Authors: The Haj
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #History, #Literary, #American, #Literary Criticism, #Middle East
Leon Uris
Leon Uris
For
MARK
Part One: The Valley of Ayalon
In order to spend the years necessary to travel, research, and write a novel such as
The Haj
, the writer must necessarily become a self-centered creator and is apt to test the strength of his relationships. My wife, Jill, embraced this project with no less devotion than myself. She unselfishly gave everything: compassion, loyalty, love. She took care of me, often in dark and dangerous places. And importantly, she made a major contribution by her astute and wise advice during the writing. These pages could scarcely have been written without such a partner at my side.
I was already aware from writing
Trinity
that my research associate, Diane Eagle, possessed a mystical quality of understanding what I was trying to say and what the story required.
The Haj
was a ponderous challenge for any researcher. She answered by pulling a thousand and one brilliant reports. Each day when I went into battle at the typewriter, the facts in these reports were close at hand and immediate assistance was only an office away. She not only added considerably to the background and authenticity of the novel, she lightened my work load immensely. Mostly, I want to thank Diane as a buddy for her unfaltering friendship to Jill and me.
Many of the events in
The Haj
are a matter of history and public record. Many of the scenes were created around historical incidents and used as a backdrop for the purpose of fiction.
There may be persons alive who took part in events similar to those described in this book. It is possible, therefore, that some may be mistaken for characters in the novel.
Let me emphasize that all the characters in
The Haj
are the complete creation of the author, and entirely fictional.
The exceptions, of course, are the recognizable public figures who were associated historically with this period, such as David Ben-Gurion, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Abdullah, Yigal Allon, and others.
Arabic and Hebrew words often have many different spellings when translated. I have settled on the easiest and most recognizable spelling for the reader.
1922
Y
OUNG
I
BRAHIM QUIETLY TOOK
his place at his father’s bedside, watching the old man wheeze out his final scene.
The glazed eyes of the sheik gave his son an inkling of recognition and he rallied his remaining strength. Reaching beneath the pillow, he withdrew the jeweled dagger and, trembling, handed it to Ibrahim, enacting the ancient rite of the passage of power.
‘This belongs to Farouk,’ Ibrahim said. ‘He is my elder.’
‘Your brother is a dog with no teeth,’ the father rasped. ‘Already the others are conspiring to select a new muktar. The power must remain with us, the Soukoris,’ he said and thrust the dagger into his son’s hand. ‘It is small, as weapons go,’ the sheik said, ‘but it is the weapon by which we rule our people. They know the meaning of the dagger and the courage of the man who can drive it in to the hilt.’
The old sheik died and the village wailed, and true to his dying thoughts, the four other clans had selected a new muktar for Tabah, breaking the Soukori hold of a century. An hour after his father was buried, Ibrahim invited eight of the leading members of the other clans to his home. In the center of the room stood a crude wooden table. Ibrahim suddenly produced eight knives and stabbed them in a line into the planking, then pulled back his robes, revealing the jeweled dagger.
‘I believe,’ he said, ‘it is time that we hold an election for the new muktar. If anyone disagrees with the continuity of the Soukori rule ...’ He left the sentence unfinished and waved an open hand at the array of knives. Ordinarily the election of a new muktar would take a thousand hours of haggling before coming to the conclusion that Ibrahim had now presented to them. This election was over within a minute, with each of the eight adversaries stopping before him one at a time, bowing, kissing his hand, and declaring his loyalty.
Ibrahim al Soukori was in his mid twenties and Muktar of Tabah, and he knew the power of the dagger in Arab life.
The Valley of Ayalon
1
1944
I
AM ISHMAEL.
I
WAS
born in Palestine during the riots of 1936. Since many things written here took place before my birth, you ask, ‘How could Ishmael know of them?’ Take the case of my father, Ibrahim, becoming the Muktar of Tabah. In our world the repetition of stories is a way of life. Everyone eventually knows all of the tales of the past.
Other events happened here when I was not present. Aha! How could I know of these? Do not forget, my esteemed reader, that we Arabs are unusually gifted in matters of fantasy and magic. Did we not give the world
A Thousand and One Nights?
There are times I will speak to you in my own voice. Others will speak in theirs. Our tale comes from a million suns and moons and comets and all that I cannot possibly know will reach these pages with the help of Allah and our special magic.
