Thieves in the Night: Chronicle of an Experiment Read online

  The Mukhtar heaved himself out of bed, ignored the slippers which his son held out for him and, barefooted, walked out to the balcony. The sun had risen about an hour ago, and already the air was hot. He leaned heavily with his palms on the parapet of red bricks which, with gaps left between each adjoining pair, made a kind of horizontal lattice. Beyond the Mukhtar’s house there were only a few clay huts which formed the outposts of the village, then the sparsely terraced slope down to the valley. The valley was arid and stony with a few patches of black, ploughed-up earth; on its further side rose the equally arid Hill of Dogs. The top of the hill seemed to swarm with tiny black crawling figures. In the midst of that busy antheap something like a vertical match-stick could be made out: the watch-tower.

  With slow, deliberate chewing movements the Mukhtar gathered the saliva in his mouth, masticated it and spat over the parapet. He cursed softly and savagely under his breath, then turned to Issa:

  “Why are you standing about, you pock-marked mule? Get my war glass.”

  The youth jumped and returned a moment later with a heavy and impressive telescope of brass. It was a relic of the Turkish Army, in which the Mukhtar had fought as an officer against General Allenby’s forces in the first world war. He adjusted the glass and the Hill of Dogs jumped from a distance of two miles to one of two hundred yards. The panelled frame of the watch-tower, now visible in detail, dominated the scene; on its top one could see the cyclopean reflector-eye which at night would blink its messages to the intruders’ confederates, defiling the peaceful darkness of the hills. Around the tower there were the messy beginnings of a camp with tangled barbed wire, trenches and dug-outs, several tents and the first wall of a pre-fabricated wooden hut in the process of erection. And all around bustling figures, digging, hammering and running about in undignified, alien hurry in their loathsome clothes, bareheaded in open shirts; and their loathsome shameless women with naked bulging calves and thighs, and nipples bursting through tight shirts—whores, harlots, bitches and daughters of bitches….

  The Mukhtar let the glass sink. His face had become a greyish yellow, as in an attack of malaria, and his eyes were bloodshot. His stomach almost turned over at the thought that henceforth every morning when he got up the first thing to meet his eyes would be this abomination, this defilement, this brazen challenge of the intruders. Dogs on the Hill of Dogs, dropping their filth, wallowing in it, building their citadel of filth…. It was finished. The whole landscape was spoilt. Never again would he, the Mukhtar of Kfar Tabiyeh, be allowed to enjoy the use of his own balcony. His eyes would no longer rest in peace on God’s creation, watch the fellaheen in the valley walking behind their wooden ploughs in dignified leisure, watch the sheep flocking over the slopes—they would be drawn to that one spot in which the whole landscape had become focused, that poisoned fountain of evil, the well of blasphemy and temptation….

  From inside the house he heard the slow clop-clop of the old man’s stick on the stone floor. Issa, who had also heard it, quickly brought his father’s clothes. The Mukhtar got into his long wide skirts, pulled the striped vest over his pyjamas, wrapped the kefiyeh round his head, lifted the coiled agál with both hands into the air like a crown and adjusted it on top of the kefiyeh. He had just finished dressing when the old man, stick in front, emerged on the balcony. Disregarding his son’s and grandson’s greetings, he advanced with small firm steps to the parapet, rested his stick on its top and lifted his blind face towards the hills. “Where?” he asked with a curt, commanding bellow. His sparse white goat’s-beard stuck out in front, and his bony nose with the hawk’s bend seemed to sniff the air for the smell of the intruders.

  “Over there, on the Dogs’ Hill,” the Mukhtar said submissively, guiding the stick in the old man’s hand towards the spot.

  The old man gave no answer; he stood erect and motionless at the parapet, his face lifted to the hills. Issa, avoiding the Mukhtar’s eye, had disappeared into the house. The Mukhtar stood behind his father like a waiter in attendance, his big, heavy body slumped into guilty shapelessness. At last he could bear the old man’s silence no longer.

  “It is not my fault,” he said in a throaty, plaintively bumptious voice. “The whole village wanted to sell. They would have sold even against my will, the dogs, and we would have got nothing.”

