396
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
German-American Bund, an American Nazi and Jew-hater.
"Now tell me about yourself," I said casually.
He had been caught by the English on a submarine off Italy
and imprisoned in various camps. Finally, he and another German, a captain in the Wehrmacht, had escaped. They had
been fighting with the Arabs since then. He and other Germans had fought in Katamon in Jerusalem (confirming Israeli
disclosures that instructions had been found there in German). I noted that Stefan was well-dressed and smoked expensive cigarettes.
"I don't receive money from any Arabs. Someone else gives
it when I need it," he said. "You will meet many Germans
here. We have headquarters here and in Beirut. There arc also
many Yugoslav Moslems here. Some of them are living in a
mosque. I will introduce you to them. Yugoslavs and Germans
are everywhere in the Syrian army. Ach, we had a bloody time.
These Arabs think you can win a war by talking instead of by
discipline and sacrifice."
"I've been with them. I know. Have you been hurt fighting?"
"I've just come out of the hospital. My body is still full of
shrapnel. Here, feel this." Stefan rolled up his sleeve. His arm
was lacerated with healing flesh wounds. "Thirty-two days in
the hospital!"
"Tonight let's celebrate," I said. "Let's go to a night-club."
When I met Stefan later, the Damascus sky was bright with
stars, especially brilliant over the blacked-out city. Stefan was
dressed to kill.
"Let's go to the best place in town," he said.
"Yallah!"
We walked up a dark street, turned into another, even
darker, and reached the Garden of the Orient. I paid the admission. Inside, we seated ourselves at a table under a tree. I
saw that we were in a fenced-in open-air casino dotted with