Jimgrim and Allah's Peace Part 13

If I had not listened to equally childish political maneuvers in the States, and seen them succeed for the reason that people who want something want also to be fooled into getting it by special arguments, it would have seemed incredible that a man, who had recently boasted of statesmans.h.i.+p, should dare to make such a public a.s.s of himself. Yet, for fifteen minutes he carried the whole meeting with him, and the warmth of his self-satisfied emotion made him ooze resplendent sweat.

"Now he speaks of you, effendi," Mahommed ben Hamza whispered; and in confirmation of it Anazeh clutched my arm, as if to keep the tide of eloquence from was.h.i.+ng me away.

Had the British done anything for the country this side of Jordan? Anything for the people's education, for instance? No! Instead, they had taken away the missionaries. Better than nothing were those missionaries. They had their faults. They undermined religion. But they taught. And the British had called them in, giving some ridiculous excuse about danger. It had remained then for him-Abdul Ali of Damascus and of El-Kerak -the same individual who was now urging them to strike for their own advantage-to take the first step for the establishment in El-Kerak of a school that should be independent of the British. He, Abdul Ali, greatly daring because he had the interest of El- Kerak at heart, had introduced that day into the mejlis a distinguished guest from the United States, whose sole desire- whose only object in life-whose altruistic and divine ambition was to establish an American secular school in El-Kerak!

He sat down, glowing with super-virtue. And then the fur flew.

Anazeh was first on his feet.

"Princes!" he shouted. "That Damascene is a father of lies! It was I, Anazeh, who brought this man hither! That corrupter of honesty, who doles out other people's gold for bidden purposes, seeks to appear as your benefactor!" (It was fairly obvious that Anazeh had not received any of the gold.) "He will say next that it was he who set the stars in the sky over El-Kerak, and makes the moon rise! He is a foreigner, a father of snakes, and a born liar!"

Anazeh refused to sit down again, but stood with rifle on his arm, daring any one to challenge his statements. Abdul Ali flushed angrily, but laughed aloud. The next man on his feet was ben n.a.z.ir, my erstwhile host, who had repudiated me. And he repudiated me all over again, accusing me of abusing his hospitality by going over to Abdul Ali, who had never even heard of me before I came to El-Kerak.

There was no making head or tail of the storm of abuse and counter-abuse that followed, except that it did not look healthy for me. There seemed to be four or five different factions, all of whom regarded me as the bone of contention. Rather than betray anxiety I opened the Bible and began to make dots under letters, spelling out a message to Grim to the effect that I had no notion where to find lodgings for the night, and that if Anazeh elected to carry me off I should have to go with him.

I did not know how to get the message to him without arousing suspicion and making matters worse than they were, and it seemed best not to call attention to the fact that I was writing. So I made a few dots at a time, and looked about me. I saw Abdul Ali, laughing cynically, make a gesture with his arm as if he consigned me to the dogs. Then I caught Grim's eye-Suliman ben Saoud's. He, too, was making capital of my predicament.

He had got the attention of the men around him, and was pointing at the Bible while he reeled off a string of an angry rhetoric that sounded like a cat-fight. He shouted at me, and made angry gestures; but I knew that if he wanted me to understand his signals he would never make them openly, so I ignored them.

"The sheikh from Arabia demands to see the book," said Mahommed ben Hamza in my ear.

I pa.s.sed it over the carpet with the pencil folded in it at the page I had begun to mark; and the men opposite handed it along, with remarks they considered appropriate. Jim Suliman ben Saoud Grim seized the book angrily, glared at it, denounced it, and wrote something on the fly-leaf. He showed it to the men beside him, and they laughed, nodding approval. He wrote again. They approved again. He turned and talked to them. Then, as if he had an afterthought, he wrote a third time. When they wanted to look at that he ran the pencil through it and wrote something else on the other side of the fly-leaf, at which they all laughed uproariously. Presently he tossed the book back to me with all the outward signs of contempt that a fanatic can show for another religion.

I have kept that Bible as a souvenir, with the verses from the Koran written on the flyleaf in Arabic in Grim's fine hand. Underneath them, in Greek characters with a pencil line scrawled through them, is the only sentence that interested me at the moment:

"This looks good. Keep Anazeh quiet and sober."

Anazeh was beginning to hold forth again, shaking his fist at Abdul Ali and making the roof echo to his mighty bellowing. I tugged at the skirt of his cloak, and after a minute he sat down to discover what I wanted. He seemed to think I needed rea.s.surance. He began to flood me with promises of protection. It was about a minute before I could get a word in edgeways. Then:

"Jimgrim says," said I.

"Jimgrim! Is he here?"

"He surely is."

"How do you know?"

"We have a sign. Jimgrim says, 'Be quiet, and drink no strong drink.'"

He leaned across to Mahommed ben Hamza, doubting his ears and my Arabic. I repeated the message, and ben Hamza translated.

"I don't believe Jimgrim is here!" said Anazeh. "I would know him among a million."

"It is true," said ben Hamza, grinning from ear to ear, "for I myself know where he sits!"

"Where then?" Anazeh demanded excitedly.

"Don't you dare!" said I, and ben Hamza grinned again.

"He is my friend. I say nothing," he answered.

Anazeh put in the next five minutes minutely examining every face within range, while the din of argument rose louder and more violent than ever, and suspicion of me seemed to be gaining.

