286
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
sessed me. Perhaps it was an expression of the contagiously
crazy mood that overcame most of us in Jerusalem—nature's
way, I suppose, of relieving the tension and frustration of being cooped up at the Pantiles, knowing we were completely
surrounded—the hunger, anxiety, fear, and round-the-clock
uncertainty day after day, with no relief in sight. If we hadn't
done the absurd things, each in his own way, perhaps some of
us would have snapped.
The idea occurred to me to visit Deir Aboutor. I wanted to
see what has happened to my old headquarters, the Osborne
House. The Jews now controlled Deir Aboutor: but what
about Moustafa? Killed? Taken prisoner? I hoped he had
somehow been spared. ... It was an exceptionally lovely
morning and firing seemed to have quieted down. I washed,
shaved, put on a chic T-shirt, polished my shoes, even picked
a flower from the garden, and was ready for my stroll.
White shirt gleaming in the sun, I walked past the Public
Information Office and found myself amid a clutter of roadblocks, sandbags, rusty barbed wire, and rubble. Dead ahead
were the Old City walls. To my left was the Yemin Moshe
quarter, with an abandoned windmill serving as a lookout
and Jewish sniper's post. The morning looked harmless. God
was in His heaven, and I had no animus against anybody. I
stretched my arms, took a few deep draughts of Jerusalem's
crystal-clean air, and already felt freed from tension. I waited
at the edge of an olive grove to see if anybody would shout at
me, or blow a whistle and wave me back. When nothing happened I walked on toward my old haunts on Deir Aboutor.
Halfway across the olive grove I stopped uneasily. I felt I
was being watched, no doubt by friendly Jews. I thought, let
them watch. There was a brief clearing of tall grass and rocks.
I skipped across it, hu