A Short History of Darkness

A Short History of Darkness, By John Maher

Prologue

Haifa April 1948.

The ceiling fan beats a steady cha-cha-cha rhythm as Danaher lies there blowing a ring of blue cigarette smoke into the warm air. The dusty light of early afternoon, streams through the grimy shutters, falling on their tired, sweated bodies. Outside, catcalls career about the narrow alleyways and lanes of Wadi Nisnas. A woman’s sharp voice calls out after a child. ‘Taa! Taa! Come here! Come here!’

He runs a finger along the olive skin of the young man beside him.

Adaysh a saa’?’

‘Just after one, my old china.’

Laila aw nahar?’

‘Day or night? Are you bloody serious? Can’t you see the sun shining in?’

Danaher rises slowly from the bed, the pungent, soursweet smell of man coupling still sousing his body. In front of the little porcelain handbasin in the corner, he scours himself with a flannel towel, running his hand along his taut stomach.

He pulls on the crumpled cavalry twill trousers and peeps out through the shutters. Arab faces. There isn’t a Jewish face in sight here. It’s all starting up now. The intelligence reports were right on the button: slowly and steadily the Jewish forces are squeezing the Arabs out of the city. A little machine-gun fire into a crowd or a barrel laden with explosives rolled down the hill into a crowd street. But he will be out of here by the time it all goest up, thank Christ. He asks himself, for the thousandth time, why he wants to make the trip at all. What is a bad conscience anyway but the handmaiden of guilt? Charlie Brent, the tub – of – guts Scottish CID go-between had put it just that way. The hairy hand tapping the stem of his ancient briar on the green baize of the desk in the Haifa base.

‘You’re mad, you are, my son.’

‘I want to clear my name.’

‘With the Druze? They’re just bloody Arabs too, my friend. Just like the rest of them. Even the Jews are Arabs here, if you ask me.’

‘I have to live with myself, you know.’

‘Die with yourself is more like it, sunshine.’

He pulls the door to behind him. Ahmad or Mahmoud or whatever his real name can sort himself out. The young man’s voice comes to him through the door.  ‘Wayn raih? Where are you off to?’

Danaher carries on swiftly into the street in the direction of the port and the railway station. Nervous eyes track him as he makes his way along the crowded streets of the Hadar. The pistol concealed in his satchel won’t be much use against a mob. And everyone is antsy now. The Jews, the Arabs and the British themselves.

He hears Charlie Brent’s tobacco-flavoured voice is in his ear again. ‘Let the buggers at it, I say. The Ab-Dabs and the Jewboys. Two bald men fighting over a comb. As bad as the bloody Irish, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

Haifa station is swamped with soldiers but he passes through easily enough with the CID warrant card. None of them need to know he is really one of them, ceded from military intelligence into the no-man’s land of MO4. The train takes its time pulling out of the station. There have been a couple of bombs on the coastal line a while before. A lot of dead soldiers. But the line from Haifa and the coast, eastwards to Baisan, in the Jordan Valley, is usually safe enough. There are lots of Arab faces on the train. He has a strange sense that half of Haifa is on the move. People getting out before the axe falls.

A middle – aged Arab in a fawn –coloured business suit sitting opposite him, eyes him curiously. Better speak in English if a conversation starts up. He can’t resist the temptation and, a few minutes into the journey he looks into the nut brown eyes.

‘Have you got a light?’

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