84
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
and hawklike. I could tell by his gray turban and flowing, grayblack burnous that he was a Bedouin from the desert, and at
the same time a sheikh of El Azhar. I had caught a glimpse of
him the previous night. Now he was whiling away his time
by toying with the sibha, a string of large oval amber beads,
used by the Arabs to count their prayers and also to work off
nervous energy. Fascinated, I watched his enormous hands,
capable of choking a throat as easily as crushing an egg, as he
endlessly slipped bead after bead through his fingers. He put
away the beads and dug his hand deep into the folds of a
pocket inside the voluminous burnous. It emerged with a
handful of heavy-caliber bullets. His other hand dipped, and
came out clutching a Belgian automatic. He placed this in
his lap and patted it fondly.
"Allah! I paid £20 for this, and I won't have my money's
worth until I have killed twenty Jews. One pound, one Jew."
This pleasant observation was translated for me by another
neighbor, a police lieutenant who had replaced my student
friend. I suspected he had taken a seat near me to watch me
more closely, and I played my hand accordingly.
"How many have you killed so far?" I asked the Bedouin.
"With my rifle, four. With the knife, two." He held up his
fingers each time. "That is not enough in the sight of Allah.
I have come to Cairo to buy heavy arms. With these we shall
have a blood feast." He apparently took a fancy to me. "You
are the first American I have liked," he said. "You do not display Western manners. You do not have superior ways. I feel
toward you as a brother. You talk like an Arab. Allah, you look
like an Arab. I want you to visit me in the Negev," he said
quite suddenly. He was evidently in earnest, because he gave
me his name, which I carefully copied down—Sheikh Younis
Hussein Mohammed—and detailed instructions for reaching
his desert stronghold, near Falouja, above the Palestine-Egyptain border. Leaning over, he asked what kind of gun I carried.
"I shoot only with my cameras," I said. "I need no guns."
"You are a brave American, but not a wise one," Sheikh