42
PARTISAN REVIEW
read in Edward Said's recent autobiography
Out of Place: A Memoir
(Alfred A. Knopf,
$26.95)
that the Talbiyeh and the Jerusalem he remem–
bers, where he stayed in
1947,
were quite different.
Mr. Said was a schoolboy then, and I was a young journalist, but we
walked the same streets and went to the same cinemas (the Arab Rex
and the Jewish Regent). We had to show our special passes when enter–
ing the British security zones (which had been estab lished in
1946
after
the King David bombing), the German Colony, and some other parts of
western Jerusalem. Yet one statement in Mr. Said's memoir puzzles me
in particular-his distinct recollection that Talbiyeh and the neighbor–
ing districts were exclusively populated by Palestinians. Elsewhere, as
well, he writes that Jerusalem, unlike Cairo, had a homogeneous popu–
lation made up mainly of Palestinians.
I
have no reason to doubt that
these are indeed Mr. Said's recollections; they remind me of the (proba–
bly apocryphal) stories about Herzl, who during his visit to Palestine in
1898 managed not to see the Arab inhabitants of the country. I con–
sulted the works of reference: according to the statistics of the British
Mandate, in
[947
there lived in Jerusalem
J
57,000
people, of whom
97,000
were Jews; the rest
(60,000)
were mainly Arabs but also
included many thousands of Greeks and Armenians, as well as monks
and nuns from all over the world. There had been in fact a Jewish
majority in Jerusalem since the nineteenth century. Yet the Jerusalem
that Mr. Said remembers was not at all cosmopolitan, but an almost
entirely Arab city. Mr. Said thinks that "our society was destroyed in
1948."
If
he refers to the presence of the wealthy Christian Arab fami–
lies in Talbiyeh, then he is right. But if he refers to Arab Jerusalem, he is
not, for the number of Arabs living in the city is now three or four times
larger than it was in
1947.
The peaceful coexistence of
1947
did come to an end rather suddenly.
I well remember the days in December
'947
when Mr. raraj, my land–
lord in the German Colony and a sergeant in the local police station,
told me that though some of his best friends were Jews, there had to be
a war-but that after the war, everyth ing would be fine again. Both
assumptions seemed to me doubtful; but upon pressing him concerning
the necessity of a war, I did not get a clear answer.
Unfortunately, Sergeant Faraj's fatalistic views prevailed.
It
started
with severa l probably spontaneous attacks against Jewish buses.
In
the
beginning on ly stones were thrown. But a few hours later shots were
fired. During the days after December
2,
several Jewish quarters such as
Romema and Mekor Baruch came under fire, and the Jewish residents
had
to
escape. The Shabab (young Arab militants organized in the
