by D. D. Mayers
I’ve skipped way ahead. I must go back to our youth hostel in Jerusalem from where we were well placed to drive to places of biblical history. Bethlehem stood out as the place that made a mockery of all the different Christian religions. The streets of shops surrounding all the holy places displaying thousands of trinkets of such irreverent rubbish, that I, even as a non-believer found incredibly distasteful. Nevertheless, C bought herself yet another long embroidered, ankle-length dress, which she still has, at the Holy Manger Store. When walking down the steps to the crypt where Jesus was born, we passed a large packet of soap powder, Daz, forgotten, forlorn, on the bottom step.
The Middle East - Part Two
Damascus to Hamburg
In Jericho, an incident took place that might have been disastrous. We were driving slowly down a street looking for a sign of the walls blown down by the noise of all those trumpets. There must have been some sort of public holiday, both pavements were thick with the milling crowd. Suddenly, a boy, a young boy, eight or ten, appeared, in the running position, head down, almost in mid-air, directly ahead of the bonnet. I slammed on my brakes, a split-second after I hit him. With a sickening thud, he bounced off the bonnet and hit the road rolling away. A shouting crowd immediately surrounded the car. My door was flung open and I was pulled out. I managed to push my way to the front of the car to see the boy. He was held standing, stooped, held up by bearded men. They too started shouting at me. The excitement generated in the crowd was palpable. It was frightening. There was nothing I could do. I gave in to the jostling, pulled this way and that. Quite suddenly two young men appeared, in their late twenties perhaps, very well built, clean-shaven, wearing grey tea-shirts. They extended their arms, gesturing the crowd to quieten. The effect was immediate, electric. They gestured them to be on their way. Murmuring, they dispersed as quickly as they’d gathered. They turned to me, and in fluent English, asked me what had happened. I explained, and one said he’d take us to the police station. He got into the back seat with Honey. The other one stayed with the boy and the two bearded men. We wove our way through Jericho to the station. He told me to follow him and the girls to stay in the car. The front room of the station was packed with people trying to elbow their way to the top of a queue. My heart sank. This would take forever. The young man said, ‘Follow me closely.’ He turned one shoulder to the fore and cut a clean line to the head of a queue. A few words exchanged and we were gestured to a door at the end of a counter. A senior officer sitting behind a large desk offered us chairs in front of the desk. The young man spoke deferentially in Arabic to the officer and seemed to explain why I was with him. The officer then turned to me and told me in English, to explain in my own words, what exactly had happened. I did so. He listened without interruption and after a while he said, ‘You must come tomorrow to the court, the boy and his father will be there, and the Judge will make his judgement.’ On the way back to the car, the young man told me exactly where the court was and reiterated the importance of the time I must be there. I, rather meekly, thanked him; imagine what could have happened had he and his friend not intervened at that moment in the crowd, we shook hands and I never saw him again.
Over supper, back at the youth hostel, we were recounting the story to fellow-travellers when one of them immediately asked if they’d taken our passports. On saying no, they all vehemently insisted we must pack up our things, right now, get into the car, not stop until over the border and into Syria. We looked at each other in astonishment. C said, ‘But we’ve done nothing wrong.’ ‘What’s that got to do with it, you hit an Arab boy, he bounced off your bonnet, tomorrow he WILL be bruised, tomorrow he WILL look as though he’s been hit by a car, it’s not worth the risk. Just imagine what you might have to pay to his family, it’ll take months for the insurance to cover it.’ I do hate know-alls. But he could be right. We hadn’t thought this through. We had to go away and discuss this privately. C was adamant we shouldn’t run away from anything, whether we were in the right or in the wrong. I knew, if I’d hit the boy at all, it could only have been my fault. We were looking out for those bloody walls. I could have been looking away at the moment the boy decided to put his head down and sprint to the other side of the road. That picture is as clear in my mind today as it was then. The two girls couldn’t be held responsible in any way, but if I was held in custody, what would they do? Had the authorities purposely not taken my passport; were they giving me a clear signal to leave. The young man who’d saved us from the crowd did stress the importance of eleven o’clock; of course if we just left now, we could easily be well away from the Jordanian border and into Syria.
