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.