“Then help us here in Palestine,” said Golomb. He had a deep gravelly voice that was entirely in keeping with the amount of hair on his body. He looked like a house-trained bear. “We’ll drive you to Jerusalem from where you and Fievel can catch a train to Suez, and then to Alexandria. We’ll pay you whatever you want. Help us, Herr Gunther. Help us to make something of this country. Everyone hates the Jews, and rightly so. We know no order or discipline. We’ve looked after ourselves for too long. Our only hope of salvation lies in a general immigration to Palestine. Europe is finished for the Jew, Herr Gunther.”

Polkes finished the translation and shrugged. “Eliahu is quite an extreme Zionist,” he added. “But his is not an uncommon opinion among members of the Haganah. I myself don’t accept what he says about Jews deserving hatred. But he’s right about our needing your help. How much do you want? Sterling? Marks? Gold sovereigns, perhaps.”

I shook my head. “I won’t help you for money,” I said. “Everyone offers me money.”

“But you are going to help us,” said Polkes. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’ll help you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been to Dachau, gentlemen. I can’t think of a better reason to help you than that. If you’d seen it you would understand. That’s why I’m going to help you.”

Cairo was the diamond stud on the handle of the fan of the Nile delta. That was what my Baedeker said, anyway. To me it looked like something much less precious—more like the teat under a cow’s belly that fed a representative of every tribe in Africa, of which continent it was the largest city. “City” seemed too small a word for Cairo, however. It seemed something much more than mere metropolis. It was like an island—a historical, religious, and cultural heartland, a city that was the model for every city that had come after it, and also its opposite. Cairo fascinated and alarmed me at the same time.

I checked into the National Hotel in the Ismailiyah Quarter, which was less than half a mile east of the Nile and the Egyptian Museum. Fievel Polkes stayed at the Savoy, which was at the southern end of the same street. The National was not much smaller than a decent-size village, with rooms as big as bowling alleys. Some of these were used as pungent-smelling hookah dens where as many as a dozen Arabs would sit, cross-legged on the floor, smoking pipes that were the size and shape of retort stands in a laboratory. A large Reuters notice board dominated the hotel lobby and, entering the guest lounge, you might have expected to see Lord Kitchener sitting in an armchair, reading his newspaper and twisting his waxed mustaches.