Thieves in the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

where he was, not even with Assistant DistrictCommissioner 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 startedto 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