Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

by Ian St. James

  By contrast, the Arabs lacked cohesion, their leadership was fragmented and divided, and even then I thought them politically naive - at least fifty years behind their Zionist neighbours in their nationalistic aspirations. A dozen or more times I picked my way through the myriad dishes of an Arab mezze, listening to the argument roll on all sides of me. "How many Jews arc there in the whole of Palestine?" someone would demand. "Answer that!"

  Liquid brown eyes stared back. "Half a million, more maybe."

  "Well then? And how many are we? How many Arabs?"

  A shrug. "Twice as many."

  "Hah, isn't that my argument?" a satisfied smile, followed by: "And who owns the land?"

  Hesitation, heads shaken in bafflement, then, "Who knows anymore - the way the Jews are taking it from us? Who can say these days?"

  But the questioner would persist. "Is the land not ours by rights? Is the land not sacred? How many times have we been overrun - once - twice? Three times in my lifetime - but the land is always ours."

  Heads would nod as the talk drifted to the inevitable conclusion - that even if the British did leave, the Arabs of the surrounding lands would come to the aid of the Palestinians if called upon to do so. It was always such a comforting note to end on.

  That was Palestine in '47. A sliver of land on the eastern rim of the Mediterranean, half the size of Denmark, with a population no larger than Bristol. Arab by inheritance, Jewish by future and in trust to the British. But British rule was coming to an end. The delegates at the UN were edging toward a decision. like latter-day Solomons they proposed to dismember the body, part for the Arabs and part for the Jews - and by November 29th they were ready to vote on it.

  Jerusalem seethed all day. The British doubled their patrols and fanned their secret police through the vaulted alleyways and into the hidden passages of the ghettos, in a final despairing attempt to forestall trouble, or at least to pinpoint where it might first erupt. The souks boiled with rumours and counter-rumours. Black-coated orthodox Jews bobbed to the rhythmic sing-song of ancient prayers and mounted perpetual guard on the Wailing Wall. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre rang with the prayers of the Christians; Greek and Russian, Armenian and Chaldean, Syriac and others, all kneeling together in mutual aversion. And above it all, the piercing unending call of the minarets drew the Moslems to their own devotions.

  I spent most of the day in the streets, listening and watching, storing information in the back of my mind to write about later, until at mid-afternoon I drifted up Julian's Way to the King David, keen to sniff out official reaction to what was happening in the city. Halfway down the west corridor I bumped into Haleem as she made an exit from an office, laden with files which threatened to scatter as she struggled to close the door.

  "Carry your books for you?" I took care of the door handle.

  "It's all right, I'm only going to the next room." For once her smile was less than radiant. She lowered her voice, "Will I see you tonight?"

  I hesitated. "I'm not sure, I've a feeling it could be quite a night."

  She seemed anxious, perhaps her mind was more on what would happen six thousand miles away in New York than on seeing me later, but she said, "Our door is always open to you." She lowered her eyes, "Whatever the hour."

  "Then I'll come."

  She smiled shyly, nodded and turned away. Somebody opened the door to the office from the inside and closed it after her, so that I was left watching her shadow disappear behind a pane of crinkled glass.

  After my meeting with officialdom I went back to the Imperial, still thinking about Haleem. We had seen a good deal of each other during the weeks I had been there. True she no longer accompanied me on the meetings circuit, but that was at my insistence, not hers. I was a constant visitor to their villa, and as they were Christian Arabs I was permitted to return their hospitality, often taking Nadi and his grown-up sons with Haleem to dinner in the Arab quarter. So mostly we met in the midst of her family, Nadi so trusting that he almost adopted me as his eldest. But sometimes Haleem would flash me a glance which made me think of her in a way no brother feels for his sister, and I was beginning to seek those glances and respond with looks of my own.

  At the Imperial I took a bath and read myself the riot act. A lot of stuff about keeping her at arm's length and being in no position to get involved with anybody, let alone an Arab girl. And afterwards I climbed into a fresh suit and went down to the bar for a drink.

