Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (61 page)

The journey from Petrograd to Palestine was one he would
never forget. It had been long, arduous, and roundabout,
some six thousand miles travelled on trains, ships, wagons, and foot. He'd left Russia with nothing other than the thin,
torn prison garb he'd been wearing when he was released; the
ticket the Prince had arranged for had taken him only across
the gulf to Finland, and from there he had been on his own, with no money, no home, no friend or acquaintance, and not
even clothes enough to keep him warm. Only his heritage
and his determination to help create a Jewish homeland in
Palestine had kept him going against all odds. Somehow he'd
persevered; it had taken him three long, torturous years to work his way to Palestine and begin to fulfil the dream of all
ardent Zionists. The most exciting moment of his life was
when he'd stepped off the steamer at Haifa. Overcome by
emotion, he had clumsily dropped down on his good knee and
bent his head forward to kiss the soil of this land so rich in Biblical history and promise for all Jewish people.

It had taken many months, working at any menial job he
could find, to make his way to Jerusalem, where he found
work and a home with a family of Arab street merchants. During this time he learned both Hebrew and Arabic and
honed his ambition to join the kibbutz movement. In the holy city, he met up with a small group of Jews heading south to a
dot in the Negev where once there was an ancient well.
Schmarya joined them, and now, many weeks later, stood
atop the wind-whipped cliff surveying the majestic silent terrain. Only the roar of the sandy wind and the flapping of his
clothes disturbed what down below would be an awesome, unearthly silence broken only in places where the hot wind
managed to penetrate gaps in the canyons so that they moaned
and whistled eerily. Overhead, the solitary bird still wheeled
lazily, high in the dazzling blue sky.

He turned slowly, his body buffeted by the wind, but with
his back turned to it, the sand no longer blew into his eyes.
The force of the wind against his back made walking easier,
as though invisible hands propelled him forward with every
gust.

He whistled softly to himself. His fellow inhabitants of Ein
Shmona would kick up a fuss when he got back, because for
three days he'd been off exploring on his own. He himself had
laid down the inflexible ground rule that no one was ever to
wander out of sight alone.

He grinned to himself. What was good for the goose was
not always good for the gander. He who made the rules could
break them. Besides, they ought to be grateful that he had
done so. When he shared his discovery with them, they would
have to muzzle their complaints and be thankful to him. Just
at the fledgling kibbutz's darkest hour, his sleuthing had pro
vided the salvation for their most pressing problem.

The well which had initially drawn them into the desert had
been slowly drying up, creating a panic. Now, with a little
ingenuity and a lot of hard work, the panic could be staved off
forever. Halfway up the north face of this cliff, deep in a
narrow cleft, he had discovered an abundant source of water—
clear, cool, sparkling water which gushed from a hidden place
in the rocks and then plunged into a narrow crevasse, where
it roared down into a deep green pool before joining an under
ground stream. He'd discovered it not so much by looking for
it as by listening for it, which was the very reason he hadn't
wanted anyone to accompany him. He'd needed to concen
trate. The faint splashing of water could easily have been muf
fled by conversation, footsteps, or even breathing. Alone, the
silence had guided him to it. The only thing which subdued his
discovery's excitement somewhat was that with his artificial
leg he hadn't been able to shimmy down into the narrow crev
asse and investigate further. One of the athletic young men on the kibbutz would be only too happy to do it. With help,
he would get down there somehow, plant some explosives,
and blow clear part of the forbidding wall of rock. Then a few
miles of pipe could reroute the flow and bring the precious
water across five miles of desert to Ein Shmona. The new
source of water would more than make up for the stingy well:
it would make it obsolete. The source he'd found was pure
and apparently infinite. It would bless Ein Shmona with its
life force and bring the cracked desert fields surrounding it
bursting to glorious life for a hundred years to come. He felt
very pleased with himself.

He limped forward, dragging his wooden leg. He was nearly
at the edge of the cliff, at the spot where he'd climbed up. He
planted his legs in a wide stance, leaned his torso forward, and
looked down. He bared his teeth and cringed. It would be
much more difficult getting back down than it had been climb
ing up.

He dropped to a prone position and crawled to the edge of
the cliff. He stuck his head over the ledge and studied the drop with its outcroppings of rock. Below were gigantic rocks, some
the size of houses, jagged and menacing, like pagan altars
awaiting their sacrifices.