  The old man made no answer and no move.

  “I only got eight hundred,” said the Mukhtar, “and they would have sold anyway. I could do nothing. They cheated us, the swine. In Khubeira they paid six pounds for the dunum and another five hundred to the Mukhtar.”

  The old man again said nothing and after a while turned round and hobbled back into the house, his stick stepping in front.

  The Mukhtar listened to the receding clop-clop on the tiles. By God, he thought, what does he know? He sees nothing and understands nothing of the world. By God….

  He retreated into his bedroom without turning again towards the hill; but in the centre of his back, between the shoulder-blades, he felt its contemptuous stare like the stare of the Evil Eye.

  On his morning walk through the village the Mukhtar felt lonely and weighed down by the decisions he had to take within the next few hours; in fact he knew that he should have decided at once when Issa woke him with the news. He would have cancelled the walk but for the inferences which the villagers and the other Mukhtar would have drawn from such an omission. So he marched as usual along the one cobbled street which wound its way serpent-like through the village, stately in his bulk, unapproachable with his dark, morose face, dignified and awe-inspiring. Despite the holes and bumps in the street he never had to look down at his feet, which knew every gap between the cobbles and each turn of the gutter-canal that ran along the middle of the street as the serpent’s inverted spine—its lay-out had not changed since the time of the Romans. The fellaheen who were not out in the fields greeted him with their usual deference in front of the clay huts, while the women on the doorsteps withdrew with their usual modesty into the semi-darkness inside. At the sight of their shapeless, slatternly black widow-gear, of their faces which were withered and dumb at twenty, and of the eternal infant with the fly-ridden slimy face which they carried on their sagging breast or in a sling on their back, the Mukhtar thought with renewed fury of the shameless bitches on the Hill of Dogs and their naked arms and thighs. Yes, everything was as usual, and when he stopped to honour some elder of prominent family or other man of consequence, by inquiring after his health and the health of his sons and the state of his fields and of his cattle, the Mukhtar got the usual answer that thanks to God all was well and nothing to complain about. Not one referred, by word or implication, not even by a questioning glance, to the impending events; and yet their shadow lay on every face, and they all knew of the decision which the Mukhtar had to take—and washed their hands of it, the cowardly swine, so that afterwards they could say that they had heard nothing, known nothing, of the events of the coming night—provided, that is, that such events were to take place at all….

  So now his thoughts had already embarked on the problem which he had tried to shelve or at least to postpone, yet from which there was no escape. It was a fateful dilemma which he ought to be able to discuss with other wise and experienced men, but which by its very nature precluded discussion. Not even with his own family could he share the burden. His father, whom may God grant still many years, had lost his understanding for the ways of this world, and his eldest son was a pockmarked hyena with nothing in his head but dreams of money to visit the whore-houses in Syria—waiting with glee for his own father to fall into the trap this way or the other: to get either hanged by the Government or shot by the Arab Patriots in the hills.

