A Tale of Love and Darkness - Amos Oz [185]
At the Italian Hospital, without saying a word, we turned north toward St. George's Street, skirting the ultra-Orthodox Jewish quarter of Mea Shearim, pressing on into the world of cypresses, grilles, cornices, and stone walls. This was the opposite Jerusalem, the Jerusalem I hardly knew, the Abyssinian, Arab, pilgrim, Ottoman, missionary, German, Greek, brooding, Armenian, American, monastic, Italian, Russian Jerusalem, thick with pine trees, menacing yet fascinating, with its bells and winged enchantments that were forbidden to you because they were alien and hostile, a veiled city, concealing dangerous secrets, heavy with crosses, turrets, mosques, and mysteries, a dignified and silent city, through whose streets ministers of alien cults shrouded in black cloaks and priestly garb flitted like dark shadows, monks and nuns, kadis and muezzins, notables, worshippers, pilgrims, veiled women, and cowled priests.
It was a Saturday morning in the summer of 1947, a few months before the bloody clashes broke out in Jerusalem, less than a year before the British left, before the siege, the shelling, the water stoppage, and the partition of the city. The Saturday that we walked to the Silwani family's house in Sheikh Jarrah a pregnant calm still lay on all these northeastern suburbs. But already within the calm you could sense a faint hint of impatience, a whiff of suppressed hostility. What were three Jews, a man, a woman, and a child, doing here, where had they suddenly sprung from? And now that you're here, on this side of the city, you'd better not linger longer than necessary. Slip swiftly through these streets. While there is still—
***
There were already some fifteen or twenty guests and members of the family in the hall when we arrived, as though hovering on a cloud of cigarette smoke, most of them seated on the rows of sofas along the four walls, a few standing in little clusters in the corners. Among them was Mr. Cardigan, and also Mr. Kenneth Orwell Knox-Guildford, the postmaster general and Uncle Staszek's boss, who was standing with some other gentlemen and greeted Uncle Staszek by raising his glass slightly. Most of the doors leading into inner rooms were closed, but through one that was ajar I could see three girls of my own age, wearing long dresses, huddled together on a little bench, eyeing the guests and whispering among themselves.
Ustaz Najib Mamduh al-Silwani, our host, introduced a few members of the family and some of the other guests, men and women, including a pair of middle-aged English ladies in gray suits, an elderly French scholar, and a Greek priest in a robe and a curly square beard. To all alike our host praised his guest, in English and sometimes in French, and explained in a couple of sentences how dear Mr. Stav had dispelled the great trouble that had hung over the heads of the Silwani family for several dark weeks.
We, in turn, shook hands, chatted, smiled, made little bows, and murmured "How nice!," "Enchanté," and "Good to meet you." We even presented a modest symbolic gift to the al-Silwani family: a book of photographs of life in the kibbutz, with pictures of everyday scenes in the communal dining room, pioneers in the fields and the dairy, naked children happily splashing around under the sprinklers, and an old Arab peasant, holding fast to his donkey's halter as he stared at a gigantic tractor on tracks going past in a cloud of dust. Each photograph was accompanied by a few words of explanation in Hebrew and English.
Ustaz al-Silwani leafed through the book of photographs, smiling pleasantly, and nodding a few times as though he had finally understood what the photographers had meant to say in the pictures. He thanked his guests for the present and put it down in one of the recesses in the wall, or was it