The Levanter Part 7

'I do not ask for precise figures, naturally, but may I know the approximate strength of the PAF?'

'Not at this time.'

'Not even an approximate figure, Mr Ghaled? Over one thousand men? Under one thousand?' According to Frank Edwards it was probably less than three hundred.

'Not at this time.'

'What about allies?'

'They will come with success.'

'When the defeat of Israel is seen to be imminent?'

'When the manner in which it may be destroyed is seen and understood.'

'I see.'

'Give me a fulcrum and I will move the world. Have you not heard that expression, Mr Prescott?' He was staring at me earnestly.

'I believe that a lever is necessary as well as a fulcrum.'

'Be in no doubt. We have our lever.' He paused. 'Have you ever seen a man's house and his possessions in it dynamited before his eyes, Mr Prescott?'

'I have seen lots of bad things happen to people's possessions in war areas, and worse things to the people themselves.'

'I am not talking of war areas, Mr Prescott, but areas of so-called peace. One night two months ago, in an Arab village near Haifa, a man was sleeping when there was a knock on his door. He went and opened the door. Outside stood his brother whom he had not seen for three years, The brother was one of my men who had crossed the border secretly. He asked for shelter for the night. That is all he asked, a place to sleep, no more. He was refused. The brother, whose house it was, stood in fear of the Zionist police. Trembling, he told his brother to go away and the brother, understanding his fear, left without crossing the threshold. Sad was it not?'

'Very.'

'But now what happens? The brother in the house has a duty under the Zionist law to go to the police and report the incident, report that his brother who is with the fedayin has been there, and is in the area, in order that he may be searched for and captured. This he cannot bring himself to do to one of his own blood, so he commits the offence of remaining silent. But a neighbour has seen and heard what has happened and the neighbour goes to the police. The brother who remained silent is arrested and condemned for harbouring and a.s.sisting one of those who fight for freedom. The sentence is that his house shall be destroyed, and he is led out with his wife and children to watch the sentence being carried out., The Zionist soldiers come then and place the dynamite charges. Then, before his eyes and those of his family, everything he possesses is destroyed. What do you think of that proceeding, Mr Prescott?'

'In some countries I know, Mr Ghaled, the man would have been shot.'

'Better to shoot him than to destroy what makes his life.'

'His wife and children might not agree. Besides, as you pointed out earlier, a state of war exists between Israel and her neighbours. I take it that your man had not crossed the border just to pay a social call.'

'He was a courier, that is all.'

'When was this sentence carried out?'

'Three weeks ago.'

'What was the name of the village?'

'Majd el-Krum. But I mention this incident, Mr Prescott, not because it is rare or special, but to remind you how Arabs live under the Zionist police dictators.h.i.+p.' He fumbled inside his sheepskin coat. 'I will show you something.' He dragged out a fat tooled-leather wallet and pulled a sheaf of photographs from it.

From the size and the way the edges of the prints were trimmed I could see that they had been made with an old-style black-and-white Polaroid. There were ten or twelve of them in plastic covers. He sorted them through, then thrust the lot into my hands.

'Take them, Mr Prescott. Look at them.'

For a moment his eagerness reminded me, incongruously, of the lonely man on the long plane flight who wants to share his home-sickness with you. 'Look, there's a shot of us all together up at the lake last summer.'

Only these were not family snaps. The top one was a picture of a young woman. Her throat had been cut and she was dead.

She was lying on a patch of blood-stained earth at the base of a concrete wall. The cut in the throat was deep and gaping; you could see the severed ends of the veins and arteries. Her clothing was up over her waist and there were stab wounds in her thighs and belly.

Ghaled said something else and again Miss Hammad interpreted.

'Look well, Mr Prescott, look well.'

I slid the top print aside and looked at the next. It was of a dead man. He was naked except for a torn s.h.i.+rt, and his genitals had been cut off. The next was of a child of ten or so. I went through the rest of them.

The att.i.tudes of violent death do not vary much. When the cause has been sudden the rag-doll effect is usual, though muscular spasm can sometimes freeze the limbs in strange ways; when death comes less suddenly the knees and arms are often drawn up together in the foetal position; a human being incinerated by napalm becomes a grey-black clinker effigy of a dwarf boxer with fists up ready to do battle. There were no burn cases among these pictures, however; all the subjects had been cut, stabbed or hacked to death; you could believe that they had been human beings. One or two of the bodies, those of children, had obviously been rearranged, by or for the photographer, and posed so as to dramatise the death agonies.

