The Excursionists rode the final ten miles of the Holy Land Tour at a brisk pace. One senses they could not wait to reach Jaffa and re-join the Quaker City, which they hoped would be lying at anchor offshore.
“We galloped the horses a good part of the distance to Jaffa for the plain was as level as a floor and free from stones, and besides this was our last march in Holy Land. These two or three hours finished, we and the tired horses could have rest and sleep as long as we wanted it. As we drew near to Jaffa, the boys spurred up the horses and indulged in the excitement of an actual race - an experience we had hardly had since we raced on donkeys in the Azores islands.”
Mark Twain did not dwell too long in person, or too much in prose, in Jaffa. He saw “the noble grove of orange-trees; we passed through the walls, and rode again down narrow streets and among swarms of animated rags, and saw other sights and had other experiences we had long been familiar with.”
He didn’t see much because there wasn’t much to see. By all accounts Jaffa in 1867 was at its lowest ebb. It had recently - recently by Jaffa’s standards - been sacked by Napoleon. On its surrender he ordered the beheading of its four thousand inhabitants. So that it wasn’t quite the PR disaster it might have been he imported Muslim executioners from Egypt to swing the axe. A visit to the museum shows photographs from around the time of the Excursionists’ visit of a cholera-infested shantytown with filthy streets and filthier people.
Almost as a metaphor for Israel, the old port city has been transformed. Jaffa’s famous walls have been rebuilt and inside them the streets leveled and cleaned. The port outside the walls is still a touch ramshackle by these standards but not for much longer - it will soon be “upgraded” into a marina with matching boutiques and theme bars. Elsewhere artists have been shipped in to create a colony of sorts and an “olde Joppa”-style hotel is on its way. One is reminded of Covent Garden in London or Les Halles in Paris, a sort of Disneyfied version of the good old days. It’s attractive enough on a peripheral level but at heart it’s just another commercial development without a soul.
Two genuine buildings are of interest in Jaffa. St. Peter’s Church is the last Franciscan church we will see in the Holy Land and it’s almost as if they have saved the best for last. By the time of Twain’s visit it had been sacked by Napoleon twice: for the first time on his way north and then for good measure by his army on its retreat south. It was rebuilt in the late nineteenth century by the Spanish in the Spanish imperial baroque style; we could just as easily be in Santiago or Lima. The windows and panels depict Spanish saints as well as St. Peter. The stained glass windows are particularly attractive and what at first appears to be marble around the altar is in fact a paint effect. Today the Franciscans hold masses in all the major European languages and Russian and Polish.
The other building of interest is the old Ottoman municipality building, the Serrani. An imposing three-story building with a façade of four high relief columns, it was the headquarters of what passed for Ottoman rule until the British Mandate in 1923. In early 1948 an Israeli terrorist donned the uniform of a Royal Irish Fusiliers driver and exploded his truck at the entrance. He killed twenty-six people and injured hundreds more. A few months later the Israelis lobbed twenty tons of mortars into Jaffa with the aim of driving the Muslims and Christians out. The aim succeeded: 95 per cent of Jaffa’s 65,000
Arabs were ethnically cleansed - and the poor old Serrani was seriously devastated. The building still has the dominant position in Jaffa and has since been restored to better than its former glory and can be viewed inside by appointment.
***
But this has all happened since Mark Twain’s visit. Back then, he finished his notes with a mixture of relief and triumph: “We dismounted, for the last time, and out in the offing, riding at anchor, we saw the ship! I put an exclamation point there because we felt one when we saw the vessel.”
***
We say our goodbyes at the dock in Jaffa. It is a sad moment and brings on a sense of foreboding. Nothing to put one’s hands on, just a vacuum in the air, something missing in the heart. I throw a twig of olive into the sea and smile goodbye. We have grown fond of each other these last few months: he battling against the odds, a barometer for the Excursion, looking over his shoulder to see how I’m doing, if I’m keeping up, making sure I’m entering into the spirit of the thing; I, like a bloodhound with a kipper, following him doggedly, uniting with him at all those Holy Land’s plus ça change-s, enjoying all those TLUCs and ironies together, amazed at how he and the New Pilgrims put up with each other. Above all I’ve come to love his enquiring mind, his stoic demeanor by day and his set-’em-up-Joe by night; he wields a nifty fountain pen too.
