael was too young to make a judgment on.
In the closeness of the village it was more difficult to keep concubines than in the freedom of the Bedouin camp or the maze of the city. On occasion he visited Lydda to cavort with prostitutes, but this was never fully satisfying.
Ibrahim had gone to the tribal country for the funeral of an uncle, the sheik’s brother. While there, he saw Ramiza. Walid Azziz did not insist that the women be veiled, except in the presence of strangers. Besides, the sheik was in the daughter-selling business and was not above having prospective suitors get a glimpse of the faces of his most beautiful daughters.
Haj Ibrahim sent his brother, Farouk, as his representative to negotiate for the girl. With a warning that ‘Walid Azziz has not ruled our tribe for all these years because he cannot recognize a mule from a horse,’ Farouk, who was always anxious to serve his brother, promised to fleece the sheik in the bargaining.
The sheik suspected the purpose of Farouk’s visit but was not certain which daughter was wanted. He had set a price for each one of them in his own mind. Before Farouk arrived he and the elders determined that Haj Ibrahim had been born