  Pierre Moreau was there before me. Moreau was a know-it-all Frenchman who wrote for Le Monde when he was sober. Mostly he buttonholed people in the bar and bored the pants off them with his solutions to world problems, his complexion and his politics turning a shocking pink with successive martinis.

  In the bar I bought Moreau a drink and he bought me one, and then some of the other press boys joined us - so that by the time we left for the wire room of the Palestinian Broadcasting System all of us had had a few.

  The first surprise was the street, the street outside the Imperial. Pulsating with life a couple of hours earlier, but now as quiet as a ghost town. We stopped in our tracks at the sight of it and just stood there - listening and straining our ears for sounds of the living. A few minutes passed, then a sound like distant thunder reached us and a British half-track emerged from behind the building line. It shuffled crab-like round the corner, pointed its muzzle in our direction and crept down the road to meet us. We waited for it to pass before walking slowly toward a forbidding compound outside the general post office, fenced with barbed wire by the British for security reasons and christened Bevingrad by the Jews. Nobody spoke, we were all too damn puzzled. I think I imagined the whole city at prayer, it was the only explanation I could think of until we reached the cafe. Then it clicked. The place was full of Arabs. Normally their laughter and argument would fill the street for twenty yards in all directions, but now they just sat there, sipping coffee or with heads cupped in their bands - listening to one voice. The voice of the Arab broadcaster relaying the news from Flushing Meadow. Then I realised the Jews were doing the same - the whole population was huddled over its radio sets. The threat of division had succeeded in creating a rare moment of unity - perhaps the only such one in Jerusalem's two-thousand-year history.

  But if the streets were quiet, the wire room was bedlam. News of each vote was ripped from the teletype, one copy was snatched by a Jewish runner who raced across the courtyard to the Hebrew service, while the Arab boy rushed his copy a few yards further to "the other channel" next door. Early in the evening the rest of us greeted each vote with muttered approval or groans of dismay, and there was a good deal of good-humoured argument and heated speculation. But as the night wore on, we became less noisy and the grim-faced runners competed all evening without exchanging a word. Perhaps it was their tension which finally gripped us - or the chattering urgency of the teletype - or just the realisation that the Middle East would never be the same again. But whatever it was, we fell quiet until the final vote was cast and the verdict was known. The General Assembly of the United Nations, by thirty-three in favour, thirteen against and ten abstentions, had voted to partition Palestine.

  The city was a blaze of sudden light and alive with noise. Windows were flung open, doors wrenched back on their hinges and the Jews - many still struggling into whatever clothing came to hand - took to the streets. Faces struggled to express a whole gamut of emotions. Initial disbelief- dazed that something dreamed about, prayed and sacrificed for, was realty happening. Then fear - fear it was a rumour, fear it was a trick, fear that they would wake to discover a dream passed in the night. Followed by the slow dawning realisation that it was true - real - had happened and couldn't be snatched back again. Until finally they felt a joy too rich for laughter, too stifling for words, too overpowering for cheers. The Jews were so happy that they cried.

  The streets overflowed with a people radiant with joy. They kissed and hugged. Neighbours, strangers, wives and lovers, wiping each other's tears away before turni
ng to embrace somebody else, anybody, man, woman or child, anybody and everybody. By two o'clock every Jewish bar and restaurant in the city had opened its doors. Everywhere was open house. Every street corner had its group dancing the hora, every thoroughfare its procession singing the Hatikvah. By three the synagogues were open, packed with worshippers offering thanksgiving before slipping joyously back to the streets. Officially one hundred thousand Jews lived in Jerusalem, but that night they seemed twice as many, all convinced that after the terrors of the Holocaust the Jews of the Diaspora would come home to the Promised Land. And so they linked arms and squeezed and danced and laughed and cried their way to the building of the Jewish Agency, with its searchlight-washed balcony and wide open courtyard. I arrived just in time for the explosion of noise which greeted the blue and white Zionist flag as it fluttered to the masthead. And just in time to watch a woman's bulky figure appear above me.

  "For two thousand years we have waited for our deliverance," Golda Meir fought against her tears. "Now it is so great and wonderful that it surpasses human words," her voice broke to a sob. "Jews!" she cried. "Mazel Tov! Good luck!"

