Assignment Zoraya

by Edward S. Aarons

  Amr stood up and looked at Durell. He smiled strangely.

  "Once I told you, my friend, that I was never able to say

  this with full belief. But I have said it now, for the first time, with full understanding and absolute acceptance." He paused.

  "Will you come with me?'

  "Yes."

  "And you, Zoraya?"

  She looked at him with wide, tawny eyes, "Yes, Amr. I will always stand with you. Do you truly want me?" "Yes. I truly do." "Then I will go with you, too."

  Often, much later, Durell thought of what followed and tried to understand it. But, later, it was difficult to recapture that morning on the shore of Arabia, facing the burning sea and the flaming city. He could recall the faces of the mob, the inflamed passions that struck the prince, Zoraya, and him like the blast of a furnace when they walked down the broad avenue from Faiz to the Bab es-Salam. He would always see the distorted faces of the mob in his mind, see them jumping and dancing like puppets- reacting to strings of hate. Here and there among the faces that squeezed through the gate was one that reflected awe and fear and perhaps shame, but it was difficult to remember this last very clearly.

  He felt his own fear in him as he walked through the hot sunlight, toward the crowd that turned in startled wonder at the sight of their three small figures. They walked on, facing the inflamed wrath of the city.

  He was not ashamed of his fear. Only a fool would react otherwise. But he walked beside Amr, with the girl between them, and then Amr halted them and walked on alone, a little ahead.

  The crowd fell silent.

  They turned in astonishment toward the Prince of Jidrat.

  A man cried Amr's name, and it rolled back and forth through the blood-spattered mob like a wave, growing as it reached those in the back, still jammed in Faiz Square.

  The name came back to them in a shout.

  And then silence returned.

  Amr's words fell into the silence like stones into a dark pool.

  His Arabic was quiet, gutteral, forceful. He was transformed. He stood straighter and taller, an image of his old royal self. But there was no petty anger in his voice. His words were hard and forceful.

  He told the crowd to go home.

  He said he had come back to assume the imamate for himself. He told them he would never leave Jidrat again.

  He told them he would bring peace and dignity to Jidrat once more, when the shame of their crimes had been eased by the passage of time.

  It was almost enough.

  But not quite.

  Ta'arife's paid agitators did not know their master was dead. The man who had thrown the first stone at the old Imam decided that where the tactic had succeeded once it would succeed again. He scooped up a stone from the rubble at the gate and straightened to throw it.

  Durell shot him.

  It had to be a true shot, sharp and clean and accurate. If it missed or only wounded, the mob would be galvanized into bloody life again.

  The heavy report of his borrowed Colt .45 was like a massive punctuation mark to Prince Amr's speech.

  The agitator fell without a sound.

  "Go home," Amr said quietly. "Go to your homes now."

  Everything hung in the balance.

  Leaderless, not knowing Ta'arife was dead, the street crowd and the soldiers of the mutiny had no one to spur them on. Ihose in the van under the gate pressed back. A murmuring arose There was a disorganized pushing and shoving. The crowd gave way. An aisle was formed.

  Through the aisle came a man in black riding a white donkey. It was the Q'adi Ghezri.

  He looked not to right or left as he rode toward Amr al-

  Maari. When he was a short distance away, under the bloody remainder of the Imam's body, he dismounted from the donkey. His black robe swept the dust. The green band of his turban, which indicated he had fulfilled the holy requirement of a hadj to Mecca, shone under the hot sun.

  His face was the face of a beaten eagle.

  He stood in the sunlight before Prince Amr and said: "I have learned that Colonel Ta'arife is dead. My people are disorganized."

  "And your weapons have been blown up," Amr said curtly.

  "Yes. A messenger has also told me this."

  Amr said to the tall, black-robed figure, "You are under arrest for treason."

  The Q'adi bowed. In his eyes was an acceptance of fate, a submission to events that moved beyond the powers of men.

  "It is as Allah wills," he said.

  And the people went home.

  Chapter Twenty

  The revolution ended like a balloon burst by a pin. But Major Kolia Mikelnikov still had a job to do. He had bis gun, and there was Durell. Not even Naomi had made him forget. The habits of discipline were too strongly ingrained in him to do otherwise.

  Naomi was a miracle. And so was the fact they were both still alive. The Imam had saved them. His appearance at the gate, the pause he gave the onrushing crowd, and then the distraction of the mob as they killed him and hanged his remains from the Bab es-Salam gave Kolia and Naomi a chance to hide in the thick oleander shrubbery on the Faiz grounds.

  There was no time for words then. They witnessed everything from their hiding place. Several times the trampling feet of the mob came so close they were visible to them through the dense green foliage. The shrill cries of the Jidrattis echoed all around and above them.

