Thieves in the Night (41 page)

“Let's begin,” said Bauman. He was the only one in the room with an easy and informal manner. Joseph took his place
among the other young men standing lined up with their backs to the wall. He had gathered that they were junior officers of the organisation, while Bauman and the two others seated behind the table were members of the Command. There was a tense silence in the room, emphasised by the flicker of the candles.

Bauman read out from a piece of paper the name—which was an alias—of the candidate, and at a sign from him the young officer standing next to the door opened it and gave an order to the sentry in the corridor. The sentry called out the name, and presently a young boy entered through the door, which closed behind him. He saluted and advanced three steps until he stood in front of the table. He must have been told beforehand what to do, for there was no hesitation about him. He might have been about seventeen and had blue eyes and smooth fair hair parted in the middle, and looked the type of boy who in school is called “babyface” and resents it. At this moment he gave the impression of being in a trance. Standing rigidly to attention, his wide-open eyes were fixed for a second or two on the flame of the candles, skirted the Bible and stuck fascinatedly on the revolver.

“Kiss the Bible and touch the gun,” said Bauman, rising to his feet followed by the other two behind the desk. The boy did as bidden. It was so still that one could hear the small, damp noise of his lips touching the leather cover of the book.

“Now speak the words after me,” said Bauman. “
In the name of the All-present who brought Israel out of the house of bondage in Egypt
…”

“
In the name
…” the boy repeated in a dreamy voice, looking with puckered brows into the candle.

“
… not to rest until the Nation is resurrected as a free and sovereign State within its historic boundaries, from Dan to Beersheba
….”

“
… from Dan to Beersheba
.”

“
To obey blindly my superior officers
…”

“
… officers
…”

“
… not to reveal anything entrusted to me, neither under threats nor bodily torture; and that I shall bear my sufferings in silence
.”

“
… in silence
.”

The candles flickered and one could hear the boy's breathing. In a dreamy, entranced voice he repeated the last words of the oath:

“
If I forget thee, Jerusalem
…”

“
If I forget thee, Jerusalem
…”

“
… as long as my soul resides in my body
.”

“
… in my body. Amen
.”

For the full length of a minute Bauman said nothing and let everybody stand to attention. In the tense silence one could feel how the significance of the moment sank into the boy's soul, to leave its indelible mark there. Every nerve in Joseph's body craved to cry out at them to stop, that they had no right to do this to a child. He tried to evoke Dina's mutilated face in the open coffin, but it did not help and did not connect. We shall never be forgiven this, he thought, for we know what we do.

And we should never be forgiven, he answered himself, if we omitted to do it.

“Dismiss,” said Bauman.

The boy turned about and marched out of the room, with the precise movements of an automaton.

Later, when Joseph took his leave from Bauman in the corridor, Bauman asked him:

“What did you think of it?”

“I thought,” said Joseph, “that I did not envy you. I would rather obey than command.”

“Who would not?” said Bauman.

The yellow malaria colour of his cheeks seemed more pronounced now, but perhaps it was merely the pallid light of the oil-lamp.

(1939)

“… And indeed that was a time most fertile in all manner of wicked practices, in so much that no kind of evil deeds were then left undone; nor could any one so much as devise any bad thing that was new, so deeply were they all infected.”

FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, “The Wars of the Jews”

The uncertainty about the country's future was brought to an end on May the 17th. On this day the British Government issued a Statement of Policy, known as the White Paper of
1939,
which was meant as a final settlement of the Palestine problem
.

“
It has been urged,” the Statement ran, “that the expression ‘a National Home for the Jewish people' offered a prospect that Palestine might in due course become a Jewish State or Commonwealth. His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State
.”

