by Неизвестный
On hearing all this Abu Il-Shawarab drew his arm out of the other’s grip, made a gesture as if defending his soul, swayed like a drunken man, and fell helplessly to the ground.
His head dropped to his knees and continued falling toward the ground. He buried his face in his hands. A despairing groan burst from his throat, the savage moan of a man who has been defeated by a mighty power from which there is no escape. Then he fell silent, and a terrible stillness filled the air.
Shocked and confused, the suss vendor gazed around him with eyes peeled. He heard no suspicious sound, and calmed down a little. Then he turned to Abu Il-Shawarab, bent over him, touched him pityingly on his trembling shoulders, and tried to lift him.
“Enough, my brother,” he whispered. “Listen to me, what is past is past…Everything comes from Allah, praise Him and exalt Him!…What is said is written and what is thought is decreed…” Seeing that his words were having no effect on Abu Il-Shawarab, he went on in a more energetic tone:
“There’s very little time left…Rise, and cross the Jordan before the moon comes up and reveals your tracks…With Allah’s help, in a week or ten days you’ll get to Wadi El-Arish…There nothing can harm you, and the blood-avengers and the government won’t be able to touch you. In a year or two things will settle down, Abu Faris’s family will be reconciled to their loss and will agree to accept a ransom. That’s my advice to you…Let’s make an effort now…I’ll arrange everything. I promise to watch out and let you know everything that happens. Get on your horse. I’ll accompany you to the Jordan crossing. From there I’ll head left to Nablus…It’d be best if I disappeared too. Those dogs, may Allah not have mercy on their fathers’ bones! They’re surely planning to do me harm…”
He grasped Abu Il-Shawarab around the waist and raised him from the ground. Noticing that Abu Il-Shawarab’s abbayeh was not over his shoulders, he took off his own and wrapped it around his leader, and then held the horse’s stirrup to help him mount.
For a long time they traveled in their hasty flight, like animals fleeing before the hunters. To conceal their tracks they left the paths and wended their way among the pools and waterholes, over crystals of salt that crackled under their feet and twinkled and faded like stars in the dark sky. They passed beside the swamps and the mouth of the Jordan, pushing their way through reeds and bulrushes and many other marsh plants that fastened around their legs and waists and impeded their progress.
When they drew near to the crossing the suss vendor turned his sheepskin inside out and began crawling forward on all fours. He cautiously inspected the entire area, looking, as he moved, like a jackal stealing through the fields. While he was doing this, Abu Il-Shawarab remained hidden among the bushes, waiting fearfully for his return.
The suss vendor came back, walking erect, and Abu Il-Shawarab took courage, left his hiding place, and mounted his horse. Straining to overcome the trembling of his voice, he spoke to the suss vendor, instructing him of the messages he was to bear to his family and household. When he had finished speaking, he continued standing on the spot, gazing blankly into space.
“Hurry now,” the suss vendor urged him, offering him his hand in farewell. Abu Il-Shawarab felt a flush of joy, and kissed the other man on the head, wept on his neck a little, and then spurred his horse on.
Several times he turned his head back as he rode, to gaze at the immobile figure of the suss vendor. When the figure had completely merged into darkness, he sighed deeply and continued riding forward, sorrowing and bent under the desperate suffering and agony of men exiled from the land of their birth…
Notes
1. of the three major districts—Hebron, Nablus, Jerusalem.
2. a parasang is a Persian measure of length, usually 3 to 3 1/2 English miles
3. According to an Arab legend, Moses was originally buried further away, but Allah had moved the grave to where the mosque now stood.
4. The hosts light torches in the desert and on mountaintops to show the way to wanderers and to invite them to the festivities.
5. “Moses [who] speaks with God.”
6. Author’s note: in the 1950s, an incident like this actually occurred. In a riot over the flag the Hebronite flag-master and two of his followers were killed, and several Nablusites also fell.