  Kolia was prepared to die. He could not question Naomi as to how she had appeared out of nowhere in this place where he had not even thought of looking for her. He knew now that she was the Israeli girl that Ta'arife had planned to use as a lure to inflame the mob into a last assault on Faiz, and he silently cursed his inattention, knowing now that Naomi had been in the al-Zaysir with him, so near and unsuspected, living out her hours of terror.

  How could she ever forgive him? How—when he could not forgive himself?

  In those moments when Naomi shuddered beside him as they lay hidden in the bushes, with death from the mob so near, he felt that this miracle was too great to accept. It i was a trick of fate, he thought, and any moment they would be found and he would empty the Tokarev at the nearest men, and then it would all end, before it could begin again.

  He did not do more than whisper Naomi's name and smile encouragingly into her wide eyes.

  Then Amr appeared, and Mikelnikov witnessed what followed.

  He could have shot Durell then.

  But the thought of what might follow, the new lease he would give to mob violence and the immediate danger to Naomi, made him put his gun down again. Still, he did not forget his mission.

  It was long minutes before they felt safe. Once Naomi started to rise, but he pulled her back into their leafy hiding place. Naomi stared at him in utter wonderment. He sensed confusion, a struggle in her. He touched her bruised cheek gently with his big, strong hand; he covered her breast with a torn shred of her dress. She seemed unaware of it.

  "Kolia?" she whispered. "It is really you?"

  "Yes. It is something to wonder at, is it not?"

  "But where did you come from?"

  He told her, briefly. "And you?"

  She told him how she came to Jidrat aboard the Atlantic Maid. How she had fled Budapest to run and hide and reach Vienna, and how from Vienna she had gone to Rome with other refugees, and at last had arrived in Haifa.

  "I have an apartment now in Tel Aviv," she said. The words meant nothing, simply filling the space of distance and time between them. "Tel Aviv is a beautiful city. I have a good job. I was happy there."

  "I see. Will you go back?"

  She remembered her terror. "Will the Jidrattis let me?"

  "I th!nk it can be arranged now."

  She said: "Well, then, if I can, I will go back to Tel Aviv."

  "Naomi—?"'

  "No," she said.

  "Will you never forgive me?"

  "How can I?"

  "If you hadn't run away, I could have helped. I searched ^everywhere, in so many cities, loo
king at every woman with black hair and the shape of your body, and every time I was disappointed I died a little."

  "Perhaps it was better that way."

  "Look at me, Naomi."

  She looked at him. Her eyes were blank. But her mouth trembled. He said, "Are we still married, Naomi?"

  "I suppose so. Legally, yes."

  "So you are still my wife."

  "I am nothing to you."

  "Your father and your brothers—"

  "I try not to think of it any more."

  "Do you hate me so much, then?"

  "I don't hate you. Last night, when I thought I would never be alive at this hour, I stopped hating you, Kolia. I only wanted to remember how it once was, how wonderful you were to me, how we loved each other."

  "I still love you," he said.

  "You killed them," she said, meaning her father and brothers.

  He said nothing. He could not excuse himself on the basis of duty or military necessity or the need to preserve oneself by following orders. He could not tell her how he had protested against General Murov's plans. Nothing could help him.

  "So it is finished?" he whispered.

  "You do not understand. I have forgiven you," she said. "But it means nothing. Have you changed? Would you not do it again, if you had to? Isn't that right?"

  "I don't know." His face was long and sad and heavy in the shadows of the sheltering oleanders. He thought of Du-rell, of his job here. Where did it end? Where did the machine and the state leave off, and where did the man begin? "I don't know," he said again.

  And then Durell walked alone down the empty avenue to the Bab es-Salam. He walked slowly, his hands at his sides. He was looking for them. He had heard about the Israeli girl and the Russian who had vanished when the Imam opened the gate.

  Mikelnikov knew that Durell wanted him.

  He stood up with the Tokarev in his hand.

  "Durell!" he called.

  Durell saw him. His hands were at his sides. He was covered by Kolia's gun. His face was expressionless in the glare of sunlight.

  "Kolia," Naomi said. "What are you doing?"

  "Be still, little one. It is between me and this man."

  "But he saved us, Kolia! Why do you have your gun—?"

  "I have my job to do," Mikelnikov said, and the words were tortured in his throat. "Do you understand how it is? If I fail, I can never go home!"

  "Yes, or they will kill you," Durell said. "The people you work for sometimes are like that. And you are anxious to stay with them?"

  "Yes, I don't want to be alone and homeless like—like—"

  He stared at Naomi.

  Naomi suddenly wrenched free and tore through the shrubbery and stood beside the American. Her face was white; her eyes blazed.

