April 11, 2004

Maureen Lines laments the travails of the Palestinian people

It was 1964. I was on board the SS France, docked in New York harbour, and was about to make my second crossing of the Atlantic. This was still the time of the great ocean-going liners. Travel then was much more relaxed; journeys in the western world were threatened only by natural disasters or mechanical failures.

Those who were closest to me came with champagne to see me off. There was no doubt in their mind that they were seeing me for the last time.

“Why Damascus?”

“Why are you going?”

“Because, because” I spoke no further. As Virginia Woolf said, we are all books known only to ourselves.

“You will be raped!”

“You will be murdered!”

“No one in their right mind would hitch-hike through Arabia!” I did not answer. I just stared out to the beckoning ocean.

France, Germany passed by me in the train, with stops only in Paris, Heidelberg and Munich from where I flew to Istanbul. On the Asian side of the Bosphorus, I started hitch-hiking. Perhaps that is a misnomer, as only on that one occasion did I stand on the roadside. That first ride was on a bus full of farm workers returning to their villages in the interior. Those rural Turks took loving care of me for the next twenty-four hours.

For the next twenty days, I was taken by the hand from one minder, one vehicle to another, much in the same way, perhaps, a valuable package sent by courier is carefully transported. I was not allowed at any time to buy food, chai, the rare hotel room, postcards home, and postage stamps, whatever.

The plains of Anatolia gave way to Syria — Aleppo, Hama and Homs. I stayed with farmers, taxi wallahs, government officials and the intelligentsia. I saw the great Syrian Desert, with the ancient ruins of Palmyra reaching from the sandy desert to the azure blue of the sky. I sat with the Bedu in their tents and savoured everything around me.

My senses were on fire. I was totally in love with the East, the desert, the history, the food, and the people: above all, the people. I stayed with one family in Damascus for five days. They took me to the Ghouta (the legendary Garden of Eden) and wined and dined me — literally. Islam, I have discovered is a very logical religion, as well as a compassionate one, with many interpretations, dependent upon the individual country and its culture.

From Damascus I travelled to Beirut, where I stayed with my former hosts’ relative, the police chief of the city. When I left for Athens, his wife saw me to the airport, wept and gave me the bracelet she was wearing.

Was I the classic British romantic? Perhaps. I was young, impressionable, in love with life, but that journey changed me; it changed the whole course of my life.

Returning to New York, I enrolled in an Arabic course at New York University where my teacher was a Sabra Jew from Jerusalem. His views of the Arab/Israeli situation were enlightening. He recognized the injustices being done to the Palestinians.

I also enrolled in a course of International Affairs at the Carnegie Institute and learned how the ‘white man’ had systematically committed genocide towards certain Indian tribes in Brazil.

In 1971, I travelled through Morocco before taking up the position of governess to the children of the Lebanese ambassador to the UN, who was retuning to Beirut. Travels in Egypt, Sudan and to the Gulf States and Jordan followed. Although the Nile Valley was spectacular in every way, it was perhaps Jordan that would make the most lasting impression upon me, as the highlight was my visit to Jerusalem. The Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem left me cold because of its ostentation, but the Dome of the Rock left me awe struck by its pure simplicity.

I saw how the Palestinians were humiliated at the gate to East Jerusalem. I saw the deprivation in a refugee camp. In the mid seventies in London, I had worked as a volunteer for Amnesty International. I knew also from my own independent studies, the travails of the Palestinian population.

In 1980, I discovered Pakistan. From 1982 to 1984, I trained in New York City to become an emergency medical technician. The American dream I had embraced, so many years before, lay shattered. The people were the same, the same wonderfully open, and all embracing, but somewhere, something had gone wrong. Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Panama had come and gone since I had made my very first Atlantic crossing in 1961, followed by my next meaningful crossing in 1964.

In 1986, I again travelled around the Northern Areas and the North West Frontier of Pakistan. In the late eighties, I journeyed all over Nuristan, and, in the nineties, visited Kabul, followed by further visits there and other regions in the south east of the country.

During the recount between Bush and Gore, in the last election in the United States, I happened to be in New York. My friends and I sat in shock when we heard that Bush had won (unfairly, according to most intelligent observers). The announcement that Sharon had won the election in Israel also came while I was there.

“God help the world!” we said in despair.

Now, just past the Ides of March, when the dogs of war have been unleashed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, I am sick to my stomach. My idea for this article was to write a historical piece about how the British Balfour Declaration of 1917, paving the way for the creation of the Israeli state, and the Sykes/Picot agreement, which carved up Syria and Iraq, started all this rot, and how the British betrayed the Arabs after Lawrence’s revolt in the desert, when the Turks were defeated.

The assassination of Sheikh Yassin has made me almost forget past history and linger on the recent past, how Sharon allowed the massacre of the Palestinians in Chatila and Sabra camps in the eighties. After 9/11, there was the killing of so many innocent civilians in Afghanistan (who said that was a success story?) by American forces, the invasion of Iraq by the coalition army and the subsequent mayhem. Anyone who knew Afghanistan and the Middle East were able to quite easily predict that these actions would lead only to instability and bloodshed.

The heart, the very core of what the western world refers to as terrorism, has its roots in the question of Palestine and continuing disregard for the sensibilities of the peoples of the Middle East. Terrible injustice has been done to these people in the name of the preservation of the Jewish state (before its creation, both Jew and Arab — both Semites — lived in harmony), and in promoting the agenda of the neo-cons in the Bush administration. Refuseniks and peace activists in Israel are only too well aware of the crimes being enacted in their name. Back during the Six Day War, when I was collecting money for the Palestinian refugees on the streets of Manhattan, the most generous donor was an Israeli.

The building of the ‘Wall’ in Palestine, the strangulation of the economy, the targeted killings, the bulldozing of houses will only heighten feelings of hatred and injustice.

As a westerner living in a Muslim country, I hang my head in despair; shame is perhaps the correct word. I weep for those families whose loved ones have perished, and I weep for all those Arabs, Israelis, and westerners who will surely die as a result of the assassination of Sheikh Yassin.

Sharon and his backers are setting the world on fire. They are creating Armageddon.

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