One Palestine, Complete by Tom Segev

Author:Tom Segev
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2017-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

16

Hamlet in Bir Zeit

1.

The new high commissioner’s residence, or Government House, stood on the Hill of the Preacher in the south of Jerusalem, erroneously identified by some as the New Testament’s Hill of Evil Counsel. Offering a breathtaking view, surrounded by a pine grove and gardens containing a handsome fountain, the stone mansion exhibited architectural elements carefully selected from the West and the East. It exuded majesty and permanence, and one glance left no room for doubt: the British Empire had come to stay. Adjacent to the building was a dog cemetery: Boots came into the world in June 1938 and met his maker in May 1941; Judy was also born in June 1938 but went to her eternal rest in July 1944.

On the ground floor, next to the dining and the billiard rooms, was a ballroom whose parquet floor was famous throughout the Middle East; part of it was covered with Persian rugs. There was also a resplendent fireplace, inlaid with blue and white Armenian tiles. The curtains, the furniture, the fixtures—all were imported from overseas. The walls were covered with oil portraits of the kings of England, hung in heavy gold frames. A crystal chandelier illuminated the ballroom, and there was a minstrel’s gallery for the police band. There were separate bathrooms for the British and for natives.1

Arthur Wauchope, the high commissioner who replaced John Chancellor in November 1931, was a fatherly general, a bachelor who loved to entertain. The American consulate in Jerusalem once reported to Washington that in a single month Wauchope hosted no less than six hundred people. He was a rich man. “Money and champagne flowed like water,” wrote one of his senior officials.2

Jerusalem was their Camelot, a myth of splendor—and self-delusion. The British talked about “the government” as if it were the nerve center of a huge empire, not a clutch of officials manning a smallish bureaucracy in a remote province. A head of department was respected as if he were a minister, a consul an ambassador; every woman was a duchess; the high commissioner was addressed as “your excellency.” This inflation of status was the key to British social life, one of them later suggested. The sweaty constrictedness of colonial existence, the way they lived on top of one another, seemed to magnify each of them to an extravagant size. The smaller the pond the bigger the fish, Horace Samuel commented.3 They dressed and spoke and entertained each other properly, in accordance with strict social conventions.

Beatrice Magnes, wife of the university chancellor, recalled an incident of minor social rebellion that almost caused a scandal. The ladies, almost all of them wives of senior administration officials, were expected to appear at the high commissioner’s balls dressed in décolletage, their shoulders bare. Despite the chill of Jerusalem evenings, they never dared to wear anything else. Magnes violated this rule by appearing in public with a watermelon-colored shawl over her shoulders. Once, it got caught on the medals on a guest’s official uniform; by the

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