Medinat Yisrael Is Born
249
enough food to feed another mouth, especially from America.
If you don't mind sharing a room, we can put you up. If it
proves too uncomfortable you can make your way to Amman
or Damascus." I thanked him, but insisted that I ought to be
on the Jewish side of Jerusalem with my fellow correspondents. I'd share their fate, I said, whatever it was. The Patriarch
gave me his blessing. I dashed down the stairs, followed by an
Armenian lad.
"Shood ureh, shood meh," he urged, "Hurry up, Hurry up.
They will begin. The big bombing will begin now."
We raced over the cobblestones through a labyrinth of
passageways and cell-like rooms built of stone, narrowly missing Armenians in the alleys. I banged on the door of the house
where I had left my bag. It was locked!
"Ammaaan! Ammaaan! Arnmaaan!
This was the standard wailing call of the Near East, which
I had heard throughout my childhood, usually accentuated by
a sidewise swinging of the head and body. I had heard the
lament from my mother, and an ageless aunt at whose knee I
was raised. Now, as a grown man in my thirty-ninth year, I
came out with the lament, Americanizing my agony by interspersing salvo after salvo of Anglo-Saxon oaths. As the
Armenian youth had run off to locate the owners, the family
next door invited me to a cup of coffee.
"I'm in no mood for coffee. I want to get out of here alive."
"Gaghatchem, soorj mu humetzek mezzi hed! I beg you.
Please have a cup of coffee with us." It was the woman of the
household.
"Digin, soorji jamanag tche! Madam, this is no time for
coffee!"
I may as well have been talking to the cobblestones. I was
a stranger from America, and every stranger from America
must be ho