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between the East and the West, not to lose itself in the medieval morass
of the Moslem world.... This could not but strike me as anticlimactic,
after all my hesitation and cogitation. Edde himself was splendid, a
vibrant, bull-necked man with protruding eyes. He lived in one of the
most beautiful houses in the world. The next morning, as I went to my
office, I was thinking rather of Edde's house than of his ideas.
I found my office in an uproar. Poor Wajdi Mallat was caught in
a swirl of reporters; he was tearing his hair, waving his arms, protest–
ing to heaven. Upon my arrival, they abandoned him and made a bee–
line for me. I shut myself up in an adjacent room with Wajdi, and
asked him what was going on.
This was disingenuous. I had left Edde at midnight; Mallat had
been informed of my visit at one A.M. Which was exactly what I might
have expected. The "whole town," he told me, knew about it this morn–
ing. It was being interpreted as an unfriendly gesture with respect to
Bechara el-Khoury, who had made a great point of being kind to us.
It was being resented as an unwarranted intrusion in Lebanese politics.
Finally he managed to bundle them out of the room. All except
one-a redhaired, freckled fellow with blond eyelashes and a profoundly
apologetic air. He slipped through the door, when Wajdi was gone, and
presented me with a sheet of paper on which several questions had been
typewritten, in comic English. The questions, of course, were invidious.
Was it true that a toast had been born to the pseudo-State of Israel?
Was it true that I had said X and Edde had said Y? I laughed at them
all, and asked the man whether he had installed a spy under the table.
But while I was laughing he looked at me, through his blond eye–
lashes, and said:
"Is it true that you are a 'Jew?"
IV
The question was tactless, under the circumstances, and so-I
fear-was my reply. Both lost their point through the devotion of Wajdi,
who mobilized the government and our young friend Michel el-Khoury,
and saw to it that the affair was smoothed over.
There was still, of course, the threat which hung over Riachy, and
which was not dispelled for several days. I never knew, in any case, exact–
ly in what it consisted. For the rest, I had deeply disturbed my friends,
most of them young pan-Arab intellectuals, who came to me in a long
series to beg me not to believe a word of what Edde had said. This
meant, again, hours and hours of painful discussion, in the course of
