Leon Uris (94 page)

As in all Arab lands, these Jews lived as second-class citizens. There were the usual repressive laws, unequal taxation, persecutions, and denial of the civil rights given to Moslems. The degree of persecution varied with the particular ruler in the particular area.

A standing rule forbade Jews’ raising their voices before a Moslem, building a house higher than a Moslem, touching a Moslem, or passing a Moslem on the right side. A Jew must not ride a camel, for the mount would put his head higher than a Moslem’s. In a land where the camel was the chief mode of transportation, this was a severity. Jews lived in
mellahs
, Oriental versions of ghettos.

The world moved on and progressed. Time stood still in Yemen. It remained as primitive as the jungle and as remote and inaccessible as Nepal or Outer Mongolia. No hospital existed in Yemen, no school or newspaper or printing press or radio or telephone or highway.

It was a land of desert and vicious mountains linked only by the paths of camel caravans. Hidden cities nestled in twelve-thousand-foot ranges surrounded by hundreds of thousands of square miles of complete waste. Illiteracy was nearly a hundred per cent. Backward, forsaken, wild and uncharted, some of its boundaries were never defined.

Yemen was ruled by an Imam, a relative of Mohammed, and the personal representative of Allah, the Merciful, the All-Compassionate. The Imam of Yemen was an absolute ruler. He controlled the life of every subject. He controlled the gold and the single crop of coffee. He answered to no cabinet. He provided no civil or social services. He held power by dexterously balancing tribal strength, being continually occupied in crushing one tribe or aiding another among the hot desert feuds and the raging jealousies. He kept hostile tribes under control by kidnaping their people and holding them as hostages. He kept hundreds of slaves. He sat in cross-legged pompousness and dispensed justice according to his whim, ordering the noses of prostitutes cut off and the hands of thieves amputated. He scorned civilization and did all in his power to keep it from penetrating his kingdom, although he was forced to yield occasionally from fear of his powerful Saudi Arabian neighbor to the north who dabbled in international intrigue.

Part of the Imam’s fear of civilization derived from civilization’s desire to subjugate his land. Despite its remoteness it was located in a corner of the world that formed a gateway to the Orient through the Red Sea. Time and again Yemen became a battlefield as colonial expansionists set covetous eyes on it.

The Imam traditionally assumed the role of benevolent despot toward the Jews. So long as the Jews remained subservient they were given some protection. The Imam was cautious: the Jews were the finest artisans and craftsmen of the land. Their generations passed down the arts of silversmithing, jewelry making, minting, leatherwork, carpentry, shoemaking, and a hundred other trades which most Arabs had not mastered. The latter either farmed or comprised the roving Bedouin bands. Thus skill brought the Jews some measure of protection.

That the Jews of Yemen remained Jews was incredible. For three thousand years these people had no contact with the outer world. Their lives would have been much easier had they taken up Islam. Yet the Yemenite Jews kept the Torah, the Laws, the Sabbath, and the holidays through the centuries of isolation. Many of the Jews were illiterate in Arabic but all of them knew Hebrew. There were no presses; all holy books were written by hand with great accuracy and passed down through the generations.

Direct pressure was often brought to bear to make them convert from Judaism to Islam, but they resisted. When the Imam began to abduct orphans and convert them, the Jews embraced the practice of immediately marrying orphans no matter what their age. There were cases of children only a few months old becoming husbands or wives.

In physical appearance, in dress, in action, and in spirit the present-day Yemenite Jews could have been mistaken for ancient prophets. As in Biblical days, they still practiced multiple marriage. They believed in the evil eye, in ill winds and a variety of demons, against which they wore protective amulets. Their belief in the Bible was absolutely literal.

During the years, the Yemenite Jews never stopped looking toward Jerusalem. They waited through the centuries in patience and devotion for Him to send the word for them to “go up.” From time to time small groups or individuals managed to get out of Yemen, and they returned to Palestine and established a small community there. And then, the word came, as the prophets had declared it would!

