My Trip to Jordan

On the Plane to Jerusalem

... The International Relief Agency's plane lifts us up from Khaldeh airport, and the earth draws away from us little by little, my eye turned downward, sweeping over sea and land, bidding farewell to one picture and welcoming another with wonder and amazement... How right was he who called this age the age of the airplane!! What grandeur is hers — she rises above the peaks and butts the whiteness of the clouds with boldness and confidence!!

I whisper in the ear of my neighbor, the English journalist Miss Myrtle Winter: "This is my first journey by plane!" And she opens her eyes wide in my face like someone looking at a creature from the Stone Age!! It was a delightful experience, lived for the first time in my life, soaring with the eagles — but for a continual dropping and a disturbance in the plane's balance that occurred over Mount Hermon... They called it "air pockets"; as for me, whenever I recall what I felt at that moment my brow grows damp all over again with cold sweat, and my inward voice says: if air pockets deal such an unpleasant jolt, then a curse on pockets of every kind — my clothes shall have no pockets from this day on!!

The loveliest thing that caught my eye from the plane was the Bekaa plain, stretching over the wide, far expanse. Its geometric arrangements, interlaced in colors and shapes, reminded me of the canvases of "abstract art" I had seen at the exhibition of the artist Salwa Rawda... And it is but the twinkling of an eye — an hour and a quarter — and the plane comes down with balance and deliberateness, and there we are at the Jerusalem airport, outside the Holy City. A glass of cold refreshments restores me to my full senses before we board the Relief Agency car that was waiting for us, to carry us to "Marj Na'ja," the first goal of our pilgrimage on this journey, where the first model village for housing the refugees is being built.

From Jerusalem to "Marj Na'ja"

... We pass through the city of Jerusalem, and I listen in uneasy silence to my companion, the Palestinian engineer, as he explains to me Jerusalem's present situation: "This is old Jerusalem behind the wall — it is still Arab; and that is the Jewish zone — the usurped zone... Do you see that pale cypress over there? Behind it lie our houses and our properties; for three years we have known nothing of them!"

Suddenly we pass a splendid building that the bombs pounded utterly flat, and I lower my eyes — why, I wonder, does man turn coward before death and the sights of passing away? And I let my gaze wander from afar over beloved Jerusalem, which carries within her the holiest of memories and the dearest to our hearts... Shall I call her "Paradise Lost?!"... No. Far be it from my heart, saturated with the faith of nationalism — for we can, as a living nation, win back this sacred part of our homeland — far be it from my heart to surrender and despair...

... The road winds with us and turns and turns in a steady descent. We are now on the Jericho road, and before long we are 400 meters below the level of the sea! Here their winter is summer, and their summer is hell... Here their spring is a green apparition lasting no more than two weeks, after which the land turns to a parched barrenness... And the paths in early April are lilac-hued Palm Sunday processions, yellow and white with the thorny blossoms that resist the harshness of the climate and bear patiently with the drought!! The mountains around Jericho were, a few days past, all green; today they are bidding farewell to their short spring: their eastern half dry and yellow, the western half still embroidered with green — like a head in which white hair caught fire between one night and its morning...

At "Marj Na'ja"

At last, after two hours, the road brings us to a halt before a broad stretch of level ground, lying some fifty kilometers north of Jericho. My companion the engineer said: This is "Marj Na'ja," 270 meters below sea level. Here the International Relief Agency is building the first model village to house the Palestinian refugees permanently...

I take in the plain and the slope at a single glance. The plain is a well-watered green, greenness at its most magnificent! Ears of grain rising tall and proud, swaying one against another... Glory to Him who sated them with water so that they gave forth this wondrous bounty!! Here the soil is fertility at its best: when the sky gives generously, the earth gives generously. But the sky at "Marj Na'ja" and over the neighboring plains is often miserly, even withholding, until the very drop of water grows precious... and this is what frightens the refugees. The International Relief Agency, however, has provided against this by digging two wells which, by means of modern pumps, supply the farmers with enough for their needs and quiet their fears in the years of drought...

At "Marj Na'ja" today there are 36 tents housing 36 families, an average of five persons to a family. Each family has been given 25 dunums of land to dispose of freely as it wishes. After the Relief Agency's experts examined the soil, most of the land was planted with wheat, and experiments were made in planting various kinds of vegetables — potatoes, squash, tomatoes, onions, and so on. Some of these have already begun to bear, and with amazing speed... The agricultural expert there says that the soil in that region is virgin soil, of such quality and fertility that it runs ahead of the harvest seasons of other countries; this advantage alone is enough to tempt the refugees to remain here and export the products of their lands abroad. And it was found very necessary to equip them with modern agricultural knowledge that will secure them summer crops and winter crops alike, so that they draw a double benefit from the land and their profits multiply with time. This too is what the International Agency is striving to secure as far as it can.

