O Jerusalem (18 page)

Mahmoud built his story with growing drama, beginning in Jerusalem, when the Fast Hotel near the Jaffa Gate was confiscated for army use and advisers in highranking uniforms openly filled the town, sure signs to the Turkish spies that Allied headquarters was moving to be near the river Jordan. He then described the stealthy moving in of troops on the left flank, always at night, only into tents that had already been in position for months. When he described the false messages given to spies, his audience began to nod in appreciation, guile being a truer sign of wit than mere cleverness was.

When he launched into a detailed description of the ostensible troop movements on the Jordan itself, however, the villagers began to grin in gap-toothed appreciation at a commander who would cause lorries to drag logs up and down, raising the dust of great activity, and who would direct whole regiments to march conspicuously into the eastern lines during the heat of the day, only to have them travel quietly west again under cover
of darkness to their starting point. Out and back went the decoy soldiers, openly out to and secretly back from the Jordan Valley, a relatively few men giving the impression of a massive build-up of strength. Tent cities were planted and five pontoon bridges thrown across the Jordan while “El Aurens”—Colonel T. E. Lawrence—and his camel Bedu staged spectacular raids nearby.

But it was the fake horse lines that had Mahmoud’s listeners rolling on the carpets with tears in their eyes: twenty thousand old blankets shipped up from Egypt and draped over shrubs, some of them propped up on wooden legs, from a dusty distance taking on the appearance of a massive accumulation of tethered cavalry horses.

The Turks fell for the entire ruse, supported by their German advisers, who believed the reports of their misled spies. The Turkish empire lined up the strength of its men and guns at the eastern borders of Palestine, ready to counter the attack out of Jerusalem; when Allenby threw his true forces instead onto their unprepared western flank, the Turks had not a chance. He swept them up, took ninety thousand prisoners, and broke the back of the Turkish Army in the most decisive victory of the entire world war, pushing the remnants in rapid and growing disorder all the way to Damascus and surrender.

Mahmoud’s story was obviously the high point of the evening; anything else would be an anti-climax. With the typically abrupt leave-taking of the Arab, the party began to break up. Limp children were carried off to their beds, older boys clattered off into the four directions on scrofulous donkeys, and adults pressed the
mukhtar
’s hand and that of Mahmoud before walking off into the night, reciting segments of Mahmoud’s story to one another at the tops of their voices, laughing and calling and fading away.

Not everyone left. The close friends and family of the
mukhtar
, twenty-five or thirty men, stayed on, chatting
and smoking a last pipe and conducting small business. I thought we were perhaps finished for the evening, and began to think with actual anticipation of my hard bed where at least I could stretch out my leg muscles without causing offence, when Holmes dropped a question into a brief silence.

“My brothers,” he asked, frowning in concentration as he rolled up a cigarette. “Do you think the Turk is truly gone from the land?”

Writing is the shaping of letters to represent spoken words which, in turn, represent what is in the soul
.

—THE
Muqaddimah
OF IBN KHALDÛN

he question rippled through the tent, silencing the men around the fire. I could hear the sounds of sleepy children on the other side of the cloth partition; someone shouted monotonously from the other end of the village. Holmes ran the tip of his tongue along the edge of the thin cigarette paper, sealed it, and reached for the tongs to take a coal from the fire. Men began to speak, in a frustrating jumble of voices.

Some, I thought, protested loyally that Allenby and Feisal had truly driven the Turk to his knees. Heads nodded, and hands reached for the reassurance of
narghile
and cigarette. Some men, though, did not agree. The men of active fighting age, men whose faces were even more guarded than the average Bedouin’s, quiet men with scars and limps, men who had done more than stand and shoot at a fleeing enemy,
those men did not nod their heads and exclaim loudly at the cowardice of the Turk. They glanced at each other from under their eyelids and at Holmes, and they said nothing.

Holmes listened politely to the protestations of freedom, and allowed the subsequent conversation to drift away into a series of bloodthirsty reminiscences of wartime
ghazi
s. I did not think, however, that he had missed the covert glances, and I was not surprised when, a few minutes later, he got to his feet and left the tent, nor that when he returned he settled down not into his former spot, but in the midst of three of the men who had been silent. One of those was Farash, the
mukhtar
’s son.

Reluctantly I had to agree that the questions he was about to put to the men were best done casually and quietly, so I stayed where I was in the third rank back from the fire. I looked to see what Mahmoud and Ali would do and saw that, despite the sour expression on Ali’s face, they too planned to stay where they were and allow Holmes to continue his sub rosa interrogation. Mahmoud, moreover, tore his eyes from Holmes and turned to the
mukhtar
.

