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CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
Henschel, Dept. of Antiquities, Jerusalem." Inside was a letter on the stationery of the Palestine Exploration Fund, London. It was dated July 16, 1938, and gave details for a new
museum exhibit case.
A more revealing letter was addressed to Mrs. SimonHenschel, "Palestine Archaeological Museum." Numerous letters in unreadable German script bore the return address:
"Dr. Henschel, American Expedition, Akaba." A letter from
"Mrs. Rose Pandelides, Chicago," announced the death of her
husband, "Costa." Mrs. Henschel-Simon's typewritten answer
told all I needed to know about the couple in whose home I
found myself:
We feel so much with you and understand your sorrow. We
wanted to tell you and Mr. Pandelides who was with us when
we first saw this country, what had happened to us and how
happy we feel. We are grateful to Fate who seems to give us
some quiet years before trouble starts again. Because this East
is as treacherous a soil as Europe is. But meanwhile we enjoy
our work and our little house [the one that we were now in]
which we have got just outside the town so that we can reach
it in a few minutes with the car.
My husband has taken up his advertising drawing with good
success which suffered only through the disturbances, and I
do again museum work as I did in Germany. As Mr. Rockefeller enabled the work to be done on a broader base than the
[Palestinian] Government would have done by itself, I feel
very much indebted to America. But if you come East, we
hope you will come and see us. . . .
Captain Zaki came over. "What have you found?"
"Only letters. The Jews here were refugees from Germany/'
I looked through another handful. One from England, was
from "Kathrine," to "Aunt Ebeth":
I had ever so many presents for Christmas and my birthday. Mummy made me a green costume with a tweed jacket