Yasmine (8 page)

The festive lunch was followed by official ceremonies. The leader of the opposition in the city, a Communist, well-known
for his caustic attacks on the government, stood up to speak. Eshkol rested his head on his hand and fell asleep. This could be a disaster, I thought, disappointed and embarrassed.

“The Prime Minister is asleep,” I said urgently to the director of his office. “It will offend the Arabs, and he won't know what to say in response to their speeches. All our efforts will be wasted!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go and wake him up. Give him a glass of water, a note, anything…”

“Take it easy, young man. Relax.”

But I couldn't relax. The faces of the Arab guests clearly showed their dismay. But when the speeches ended Eshkol opened his eyes, looked around at the people seated beside him on the podium, looked at the audience in the hall, and began to answer all the points raised one by one. His statements were thorough and persuasive, based on solid facts. He did not fail to respond to any of the complaints, admitted that one or two of them were justified, promised to set things right, and won the audience's hearts.

The director shoved his elbow into my ribs, beaming. “You see? Old Labourites, when they want to concentrate they close their eyes.”

Now, once again, I had the privilege of joining the entourage of the Prime Minister, this time on his first visit to East Jerusalem. Levanah and the Ministry spokesman came too, and we waited in the Minister's car until he and the PM came out.

Inside the Old City we were met by the Minister of Defence, the Chief of Staff, the Mayor of Jerusalem and other VIPs. At first, as we walked through the winding alleys towards the
Western Wall, Eshkol was smiling and relaxed. But gradually his expression changed, and he seemed perplexed, even sad, though mainly thoughtful. Countless eyes watched him as he passed, defeated eyes, eyes filled with silent fury. When we approached the Wall, Eshkol was greeted with applause from a group of Jewish worshippers. He raised his left hand, with the damaged finger, and made a V sign.

“Is that V for victory?” his office director asked.

The Prime Minister's face was grim. “No, it's V for
Vie krikhtmen arois
? How do we get out of this?”

I couldn't shake off the impact of Eshkol's remark and his extraordinary reaction on visiting the Western Wall. Such sobriety in the midst of the euphoria that engulfed all the rest of us. Such humanity amid the roars of triumph. Again and again I have asked myself what he meant. Was he thinking, as people said then, of the difficulties and complex problems ahead of us, which he foresaw from the start, or did he mean literally how to get out, how to separate ourselves again from the Arab population?

As we were leaving the Wall, Eshkol stopped, saying earnestly: “Normality must be restored without delay!”

An hour later all the personnel involved met in the conference room of the Regional Commander to discuss how to implement the Prime Minister's order. There wasn't enough room for everybody around the long table and an extra row of seats was added, creating a kind of class system – those at the table and those further from it. After a tense meeting in which all sorts of assignments were given out, I undertook to speak to one of the Palestinian dignitaries to whom Amitai had introduced me – Abu George.

In the evening I phoned Al-Hurriyeh, Abu George's restaurant, but no one answered. I was about to try his home number but, worried that he might refuse to meet me, instead decided to act in the Middle Eastern manner and simply go to his house on Ragheb al-Nashashibi Lane in Sheikh Jarrah.

Abu George's house, like others in the neighbourhood, was surrounded by a fence of iron posts with sharp spikes. I rang the electric bell beside the heavy gate and waited some time. At last the gate swung open slowly, not much more than a crack, and Abu George stood before me, his eyes dark and his mouth shut tight.

“
As-salam aleikum
,” I greeted him, though it was for him to greet me first.

“
Wa-aleikum
,” he replied drily, without adding the usual “and the mercy and blessings of Allah”. Feeling awkward, I smiled at him, wondering if he'd forgotten me and our recent chat in his restaurant.

“Could I have a few words with you?” I asked. He nodded silently, and after looking up and down the silent street to make sure there were no witnesses he opened the gate wider, though he did not say the customary “
Tfadal
”.

We crossed the garden and entered the house without saying a word. The walls of the wide hallway were hung with an impressive collection of ancient pistols, swords and scimitars. The living-room didn't look like a traditional Arab
madafeh
, with low divans and hard cushions, such as I usually saw in Israeli Arab houses, but had modern furniture – leather sofas and armchairs, vases filled with flowers, decorative statuettes. On one of the walls hung photographs, presumably of family members, and in the centre was a studio portrait of a very
beautiful young woman, with blue or grey eyes. Another large photo that caught my attention was of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, in splendid traditional robes. I turned away from the Palestinian leader, a man who collaborated with Hitler and hoped to exterminate the Jewish people. Abu George invited me with a gesture to take a seat but remained standing in front of me, not even trying to hide his displeasure at my uninvited visit.

