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Authors: Jan Morris
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and delicate her crucifix, but they were living close to savage things. The nervous young prosecutor, fiddling with his tie and smiling ingratiatingly at the brigadier, was relying upon alleged confessions obtained by methods of remorseless violence; perhaps he was only thinking of his promotion, poor chap, but if he looked across the room he could see the great blue weals still, as that crippled prisoner painfully moved an arm to pull the towel closer around his head.
The brigadier, presiding so forcefully over the hearing, knew that he might well be writing his own death sentence too; the forces he was judging are much more powerful, much more irresistible than the strength of his own authority, and if ever at last revolution reachesAmman itself he will doubtless suffer the penalties of loyalty. They were all anxious people, every one, judges and prisoners and prosecutors and jailers and all, caught cruelly in the whirlpool of change.
And what of the audience, metaphorically sucking its thumbs on its kitchen chairs? It represented that bog of apathy in which the human conscience, perceptive or misguided, sparkles like a diamond. It sat in the middle of great emotions; a tortured man on one side, a pair of star-crossed lovers on another, and you could almost hear its unspoken communal plea, above the harsh pronouncements of the president: ‘Pass me my work basket, will you, dear, and I’ll get on with my knitting while you men have a good old talk. What I always say is, you can’t change human nature, can you?’
I never heard what became of the accused, but revolution never erupted in Jordan anyway.
Jerusalem
In the late 1940s I had soldiered in the British mandated territory of Palestine, but the British had withdrawn from the country in 1948, leaving its Arab and Jewish inhabitants to fight for its possession. Jerusalem, sacred to both parties, seemed an insoluble obstacle to an agreement between them. In 1955, when I wrote this report for The Times, the walled Old City of Jerusalem was in Jordanian hands, considered part of Jordan and garrisoned by soldiers of Jordan’s British-founded Arab Legion, while the modern parts of the city were held by the Israelis.
Old Jerusalem is golden still, especially seen from the Mount of Olives or through the gnarled trees of Gethsemane on a late summer evening. It is still the holiest of holy places, still a magnificent Islamic city, still a fortress. Its buildings, scarred in the recent fighting, stand mellow and serene; through its tortuous streets move the pilgrims and priests, Beduin, bootblacks, coffee-sellers and gowned merchants of its tradition; upon its ramparts, guarding the embattled frontier with Israel, soldiers of the Arab Legion stand guard in pink-checked kuffiyahs and battledress.
It would be alien to its tradition for Jerusalem to be peaceful. Deaths and battles, armies and sieges, bloodshed and privation are the normalities of the city. Among its sparse hills the place certainly lies in a wonderfulsilence, calm and cool, with the first chinks of lights appearing and the call to evening prayer ringing from the mosque on the Hill of Ascension. But an implacable frontier divides the Old City from most of its modern suburbs, and the blaze of lights on the western ridge marks the centre of New Jerusalem, in the hands of the Jews and as inaccessible to the Arabs as Bhutan. An enemy is literally at the gates.
*
The spirit of Jerusalem has withdrawn from the grand new suburbs, now mostly in Israel, into the walled city where it belongs. The streets are crowded, prosperous and clean. Big American cars are driven precariously up ramps along stepped alleyways, for many rich Arab retailers, driven from New Jerusalem, have set up shop within the walls. They will tell you, as you drink their spiced coffee, of the enormous emporia, the vast estates, the bursting bank balances they invariably seem to have left behind – a myth of vanished opulence, a sort of gilt-edged
The brigadier, presiding so forcefully over the hearing, knew that he might well be writing his own death sentence too; the forces he was judging are much more powerful, much more irresistible than the strength of his own authority, and if ever at last revolution reachesAmman itself he will doubtless suffer the penalties of loyalty. They were all anxious people, every one, judges and prisoners and prosecutors and jailers and all, caught cruelly in the whirlpool of change.
And what of the audience, metaphorically sucking its thumbs on its kitchen chairs? It represented that bog of apathy in which the human conscience, perceptive or misguided, sparkles like a diamond. It sat in the middle of great emotions; a tortured man on one side, a pair of star-crossed lovers on another, and you could almost hear its unspoken communal plea, above the harsh pronouncements of the president: ‘Pass me my work basket, will you, dear, and I’ll get on with my knitting while you men have a good old talk. What I always say is, you can’t change human nature, can you?’
I never heard what became of the accused, but revolution never erupted in Jordan anyway.
Jerusalem
In the late 1940s I had soldiered in the British mandated territory of Palestine, but the British had withdrawn from the country in 1948, leaving its Arab and Jewish inhabitants to fight for its possession. Jerusalem, sacred to both parties, seemed an insoluble obstacle to an agreement between them. In 1955, when I wrote this report for The Times, the walled Old City of Jerusalem was in Jordanian hands, considered part of Jordan and garrisoned by soldiers of Jordan’s British-founded Arab Legion, while the modern parts of the city were held by the Israelis.
Old Jerusalem is golden still, especially seen from the Mount of Olives or through the gnarled trees of Gethsemane on a late summer evening. It is still the holiest of holy places, still a magnificent Islamic city, still a fortress. Its buildings, scarred in the recent fighting, stand mellow and serene; through its tortuous streets move the pilgrims and priests, Beduin, bootblacks, coffee-sellers and gowned merchants of its tradition; upon its ramparts, guarding the embattled frontier with Israel, soldiers of the Arab Legion stand guard in pink-checked kuffiyahs and battledress.
It would be alien to its tradition for Jerusalem to be peaceful. Deaths and battles, armies and sieges, bloodshed and privation are the normalities of the city. Among its sparse hills the place certainly lies in a wonderfulsilence, calm and cool, with the first chinks of lights appearing and the call to evening prayer ringing from the mosque on the Hill of Ascension. But an implacable frontier divides the Old City from most of its modern suburbs, and the blaze of lights on the western ridge marks the centre of New Jerusalem, in the hands of the Jews and as inaccessible to the Arabs as Bhutan. An enemy is literally at the gates.
*
The spirit of Jerusalem has withdrawn from the grand new suburbs, now mostly in Israel, into the walled city where it belongs. The streets are crowded, prosperous and clean. Big American cars are driven precariously up ramps along stepped alleyways, for many rich Arab retailers, driven from New Jerusalem, have set up shop within the walls. They will tell you, as you drink their spiced coffee, of the enormous emporia, the vast estates, the bursting bank balances they invariably seem to have left behind – a myth of vanished opulence, a sort of gilt-edged
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