“The imam in Hebron?” Mahmoud asked.
“And others.” Joshua turned to explain. “Until recently, Jew and Arab lived together in this country without severe problems. Not as family, necessarily, but neighbours. That is no longer the case, for many reasons. The Arab people fear what the Balfour and Sykes-Picot agreements might mean. They fear outsiders in general. They respect the British, and they revere General Allenby, but they need a focal point for their uncertainty, and the recent influx of Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe looks to be that. Unless something is done, the Jews will become the scapegoat. The imams and mullahs are encouraging it, those who are political.” The man ran a frustrated hand through his thin hair.
“The speeches are escalating, becoming more bloodthirsty every day. We’ve had several incidents of rock throwing, a Jewish shop burnt, wild rumours. The murders of Yitzak and his two men are the worst; had you not made it appear as if the poor man had fallen on his scythe and his two hired men fled with the petty cash from the kitchen, I have no doubt that we would have had a full-scale riot on our hands in Jaffa by mid-week.
“General Allenby does his best, but he’s only one man, and has only so much oil to pour on troubled waters. And there is so much misunderstanding—it’s difficult to know where to begin. When the fellah hears from his betters that the real meaning of the Balfour agreement is that his ten dry acres are to be cut in half and shared with a Jewish family from Russia, he believes that is what the government means by providing a ‘Jewish homeland.’ He does not know of the Paris peace talks, does not trust distant politicians to protect him. All he knows is that the Turkish yoke was on his neck for four hundred years; now it is off, he will fight to keep it off. ”
“Aurens used to say, ‘Semites have no half-tones in their register of vision,’ ” Mahmoud commented. The precision of the words sounded incongruous in his heavy accent.
“Colonel Lawrence being something of an expert himself in the matter of black-and-white truths,” Joshua noted drily.
“Still, it is true,” Mahmoud persisted. “This is an emotional people, not an intellectual one.” Not entirely true, I thought, given the record of Arabic scholarship, but I was not about to quibble.
“Tell me this, Mahmoud,” said Joshua, addressing his teacup. “Do you think this reaction could be a deliberate one, rather than strictly spontaneous?”
The simple question instantly galvanised the room: Holmes quivered to attention like a hunting dog on point, Ali straightened, and Mahmoud’s eyes went dark. Holmes broke the silence.
“That is a most intriguing suggestion. May I ask what brought it to mind?”
“A certain degree of similarity in the… one couldn’t call them ‘attacks,’ exactly, although some of them were. ‘Symptoms’ is how I think of them. Arabic pamphlets that bear a strong resemblance to one another. Identical rumours springing up at two or more far-flung places before they are heard in the intervening countryside. Slanted translations of British policy statements that give signs of having been planted. An unexpected sophistication in the times and places where rocks are thrown and speeches made, and a marked tendency of the ringleaders to disappear without a trace.”
“The trembling of a web,” Holmes said to himself. There was a look of intense gratification on the few square inches of face visible between kuffiyah and beard.
“A web?”
Holmes waved the question away impatiently. “Where is the centre of this activity?”
“This is a small country, Mr Holmes. If the roads were in good nick one could motor down the better part of it in a day, or ride it in a week. Most of the disruptions have been within the triangle formed by Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa, but then most of the population is there as well. If there is a centre to the disturbances, I would guess it to be around Jerusalem, probably to the north of the city.”
Holmes controlled himself admirably, saying not a word against the idea of relying on a guess, which he regarded as a mental aberration, shockingly destructive to clean habits of thought. He merely mused as if to himself, “If conspiracy there is, who are the conspirators?”
Joshua took it as a question, and settled back in his camp chair for another lecture. “In Palestine, clearly there are three main parties: Christian, Jewish, and Moslem. I think for the time being we may leave aside the fringe minorities, the Druse, the Sufi Moslems, and so forth. And if we assume that the disturbances are aimed at increasing ferment and upsetting the status quo that the military government is struggling to maintain, then the Christians are unlikely to be the cause: under British rule, they will be in the best position they have held since the Crusaders were evicted in 1291. Jews are more usually targets than instigators, although there have been several staged reprisals against Moslems, but it would be hasty to assume that this is a Moslem conspiracy. There are several factions among the Jews, particularly recent immigrants, who see the traditional complacency of the native Jewish population as the main obstacle to establishing a Jewish homeland here. Jews whose families have been here for generations tend to keep their heads down and pray; radical immigrants, the Zionists from Russia and Europe, can be firebrands, anxious to unite their people beneath a sense of adversity. It is worth noting that, Yitzak’s farm aside, there have been no deaths or serious injuries in the post-war clashes.”
“Yet,” I muttered.
“This man Mikhail,” Holmes broke in. “Where did he die?”
It was clear that Holmes had not heard a word of Joshua’s peroration. The round spymaster scowled, and addressed himself to Mahmoud. “Mikhail was found halfway down the Wadi Estemoa. Two boys chasing a goat spotted him. Sheer chance he was found at all.”
Holmes had bent to run his eyes across the map, and when he found the river-bed in question he pointed it out to me.
“You have no idea what he was doing there?” he asked Joshua.
“As I said, I assume he was listening.”
“Was he robbed?”
“There was nothing in his bag but the basics: flour and coffee— already ground—a bottle of water, his tobacco, that sort of thing. No money, and his gun was missing, but the two Bedouin boys took those. Had I forced them to hand their loot over.” he added in explanation, “they would never report anything else they might find in the future, nor would their entire clan. Instead I gave the boys a small reward, and they admitted to taking the gun and the money, but swore they took nothing else. I believe them.”
“Was he from this area?”
“Mikhail? No. Despite his Christian name, he was a Druse, from the hills above Haifa. However, he knew the whole of Palestine intimately. He was a dragoman before the war, especially popular with the English and German tourists, I understand.” He caught himself. “But Mahmoud knows this, and you do not need to. You’re not investigating a murder, Mr Holmes. You are not investigating anything, in fact. You are here in a strictly subordinate rôle. Is that understood?”