The Quaker City set off for Alexandria, Egypt and back through the Mediterranean to New York. Vasco da Gama left Haifa for Cyprus and Turkey. Mark Twain returned to fame and on/off fortune and - overall - happiness and serenity. I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen to me; it depends on how many people get to read these words.
***
In Egypt, after a few days reflection, Twain summed up his experience in the Holy Land thus:
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective - distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists - over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead - about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane.
Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua’s miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour’s presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye.
Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shape- less ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the desert places round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour’s voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
***
I’m sure that this enquiring mind would love to know how the Holy Land lies today. Awhile back I resolved that when the re-Tour was over I would spend a few days at anchor
off Cyprus writing him a letter, Dear Sam, as an epilogue.
45 I believe I would rather ride a donkey than any beast in the world. He goes briskly, he puts on no airs, he is docile, though opinionated. Satan himself could not scare him, and he is convenient - very convenient. When you are tired riding you can rest your feet on the ground and let him gallop from under you. The Innocents Abroad
46 A sin takes on new and real terrors when there seems a chance it is going to be found out.
47 During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Europe and Elsewhere
48 To any foreigner, English is exceedingly difficult. Even the angels speak it with an accent. Pudd’nhead Wilson
Epilogue:
Dear Sam, being a letter from Ian to Sam about the Middle East as he would find it now.
s/y Vasco da Gama
At anchor
Ormos Pissouri
Cyprus
Dear Sam,
Goodness gracious! That was some endurance test we did back there. The Holy Land is not for the faint of heart, nor for the correct of politic. Religion red in tooth and claw, culture suspended for the duration, old civilizations newly uncivilized, a place where old souls cry and new souls swagger – not your favorite place then, not my favorite place now.
I left a week ago, almost exactly one hundred and forty-three years after you did. A week is a good time for reflection; events and impression are still fresh, just the immediacy of coping with all that the Holy Land throws at you has dampened down enough to allow reflection to take place. I thought you might appreciate a letter, a think piece, a Sitrep, hack to hack as you might say, about how it’s all turned out since you waved Jaffa goodbye.
You won’t be surprised to hear that the Holy Land has lost none of its intensity: whereas you saw desolation and serfdom, I saw arrogance and desperation; whereas you saw religious skullduggery and barbarity, I saw religion politicized and so doubly dangerous; whereas you wished the British and French Empires would sink the Ottoman Empire, I saw how the British and French Empires’ broken promises have left only broken dreams.
I thought it might be helpful to summarize succinctly the history of the Holy Land from when you left towards the end of 1867 until now. I’m going to approach this from a British point of view for several reasons. Firstly, of course, I’m British and can’t do much about that. Secondly, it has to be said that the British are largely responsible for the unholy part of the mess in which the Holy Land finds itself today. Thirdly, in an area where there are twelve sides to every coin it makes for a more consistent summary to plant one’s feet in a particular patch of ground and keep them there.
When you were in the Greater Syria province of the Ottoman Empire you met some ultraorthodox Jews in Tiberias and some more in Jerusalem. There was also a Jewish quarter in Damascus. “Body-snatchers” you called them on account of their self-righteous and sanctimonious bearing. There were something like ten thousand ultraorthodox Jews living there and this population stayed steady for the next dozen or so years. Like all non-Muslim religions they were free to practice their creed upon payment to the Ottomans for the permits to do so. The Jewish communities were self-contained and, as always, good citizens; they left alone and were left alone.
Meanwhile in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, a groundswell was building in Jewish communities for a permanent Jewish home. The groundswell became an outbreak in the 1880s when the Eastern Orthodox Church in Russia sponsored a series of anti-Semitic pogroms (a Russian word meaning “devas- tation”) banning Jews from the countryside and universities and from urban professions. As a direct result in 1882 seven thousand Jewish refugees fled to the Holy Land. They found, as you had done, a sparsely populated and desolate land, literally dirt poor. The American Consul49 in Jerusalem at the time, Saleh Merrill, wrote to Washington that the Holy Land was in long term decline and that “the population and wealth has not increased these past forty years”. In spite of this gloomy outlook the newly arrived Jews somehow made their circumstances work as Jews have always done and by the turn of the last century there were twenty thousand Jewish immigrants in what was still called Greater Syria; Palestine as a nation state was an idea whose time was yet to come.
