The Gates of Zion (7 page)

“
The vote passed with a narrow two-thirds majority, thirty-three nations voting for Partition and thirteen voting against.

Among those abstaining were Great Britain and …”

“Oh,” Ellie exclaimed in relief, “I thought somebody blew something up!”

“Not yet,” said Miriam sadly. “That will happen tomorrow.”

“I forgot this was the day of the vote.” Ellie leaned closer to the radio.

“What can one do with such a girl?” Miriam threw her hands into the air.

Ellie ignored her. “The British are leaving then.”

Ishmael nodded slowly. “There will be a war here very soon. The Mufti has returned to Jerusalem. I hear it but this morning. He stirs the Muslim Arabs to passion. What will become of us, the Christian Arabs, then? Who can say!”

“Only our Lord knows,” Miriam said as she filled the cups. “Jesus, be our defender,” she murmured.

“So who is this Mufti anyway?” Ellie asked.

“You see, Ishmael, she does not even know of the Mufti.” Miriam shook her head in disbelief at Ellie’s ignorance.

“Muhammed Said Haj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. A man of great power over the people,” said Ishmael. “In 1929 and again in 1936, for many months he stirs the people to riot against the Jews, when before they are friends and neighbors. He proclaims a jihad—a holy war—against all who are not Muslim.”

“You too?” Ellie frowned and leaned forward. “The Christian Arabs, too?”

“It was this wicked man who was responsible for the deaths of my younger brother and my father,” Ishmael explained.

Ellie glanced at Miriam, who simply sighed and shook her head at the memory. “I … I’m sorry,” Ellie murmured. “I didn’t know.”

“It was in 1920,” said the old woman. “And your kind uncle, the professor, he took this old woman in when I had no place to go.”

“For a Jewish child,” Ishmael continued, settling back in his chair, “the Mufti is the one they have nightmares about when the lamps are put out and they are afraid in the night.”

“The bogeyman?” Ellie queried.

“Yes. The same. Of course, he is only mortal. This is a fact he knows well. He does not go anywhere without six tall, black Sudanese bodyguards.”

“Sudanese?”

“As a young man he worked for British intelligence in Sudan. He believed that Britain would become the liberator of his people. Then in 1917 the British signed a paper that planned an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine.”

“The Balfour Declaration.” Miriam stirred the coffee. “How the young Zionists celebrated in Jerusalem! And we Christians all came to believe that soon the Lord Jesus would return to this earth!” She smiled.

“Each Sunday after church services we would all picnic on the Mount of Olives and say one to another, ‘Perhaps this will be the day of His return.’” Ishmael, too, smiled at the memory.

“We were a large and happy family then,” added the old woman.

“But this Haj Amin, the Mufti—he began to hate the British. He quit his job and returned to Jerusalem. All day in the souks of the Muslim Quarter he talked about the evil British and the evil Jews and the evil Christians who believe that this is written in the Word and must be fulfilled that Jews return.”

“Not all Christians believe this, Mother,” Ishmael interrupted.

“Some don’t agree with that and some are only Christians in name.

For political reasons.”

“Like Democrats and Republicans in the States?” Ellie questioned.

Ishmael nodded. “Yes. Political. But many of us here in Palestine believe in the Christ. He is the Messiah. When there is once again a nation of Israel, He must return, and perhaps soon.” He rubbed his forehead as if trying to remember something. “But this fellow Haj Amin Husseini, he hates all who stand by the promises for Israel.

When I am yet a young man, this fellow stirs the Arabs of the Muslim Quarter to riot during the holy Easter season. They fall upon the Jews and Christian Arabs at Jaffa Gate. They swarm from the Quarter and fall upon us. My father is killed before my eyes. My brother is knifed, and so am I.” Ishmael pulled back his shirt collar, revealing a jagged scar six inches long from his throat to his chest. “My brother does not recover. I am near to death for many weeks.”

Miriam stood with her head bowed and her back to Ishmael and Ellie. Her voice muffled, she said, “The British did nothing to punish this man. Instead, they hoped to win him over, and they appointed him to the third-highest Muslim post. They created him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. No Muslim official secures office without swearing absolute loyalty to him. He despised the intelligent and built his power on the ignorant.”

