"D'you mind if I use You?"
For all his care to seem hospitable before any other
consideration, ben Nazir looked ill at ease. He led me down
again to a dining-room hung with spears, shields, scimitars and
ancient pistols, but furnished otherwise like an instalment-plan
apartment. He watched while a man set food before me. It seemed
that Anazeh had gone away somewhere to eat with his men.
Ben Nazir's restlessness became so obvious that I asked at last
whether I was not detaining him. He jumped at the opening. With
profound apologies he asked me to excuse him for the remainder of
the afternoon.
"You see," he explained, "I came from Damascus to Jerusalem, so I
was rather out of touch with what was going on here. This
conference of notables was rather a surprise to me. It will not
really take place until tomorrow, but there are important details
to attend to in advance. If you could amuse yourself--"
The man who could not do that in a crusader city, crammed with
sons of Ishmael who looked as if they had stepped out of the
pages of the Old Testament, would be difficult to please. I
asked for Ahmed, to act as interpreter. Ben Nazir volunteered to
provide me with two men in addition as a sort of bodyguard.
"Because Ahmed is a person who is not respected."
It did not take ten minutes to produce Ahmed and the two men.
The latter were six-foot, solemn veterans armed with rifles
and long knives. With them at my heels I set out to explore
El-Kerak.
"There is nothing to see," said Ahmed, who did not want to come.
But Ahmed was a liar. There was everything to see. The only
definite purpose I had in mind was to find Grim. It was possible
I might recognize him even through his disguise. Failing that,
he could not help but notice me if I walked about enough; if so,
he would find his own means of establishing communication.
But you might as well have hunted for one particular pebble on a
beach as for a single individual in all that throng. Remembering
Grim's disguise when I first saw him, I naturally had that
picture of him in mind. But all the Bedouins looked about as
much alike as peas in a pod. They stared at me as if I were a
curio on exhibition, but they did not like being stared back at.
There was no hint of violence or interference, and no apparent
resentment of an alien's presence in their midst. The loud-
lunged bodyguard shouted out to all and sundry to make way for
the "Amerikani," and way was made forthwith, although several
times the bodyguard was stopped and questioned after I had
passed, to make sure I was really American and not English.
Ahmed assured me that if I had been English they would have
"massacred" me. In view of what transpired he may have been
right, though I doubt it. They might have held me as hostage.
Not that they were in any kind of over-tolerant mood. There was
a man's dead body hanging by one foot from a great hook on a high
wall, and the wall was splattered with blood and chipped by
bullets. I asked Ahmed what kind of criminal he might be.
"He did not agree with them. They are for war. He was in favor
of peace, and he made a speech two hours ago. So they accused
him of being a traitor, and he was tried and condemned."
"Who tried him?"
"Everybody did."
"War with whom?" I asked.
"The British."
"Why?"
"Because they favor the Zionists."
"And that is what the conference is all about?"
"Yes. There is a man here from Damascus, who urges them to raid
across the Jordan into Palestine. He says that the Palestinian
Arabs will rise then, and cut the throats of all the Zionists.
He says that Emir Feisul is going to attack the French in Syria,
and that the British will have to go and help the French, so now
is the time for a raid."
"Is my host, ben Nazir, the man who is talking that way? He has
been to Damascus."
"No. Another, named Abdul Ali--a very rich sheikh, who comes
here often with caravans of merchandise, and gives rich presents
to notables."
"Has ben Nazir anything to do with it?"
"Who knows? Mashallah! The world is full of mysteries. That
Nazir is a knowing one. They say of him: whichever option is
uppermost, that is always his opinion. He is a safe man to
follow for that reason. Yet it is easier to follow water through
a channel underground."
We made our way toward the castle at the south side of the town,
but were prevented from entering by a guard of feudal retainers,
who looked as if they had been well drilled. They were as solemn
as the vultures that sat perched along the rampart overlooking a
great artificial moat dividing the town from the high hill just
beyond it.
Nobody interfered when I climbed on the broken town wall and
looked over. The castle wall sloped down steeply into the moat,
suggesting ample space within for dungeons and underground
passages; but there was nothing else there of much interest to
see, only dead donkeys, a dying camel with the vultures already
beginning on him, some dead dogs, heaps of refuse, and a lot more
vultures too gorged to fly--the usual Arab scheme of sanitation.
I asked one of my bodyguard to shoot the camel and he obliged me,
with the air of a keeper making concessions to a lunatic. Nobody
took any notice of the rifle going off.
It was when we turned back into the town again that the first
inkling of Grim's presence in the place turned up. A bulky-
looking Arab in a sheepskin coat that stank of sweat so vilely
that you could hardly bear the man near you, came up and stood in
my way. Barring the smell, he was a winning-looking rascal--
truculent, swaggering, but possessed of a good-natured smile that
seemed to say: "Sure, I'm a rogue and a liar, but what else did
you expect!"
He spoke perfectly good English. He said he wished to speak to
me alone. That was easy enough; Ahmed and the bodyguard
withdrew about ten paces, and he and I stepped into a doorway.
"I am Mahommed ben Hamza," he said, with his head on one side, as
if that explanation ought to make everything clear to me at once.
"From Hebron," he added, when I did not seem to see the light.
The wiser one looks, and the less one says, in Arab lands, the
less trouble there's likely to be. I tried to look extremely
wise, and said nothing.
"Where is Jimgrim?" he demanded.
"If you can tell me that I'll give you ten piastres," I answered.
"I will give you fifty if you tell me!"
"Why do you want to know?"
"He is my friend. He said I should see him here. But I have not
seen him. He said also I should see you. You are the Amerikani?
And you don't know where he is? Truly? Then, when you see him,
will you say to him, 'Mahommed ben Hamza is here with nine men at
the house of Abu Shamah?' Jimgrim will understand."