The idea whose time by now had most definitely come was Zionism; Zion being the Hebrew word for Jerusalem, and Zionism came to mean the dream of returning to Jerusalem. It needed an exceptional man to bring together all the ideas blowing in the wind across Middle and Eastern Europe and this nascent Zionism found him in a young and radicalized Austrian Jew called Theodor Herzl. In 1897 he convened the First Zionist Congress in Switzerland and crystallized the idea of a Jewish homeland for the Jewish people.
Over the next fifteen years a further forty thousand Jews settled in the Holy Land and the number of immigrants reached a level where the indigenous Arabs - and most estimates suggest that there were about a quarter of a million of them - became fearful of displacement. Herzl’s activities continued apace as he lobbied around Europe and North America for his dream of a Jewish state in what by now was increasingly being called Palestine.
In 1914 events in the Holy Land were subsumed by events further west. In June a Yugoslav nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The Austrians responded by threatening Serbia. A complex arrangement of imperial pacts and alliances soon led the British, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman Empires, as well as France and Italy to become involved in an arcane dispute, an involvement that over the next four years was to cost the lives of nine million souls. The world was at war: the First World War. By the time it ended the United States had helped the Allies to victory and the Russian, Ottoman, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires to defeat - and extinction. The waste of lives and the pointlessness of it all devastated Europe. The League of Nations, the precursor of the United Nations, was founded in an attempt to prevent such a human catastrophe ever happening again.
During the war the British made three specific agreements which funda- mentally altered the geopolitics of the Holy Land. The background was the need to undermine the war effort of the Ottoman Empire, which had allied itself with the Germans. The British perceived that the Ottoman Empire had a soft underbelly in its sparse Syrian provinces stretching all the way down to Egypt. In 1915, in an effort to encourage an Arab revolt against the Ottomans, the British entered into an agreement with the Arabs that indicated British support for an independent Greater Syria if and when all sides had defeated the Ottomans. This is known as the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. A year later Sir Mark Sykes of Britain and Monsieur Georges Picot of France met in secret and formulated plans to divide up this same enormous piece of land - also if and when all sides had defeated the Ottomans. This is known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Lastly in 1917, partly out of sympathy for the Diaspora, partly out of a Protestant Evangelical wish to hasten the coming of the next messiah and partly as an attempt to persuade the United States to join the war, Sir Arthur Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild promising British support for what amounted to the state of Israel. This is known as the Balfour Declaration.
These three agreements were made in expediency and with the knowledge that at any given time two of them would have to be... re-aligned. When the League of Nations was formed Britain and France were the dominant powers and set about dividing up the now-defunct Ottoman Empire as per the Sykes- Picot Agreement. But there was an American fly in the i
mperial ointment.
After the First World War President Woodrow Wilson announced the frankly radical notion that nations should be entitled to self-determination. This was to become American policy. It was both a successful attempt to gain the moral high ground with subject nations and a shot across the bows of renewed post-war European imperialism.
The Europeans had a solution that, for a while, kept all sides happy: the Mandate system, whereby Britain and France ruled the Middle East under a League of Nations Mandate. Under these 1922 Mandates Britain and France would, in effect, foster-care the emerging Arab countries until they were deemed ready to govern themselves; deemed ready, of course, by the foster- carers. It was of course imperialism by the back door so the Europeans were most content, yet it wasn’t imperialism so the Americans were more-or-less content, in its way it recognized de facto that the Arab countries would at some stage become independent so they were partly content and as for the still unborn Israel, well it was another step towards statehood so they were not uncontent.
Under the Mandate France was to inherit Syria, Lebanon, and the oil-rich area of Mosul in Iraq. Britain was to gain the rest of Iraq and all of Palestine; Palestine at that time included what are now Jordan as well as Israel and the West Bank. Later Britain and France horse-traded some other oil concessions. The British installed a puppet Arab, Faisal, to be King of Syria but he fell out with the French so Britain told him he was now King of Iraq instead. Wasn’t life simple in those days? Not so long ago, either.
Innocence and War Page 29