Carefully, with infinite slowness, he began his creep down
ward.

Veins and bubbles of sweat stood out on his forehead in
bold relief, more from fear than from the exertion. One wrong
foothold, one loose rock
...
He mustn't think of that. He
had to keep his mind clear and concentrate on one thing, and
one thing only: getting safely to the base of this cliff. Nothing
else mattered.

Ever so slowly, he continued to descend, his feet slipping
from the skimpy foothold, his hands raw from grasping the outcroppings. But steadily, inch by precarious inch, then foot
by foot, the ground was coming closer.

Now his blood surged and boiled from the effort and the
excitement. This was danger. This was life. This was laughing
squarely in the face of death.

Forgotten suddenly was his useless leg. Clinging to the rock
face began to make him feel omnipotent. He had set out to
conquer, and conquer he would. It was Schmarya Boralevi alone against the forces of nature, and it didn't matter that he was handicapped. He was in command of his body, and his
adrenaline pumped mightily. He could almost hear its power
ful rushing roar.

Pebbles sang and laughed as they slid and bounced. And
then, the outcropping he grasped in his right hand suddenly
cracked loose from the cliff. He cried out silently in surprise,
and hung there, one-handed, for a single long, drawn-out
moment before his left handhold too snapped clean from the cliff. For an instant he felt suspended in midair, and then the
tunnel of wind rushed upward to meet him as he dived down,
down, down through nothingness.

Chapter 2

'Allahu akbar. .
.'

God is Great . . .

The muezzin's chanting prayer rang out clearly in the small
Arab oasis village of al-Najaf. The villagers caught out-of-doors dropped to their knees and faced the huge red setting
sun and Mecca far beyond. Indoors, the faithful had already
unfurled their precious prayer rugs and bowed low, their
voices echoing the prayer

'. . .
A shhadu allaa ilaha ilia llah . .
.'

I bear witness that there is no God but God . . .

The prayer rose in a powerful chant from within the tiny
stone houses, from the men still out in the fields, from the
camel tenders of the bedouins who had pitched their goat-hair
tents outside the oasis, and from the man tending the noria,
the huge, antiquated water wheel which scooped up precious
dippers of water from the oasis pond and deposited them into
the irrigation channels from which the surrounding fields were
watered. Only the creaking of the wooden wheel and the rest
less movement of the animals disturbed the ethereal, cathedral -
like aura suffusing the oasis during the evening prayer.

After the last melodic note of the prayer died into the dusk,
Naemuddin al-Ameer got to his feet, brushed sand off the
knees of his robe, and hurried home.

At forty-three, he was a tall, imposing man with a craggy
presence, a full black beard and flowing moustache, and a
magnificent hawk's beak of a nose. He surveyed the oasis and
the surrounding fields with a countenance which belonged to
the prophets of the Old Testament. His eyes were sharp and canny, his black, flowing
bisht
the same as that of his people, but what distinguished his position was his cleanliness, the
maroon-and-black patterned headdress wound around his head, and the grey-and-black fringed shawl beneath it. Only
the most important man in the little settlement could afford
to wear cloth of such fine quality.

As the leader of the village, it had been up to him to visit
the bedouins camped nearby, who would depart long before daylight, and he had just left their huge black tents when the
call to evening prayers had caught him out-of-doors.

He left behind the miraculously lush and fertile furrowed
fields as he made his way toward the date palms which marked
the perimeter of the oasis itself. Here a sandy path led past
the mean tents and rickety lean-tos of the poorer inhabitants,
and then he reached the inky pool of water with its magical
water wheel splashing gently, the miniature waterfalls it created flowing from its dippers like liquid crystal. He stood still for several moments, marvelling at its wonderful power as he
did each time he passed it, ever since he had been a child.
Without it, the village would cease to function and its inhabi
tants would starve. It was a miraculous invention indeed, as were the large, delicately carved Archimedes' screws which,
when the farmers rotated them by hand, raised water from the
lower level of the six main irrigation channels into the higher
ones which crisscrossed their own small, individually owned
fields. Al-Najaf was an agricultural community, and except
for its meagre trade with passing bedouins, relied solely on its
few goats, sheep, and crops for survival.