What we didn’t know at this point was, we were going to be incarcerated for another five days of cholera quarantine on the Syrian border.
C was still adamant, Honey was in two minds and I didn’t know what to do. But ultimately it was my responsibility. A friend had once told me, if you can’t make up your mind which option to take, find a common theme, and take it out, and what you’re left with is the essence of the options. Usually, it’s with money, take away the cost, then the choice becomes clear. So here, if I ran away, even if I were being guided to do so, I’d be breaking the law. I’d have to live with that decision forever.
We were there, promptly, outside the courthouse, at a quarter to eleven. The girls stayed in the car. I met impassive faces. No hint of anything. I gave my passport to the officer on duty as identification. With just the briefest of glances, I was lead to the dock. I was getting a little nervous.
The boy was smartly dressed in a tidy long-sleeved white shirt and long black trousers. He had an enormous swelling on the side of his head just above his right eye. The bearded man sat next to him holding his hand. Behind them, filling all the other benches, was, what seemed to be, his entire family. I felt very alone. Only at that moment did it occur to me perhaps I should be represented by a lawyer. Were my fellow-travellers, at the youth hostel, right after all. You could hear a pin drop. The door behind the judge’s chair opened and the judge walked in. We all stood up and bowed. He sat down. We followed suit. He then said something in Arabic. He then turned to me and said in broken English, ‘Tell me what happened.’ For some reason I thought the explanation, should be very long-winded. So I started with leaving the dock in Kuwait. After a minute or two he tried to hurry me along. ‘Yes, yes, but yesterday,’ he said. I said, ‘I’m sorry Your Honour, but, you see, we were staying at the hostel in Jerusalem, and we wanted to see the ancient history of Jericho, so we were driving along...’ Suddenly the bearded man jumped to his feet and shouted something at the Judge, then pointed to the boy. The Judge shouted back and the man angrily sat down. ‘Continue’ he said to me, ‘Well, you see Your Honour, we were slowly driving along the street, there were lots of people...’ The man jumped up again, shouting at the Judge, pointing at me then at the boy. The Judge shouted back. But instead of sitting down, the entire family, seated on the benches behind him, jumped to their feet as well, shouting and pointing at me. Quite suddenly the Judge had lost control. There was pandemonium. He tried to regain his authority, hitting his gavel on the desk, but they wouldn’t sit down. He turned to me, shouted in his broken English, waving his arm at me, ‘You, go, go.’ I couldn’t quite believe what he was saying, I shifted about, looking around, he shouted again, ‘Go, go.’ A court official came up to me, took my arm firmly and guided me out of the court. ‘Go,’ he said. I very hurriedly left the pandemonium and went. I ran to the car and jumped in, ‘What happened, what happened,’ both quickly said in unison, ‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to go right now.’ We never did see those walls.
