"He will say next that it was he who set the stars in the sky
over El-Kerak, and makes the moon rise!"
Ali Shah al Khassib was the first to speak. He was heard to the
end respectfully, none interrupting. But it seemed obvious from
their faces that not a few sheikhs were disposed to question both
his leadership and most of what he said. Mahommed ben Hamza kept
up a running whisper of interpretation, breathing into my ear
until it was wet with condensed breath. I had to use a
handkerchief repeatedly.
Ali Shah al Khassib made no definite proposal. He said that a
man whom they all knew well had brought news to the effect that
Emir Feisul was ready to make war on the French in order to drive
them out of Syria. That in a case like that, of Moslems against
kafirs,* there could be no question on which side their hearts or
their interests lay. That several dependable men had brought
word of great unrest in Palestine. That in all likelihood the
British would send their army to help the French, in which case
the Arabs of Palestine were likely to rise in rebellion in the
British army's rear. That was the situation. They were invited
to consider it, and to decide what action, if any, seemed called
for. [*Unbelievers.]
He sat down without having risked his leadership by any statement
of his own attitude. He had simply reported facts that he
believed to be true--facts that many of the notables plainly did
not yet believe, or believed only in part. There followed a
perfect babel of argument, during which the servants passed the
coffee and cakes around. After that, during every interval
between speeches there was more coffee and more cakes--wonderful
cakes made with honey and almonds, immensely filling; but the
more full an Arab gets of stodgy food the more his tongue wags,
until at last he talks himself to sleep.
For ten minutes men were shouting their opinions to one another
to and fro across the room. From what I could make of it there
was not a man who did not advocate putting the whole of Palestine
to the sword forthwith. But it was noticeable that when their
turns came to stand up and address the mejlis their advocacy was
considerably toned down. Everybody seemed to want somebody else
to father the proposal for a raid, although every man pretended
to be anxious to take part in one.
Old Anazeh on my right sat in grim silence, quizzing each talker
in turn with puckered eyes. The only comment he made was a sort
of internal rumbling, suggestive of the preliminary notice of
an earthquake.
At the end of ten minutes Sheikh Ali Shah al Khassib brought
proceedings a step forward by calling for confirmation of the
news of unrest in Palestine. Man after man got up, and, since he
was speaking of others, not of himself, painted the discontent of
the Palestinians in lurid terms. Each man tried to outvie the
other. The first man said they were anxious regarding the
Zionists and keen for a solution of the problem. The second said
they hated the Zionists, and could see no way out of their
predicament but by rebellion. The third said that no Arab in
Palestine could eat for thinking of the Zionist outrage, and that
the heart of every man in El-Kerak should bleed for his
distressed brethren.
To judge by what the fourth and fifth and sixth said, Palestine
was in a state of scarcely suppressed rebellion, and every living
Arab in the country was sharpening his sword in secret for the
butchering of Zionists at the first opportunity. The seventh man
said that the Palestine Arabs had never under Turkish rule
suffered and groaned as they did under the British, and that
their cry was going up to heaven for relief from the ignominious
tyranny of Zionist pretensions.
Ali Shah al Khassib chose that ringing appeal as the cue for his
next move in the game. He called on Sheikh Abdul Ali, "as well
known in Damascus as in this place," to address the mejlis.
There was instant silence. Even the coffee cups ceased rattling.
Abdul Ali got to his feet with the manner of a man long used to
swaying assemblies. He had just the right air of authority;
exactly the right suggestion of deference; the quiet smile of
the man with secrets up his sleeve; and he paused just long
enough before speaking to whet curiosity and fix attention.
He did not speak floridly or fast, and he indulged in none of
those flights of oratory that most Arabs love. There was ample
time between his sentences for Mahommed ben Hamza to translate
into my wet and itching ear. But every sentence of his speech
had measured weight in it, and every word he used was chosen for
its poison or its sting.