  It was very late when I remembered my promise to Haleem. I hesitated, not wanting to go and wishing I hadn't committed myself. Haleem had said I was welcome at any time and I had warned that I might be late, but this late? I struggled with my conscience, knowing the store they set by promises. Finally I decided to walk up to Katamon - if there was a light in the window I would knock - otherwise I would turn and flee.

  Nadi was waiting up for me. "My family are in bed asleep." He seemed strangely embarrassed. "They hope you'll forgive their bad manners."

  I looked at him, sensing a rebuke and cursing my decision to call at so late an hour. He looked old. Even allowing that he was tired, in three days he seemed to have aged ten years.

  "Haleem says the British have betrayed us." He used the excuse of pouring coffee to avoid my eye. "She is very upset. She's young, of course, inexperienced in life, but—" he shrugged, and then in case I thought him disloyal, he added: "But usually she has a great understanding of these matters."

  I nodded but remained silent.

  "What will happen now?" he asked simply.

  "Perhaps very little," I ventured, trying to sound hopeful. "After all, although Palestine is to be partitioned, Jerusalem is to become an international city - administered by the United Nations."

  "You believe that?"

  "It's what the UN has decided."

  "But can they do it?"

  I struggled. "I believe they'll try."

  "And if they fail?"

  "How can they?"

  "Was the League of Nations so successful?"

  "This is different, Nadi, surely? A different organisation different men - different times. The world must try again."

  He smiled that tired patient look which the very old reserve for the very young and gently led the conversation away from politics to more general matters. He asked my plans, and I told him that I hoped to be allowed to stay in the Middle East for a while - and then, quite suddenly, he said: "Harry, I lied to you. Haleem is not upstairs. Nor are my sons."

  What the hell do you say when somebody says something like that? Nadi of all people. Kind, civilised, gentle, urbane. It was so out of character. My mind slipped a cog between analysing his motives and speculating on the whereabouts of his children, but I held my tongue and said nothing.

  Eventually he sighed and asked, "Do the initials E.G. mean anything to you?"

  The question was almost rhetorical. "Emile Ghoury?" I asked and he nodded.

  Ghoury was leader of the Arab Higher Committee. A Christian Arab, educated at Cincinnati University and powerfully persuasive. I had attended one of his meetings once, or at least tried to. Halfway through I was discovered and thrown out.

  "An hour ago a messenger brought this," Nadi passed me a scrap of paper. It was grubby and creased into a million wrinkles, as if whoever had carried it had screwed it up to make it much smaller than it was. On it were the initials "E.G." and the sign of the crescent and the cross.

  "Other men were waiting outside," Nadi whispered as if afraid of being overheard. "They had a car, a truck perhaps, it was dark so I'm not sure. Hemeh took the man into the other room, Negib and Haleem joined them." He shook his head in bewilderment. "In my own house, Harry. Have I so little authority that I have lost the respect of my children?"

  I told him his children loved and honoured him and encouraged him to continue.

  "Fifteen minutes later the messenger left, taking Hemeh with him. When the car had driven away Haleem came to see me. We had—" his face folded into a grimace of misery. "We had an argument. Haleem says the Jewish terrorists will never accept partition without Jerusalem. That soon they will attack us. That Arabs all over the city must be prepared to defend themselves."

  "But Haleem has so many Jewish friends?" I protested.

  "Who hasn't?" His eyes were closed and he sounded tired enough to be talking in his sleep. "But Haleem says all of our friends will follow the terrorists. They will have no choice in the matter, if they remain friends of ours they will face reprisals from the entire Hebrew community."

  "So you argued?"

  His hand rose and fell limply in a gesture of defeat. "Negib joined sides with her. Said the Mufti was right after all - we should never have trusted the British. Arabs everywhere must be ready to defend themselves against murderers like the Stern Gang."

  "What happened then?"