In war it is possible, as well as necessary and advisable, to get used to horrors. What I have never been able quite to get used to is the man who chooses to collect and keep pictures of them. Ghaled's private gallery would have an ostensible propaganda purpose of course, but the prints had been well-thumbed before they had been protected by plastic. The last collection I had seen like it had been carried by a Special Forces lieutenant in Vietnam. He had claimed a propaganda purpose. He had said piously that he kept it to remind him of what he was fighting against. I didn't believe him. He kept it for kicks. The British policeman in Malaya who treasured a jungle photograph of himself, shotgun in hand with one raised foot resting sportively on the disembowelled body of a Liberation Army Chinese, had been more forthcoming. He was grinning proudly in the picture and he had grinned proudly when he had shown it to me.

I handed his photographs back to Ghaled.

'Well, Mr Prescott?'

'Well what, Mr Ghaled - I've seen pictures like that before. What are those dead bodies supposed to prove?"

'Those were Arab villagers murdered and mutilated by Zionist forces.'

'You say so, Mr Ghaled. I say that they could equally well be Arab villagers killed by other Arabs, or Israeli villagers killed by the fedayin. Where were the pictures taken? When were they taken? On one occasion or several? Who was the photographer or was there more than one? Of what value are these photographs as evidence?'

'These photographs were taken on my orders and under my supervision after a raid, a typical raid, by Druse commando traitors of the Zionist army, on a refugee village in Jordan."

'In this typical raid were no bullets used?'

'What do you mean?'

'None of the wounds shown in those photographs was made by a bullet. For a commando raid that seems odd.'

'They do not waste bullets on helpless women and children and crippled men.'

'I must accept what you say of course.' In fact, all I would have accepted from him after that was his claim to have supervised the taking of the pictures; but there was no point in pursuing the argument. I wanted no more of him, and it seemed a good moment to bring the interview to an end.

'One or two final questions, Mr Ghaled. Does the fact that so many of your Palestinian colleagues, your fellow leaders in the guerilla movement, profoundly disagree with your views and policies ever cause you to question them yourself?'

'Naturally. Self-examination and self-criticism are always necessary. As for disagreement, I would remind you that many of Lenin's closest colleagues profoundly disagreed with him. But who in the end was proved right?'

'You see yourself as the Lenin of the Palestinian revolutionary guerilla movement?'

'I see myself as the Ghaled of the Palestinian Action Force.'

'And time in the end will no doubt prove you right. I see. Thank you, Mr Ghaled. You have been most patient and helpful.'

When Miss Hammad had translated that she looked at me questioningly.

'That's all,' I said.

'Interview between Salah Ghaled and Lewis Prescott concluded,' she said and switched off the recorders. While she packed them up again Ghaled took the bottle of arrack and refilled the gla.s.ses.

He seemed pleased with the way the interview had gone and lit up a fresh cigar with the air of a man who has just concluded a successful deal. If he had spoken enough English he would probably have fished for some expression of satisfaction on my part.

He took the two tape ca.s.settes which Miss Hammad handed him and one of the recorders. While she showed him how to operate it, I sipped the arrack and wondered how I was going to get back to Beirut. The prospect of being driven down that mountain road in the darkness by Miss Hammad was not attractive.

I need not have worried. After the ceremonial leave-taking and the scramble back down to the Volkswagen, she explained the position. There was no question of our driving back to Beirut right away. During the hours of darkness n.o.body was allowed through the military roadblocks. We would have to wait at the chalet until it was light.

There I had a Scotch to take away the taste of the arrack and Miss Hammad began to question me about my 'impressions' of Ghaled.

I had expected that and was ready for her.

'Frankly,' I said, 'I was disappointed.'

'Disappointed!'

'You're a journalist, Melanie. You should know that there's no story in what he gave me."

'No story!' She was amazed.

