40. Jerusalem, 1997 - Another door opens
In which Eleanor arrives in the Holy Land.
Once again, Eleanor is captivated. But Jerusalem is very different to Cairo. And she's been warned to be careful this time…
Eleanor
Francois, now the head of South Africa’s two-year old mission in Ramallah, greets me as I walk off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport. I last saw him two years ago, when he was my boss on the Levant desk, before I went to Cairo. His gray-green eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses look tired, and his square, resolute face looks thinner than I remember, but he is otherwise the same. As we walk to baggage claim I’m reminded how I have quite a few inches of height on him. It feels a little strange to be taller than my new boss.
An athletic man my height with salt and pepper hair and a trim mustache, wearing jeans and a crisp button-down shirt, walks up to us while we wait, a broad, easy smile on his face. “This is Wissam, Eleanor,” Francois introduces us. “He’s the mission’s driver and master of all things logistics. He was my first hire, and he’s helped me to establish the mission in Ramallah. You’ll meet Nagla, our other Palestinian staffer, tomorrow,” Francois continues. “Oh, and perhaps Jacob, if he happens to be in the office.”
“Ahlan wa sahlan, Miss Eleanor. Ahlan wa sahlan.” Wissam’s face positively beams with warmth, and he gives me a double-handed handshake. I give him the traditional response, and he chuckles in reply, “Aha, Miss Eleanor, very good, very good. But you speak with an Egyptian accent. We will have to teach you the Palestinian accent!”
I warm to Wissam immediately. He’s deferential to Francois, calling him sir, but he is completely assured as he seamlessly switches between Arabic, Hebrew and flawless English as we negotiate our way through customs and immigration. I am careful to pull out the right passport. I was issued a second diplomatic passport in South Africa before I came here. “This one is for traveling in and out Israel,” the transfers coordinator in Pretoria told me, handing me back the same passport I’ve been using in Cairo, now with my new four-year Israeli visa in it, “and this one is for anywhere else you want to go in the Middle East. Make sure you present the right passport to the right country, or we have ‘n moer1 of a time extricating you from the gemors2 using the wrong passport causes.”
And then we are out of the airport, and I am in Israel. Wissam guides us to the mission’s Range Rover, which is gleaming and spotless. “I checked with the Embassy in Tel Aviv,” Wissam says to me in Arabic as he puts my one suitcase in the back, “they say your stuff from Cairo is already here, and will be released next week.” That’s great news. “And I’ve arranged apartments for you to start looking at tomorrow,” he adds as I get into the back and Francois into the passenger seat.
Francois turns around from his seat, “You’ll be living in East Jerusalem. That’s the post-Oslo3 arrangement with Israel. The mission’s in Ramallah, but the diplomats accredited to the Palestinian National Authority have to live in Jerusalem, so that we are covered by Israel’s security guarantees. So we live in Palestinian East Jerusalem.” I nod. Henrik Viljoen had explained it to me, when he’d summoned me into his office in Pretoria.
“Hettie Vermeulen, the Admin Officer from the Embassy will be with you tomorrow, as I need Wissam with me.” Francois turns in his seat as Wissam starts driving. “For the most part we operate independently from the Embassy in Tel Aviv. But as we don’t have our own administrative or consular staff, we have to use them for some stuff.” He pauses. The side of his face that I can see seems to harden. “But I try to keep it to a minimum,” he carries on, his lips compressed. “The staff in the mission can be quite…difficult. Hettie’s good, but the rest —” His face is sour. “And as for Naughton Elliot, the Ambassador—” he stops himself. “I’ll explain later,” he continues, glancing at Wissam, who is focused on the road.
Francois’s comments remind me of the conversation I had with Sizwe two weeks ago. Serendipitously, we’d overlapped briefly in Pretoria before he went back to New York and I came to Jerusalem. We’d had a lovely long lunch together, catching up on everything. Of course we had gotten onto what I could expect at my new posting.
“I hear the Deputy Minister and the Director-General are at odds over the Embassy in Tel Aviv,” he’d offered. No surprises there really. Even when I’d been on the Middle East desk before I went to Cairo, the tension between the Deputy Minister, appointed by Mandela, and the Director-General, a hold-over from the apartheid government, had been a frequent topic of conversation between the cadets.
“Given how close Israel was with the apartheid government, ANC leadership has little love for the Israeli government.” He’d paused, a sour look dimming his usual ebullience. “There’ve long been whispers in the ANC that Israel helped the Nats with its very hush-hush nuclear program. And of course Israel only supported sanctions because America put pressure on them,” he’d added, his fingers drumming on the table. “But with the focus on opening up and staffing the new missions in the Middle East,” he’d carried on, his face still sour, “there’s been less focus on making any changes at the Embassy in Tel Aviv. Which is a problem, as the Ambassador leans Zionist.”
“And you know all of this because…?” I’d probed.
