A Tale of Love and Darkness

by Amos Oz

  And another day in September 1947:

  Lieutenant-Colonel Adderley has presided over a military court hearing the case of Shlomo Mansoor Shalom, a distributor of illegal leaflets who was found to be of unsound mind. The probation officer, Mr. Gardewicz, requested that the prisoner should not be committed to a lunatic asylum, for fear of a deterioration in his condition, and pleaded with the judges that he should be isolated in a private institution instead, lest his weak intellect be exploited by fanatics for their own criminal ends. Lt.-Col. Adderley regretted that he was unable to accede to Mr. Gardewicz's request, since it was beyond his powers; he was obliged to commit the unfortunate man to custody pending a ruling by the High Commissioner, representing the Crown, on the possible exercise of special leniency or clemency. On the radio, Cilla Leibowitz is giving a piano recital, and after the news we are promised a commentary by Mr. Gordus; to round off the evening Miss Bracha Tsefira will give a rendition of a selection of folk songs.

  One evening Father explained to his friends who had come over for a glass of tea that ever since the middle of the eighteenth century, long before the appearance of modern Zionism and unconnected with it, the Jews constituted a clear majority of the population of Jerusalem. At the beginning of the twentieth century, still before the beginning of the Zionist immigrations, Jerusalem, under Ottoman Turkish rule, was already the most populous city in the country: it had fifty-five thousand inhabitants, of whom some thirty-five thousand were Jews. And now, in the autumn of 1947, there were about a hundred thousand Jews living in Jerusalem and some sixty-five thousand non-Jews, made up of Muslim and Christian Arabs, Armenians, Greeks, British, and many other nationalities.

  But in the north, east, and south of the city there were extensive Arab neighborhoods, including Sheikh Jarrah, the American colony, the Muslim and Christian Quarters in the Old City, the German Colony, the Greek Colony, Katamon, Bakaa, and Abu Tor. There were Arab towns, too, in the hills around Jerusalem, Ramallah and el-Bireh, Beit Jalla and Bethlehem, and many Arab villages: el-Azariya, Silwan, Abu-Dis, et-Tur, Isawiya, Qalandaria, Bir Naballah, Nebi Samwil, Biddu, Shuafat, Lifta, Beit Hanina, Beit Iksa, Qoloniya, Sheikh Badr, Deir Yassin, where more than a hundred inhabitants would be butchered by members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang in April 1948, Suba, Ein Karim, Beit Mazmil, el-Maliha, Beit Safafa, Umm Tuba, and Sur Bahir.

  To the north, south, east, and west of Jerusalem were Arab areas, and only a few Hebrew settlements were scattered here and there around the city: Atarot and Neve Yaakov to the north, Kalya and Beit ha-Arava on the shore of the Dead Sea to the east, Ramat Rahel and Gush Etsion to the south, and Motsa, Kiriat Anavim and Maale ha-Hamisha to the west. In the war of 1948 most of these Hebrew settlements, together with the Jewish Quarter inside the walls of the Old City, fell into the hands of the Arab Legion. All the Jewish settlements that were captured by the Arabs in the War of Independence, without exception, were razed to the ground, and their Jewish inhabitants were murdered or taken captive or escaped, but the Arab armies did not allow any of the survivors to return after the war. The Arabs implemented a more complete "ethnic cleansing" in the territories they conquered than the Jews did: hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were driven out from the territory of the State of Israel in that war, but a hundred thousand remained, whereas there were no Jews at all in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Not one. The settlements were obliterated, and the synagogues and cemeteries were razed to the ground.

  In the lives of individuals and of peoples, too, the worst conflicts are often those that break out between those who are persecuted. It is mere wishful thinking to imagine that the persecuted and the oppressed will unite out of solidarity and man the barricades together against a ruthless oppressor. In reality, two children of the same abusive father will not necessarily make common cause, brought close together by their shared fate. Often each sees in the other not a partner in misfortune but in fact the image of their common oppressor.

  That may well be the case with the hundred-year-old conflict between Arabs and Jews.