It was an unusually candid political document. For the next five years a last batch of Jews, numbering seventy-five thousand in all, was to be allowed to scramble in before the doors were closed; then, from June
1944
to the end of the world, no further Jews were to be allowed to enter Palestine. By that date, the document reckoned, the Hebrew community would have reached one-third of the total population of the country. From then onward, owing to the disparity of birth-rates and unrestricted Arab immigration, it was condemned proportionally to fall to a smaller and smaller minority. To prevent any economic expansion of this minority, the High Commissioner of Palestine was further empowered to prohibit the purchase of land by Jews. Making use of these powers, the Land Transfer Acts of February
1940
restricted the zone in which Jews were free to buy land to five per cent of the total area of the country.
The National Home had become transformed into one more cramped Oriental ghetto with sealed gates
.

In the Parliamentary debate which followed a few days later, the Right Hon. Winston Churchill (Conservative) called the White Paper “a plain breach of promise, a base betrayal, the filing of a petition in moral and physical bankruptcy, a new Munich and an act of abjection”. Sir Archibald Sinclair (Liberal) declared that “the arbitrary prohibition of Jewish immigration without any corresponding restriction of Arab immigration, introducing an element of discrimination against the Jews on grounds of race and religion—these things are grave departures from the terms of the Mandate, and they call in question our moral right to continue to hold it”. Mr. Herbert Morrison (Labour) declared that his Party regarded “this White Paper and the policy in it as a cynical breach of pledges given to the world”; and that he “would have had more respect for the Colonial Secretary and his speech if he had frankly admitted that the Jews were to be sacrificed to the incompetence of the Government in the matter, to be sacrificed to its apparent fear, if not indeed its sympathy with violence and the methods of murder and assassination
”.

According to the terms of the international Mandate, the White Paper could only gain legal validity if endorsed by the League of Nations. The League's Permanent Mandates Commission met on June
16
and found unanimously that the new policy contradicted the terms of Britain's trusteeship. The last word now rested with the League's Council. It was to meet in September
1939.
It never met, and the White Paper never acquired legal validity
.

Its provisions however were implemented point by. point: the sale of land to Jews was prohibited in
94.8
per cent of their homeland, access to it was refused to survivors of the great massacre and shiploads of them drowned in
1941
and'42 in the waters of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Those who succeeded in getting ashore were sent to prison or deported
to Eritrea, the Sudan or the Island of Mauritius; helpers in the work of rescue were treated as criminals and given long sentences of imprisonment. A document with no legal validity became the legal guide of Government, Law Courts and Police; lawlessness reigned as the supreme law in the Holy Land
.

The reign of lawlessness began on the very evening of the new policy's inauguration. It began at precisely 8 P.M., the hour at which the Palestine Radio was to broadcast the official text of the White Paper in Arabic.

At that hour, Issa, son of the late Mukhtar of Kfar Tabiyeh, was sitting with two newly won acquaintances on the terrace of the little Arab coffee-house near Bab el Mandeb, the Damascus Gate, waiting for the broadcast to begin. The proprietor of the coffee-house, who had once been a follower of the moderate Nashashibi clan, and whose establishment had been burnt down by the Mufti's followers during the riots of 1937, had specially installed a loudspeaker for the occasion to prove his patriotic feelings.

Issa had come to Jerusalem to arrange with the Arab Bank certain matters in connection with the Mukhtar's death. He wore a cream-coloured suit with pink stripes, patent leather shoes with white suede inlays, and a black armlet as a sign of mourning. It was his first visit to the capital, and he successfully hid his excitement under a mask of blasé boredom. The circumstances of his father's death had caused a certain stir and had helped Issa to gain access to circles of high Arab society not usually open to an obscure village Mukhtar's son. His two companions he had only met the day before, at one of the weekly “at homes” of Mme. Makropoulos, widow of Josef Makropoulos, the author of
Pan-Arab Renaissance
. Mme. Makropoulos had a political salon where the higher British officials and visiting celebrities met the Arab intelligentsia in
an easy and civilised atmosphere—and where they could relax from the strain of intense and purposeful Jewish hospitality where Banquo's ghost kept cropping up from under the dinner-table. Issa had been taken to the party by a Director of the Arab Bank and was also armed with a letter of introduction from District Officer Tubashi. He had been received with kindly sympathy which helped him to overcome his shyness and assume the role of a martyr of the Cause, which from that moment onward he genuinely felt himself to be.