“I'm sorry for disturbing you in the evening,” I said.

“What will you drink?” he asked coldly.

“If I were in my father's house, I'd ask for a chilled beer, but…”

This approach must have appealed to him, because his forehead cleared and the tension in his face eased. He left the room.

The house was very quiet. I remembered something I'd heard from the Minister in Charge: “When you go into a Jewish house and it's quiet, you know someone is ill. When you go into a non-Jewish house and it's quiet, you know everything's all right.”

Abu George returned with bottles of Dutch beer and filled glasses for both of us. Then he sat down opposite me, took a big
masbahah
from his pocket and began to roll the beads rapidly through his fingers. The clicking was loud in the silent room.

“Handsome jars,” I said, pointing to a collection of antiques in a display cabinet.

“Inherited from my grandfather,” he said impatiently.

“The pictures on the walls must have historical value too.”

Instead of responding with polite phrases in the customary Arab manner, he leaned forwards, and stuck out his chin, as if to say, “Get on with it!”

So I did. “I'm here on behalf of the government. We're asking for your help in restoring normal life.”

He frowned, closed his hand on the string of beads and sniffed at them. “Why should I help you?”

“People need to go on, to make a living, to work. We want life to proceed normally. I'm told that you have dozens of employees who are out of work.”

“If you go away and leave us, everything will soon be back to normal.”

“History follows its own course and it can't be turned back. Nor are we here for the short term.” Then I added: “Try to see us as partners who want to help you and be helped by you.”

“You have wounded our honour, shamed us before our children and the entire world, driven thousands of our people from the country, taken over our holy places. Then you come to me after dark and ask for my help? You want to turn life back to normal? What life are you talking about?” He began to cough till his eyes turned red.

“Frankly, I don't know how I would act in your place. But please, Abu George, who can solve the problems between us if not us, if we don't communicate?”

“This land speaks Arabic!”

“This land also speaks Hebrew – and Latin and all the languages of worship,” I said quietly but firmly. “And it's on this land that you and we must live.”

“Why not leave things as they are, without work, without supplies, without services, without anything. Let it all blow up and burn!”

“Doing nothing is also an act. Sometimes it's the most destructive act of all, as a wise writer once said.”

Abu George made a dismissive gesture. “You won't be allowed
to stay on in al-Quds al-Sharif. You'll quit this place just as you quit Sinai and Gaza in '56. The business people here are not willing to commit themselves to more than a week or two. They're waiting for you to leave.”

“Abu George, it's true that politics are volatile and anything is possible, but in the meantime you still need to live,” I insisted.

“Conquerors have rolled in and out of this place like footballs – Crusaders, Ottomans, the English. They all left, and the same will happen to you. No conqueror ever lasted here.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“You haven't been here since the days of Adam and Eve either. In fact, we were here before you. But let's not go into that. Even if, as you say, we're going to quit this place in a couple of weeks, why hurt commerce, why not take care to keep life on an even keel?”

He stared ahead of him with a stony expression and continued to roll the beads with nervous fingers.

“If you, the public figures, don't help out, things will develop by themselves without you.” Suddenly I remembered our first meeting, together with Abu Nabil, and I went on, “Abu George, now you can restart your newspaper, just as you always wanted.”

“Has it occurred to you that I might be accused of collaboration,” he replied, “that people might say you bought me? And what would my answer be – that you asked for my help and consent?” He slammed the beads on the table.

“The situation is painful and embarrassing, but life must go on,” I repeated.

His face was grey. I felt deeply sorry for him and for his world which had collapsed. Unlike many others, I did not believe that this was a case of an advanced Western civilisation beating a
backward oriental one. The oriental culture was part of my world, I'd grown up in it and I cherished it. If we were not standing on opposite sides of a barricade, and if they had not tried to destroy us, I'd have felt not only compassion but also pain for a rich culture gone bankrupt. How to help them overcome the humiliation? How to save them, and us, from frustration and vengeance? I didn't know what to say and I didn't know him well enough to share my thoughts with him. He might think I was condescending so I said nothing.