As a male child I was entitled to my mother’s breasts for as long as I demanded them and was not weaned until my fifth birthday. Usually this signaled the boy was coming out of the kitchen, but I was small and still able to hide among the women. My mother, Hagar, was a large woman with great breasts. Not only were they filled with milk, but they gave me a place where I could nestle and feel an enormous comfort. I managed to hide from the world of men until 1944, when I was eight years of age. One day my father, Ibrahim, sent my mother away to her own village many miles to the south. She was rarely given time off, so her sudden departure was both traumatic and ominous for me. As an infant and a young child, I lived with women who sheltered and protected me. My grandmother had raised me part of the time because my mother not only had the duties of the kitchen, the house, and the family, but she worked in the big fields and attended the plot beside the house as well. It was a few days after my grandmother died that my mother was sent away.
Fetching water had been my only chore. I had gone to the village well with my mother every day. Now she was gone. I was greeted with taunts. The women all cackled and laughed at me. They told me my father was going to take a second wife. That was why my father had sent her out of the village, to spare himself her anger and humiliation. Soon my playmates joined in the chorus of taunts and some threw stones at me.
I saw my father taking his morning stroll to the coffeehouse, which was owned by him and my Uncle Farouk and which was where he spent most of his day. I ran up to him and cried about what was happening. As usual, he brushed me aside harshly, walking on. I ran after him and tugged at his coat, a tug barely strong enough to demand his attention. As he turned I threw my little fist at him and said I hated him.
My father grabbed me by the arm and shook me so violently I thought I would faint. Then he tossed me like garbage, so that I landed in the open sewer that ran down from the top of the village.
There I was, dressed as a girl, shrieking at the top of my lungs. I could feel salt from my tears and snot from my nose dripping into my mouth. I shrieked in desperation, for even at that age I realized there was nothing I could do about my situation. There was no way to either rebel or protest.
I have seen that little boy over and over again in refugee camps playing in garbage dumps, being hit and shaken and taunted by adults and family and playmates. All screaming to an unhearing Allah.
Our Village of Tabah sat near the road to Jerusalem. My family was of the Soukori clan, which had once belonged to the Wahhabi Bedouin tribe. The Wahhabi were great warriors who came from the Arabian Peninsula about two hundred and fifty years ago and purified the region for Islam through sword and fire.
Eventually the power of the Wahhabi was broken by invading Turkish and Egyptian armies. Many of the clans split off from the main tribe and some migrated to Palestine. Our branch of the tribe roamed an area between Gaza and Beersheba, crossing back and forth from the Negev to the Sinai deserts.
Several clans, numbering over a hundred and fifty families, moved north and settled on the land. However, we still retained very close ties with the Wahhabi through marriage, reinforced at festival and wedding and funeral times, and we used them as cameleers during the harvest and manure-gathering seasons.
My father, Ibrahim, was a great man who was feared and respected in the entire region. My father was not only the muktar, the head of the village, he was the agent of the landowners. Our family were sayyids, direct descendants of the Prophet Mohammed, and this gave us status above the others. In addition to Tabah, there were smaller villages of former Wahhabi Bedouin in the area and he controlled them as well. My father’s power came from the fact that he ran the legal, clerical, and police apparatus and was endowed to verify the documents that spelled out the property and inheritances of the villagers. He was the only one in the area who had made the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. A painting and the date over the front door of our house commemorated the glorious event.
At first he was known as Ibrahim al Soukori al Wahhabi, to denote his clan and tribe, but Arab names change with the birth of male children. Unfortunately, my parents’ first two were girls and this was a small disaster. Everyone, particularly the women at the village well, whispered behind his back that he was Abu Banat, A Father of Daughters, a most terrible insult.
My father threatened to get rid of my mother, who had brought this humiliation to him. She begged for a final chance, and by Allah’s will their third child was a son, my oldest brother, Kamal. After Kamal’s birth my father could then assume the honorable title of Ibrahim Abu Kamal, which means ‘Abraham, father of Kamal.’
Three more sons followed Kamal and my father basked in glory. But alas, there were three more daughters before my own birth. One of my brothers and two of my sisters died before I ever knew them. My brother died from cholera. One of my sisters died of the stomach and the other from a chest ailment. They all died before their first year. It was usual for a family of ten to lose three or more children, but my father felt particularly blessed to have four sons who survived.