A Long Way to Shiloh

by Lionel Davidson

  The little spry one hadn’t bothered answering me. He’d opened a medical chest and was fiddling with a pad of lint. And suddenly everything went into slow motion as my concussed and labouring brain started assimilating in a frenzy. I assimilated Ike quietly vomiting next door, and the large man standing over the lavatory and wiping a knife very carefully on toilet paper; and the other one leaning in the doorway and studying a sheet of curling black card – the scroll fragment, I realized suddenly.

  The little one had lifted the hat and popped the lint inside and replaced the hat again. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘That will stop it. We can go now.’

  I said, ‘Look here,’ still mumbling at him and weaving about. ‘This is some horrible mistake. I don’t know what you want, but you’ve got it wrong. You’ve got the wrong man. I’m – I’m a physician, a doctor,’ I said, suddenly recalling how he’d addressed me. ‘I’m simply a doctor. What do you want with me?’

  ‘A physician?’ he said, a bit taken aback, and the other two looked round, a bit taken aback also. ‘Well, I don’t know anything about that,’ he said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. It will all be explained.’

  ‘Explained? Explain what?’ I said, but with a certain idiot relief flooding in. The man plainly didn’t know me from Adam, and I’d suddenly recalled that my passport and every other bit of identifying material was safely in the hotel; also that my Arabic was quite as good as his. ‘You camel turd, you!’ I told him. ‘You offal skin! You’ve made a mistake, can’t you see? I’m an Arab, you fool – like yourself! I’m visiting this man. He’s my patient. Ask anybody in the locality!’

  This statement, though incoherently delivered, seemed to upset the two larger men, who frowned uncertainly at their colleague. It didn’t, unfortunately, upset him. He simply began fumbling fussily with a pocketful of papers.

  ‘No mistake, I think,’ he said. ‘No mistake my end, anyway. Seen with the man Agrot. Staying at the King David –’

  ‘Visiting, you fool – visiting a patient!’

  ‘– Followed here yesterday. And here – check photograph. That’s him, isn’t it?’ he said.

  His two colleagues had a look at the photo. I had a look at it, too. No mistakes his end, all right. I seemed to be scrutinizing the photo anxiously for mistakes. There I was in it, sitting at a plain wooden table, alongside a military-type sleeve, with a young Arab grinning in the background; evidently taken on some dig in Jordan. I had the same worried scowl I must be wearing now.

  I said, ‘That’s easily explained, of course –’

  ‘Of course. But we have to go now, Doctor.’ He was getting harassed. ‘All the mistakes will be settled. I’m sure you will be back here soon with many apologies. It’s just a matter of control. Stand straight now. We’ll walk to the car. We’ll walk quite slowly. What we’ll do, I and this gentleman will walk beside you. We don’t want to hold you. The other gentleman will walk behind you. He’s there to see you don’t make a disturbance. If you make a disturbance he’ll have to shoot you, and we’ll run. Please don’t make a disturbance.’

  ‘No, no, don’t make a disturbance,’ the other gentleman said. It was the first time he’d said anything, and he said it in a shocked, admonitory sort of way.

  I was sitting on the toilet then, my legs having folded, and looking up seriously at the two heads of the little chap, my eyes having crossed as well. He was clicking with his tongue. ‘Come on, now. Stand up. You can do it. It isn’t far. I’m afraid you were hit a bit too hard,’ he said, clicking some more.

  I’d been hit a bloody sight too hard. I couldn’t seem to keep abreast of the situation for more than seconds at a time. Thank God Ike had stopped vomiting. He’d stopped because we weren’t there now. We were on the iron stairs. We were in the alley. We were in the Jaffa Road. It was drizzling.

  Mad, of course, all. of it. Couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t me here, walking thoughtfully down the Jaffa Road with the two gentlemen. Where was the other gentleman? The other gentleman was behind. Street crowded as usual; vans, buses, housewives, old men with sticks.

  ‘Not very far now. Just keep walking normally.’

