Friday, 10 January 2014

16th and 17th February, 1948 - Bitterly cold winds, a home made brazier, chats with the Arab Legion and a poem...

Monday, 16th February, 1948

A terrific gale has been blowing all day with occasional light showers of rain.
At the P.B.S. we sit with a T.A.C. and an Arab Legion fellow at the entrance to the Studios.  Again our duty is to check and search all incomers to the Studios.  With us is an Arab Woman Police Searcher.  She searches all the women in a screened off place.

We were very cold in the late afternoon and tried to build a fire in an empty petrol tin in which holes had been punched.  The fire was a very smoky one and for the greatest part of its existence was outside the building waiting for the smoke to go off.



Tuesday, 17th February, 1948
A bitterly cold gale force wind continues to blow all today.
We continued our watch on the P.B.S. buildings without event.
I have been talking a great deal with men of the Arab Legion.  These men seem to be of a much higher standard of intelligence than the Palestinian Arab and they have better powers of conversation.
These people do not give us the English much credit in our knowledge of the Political scene out here.  The two I was talking to seemed very surprised that I knew that the Palestinian Arabs do not like King Abdullah of Trans Jordan and would not like the two countries merged in one.



Poem:

                  Jerusalem  

City in two I found you
City half old and half new
What is the tie that binds you
Being half Arab half Jew?

City so old I found you,
Shut in by David’s high wall;
Minarets tall stand o’er you,
Religion the wish of all.

City so new I found you,
Nothing can stop you at all;
New buildings rise around you,
“Homes for the Nation,” you call.

City in two I found you
City half Arab half Jew
There is no tie can bind you
Never your heart will beat true.

17.2.48

                                                            REB

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