282
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
"Why are you out so late?" one of the guards asked.
"Because I am an Arab spy," I said.
HUNGER
OUR food was all but gone at the Pantiles. Only a few cans
of salmon remained. We had no more bread, no more flour,
no more cheese. The boys were down to their last case of beer.
The cats had multiplied and were prowling around, gaunt, like
huge rats. Cornell Acheson, of the Indianapolis News, and I
spent one morning carting loads of accumulated tin cans and
refuse to an empty lot and burning them. Al Noderer of the
Chicago Tribune stayed in bed, recovering from injections
for typhus, typhoid, and cholera. Most of us had already had
the same dosage.
My mind went back to 1919, when my parents were living
in the suburbs of Istanbul. French occupation troops, white
and Senegalese, moved in. In a few weeks' time all the cats disappeared, including our pet. No one could explain the mystery until one morning I chanced to a open garbage can and
discovered piles of vertebrae and heaps of cat fur, among
which I recognized the pelt of our pet. Weeping, I brought
the skin home. I wondered if I should have been more considerate toward the Pantiles cats, perhaps even fattened them
a bit. . . .
In the afternoon I wandered off to forage for food. Stopping at two grocery shops, I was asked for my ration cards. I
had none; at the Pantiles none of us had taken the trouble
to get them. A third grocer helped me out with a single wafer
of matzoh. "It's against regulations, but I do it only because
I have a son and daughter in Brooklyn." I had thought I'd be
able to buy food with a display of American dollars. But the
caliber of Israeli patriotism was high. I got nothing. There