Chapter six
Abu Il-Shawarab suffered innumerable hardships in the course of his flight. Fearing people as he now did, he kept away from inhabited places, making large detours around villages and tent camps. Like a hyena, he would hide by day in crevices among the rocks or in caves on mountaintops, whence he could get a glimpse of what lay ahead of him, and when darkness came he would continue on his way. For entire nights he traveled through deep valleys, crossed ravines, or slowly climbed up mountain slopes, leaning on the hind part of his horse. Fearing the bright moonlight too, he would flee into the deepest shadows, and here, in these waves of expanses which rose and fell yet stood still and petrified, not obstructing the vistas of the horizon extending into infinitude, he and his steed would lose their importance, and appear tinier and more lost than ants.
When troubled by hunger he would turn aside for a while to one of the camps of the Bedouin shepherds, which he encountered here and there, scattered over some field like large black wings. Even though it was dark he would cover his face and head well with his kefiyeh, showing no more than his glinting eyes, which wore that special film of weariness and sorrow, and would glance hastily over the faces of all the men around him. Having asked politely about the health of all present, and having listened carefully to the reply of each, he would draw out the hand which had been grasping a weapon under his abbayeh all this time, and in a sad and shamed voice would make his request, asking directions for his journey and waiting expectantly for them to offer him their hospitality, all this without descending from his horse. Only when they had coaxed him profusely, assuring him that he would offend them and turn them into pursuers if he didn’t accede to their invitations, did he agree to join them around their fire, and to wait until they had kneaded and baked their flat cakes for him.
Not one man of all those who offered him their hospitality in the course of his flight asked him questions about his past or the reasons for his journey or his estrangement. By an unspoken agreement they circled wide around this point, which was shrouded in mists and riddles. On seeing his stubborn stance and his endeavors to change his voice and to cover his presence and his traces, they deliberately ignored him, turning their eyes away from him and not even examining him surreptitiously under their eyelids. All of them were naturally aware that he was estranged because he was fleeing. No man travels alone into far parts in the darkness of night unless some disaster has come upon him. And such occurrences are not unusual among men who carry arms. In these cases it was clear that the hosts were duty-bound to support the pursued, to hide him and shield him and assist him and not to inform upon him to the blood-avengers, who would surely be not very far behind. They would supply him with provisions for himself and his horse, as generously as they could afford, and one of them would then accompany him some of the way on, calming and assuring him faithfully in his own name and in that of his entire tribe that his secret would be as safe with them as in a deep well, and that not even the birds in the sky would wrest it from them or discover that he had passed through their bounds. Before taking leave of him, his escort would give him directions, telling him of secret and forgotten paths he could follow where no one would be able to find his traces.
Since he had to circle around the entire Negev in order to avoid traversing the Hebronite lands, his journey took twice as long and his troubles increased. Because of his ignorance of the terrain here, he got lost in the Edom desert around the arid southern coast of the Dead Sea. For two days he saw neither man nor a spot of green which might signify a waterhole, nothing but occasionally some whitish thorn bushes, rust-eaten and covered with salt crystals that glinted like frost. They looked more wretched and desolate than the desert i
tself. Their mucous, sticky juice increased the stale and bitter taste in his mouth and dried up the juices of life in his horse’s veins. On the second day, as he was rising over a high hill in the heat of noon, his horse, already weakened by hunger and thirst, suddenly bent its back, slipped down to its knees, rolled over, and fell on its head. It lay on the ground, its dry, swollen tongue hanging out like a withering cactus leaf, its chest contracting and expanding like a bellows. In vain did Abu Il-Shawarab rush around the animal, tearing his hair like a man who has lost his senses, in vain did he cut the saddle straps and roll the saddle away with his foot, kissing the horse on the forehead, embracing it around the neck and calling it a string of affectionate names and endearments. The horse only raised its head slightly, gazed at him through its sorrowful and dripping eyes that had already lost most of their spark, as if pleading and saying:
“Master! You can see for yourself that my end has come! Why torment me? Let me die here in peace and let this be the reward you give me.” Then its legs jerked aside, its hairy thighs moved a little, and it died quietly.
