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extent that at two in the morning, flea-infested divans began to seem
attractive. It was no hardship to rise early and return to the road.
We turned back towards the sea and north, and trudged for twenty dreary miles
(how far I had come since the first sparkling day out of Jaffa, a bare two
weeks before!) down out of the desert hills and into the Jordan Valley, where
the river emptied into the Dead Sea. When it first appeared, I welcomed the
green of palm and banana and sugarcane and the rustle of birds in the leaves,
but with every step the air grew warmer, and so damp that it became a struggle
to breathe. The mules plodded with their heads down, dripping sweat from their
necks and flanks. Their humans did much the same.
The monastery of St Gerasimo was another disappointment, as were the following
day the various small monasteries around the site of John the Baptist s
immersion in the Jordan. We pushed west through the thorns and the oppressive
air towards Jericho, a squalid little settlement unworthy of its ancient and
noble history. We were aiming our steps at the Greek monastery on the Mount of
Temptation to the north of town, after which we would turn our faces towards
the monastery in Wadi Qelt and then to those along the Jerusalem road, but no
sooner had we shaken the town s mongrel dogs from our heels than we stumbled
upon an archaeological dig inhabited by an elderly Englishwoman with a passion
for the subject as a whole, a positive lust for potsherds in particular, and a
furious store of energy at her command. In our enervated state she had no
trouble in seizing us and dragging us off to her home, where she questioned us
and lectured us and put us up for the night, returning us to our path the
following morning clean and fed if delayed and rather dazed by the assault.
From her peculiar encampment we travelled north towards the Mount of
Temptation (it being a steep climb to the top, I planned on volunteering to
stay behind and guard the mules). Before we reached it, though, about a mile
outside of town where the track passed through a small plantation of young
banana trees watered by the ages-old Jericho springs, a car stood waiting.
It was a heavy car, an open Rolls-Royce of the sort used only by the
highest-ranking army staff officers, its chassis virtually indestructible over
the roughest of roads. The driver sat on the running board, smoking a
cigarette and watching us come along the dusty track. As we approached he
straightened, flicked the end of his cigarette across the road, and nodded in
a familiar way to Mahmoud.
I ve arranged for you to leave your mules and kit with the family in the next
farmhouse, he said politely in an English straight out of Edinburgh. General
Allenby would like a word.
twelve
Both the sword and the pen are necessary tools for a ruler; however, at the
start of a dynasty, the need for the sword is greater.
Page 70
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the Muqaddimah of ibn khaldn
^
It was strange beyond measure, compelling and exotic, to sit motionless while
the land flew past at a speed faster than legs could move one. Trees were no
sooner sighted than they were gone, and I felt as though I was looking at the
open-mouthed children on the roadside with an identical amazed expression on
my own face.
We were in Haifa in no time at all, it seemed: one hundred miles, and it was
still not too late for tea. We were driven up to a grand house (the palace of
a pasha, I discovered later) that had a number of incongruous army lorries and
armoured vehicles scattered about what had once been formal gardens. The
driver deposited us at a portico, where a lieutenant wearing thick spectacles
and a uniform that had never seen battle conditions took possession of our
ragged persons with such an air of infinite politeness that one would have
assumed that he ushered in similar guests every afternoon as indeed he may
have done.
The lieutenant clicked down the polished corridor, turned a corner, stopped
before a door, opened it without knocking, said, The Hazr brothers are here,
sir, stood back to let us file in, and closed the door behind us. I was dimly
aware of the sound of his heels clicking away, but mostly my attention was
taken by the man in the room.
The room held two men, but I do not imagine that the world has produced many
individuals who would be noticed in the presence of the man whose office this
was.
He was big, although not extraordinarily so. His size was more an extension of
his personality: taut with power until his uniform seemed at risk of bursting.
He had eyes that probed and analysed and summed up the strengths, weaknesses,
and potential uses of their target in seconds, a beak of a nose, a thinning
tonsure of hair, and his bullet head was tipped slightly to one side as if
listening for hidden currents. Behind his back, men called him the Bull.
This was the man of whose exploits Mahmoud had spoken in the village, the man
who, in the space of sixteen months, had assembled his inherited hotchpotch of
an army and moved it out of its static place in Suez in order to present the
despairing British people with Jerusalem for one Christmas and the remainder
of the Turkish empire for the next, the man who at that moment was the sole
authority of all the occupied territory from Constantinople to the Suez Canal:
the Commander in Chief, General Edmund Allenby. He seemed to take up a great
deal of space in the room.
We had paused just inside the door while Allenby swept us with those
search-light eyes of his. After a long five seconds he let us loose and turned
to the man seated across the desk from him, and told him, I shall give him a
decision tomorrow, when I ve reviewed his report. Now, time for tea. Ah, he
said, as the door behind us opened with a clairvoyant promptness. Good. Over
by the fire, if you would, Arthurs. It s as cold as England here. He emerged
from his desk, holding a hand out to Mahmoud. It s good to see you again, Mr
Hazr. I trust you are well again? Those knife wounds can be a nasty business.
Mr Ali Hazr, a good day to you as well. And you two, he addressed himself to
us, taking our hands in his powerful grip but not, I noticed, using our names
until Arthurs had laid out the tea things and shut the door behind him. The
big man then turned to his aide, one of those phlegmatic, sleek-haired,
blue-blooded types the diplomatic corps treasures, and an unexpected sparkle
bloomed in his eye. Plumbury, he said, I d like you to meet& Mr Sherlock
Holmes. As he spoke the words he peered closely at the aide s face, and was
rewarded by a blink, apparently of astonishment. Allenby grinned as if he d
scored a point, and then the mischief was clearly in his face as he brought me
forward to be introduced. And his associate, Miss Mary Russell.
Plumbury s reaction was a clear victory for the Bull: not only did the
startled man blink a second time at the unwashed Arab youth standing in front
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