“Uh-uh, sis, you know I have my sources,” his mood had snapped back and he’d laughed. Sizwe’s “sources” are a running joke between us. If there’s anything at all I want to know about the real back-office politics in the Department, Sizwe is the person to ask. I’ve missed us just being able to hang-out over coffee and lunches.
“Anything I should know about Francois?” I’d asked. I remember him as tough, but fair, like Henrik Viljoen.
“He’s good,” Sizwe had smiled, reassuring me. “He’s aligned with the ANC’s policy on the Middle East. But the Ambassador in Tel Aviv? That’s another story. The Deputy Minister thinks he’s an outright Zionist, but hiding it well. And the Director-General is defending him.”
Listening to Francois now, as we drive from the airport to Jerusalem, I briefly wonder if I should worry about the tensions between Ramallah and Tel Aviv, but my attention is captured by the landscape we’re driving through. In what seems like no time at all, we leave the plain and are among the hills. I take it all in as we wind upwards, ever upwards, towards Jerusalem: the rocky hills, the green valleys, the villas and apartment complexes. My first impression is “What a disappointment! This is the Holy Land?” The landscape is scrabbly, dry, and monochromatic. Construction debris is everywhere. Hills have jagged scars across them.
Wissam and Francois both give a continuous stream of commentary. Pointing out this, explaining that. Showing where the Green Line4 runs, not on a map, but through land, through orchards and fields and villages. On the one side, might and right. On the other, resistance and endurance.
As we come into Jerusalem I start to see it for the first time. The lure of this place. The sense of history, as churches mix with mosques mix with synagogues. Instead of driving straight to the hotel, Francois tells Wissam to take us to Mount Scopus. He parks and we all get out.
My breath catches. It’s late summer, and there’s a haze in the air, but still the view stills me. Below us Jerusalem spreads across its hills, shimmering in the heat. The golden dome draws all attention to itself, of course. Wissam and Francois point out the walls of the Old City, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives. They explain that I can’t see the Western Wall from this perspective, but they point out where it is. They point to the roads that mark the line between Israeli West and Palestinian East Jerusalem. To the north and east the settlements, never ceasing their expansion deeper and deeper into the West Bank. Bethlehem just beyond the horizon to the south. To the east, Jericho, the Jordan Valley and the Jordanian hills a faint blue haze against the far horizon.
It’s a jumble. An inseparable mix of the present day, the recent past, and ancient history, all inhabiting this one place at once. Each one elbowing the other for room. Each one crowding out the others. Each demanding that it has the truth, trying to silence the others.
I’m here. I’m actually here. In the Holy Land. To live and to work. The sacred and the profane interweaving in my view of the city. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Al Aqsa. The Western Wall. The settlements, the check-points, the guns and razor wire. The swimming pools and gardens and banks and homes and shopping centers.
It’s exhilarating.
It’s bewildering.
It’s only as Wissam parks at the American Colony Hotel that things come back to a sense of the familiar. As we walk into the lobby, I feel myself instantly relax. This I know. Here British colonialism meets the Ottoman Empire to create an oasis for the elite. This is just like the old Gezirah Palace in Zamalek, or the Mena House in Giza. I take in the whitewashed walls and low arches, the latticed lamps hanging down over brass coffee tables, the Persian carpets here and there, and the blue and white tile mosaics on the walls. This is the beguiling Orient at its best.
I step into the lush courtyard beyond the lobby. There is a small fountain, an olive tree, vines, and flowers everywhere in terracotta pots. Small tables and umbrellas are dotted around the courtyard. The hotel’s serene quiet soothes the giddiness and disorientation of arriving, of being here.
Here!
My first actual four-year posting.
Jerusalem!
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International Fiction (stories not set in the US)
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Bonus Material
On the word “Palestine”: why I use it, what I mean by it
Palestine section Bonus Materials: a note
The American Colony Hotel: my first “home” in Jerusalem
Afrikaans, slang, loosely translated as “a helluva” in this context
Afrikaans, literally “mess”
The Oslo Peace Accords: a pair of interim agreements (1993, 1995) between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). They marked the start of the Oslo process, a peace process aimed at achieving a peace treaty based on Resolution 242 and Resolution 338 of the United Nations Security Council. The Oslo process never effectively addressed ongoing settlement expansion and the annexation of more land. The Oslo process was also supposed to reach a comprehensive peace agreement after 5 years, on May 4, 1999. This never occurred. There is yet to be a final peace treaty between Israel and Palestine. Occupation, settlement expansion and annexation continue to this day.
“The Green Line, or 1949 Armistice border, is the demarcation line set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between the armies of Israel and those of its neighbors (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria) after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It served as the de facto borders of the State of Israel from 1949 until the Six-Day War in 1967, and continues to represent Israel's internationally recognized borders with the two Palestinian territories: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” (Source, Wikipedia, Green Line).