But suddenly Suliman ben Saoud got to his feet and there was silence. They were all willing to listen to a member of the Ichwan sect, for the news of its power and political designs had spread wherever men talk Arabic. He spoke gutturally in a dialect that ben Hamza did not find it any too easy to follow, so I only got the general gist of Grim's remarks.

He said that he had much experience of raids and of making preparations for them. A raid aimed at the Zionists-at this moment-might be good-perhaps. They were better judges of that than he. But it was all-important to know who was in favour of the raid, and exactly why. The words men spoke were not nearly so impressive as the deeds they did. Therefore, when the ill.u.s.trious Sheikh Abdul Ali of Damascus urged a raid on the one hand, and boasted of provision for a school in El-Kerak on the other, it would be well to examine this foreign effendi, whom Abdul Ali claimed to have introduced. The claim was disputed, but the claim was not made for nothing. In his judgment, based on vast experience of politics in Arabia, motives were seldom on the surface. All depended on the motives of the ill.u.s.trious Abdul Ali. This stranger from America-he glared balefully at me-should be investigated thoroughly. As a man of vast experience with the interests of El-Islam at heart, he offered respectfully to examine this stranger thoroughly with the aid of an interpreter. He confessed to certain suspicions; should they prove unfounded, then it might be reasonable to credit the rest of Abdul Ali's statements; if not, no. He was willing, if the honourable mejlis saw fit, to take the stranger aside and put many questions to him.

When he had finished you could actually physically feel the suspicion directed at me. It was like a cold wind. Anazeh was just as conscious of it, and muttered something about its being time to go. Abdul Ali got up and asked indignantly why the Ichwan from so far away should have such an important voice; he himself stood there ready to answer all questions. Suliman ben Saoud retorted sourly that he proposed to question the Damascene in public after privately interrogating me.

"They shall not interfere with you! You are in my charge," Anazeh growled in my ear. "I will summon my men at the first excuse."

"Jimgrim says, 'Be quiet!'" I answered.

There was another uproar. Ali Shah al Kha.s.sib openly took the part of Abdul Ali. A dozen men demanded to know how much he had been paid to do it. Finally, Suliman ben Saoud beckoned me. I got up, and with Mahommed ben Hamza at my heels I followed him to a narrow door in a side wall that opened on a stone stairway leading to the ramparts. Anazeh' came too, growling like a hungry bear, and after a couple of blood-curdling threats hurled at Suliman ben Saoud's back he took up position in the open door, facing the crowd, and dared any one to try to follow. He seemed to have confidence in Mahommed ben Hamza's ability to protect me, if necessary, on the roof.

The roof and ramparts appeared deserted. They were in the ruinous state to which the Turks reduce everything by sheer neglect, and in which Arabs, blaming the Turks, seemed quite disposed to leave things. The Ichwan led the way to the southwest corner, peering about him to make sure no guards were in hiding, or asleep behind projecting b.u.t.tresses. Overhead the kites were wheeling against a pure blue sky. The Dead Sea lay and smiled below us, with the gorgeous, treeless Judean Hills beyond. Through the broken window of the hall came the clamour of arguing men.

"O, Jimgrim!" grinned Mahommed ben Hamza when we reached the corner.

Grim turned and faced us with folded arms, leaning his back against the parapet.

Ben Hamza continued: "You are a very prince of dare-devils! One word from me-one little word, and they would fling you down into the moat for the vultures to feed on!"

"I remember a time," Grim answered, "when a word from me saved you from hanging."

"True, father of good fortune! But a man must laugh. I will hold my tongue in El-Kerak like a tomb that has not been plundered!"

"You'd better! You've work to do. Where are your men?"

"All where I can find them."

"Good. You'll get turned out of the mejlis presently. Look down into the moat now."

We all peered over. The lower ramp of the wall sloped steeply, but all the way up the sharp southwest corner the stones were broken out, and a goat, or a very active man could find foothold.

"Could you climb that?"

"Surely. Remember, Jimgrim, when I climbed the wall of El-Kudz (Jerusalem) to escape from the police!"

"Bring your men into the moat between dark and moonrise. Have a long rope with you-a good one. You and two men climb up here and hide. The remainder wait below. Oh, yes; and bring a wheat sack-a new, strong one. You may have to wait for several hours. When you see me, take your cue from me; but whatever happens, no murder! You understand? n.o.body's to be killed."

Ben Hamza grinned and nodded. He seemed to be one of those good- natured rogues who ask nothing better than the sheer sport of lawless hero-wors.h.i.+p. He would have made a perfect chief of staff for any brigand, provided the brigand took lots of chances.

"You'll be killed, if anybody finds you up here after dark! You realize that?"

"Trust me."

Grim nodded. He was good at trusting people, when he had to, and when the selection was his own.

"Affairs seem to be drifting nicely," he said, turning to me. "It's best not to let Anazeh know who I am just yet, if that can be helped. But if you must, when the time comes, you'll have to tell him. Do keep him sober. After the evening prayer there'll be a banquet; if he gets drunk we're done for. I'm going to make you out an awful leper, if you don't mind. They may yell for your hide and feathers before I've finished, but Anazeh will protect you. If he leaves the hall in a huff, don't make any bones about going with him. Let him ride out of town and wait for me about two miles down the track, at the point where that tomb stands above a narrow pa.s.s between two big rocks. Do you remember it?"

"What if he won't wait?"