'Melanie, forget your own interest in the man and your sympathy with the cause. Look at it professionally. Ghaled moved out of the main stream of the Palestinian movement when he formed the PAF and denounced the PLO and El Fatah. The Popular Front people have brushed him off. He's little more than a gangster now and he has sense enough left to realise it. So he's trying to talk his way back in with this crack-pot stuff about destroying Israel single-handed.'

'That is not what he said.' She was indignant now. 'He said "defeat" not "destroy" and he did not say "single-handed". You are seriously understimating him.'

I shook my head. 'A punchy has-been still kidding himself that he's in line for a champions.h.i.+p bout. That's all I see.'

'That is a ridiculous comparison!'

'I don't think so. Destroy, defeat the Zionist state? Don't tell me you can take that seriously.'

'Indeed I can, and I do.'

'All that nonsense about fulcrums and levers?'

'It is not nonsense!'

'Sorry, Melanie, I think it is.'

'That is because you do not know what is planned.'

'And you do?'

'I know a little, yes.'

That was the first thing I had wanted to find out. I went on needling her.

'Plans for defeating Israel are easy to make. The Arabs have made quite a few. Carrying them out, though, doesn't seem to be so easy. The combined forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan couldn't do it. I can't see your Mr Ghaled improving on their efforts.'

'He will.'

'What with? Bombs in grapefruit?'

'You were not so contemptuous of bombs when they were planted in airliners by the Popular Front.'

'No. But what did that little campaign achieve against Israel? Did it stop the tourists going to Israel by air with their travellers' cheques? It did not. More tourists than ever went. When your Mr Ghaled's friends shot up the Israeli buses taking tourists into the occupied territories, did they stop the buses running? At no time.'

'It will be a different story when Salah has finished.'

That was the second piece of information she gave me.

I shrugged. 'So what? A few unfortunate tourists are killed. Okay, the tourist trade is important to the Israeli economy, but it's not that important. A slight let-up in the dollar flow isn't going to destroy Israel.'

'Who can tell what it might lead to?" She was becoming angry now. I didn't think I would get any more out of her; but after a moment she went on. 'You said "destroy" again.

The word Salah used was "defeat". You see now why he insisted on tape-recordings.'

'Destroy, defeat? What's the difference? He used both words.'

'But in different contexts. Where Israel is concerned the distinction is important. If it cannot be destroyed from without it must be defeated from within.'

'Sorry, I don't get it.'

'You said yourself that Israeli unity has been an Arab achievement.'

'That was part of a loaded question I was asking. Israeli unity is a product of many things - religion, faith, history, the drama of the Ingathering, the toughness of the sabras, the dedication of the aliyah immigrants, common purpose, self-respect - all the ingredients of high national morale are there. The presence of Goliath and the continued success of David against him are only parts of the story.'

'They are the parts that count most. Without the pressure on it from the outside the Israeli state would have fallen to pieces. Even now, with Goliath, as you call it, still at the gate, they are torn by hate and dissension.'

'Dissension is part of democratic government.'

'But not hatreds such as theirs. The Ashken.a.z.im hate the Sephardim and both are hated by the Oriental Jews, the underprivileged proletariat. The Aduk hate the Ostjuden and the Taymaninr hate those of Mea Shearim and their like who are Jewish anti-Zionists. The sabras hate everyone, even themselves.'

'You mean Ghaled is counting on Israel becoming politically unstable and falling apart? Because if so. . . .'

'Who can say,' she demanded challengingly, 'what will happen when, for the first time, David's boasts are proved empty, when it is Goliath who has the sling and the simple bag of stones, when the Israelis have to taste defeat?'

'Perhaps, perhaps not. Defeat does strange things to those with experience of it.'

'Israel isn't going to be defeated by pin-p.r.i.c.ks.'

'One pin-p.r.i.c.k will collapse a balloon, especially if the pressure inside is high.'

'And if Ghaled had the right fulcrum he could move the earth, I know. Let's skip it, Melanie.' I yawned. I didn't want her to realise how much of the cat she had let out of the bag, so I didn't leave it there. 'One thing I forgot," I went on, stifling the yawn. 'How do you spell the name of that village Ghaled mentioned, the one near Haifa? Majd el something, wasn't it?'

'Majd el-Krum.' She spelt it out. 'But I thought you said that there was no story."