Yemen declared war upon Israel after the Israeli Declaration of Independence and sent a token force to fight in the Egyptian Army. This action apprised the Jews of the fact that Israel had been reborn. Their rabbis told them it was the message from God. King David had returned to Jerusalem! Their long wait would come to an end! The Haham—the Wise Ones—told them to rise and go up to the Promised Land on wings of the eagle!

When the first stir of this Yemenite exodus reached the ears of those in Israel, the War of Liberation still raged. Little was known of the number of the Yemenites, of how to get them out, or what to do with them.

The chief Haham went to the Imam and petitioned the All-Merciful to allow the Jews to leave. There were a number of political and economic reasons why the Imam felt it was better to keep the Jews. The rabbi intimated that the Imam had better reacquaint himself with the chapters of Exodus in the Old Testament.

The Imam sat cross-legged in his harem and thought for several days. The rabbi had made his point. The thought of the Ten Plagues was in the Imam’s heart. Not long before the chief rabbi had petitioned him a typhoid epidemic had wiped out a quarter of his population. He decided that it was a warning from Allah.

The Imam agreed that the Jews could leave with the condition that all property was left to him, a head tax was paid, and several hundred artisans and craftsmen stayed as hostages to teach the Moslems.

The Jews of Yemen left behind their fields and their homes. They packed what they could carry and began a trek through the wild and murderous mountains, the searing sun, and the vast wastelands scourged by hundred-mile-an-hour winds.

They walked toward the border of the Western Protectorate, this gentle little people with olive skins and delicate features. They were turbaned and wore the same kind of long striped robes that were worn in the palace of Solomon. The women from Sa’na were dressed in black gowns with white fringe and they carried their babies in slings on their backs. They trudged along in the fulfillment of a prophecy, easy prey to the Arab tribes who took their meager possessions as toll for the passage.

The protectorates along the Arabian Peninsula consisted of a complex of large and small Arab kingdoms, sheikdoms and Bedouin tribes which skirted the shores from the Red Sea along the Gulf of Aden on through to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. The British controlled the area by a hundred different treaties which paid tribute in arms or money to the tribes for oil rights. In turn, the British attempted to keep the feuds down and give protection and passage.

The key place in this holding was the Crown Colony of Aden in the Western Protectorate. The port of Aden was a passageway between East and West, settled by Greeks, British, Arabs, and Jews, and a blend of oriental filth, Asiatic exoticness, British rigidity, traces of industrial progress, and the wildness of a port of call. It was at once an exciting and disgusting place.

The port of Aden was the goal of the Yemenite exodus. At first the British did not quite know what to do with these people pouring in over their border in caravans that seemed right out of the Bible. They were still at odds with the Jews over the mandate, yet they could feel no hatred for the Yemenites. The British gave conditional approval to the Yemenites to enter and establish camps, provided the Israelis came down and got them out.

They were tragic figures as they came from Yemen, dressed in rags, filthy and half dead from starvation and thirst. Almost all their possessions had been stolen from them by the Arabs. But each man still carried his Bible and each village still carried the Holy Torah of the synagogue.

A hasty camp was set up at Hashed near the port of Aden. The Israelis covered the border between the Western Protectorate and Yemen. As soon as there was news of another group arriving, they rushed transport to the border to bring them to Hashed. There was a shortage of personnel and supplies at Hashed. The organization badly lagged behind the needs of the numbers coming through.

The immigration people faced the additional difficulty of having to deal with a semiprimitive people. The Yemenites could not comprehend things like water taps, toilets, or electric lights. This was a community who had suddenly caught up with almost three thousand years of progress in hours. Motor vehicles, medicine, western dress, and a thousand things were strange and awesome to them. It was a frightening experience.

The women shrieked as doctors and nurses tried to remove their lice-filled rags to exchange them for clean clothing. They refused to have their bodies examined for sores and diseases, and rebelled against shots and vaccinations. There was a continuous fight against the workers who tried to remove temporarily the infants who badly needed treatment for malnutrition.