He began by reminding them of the war and of Emir Feisul's share
in it. Of how they, and their fathers, and their sons had fought
behind Feisul and helped to establish him in Damascus. Then he
spoke of the British promise that the Arabs' should have a
kingdom of their own, with Damascus for its capital and borders
to include all the peoples of Arab blood in the Near East. He
paused for a full minute after that. Then:
"But the French are in Syria. The French, who also promised us
an Arab kingdom. They have assembled at the coast an army that
already threatens Emir Feisul. The British are in Palestine,
where they are admitting a horde of Zionist Jews to displace us
Arabs, rightful owners of the soil. The British are also in
Mesopotamia, which they have seized for themselves for the sake
of the oil which Allah, in His wisdom, created beneath the
fertile earth. Feisul makes ready to defend Syria against the
French. But the British will march to the aid of the French.
Can anybody tell me how much of that promise to us Arabs has been
kept, by either nation, French or British?"
So far he was on thoroughly safe ground. A man who preached
against the French could hardly be suspected of being hired by
the French to do it. There was nobody there but he who could say
what Feisul's intentions actually were. You can say what you
like against the British anywhere, at any time, and find some one
to believe what you say. And it needed no wizardry to prove that
the Allies had broken every promise they ever made to the Arabs.
"Are you going to sit idle, and let Emir Feisul and the Syrians
fight the French alone?" he asked, and paused again.
There was a great deal of murmuring--not quite all of it, I
thought, entirely in his favour.
"What is the alternative to sitting still like camels waiting to
be doubly burdened? If you raid Palestine, the local Arabs will
all rise to your assistance. The throat of every Zionist from
the Lebanon to Beersheba will be cut. There will be plunder
beyond reckoning. And you will help Feisul by holding back the
British army from marching to the assistance of the French. The
question is, are you men?--are you Arabs?--are you true Moslems?
--or do you like to look down from these heights of El-Kerak over
the home of your ancestors in the hands of so-called Zionists who
are nothing but Jews, under a new name?"
He sat down before any one could answer him, and whispered to Ali
Shah al Khassib, who called on another man to speak at once. It
was a pretty obvious piece of concerted strategy, but he got by
with it for the moment. The general feeling seemed to be in
favour of a raid if only some one would start it. Nobody seemed
to mind much how the decision was arrived at, so long as the
responsibility was passed to some one else.
The man now called on was a smooth-tongued, tall, lean individual
with shifty eyes, and a flow of talk of the coffeeshop variety.
At the end of his first sentence any fool would have known that
he had been put up to quiz Abdul Ali, in order that Abdul Ali
might have an excuse to justify himself. He attacked him very
mildly, with much careful hedging and apologetic gesture, on the
ground that possibly the Damascene was ignoring their interests
while urging them to take action that would suit his own.
Even with that mild criticism he set loose quite a murmur of
minority agreement. For the first time since the speech-making
began Anazeh barked approval. I thought for a moment the old man
was going to get to his feet. But Abdul Ali was up again first,
and launched on the seas of self-esteem.
If I had not listened to equally childish political maneuvers in
the States, and seen them succeed for the reason that people who
want something want also to be fooled into getting it by special
arguments, it would have seemed incredible that a man, who had
recently boasted of statesmanship, should dare to make such a
public ass of himself. Yet, for fifteen minutes he carried the
whole meeting with him, and the warmth of his self-satisfied
emotion made him ooze resplendent sweat.
"Now he speaks of you, effendi," Mahommed ben Hamza whispered;
and in confirmation of it Anazeh clutched my arm, as if to keep
the tide of eloquence from washing me away.
Had the British done anything for the country this side of
Jordan? Anything for the people's education, for instance? No!
Instead, they had taken away the missionaries. Better than
nothing were those missionaries. They had their faults. They
undermined religion. But they taught. And the British had
called them in, giving some ridiculous excuse about danger. It
had remained then for him--Abdul Ali of Damascus and of El-Kerak
--the same individual who was now urging them to strike for their
own advantage--to take the first step for the establishment in
El-Kerak of a school that should be independent of the British.