The borders, in those days, before the six-day-war, were entirely different from the position they’re in today, and so we headed directly north to Syria. I don’t remember exactly how long it took, but it can’t have been long, as I don’t think we stopped a night anywhere until we were in our prison that night. It wasn’t really a prison, but we wer
e imprisoned. Exactly the same little smirks on the border police’s faces, as the ones who’d guffawed at us on the Iraqi border, immediately warned us of what we’d expect at the Syrian border. We’d deliberately chosen the smallest border crossing we could find, to avoid all the trucks and, possibly, another quarantine. It was way up in the hills above the northern Jordanian border. No one at the Embassy in Jerusalem had seemed able to give us any definite reason why there should be a quarantine, or indeed if there was a quarantine. Sure enough an emphatic, expressionless face gave us the order and kept our passports. We asked, ‘why?’ ‘Because you’ve been to Iraq and they have cholera.’ ‘But we’ve had five days quarantine to go into Jordan.’ ‘Your passports will in returned in five days.’ There was no point in pursuing this particular path. ‘Can you please direct us to your quarantine campsite.’ ‘We have no campsite, but we have no one in our hospital so you may stay there.’ Then almost as an afterthought, ‘And you must not walk into the town during your confinement, so the doctor will get you food.’ The doctor couldn’t have been more pleasant, he welcomed us with open arms. All this really was getting quite surreal. It was as though we were in a disjointed film where the director had no idea of the plot. This hospital wasn’t a couple of rooms pretending to be a hospital, it really was a hospital. It had wards, all full of hospital beds, and shower rooms off the wards, and even an equipped operating theatre. How there could be ‘no patients’ in a reasonably sized town such as this, was not believable. Unless of course, they’d found the answer to life. We chatted to the Doctor about his work in the town and chose our ward for our five-day stay. Nothing seemed amiss. But what did become apparent quite quickly, was the same problem we had from the very beginning. My two girls. Which one was free? He asked us what sort of food we’d like and kindly offered to bring it himself. The time passed quite pleasantly really, with the doctor’s daily visits and very long chats. He was well read, spoke English almost flawlessly and was very interesting about the politics of the country. On the evening of the third day, he brought our supper as usual, but this time with a bottle of red wine. We glanced at one another. He was about to make his move. Supper went on and on and he stayed and stayed, the last drop of red wine had been squeezed from the bottle. What on earth were we to do. Our saviour suddenly arrived in the form of a roar of an engine, screeching to a halt outside the hospital front door. We thankfully flew to the windows, only to see a filthy dark-green Jaguar car that had evidently lost its exhaust. All four doors flung open simultaneously and out jumped five of the scruffiest young men you’d see anywhere. One of them younger than the others, probably about nineteen, and the driver a bit older with a short ginger beard, the other three in their midtwenties. The Doctor was furious. His evening ruined, he threw himself out of the ward and down the stairs to the front door. Shouting orders at the bewildered five young men, he turned on his heel and flounced off down the hill and back to the town. We introduced ourselves to our new companions, telling them how well we’d been treated and remarkably, the food was on the house. However, no food and no doctor appeared again. We wondered what would happen at the end of our confinement. We needn’t have worried, on the morning we were due to leave, the doctor arrived with our passports and returned them with a smile and a little bow. We shook hands and he wished us well for the rest of our trip. No hint of embarrassment or awkwardness of why we hadn’t seen him after he flounced off when the new intake arrived; or why the food so abruptly ceased to materialise after being so abundant for the first half of our quarantine. I can only suppose we were considered ‘fair game’, some you win, some you lose.
A little episode happened with the group of young men; I seem to be talking about them as though they were younger than me. whereas the older one, the one with the ginger beard was, in fact, older. It turned out they were very short of money. I’ve no idea how they thought they’d get to England. The evening of the day before we were due to leave, I went to check everything was in order with the car. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I glanced at the fuel gauge. Then stared at it in disbelief. It was completely empty. I checked with the girls we’d filled the tank just before leaving Jordan. There was only one conclusion, all the petrol had been siphoned out. After a brief discussion, I had no alternative but to confront the boys. The elder one hung his head in shame, and the others shuffled about, hands in pockets, looking at their shoes. He gave me the cash for the petrol. I’d like to have said ‘you can keep it’ but we weren’t in the position for such generosity.
In the morning we set forth for Damascus, leaving behind five young men, who’d be our age now, and who we’d neither see nor hear of again. And a doctor, with an empty hospital, who’d ‘tried-it-on’ and failed. If all these disparate little episodes add up to make a life, no wonder our dreams are so diverse and confusing when everything we’ve ever done is recorded in such detail.