... Our eyes turn toward the village itself: some of it has been finished, and of some the walls have risen. Here the author of the plan and supervisor of the building, the engineer Habib Bishara, undertakes to make clear to us what we could not grasp. The houses in the village are of three kinds: one of earthen mud-brick, one of rubble stone with earth and lime, and the third of concrete with rubble stone. He shows us that this village is an experimental village for many villages that will be built in other places, and how its plan was drawn up on modern technical principles, in which the aesthetic, the economic, and the sanitary considerations were all observed at once... Each family has a house of two small rooms, with the possibility of adding a third room in the future, and a walled forecourt. Each house has a small kitchen, a latrine, a coop for the chickens and a pen for the animals... And the village will have a school for the children, who now number one hundred.

I left my journalist colleague Miss Winter absorbed in photographing the village and slipped inside the tents, where the women and the nursing infants were — and the state of things within bore all the marks of shabbiness and misery. The women gathered around me, baring their breasts, complaining of nakedness and of provisions that fall short of keeping body and soul together for them and their children... These provisions last them twenty days of the month; the remaining ten days they live on the daily wages of their men, which the Relief Agency grants them in return for their share in building the village... And you see their families there in the tents, on worn-out mats, their eyes on the white houses rising higher from one day to the next... When will these beautiful houses become their own, so that they may order their lives in them anew, and live the life of the honored farmer?!

To this the executor of the project, the engineer Issa Fashi, gave answer: he hopes that by the end of April the building of twenty houses will be complete. As for the speed of carrying the project through to the end, that depends solely on the materials being delivered as promptly as required; laboring hands are plentiful.

And we turned back, our course set for Amman, while the wounded dusk was passing through colors of lapis, shadows and lights swimming over the red hills... fairies of light dancing on bare feet upon the glow of the earth, hastening toward the distant mirage...

... In Amman

As my eye takes in Amman at first glance, it seems to me that we are in a Baghdad in miniature — were it not for mountains rising out of her folds, spread over with stone mansions in the newest style: beautiful mansions racing one another up the shoulders of the bare mountains around Amman with astonishing speed, casting over her an air of breadth and spaciousness, and persuading the mind that the capital of Jordan keeps pace with the times on feet long accustomed to walking!!

I open my eyes the next morning with a visit to Raghadan Palace at the head of my program. Was not my first aim in this journey to answer the gracious invitation extended to me by Her Majesty the Queen Mother, Queen Misbah?!

Getting in touch with the Queen Mother's wing at Raghadan Palace was not the easy matter it seemed to me at first sight, and but for the energy of Mr. Mohammad al-Baradei I should not have secured that audience with the required speed... Within minutes I was listening to the voice of Her Majesty Queen Misbah on the telephone:

"Edvick — you come to Amman and are not our guest at the palace? We have made a room ready for you."

"You must forgive me, Madam; we are a party, and courtesy requires that we stay together. If Her Majesty commands, let her appoint me a time for the honor of calling upon her."

"Let it be twelve o'clock today — we shall lunch together. I will send the car with the aide to the hotel at the appointed time."

"Thank you, 'Sitti.'"

Four Hours in "Raghadan" Palace

... At the appointed hour I found myself in the salon of the Queen Mother, in her private wing of Raghadan Palace. My eyes were devouring everything... a salon lavish in its spaciousness, furnished with green velvet seats, its walls adorned with royal faces that I knew at once! — This is Sharif Nasser, father of Queen Misbah and uncle of His Majesty King Abdullah... In the place of honor, King Hussein, her uncle. This is a recent portrait of King Talal, and these are Their Majesties: Abdullah, Ali, Faisal, Ghazi, and the young Faisal... The palace garden below the salon's balcony was beginning to break into greenery and blossoms... and on a ban-tree bough a nightingale stood singing and calling! I marveled at him, daring all alone to sing in that silent, brooding air!!

The course of my thoughts is cut short by the fall of light footsteps and a voice full of will and of resolve. I spring to my feet to meet the owner of the voice, and with a smile and a graceful jest she raises me up from her hand, inquiring, searching for a trace of rouge! — and when she is assured there is none, she turns her cheek to me and I kiss it with a daughter's kiss. Then she sits down at my side, not in her own royal seat, asking and I answering, and our talk ranges over all manner of subjects.