He, Abdul Ali, greatly daring because he had the interest of El-
Kerak at heart, had introduced that day into the mejlis a
distinguished guest from the United States, whose sole desire--
whose only object in life--whose altruistic and divine ambition
was to establish an American secular school in El-Kerak!
He sat down, glowing with super-virtue. And then the fur flew.
Anazeh was first on his feet.
"Princes!" he shouted. "That Damascene is a father of lies! It
was I, Anazeh, who brought this man hither! That corrupter of
honesty, who doles out other people's gold for bidden purposes,
seeks to appear as your benefactor!" (It was fairly obvious that
Anazeh had not received any of the gold.) "He will say next that
it was he who set the stars in the sky over El-Kerak, and makes
the moon rise! He is a foreigner, a father of snakes, and a
born liar!"
Anazeh refused to sit down again, but stood with rifle on his
arm, daring any one to challenge his statements. Abdul Ali
flushed angrily, but laughed aloud. The next man on his feet was
ben Nazir, my erstwhile host, who had repudiated me. And he
repudiated me all over again, accusing me of abusing his
hospitality by going over to Abdul Ali, who had never even heard
of me before I came to El-Kerak.
There was no making head or tail of the storm of abuse and
counter-abuse that followed, except that it did not look healthy
for me. There seemed to be four or five different factions, all
of whom regarded me as the bone of contention. Rather than
betray anxiety I opened the Bible and began to make dots under
letters, spelling out a message to Grim to the effect that I had
no notion where to find lodgings for the night, and that if
Anazeh elected to carry me off I should have to go with him.
I did not know how to get the message to him without arousing
suspicion and making matters worse than they were, and it seemed
best not to call attention to the fact that I was writing. So I
made a few dots at a time, and looked about me. I saw Abdul Ali,
laughing cynically, make a gesture with his arm as if he
consigned me to the dogs. Then I caught Grim's eye--Suliman ben
Saoud's. He, too, was making capital of my predicament.
He had got the attention of the men around him, and was pointing
at the Bible while he reeled off a string of an angry rhetoric
that sounded like a cat-fight. He shouted at me, and made angry
gestures; but I knew that if he wanted me to understand his
signals he would never make them openly, so I ignored them.
"The sheikh from Arabia demands to see the book," said Mahommed
ben Hamza in my ear.
I passed it over the carpet with the pencil folded in it at the
page I had begun to mark; and the men opposite handed it along,
with remarks they considered appropriate. Jim Suliman ben Saoud
Grim seized the book angrily, glared at it, denounced it, and
wrote something on the fly-leaf. He showed it to the men beside
him, and they laughed, nodding approval. He wrote again. They
approved again. He turned and talked to them. Then, as if he
had an afterthought, he wrote a third time. When they wanted to
look at that he ran the pencil through it and wrote something
else on the other side of the fly-leaf, at which they all
laughed uproariously. Presently he tossed the book back to me
with all the outward signs of contempt that a fanatic can show
for another religion.
I have kept that Bible as a souvenir, with the verses from the
Koran written on the flyleaf in Arabic in Grim's fine hand.
Underneath them, in Greek characters with a pencil line scrawled
through them, is the only sentence that interested me at the
moment:
"This looks good. Keep Anazeh quiet and sober."
Anazeh was beginning to hold forth again, shaking his fist
at Abdul Ali and making the roof echo to his mighty bellowing.
I tugged at the skirt of his cloak, and after a minute he
sat down to discover what I wanted. He seemed to think I
needed reassurance. He began to flood me with promises of
protection. It was about a minute before I could get a word
in edgeways. Then:
"Jimgrim says," said I.
"Jimgrim! Is he here?"
"He surely is."
"How do you know?"
"We have a sign. Jimgrim says, 'Be quiet, and drink no
strong drink.'"
He leaned across to Mahommed ben Hamza, doubting his ears and my
Arabic. I repeated the message, and ben Hamza translated.
