The Haj - Leon Uris [9]
‘A Jew is coming on a horse!’ he cried.
Everyone looked to Ibrahim. He stood menacingly and the crowd parted before him. With a wave of the hand he commanded everyone to stand fast and made his way into the square alone.
In a moment a solitary rider on a magnificent, dappled Arabian mount trotted in. The man was of medium build, with a neat blond beard and blue eyes. He seemed rather old to be a Shomer; perhaps he had seen forty years. He bore no arms. Ibrahim understood immediately that the rider knew Arab custom, for once he had entered the village, the village was honor-bound to protect him, even if he was a Jew. He dismounted as smartly as he had handled his horse and tethered it near the well and walked toward Ibrahim with a hand extended.
Ibrahim held up his hand for the man to stop a distance away from him.
‘I am Gideon Asch,’ the man said in perfect Arabic. ‘We have purchased several thousand dunams of land over the road from the Effendi Kabir. We hope to be able to make a farm out of it. I take it you are the muktar?’
‘I am the muktar,’ Ibrahim said icily as everyone behind him inched in. Ibrahim was extremely quick in sizing up a man’s courage. The Shomer had a reputation for bravery and this one obviously had his share. Ibrahim was now obliged to show his own courage and perform with the might of a fearless muktar.
‘They are nice young people over there,’ the man called Gideon Asch continued, ‘and we hope that we all become good neighbors.’
In the silence that followed, the men began to encircle the Jew, cutting him off from his horse and then, as if on a signal, everyone began shouting and shaking their fists at him at once. Ibrahim held up his hand again for silence.
‘Our water truck was delayed,’ Gideon continued. ‘I was hoping we could draw some from your well.’
‘Not one drop,’ Ibrahim hissed.
This brought on a mixture of laughter and renewed shouting. The Jew walked toward Ibrahim and only stopped when he was so close their noses nearly touched.
‘You will have to change your minds,’ Gideon said, ‘and the sooner you do, the better for all of us.’ Having struck everyone silent, he spun around and walked right at the men who enclosed him. They separated. He took his horse by the reins and led it to the well and allowed it to drink, then dunked his own face in it. Everyone looked to Ibrahim, confused, as the Jew mounted.
‘You are not welcome,’ Ibrahim shouted, shaking a fist. ‘If you enter Tabah again, you will not have our sanctuary. In fact, I’ll cut off your balls and stick them in your eyes.’
Then the Jew did an astonishing thing. He laughed, saluted in a mock manner, and spurred off.
Ibrahim knew instantly that his people were in for serious trouble. The Gideon person was reckless, fearless. Ibrahim didn’t like it. He had heard that the Shomer were as clever and brave as Bedouin. But Ibrahim was the Muktar of Tabah and he had absolutely no choice but to play out the game. If he didn’t, they would replace him. Well, he would order an attack, and then let nature take its course.
4
Rosh Pinna—1882
GIDEON ASCH HAD NOT ridden into Tabah simply out of nowhere. He, too, was a long-standing partner in the history of modern Palestine.
Some Jews had been able to find their first taste of true equality by immigration to America; however, most Jews in nineteenth-century Europe remained locked into a repetitious cycle of anguish. They looked, as they always had, to a return to Palestine. This longing had never left their daily prayer and was reemphasized in the yearly Yom Kippur greeting, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’
Into the weary land of Palestine there came a sudden stir. By hook, by crook, and by bribery, religious Jews were entering Palestine in great numbers. For the most part they were poverty-stricken Hassidim fleeing centuries of terror and persecution at the hands of the Russians and Poles. In the mid-1800s they turned Jerusalem into a Jewish majority, which it has remained ever since. They settled in the other holy cities of Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias to study, pray, and await