Fortunately there was a partial solution that kept the workers and doctors from complete frustration. The camp workers, mostly Israelis with an intimate knowledge of the Bible, quickly learned to go to the Yemenite rabbis with appropriate Biblical passages, and thereby nearly anything could be accomplished. So long as it was written in “the Book,” the Yemenites would accede.

The Hashed camp grew, and reports along the Western Protectorate frontier told of more Yemenites coming. Under agreement with the British, the Israel Provisional Government had to get them out of Aden. So Arctic Circle Airways became Palestine Central and Foster J. MacWilliams unwittingly answered an age-old prophecy by dropping from the sky with the first of the great “eagles.”

The arrival of the plane created tremendous excitement. The first group picked up their Torah and their water bottles and were removed to the airport. They saw the eagle and nodded their heads knowingly: God had sent it as He said He would. But when they were asked to board, they refused. The rabbi in the group remembered it was the Sabbath. A terrible argument ensued. The Hashed camp chief explained that thousands of people were waiting to get to Israel and it was unfair to hold up the eagle for even a day. No amount of arguing could make them break the Sabbath. They sat adamantly under the wings of the eagle and refused to budge. After three thousand years of waiting, they could wait one more day.

Foster J. MacWilliams took one look at these strange creatures, listened to the arguments in the gobbledygook lingo, uttered a short oath to Stretch Thompson and went into town and got very intoxicated.

He was awakened the next morning and carted to the airport with a horrible throbbing hangover from mixing Greek ouzo, rice wine, and Scotch. He watched the Yemenites carrying their water bottles and their Torah aboard the plane.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Foster commented on the procession.

“Captain MacWilliams,” a voice said behind him. He turned and faced a tall, well-shaped
sabra
who introduced herself as Hanna. She was in her mid-twenties and wore the traditional blue of a
kibbutz
and had sandals on her feet. “I will be flying with you and taking care of the passengers.”

At that point the trip started to become interesting to Foster. Hanna was unconcerned that he was looking her over very carefully. “Do you have any particular instructions? I mean this is our first experiment.”

“Hell, no. Just keep them gooks out of the pilot’s cabin. Of course,
you
are welcome to come in ... any time. And call me ‘Tex.’ ”

Foster was watching the loading. The line of Yemenites seemed endless. “Hey! What’s the score? How many of them do you think that plane will hold?”

“We have a hundred and forty listed.”

“What! You crazy? We won’t get that thing into the air. Now, Hanna, you just run up there and tell whoever is putting those people on to take half of them off.”

“Captain MacWilliams,” the girl pleaded, “they are very light people.”

“So are peanuts light. That don’t mean that I can haul a billion of them.”

“Please. I promise you won’t have any trouble with them.”

“You’re damned right I won’t. We’ll all be dead at the end of the runway.”

“Captain MacWilliams. Our situation is desperate. The British have ordered us to get them out of Aden. They are pouring over the border by the hundreds every day.”

Foster grumbled and studied the weight charts. The Israeli workers nearby held their breath as he calculated. He made the mistake of looking up into Hanna’s eyes. He refigured, cheated a bit, and reckoned with luck the old ship could rev up enough steam to get up in the air. Once up, he’d keep her up ... somehow. “Hell, leave them in,” he said, “this is my first and last trip, anyhow.”

The camp director handed him the final manifest. A hundred and forty-two Yemenites were packed into the craft. Hanna got the food and supplies aboard and he climbed up the ladder.

The stench hit his nostrils!

“We didn’t have time to bathe them all,” Hanna apologized. “We didn’t know when you were coming.”

He poked his head in the main cabin. It was jammed tight with the little people. They sat cross-legged and frightened on the floor. The smell was horrible.

Foster stepped in and closed and locked the door. Whereupon the unventilated hundred-and-twenty-degree heat began to work on the odors. He worked his way forward an inch at a time. By the time he reached the pilot’s cabin he was an interesting shade of green. He threw the window open to get air but instead got a blast of heat. He ran up the engines and as he taxied down the runway he held his head out of the window and vomited. He continued retching as he gunned the plane down the runway and barely lifted at the last inch. He sucked a lemon as he fought for altitude, and finally, with the coming of cooler air, his stomach came under control.