Again there was an awkward silence, and he picked up his beads and began to roll them slowly, his gaze wandering over the room.

“You know I'm a refugee from '48?” he said at last.

“I know.”

“Everything is dead,” he sighed. “I can't promise anything.”

“Why not? Don't you want to start publishing your newspaper again, reopen the hotels, bring back the tourists, provide employment for your workers?”

“These things are not up to me alone. I'll have to summon a meeting of the board to decide. I'll do this only if I get a written order from you,” he concluded and put a visiting-card on the table.

“Tomorrow morning you'll get an official letter,” I said and stood up.

“Why didn't the ‘Colonel' come?”

“It's a civil matter.”

“You're mistaken. It would be easier to obey an order from the military governor.”

He won my respect precisely because he promised nothing and made no effort to please me. I was familiar with the rich
ceremonial customs of greetings and courtesies, pleasantries, good wishes and gestures, embraces and kisses, a complex system of manners cultivated by the Arabs over the centuries, and it made them the world's finest hosts. But this excessive courtesy can mislead. Experts in camouflaging their feelings, masters of prevarication, they are not always wedded to the truth, and they can be brazen liars.

But I was not the kind of naive Westerner who falls for Arab charm. Nor was Abu George a typical Arab, using courtesy and bonhomie to disguise his true feelings. His lips and his heart spoke the same language. He expressed what he felt, and was obviously choked with grief. He couldn't understand our history, couldn't see into our hearts or recognise our wounds. To him we were oppressive conquerors treating his city as if it belonged to us. I had to treat him like a man who has fallen into a chasm and broken his bones, and every little movement causes him pain.

As soon as the Israeli official left, Abu George went to the telephone. Then he hesitated. What could he say to Abu Nabil, and anyway, what was the urgency? Was his ship sinking? Haste comes from the devil, in the words of the proverb. They want to restore the normality of life? Let them try!

To take his mind off the problem he went down to the basement to fetch a bottle of Dutch beer but couldn’t find any. God damn them, he thought, now I won’t be able to import the stuff without seeking a permit from them. He poured himself a glass of vodka instead. Since the events that led up to this devilish war he had been drinking more and more. At first in elation, hoping that the coming war would wipe out the humiliation of the
Nakba
, and restore the people’s rights and properties. Then after the
Nakseh
, the error that led to the new calamity, he began to drink out of grief, loss, failed dreams – and there was more to come.

What’s he going to say to his colleagues tomorrow? The nerve of the man! The Minister’s counsellor presents himself at my house and demands in the name of his government the restoration of normal life. Why hadn’t the “Colonel”, the one who calls him “brother” in a familiar way, given him the slightest hint? Yet they’re all fingers of one hand. Who else did
they approach? The Jews are shrewd, they’re using British tactics, divide and rule. In a little while, when Senator Antoine comes over as he has every evening since the war, we’ll find out if they have approached him too. And where is Um George? Why is she out this evening? He picked up the receiver to phone around for her, but changed his mind. Let her enjoy herself, poor thing, take her mind off Yasmine who isn’t here with us.

A long and insistent ring at the gate announced the arrival of the senator. That’s the kind of man he is, more like an impatient child. It might be better not to involve him in these deliberations. His views are clear and razor-sharp: “There must be no co-operation with the Jews. No helping Israel! And the worse things get, the better.”

In the morning Abu George went to the restaurant earlier than usual. He watered the geraniums in the window-boxes, plucked the withered leaves, gazed wistfully at the lemon tree and decided to send for the gardener to mow the lawn and trim the hedge. Then he sat at his table and sipped the hot water with mint that the head waiter had prepared for him. He looked at his watch and wound it up. Abu Nabil was due at eight-thirty. For the past ten years, since they acquired
Al-Wattan
, the two had breakfasted together every day at Al-Hurriyeh, spent an hour or two talking, discussing their joint enterprises, and decided on the subject of the day’s leading article. Only rarely did they break this habit.