  For these, indeed, were the alternatives in store for the Mukhtar if he did not act with extreme wisdom and caution. The Patriots were everywhere around in the hills, led by the famous Syrian revolutionary Fawzi el Din Kawki, whom may God grant still many years of glory, though as far away as possible from the peaceful
village of Kfar Tabiyeh. The trouble, however, was that Fawzi’s secret headquarters happened to be at the moment not more than three hours’ horse-ride away at a certain hidden spot in the hills, and that his men came regularly every other night to Kfar Tabiyeh to fetch the village’s tribute to the Cause in sheep, flour and durrha. Not for nothing had Fawzi served in the Turkish Army and under King Ibn Saud; he knew how to organise his supplies and live on the fat of the land. Of these nightly goings-on the Mukhtar was officially as ignorant as the rest of the village; and during the occasional visits of Assistant District Commissioner Newton, after the greetings and courtesies had been exchanged, the health and prosperity of both families mutually ascertained, after coffee had been served, the weather and the prospective crops discussed, his innocence became established clearer than daylight for everybody concerned. The recent increase in nocturnal thefts was of course admitted and deplored with deep sighs and mournful reflection on these godless and lawless times; but what could a poor village Mukhtar do against these sneaking, invisible thieves? One could not expect each sheep or hen to be fastened by a lock and chain round its legs—and this joke, though often repeated, always gave rise to great and protracted hilarity, the slapping of one’s knees and the wiping of tears from one’s eyes—except for Newton Effendi who would continue to sip his coffee in absent-minded silence. So far, so good—but the Mukhtar had a premonition that it couldn’t be carried much further, and that the joke was losing its flavour. At his last visit Newton Effendi had been more absent-minded than ever and, talking of sheep and cattle, had mentioned in his mumbling way the impending arrival of a pack of bloodhounds capable of tracing any trail of thieves to the very end of this hilly world. They could of course prove nothing definite against the Mukhtar; but what if they searched the village and found some of Fawzi’s men, who had the regrettable habit of staying overnight in one hut or another—a service which hospitality couldn’t refuse; or if some dirty rat from the other Mukhtar’s family gave evidence and swore to some invented pack of lies? There was danger everywhere, and who knew Newton Effendi’s game? It was evident that he wanted to avoid trouble; but on the other hand it was undeniable that the Patriots had gone too far by killing not only Hebrews but Englishmen as well, and turning against the Government itself. The whole situation had changed and a man knew no longer where he was, not even with Assistant District Commissioner Newton. And then there were the Military; they had lately started to blow up houses to punish peaceful villages like Kfar Tabiyeh against whom nothing could be proved; and they always selected the best houses in the village to be blown up, the Mukhtar’s first…. There was of course the Arab Bank which was quite generous in granting credit for the rebuilding of the victims’ houses, and some people in Lydda and Ramleh had fared quite well by getting a handsome stone house built to replace a clay hut or some decrepit ruin; it was even said that some clever ones had found the means of having their mud huts blown to glory though the English forgot to bother about them. Still, one’s house was one’s house, and if it happened to be a good house one did not like to take risks with it; and even less with one’s neck, which no generosity of the Arab Bank could replace….

  Pursuing his thoughts, the Mukhtar had completed his circular walk and arrived home; he put on his slippers, ordered his water pipe and sat down under Mr. Chamberlain’s portrait to continue his lonely meditation. The quiet bubbling of the pipe soothed his mind, while his hands were engaged in pushing the yellow amber beads of his rosary.

  His thoughts turned to the other horn of the dilemma. It had been the expressed wish of Fawzi el Din that a messenger should be sent to him at once if the Hebrews tried to take possession of the Dogs’ Hill. It was easy to guess the reasons for the Patriot leader’s keen interest in the matter. He wanted to set an example. An example which would prove to the world once and for all that the Arab nation had decided to put a stop to the building of new settlements by the Hebrews. If Fawzi succeeded, the dogs would never dare to try it again, and the piecemeal slipping away of the land into their hands would be ended.

  Yes, Fawzi’s intention was obvious, and there was every chance of his succeeding in wiping the dogs of the Dogs’ Hill from the face of the earth. The Mukhtar took a deep breath, and the bubbles in the pipe increased as if the water had started to boil. Oh, to wake up in the morning and to look at the hill and to see the watch-tower gone and those creeping insects vanished like jinn in the night; and to breathe the pure air and behold the peaceful country with its silent hills…. By God, it shall be.

  The Mukhtar got up and called for Issa. He had made up his mind. He had given a promise to Fawzi el Din and he was going to keep it, whatever the consequences might be. The English might blow up the village, they might even blow up his house—they would soon find out that no threats and no brutality could prevail against a nation united in its will, decided to defend its soil against the foreign intruder. Besides, they couldn’t prove anything. Kfar Tabiyeh was a peaceful village whose peasants slept the sleep of the just and knew nothing of the happenings of the night.

  Issa received the Mukhtar’s instructions with frightened, shifting eyes but in respectful silence. He bowed, touched his forehead, kissed his father’s hand and went to saddle his horse. After all, the Mukhtar thought, he is a good boy. And in a warm surge of generosity he decided to buy Issa a good wife, regardless of cost; a strapping girl as firm-fleshed and round as any of the bitches on the hill in their tight-bottomed pants.

