Jimgrim and Allah's Peace Part 7

There was no hint of violence or interference, and no apparent resentment of an alien's presence in their midst. The loud- lunged bodyguard shouted out to all and sundry to make way for the "Amerikani," and way was made forthwith, although several times the bodyguard was stopped and questioned after I had pa.s.sed, to make sure I was really American and not English. Ahmed a.s.sured me that if I had been English they would have "ma.s.sacred" me. In view of what transpired he may have been right, though I doubt it. They might have held me as hostage.

Not that they were in any kind of over-tolerant mood. There was a man's dead body hanging by one foot from a great hook on a high wall, and the wall was splattered with blood and chipped by bullets. I asked Ahmed what kind of criminal he might be.

"He did not agree with them. They are for war. He was in favor of peace, and he made a speech two hours ago. So they accused him of being a traitor, and he was tried and condemned."

"Who tried him?"

"Everybody did."

"War with whom?" I asked.

"The British."

"Why?"

"Because they favor the Zionists."

"And that is what the conference is all about?"

"Yes. There is a man here from Damascus, who urges them to raid across the Jordan into Palestine. He says that the Palestinian Arabs will rise then, and cut the throats of all the Zionists. He says that Emir Feisul is going to attack the French in Syria, and that the British will have to go and help the French, so now is the time for a raid."

"Is my host, ben n.a.z.ir, the man who is talking that way? He has been to Damascus."

"No. Another, named Abdul Ali-a very rich sheikh, who comes here often with caravans of merchandise, and gives rich presents to notables."

"Has ben n.a.z.ir anything to do with it?"

"Who knows? Mashallah! The world is full of mysteries. That n.a.z.ir is a knowing one. They say of him: whichever option is uppermost, that is always his opinion. He is a safe man to follow for that reason. Yet it is easier to follow water through a channel underground."

We made our way toward the castle at the south side of the town, but were prevented from entering by a guard of feudal retainers, who looked as if they had been well drilled. They were as solemn as the vultures that sat perched along the rampart overlooking a great artificial moat dividing the town from the high hill just beyond it.

n.o.body interfered when I climbed on the broken town wall and looked over. The castle wall sloped down steeply into the moat, suggesting ample s.p.a.ce within for dungeons and underground pa.s.sages; but there was nothing else there of much interest to see, only dead donkeys, a dying camel with the vultures already beginning on him, some dead dogs, heaps of refuse, and a lot more vultures too gorged to fly-the usual Arab scheme of sanitation. I asked one of my bodyguard to shoot the camel and he obliged me, with the air of a keeper making concessions to a lunatic. n.o.body took any notice of the rifle going off.

It was when we turned back into the town again that the first inkling of Grim's presence in the place turned up. A bulky- looking Arab in a sheepskin coat that stank of sweat so vilely that you could hardly bear the man near you, came up and stood in my way. Barring the smell, he was a winning-looking rascal- truculent, swaggering, but possessed of a good-natured smile that seemed to say: "Sure, I'm a rogue and a liar, but what else did you expect!"

He spoke perfectly good English. He said he wished to speak to me alone. That was easy enough; Ahmed and the bodyguard withdrew about ten paces, and he and I stepped into a doorway.

"I am Mahommed ben Hamza," he said, with his head on one side, as if that explanation ought to make everything clear to me at once. "From Hebron," he added, when I did not seem to see the light.

The wiser one looks, and the less one says, in Arab lands, the less trouble there's likely to be. I tried to look extremely wise, and said nothing.

"Where is Jimgrim?" he demanded.

"If you can tell me that I'll give you ten piastres," I answered.

"I will give you fifty if you tell me!"

"Why do you want to know?"

"He is my friend. He said I should see him here. But I have not seen him. He said also I should see you. You are the Amerikani? And you don't know where he is? Truly? Then, when you see him, will you say to him, 'Mahommed ben Hamza is here with nine men at the house of Abu Shamah?' Jimgrim will understand."

