Dynamite Fishermen Read Online Free PDF

the last. After we fought our way up to the roof, I had a difference of opinion with other officers over how to, let us say, consolidate our victory. When they sided against me, I decided to leave the war in their hands and return to my parents’ house in Tripoli. A week later, certain events persuaded me that it would be best if I traveled to Europe.”
    “Somebody tried to kill him,” Landers pointed out.
    Disregarding Landers, Prosser asked, “Are any of your old comrades-in-arms still in the National Movement?”
    “Possibly.”
    Prosser nodded politely. Husayn was beginning to look more interesting, but Prosser did not want to appear overeager. If Husayn was a regular drinking companion of Harry, there would be other times to pursue the matter at greater length.
    “Tell me, Husayn, how much longer do you think you’ll be staying here?”
    “A month, perhaps two. Allah only knows. It depends on my father’s debtors. If it were my money alone, I would board the next plane to Frankfurt. But my mother needs the money, and my sister is not yet married. She, too, needs whatever I can preserve for her.”
    “Excuse my asking, Husayn,” Landers put in, “but if Zuhayri hasn’t paid you by now, what makes you think he ever will?”
    “I shall persuade him.”
    Prosser saw determination in Husayn’s eyes, but could not be sure whether it was backed by courage or foolhardiness.
    “Sounds like risky business to me,” Landers answered with mock earnestness.
    “No riskier than denying visas at the American embassy, I think,” Husayn replied, managing an ironic smile.
    Landers caught Prosser’s eye. “I won’t touch that one,” the vice consul volunteered.
    At that moment, Prosser noticed the woman who had been belly dancing when he had arrived now coming toward him with an alluring smile.
    “Are you Harry?” she asked breathlessly.
    “No, but for once I wish I were. My name is Conrad Prosser. And you are?”
    “Layla Said,” she replied perfunctorily before turning abruptly to the other American. “Then you must be Harry.”
    “I cannot tell a lie,” the vice consul answered with a grin.
    She took a leatherette-covered travel document out of her purse, opened it to the last page, and handed it across. “The stamp…it means I have been rejected for a visa by the American embassy. Now that you have marked my passport like this, no European embassy in Beirut will give me a visa. Do you realize how impossible you have made it for me to travel? Why? Why would you do such a thing?”
    Landers thumbed rapidly through the travel document and returned it as if it were something he did not care to touch. Husayn took the opportunity to excuse himself and limped off toward the bar before Landers spoke again. “I would imagine that my colleague at the embassy didn’t give you a visa because he didn’t expect you to come back to Lebanon,” he ventured.
    “But how can he know such a thing from looking at my passport and talking to me for no more than three minutes? It is absolutely not true!”
    “I’m sorry, Layla, but nearly every time we’ve given visas to young women in your situation, they haven’t returned. They go to Detroit or Cleveland or Sacramento, get engaged to nice Arab American boys, and live happily ever after. That’s all very nice, but it’s not what visitor visas are about. For you to get a visitor visa, we need to see evidence of strong ties that will bring you back to Lebanon. The consul you talked to probably wasn’t convinced you have them.”
    “But of course I have ties here! I have lived here all my life. My mother and my three brothers are here. And I have a good job with the United Nations, at ECWA. I have letters proving I am working as an administrator for humanitarian affairs for four years!”
    “If that were all there were to it, Layla, I might be convinced. But let’s face it, you don’t have Lebanese citizenship. You carry a Palestinian identity card from the UN, and