328
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
of an approaching crowd, I could see a large white flag tacked
on to a stick. It was the Jewish surrender party! The soldiers
and local hangers-on parted, in silence, almost in respect.
Holding the flag was the patriarchal figure of a rabbi in
black garments, flowing beard, hobbling along on a cane.
Rabbi Ben Zion Hazzan Ireq, seventy-two years of age, was a
tall man, as Old City Jews went, and his head was high, not
cringing in fear or cowardice. He was accompanied by a short,
frightened wisp of a man, an ancient eighty-six-year-old Jew
named Israel Zief Mintzbcrg. He had sad, shrunken little eyes,
a sallow face and shiny black clothing, including a cape that
came to his ankles. Mintzberg walked with quick, hesitant
little steps, looking around as though he expected a blow from
any quarter, somewhat bewildered that it hadn't yet come.
The two, surrounded by Legionnaires, walked as if they had
just emerged from a dark cellar, groping their way laboriously
over the cobblestone pavement of the Armenian quarter.
Through an arched doorway at the rear of the school they
entered the confines of the Vank and were led by the back
entrance into the basement. They were seated on a bench and
waited for Captain Mahmoud Bey Mousa. The Arabs, and
later the newsmen who arrived, all excited, gathered around
them. There was neither hostility nor jubilance from members of the Arab Legion. Representatives of the Ikhwan el
Muslimin—from Egypt, Syria, and Palestine—prowled around
savagely, growling at the treatment being accorded the emissaries.
''The Jews deserve only this. . . ." One of them made a
cutting motion across his throat.
The deliberations were brief. When Captain Mahmoud arrived, he told the two, curtly but politely, of the unconditional terms of surrender. They were to accept or reject them.
The two ancients left the way they came, carrying the white
flag, through the Armenian quarter. The little Jew several
times looked over his shoulder, as if still expecting the blow
that never came.