Yasmine by Eli Amir Page B

was a Sephardi Jerusalemite whose ancestors had come from Macedonia. He told me at our first meeting that his father had been the Town Engineer in the administration of Ragheb al-Nashashibi, the Palestinian Mayor who was married to a Jewish woman. After the June war, Solly Levy suddenly found himself responsible for all the public properties owned by the Jordanian government in Jerusalem. He showed me some spectacular buildings, then took me to a small house set in a beautiful garden in Sheikh Jarrah.
    â€œThis was the office of Ahmed Shukeiry, the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organisation,” he told me. The name struck me forcibly. This was the man whose evil laugh spouted from all the radio sets during the run-up to the war: “Isra’il, your head is made of wax, so why are you walking in the sun?” Shukeiry himself was not a Palestinian but a Lebanese fromTebnine, and was renowned as a sharp lawyer and brilliant speaker who hired out his pen and his voice to the highest bidder. He had served as Syria’s ambassador to the UN, as deputy head of the Arab League, and even as Saudi Arabia’s UN ambassador. Nasser appointed him chairman of the PLO – and here I was in his Jerusalem office.
    The house had five rooms as well as the office, it had a handsomely furnished bedroom, a modern kitchen, and a living-room which contained a large sofa, a damascene inlaid table and two armchairs. All was comfortable and attractive, way beyond my expectations, but I was uneasy. Me in Ahmad Shukeiry’s office? How could I work from the residence of such a bitter enemy?
    Mr Levy broke into my thoughts. “Shukeiry ran away in the middle of the fighting, and these are the offices we’ve been given. Why are you hesitating? For myself I’ve chosen the Saudi consulate next door.”
    He’s right, I thought. And this place suits my purpose. If I’m to make contact with their leading figures, it will be easier for them to come to this prosperous secluded neighbourhood, to an office set among trees and diplomats’ villas, far from malicious eyes. Perhaps here I’ll be able to establish relations of mutual respect and openness. So instead of avoiding the dark shadow of the previous occupier, I chose to use the elegant house as my starting point. I felt there was a good spirit in the air, a new hope – perhaps a new order will prevail, perhaps the country will know peace at last.
    Later I tried to pinpoint the moment when the seeds of future enmity were sown. When did the open hearts close, when did the smiling faces begin to frown?
    Was it when the bulldozers demolished the houses of theMughrabi Quarter to make room for the Western Wall plaza, a huge open space that made it easier to reach the Wall, but dwarfed it and deprived it of its hidden, mournful glory? Or the moment when the inexperienced military governor insulted the Mayor of East Jerusalem, Ruhi al-Khatib? Or when another stanza was added to the song Jerusalem of Gold : “We have come back to the water-cisterns, the market and the square”, as if they hadn’t been inhabited since time immemorial?
    Who can tell, who can define the moment after which nothing was the same any more? Perhaps there was no such moment, no time of acceptance and reconciliation, only an interval after the shock of defeat. Perhaps while we were celebrating our revival, their old hostility, burning jealousy and intolerance continued to simmer, as well as their natural rage about the plunder of their land, and all these festered secretly like malignant tumours that devour the body and leave nothing but raw bones.
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    As in previous meetings in the office of the Mayor, Teddy Kollek, I tried to figure out his personality – a good-looking man, impressive and distinguished, full of charm and very influential, who seemed to be able to open all hearts and doors. Businesslike, impatient and self-confident, he was in a hurry to join