The Moslem (Black) Brotherhood
87
I decided to leave on this pleasant note, lest I overplay my
hand. As I stood up, half the room rose in respect to the
American who looked, talked, and thought like an Arab.
Solemnly I shook hands with my new-found friends, the
lieutenant and the sheikh, and renewed my pledge to visit
the latter in the desert. The lieutenant gave me his address and
telephone number and vowed to get me out of any trouble I
might find myself in.
As I kept visiting Ikhwan headquarters, it became increasingly difficult to enter the building inconspicuously, and my
fear grew of detection by the Green Shirts, only a block away.
I made it a point to keep away from Ahmed Hussein and the
members (though I telephoned frequently) until I had finished my investigations of the Ikhwan.
My fame spread to such an extent that on succeeding days
I was allowed to use my camera and to speak freely to anyone
I wished at Ikhwan headquarters—privileges surely never before accorded to a non-Moslem. I walked in and out of the
building, picking up items of information and piecing them
together. I had not yet met the Moorshid. But I met other
memorable characters. Among them was a thug who said
gloatingly to me, pointing to a new automatic he had just
bought: "This is for the Jew in battle. But this,"—pointing
to a dagger—"is for the Jew in Cairo."
Another was Mahmoud Bey Labib, chief recruiting officer
and trainer of Ikhwan volunteer fighters, who had lived in
Germany for a while. Labib Bey was disappointed that I did
not speak German fluently. He knew English, but had taken
an oath not to speak it "until the last Englishman has left
Egyptian soil," he told me through an interpreter. "I am
against everything British, and that includes their cursed
tongue. If I say one word in English by mistake, I must wash
my mouth till every trace disappears."
Labib Bey was square-faced, surly, and apparently angry at
the world as well as himself. He always appeared in a trench
coat and carried leather gloves, after the fashion of the Nazi