  I was walking normally. I seemed to be walking normally. My feet weren’t quite touching the ground. There was a reason for this, I thought, watching the windscreen wipers flick there and back. We were stopped at traffic lights. I was in a car. I suddenly remembered getting into the car. It was a big beat-up old Studebaker, parked at a traffic meter in a side street As I got into it I remembered why Ike had stopped vomiting.

  Some confusion seemed to be present here. To do with my head, of course. Except it wasn’t mine, but this Arab doctor’s. He’d been hit on it. Hit a bloody sight too hard. I was full of indignation suddenly. ‘You are a camel turd,’ I told the man again. ‘A Palestinian camel turd,’ I elaborated. So he was; Palestinian Arab accent The others seemed to be Jordanian. ‘A turd,’ I said again. But it wasn’t him. He’d taken himself off. I was in the back with two other turds. I suddenly remembered he was driving. The whole trouble was, lapses. Pockets of sleep, gulfs. Like the Big Dipper, but instead of leaving your stomach, leave your senses, swoop. It wouldn’t do. Had to assimilate. Street names, say. Where street names? No bloody street names.

  Y.M.C.A., though; tall tower and domes, couldn’t be anything else, which meant King David Hotel opposite. Which it was. This was pleasing. So the railway station next, if we were going out of town. Keep awake for it.

  Didn’t keep awake. Went off, came back, tried to think what I was supposed to be keeping awake for. We were out of town. A bus lumbering ahead. I took its route number, quick as a flash. Number seven. A very useful item. Even more useful if I knew where it was going. Turn and see the destination board as we pass. Turned, but missed it. Too much mud. Endless red mud. Where the hell were we walking to through all this mud?

  ‘Where the hell are we walking to through all this mud?’ I said, tetchily.

  ‘To the trees. It isn’t far now,’ one of the Jordanians said. Both Jordanians were there; not the little chap, though. Taken himself off again; a spry little bastard if ever I saw one.

  ‘Where’s the car?’ I said.

  ‘We’ll have another car. You’ll be comfortable. You’ll be able to rest first.’

  ‘Rest where?’

  ‘Not far now,’ he said.

  We were in a lane. I had an impression we’d passed houses. Fruit on all sides, now; stepped terraces of fruit, dripping in the rain. Rock walls, red earth. Where the hell were we? A truck came bouncing along the potholes in the lane. I looked to see if there was a name on it. Couldn’t see. Too many trees. I was standing under one. My hat was tight, sodden from the dripping tree.

  ‘Where’s your friend?’ I said. The man was holding me up.

  ‘He’ll be back. How do you feel?’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘Soon you’ll feel better. We’ll move soon.’

  ‘We’ll move now,’ the friend said.

  We started to move. The hat was tight and hot. I wanted to take it off.

  ‘Don’t take the hat off,’ he said.

  ‘It’s tight. It hurts.’

  ‘Soon it won’t hurt.’

  It hurt now. It hurt like hell. I was stumbling on a black cinder track. I held my head down. My head was getting banged somehow. A tunnel of blackness, and I fell into it, fell away into it.

  ‘I simply must have a rest,’ I said crisply.

  ‘Yes, you can rest. It’s done you good to rest.’

  ‘How long have we been here?’

  ‘An hour or two. Take another rest if you wish.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly, and took one.

  I was still in the tunnel when I’d taken it. We were all in the tunnel. I was in a slightly foetal position, back pressed hard into the curve, hat touching the roof. They were sitting one each side of me, a pistol in each lap. I was trembling in a piercing draught. A husky resonance sounded as the wind blew through the tunnel.
I said, ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Just a place to rest. It was too wet in the trees. You look better now.’

  I didn’t feel better. I felt as if a meat cleaver had been buried in my head and my limbs trussed and crammed into some compact sized freezer. A place to rest. We must be at the jumping-off point, then; on the frontier. We were waiting for something. What? My teeth started to chatter like castanets.

  ‘You still have some shock,’ the one without the hat said, watching me.