The two other young men, seated on low wicker stools and sipping black coffee while waiting for the broadcast to start, belonged to the new Arab intelligentsia. Farid, a dark, lanky young man, had the untidy and romantic appearance, the tweedy nonchalance and languid air of an Oxford undergraduate. He came from one of the oldest Arab families in Jerusalem, had been educated by an English private tutor, wrote English poetry, and articles against English Imperialism in the Arab
El Difa
. Salla, his best friend, was a round-faced dandy with a clipped blond moustache. The two of them had been planning for over a year to launch the first Arab literary weekly, but had so far been unable to find the necessary financial backing.

Issa, anxious to show his lights, had just told them a smutty story from Beyrout but had met with cool disapproval; to ease the silence he hummed the popular jingle:
Falastin baladna, Yahud kalabna
, Palestine is our country, the Jews are our dogs—but that did not cut much ice either. There was still about a quarter of an hour left before the broadcast was to start, and Salla ordered more coffee. “Would you like a nargileh?” he asked, turning politely to Issa. Issa longed for one but thought that smoking a water pipe would be considered provincial and boorish. “No, thank you, I only smoke cigarettes,” he said. Salla offered his silver case and they both lit cigarettes, but Farid refused, shaking his head with the dark, wavy hair which had a tendency to fall over his brow. “I shall have a
nargileh,” he said. Then, with one of his sudden changes from languidness to enthusiasm, he turned briskly to Issa.

“When we start our magazine you must write us an article about Arab village life,” he said.

Issa grinned, half flattered, half incredulous. “Village life?” he said. “What is there to write about? The fellaheen are stupid, backward and filthy.”

“This is just the point,” said Salla, his chin propped on the silver knob of his walking-stick. “We must rouse the fellah from his apathy. Look at the Hebrews.”

“Ah, the Hebrews,” said Issa. “They use tractors and fertilisers and imported livestock. They've got the money.”

“Surely you must have enough money in Kfar Tabiyeh to buy fertilisers and even a tractor,” said Farid, with the mouthpiece of the water pipe between his teeth.

“Ah—but we lack co-operation,” said Issa.

“But that is just the point,” cried Salla. “Lack of co-operation. Jealousy and blood feuds. Ignorance. Superstition. A mediaeval economy. That is what we have to fight.” He was thumping his chin after each phrase with the walking-stick;

“Ye-es,” said Issa. “But the younger ones all want to run away to the towns where they get wages and can go to the cinema.”

“And sell the land to the Jews,” said Salla.

“Ah—so it is,” Issa agreed. “The Jews have the money. And the prices they pay! I could tell you stories …”

He hastily checked himself, and his eyes shifted round the tables in the neighbourhood. They were mainly occupied by small shopkeepers from the shuks, with a sprinkling of villagers and Beduins from Transjordan. The terrace was more crowded than usual because of the broadcast and the historic events, but the men all sat peacefully sucking their nargilehs or playing tauleh, the ancestor of backgammon, with an air of laziness and content.

Farid sat with his legs stretched out, elbows on knees, sucking at the tube and watching the bubbles in the glass bowl.
With his high forehead, dreamy eyes and sensuous lips he looked attractive and he probably knew it. He was a frequent guest at the rather dull parties of the English colony and, having had some of his poems printed in the
Jerusalem Mail
, was a favourite with the middle-aged and intellectually inclined among the English women. Young Farid, who was twenty and a virgin, allowed himself to be spoiled with a languid and blasé air. He knew from one painful experience that all European women were sex teasers, and he was careful not to expose himself to humiliation. Besides, he was in love with his three years older cousin Raissa, daughter of a Syrian patriot who had escaped being hanged by the Turks in 1916 and was shot by the French in 1926.