Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (124 page)

She nodded. That meant he almost certainly wasn't from Beirut, where there were plenty of nightclubs and glittering hotels and liquor and a thousand other temptations for the
asking. 'Are you planning to spend some time in Beirut?' she
asked softly, her dark liquid eyes probing his.

'I'm afraid not.' He smiled apologetically.

The professional smile went back on her face, but she
couldn't hide the disappointment from her voice. 'I see. Well,
if you need anything, just press the call button.'

He nodded, tilting his seat back as far as it would go, and
nursed his drink. She had made her overture, as he'd guessed
she would, and he had rejected it politely. Inwardly he
shrugged. Even at his age he had had more than his share
of women already. They were there for the picking. Always throwing themselves at him. What was it that Revlon model in New York had told him? 'You're too damn good-looking
for your own good, Najib al-Ameer. All you do is take and
take, but you never want to give!' He smiled, remembering her anger when he wouldn't take her a second time.

Forgetting women for the moment he shut his eyes.

Nearly ten years had passed since he had left al-Najaf, and he had returned to the Middle East only once in all that time.
That had been four years earlier, right after he had graduated
from Eton. Now it seemed a lifetime and a world ago.

July 12, 1952. The day the real horror had begun.

He would never forget it as long as he lived.

It had taken him nearly three weeks of travel to reach that
fateful rendezvous with the twelfth of July in the middle of the
Negev. Happily unaware of what awaited him, he felt jubilant,
and with good reason. He had done his people proud. Soon
he would be home in the village of his birth, a graduate of
an exclusive English school with a crisp new diploma in his
possession to prove it. He could imagine how it would be
passed around from person to person, solemnly fingered with
awe and respect, for never before had a villager attended so
many years of school, let alone such an important one. There
would be much celebrating, for this was a momentous
occasion. A holiday would be proclaimed; there would be a
week of feasting on succulent lamb and music and dancing.
For six long years he had been gone
...
six years during which
he, the village's most gifted son, had been provided with an
education fit for a prince. It was as much their victory as his.
And he had done them proud, graduating at the top of the
class. The only thing that made him uneasy was that he hadn't
received a letter from the village for the past six months.

The journey through the familiar Negev brought back mem
ories, and he felt exhilarated but enervated: it was July, one
of the hottest months of the Middle Eastern year, and the
years he had spent in the English countryside had almost made
him forget the brooding oppressiveness of the gritty desert
heat which lay in stifling blanket layers. Now, at the height of summer noon, it hit him full force, and he sweltered unbear
ably despite the flowing desert robes he had changed into.

He was unprepared to meet tragedy. The peaceful ivy-clad
halls of learning had protected him from the harsh realities that were the mainstay of Middle Eastern life, had sheltered him from the ever-present lurking dangers, had made him
forget the potential violence which, he was to discover, had
shattered the peaceful tranquillity of his birthplace while he had been away enjoying peaceful study in blissful ignorance.

For the remainder of his life, the memory of that day would
remain crystal clear.

The desert had been unearthly still, even for the sun-baked
Negev. No living creature moved or breathed. Under the great
vast bowl of the cloudless sky and the blazing white sun, the
silence was eerie and unearthly. It chilled him to the bone,
that mute otherworldly soundlessness that somehow held a
portent of bleached bones and destruction. It was the kind of
ultimate, deathlike quiet that heralds a ghost town which even
the scavenging bugs and ubiquitous flies have long since
deserted.

When he stumbled out of the car he had hired in Haifa, he
could only stare in disbelief. He dared not believe his eyes,
certain that they were deceiving him. Maybe what he was
seeing in the shimmering heat waves was really a mirage.

But he knew deep down inside that it was no mirage, and it
sickened him. He had expected a noisy reception, and had
pictured the village just as it had been before he left it: abuzz
with activity, the proud walnut-hued men wearing their flow
ing bishts, the prematurely aged women their dark, dusty
abbeyas
and headcloths as they patiently hoed the fields or
prepared the traditional meals; the children shrieking at play
under the tall, graceful date palms heavy with clusters of
ripening fruit; the fields all around lush from irrigation; the lake which gave succour to all, gleaming silvery with the pre
cious water provided by Allah the Munificent—such a beauti
ful, bountiful oasis, demanding lives of gruelling work but
good, happy lives nevertheless.