  The Europe that abused, humiliated, and oppressed the Arabs by means of imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, and repression is the same Europe that oppressed and persecuted the Jews, and eventually allowed or even helped the Germans to root them out of every corner of the continent and murder almost all of them. But when the Arabs look at us, they see not a bunch of half-hysterical survivors but a new offshoot of Europe, with its colonialism, technical sophistication, and exploitation, that has cleverly returned to the Middle East—in Zionist guise this time—to exploit, evict, and oppress all over again. And when we look at them, we do not see fellow victims either; we see not brothers in adversity but pogrom-making Cossacks, bloodthirsty anti-Semites, Nazis in disguise, as though our European persecutors have reappeared here in the Land of Israel, put keffiyehs on their heads, and grown mustaches, but they are still our old murderers, interested only in slitting Jews' throats for fun.

  In September, October, and November 1947 nobody in Kerem Avraham knew whether to pray that the UN General Assembly would approve the UNSCOP majority report or to hope instead that the British would not abandon us to our fate, "alone and defenseless in a sea of Arabs." Many hoped that a free Hebrew state would be established at last, that the restrictions on immigration imposed by the British would be lifted, and the hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors who had been languishing in displaced persons camps and detention camps in Cyprus since the downfall of Hitler would finally be allowed into the land that most of them considered their only home. Yet behind the back of these hopes, as it were, they feared (in whispers) that the million local Arabs, with the help of the regular armies of the countries of the Arab League, might rise up and slaughter the six hundred thousand Jews the moment the British pulled out.

  At the grocer's, in the street, at the pharmacist's, people talked openly about an imminent redemption, they talked about Moshe Shertok and Eliezer Kaplan becoming ministers in the Hebrew government to be set up by Ben-Gurion in Haifa or Tel Aviv, and they talked (in whispers) about famous Jewish generals from abroad, from the Red Army, the American Air Force, and even the Royal Navy, being invited to come and command the Hebrew armed forces to be created when the British left.

  But secretly, at home, under the blankets, after lights out, they whispered to each that who knew—perhaps the British would still cancel their evacuation, perhaps they had no intention of leaving, and the whole thing was nothing but a cunning ploy on the part of Perfidious Albion, with the aim of getting the Jews themselves to turn to the British in the face of impending annihilation and beg them not to abandon them to their fate. Then London could demand, in exchange for continued British protection, that the Jews cease all terrorist activities, decommission some of their stockpiles of illegal weapons, and hand over the leaders of the underground armies to the CID. Perhaps the British would change their minds at the last minute and not surrender us all to the mercy of the Arabs' knives. Perhaps at least here in Jerusalem they might leave a regular force behind to protect us from an Arab pogrom. Or perhaps Ben-Gurion and his friends down there in comfortable Tel Aviv, which was not surrounded by Arabs on every side, might come to their senses at the last minute and give up this adventure of a Hebrew state in favor of some modest compromise with the Arab world and the Muslim masses. Or perhaps the United Nations would send some troops from neutral countries while there was still time to take over from the British and protect the Holy City at least, if not the whole Holy Land, from the threat of a bloodbath.

  Azzam Pasha, the secretary general of the Arab League, warned the Jews that "if they dared to attempt to create a Zionist entity on a single inch of Arab land, the Arabs would drown them in their own blood," and the Middle East would witness horrors "compared to which the atrocities of the Mongol conquests would pale into insignificance." The Iraqi Prime Minister, Muzahim al-Bajaji, called on the Jews of Palestine to "pack their bags and leave while there was
still time," because the Arabs had vowed that after their victory they would spare the lives only of those few Jews who had lived in Palestine before 1917, and even they "would be allowed to take refuge under the wings of Islam and be tolerated under its banner only on condition that they woke up once and for all from the poison of Zionism and became once more a religious community that knew its place under the protection of Islam and lived according to the laws and customs of Islam." The Jews, added a preacher at the great mosque in Jaffa, were not a people and not really a religion either: everyone knew that Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, himself detested them, and had therefore condemned them to be accursed and despised forever in all the lands of their dispersion. The Jews were the most stubborn of the stubborn: the Prophet had extended his hand to them, and they had spat at him; Issa (Jesus) had extended his hand to them, and they had murdered him; they had even regularly stoned to death the prophets of their own contemptible faith. Not in vain had all the nations of Europe resolved to be rid of them once and for all, and now Europe was planning to inflict them all upon us, but we Arabs would not permit the Europeans to dump their rubbish on us. We Arabs would frustrate with our swords this devilish plan to turn the holy land of Palestine into a midden for all the refuse of the world.

