The Haj - Leon Uris [82]
The highway took a downward plunge into a deep valley before starting the last climb to Jerusalem. On either side there was a smattering of Arab villages. To the left, in the distance, a tall hill arose that held the traditional Arab tomb of the prophet Samuel. It was from that particular hill that Richard the Lion-Heart was compelled to end and dismantle his Crusade. From there the British king had stared into a Jerusalem he would never enter.
As they took the final long hill up, homes made of the subtle pink Jerusalem stone revealed themselves glaringly under a midday sun. They broke into the suburbs, with an Arab district on the left of the highway and Jewish West Jerusalem before them. Moving down Jaffa Road to the central business district of the Jews, they snarled along behind a regiment of slow-moving traffic. Undisciplined Hasidim crossed the street in front of them at random with their side curls flopping up and down beneath broad-rimmed black beaver hats. Arab donkey carts, buses belching smoke, and a Mardi Gras mixture of unlikely peoples thickened near the Old City Wall.
A jungle of barbed wire and British presence blocked the way where Jaffa Road met the Jaffa Gate of the Old City. Dandash personally had to leave the car to find an officer to get them through.
They skirted the Old City, then turned abruptly onto Jericho Road and the welcome sight of all-Arab suburb. Once they cleared the outlying villages, the car took its downward trek into the bleak landscape of the Judean wilderness: the wilderness where David hid from Saul, the wilderness of the Essenes, of John the Baptist, and the wilderness of Christ. Ever downward they drove toward the lowest point on earth. A British convoy tore uphill, passing them in a race for Jerusalem, as military convoys will, with a sense of the utmost urgency.
With the traffic thinned, the chauffeur floored the pedal, slowing only to slam on the brakes and swerve past a suddenly appearing old truck or cart. A blinding afternoon heat blazed off the desert floor, sending up little waves rippling off the rocks. Haj Ibrahim was astonished that the inside of the automobile had remained cooled by some kind of miraculous device.
Through a Jericho lolling in stagnation, they skirted the northern tip of the Dead Sea and zipped along an empty straight road at breakneck speed. They were in a deep depression of the earth known as the Great Rift Valley. In the background on both sides of the river rose a backbone of sentinel mountains, one in Palestine and one in Trans-Jordan.
Across the river, Moses had died after seeing the Promised Land and Joshua had staged the Hebrew Tribes for their invasion. This had once been the ancient King’s Highway, a vital caravan route from Damascus to its terminal at the Gulf of Aqaba, from whence Solomon’s ships departed for Africa and the Orient.
On May 14 of the coming year of 1948, the British would withdraw from Trans-Jordan as well, leaving only an officer corps for the Arab Legion. The Emir Abdullah, who had already crowned himself king, now ruled a territory known as the Kingdom of Jordan. It would be a bogus kingdom, one of the weakest and poorest in the Arab world.
Everyone knew that Abdullah talked with the Jews and was only mildly interested in getting mixed up in a war with them. Despite his moderate hatred of the Jews, he did covet Jerusalem and longed for it to be annexed into his kingdom. He felt there was an excellent chance of obtaining both East Jerusalem and some lands on the West Bank by negotiation with the Jews. Unfortunately, he was an Arab monarch and under