I nodded, and the man from Hebron walked away without another word.

"Did he steal your watch?" asked Ahmed. They are as jealous as children, those Arabs.

There was a second execution while I walked back through the city. A wide-eyed, panic-stricken poor devil with s...o...b..r on his jaws came tearing down-street with a mob at his heels. We stepped into an alley to let the race go by, but he doubled down the alley opposite. Before he had run twenty yards along it some one hit the back of his head with a piece of rock. A second later they had pounced on him, and in less than a minute after that he was kicking in the noose of a hide rope slung over a house-beam. I don't know what they hanged him for. No one apparently knew. But they used his carcase for a target and shot it almost to pieces.

I kept on looking for Grim, although the task seemed hopeless. Of course, I could not give a hint of my real purpose. But as Grim knew that the talk about a school-teacher was my pa.s.sport to the place, it seemed possible that he might use that as an excuse for getting in touch with me. So I told Ahmed to show me the schools.

They weren't worth looking at-mere tumble-down sheds in which Moslem boys were taught to say the Koran by heart. The places where Christian missionaries once had been were all turned into stores, and even into stables for the horses of the notables.

So I returned to ben n.a.z.ir's house, and found old Sheikh Anazeh sitting outside on the step, as motionless as a tobacco-store Indian but twice as picturesque. He still had his own rifle over his knees, and the plundered one slung over his shoulder by a strap; he never stirred abroad unarmed.

I asked him what the conference of notables was going to be about, and he told me to mind my own business. That struck me as an excellent idea, so, not having slept at all the previous night, I went upstairs and lay on the bed. There was no lock on the door, so I set the chair against it.

Ben n.a.z.ir was a man who had traveled a great deal, and picked up western notions of hospitality to add to the inborn eastern sense of sacredness in the relation between host and guest. It seems that an hour or two later he came to take me down to a Gargantuan meal, but, feeling the chair against the door, and hearing snores, he decided it was better manners to let me lie in peace.

So I did not wake up again until after midnight. The moonlight was streaming through a little high-perched window, and fell on the white-robed, ghostly-looking figure of a man, who sat with crossed legs on the end of the bed. I thought I was dead and in h.e.l.l.

That is no picturesque exaggeration about a man's hair standing when he is terrified. It really does. I would have yelled aloud, if the breath would have come, but there is a trick of sudden fear that seems to grip your lungs and hold them impotent. The thing on the end of the bed had no eye-brows. It grinned as if it knew all about evil, and were hungry, and living men were its food.

I don't know how long I stared at the thing, but it seemed like a week. At last it spoke, and I burst into a sweat with the reaction.

"Good job you don't know how to fasten a door with a chair. I'll have to show you that trick, or you'll be dying before your time. Sh-h-h! Don't make a noise!"

I sat up and looked more closely at him. It was the Ichwan of the afternoon-Sheikh Suliman ben Saoud. And he was speaking unmistakable American. I began again to believe I was dreaming. He chuckled quietly and lit a cigarette.

"Aren't you wise to me yet?"

"Grim?"

"Who else?"

"But what's happened to your face? You're all one-sided."

"Oh, that's easy. I just take out my false teeth. The rest is done with a razor and some brown stain. I thought you were going to spot me when you first came. Did you? I didn't think so. Did you act as well as all that?"

"No. Looked all over town for you afterward."

"Uh-huh. I thought that was too natural to be acting. Pick up any news in town?"

"Saw a hanging, and met a man who calls himself Mahommed ben Hamza. He's waiting at the house of Abu Shamah."

"Any men with him?"

"Nine."

"Three more than he promised. Ben Hamza is the most honest thief and dependable liar in Palestine-a cheerful murderer who sticks closer than a brother. I saved him once from being hung, because he smiles so nicely. Any more news?"

"I expect none that you don't know. There's a sheikh named Abdul Ali from Damascus, preaching a raid into Palestine."