Abu Il-Shawarab buried his face in the ground. With sand between his teeth he howled and moaned, emitting strange sounds that belonged to no language. His burning eyes blazed as if consumed by fire, and his blood pumped through his veins with a strange heat.
When the horse’s movements had ceased entirely, Abu Il-Shawarab crawled silently forward and bent over the animal’s carcass, as if to take leave for the last time of the very source of his own powers. When he finally decided to get up and continue his journey, his soul and hopes were broken to fragments, and he had neither the strength nor the desire to gather them together.
In the company of a camel caravan that he met, which was conveying its animals to Egypt, Abu Il-Shawarab traveled the desert of El Arish and then further south. After several days he reached the bank of the Suez Canal. Agitated and frightened, like a night bird that is suddenly flung out of its dark nest in the middle of the day, he mingled with the vast throngs of men rushing and pushing toward the whistling steamboat that was about to sail to the nearest railway station on the line to Cairo.
Chapter seven
Abu Il-Shawarab’s exile in the capital of the Nile-lands was a long one, a time of many difficulties and troubles, injuries and disasters, disappointment and despair. The changes in his condition and the deep emotional shocks that followed them left their mark upon him and brought sharp changes in his character. To grasp something of their nature it is necessary to unravel the complex web of fate and describe the events in the sequence in which they happened.
During the first days, after the torments of his flight, the weeks spent in deserts and places remote from any habitation, Abu Il-Shawarab found a resting place in a small narrow room overlooking the Nile. He had rented the room in a large khan consisting of a vast number of cubicles and crannies, like an anthill, in one of the poorer sections of the city. Here—in the whirlpool of the city, in the incessant noise of masses of refugees and exiles from different lands and of different races, among sad, displaced peasants in broad blue gowns who had left a homeland not their own to oppressors and bloodsucking landlords to escape empty-handed to the distant and enchanting city of promise and to try their fortune there as porters and street-cleaners, doormen or pickpockets—here his presence aroused no wonder or astonishment. No one here saw him as a special kind of creature to be suspected; no one annoyed him with talk or pointless questions or interrogated him about his past or the reasons for his flight.
The few Nablusites living in Cairo, his “brethren in misfortune,” received him with understanding and with the joy and loyal friendship so characteristic of bitter and afflicted refugees when they meet on foreign soil. The news of his arrival and of the reason for his flight spread like wildfire among them. It touched and moved each of them profoundly. The wondrous event, already enveloped in mists of legend and bravery, captivated their imaginations. In the cruel intrigue of chance from which there can be no escape each one of them saw his own reflection and the story of his own life. Before long they all found him, one by one, and came to the place where he was staying, to visit him and congratulate him on his escape.