  "Then kill us both," she said. "That is what you are good for, Kolia. Iwas alone and homeless, too. So kill me, like you killed my father and my brothers!" Mikelnikov stared at her. His big body, strong and full of life, was devoted to the duty he had been trained for.

  Durell waited. He knew it was useless to try for his own gun. He did not understand what was happening between the Russian and the Israeli girl. He stood in the hot sunlight and wondered.

  "Naomi?" Kolia whispered. "I can never go back if I—"

  "Back to what?" she asked.

  "I—I don't know."

  "If you love me, Kolia, will you come with me?"

  "With you?"

  "To my new home. To my apartment in Tel Aviv."

  He said, "They would not want me. Or accept me."

  "Yes, they will. Yes! I want you. So they will want you."

  Major Kolia Mikelnikov stood on a threshold. He could step either way. He looked at Naomi and Durell and saw they were not afraid. He saw the look in her eyes. It was one of hoping and praying. But not for herself. She was praying for him. For him, and perhaps a new life. If he stepped forward, he could never go back. He would have to live with her people then, forever. He wondered if that would be so bad. Theirs was a new, hard, pioneering world; and they were strangers; but they were not complete strangers, because they were Naomi's people. He could make himself useful, he thought. He was strong and intelligent and he could work at many constructive things. He could build a new life and a new way for so many others who were like Naomi.

  He felt a stir of excitement in him and laughed. He threw down the gun. It lay in the dust and the debris of the Gate of Peace.

  Durell stooped to pick it up.

  "Leave it there," Kolia said. "I am finished with it."

  "I wish I could," Durell said. "I wish I could go with you."

  By evening, the city was quiet again. The fires were out.

  The bazaars were open, the shops unshuttered, and the merchants sat on their baradas and drank hot sweet tea and bargained for their wares.

  At the Faiz Palace, the servants had returned and the guards paraded at drill, imitating the rigid British steps of the Buckingham Palace Guard, in unconscious obedience to their English Army instructors of another year.

  The oil wells were pumping again. The tankers at the quay were like strange sea monsters, sinking low in the water as they sucked the oil into their bellies. The sun went down behind the Djebel Haradh, and a cool wind blew from the sea.

  Durell remembered that the nakhoda had called the wind the breath of God.

  The wind blew quietly through Faiz, and into the room where he sat drinking coffee with Amr and Zoraya. From the east side of the city came the sound of the first plane lifting from the reopened airport; the big silver jet circled Jidrat once and then flew west.

  "You understand," Amr said, "I thought it wise to get the Russian and his wife out of Jidrat as soon as possible. I decided it was best to let them board the plane."

  "Are they still in love?" Zoraya asked.

  "Yes," Durell said.

  Amr said briskly, "As for you, my friend, I give you my personal thanks, but nothing more. Do you understand? I promise you and your government nothing. No special favors, no special arrangements. Jidrat will be neutral."

  "Like Egypt?" Durell asked wryly.

  "Truly neutral. What happened here was not an affliction brought in from the outside, like a disease. No, the disease is here, in the fact that we have much to learn and do and change, before we can walk with the rest of the world. I can help them. I shall spend the rest of my life helping them. And the past shall be only a dream."

  "No one could ask for more than fairness and justice to all, Imam Amr," Durell said gravely. He looked at Zoraya. "And you?"

  She said nothing.

  Amr said, "She is my wife. She stays at my side."

  "It is the will of Allah," Durell said.

  The cool soothing breeze of evening blew through the broken window of the U. S. Consulate office. T. P. Fenner

  finished talking on the radio-telephone through a hookup via Karachi. He had given a long report on the abortive revolution in Jidrat. He had talked long and earnestly and persuasively, and the return message had filled him with an enormous sense of gratification.

  First, he was commended highly for the job he had done here during the past forty-eight hours. As a result, he was directed to call upon the new Imam as soon as it was convenient, with full credentials and immediate recognition of the new regime. When this was done, he was to await nis successor, who was on his way from Malaya to relieve him.

  T. P. Fenner was being promoted.

  His next post was in the Paris Embassy.

  He sighed, quite contented with himself, and reached for the bottle of bourbon on his desk. Then he chuckled. In Paris, he would have to develop a taste for fine old brandies, he decided. There could be worse duties, he thought.

  Yes, he felt quite satisfied with T. P. Fenner. The report he had telephoned may have been somewhat colored, but he already believed his version of what had happened. And who could prove what had happened here in this crazy city last night. Nobody. He was here at the consulate, and all was quiet a
gain.

  No damage done.

  And he had his promotion.

  All good things, he decided, came to those who wait.

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Pages

  Back Cover