186
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
saw a protecting rockpile or fence. By the time we arrived, the
convoy was well on its way. We hailed a small armored car to
drive us back to our truck.
As Moustafa scrambled into the car, I barely squeezed in
after him. I found myself sitting on what I presumed was
someone's leg. When I turned to beg his pardon, I found the
man dead. He was an Arab Legionnaire propped up against a
tire. At first I saw only his arm. Then I saw that he had been
shot through the left temple, and the blood had clotted over
his face and eyeball. His mouth was partly open, but I could
see no teeth. A small white bandage, thrown over his head,
had become saturated with his blood. The pallor of death had
already set in. I looked around. Exactly thirteen of us were
jammed tightly inside the sweating interior of the car. To my
right was a veiled woman. Her hands were bloody and she was
weeping.
"Was he your son?" I asked in broken Arabic.
"La, no," she said, and indicated that she had bloodied her
hands helping him into the truck.
The Legionnaire was the first dead man I had ever touched.
The soldier's legs wobbled grotesquely against mine, and the
horribly mutilated face stared vacantly in the hot, cramped
confines of the armored car. We reached Faris, who was
waiting for us in our truck.
We continued south, toward the Negev, driving across
lands now waste, but which could easily bloom—not by
insh'allah, or by agricultural methods pre-dating Mohammed
—but by toil, by planning, by science, by water. We passed
small herds of bearded black goats tended by young boys in
rags. We came to what I thought at first was a rubble heap. It
turned out to be a native mud village. Hordes of children
swarmed across our path, followed by mangy dogs. Once again
we passed the telephone lines, stripped of copper, swinging
pathetically in the hot wind.