  And what about the man from Aunt Greta's clothes shop? The compassionate Arab man who rescued me from the dark pit and carried me in his arms when I was only four or five? The man with big bags under his kind eyes, and a brown, soporific smell, with the green-and-white tailor's tape-measure around his neck, both ends dangling down onto his chest, with his warm cheek and pleasant gray stubble, that sleepy, kindly man with a shy smile that flickered for a moment and died under his soft gray mustache? With his square, brown-framed reading glasses, which he wore halfway down his nose, like a kindhearted, elderly carpenter, a sort of Gepetto, that man who walked so slowly, dragging his feet in a weary sort of way, through the thicket of women's clothes, and when he pulled me out of my solitary confinement, said to me in his husky voice, a voice that I will always remember with longing: "Enough child every thing all right child everything all right." What, him too? Was he "sharpening his curved dagger, whetting the blade and preparing to slaughter us all"? Would he too sneak into Amos Street in the middle of the night with a long curved knife between his teeth, to slit my throat and my parents' throats and "drown us all in blood"?

  Balmy are the nights in Canaan

  as the breeze blows over all.

  From the Nile hyenas answer

  the Syrian jackals' call.

  Abd el-Qadr, Spears, and Khoury

  stir their poison brew of gall.

  ...

  Stormy March winds puffand bluster

  sending clouds across the sky.

  Youthful, fully armed, and bristling

  Tel Aviv tonight lets fly,

  Manara keeps a lofty vigil,

  watchful is the Huleh's eye.*

  But Jewish Jerusalem was neither youthful nor fully armed and bristling, it was a Chekhovian town, confused, terrified, swept by gossip and false rumors, at its wits' end, paralyzed by muddle and terror. On April 20, 1948, David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary, following a conversation with David Shealtiel, the commander of the Haganah militia in Jerusalem, his impression of Jewish Jerusalem:

  The element in Jerusalem: 20% normal people, 20% privileged (university etc.), 60% weird (provincial, medieval, etc.).**

  (It is hard to say whether Ben-Gurion smiled when he wrote this entry in his diary; either way, Kerem Avraham was not included in the first category, nor in the second either.)

  At the greengrocer's, our neighbor Mrs. Lemberg said:

  "But I don't trust them anymore already. I don't trust anybody. It's just one big intrigue."

  Mrs. Rosendorff said:

  "You absolutely mustn't speak like this. I'm sorry. You must please forgive me if I say this to you: speaking like this simply wrecks the morale of the entire nation. What are you thinking? That our boys will agree to go and fight for you, risk their young lives, if you are saying that it is all an intrigue?"

  *Natan Alterman, "Nights in Canaan," from The Seventh Column, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1950), p. 364.

  **David Ben-Gurion, Diary of the War, 1948, ed. G. Rivlin and Dr. E. Oren, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1983), p. 359.

  The greengrocer, Mr. Babaiof, said:

  "I don't envy those Arabs. There are some Jews in America, they will soon send us here some atom bombs."

  My mother said:

  "These onions don't look too good. Neither do the cucumbers."

  And Mrs. Lemberg (who always smelled faintly of hard-boiled eggs, perspiration, and stale soap) said:

  "It's all just one big intrigue, I'm telling you! They're making theater! Comedy! Ben-Gurion has already agreed in secret to sell all of Jerusalem to the Mufti and the Arab gangs and King Abdullah, and for this the English and the Arabs have agreed maybe to leave him his kibbutzim and the Nahalal and Tel Aviv. And that's all they care about! And what will happen to us, if they will murder us or burn us all, they don't care about that at all. Jerusalem, the best thing they should all go faifen, so afterward in the state they want to make for themselves they should be left with a few less revisionists, a few less ultra-Orthodox, a few less intelligentsia."