“And there are many who followed him. It was he who frightened the British to halt Jewish immigration with the White Paper of 1939,”

Ishmael added.

“How could one man do all this?” Ellie asked.

“He declared a jihad—holy war against all Jews,” he explained. “So the English think they will save a lot of trouble in Palestine by keeping Jews out. After all, England was fighting the Nazis. Perhaps they thought the Arabs would kill all the Jews anyway if they came to Palestine. So this White Paper stopped the Jews from escaping and Hitler killed them all the same.”

“The Mufti fell from favor with the British and fled to the side of Adolf Hitler. There he remained through the war. Two madmen, supping on their hatred of God’s chosen. So Hitler is dead, but the Mufti returns to Jerusalem in this hour to stir the Muslims to passion once again,” said Miriam.

“What does he look like?” Ellie asked, wondering if the unspeakable evil of such a man could ever be caught on film.

“He has a red beard … ,” Ishmael began.

“Red?”

Ishmael nodded. “And blue eyes. He is always courteous, they say.

Most elegant and with much dignity. He condemns a man to death with a wave of his hand.”

“And he has six black bodyguards?” Ellie smiled. “He’d be hard to miss.”

“But it is better if you miss him all the same,” said Miriam sternly.

“You must not hope to find this man and take a photograph.”

“You read my mind.”

“The darkness of his hatred cannot be seen,” Miriam warned. “But it can be felt. Every Jew who dies by his violence is but another victim of what this Hitler believed in. The Mufti is in Jerusalem. Soon we will all feel his presence.”

“There are Jews also whose hatred is just as dark,” Ishmael added solemnly. “They think that violence is the only response to violence, and so they, too, have the blood of the innocent on their hands.”

“It is their senseless acts that turn the hearts of the world against a Jewish state, I think.” Miriam shook her head sadly.

“Well, considering what has happened to them, can you blame them if they don’t turn the other cheek?” asked Ellie.

“There is no blame.” Ishmael shrugged. “But even the leaders of the Jews, good men like David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weitzman, they know that when Jews become terrorists and murder innocents as the Mufti does, it undermines the Jewish dream of homeland. And the world looks at those they murdered and says, ‘See, those Jews are killing the innocent also. How are they different from the Nazis, eh?’”

“Not long before you come to Palestine, the English executed two Jewish terrorists who were guilty of murder.” Miriam poured a cup of coffee for Ellie. “So then other Jewish terrorists kidnap two British soldiers and hang them. They died only because they were English. This old woman wonders how it shall all end.”

“Shhh.” Ishmael raised his index finger for silence.

The announcer droned on with a thick British accent: “
Palestine will be divided into two states: one Arab and one
Jewish. On the recommendation of the commission, Jerusalem
has been declared an international city and will in fact be
governed by the United Nations… .”

“There, you see?” Ellie chirped. “Jerusalem belongs to everybody: Christian, Jew, Arab. You’ll all be okay.”

Miriam looked at her with an unfathomable glance, causing Ellie’s smile to quickly fade.

“I tell you, Miss Ellie,” broke in Ishmael kindly, “the Mufti will not rest until the Jews are driven into the sea, until Jerusalem is capital of the United Arab Nation of Palestine. No Jews. You see?”

“War?” Ellie asked.

“Yes,” mourned Miriam. “And those of our faith shall be trapped in the middle.”

“All the horns.” Ellie nodded toward the sound of the automobile horns.

“The Jews celebrate. At least some of them. But the old rabbis will not rejoice tonight. They know that too many will die,” said Ishmael.

Miriam rose and set the coffeepot on the back of the stove. “Our lives will change, most certainly. Perhaps this is the time our Lord the Christ spoke of, but I think now would be a good time to take a holiday to America if I were not so old and if the bones of my family for a thousand years were not planted so near Jerusalem.”

“
Representatives of the Arab nations have vowed to drive the
Jews into the sea the day after the last British soldier leaves
the soil of the Holy Land. Zionists have countered with the
…”

“Surely the United Nations—,” Ellie began, gulping back her words as the radio continued:

“
The British government has vowed to remain neutral in all
disputes between Jews and Arabs, but will continue to enforce
the laws of the Mandate until British evacuation.”

