Heapwill for Yours
WFILN I was leaving school my headmaster asked me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I told him I wanted to write, and he looked gloomy. 'What are you going to write about?' he asked. I said I didn't know. 'Well, that's it,' he said, 'you can't write, unless you've had some Experience. Go out and get some Experience.'
I often think of that man and his advice (very sound advice, too, by the way) out here in the Middle East. Somehow Experience seems easier to come by in these parts than it did to an eighteen-year-old on the point of leaving a quiet Yorkshire valley for the open world. I some- times feel I've had enough of it, and that I'd like to get back to that valley and write about it—or at least stop having it. But still it comes.
Last week my house was burgled. After five jolly years in the Middle East, in the course of which I've been stoned, shot at, arrested, interned, expelled, here was something new. If I had been eighteen still, I should have been delighted, especially as I caught the burglar. I should have felt that this was Life, that here was one more situation about which I should be able to write with authority, as one who had lived the part and experienced the sensations of the character he was creating. I should have increased my spiritual capital—or something pretentious like that.
As it was, the glow of triumph at catching the blighter soon wore off, to yield place to the gloomy realisation that! was involved in another Situation. And Situations, in the Middle East, have a wiy of complicating themselves by some sort of natural law.
For instance, I was once driving through Beirut when I had a collision with a taxi at a crossroads. As we hit each other I noticed with relief that (as usual) he was driving the wrong way up a one- way street. A crowd gathered and there was a fair amount of shouting, in the course of which I rang up my insurance company and then sat in my car reading the newspaper. When anyone tried (0 involve me in the argument, I simply pointed 10 the one-way sign, and went on reading. In doe course the insurance man turned up, established the facts, assured me that I had a perfect case, and we all went home. When the cars had been repaired and the claims established, my insurance agent telephoned to tell me the result. 'All's well, he said, 'the other chap's company agreed to paY, for seventy-five per cent. of the damage. 'Seventy-five per cent.?' I said in surprise, 'but I thought it was accepted that he was in the wrong?"Ah, yes,' said the agent, 'but you know, Mr. Adams, nothing is ever 100 per cent. in the Lebanon.'
But to get back to the burglar. We caught him, my neighbours and I (so that there were two. witnesses, apart from my wife, whose triumph ii really was, since she had woken first and instead of screaming the house down had merely nudged mc and observed gently that there was a man rifling the dressing table), with my money in 10 pocket, trying to get out of a window which had been shut and which he had opened in order (t3 get in. A reasonably clear ease, you think? Hardly worth bothering Sherlock Holmes 0C M. Hercule Poirot?
Not so fast. Within forty-eight hours the storY was reasonably well established in the neighbour- hood that what had really happened was this:, my maid had opened the door to the 'burglar (who by this was transformed into rather a dash- ing fellow), having an illicit assignation with hitn, and that I, poor dupe, had been misled into be- lieving that the episode had some more sinister meaning. 'That nice young boy—why, he's 1nY cousin. You don't imagine for a moment that anY, member of my family would do a thing like that? etcetera, etcetera. And if the opposition had not tried a little too hard, by seeking to establish that the culprit was only fifteen years old; and if the whole thing hadn't happened at 5.30 in the morn' ing, which—even allowing for the inexperience of a fifteen-year-old—seemed an unlikely hour at which to engage in amorous adventures; and if, finally, the maid had not happened to be sleeping at home that night, at the other end of the town, Why, then it would have been hard to ensure that even 50 per cent. of the truth prevailed, let alone 100 per cent. Come to that, it's not settled yet, and the opposition have obtained the services of three lawyers, so let's just say that our case rests.
Experience—there's been plenty of it, some Pleasant and some not. But since it's Christmas, I'd rather remember some of the pleasant, and out of these past few years of ranging through the Arab world there are many faces which appear to my mind's eye and to whom I should like to wave a friendly greeting in recognition of some service rendered to me for no more sub- stantial reason than that they brought me a smile When that was what I needed.
Like the anonymous Egyptian bank manager at the time of Suez, who when I asked if I might draw some money from my account (British Planes had been dropping bombs round Cairo for two days then) suggested with a ghost of a wink that I would do well to take the lot. (Next day the banks closed and all British assets were sequestrated.) Or the Jordanian cable operator, to whom I came in a thbroughly bad temper once with a press cable, only to learn that it had to be submitted in triplicate—at which I was un- reasonably angry. But this gentleman—and I use the word humbly—waited until my fury subsided, and then asked gently if I would mind waiting While he typed two further copies for me. Or, Oil a rather different plane, there is (unless, deservedly, he has risen to higher things) the Syrian immigration official who talked so charm- ingly while he gave me—as 1 thought—an entry visa that, when I learned later that the scrap of Paper for which I had paid him two pounds was a ticket for a football match which I could not Possibly attend and in which I had no interest Whatsoever, there was nothing I could do but laugh in admiration, of his virtuosity.
.Yes, there is humour in the Middle East, and kindness, too, to offset the harsher tones that too often find their-echo in the headlines. And it is good to know that, although there is no one like Your Arab for looking a gift horse in the mouth, there are still wirm hearts around the world who do their best to relieve the poverty and unhap- Mess that are endemic in the Arab world. Like the 800 soldiers of the Canadian contingent to UNEE (the United Nations Emergency Force Which keeps the peace between Egypt and Israel) who have this year given a $6,000 clinic and Maternity centre as a Christmas present to the Arab refugees at a wretched place called Khan Y. unis in the Gaza strip; or the many kind souls Iii Britain whose contributions to World Refugee Year have dropped an extra quarter of a million .Pounds into the budget of UNRWA and enabled It to build a new vocational training centre in Jordan. I invite them all to share this graceful Christmas message which came to me from an Arab on whom kindness was not wasted : 1 hop that you are very heapwill for yours Party. I am very joy with you with this fray day Christ's. 1 hop that your mrs. are very heapy
and all the familly very charist with joy and the children also heapy.
Good Bay Dear Micheal, Salah Mageed.
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