  "They left. They'll be back before dawn they said. Also, if you arrived, it would be best to tell you they'd gone to bed."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "Yes, why didn't I?" his eyes opened wide, as if the effort of answering had jerked him into wakefulness. "Perhaps because a father worries for his children, Harry. Even when they ignore his advice. Even when they treat him like—" he struggled to find the right expression, "like a United Nations." He lapsed into silence for a moment, as if trying to reach a decision. "Harry, they like you. All of them. Especially Haleem, she never stops talking about you. Perhaps - I mean, I thought - well if you were to talk to them? You're nearer their own age, only your experience makes you appear older. Tell them that only trouble can come of it - explain to them - persuade." The words ran out until he gathered himself for his final plea. "They're only children after all."

  I promised to do whatever I could and offered to wait for their return, but he didn't want that, preferring me to seek them out in a day or two, and sound them out without letting on that he had confided in me.

  He embraced me at the door. "May all your feasts find you in good health."

  "You too - look after yourself."

  "Harry, those men," he clung to my arm. "They all had guns."

  I walked back to the Imperial, pulling my coat tight against the cold, surprised to realise it would be dawn in half an hour. In the streets the Jews still celebrated, their ranks thinner now, reduced mainly to the young Sabras, the first generation Palestinian Jews, still singing and dancing, intoxicated by the hour and fortified by the free drinks which had bathed their throats all night. Some of the British soldiers joined in while others looked the other way and pretended that nothing unusual was happening. But not an Arab was to be seen.

  Back in my room I rummaged through the pockets of my jacket, looking for my notebook before settling down at the typewriter. Perhaps it was prophetic, but the first quote I found was that of the Syrian delegate immediately after the vote at the UN: "The Holy places are going to pass through long years of war, and peace will not prevail there for generations." I shivered. I watched the cold grey dawn slide through the window, and wondered if Haleem had yet returned to the safety of her father's house.

  0700 Wednesday

  There was no mistaking Conlaragh. A hundred yards in from the sea the creek twisted and Reilly's birthplace was laid out before them. The early morning mist had given way to soft rain which dimpled the water as the Aileen Maloney follo
wed the other boat up the estuary, and a minute later the liquid sun broke through the clouds to wash pale light over the countryside, turning the grey road to a silver ribbon. The road to Cork, Abou remembered. He followed it down from the brow of the hill, past sheep grazing dew-wet grass and beyond a knot of cottages to the other buildings which lined the jetty. He saw the church with its grey slate roof, and at his side Suzy looked at the pub and thought of Liam Reilly. She imagined him at the bar, his provocative blue eyes emphasising the sardonic twist of his mouth. Reilly would have been popular, she thought. Strong enough for men to like and with enough of the devil to be attractive to women. Fearfully she glanced sideways to her own devil and anticipated the crisis facing him when they landed.

  Unexpectedly the other boat went past the jetty and on up the creek. Abou stiffened, ever suspicious of a trap, always on guard for a sign of betrayal. But a hundred yards on he saw the boat-houses and the little wharf beneath a sign which read "Inishmore Fishing" in letters a foot high. The buildings slid down to the water, a corrugated iron roof supported by concrete pillars jutting out thirty feet from the bank. The boat ahead slowed and manoeuvred then disappeared beneath the cover of the roof. Bare electric light bulbs winked out from the gloom and half a dozen men congregated on the jetty to meet them. Reilly's friends had come to welcome him home.

  Abou grunted to the helmsman to follow. The port side door slid open and one of the commandos entered armed with a Kalashnikov. Abou watched others take up positions, one in the prow and another alongside the deckhouse on the starboard side. Three more would be aft next to the cargo while the last man nursed his wound in silent agony below. The next few minutes would be critical. As critical as any so far. Get through them and you've a chance. The Plan has a chance a chance to succeed where all else has failed. A chance to safeguard the future of fifteen million people. Abou gritted his teeth and clasped and unclasped his hands to ease his tension. The helmsman cut the engine and the Aileen Maloney drifted beneath the iron canopy. On the jetty men sprang forward fore and aft to secure the boat quickly and a big man jumped across to her decks and hurried forward to the deckhouse. The waiting was over.