  Now that he had made up his mind, he felt relaxed and at peace with himself. For beneath the surface of his boisterousness he knew himself to be a weak, corrupt and greedy man; but he also knew that his love for the hills and his country was genuine, and that he would defend it against the intruders with cunning, courage and ruse, with smiles and treachery, and was quite prepared, at least as long as his present mood lasted, to get himself hanged and not even to twitch when they slipped the coiled rope over his head.

  5

  The convoy had arrived at its destination just before sunrise.

  Only the lighter trucks were able to drive up nearly to the top of the hill. Their engines roared and their radiators spouted steam as they crept at two miles an hour up the pathless incline covered with rubble and patches of dry, crumbling earth. The heavier trucks had to stop half-way up where the dirt track ended.

  Bauman and his boys awaited the convoy at the top. They had arrived two hours earlier and seemed already much at home among those inhospitable starlit rocks. Bauman had dispersed the boys along the undulating saddle of the hill and on the edge of rocks protruding over the slope; there they stood or squatted in dark clusters, the glowing sparks of their cigarettes suspended in the air, their rifles sharply silhouetted against the stars.

  On the very top of the hill, in the most advantageous position, a rectangle of a hundred by sixty yards was neatly pegged out, marking the site for the camp. A tractor with a plough rattled slowly and painfully around this rectangle drawing the first symbolical furrow, which, according to Arab custom, signified that the new settlers had effectively taken possession of the land.

  About half-past five a slight inflammation over the hills to the east showed that the sky was preparing for the rise of day; a grey pallor expanded overhead in which the stars dissolved one by one, and soon afterwards the sun rose with brisk abruptness, as if in a hurry. Within a quarter of an hour the cloudless sky had changed from light grey into a transparent greenish blue, and all around the hills emerged in their normal day-shape, arid and desolate and yet soft and gently curved. They were reddish brown at close range, chalk-grey in the distance, and became of an unreal tender violet pastel shade as they receded towards the horizon. The new settlers found themselves in the centre of a landscape of gentle desolation, a barrenness mellowed by age. The rocks had settled down for eternity; the sparse scrubs and olive trees exhaled a silent and contented resignation. A few vultures sailed round the hill-top; the curves they described seemed to paraphrase the smooth
curvature of the hills.

  On the slope across the valley to the east stood the village of Kfar Tabiyeh, silent and apparently deserted. Its houses were the colour of the hill, built from the clay and stone of the hill; they hugged the slope out of which they were carved and into which they seemed to dissolve by natural mimicry. Their walls were blind with only the smallest square window-hole or no windows at all. The terraces below the village were protected by loose stone walls, demolished in parts by last year’s rain. Some of the houses carried spherical domes of baked clay; others had flat mud roofs with grass and weeds growing out of them. The whole of the village looked like an ancient ruin spread over the slope and gently crumbling away into the dust out of which it had arisen in some timeless past; it basked peacefully under the early but already hardening rays of the Galilean sun.

  The people who had arrived in the convoy clustered round a truck from the top of which Reuben, the leader of the new settlers, read out the roll and the task allotted to each man and woman. He was a tall, bony fellow with sparse gestures and a way of commanding silence without raising his voice. After some initial muddle the groups sorted themselves out, and by 6 A.M. everybody was at his job. The largest group, of about fifty people, was engaged in clearing a path for the heavy trucks from the end of the dirt track to the camp on the hill-top, a distance of about two hundred yards. The stones they picked up were thrown into baskets; the baskets travelled from hand to hand along a chain to the top, where a second group, skilled men from the Haganah, used them for the building of parapets. These parapets protected five dug-outs, two of them facing north, and one each towards the east, south and west. A third group was digging zigzag trenches to connect the dug-outs; owing to the shallowness of the earth over the rocky ground these connecting trenches could only provide protection for men creeping on all fours. Another group rammed iron posts into the earth for the barbed-wire fence which was to surround the camp in front of the trenches.