“You see, Miss Ellie,” explained Ishmael, “the laws of the Mandate declare that Jews may not have weapons. The Arab nations have many weapons and may buy more, for they are recognized nations. The Jews must wait until the Mandate ends before they can buy, and then it will be too late. There will be no one to protect them. Unless God makes a miracle, they will be wiped out in only days. You will see.”

“The Jews have wanted a state of their own,” said Miriam, sitting down heavily at the table. “I fear they have purchased only a cemetery for those who shall die. Here is a night to mourn, I fear.

The night of Partition.”

“Well, it will certainly give Uncle Howard something to talk about at social events,” Ellie threw in, trying to lighten the mood.

“What can you do with such a mind as this?” Miriam petitioned the Almighty with hands raised. “Miss Ellie, you care about nothing but that camera,” she chided. “Always making jokes, and no one is laughing. Only dying.”

Ellie resisted the impulse to say it wasn’t so bad to die laughing and took a sip of her coffee instead. Then she stood. “Well, thanks for the coffee. Now for that shower.” She waved and walked to the door, then turned and smiled sweetly at Miriam. “Hope your feet feel better soon,” she said, quickly closing the door behind her on a stream of exasperated Arabic.

As she passed Uncle Howard’s darkened study, the telephone rang.

Ellie glanced at her watch. Nearly 1:00 am.
That means only one
thing—a long-distance call.
And at this hour it had to be really long distance. Perhaps her mother in the States? “Mother never can remember the time difference,” she murmured as she picked up the phone.

“Hello,” she said loudly, expecting the dim reply of a long-distance operator. Instead she was greeted by the excited voice of Darla Makewith, a student at the American School of Oriental Research who rarely surfaced from her books for anything.

“Is that you, Ellie? What are you yelling about?”

“I thought you were—,” Ellie began, only to be cut short by Darla’s frantic babbling over raucous laughter in the background.

“Can you believe what’s happening? I mean, the place is going crazy. Everyone is so excited! Hey, I thought you were sick or something. You want to go out with us for a while? People are dancing in the streets, like V-day!”

“Give me half an hour. I’ve got to shower first. Then come by.” Ellie chuckled, amused at the unusual phenomenon of Darla speaking more than two sentences at once. This must be some street party to blast Miss Makewith out of her books.

Ellie hung up the phone and rushed to the shower, feeling better with every second as the steaming water washed away the film of developing chemicals and the dull ache in her shoulders. She washed her hair, letting the hot water flow from her head down her back. It was past one in the morning and she was only just beginning to feel awake and alive.
Probably my days and nights will be mixed up for
a while—like they were when I first came over from America.

After all, it was the middle of the afternoon back home. Her folks would be listening to all the news about the Middle East right about now and thinking about her as they wrapped Christmas presents to mail to faraway Palestine. For a moment Ellie felt a twinge of homesickness as she pictured her mother sitting on the living-room floor busily boxing what she referred to as “Ellie’s Red Cross packages.” One arrived at least twice a month containing safety pins or squashed chocolate-chip cookies. Ellie made a mental note to write her mother for Kleenex. It was easy to write and ask for needs like that.

What Ellie found difficult was telling her folks how she really felt about David. Maybe it was because she was so unsure herself about what she felt or what she really believed. Her folks had always been so certain of everything. The world was full of right and wrong, justice and injustice, truth and falsehood. There were no gray areas, no maybes. Ellie had felt exactly as they had until she had fallen in love with David. Then there was no more right or wrong, only him and their love—or what she had thought was love.

Ellie stepped from the shower and dried briskly, wiped off the mirror, and examined the wild red hair on the ghost gawking back at her. No one could tell by looking how changed she was. Her mother and father mailed the packages to someone who really no longer existed, thinking all the time that she was still their “little girl.” She didn’t begrudge them that; she simply did not see any reason to tell them any different. No one needed to know what she carried in her soul. Those secrets were hers. And maybe God’s, if He still happened to be interested. She wasn’t even sure she believed that anymore, either. And maybe it didn’t matter, anyway. Nothing could ever give her back what she had lost. Nothing could take the gray away from her life.