Джеймс Миченер - The Source

As soon as he saw the Arab he said what was on his mind: “Get your records in shape, Jemail, because Cullinane’s got to finish this dig by himself.”

“Why?”

“I’m taking the cabinet job. The prime minister announces it tomorrow. And my first appointment will be you. Director-general.” He extended his hand to the Arab.

Tabari drew back. “You know what you’re doing?” he asked suspiciously.

“I sure do,” Eliav said. He threw his arm about Tabari’s shoulder and led him to the edge of the dig, where they sat on stones that had once served as part of a synagogue-basilica-mosque-church, and there the Jew and the descendant of Ur fought it out, as their ancestors had done ages ago. They were two handsome men in the strong middle years of their lives: the ascetic Jew, tall and serious, with hollow cheeks and cautious manner; the man of Ur, with his five children, heavier, browner, with a quicker wit and a more congenial smile. At the dig they had formed a constructive team, assuming responsibility for decisions and sustaining the creative mood on the tell. Now they were about to grope for a reincarnation of that fruitful if tempestuous partnership which Hebrew and Canaanite had shared four thousand years ago and which Jew and Arab had known for thirteen hundred years following the arrival of Islam.

“It’s about time we Jews and Arabs made some real gestures of conciliation,” Eliav began. “Looks like we’re going to share this part of the world for quite a long time.”

“I have no wish to serve as an experiment.”

“And since in the matters I’ll be handling, you’re the best-informed man I know …”

“If you appoint me there could be all sorts of hell.”

“There will be. But we’ve got to encourage the day when Nasser will appoint a Jew to some job of similar importance. And he will.”

“I don’t want to see you get in trouble, Ilan.”

“Trouble I can take . If they fire me I’ll come back here and live off Paul Zodman.”

“But you’ll be up to your neck in Arab-Jewish relations, and I could hurt you.”

“No. You’ll help. To prove that even in these difficult areas Jews and Arabs can work in harmony.”

“There aren’t six people in Israel prepared to believe that.”

“You’re one of the six, and our job is to increase the number.”

“I was always much impressed,” Tabari said, “when your Jewish God halted human sacrifice. Here you are, restoring it.”

“I’m trying to restore something much older. The brotherhood that used to exist on this land. Want to help?”

Tabari studied the invitation for some moments, then said, “No. I’m an Arab, and the fact that I stayed behind to help rebuild this country doesn’t make me any less an Arab. I’ll become your assistant, Eliav, on the day your government gives one sign that it understands Arabs, wants them to stay here, and is willing to accept them as full partners…”

“Haven’t I proved that this summer? Haven’t you and I been full, respectable partners?”

“You and I? Yes. Your government and we Arabs? No.”

“What do you want?”

“Take out your pencil. We want better schools, hospitals, roads to our villages, nurses, a place in the university for our best young men, a partnership in which our talents are respected. We want you to see that on this land there can be a fruitful association of equals. Your intellectuals have got to stop patronizing us as if we were idiot children. Your businessmen have got to accept us as men who can count and who are as honest as they are. Eliav, we want to feel that as Arabs we have a home in your society.”

“Haven’t I conveyed that promise in everything I’ve done this summer?”

“And there’s one other reason why I can’t accept.”

“Do I know what it is?” Eliav asked.

“I think you can guess. In those long discussions we had with Cullinane on the nature of the moral state, I noticed that there was one topic which he often led up to but always shied away from. Americans are taught to be so sensitive about other people’s feelings. Yet this is the problem which really tests the moral foundations of Judaism.”

“You mean the Arab refugees?”

“I do. Those refugees on the other side of the border were in Cullitiane’s mind every time he fell silent in our discussions. They’re in mine, too.”

“What would you have us do?” Eliav asked in frank perplexity. “In 1948, against every plea of the Jews, some six hundred thousand Arabs evacuated this country. They did so at the urging of their political leaders. On the promise that within two weeks they would come back as victors, take over all Jewish property and do what they liked with Jewish women. Now it’s sixteen years later. They tell us the number of refugees has multiplied to a million. Arab governments have not allowed them to find new homes in Arab countries and the time has passed when they can recover their old homes here. What do you want us to do?”

“I’ll join you, Eliav, on the day Israel makes proper restitution for…”

“We’ve agreed to do that! In my first speech I’m to announce that Israel, before the bar of humanity and world opinion, is willing to discuss compensation for every refugee who can prove he left old Palestine, if such a settlement becomes part of a total peace treaty. I’ll go through the world begging Jews in every land to help us pay off that self-imposed obligation. I’ll propose taxes here at home higher than we’ve ever had before. Tabari! Work with me to reach this honorable solution.”

“And what about repatriation?”

Eliav fell silent. Uneasily he moved about the tell and from some distance said, “After we took Zefat I personally went out … in a captured English Land Rover…begging the fleeing Arab refugees to come back to their homes in Zefat. Twice I was shot at, but I kept on, because I knew then that we needed those Arabs and they needed us. But they wouldn’t listen. ‘We’ll come back with an army,’ they boasted. We’ll take everything. Our homes. Your homes. And all the land.’ And they walked over the hills to Syria. A couple of nights later, right where I’m standing, other Arabs killed my wife, yet the next morning, after we had the big fight in Akko…where I met you for the first time…” He looked across the tell at Tabari and asked in a low voice, “What did I do that morning, Jemail?”

The Arab remained silent, and with a sudden leap Eliav was upon him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking them. “What did I do?” he shouted. “Tell me…now!”

In a soft voice, barely audible above the November breeze that was coming down the wadi with the first hints of winter, Tabari said, “You went to the beach, where the boats were filling up with Arab refugees, and you pleaded with every man you could reach: ‘Don’t run away. Stay here and help us build this country.’”

“And did any stay?”

“I did.”

Eliav looked at his friend with the kind of quiet passion that history instills in men of perception. He sat down, burdened by the impossible complexity of the refugee problem, and recalled those fateful days when the Arabs had fled the country. “More than twenty thousand left Akko that day,” he said, “and I went from man to man, but of them all I was able to persuade only you.” He bowed to Tabari, then said with increasing bitterness, “And now they want to come back. When the land is fertile and the shops are filled, when the schools are productive and the mosques are open, they want to come back. It may be too late. In Cyprus we’re seeing what happens when you try to force two different peoples to live together in a majority-minority status. Would you have us create a second Cyprus here?”