  The other women hurriedly silenced her: What's the matter with you! Mrs. Lemberg! Sha! Bist du meshigge? Es shteit da a kind! A farsh-tandiker kind! (Hush! Are you crazy? There is a child here! A child who understands!)

  The farshtandiker kind, the child strategist, recited what he had heard from his father or his grandfather:

  "When the British go home, the Haganah, the Irgun, and the Stern Gang will certainly unite and defeat the enemy."

  Meanwhile, the unseen bird in the pomegranate tree held fast to its own line: it did not budge. "Ti-da-di-da-di." And over and over again: "Ti-da-di-da-di." And after a pause for reflection: "Ti-da-di-da-di!!"

  43

  IN SEPTEMBER and October 1947 the papers were full of guesses, analyses, assessments, and suppositions. Would there be a vote on partition at the General Assembly? Would the Arabs succeed in getting the recommendations changed or the vote canceled? And if it did go to the vote, where would we get a two-thirds majority?

  Every evening Father would sit between Mother and me at the kitchen table, and after drying the oilcloth he would spread out some cards and start calculating, in pencil, in the sickly yellow light, the chances of winning the vote. Evening by evening his spirits fell. All his calculations indicated a certain and crushing defeat.

  "All twelve Arab and Muslim states will naturally vote against us. And the Catholic Church is definitely putting pressure on the Catholic countries to vote against, because a Jewish state contradicts the fundamental belief of the Church, and there's no one like the Vatican when it comes to pulling strings behind the scenes. So we'll probably lose all twenty votes of the Latin American countries. And Stalin will undoubtedly instruct all his satellites in the Communist bloc to vote in accordance with his rigid anti-Zionist approach, so that makes another twelve votes against us. Not to mention England, which is always stirring up feeling against us everywhere and especially in her dominions, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and they'll all be roped in to thwart any chance of a Hebrew state. What about France, and the countries that follow her? France will never dare to risk incurring the anger of the millions of Muslims in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Greece has close trade links with the whole Arab world, and there are big Greek communities in all the Arab countries. And what about America itself? Is America's support for the partition plan final? What happens if the intrigues of the giant oil companies and our enemies in the State Department tip the balance and outweigh President Truman's conscience?"

  Over and over again Father calculated the balance of votes in the Assembly. Evening after evening he tried to soften the blow, to devise some coalition of countries that usually followed the United States, countries that might have
reasons of their own to oppose the Arabs, and small, respectable countries like Denmark or Holland, countries that had witnessed the horrors of the genocide of the Jewish people and might now gird their loins and act according to the dictates of their conscience rather than considerations of self-interest and oil.

  Was the Silwani family, in their villa in Sheikh Jarrah (a mere forty minutes' walk from here), also sitting around a piece of paper at their kitchen table this very minute, making the same calculations in reverse? Were they worrying, just like us, which way Greece would vote, and chewing the tip of a pencil over the final decision of the Scandinavian countries? Did they also have their optimists and pessimists, their cynics and their prophets of doom? Were they also trembling every night, imagining that we were scheming, stirring things up, cunningly pulling strings? Were they also all asking what would happen here, what would come to pass? Were they just as frightened of us as we were of them?

  And how about Aisha, and her parents in Talbieh? Was her whole family sitting in a room full of men with mustaches and jeweled women with angry faces and eyebrows that met above their noses, gathered in a circle around bowls of sugared orange peel, whispering among themselves and planning to "drown us in blood"? Did Aisha still sometimes play tunes she had learned from her Jewish piano teacher? Or was she forbidden to?

  Or perhaps they were standing in a silent circle around their little boy's bed? Awwad. His leg had been amputated. Because of me. Or he was dying from blood poisoning. Because of me. His curious, innocent puppy-dog eyes were closed. Pressed tight with suffering. His face drawn and pale as ice. His forehead racked with pain. His pretty curls lying on the white pillow. Jest a moment rest a moment. Groaning and shaking with pain. Or quietly crying in a high-pitched baby voice. And his sister sitting by his bedside hating me because it was my fault, everything was my fault, it was my fault she was beaten so cruelly, so thoroughly, over and over again, on her back, her head, her frail shoulders, not the way a girl who has done something wrong is sometimes beaten, but like a stubborn horse. It was my fault.