Several of the more desperate characters, who had long since cut themselves off from their past and their future, became very frequent visitors. Among these was Abd El-Kadir, a man with many adventures and outrages behind him. He had been the terror of all the policemen in Nablus, and had won notoriety when he evaded his prison guards and jumped off the roof of the jail, carrying a friend on his back. He claimed to be one of Nimmer’s old acquaintances, and now attached himself to him as guide and mentor. He and his friends took him under their wing and offered him the benefit of their experience. They also tried to cheer him and disperse his gloom, and to keep him from thinking about either past or future. To this end they sought things, which could delight and divert him. They altered the shape of his moustache and beard and changed his clothing beyond recognition, to protect him against any unexpected dangers, and they did not leave his side. The hottest hours of the day, when the air quivers as if on coals and the sunbeams pierce through it, they would spend squatting in the shady yards of the white mosques, or lying outstretched and immobile in groves of palm trees that rose wearily against the slumbering noon. In the evenings they would wander through the lively bustling streets, visiting various coffeehouses and taverns, to listen to the chants and songs, finding the expression of their own feelings in the verses of the poets, whose burden was separation and longing, loneliness and wandering, and in the marvelous voice of the famous singer, whose song was like a stormy waterfall. Their passions, long restrained within familiar bounds, were violently aroused by the singing and the dancing. With tears in their eyes they would plead in whispers with the waiters in the coffeehouses, until they got what they wanted. Then, their nostrils dilated with lust, their faces wearing the expressions of thirsting beasts, they drew deep into their lungs the smoke of the narguilehs which had been spiked with hashish, in which they sought the oblivion longed for by the most miserable and unfortunate of souls. When quite intoxicated they would get up to all sorts of mischief, often starting up quarrels with real or imaginary enemies. And sometimes they would sink into melancholy over their own griefs, often bursting into outcries of pleading and wailing. Their nonsense would go on into the last watch of the night, and with the gray light of dawn, when their eyes were half closed with weariness and their tongues were already babbling meaningless and fragmented syllables, they would accede to the Negro proprietor’s persistent demands that they go home. With neither grace nor dignity in their movements, they would get up silently and unwillingly, for their limbs as well as their souls were held down and enthralled by the marvelous visions and joys fluttering about in their minds. One moment signs of sorrow and suffering would darken their brows, and they would clench their fists at the black emissary of hell who was disturbing them out of their paradise and interrupting the choir of angels in their song. The next moment, their faces would light up again with the same smile full of heavenly joy, and they returned to weaving their marvelous dreams of delight with trembling hearts. Thrusting their arms out into the air to imitate the flight of the swallows that were cutting swiftly through the air like arrows, as if having cast off all the troubles of the earth, they left the coffeehouses and walked, swaying and stumbling and slipping on the clay paving stones that gleamed in the morning dew, as if gliding over the waves of the sea that raised their froth in the liquid purple of dawn, and climbed the steep and winding stone steps leading to Abu Il-Shawarab’s room. Locking the door behind them so as not to be disturbed by voices coming in from outside, they sprawled out like dead men on the floor mats in a drunken slumber of deep oblivion whose twilit state would continue into their waking on the night of the next day.
And even though Nimmer Abu Il-Shawarab knew well that only now, after his flight, his real struggle was about to begin, and that he had to prepare himself and devise s
tratagems to get out of the trouble he was in, he was in no hurry to begin any decisive action, and made no real effort to prepare the ground for negotiations with his enemies. Tired, full of doubts and remorse and hopelessness, absolutely certain that everything that had happened and would happen was predetermined and necessary; he saw no point in forcing things. In addition, his secret fear that his last hopes might be disappointed, weakened and terrified him. This terror grew stronger even than his torments of doubt and his suffering. He could find no way of ridding himself of this terror other than by fleeing it into vain illusions, and postponing by every means possible the day when he would have to meet it face-to-face.
Giving himself the excuse that he was being cautious in order not to make an error, and was really advancing slowly toward his goal, he yielded to the advice of his new acquaintances, who counseled him to sit tight and not show any sign of life, to blot out his existence as far as possible until the blood-avengers became reconciled and would agree to accept ransom. He disguised his terrible weariness and his great longing for rest and oblivion and turned his thoughts forcibly away from the events that had besmirched his life. He didn’t even want to know a thing about the verdict that had been passed on him in distant Nablus, in that other world from which he was now divorced. The entire affair seemed to him so complicated that even to touch it might be dangerous. Having found that here in this refuge no harm was likely to come to him, and feeling confident in his circle of acquaintances, who would protect him from his pursuers, he allowed slumber and inaction to take over his being. He drove away all thoughts of past and future, and found contentment in the fact that he was alive and breathing freely under a free sky. As for the future—Allah karim! God is great! With patience and endurance the berry leaves turn to silk. The hasty fail, while those who are patient are saved.