Abu Nabil was a fluent and stylish writer. Once he familiarised himself with an issue, he would dash off sheet after sheet with his Parker-51 filled with green ink. His career in journalism had begun in Egypt, when he became a reporter on the famous daily
Al-Ahram
, and he was trained by the best men
in the field. From the start of their partnership they had divided the work in the most natural way – Abu Nabil wrote mainly about political issues, while Abu George preferred social subjects and the arts. Perhaps it was because he was a Christian, a shrinking island in the sea of Islam, that he hesitated to express his own unorthodox views publicly, choosing rather to influence the Muslim Abu Nabil from behind the scenes. Um George tried to persuade him to avoid political involvement, and in fact doubted the wisdom of owning a newspaper, but once bitten by the bug of public commitment he could not give up journalism.

Abu George dearly loved the printing press, especially the machine which spat out thousands of identical copies, a truly magical process. He would come in at night and, dressed in a suit and tie, would stand beside the printers in their grimy overalls and wait for the first sheets to emerge – like a father waiting for his child to be born.

He edited the weekly arts and letters supplement, played down the gossip about stage and film stars that characterised other newspapers and gave generous space to poetry, short stories and serious writing. The editorial role led him back to poetry, an early love of his. In the ’40s, when Yasmine was born and his joy was unbounded, he published a collection of poems which was regarded by the literati as a gem. As the newspaper became established, he began to publish his old stories and poems that had languished in a drawer, but under imaginary borrowed names – Antara ibn Shaddad, an Arab hero from pre-Muslim times, Tarik bin Ziad, the Arab conqueror of Spain, Saladin, the Kurdish warrior who defeated the Crusaders. He could not explain why he chose military heroes, but the
well-known
names intrigued and thrilled the readers. Even A
Nabil did not know he was the author. The poems that bore his name dealt with everyday concerns – such as the
Nakba
of 1948, or wandering, searching for a home.

Then came exciting times. Gamal Abd el-Nasser rose like a bright star in the world of Arab leadership and swept everyone away, even him, not to mention his adolescent daughter who worshipped the Egyptian president like a god. Inspired by him, Abu George published a new book of poems under the pseudonym Saif al-Arab – Sword of the Arabs – dedicated to “Gamal, the banner of Arabism”. Nasser wrote to him to acknowledge the dedication, and revealed that in his youth he too used to write and wanted to be “an author like Tawfik al-Hakim”. Abu George was thrilled – Tawfik al-Hakim was an enlightened writer who aspired to social justice and humane democracy, detested fascism and the Nazis and mocked the antics of Mussolini and Hitler. Perhaps Tawfik al-Hakim would serve as Nasser’s mentor and encourage him to devote his energies to the war on poverty, to education and the
redistribution
of national resources. But the more he listened to Nasser’s speeches, which veered between grand phraseology and self-pity, the more he suspected that the promising new leader was another man who sought, in the words of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, “monarchy in politics”.

At this stage he tried to cool the enthusiasm of his daughter Yasmine. “No human being can achieve so much,” he told her. And indeed, the dreams of a new, free and democratic society that would break out of isolation and backwardness and take its place in global culture, dissolved in the heat of extremism and Nasser’s lust for power.

When Abu George realised that he and his contemporaries could not reform Arab society, he decided to take care of his
own. He went into the tourist business and opened a restaurant and hotel in partnership with Abu Nabil. As a Christian who was not identified with any of the major rival clans in al-Quds, and thanks also to his good nature, he made friends and acquired status and soon found himself involved in public affairs. But now, after the debacle, his business was stuck like a car in the sand.

Once more he began to contemplate leaving the country and joining his brother Younes who had settled in America. In 1950 he had stayed with him for three weeks in the New York borough of Queens, where Younes had opened a shop specialising in condiments and sweets from Beirut and Damascus. It was a thriving business. The two brothers used to walk up and down Atlantic Avenue, discussing their lives.

“Come on, Abu George. Come over here and settle in America. We’ll go into business together. We’ll lease an old apartment building, renovate it and rent it out, and in a few years we’ll recover the investment and start making a profit.”

“And leave home?”

“Home? What home? It’s a crazy region, never at peace,” said Younes. “Who knows how long the Arabs and the Jews will go on killing each other. Leave that place behind, bring up Yasmine in a free and safe country.”

Abu George wandered about Queens and Manhattan and tried to imagine his life there. He saw himself getting lost in the huge department stores, smothered by the clamour and frenetic pace. Life in New York struck him as neurotic, a constant chase after riches, and their slogan “Time is money” seemed oppressive – like a saddle on a wild horse.

