This is an immediate record of our stay in Israel in May 1978. I wrote it every morning on my little Olivetti while Harold had his shower. At this point, Harold and I had been living together since August 1975 but were not yet able to get married. He was 47 and I was 45.
8th May
Writing this sitting in the aeroplane ... Harold has concentrated his shopping on shoes, many pairs of bi-coloured leather and canvas shoes which I hope mean he intends to go sight-seeing. I have bought a sand-coloured skirt from St Laurent and a white blouse from M&S (loyalty) and also some shoes. Our feet seem to have been much on our minds. I think we both think we shall tramp through a great deal of history.
[At Mishkenot Sha’ananim, the artists’ colony where we are staying]
Our apartment is delightful and large. Arched windows, sitting room, bedroom, extra bedroom, high windowless studio room, kitchen already with provisions – next morning I notice that everything is firmly labelled MEAT and DAIRY according to the kosher rules and resolved hastily not to let down the side by mixing the two up.
We go to the Mishkenot restaurant. H talks about his instruction for Bar Mitzvah, two nights a week learning Hebrew. “I haven’t thought about it for years.” How astounded his parents were by his gesture of revolt against the formal religion two years later. How they have mellowed. (Harold of course sent them on one or two trips to Israel when asked.)
9th May
Hotel next door for Israeli beer … Then, armed only with a little paper map, we walk down hill and up dale to the Old City.
Entering the New Gate and finding ourselves immediately in another Arab world – for this is what it is, despite notices like Latin Patriarchate Rd – is an extraordinary experience. Shops on left and right and soon we are under arches and thus shaded in a sort of endless commercial catacomb, Kaftans, eastern blouses, gold souvenirs of Islamic nature, even sheepskin waistcoats, with eager shopkeepers all cast out of the Arabian Nights (operatic version) also masses of vegetables, piles of peppers, red and green, tomatoes, bananas which look nice massed in the distance, rather frightening near to – I am suddenly terrified of being stranded here and forced to eat them! A nightmare of claustrophobia – Then: “Look,” says H pointing up. A soldier with a large gun is sitting on the roof above the crowd. What is he on the lookout for? We haven’t the faintest idea. “A familiar face in the crowd,” suggests H.
10th May
Very hot. Hotter at 11am for Remembrance of the Dead (and also at 8pm last night). A moving article in the Jerusalem Post by a father who has lost his only son – “No one left to call me Abba ever again”.
H thinks we should not go near the Old City for two days, since he has discovered the soldiers are not normally there, but are against paraded “incidents” during these two days of independence.
He is right. Although the risks of a car crash in England greater, he is still right. It would be an ostentatious and foolish risk to run. (This story turns out to be quite untrue. A Jerusalem rumour about Tel Aviv.)
In the evening we go to the Jerusalem theatre, a large concrete-block building, National Theatre-style, for a celebratory concert. We are handsomely seated tho’ the long hand of Jonathan Miller (of all people!) stretches forth to ruffle H.
Director of theatre – a very tall man indeed in a safari suit: “I am so delighted to see you here. I never thought you would come. You see, Jonathan Miller explained you were frightened to come to Jerusalem.”
H: ???
Director: “For the effect it would have on your work …”
H: !!!
11th May
We get up early-ish and trek up to the King David [hotel] and go to Jericho and the Dead Sea. The journey is quite extraordinary. One moment the environs of Jerusalem, newly built if small houses, then with one stride comes the desert. As though an invisible weedkiller had been poured on all habitations beyond a certain point. And immediately bedouins appear, black clad, moving slowly and wearily with black goats. We also see a few (black) tents crouching on the dusty hills. The road, built since 1967, is fast and implacable, and we stop only at various military checkpoints – or rather slow down to be waved on.
Our driver: “The Arabs have yellow licences and they don’t stop us because we have white ones.” H & I both imagine that Arabs here are forced to have different licences – a rather horrifying yellow star system. But of course he’s referring to the Arabs from Jordan. Nevertheless his “us and them” attitude to Jews and all Arabs is quite marked. It goes with the absolutely evident fact that this is an area inhabited by Arabs and occupied by Jews.
A Jericho dig (they look in vain for the walls) is rather boring. Besides, our innocent guide, who will keep telling us Bible stories with an air of imparting totally new information, is driving H quite mad. In vain he tries to stop him telling us about Lazarus (“This man died and Jesus Christ, who was a Jew …”)
13th May
Sabbath. You don’t see much sign of it except in the Old City in the Jewish Quarter. Give or take the heat (better today) it’s like Inverness on Sunday. Closed, shuttered and v quiet. Otherwise it’s a London Sunday, with tourists splashing in the King David pool.
Another interesting gathering at Lia van Leer’s. We discuss Begin [Menachem Begin, founder of the Likud party and prime minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983].
Rather pathetically they all say: “But don’t the English understand he’s not elected?” Details, almost indignant follow. 8% of votes, compromise, etc, etc. We get lost. The failure of the long-reigning Labour party. This we take in.