  ‘How long are we staying here?’

  ‘Till it’s dark. In an hour or two.’

  ‘I can’t stay like this for an hour or two,’ I said, chattering horribly at him.

  ‘Go to sleep again.’

  ‘I have to relieve myself!’

  This was nothing but the truth. An hour or two! What could I do in an hour or two? What could I do anyway, with these two enormous ruffians and their pistols?

  They were looking silently across me at each other. The hatless one nodded slightly and after a moment the other rolled over on to his hands and knees and lumbered up the tunnel. His face appeared in the entrance after a minute. ‘All right,’ he said softly.

  The man beside me gave me a nudge, and I got over on my hands and knees, too. My head lurched shatteringly as it accompanied me. I moved into the husky resonance of the tunnel mouth and felt it vibrating my hat brim, and then wind-blown rain whipped in my face, and the man outside was helping me up. His companion was close behind me.

  We were in a scrap heap in a thicket of olive trees. Large pieces of junk lay about, a battered old boiler, a rusted cistern, sandbags. The tunnel was a section of abandoned sewage pipe, about a yard in diameter. A zigzag ditch ran to one side of the thicket; a slit trench. We must be right on the border.

  I relieved myself. We were in a valley. Through the olive trees I could see a hill on the other side of the border, with a little blue flag fluttering at its peak. A track led up the hill to where the flag fluttered, evidently from a road in the valley, out of sight now. That would be the road where the car would pick us up when it was dark – not more than a couple of hundred yards over the border.

  There was nothing to be seen on this side of the border. We seemed to be in a hollow, a no-man’s-land. The slope cut off all signs of Israeli activity. But the Israelis worked their land close up to the border. There would be buildings and people near. How near?

  The man with the knife had taken it out and was hefting it a little in his hand. He said, ‘Hurry up.’ I hurried up, and turned, and saw a rooftop, Israeli side.

  A rooftop. A hundred yards away, not more. The slope of the hollow was littered with debris. Where it stopped, fruit trees began. Above the fruit trees was the rooftop.

  My hands were shaking so much I could hardly zip up.

  The building might be abandoned, of course …

  Through the wind-blown rain, the mud on the slope winked evilly in the dirty grey light. One would have to run up the muddy slope. Very unpromising.

  ‘Ready now?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I feel sick,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘Come back inside. You’ll be better seated. There is a breeze there.’

  A sympathetic but firm grip. We went back inside, on hands and knees, myself in the middle. Bits of debris and builder’s rubble were scattered in the entrance. My hand closed on a half brick, and let it go again. What use was half a brick? Half a brigade of Guards, maybe.

  I manoeuvred back into the foetal position and tried to think. My head was hurting so horribly, this was not easy. Where the hell were we? I hadn’t the faintest idea, except south. But wait. How did I even know south?

  Think. I knew it because – of what? Because of the King David, that was it. We’d passed the King David, going south, and I’d expected to see the railway station which was farther south still. Also the bus. It was a number seven bus – the Ramat Rahel bus, I realized suddenly. You couldn’t go any farther south than Ramat Rahel: the border looped round there, enclosing the Jerusalem enclave. And we hadn’t got that far. I was sure of it I had a sudden flash of the Studebaker at the entrance to a lane, and of ourselves getting out A muddy potholed lane, going downhill. Houses in the lane, terraces of fruit trees …

  I suddenly knew where we were; could place it precisely. You could see it from the hill at Ramat Rahel, in line with the flag I’d spotted: the flag of the United Nations post. A lane ran down into a valley, to the old truce line. There was a shell crater at the bottom, with a cluster of blasted olive trees. All along the lane, right down to the crater, were smallholders’ cottages and their fruit gardens.

  Plenty of cottages, plenty of people. It was simply a matter of getting there, across the crater, up the slope … pursued by two men with guns, rather faster on their feet than I was, in present form; men who wouldn’t hesitate to use the guns, who’d have used them in the Jaffa Road this morning, with far more people about.