"I don't believe Jimgrim is here!" said Anazeh. "I would know
him among a million."
"It is true," said ben Hamza, grinning from ear to ear, "for I
myself know where he sits!"
"Where then?" Anazeh demanded excitedly.
"Don't you dare!" said I, and ben Hamza grinned again.
"He is my friend. I say nothing," he answered.
Anazeh put in the next five minutes minutely examining every face
within range, while the din of argument rose louder and more
violent than ever, and suspicion of me seemed to be gaining.
But suddenly Suliman ben Saoud got to his feet and there was
silence. They were all willing to listen to a member of the
Ichwan sect, for the news of its power and political designs had
spread wherever men talk Arabic. He spoke gutturally in a
dialect that ben Hamza did not find it any too easy to follow, so
I only got the general gist of Grim's remarks.
He said that he had much experience of raids and of making
preparations for them. A raid aimed at the Zionists--at this
moment--might be good--perhaps. They were better judges of that
than he. But it was all-important to know who was in favour of
the raid, and exactly why. The words men spoke were not nearly
so impressive as the deeds they did. Therefore, when the
illustrious Sheikh Abdul Ali of Damascus urged a raid on the one
hand, and boasted of provision for a school in El-Kerak on the
other, it would be well to examine this foreign effendi, whom
Abdul Ali claimed to have introduced. The claim was disputed,
but the claim was not made for nothing. In his judgment, based
on vast experience of politics in Arabia, motives were seldom on
the surface. All depended on the motives of the illustrious
Abdul Ali. This stranger from America--he glared balefully at
me--should be investigated thoroughly. As a man of vast
experience with the interests of El-Islam at heart, he offered
respectfully to examine this stranger thoroughly with the aid of
an interpreter. He confessed to certain suspicions; should they
prove unfounded, then it might be reasonable to credit the rest
of Abdul Ali's statements; if not, no. He was willing, if the
honourable mejlis saw fit, to take the stranger aside and put
many questions to him.
When he had finished you could actually physically feel the
suspicion directed at me. It was like a cold wind. Anazeh was
just as conscious of it, and muttered something about its being
time to go. Abdul Ali got up and asked indignantly why the
Ichwan from so far away should have such an important voice; he
himself stood there ready to answer all questions. Suliman ben
Saoud retorted sourly that he proposed to question the Damascene
in public after privately interrogating me.
"They shall not interfere with you! You are in my charge,"
Anazeh growled in my ear. "I will summon my men at the
first excuse."
"Jimgrim says, 'Be quiet!'" I answered.
There was another uproar. Ali Shah al Khassib openly took the
part of Abdul Ali. A dozen men demanded to know how much he had
been paid to do it. Finally, Suliman ben Saoud beckoned me. I
got up, and with Mahommed ben Hamza at my heels I followed him to
a narrow door in a side wall that opened on a stone stairway
leading to the ramparts. Anazeh' came too, growling like a
hungry bear, and after a couple of blood-curdling threats hurled
at Suliman ben Saoud's back he took up position in the open door,
facing the crowd, and dared any one to try to follow. He seemed
to have confidence in Mahommed ben Hamza's ability to protect me,
if necessary, on the roof.
The roof and ramparts appeared deserted. They were in the
ruinous state to which the Turks reduce everything by sheer
neglect, and in which Arabs, blaming the Turks, seemed quite
disposed to leave things. The Ichwan led the way to the
southwest corner, peering about him to make sure no guards were
in hiding, or asleep behind projecting buttresses. Overhead the
kites were wheeling against a pure blue sky. The Dead Sea lay
and smiled below us, with the gorgeous, treeless Judean Hills
beyond. Through the broken window of the hall came the clamour
of arguing men.
"O, Jimgrim!" grinned Mahommed ben Hamza when we reached
the corner.
Grim turned and faced us with folded arms, leaning his back
against the parapet.