“Forgive me, brother,” he said to Younes, “this life is synthetic.” He believed that a man should sleep in a bed that
fitted the shape of his body, move around in a stable where the horses spoke his language. Surprised by his own conservatism, he confessed to himself that even the transition from his house in Talbieh to Sheikh Jarrah had broken his heart.

Abu Nabil arrived on time, punctual as a Prussian officer, as usual. They greeted each other the way they always did, asking after each other’s health, their wives and children and the rest of their families. In the meantime the head waiter brought them breakfast with milky English tea for Abu George, his custom since Mandatory times, and Arabic coffee for Abu Nabil.

“
Akhbarak
, what is your news, Abu George?”

“Last night the advisor to the Minister in Charge came to my house – you remember him, the skinny young man the ‘Colonel’ introduced to us here a few days ago,” said Abu George and described the conversation.

“Let them drink sea water! Restoring normality to life would serve their interests, not ours. On the contrary, we must disrupt their life, start a
muqawamah
, a resistance movement,” Abu Nabil said, narrowing and widening his big eyes in the manner of Yusuf Wahbi, the famous Egyptian actor and director. “Our energy must be directed towards one single aim – to get rid of them.”

Abu George looked at him dully but said nothing. His partner dug a spoon into a dish of plum jam and ate it with obvious relish. “I tell you, now that the borders have been broken down and the damned Zionists have themselves destroyed their precious ‘green line’, we must make sure that our Palestinian brothers gradually infiltrate Israel, work there and marry our brothers and sisters there, and eventually become the majority. This way, our Arab brothers together with the anti-Zionist
Orthodox Jews will slowly but surely strangle Israel with a pincer movement.” He burst out laughing and went on lapping up the jam until he finished it.

Abu George ignored his friend’s febrile daydreams and tried to tackle the question that was troubling him. “Leave aside for the moment what will happen in the distant future. The question is, what do we do now? Right now we depend on the bastards – our freedom of movement is in their hands, taxes and customs duty, commerce and construction, even the permit to import Dutch beer…”

“We don’t have to do anything, we’re inside their guts now, we’ve got them by the balls. Look at the map – they are squeezed from the east, pushed from the south, harassed in the north. Wherever they turn they find us. They have only one outlet – the sea! Why are you worried?” He laughed aloud and Abu George envied his optimism. “We can make their life hell,” he concluded, rubbing his hands together.

“How?”

“Like I said – from now on we’re inside their guts. We can poison them, we can shaft them from the front and the back.”

“For that we need a tool we can count on,” Abu George said heavily. “All right, we Arabs have Mig fighter-jets, tanks and radar and television, but our mentality is that of
camel-drivers
.”

“Abu George, no offence, but you’re a Christian, you don’t appreciate the power of Islam. This must be made into a religious war, and that will soon bring it to an end. Let me remind you of Hassan al-Bana, how his call to love death more dearly than life captivated Egypt? We sell this message to some of our hotheads, and the fire will blaze all by itself.”

“So what do you say, should we restart the newspaper?”

“Did you ask the man how come they’re letting us publish it all of a sudden?
Dir balak
, look out, be wary of him.”

Abu George went into another fit of coughing.

“You deserve compensation for war damages,” chuckled Abu Nabil. “Five-star treatment at Hadassah Hospital.” He drained the last drop of coffee in the pot, looked around and leaned closer to his friend. “Two days ago Abu Ammar, alias Yasser Arafat, called my Nabil and inducted him into Fatah. I said to him, ‘
Ibni
, son, why are you doing this? You’ve just got married, your wife is pregnant.’ You know what he said? ‘It’s how you brought me up, Father.’”

“I’m worried too, desperately afraid that my Yasmine will be stupid enough to join Abu Ammar’s people in Paris,” Abu George sighed.

“What can I tell you, brother? We honoured our parents like God himself. Who dared disobey them, who dared look them in the eye? Today the children do what they please and nobody can tell them anything.” Abu Nabil rose, shook the pitta crumbs from his jacket and said, “I’m going to the newspaper office.”

“What newspaper? Everything is at a standstill.”

“You know what they say, man’s nature is broken only when he’s buried.”