I think I’ve briefly told you about Damascus, and as I don’t want this part of my story to turn into a travelogue I’ll just reiterate one thing I remember most vividly. We were told by our self-appointed guide that there would be a war, in three or four months from then, between all the surrounding countries with adjacent borders to Israel, to reinstate the Palestinian Nation to its rightful position on the map of the world, which did not include the state of Israel. At the time, I didn’t realise the enormous relevance of what we were told. Why were we, three very young travellers, told something of such incredible significance to all that’s happening in the Middle East to this day? How could I have not taken it in? Here was an opportunity, handed to us on a plate, for a thoughtful discussion. Was this man an Arab or a Jew? What did he do? What was his purpose? Where did he live? How did he make his living? So much we could have talked about. He was with us for most of the day. We were worried he would ask us for money, but he didn’t. C wanted to go to the street called Straight. He took us there. She bought yet another gown she still wears to this day. It’s made of bright white, beautifully embroidered, soft cotton with long sleeves and hangs to the ground. A man’s actually, but she wears it well. The hundreds of little narrow streets of silversmiths were beautiful and dazzling. I wish I could go today with, at least ‘some’ money, but the civil war makes it impossible.
After a few days, we tore ourselves away from this enticing city and made our way to another lovely city, Beirut, the capital of the Lebanon. It’s hardly possible to reconcile the city now and the city then. I haven’t been back since we were there in 1965, but the newsreel footage and journalist-word-painting, depict it as a comparable hellhole. My father would describe to me the attractiveness, the interest, the pleasure that was Mogadishu in Somalia. Antique shops full of beautiful furniture, pictures, and jewellery, restaurants with all manner of food, one after another, along the seafront. Beirut became a similar contradiction.
Our campsite, called Aamchit, a mile or two north of the city, was beautifully positioned on a rocky outcrop on the edge of the Mediterranean. I’ve tried to look for it on Google Earth, but it no longer exists as a campsite, the position would now be too valuable. The facilities all beautifully clean, even hot water in the showers, and the restaurant serving delicious cheap food, making it unnecessary to prepare our own. Beirut itself was a beautiful vibrant, but calm city. We wandered about, stopping at street cafes whenever we wished, ambling through the old town, winding our way along narrow, fascinating little streets, filled with every manner of shops you can envisage. Every doorway offered a warm, friendly, smiling, welcoming face, inviting us in for a glass of tea and a chat. If we didn’t want to buy anything, there was never any pressure to do so. They, in their turn, were amazed to hear we’d left Mombasa harbour and were driving all the way back from Kuwait to London. Other days we just stayed at our campsite, sunbathing on the flat-topped rocks and diving into the crystal clear, azure blue, Mediterranean Sea to cool off. Inevitably, if Honey ever made the mistake of swimming on her own, within a blink of an eye, as if from nowhere, a
slinky motor launch would silently sidle alongside and she’d be invited aboard for a drink. All the well bronzed men, in their early forties, with black, greased-back hair, with a hint of grey at the temples, never seemed to mind very much when she accepted, but only if her friends could come aboard with her. Many a pleasant afternoon, after a Lebanese Mezze lunch, swilled down with a cold bottle of local dry white wine, was spent aboard very expensive motor launches. We visited all the places you’d expect should be visited; The Cedars of Lebanon, the ancient columns of Baalbek, Byblos, and further up the coast, beautiful long white beaches, nothing like it is today. The vineyards, the mountains, the Sea, Lebanon is such a beautiful country. Only three tiny months later, after the Six-day-War, did the illusion of calm, throughout the Middle East, begin to erupt into the seething caldron of hatred and destruction that is the whole of the Middle East today. We were caught up in the illusion of calm and stayed too long indulging in the tranquillity and ease of life in which we, so unexpectedly, found ourselves. Our indulgence was compounded by the two weeks of enforced quarantine on the two borders, into Jordan and Syria. We wouldn’t pay for the mistake for another six weeks or so, when trying to cross the Austrian Alps on one of the highest, smallest passes, in six feet of snow. Our car had no heating, and was built for hot, African dusty roads! If we had known, I don’t think we would have been able to tear ourselves away anyway. After all, everything we were doing, from the day we left Mombasa harbour, was a one-off, so all we experienced was to be savoured and made the very most of.