— Yes, sir, a bloody fierce counterattack it was too. But I’m sure the brigadier is looking forward to showing you the battleground and explaining his military exploits, and I wouldn’t want to steal his thunder, especially since I’m a rank amateur at military strategy and had better get back to our defendant and his story… And indeed, toward Christmas, sir, the skies cleared, and he went out into the streets for a look at the brave new bedlam of a world. Several buildings had already been appropriated for the military government; barbed wire had been laid all around them; policemen and officials and statesmen and politicians were scurrying everywhere; the Jews were exultant; the Arabs in shock; the rain and fog set in again more strongly than ever, as if our army had brought its own English weather from London; and our Mr. Mani said once more to himself, “Aye, the foreigners have come to replace the foreigners…”
— Quite so, sir. I asked him that over and over. What did he think, a homo politicus like himself: that we would conquer Jerusalem, hand the keys of the city over to the natives, and retire with a modest bow?
— Jolly well put, Colonel! Here was the decisive, the fateful moment when the kernel of treachery, which had been slowly working its way down into the darkness, soaked up the sweet liquid trickling toward it through the earth and decomposed all at once, as if dowsed with corrosive acid, into thousands of thin little tendrils, frail, helpless gossamers that would seem to have no future in that heavy soil to all but the most discerning observer, who now notices two cotyledons, one the root’s and one the stem’s, each pushing greedily, unrestrainedly, off from the other… Well, sir, he walked into headquarters and was quite merrily hailed by everyone, because in the excitement of battle the trusty interpreter had been forgotten; and then he went straight, sir, to Major Stanford, the chief adjutant of the division, and showed him his British passport. The major inducted him on the spot. He issued him a uniform, a cap, and even an old pistol; added a mess kit and a dogtag; put him down for five pence ha’penny a week; and had our own Major Clark affix his signature on behalf of the advocate-general’s corps. And that, sir, was the start of Interpreter Mani’s career as a corporal in His Majesty’s army…
— Indeed they are, sir. Every last document has been stamped and put in this file, which makes it a weighty one in more ways than one.
— I quite agree, sir. It was done a bit cavalierly and without a proper security check, because he had become known to everyone throughout the autumn months of the advance on Jerusalem. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise you, Colonel, that not a few men would like to see both him and the documents thoroughly terminated. And indeed, from now on he was free to come and go in headquarters as he pleased. He even had his own desk in one of the rooms there, at which he translated the military governor’s orders. But in his large bed at night, sir, where he lay with his quiet wife and his son, he shut his eyes and pictured himself orating to the Arab villagers in the fields of Philistia, and all at once, sir, his heart bled for the Arabs…
— Yes, for the Arabs, although not really for them, sir, that’s little more than a pretext. In the darkness of the earth the root will suck any nourishment to aid the stem’s growth.
— But I’m almost there now, sir, I’ve practically gotten to it. Because how does one explain his disappointment? Time passes, you see; he goes about in his British uniform and everyone shows him respect; but every day after work he exchanges it for his black suit and takes his son and crosses the walled city, passing the Wailing Wall and the great mosques and exiting via the Dung Gate, from where he ascends the Mount of Olives on which his father and grandfather are buried and reaches the Augusta Victoria Hospital and the monastery of Tur-Malka, which are all places, sir, that are marked on the map; and near there he enters a little Mohammedan coffeehouse and listens to the talk by the copper trays; and then he descends the mount and attends a Jewish meeting, where there are speeches and delegations of Jewish dignitaries who have come huffing and puffing from abroad to witness the redemption of Zion before taking the next mail packet back; and way up north he sometimes hears the thump of a cannon shot, a single round being lazily traded by the two armies; and still the spreading root of treachery knows not what fruit it will bear… until one day, sir, he walks into a room of the general staff to throw an old draft of something into the wastebasket; and the room is empty, sir, the only sounds are the distant laughter of some officers playing football with a tennis ball outside; and he spies a map rolled up in the basket; and takes it and sticks it under his jacket; and at home that night he sees that it is a plan for an assault by the 22nd Regiment east of the Jordan; and he folds it back up, and puts it in a little bag with his prayer shawl, and goes as he does every Saturday to the Sephardic synagogue on Rabbi Isaac of Prague Lane; and when the service is over he brings his son home and does not follow him into the house, but rather keeps walking to the walled city, where he buys and dons an Arab cloak; and then, heading north through the Damascus Gate, he walks for three hours — here, sir, his route is marked on this map, if you care to follow the trail of treachery yourself, with me as your faithful guide. He reaches this little town here, Ramallah; passes straight through it like a sleepwalker and continues on into the fields; sees the British guard in its tents and shallow foxholes, which are not at all like those at Verdun, sir, because here they’re used only to rest your feet in while having tea; walks up a hill, and down a hill, and pretty soon runs into rain; smells tea himself and the smoke of a Turkish campfire; and there they are, sir, in their tattered uniforms with their faded ribbons, the same as ever, the same as they always have been; aye, he’s known them since first he saw the light of day in the narrow streets of Jerusalem; the vanquished, warming themselves by the campfire, laughing in low voices, hungry as always, chewing on their mustaches. And so he steps up to them and asks for their sergeant and hands him the map with the plans and asks to see an officer; and one comes and takes a look and doesn’t understand; and so he asks to see a German, because there’s always a German with such troops; and while they go to fetch the German he stands and waits, absorbed in the fire, the Turkish soldiers staring at him wide-eyed, in the distance the houses of an unfamiliar Arab village that according to the map must be el-Bireh; and he swallows his spittle and waits some more, all but oblivious to the rain beating down on his cloak, which might as well be someone else’s for all he notices it. After a while three men ride up on horseback, and the German dismounts in a great hurry, one Werner von Karajan, a cunning old fox, so we’ve heard. It doesn’t take him but a minute to see that the plans are real and inestimably important, and he can’t wait to rake in his prize; but our interpreter needs an interpreter, who is found in the person of a dark-skinned, bespectacled Turk with a fez, Mani’s double from over the lines. There is a glitter of gold coins; the defendant spurns them at once; in fact, sir, he never took a farthing; all he asks is to have the two villages rousted out so that he can deliver a speech to them. What sort of speech? the Turks want to know. He doesn’t answer them; doesn’t even favor them with a glance; simply says again that he wishes to deliver a speech. Well, sir, his audience is quite literally whipped together in a jiffy: farmers, shepherds, women, children, and old men; some still gripping their hoes and pitchforks; some with their sheep and donkeys. Here and there there’s even someone with a little education, some village teacher in a dirty old red fez. It’s late in the day by now, but the sky has cleared a bit and the rain has stopped; the burning red rays of the winter sun glint in the village square, glint on the mud and the dung. He asks for a table, but there is none in the entire village. A bed is fetched instead; a plank is laid over it; he strips off his cloak; now he is in a suit and tie, shriveled to a little black flame; and then, sir, he mounts the plank, and there is silence; and he sways a bit back and forth as if he were still saying his Sabbath prayers; and he begins to speak in Arabic; and what he says is: “Who are ye? Awake, before it is too late and the world is changed beyond recognition! Get ye an identity, and be quick!” And he takes Balfour’s declaration from his pocket, translated into Arabic, and reads it without any explanation, and says: “This country is yours and it is ours; half for you and half for us.” And he points toward Jerusalem, which they see shrouded in fog on the mountain, and he says, “The Englishman is there, the Turk is here; but all will depart and leave us; awake, sleep not!”