But something bad had swept through—a scythe of annihil
ating terror. It was as if a plague had visited al-Najaf.

The grove where date palms had once risen proudly was
now a wasteland of parched dead trunks completely denuded
of fruit and fronds, and the desert had reclaimed the fields. Where once the small neat houses had dotted the oasis were
piles of rubble, blackened, bullet-riddled, jagged fingers of
ruin. The charred carcass of an overturned automobile was a
rusty sculpture of despair under the merciless sun. The little lake which had nurtured life was completely dry, its concave
hollow filled with rippled waves of golden sand. The perpet
ually creaking water wheel he had known since his earliest
days was silent, its precious wood either buried in the sand or
burned in whatever holocaust had visited.

He blinked back salty tears. This couldn't be his beloved
village! he thought wildly. Except for the time the Jews had
attacked, just before he'd left for England, his village had
been peaceful, had thrived. He must have come to the wrong
place!

But the imposing neolithic rock formations in the distance
were all too familiar. They were the very ones he had grown
up with, embedded in his memory forever as the shapes of
giant animals and people. Now the benign fantasy figures had
undergone a metamorphosis, had become leering, malevol
ent, mocking hulks. This was his village, all right, and he had
no choice but to face that it was gone. Only an extinct ghost
town remained to mark its place, only rubble gave evidence
of what was once a thriving, happy hub of life in the Negev. His eyes wet with tears, he dropped to his knees, threw back
his head, and keened a cry of rage, an eerie, ululating wail of mourning and despair for that which was no more.

It was then that he caught sight of Abdullah. He stood atop
a pile of rubble in phantomlike silence in flowing robes of
intense blackness. His waist was circled with a cartridge belt, and a second, longer bandolier crisscrossed from shoulder to
waist like a badge of authority. The
ghutra
he wore for protec
tion from the sun was of the same depthless black.

Najib stumbled to his feet and stared at him, speechless.

Abdullah's voice was soft but mesmerizing. 'Welcome, half-
nephew, grandson of my half-brother.'

Najib remained silent, as Abdullah came down from the
pile of rubble and walked toward him.

Abdullah's powerful body was lean, all steel and springs,
and his physical strength seemed to emanate from him like a
malevolent aura. Yet his hands were slim and elongated,
almost feminine in their delicacy. But it was his gaunt face
which arrested. His forehead was high and noble, his cheekbones broad slashes, and his scimitar mouth wide and sensu
ous and cruel. His nose was magnificent; he had inherited the
same stately hawk's beak as Naemuddin, testimony to the
mother they had shared. But Najib remembered Naemuddin's
eyes as wise and kind, and Abdullah's, under majestic black brows, were messianic, pitch black, and liquid as simmering
oil. His skin was smooth and tawny, light for that of an Arab,
and was as yet unweathered and unlined: he had yet to turn thirty-five. Like all predatory beasts, he appeared to be both
relaxed and alert and gifted with an inborn sixth sense which
made him sensitive to the presence of danger, no matter how
distant it might be.

When they were face-to-face, Abdullah extended his hand
and Najib took it and pressed it to his lips.

'So,' Abdullah said softly, 'you have not forgotten the tradi
tional gesture of respect. That is good. I had feared that per
haps you had become too Westernized to remember it.' Then
he embraced Najib within the batlike folds of his robes and
kissed both his cheeks, as was customary. 'You have been
gone a long time,' he said, drawing back and touching Najib's
elbow. 'Come. We have much to discuss.'

Najib stayed rooted to the spot, unable to move. 'What
happened here?' He gestured round at the surreal ruins. 'What
in the name of infernal hell has caused all this?'

A strange vampirical light came into Abdullah's face, his
cheek hollows seemed to grow deeper, the skin of his face
stretching so tautly that Najib had the crazy sensation he was
staring at a skull. 'The plague is come.'

Najib stared at him. 'What plague, my half-uncle?'

'The plague of Jews!' The words ripped odiously from
between the knife blades of Abdullah's lips. 'The Jewish swine
who stole our water and our lands, and who now multiply like
locusts!'

Najib was blinded by a searing rage. 'And our people?' he
asked tightly. 'Where are they?'

'Gone,' Abdullah replied, 'as though scattered by the four
winds. The weak who survived are in refugee camps in
Lebanon and Syria. The strong fight at my side.'