Ben Hamza continued: "You are a very prince of dare-devils! One
word from me--one little word, and they would fling you down into
the moat for the vultures to feed on!"
"I remember a time," Grim answered, "when a word from me saved
you from hanging."
"True, father of good fortune! But a man must laugh. I
will hold my tongue in El-Kerak like a tomb that has not
been plundered!"
"You'd better! You've work to do. Where are your men?"
"All where I can find them."
"Good. You'll get turned out of the mejlis presently. Look down
into the moat now."
We all peered over. The lower ramp of the wall sloped steeply,
but all the way up the sharp southwest corner the stones were
broken out, and a goat, or a very active man could find foothold.
"Could you climb that?"
"Surely. Remember, Jimgrim, when I climbed the wall of El-Kudz
(Jerusalem) to escape from the police!"
"Bring your men into the moat between dark and moonrise. Have a
long rope with you--a good one. You and two men climb up here
and hide. The remainder wait below. Oh, yes; and bring a wheat
sack--a new, strong one. You may have to wait for several hours.
When you see me, take your cue from me; but whatever happens, no
murder! You understand? Nobody's to be killed."
Ben Hamza grinned and nodded. He seemed to be one of those good-
natured rogues who ask nothing better than the sheer sport of
lawless hero-worship. He would have made a perfect chief of
staff for any brigand, provided the brigand took lots of chances.
"You'll be killed, if anybody finds you up here after dark! You
realize that?"
"Trust me."
Grim nodded. He was good at trusting people, when he had to, and
when the selection was his own.
"Affairs seem to be drifting nicely," he said, turning to me.
"It's best not to let Anazeh know who I am just yet, if that can
be helped. But if you must, when the time comes, you'll have to
tell him. Do keep him sober. After the evening prayer there'll
be a banquet; if he gets drunk we're done for. I'm going to
make you out an awful leper, if you don't mind. They may yell
for your hide and feathers before I've finished, but Anazeh will
protect you. If he leaves the hall in a huff, don't make any
bones about going with him. Let him ride out of town and wait
for me about two miles down the track, at the point where that
tomb stands above a narrow pass between two big rocks. Do you
remember it?"
"What if he won't wait?"
"He must! Tell him I'll have a prisoner with me; then he'll be
curious. But you can bet on old Anazeh when he's sober. But
things may turn out so that it's simpler for you to stay and see
this through with me. In that case you must persuade him to go
without you, after explaining to him just where he's to wait."
"How shall I do that?" I said. "I haven't enough Arabic."
"I'll write it," he answered. "Give me that pencil."
"Say something, too, then about his keeping sober."
Grim nodded, and wrote quite a long letter in Arabic on a page of
my notebook.
"The next move," he said, as I pocketed the letter, "is for me to
get Abdul Ali's goat: I think--and I hope--he'll try to bribe
me. If he does, he's my meat! The whole question of raid or no
raid hangs on their confidence in him. If I throw suspicion on
him, and he disappears directly afterwards, they'll abandon the
plan, confiscate his goods and chattels, and quarrel among
themselves instead of raiding Palestine. Get me?"
"Um-n-yes. I've sat on a horse I was warned against--felt
safer--and gone to hospital at that."
He laughed.
"No hospitals up here! It'll be soon over if they get wise to
us. But I think we're all right; and you're almost certainly
safe. But don't be tempted to talk. Well--we've been up here
long enough for me to have put you through the third degree.
Better look a bit uncomfortable as you go down, as if I'd got
under your skin with some awkward questions. You, too, ben
Hamza; don't grin; look afraid."
"I am not at all afraid, Jimgrim. But I will try."
Grim studied for a moment.
"Don't forget," he added, "at the first suggestion that you're
not wanted, make yourself scarce, and go and round up your men.
If you're thrown out pretty roughly, keep your temper and run."
"Taht il-amr!" (Yours to command.)
"Come on, then. Let's go."
The sun was fairly low over the Judean Hills as we turned down
the narrow stairs and found Anazeh waiting at the bottom.