“Perhaps you have a thing you would like me to read?” he offered.

The eager look on the
mukhtar
’s old face, and on several others nearby, showed that they had been hoping for the offer. Three or four men scattered, to return with precious, tattered journals in hand. The
mukhtar
sent a rapid-fire set of instructions at the dividing wall. In an instant, a woman’s hand appeared under the coarse striped fabric, holding out a worn copy of an English journal called
Boy’s Own Paper
with a dramatic cover showing a troop of khaki-clad lancers riding furiously towards an unseen enemy. The dubious expression on the central horse was echoed by its rider, understandable in my opinion since the men were probably aiming their sharp sticks at an entrenched position
of troops backed by machine guns, but logic has never been a major element of patriotism. At any rate, the magazine was obviously treasured by the
mukhtar
, who put it on top of the half dozen similar literary offerings made by the other men, laid on the carpet in front of the scribe and public reader.

Mahmoud took his time deciding which of the journals and books he would read from, although I knew the instant I saw a familiar cover emerge from a striped
abayya
which he would pick, and I was right. He passed over the
Boy’s Own
and a
Saturday Evening Post
, hesitated over an Arabic translation of an American detecting person named Nick Carter, and finally reached out for the nine-year-old copy of
Strand
magazine. This he opened with care, checking that all the relevant pages were intact, before he settled back on his mound of bolsters and began to read, not so much translating as paraphrasing and considerably abridging it as he went. The story Mahmoud chose for the night’s public reading was one that Dr Watson’s literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, had called “The Devil’s Foot.” It featured a consulting detective by the name of Sherlock Holmes.

Mahmoud might have been reading a news article about the peace talks for all the mischief his face revealed, but I thought Ali would erupt with delight. Holmes, who had remained bent down to hear whatever was being said in the soft private conversation, jerked upright at the sound of his real name, badly startled. Mahmoud read on, stern of visage but with a faint breath of humour in the depths of his voice. Holmes pulled himself together, shot me a glance that dared me to laugh, and returned to his talk, safer from interruption now that the attention of the tent (both sides of it, I thought, hearing the heavy accumulation of breathing bodies pressing against the divider from the women’s side) was on this rousing tale of greed and revenge and induced madness and terrible danger. Long before the end of it, Holmes was having difficulty in keeping his
own group’s attention, but eventually he sat back, obviously content with what he had learnt, and allowed them to participate in the climactic experiment Holmes had so rashly conducted on himself and Watson, the results of which were very nearly of a sort to which clean death might have been preferable.

Mahmoud very sensibly cut short the lengthy explanations of motive and method, simplifying both down to a few lines of dialogue and a dramatic conclusion.

It was a shining success. Much discussion followed, on how one might lay hands upon this magnificently lethal substance and the sorts of crime its use might best be suited to punish, and whether or not mere passion for a woman (and an unobtainable woman at that, for a Christian monogamist) was motive enough.

Eventually, when it became apparent that Mahmoud was not about to pick up Nick Carter’s adventures or the story of the
Boy’s Own
lancers, talk became sporadic and desultory: One man told his neighbours that his young grandson had been taken to hospital in Hebron and was not expected to survive the experience. Another man had a horse gone lame, and asked if anyone had some remedy for a cracked hoof that had yet to be tried on the creature. Ali made a casual enquiry about, I thought, banditry in the area, saying that he was concerned about travelling east of here with such a small group. The responses varied from an automatic and obviously ignorant reassurance to a disgusted agreement that no travel was safe in these troubled times. Then he mentioned the lone corpse found in the Wadi Estemoa, without identifying it by name.

A flurry of speculation sprang up like the last flames of a dying fire, and the presence of bandits in the hills to the south-east was debated. However, the hour was late and interest soon died down. Men began to wrap themselves in their
abayya
s and turn into cocoons on the floor of the tent. The four of us took our leave of
our host and walked the short path to our flea-infested but honourable house.

Fortunately, this night we had outlasted the village children, and we could speak amongst ourselves in low voices without fear of being overheard. Somewhat to my surprise, Holmes did not hesitate to share what he had been told. I half expected him to pretend fatigue or at least surprise when the three of us rounded on him as soon as the door was shut, particularly following Mahmoud’s stunt with the Conan Doyle story, but he did not. He would, of course, have told us what the men had said, even if grudgingly and with gaps, but I thought afterwards that the readiness of his response was by way of recognising the debt he owed Mahmoud for so willingly taking on the lesser role, distracting the others while Holmes questioned the men who might know something. He dropped to his heels, tucked back his
kuffiyah
, and started talking—in English, to my relief.