... Her eyes overflowed with tears when she spoke at length of her only son and his wife — of the present King and Queen. She recalled King Talal's respect for her and his devotion to her: he never ceases to look after her comfort himself, seeking her approval and her prayers before all else. "Did he not forbid the policeman to halt my car while he himself passed?.. This ring — he put it on me with his own hand, saying: 'This is a keepsake from me, ya Anna...' And this carpet is his gift too; Queen Zein spread it with her own hands — God keep her and grant her health. She is now on a trip of rest to Switzerland, where her firstborn, the Crown Prince, Emir Hussein, at present at 'Harrow' University, will fly to her from England."

In her private salon Her Majesty the Queen confided to me the secrets of her heart, and between the lines I touched aching wounds; I tried to console her with phrases that came from between my lips feeble and faint, though I felt them in my heart, deep and troubled... Through the Queen Mother we tried to reach "Basman Palace" for the honor of meeting His Majesty King Talal for a few minutes, but a most intricate "protocol" stood between us...

I came out of Raghadan Palace with murmurs of deep thanks upon my lips...
In my hand a portrait of His Majesty King Talal.

On my finger a ring engraved with the name of Queen Misbah.

And at my neck a cross... a blessing from her! Is it not a kindly, generous gesture that Her Majesty should have chosen for me this gift of all gifts?!

With the Jordanian Woman

At the home of my friend Miss Thurayya Abd al-Fattah Malhas, over her tabbouleh and her tea and all that went with them, I met the choicest elite of the ladies of Jordan, and I discerned in them at once high resolve and a noble eagerness to lighten misery and to wipe clean the wounds of the orphan girl who was unjustly driven from her homeland, deprived of her breadwinner, deprived of the life filled with dignity, and exposed to the humiliation of begging... These, of all people, most deserve compassion and consolation...

And woman's duty toward them is to secure for them, so far as she can, a wing that will enable them in the future to fly free!! And is there anything more honorable than a free profession on which a defenseless girl may lean on the day the roads close in her face? The little Palestinian outcasts need strong, tender arms to lean upon until their own stems grow firm, and the ladies of Jordan will be the arms of these dear little ones... This is the essence of the activity of the ladies of Jordan in the field of social and humanitarian service — and how excellent an essence it is, and how excellent are those projects that make of the women working in them a single united bloc, giving the best that is in them to carry their project forward...

... All this I touched with my own hand on the second day, when I went in the company of the two zealous sisters Fatima and Thurayya Malhas to inspect the most important of them...

1 — Our first visit was to the "Emira Basma Charitable Home," a house of modern furnishing bespeaking taste and effort, its rooms allotted to girls great and small — here a class for reading and arithmetic, here a class for sewing and for reviving the local handicrafts, there a class for weaving woolen and cotton cloth, and this a kindergarten... It was easy to see that the women in charge of this project are young women brimming with energy and drive, under the leadership of Mrs. Maliha Labaidi Habab. And it was not long before I had proof of it, when I heard them speak with such fire of what they had accomplished in this short span, and of their hopes for the future of this great constructive project. And in gratitude they dwelt long on Queen Zein's zeal for their project and her effective support of them...

2 — We next visited the Red Crescent center, where two classes hold sixty girls: the first for teaching reading and arithmetic, the second for teaching them sewing and for securing an honorable trade to ward off from a girl the ravages of want... I admired the personality of the president of the Red Crescent, the wife of His Excellency the Prime Minister Ibrahim Pasha Hashem, and the energetic secretary, Mrs. Hind Saba Sabbagh — the two of them perpetual motion, working with devotion and a cooperation worthy of praise.

3 — We passed on afterward to the maternity hospital founded during the events of Palestine by the Jordanian Women's Union under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Misbah. I made the acquaintance of the head of the hospital, Miss Nabiha al-Wer — the very model of the energetic woman created for this work and no other. She specialized in England, and her constant labor now is to enlarge the hospital and bring it abreast of the finest hospitals of its kind. What struck me, despite the slenderness of the material means, was the cleanliness and the simplicity of taste — those two qualities we so sorely lack in our public and private life.

4 — Finally we climbed one of the mountains that surround Amman and stood on a beautiful spot overlooking the capital, where the foundation is now being laid for a splendid building — another maternity hospital. A purely women's project, whose details we shall hear when it opens, and that will be soon, God willing... And it pleased me to listen to words of burning enthusiasm for the future of this hospital, pouring from the most enthusiastic of them all, the president of the Red Crescent, Mrs. "Umm Hani."

We shall bring our gracious readers, in coming issues, a detailed account of these women's organizations, in view of the promises our delegates in Amman have taken upon themselves — for we believe in the proverb that says:

"A free man's promise is a debt."