The truth is that even H, who is in England rather obsessed with Begin and reads out his speeches from time to time in tones of angry horror (I think they confirmed his secret nightmares about Israel) didn’t realise this! And anyway, in a gloomy way, it’s not the point. The point is he is their prime minister and he is doing great harm to the Israeli image at the same time as a new generation arises to whom the Palestinan refugees, not the victims of the Holocaust, are the underdogs. It’s a bad combination.
15th May
The dreaded (by H) 6.30 rise to go to Masada. We are on parade by 7.30 for Peter Halban, son of Aline Berlin, step-son of Isaiah, to take us, and there is a faint wind blowing … South down the banks of the Dead Sea for miles in his fast smooth Alfetta. He turns out to be a most agreeable companion, 3 years in Israel, a member of the Peace Now movement, but also points to the land round us (at Jericho) and says: “This would be Palestine. Is it truly a viable state?”
Me: “Only with millions of Arab money.”
Peter: “Precisely.”
But it’s the geography of it which hits one, as geography always does, on the spot, not in maps (hence boredom of theoretical subject!) so close to the busy burgeoning Jerusalem: how can anyone expect the Israelis to welcome a state set up by Arafat and his murderous boys here?
[Descending to the cable car], H takes a look, hesitates. I, who do not realise that at this point he has glimpsed the abyss itself, simply see him stagger slightly, turn white and half fall, half sit down on the step. It is a terrible moment. I have to believe that he will get down, we will get down, because if I don’t, he won’t and no one will.
H later: “You know I told you I didn’t know what the next stage of vertigo was. Well now I know. Coldness. Nausea.”
Me: “You were a hero – you got down!”
H: “With your hand.”
He gives me a copy of Yadin’s splendid Masada inscribed “To Antonia, the girl who got me down alive”.
16th May
Supper at the Rockefeller Museum “hosted” by the Baron Edmond de Rothschild although there is in fact no sign of him. Jackie Kennedy is here – which is an odd feeling – but I don’t get to meet her and in a way don’t particularly want to and mix things. That dramatic life when I did know her, seems a world away from this one.
Later, over Israeli champagne (“the president’s sparkling wine”) cold and light, H says re our visit: “I definitely am Jewish. I know that now. But of course that makes it more complicated. I am also English. And this is an Arab town.”
Me: “I could live here in every way except one, and that’s not being Jewish.” This is a Jewish state. That’s its strength and foundation. I would never be part of it in the most real way.
It’s an academic discussion of course but an interesting one.
18th May
Moshe Perlman takes us to the Knesset. The heat, the distance to walk (security), the raucous school children coming to have a glimpse of democracy, the little booth of Personal Search Control, all make me feel most faint. But of course there’s much of great interest here, as ever with Israel, including the fact that they allow in spectators without fear or favour. They took a decision on the subject and decided that democracy must still be seen, even tho’ the Knesset is an acknowledged and obvious target of terrorists – the rocket fired last week from near Mount Scopus was probably aimed at the Knesset.
The Van Leers come round and all talk of their discovery of Israel: “For the first time I do not feel Jewish.”
Yet as Felice [Malkin, an artist] and Lia agree, they never realised before that all the time in their previous lives they had this awareness. Till they came to Israel and lost it. (H is quite different, as usual. For the first time he really does feel Jewish.)
A starry night of great beauty. Bed at 2am. H sits up, fatally, mulling.
19th May
[We go to meet] Shimon Peres, leader of the opposition. [He] lives on the 12th floor of a block overlooking the sea in a suburb of Tel Aviv. A single soldier sits at a desk outside. The view from the apartment is terrific as evening comes, the shutters are opened and a great red sun starts to go down over the sea and the series of great apartment blocks staked out in rows towards it. But the apartment itself, despite some modern art, is that of a middle class bookish man.
Mrs Peres serves strawberries, cheese, grapefruit juice, tea on request, and H is actually offered a Scotch at 5pm. (He accepts it at 5.30.)
21st May
Sunday. “Shabbat” murmurs H somewhat inaccurately, and makes my breakfast as he does at home. I potter and gaze at the Old City walls. H is interviewed by the literary editor of the Jerusalem Post in the quiet King David bar for about two hours.
In the afternoon I go to the Old City and do some extremely rapid souvenir shopping. A Jerusalem ashtray for Harold’s mother, hoping vaguely that the design is neither Islamic nor Catholic. Cotton kaftans – at last – for Harold’s son Daniel and my son Benjie, striped and sort of mannish. Myself I favour with something pink and white and floating.
22nd May
At the airport. The security is fantastic, including a personal interrogation before you check in the luggage by a polite young Israeli woman security officer in slacks and jersey. She asks us, looking at our passports: “What is your relationship to each other?”
Harold, expansively with what I feel is an [Irish touring actor/theatre manager] Anew McMaster gesture: “We’re Lovers!”
Girl, rather shyly: “I’m sorry.”
H buys me an enormous pair of Israeli agate earrings at the jewellery counter. “I am in a position to buy you something.” He gives his name for the bill. “Just like the writer,” comments the lady behind the counter with interest. “Including the spelling.”
