The Haj - Leon Uris [48]
Then came the main course.
Heaping platters, so heavy that the women could scarcely carry them, held spit-roasted chicken buried in couscous and other platters held rice filled with lamb’s eyes and testicles surrounded by small spring lamb chops. They smelled of saffron and dill and sour cherries and lemon and herbs and cinnamon and garlic and tasted of crunchy nuts.
Then came melons, peaches, grapes, plums, bananas, and baklavas, the layered pastries of honey and nuts, and other thin, sweet, sticky cakes.
After a half-dozen servings of double-boiled, thick sweet Arab coffee laced with cardamom, fingers were licked clean to the accompaniment of an artillery barrage of belching as women cleared the tables.
Narghiles, the water pipes, were passed from smoker to smoker. Then came a contended retelling of great battles and events of the past.
During the latter part of the meal, Haj Ibrahim became visibly uncomfortable. At last his face broke into a broad smile as Gideon Asch entered. As Gideon embraced Sheik Walid Azziz a great howl of approval arose from the Wahhabis, for Gideon had eaten and slept in their tents for the proverbial forty days and was almost one of them.
Walid Azziz, who had not seen Gideon since the war, started suddenly when he saw that he had lost his left hand. And the ancient sheik did something few men had ever witnessed. He wept.
16
IT DID NOT TAKE LONG for the party to disintegrate. Shortly after Gideon arrived and after the long journey and orgy of food, the old sheik suddenly looked as if he had been struck comatose. The villagers drifted off while many of the Bedouin toppled over where they had been sitting and broke into a chorus of snores.
Although many of the Bedouin were clansmen, uncles and cousins of the villagers, the villagers locked their doors tightly, hid their valuables, and counted their daughters.
Haj Ibrahim walked Gideon to a place out of the village proper near the highway where they could be alone. The muktar seemed terribly anxious.
‘I was afraid you weren’t coming back in time for my marriage,’ Ibrahim said.
‘You know I wouldn’t miss it.’
‘Tomorrow we complete the arrangement,’ Ibrahim continued. ‘She is an exquisite, magnificent flower, a fawn. I am very fortunate. What do you think about all of it, Gideon? Perhaps taking a second wife is something the Jews ought to think about. That way you can have many more children.’
‘It only means you’ll have that many more plotting against you.’
‘Hah! No matter. My brother Farouk has been cheating me for years. I am certain that my oldest son, Kamal, is also cheating me. But I am a compassionate man. If a brother and a son spend their lives working for you and you are wealthy and they are poor, then they cheat you. Don’t make your dog starve, I say, for someone else will give him a piece of bread and take him away. Believe me, I have gained enough wisdom to control a second family.’
Haj Ibrahim cleared his throat a number of times, a clear indication to Gideon that he was wiggling up to a tender subject. ‘I have to bring up a very delicate matter. You are the only friend I can trust with such a confidence.’ Ibrahim became grim. ‘This is the most confidential revelation of my entire life,’ he said. ‘I am putting my greatest earthly secret in your hands.’
‘Are you sure you ought to?’
‘I trust you, at least I think I trust you.’
‘Very well. What is it?’
Haj Ibrahim repeated his throat-clearing performance,