awesome thing and we think of it, as often as not, in grand abstractions. We talk spaciously, like astronomers, of the turmoil that is now sweeping across the Arab world and only occasionally, in sharp passing moments of enlightenment, do we collate the great political design with the poor little human conscience, struggling there beneath the manifestos. One such flash of illumination occurred this morning in the officers’ mess of the Jordanian Army training regiment on a hill outside Amman.
The mess was white with tablecloths, as though lunch were about to be served, and the silver baubles of the regimental collection gleamed from their glass cabinets handsomely. The neon lighting was bright in spite of the sunshine. There were pictures of armoured cars on the walls, and a faint tangy fragrance emanated from the dwarf pines outside the window. The trial was taking place of five Jordanians accused of conspiracy and the possession and illegal use of explosives, the penalty demanded being death: and here, as in some fierce silhouette, you could see the images of revolution clear and cruel.
On one side of the court sat the accused. There were two placid, shabbily dressed Jordanians in kuffiyahs , sitting silent and composed, as though they were in church. There was a fattish, puffy-faced man with a towel over his head, clearly so harshly used by his interrogators that he was near death already: great blue weals scarred his hands, his movements were agonizingly slow, suffering stared from his watery eyes, and sometimes with a gesture of despair he heeled over and laid his head on his neighbour’s lap. And at the end of the row sat a pair of lovers, he tall and bearded, she slim and wide-eyed, the very epitome of revolutionary and Byronic romance. The young man was cheerful and smiling, in a blue open-necked shirt: the girl was pale but proud, her great black eyes anxious and unsettled, in a dress with orange stripes and a white bangle, and a fragile gold crucifix round her neck.
On the other side of the room sat authority in the form of a military court, stern and khaki-coloured, and shuffling its papers portentously. The defence lawyers sat in double-breasted suits at one table. The prosecutor, a scared and ineffectual subaltern, sat at another. Two rather pudgy majors formed the ancillaries of the bench, and the president was a brigadier, red-tabbed and beribboned, of fine commanding presence and assurance: his face was large and craggy, like a face from the desert, his voice was very loud and rather rasping, and he glared at the court from deep-set eyes above a clipped and bristly moustache.
So they sat there, the accusers, the accused, and the judges: and all around them jostled the audience, idly lounging or half-heartedly enjoying themselves. There were troops of soldiers, apparently off-duty, sitting in the courtroom or crowding about the open door. There was a handful of eager attentive civilians. Policemen sat stoutly in their spiked helmets, vacant but willing, like country coppers on bicycles in pre-war English comedies. A few foreign pressmen doodled on their pads (‘You might do an atmosphere piece on it, old boy, but you can’t call it hard news, except for the girl angle’). A policewoman with bobbed black hair, gold earrings and a forage cap, sat incongruously among all the men, her face heavily powdered. There was a sense of muted and unhilarious recreation to the scene, such as you might experience in a suburban cinema during a fairly dreary second feature.
In fact, though, this little courtroom was alive with terrible emotions, with fears and loyalties and defiances, and all the conflicts of human judgement that are the basis of revolutions. The touching young lovers were facing death and had (if the charges against them are true) been perfectly prepared to blow any number of strangers to oblivion to further the cause of nationalism. Sweet was their obvious affection, and pretty the girl’s dress,
The mess was white with tablecloths, as though lunch were about to be served, and the silver baubles of the regimental collection gleamed from their glass cabinets handsomely. The neon lighting was bright in spite of the sunshine. There were pictures of armoured cars on the walls, and a faint tangy fragrance emanated from the dwarf pines outside the window. The trial was taking place of five Jordanians accused of conspiracy and the possession and illegal use of explosives, the penalty demanded being death: and here, as in some fierce silhouette, you could see the images of revolution clear and cruel.
On one side of the court sat the accused. There were two placid, shabbily dressed Jordanians in kuffiyahs , sitting silent and composed, as though they were in church. There was a fattish, puffy-faced man with a towel over his head, clearly so harshly used by his interrogators that he was near death already: great blue weals scarred his hands, his movements were agonizingly slow, suffering stared from his watery eyes, and sometimes with a gesture of despair he heeled over and laid his head on his neighbour’s lap. And at the end of the row sat a pair of lovers, he tall and bearded, she slim and wide-eyed, the very epitome of revolutionary and Byronic romance. The young man was cheerful and smiling, in a blue open-necked shirt: the girl was pale but proud, her great black eyes anxious and unsettled, in a dress with orange stripes and a white bangle, and a fragile gold crucifix round her neck.
On the other side of the room sat authority in the form of a military court, stern and khaki-coloured, and shuffling its papers portentously. The defence lawyers sat in double-breasted suits at one table. The prosecutor, a scared and ineffectual subaltern, sat at another. Two rather pudgy majors formed the ancillaries of the bench, and the president was a brigadier, red-tabbed and beribboned, of fine commanding presence and assurance: his face was large and craggy, like a face from the desert, his voice was very loud and rather rasping, and he glared at the court from deep-set eyes above a clipped and bristly moustache.
So they sat there, the accusers, the accused, and the judges: and all around them jostled the audience, idly lounging or half-heartedly enjoying themselves. There were troops of soldiers, apparently off-duty, sitting in the courtroom or crowding about the open door. There was a handful of eager attentive civilians. Policemen sat stoutly in their spiked helmets, vacant but willing, like country coppers on bicycles in pre-war English comedies. A few foreign pressmen doodled on their pads (‘You might do an atmosphere piece on it, old boy, but you can’t call it hard news, except for the girl angle’). A policewoman with bobbed black hair, gold earrings and a forage cap, sat incongruously among all the men, her face heavily powdered. There was a sense of muted and unhilarious recreation to the scene, such as you might experience in a suburban cinema during a fairly dreary second feature.
In fact, though, this little courtroom was alive with terrible emotions, with fears and loyalties and defiances, and all the conflicts of human judgement that are the basis of revolutions. The touching young lovers were facing death and had (if the charges against them are true) been perfectly prepared to blow any number of strangers to oblivion to further the cause of nationalism. Sweet was their obvious affection, and pretty the girl’s dress,
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