The Haj - Leon Uris [84]
Certain things were becoming quite clear. A week earlier he had visited the Wahhabi tribe for a wedding. The Wahhabis roamed the northern Sinai and little escaped their eyes and ears. His uncle, the great Sheik Walid Azziz, had told him that Egypt was starting a military buildup in the Sinai. It was scarcely a secret that Egypt would attack Palestine from the south.
Because he knew the Arab mentality, Ibrahim was distressed. No Arab nation would go to war for fellow Arabs without a reward.
Syria, over the lake, had always kept up a vague claim to all of Palestine on the grounds that Damascus had been the political and administrative center for both countries and for Lebanon as well. Syria would certainly grab the Galilee and Haifa for itself. In that manner it would have Lebanon surrounded on three sides, with the Mediterranean on the fourth.
Egypt? It would claim the Negev Desert, the Gaza Strip, and Beersheba at the head of the desert as well as Tel Aviv and Jaffa.
Abdullah would not be able to resist the temptation of ruling over Jerusalem and the west bank of the river.
Palestine would be cut up among them. And what of Iraq and the Saudis and those states that did not border Palestine? They would be in it to restore Arab manhood and for the looting and destruction of the Jews.
Would these nations, each with their own interests in a piece of Palestine, allow the Palestinian people to form a nation? There would be little left for the Palestinians when it was done, and whatever autonomy Haj Ibrahim’s people got depended upon whom they cooperated with. The warlords of Cairo, Damascus, and Amman were not even considering the Palestinian Arabs.
Was his mind wavering? Revelations came easily on the Sea of Galilee. It seemed so utterly plain to him. It was what Gideon would have told him. He would have argued with Gideon. It was difficult to talk himself out of what he had discovered.
How then did the Effendi Kabir plan to play it? What did he have in mind?
4
MORNING FOUND THEM SPEEDING north along a shoreline of immense historical and religious dimensions. Beyond the place where Jesus walked on the water, a long sloping hill drifted back from the lake. Beatitudes! The Sermon on the Mount. The meek shall inherit the earth. Past the ruins of the ancient synagogue at Capernaum where Jesus preached as a rabbi, the Sea of Galilee abruptly ended.
‘I should like to see Rosh Pinna,’ Ibrahim said.
Dandash looked at his watch, shrugged, and instructed the chauffeur to take the short detour. The village of Gideon Asch’s birthplace on the lower slopes of Mount Canaan had not changed much since it had been founded. It was sleepy but tidy. The people here farmed their own land and homes, in contrast to the communal aspects of the kibbutz.
These continuous thoughts of his former friend puzzled him. Why do I think so much of Gideon these days? Because I need him, I suppose. Haj Ibrahim could visualize Gideon as a lad lazing in the shade of the giant tree with a book in his lap ... or mounting his stallion in defiance and reaching out beyond this lovely place to join the surging new order of things.
‘Can I help you?’ a Jewish farmer asked.
Ibrahim was about to ask to see the home of Gideon. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it is just so very pleasant here.’
On social occasions Jews and Arabs were extremely hospitable to one another hereabouts. ‘You will stay for lunch?’
‘It is not possible,’ Dandash interrupted, ‘we must be in Damascus today.’
They entered the car and closed the doors, ‘Shalom,’ the farmer said.
‘Shalom,’ Haj Ibrahim answered.
Again on the main highway, they turned east and climbed toward the Syrian border. From the bottom of the earth they ascended some three thousand feet onto the plateau of the Golan Heights. At the British side of the border they left the car for a stretch and a meal from the picnic basket that had been prepared at Dandash’s hotel.
Haj Ibrahim stared down at the lake, which appeared to be little more than a large pond from this height. He could see halfway across the entire Galilee to the hills