  But wait, I thought. There were important differences between this mud-bound crater and the Jaffa Road. They’d had a car in the Jaffa Road. They’d have run to the car and got away in it. They didn’t have a car here. There wouldn’t be a car till it was dark. And there was nowhere to run till then: any shooting would bring a U.N. jeep down the track before they’d got a couple of hundred yards. So there’d be no shooting. There’d been no shooting in the flat this morning. I suddenly remembered the man cleaning his knife in the bathroom. The guns were more in the nature of protection – possibly for laying me out again if I made a disturbance. But if I put a few yards between us – if I did it quickly, without warning?

  This appraisal of the situation, and the realization that I’d have to have a try within the next couple of hours threw me into such a shaking panic one of the men actually put up his hand to hold me.

  ‘Try and relax,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long now. We’ll go early.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The rain is making it dark. We’ll have the signal before an hour.’

  I was sick, in his lap. He edged away, swearing.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I have to go outside again,’ I said, weakly.

  They looked at each other again, and the one I’d been sick on lumbered off. Presently his head was in the entrance again. ‘All right.’

  I thought, Oh God, this is it, and found myself mindlessly on hands and knees padding up the tunnel. I seemed to be slavering as I padded, like some big tired dog, limbs rubbery, stomach heaving, the other man butting me from behind. Just as I got to the entrance, I was sick again. I’d put my hand down on the half brick. Then the man outside, hissing a bit in sympathy, was bending down to help me up. He had big round eyes in a big round face, and I was looking up into it, vision blurred by tears of sickness, and willing myself to do it. Then I did it.

  His expression didn’t seem to alter much. His mouth, circled with mud and brick dust, merely described a tight pursed O and he went backwards, eyes apologetic almost, flat on his backside. Then I was stumbling round, and the other man, his view cut off, was up on his knees in the tunnel entrance, arms outstretched to steady me. ‘Easy now – easy,’ he said. ‘Get your balance.’ And I paused a moment and got it, and drew one foot back and let him have it, hard, horribly low, and his face went gently meditative. He said breathily, ‘Ah,’ and held himself, and gave a profound bow, on his knees, and then I was running, running like hell.

  8 Who Ever Perished, Being Innocent?

  Where were the righteous cut off? [Job 4.7]

  1

  The fallacy about action is that once you’re in it apprehension goes and you concentrate calmly on the job in hand. Nothing like that happened to me. I ran in blind panic, concentrating on one simple thought: God help me if they lay hands on me. About half a minute later, I saw this was very likely. I was running the wrong way.

  I’d come belting out of the trees, making for the slope, when I saw over to t
he left the black line of a cinder track. It disappeared into the trees. I suddenly remembered that we’d come down this track. In the mud it was the only sensible way down – or up. I turned and ran towards it right away, and as I turned saw the man I’d hit with the brick also running towards it; and realized he’d be at it rather sooner than I would. The other man was also on the move; not running exactly. He was stumbling along and clutching himself, a very unpleasant look on his face.

  I thought Oh Jesus Christ and without pause swerved frenziedly back in the original direction. The slope was still nearer to me than to them. If I could only keep going I’d get there first. I had to get there first. I felt myself practically flying, leaping over obstacles, sickness gone, headache gone, breath gone too. I made the slope, thick red mud sucking at my shoes, and started up it, and almost at once began slipping back down again. I clutched frantically, at rocks, debris, was on my knees, and off them again, breath sobbing as I scrambled.

  About half-way up I stopped, limbs leaden, lungs choked, because I’d suddenly seen I wasn’t going anywhere. Rocks had been gouged from the earth immediately under the top. Several were still lying around. The effect was to create an overhang that you couldn’t see till you were close up to it. Without assistance from above it wasn’t possible to get up this way at all. The assistance was already there. The first man was standing watching me, not even breathing very deeply. As I looked the second joined him. They didn’t say anything. They simply looked at me, from fifteen feet above. They looked at me fairly enjoyably.