Adventure, February 20, 1922 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Seventeen Thieves of El-Kahil in its own home, blacker than the gloom of graveyards. There was not a sound or a suggestion of anything but mother-night, that you might lean against. - Grim led the way in. It felt like groping your way forward into a trap, for in spite of the insufferable “silence—or because of it—there was a sensation after the first few yards of being watched by eyes you could ' not see and waited for by enemies who held their breath. | Twenty yards down a passage so narrow ‘that you could touch both sides at once without fully extending your arms Grim stopped and listened, and it was so dark that Cohen and I cannoned into him. Little by little then, you became aware of in- finitely tiny dots of lights, where doors and shutters did not quite fit and once or twice of a footfall about as noisy as a cat’s. There was teeming life behind the scenes, as awake and watchful as the jungle creatures that wander between the thickets when men go by. Suildenky Grim began to call aloud in Hebrew, sending the mellow, rounded vowels booming along between the walls, but getting no response except -the echo of his own voice. Three times he repeated what sounded like the same words and then turned back. “Quick! Out of this! An Arab isn’t safe here!”’ By comparison the gloom of the street looked like ‘daylight.- We made for it like small boys afraid of graveyard ghosts. ‘What did you say to them?” I asked and Cohen snickered. “A verse from the Psalms in the original— ‘Come, behold the works of the Lord. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God... . . The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.’ ” “Now who’s kiddin’ himself?” asked Cohen. ‘You think they wouldn’t, sooner know the Sikhs were coming?”’ “D’you know the history of your own - people?” Grim answered. “There isn’t a man in that ghetto who hasn’t a sharp weapon of some kind. -If they thought the Sikhs were on the way they’d very likely start something for the Sikhs to finish. That’s crowd psychology. Get a number of people all in one place, hating one thing a ~ 23 or afraid of one thing’ and any fool can stampede them into violence. Jews are fighters; don’t forget it; if they weren’t they’d have been exterminated long ago. If the Jews start anything tonight we're done for. That voice in the dark may make; them think. Come on.’ 5 ‘Where are we going now?” + ‘To the Haram.” ““Geel”’ There was no need to explain to iss what that meant and the deadly danger of it. _Beneath the mosque in the Haram is the cave of Machpelah in which Abraham’s | bones aré said to lie. The Arabs claim- * descent from Abraham in the lineof Ishmael — and Esau, and dwell lingeringly on the ~~ story of how both men lost their birthright, ae as they hold, unfairly; so now that they — - have the tables turned and own the tomb if of the common ancestor, they take delight — a in keeping out the descendants of Jacob, and the death of a Jew caught in that place 2S would be swift. Jews and other “infidels? _ with rare exceptions are allowed as far as ___ the seventh step leading upward from the ~ Me street, but not one inch nearer. Figs “Are we going inside?’ asked Cohen. x. “May as well.” Oe “You’ve got your nervel” “We'll be safe if you’ve got yours. ” Cohen did not answer and I would have. given a lot to know just what was going on in his mind. If the prospect of entering * that mosque thrilled me it must have méant vastly more to him, however broad his dis- - respect and loose his faith might be;fornot a Jew had stood within stone-throw of the — tomb of Abraham for nearly two thousand 5 years, and all the Jews of the world, Ortho- dox or not, look back through the mists of _ time to Abraham at least as thoughtfully - as does New England to the Pilgrim Fathers. | If he regarded Abraham as myth it was none the less an. adventure to tread where no Jew had dared show himself for nineteen centuries; but I don’t think he did, for you need not scratch the most free-thinking Jew particularly deep before you find a pride of ancestry as stiff as any man’s. Cohen was not one of those “international” fire- brands that offend by denying race as well as creed, but a Epiehty decent fellow as the Saal showed. Grim knew the way through the dark | streets as a fox knows the rabbit-runs, and led without a moment’s_hesitation. His ]~comicbooks.com.