The start of an Obsession

My father and myself in 1939

I have been writing and rewriting a series of novels set in the British Mandate of Palestine  for over 25 years.  The Series is called ‘Land of Broken Promises.’ Last year Bluewood Publishers accepted the three completed novels.   The first one. 'Patsy' will be coming out in both print and ebook form in March this year.

Someone recently asked why I was so obsessed with the subject. I had to travel back  almost 75 years  before identifying the seed of the obsession, an incident that occurred in the spring of 1939.

At the age of six I climbed a ramp to the top of an eight-foot dry-stone wall overlooking a railway line.  Arab patriots had built the ramp, to take pot shots at passing trains.

I  sat high above the railway line, waiting to wave at the train that delivered mail and much else from Jerusalem to Jaffa.  Eventually, I heard a sound, but not the roaring and whistling of a majestic engine preparing to leave Jerusalem station, instead a low rumbling noise as an inspection trolley rounded the curve in the line.

Brown-capped prisoners, with chained ankles, worked levers attached to the sides of the trolley.  In front, two men in railway uniform examined the track.  At the rear, a pair of policemen, wearing midnight blue uniforms topped by astrakhan kalpaks, held tommy guns at the ready.  In the centre of the trolley, a white-bearded man sat on a chair, his hands tied behind his back.  His suit was European, but, on his head, he wore a shepherd’s white keffiyah fastened with a black iqal.  He gazed ahead, chin held high, reminding me of a picture in my olivewood-bound bible of Jesus before Pontius Pilot.

A photo showing a different version  of using rail  hostages 

At the time, I didn’t mention seeing the trolley to my parents in case I got into trouble for climbing the wall so, for twelve years, this memory remained uncontaminated by either photos or other people’s reminiscences.  It was 1950 before I mentioned the incident to my mother, I forget in what context, but she told me, in no uncertain fashion, that the British had never treated Arabic prisoners that way so I must have made it up.

Believing her, as I had never known my mother to tell a deliberate lie, I consigned the incident to a mental cabinet, labelled ‘imaginary memories.’  There it remained until several decades later  I came across a book that referred to the British placing Arab hostages on inspection trolleys during the 1936-39 Rebellion. 

I wondered why my mother, who had valued truth above all virtues, had denied the existence of that hostage with such vigour and  realised that someone so relentlessly honest needed the protection of a robust subconscious.  Looking back,  I discovered other instances of her involuntary self-deception.

In this particular case, however, I knew that early in her life, my mother, like many other British citizens, had acquired the notion that God had created them as a special vehicle for spreading the gospel and to this purpose had endowed them with moral superiority.  In the late nineteen thirties, she would have found nothing amiss in the army or the police  placing  an Arab civilian on humiliating public display.

In the example I witnessed,  public humiliation  was probably the main motive, because there rail officials on the trolley and Palestine police as well as prisoners and Arab patriots had long learned to make sophisticated detonators  that would not be affected by a lightweight trolley.  The photo I saw, however,  looked rather more sinister.

 Like everyone else. My mother’s notions of morality changed over the years.   By the 1950s, she would regard such behaviour as Nazi-like and cruel.  To concede that a British government was capable of such an act would have undermined her belief in God’s choice of the British as his chosen servants.

I spent the next few years researching what had really happened in Palestine during the thirties and forties, conversing with people from many cultures who had lived there during the Mandate era and reading memoirs written not only by the British but by Arabs and Jews.  In more cases than I had expected, my own memories were confirmed.

Sequencing events proved more difficult. My memory there was far less accurate.  but the more I learned, the more I realised that sequencing was vital to understanding cause and effect.

The daily English language newspaper the Palestine Post proved the most useful tool for sequencing major events . A journalist is unlikely to write a description of a bombing before it has happened.  At the same time I became aware that censorship ensured some events went unrecorded, especially during WW2.

I learnt to distrust official reports  written for a government back in England that issued orders with no idea of the situation on the ground. I realised, too,  that all official documents were  composed in the knowledge that agents of Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern gang worked in every department of the Mandate government.  acquiring copies of even the most top secret documents on the same day that they were written.

 With so much  research under my belt I was disturbed at the ignorance of political activists on all sides of the Middle East spectrum .  Irritation as much as anything else  instigated the decision to write chronologically accurate novels depicting  events in Palestine during the British Mandate from the viewpoints of characters from four cultures.

A Job Well Done

I heard today that the Palestine Police Old Comrade's Association has digitised 'A Job Well Done' by Edward Horne. This is  the authoritive history  on Palestine Policing from the end of WW1 until the end of the British Mandate in May 1948.  The paper edition is now out of print with second hand prices being advertised from £194.  The news has given me a great deal of pleasure since  I now don't have to keep on offering to  loan out my copy, which I bought over ten years ago for a much more modest sum.

 Unfortunately at present there seems to be  only one outlet at  https://go.epublish4me.com/a_job_well_done_-_edward_horne/10021694, which is a long typing job 

The history of the British Mandate for Palestine seems to be below the radar of most people I know. They are often surprised that Britain for well over 20 years administered Palestine, which included the present territories of Israel, the West Bank Gaza strip and, until 1926,  Transjordan. During this period they governed it very much like a colony. 

Instead of treating the history of the Palestine Police in a purely chronological order, Mr Horne divides his material into subject areas,  So, for instance, there are separate sections for 13 specialist units including the Band, Dogs and Traffic Police , while World War 2 And the Jewish Troubles 1943-1948, although overlapping, warrant separate chapters.

The title refers to King George VI congratulating the British Section of the Palestine Police on a Job well Done. The same compliment should be paid to Mr Horne for producing the book and to PPOCA for ensuring its survival.

Thieves in the Night

I have just finished reading Arthur Koestler’s novel ‘Thieves in the Night’ published in 1946 and set in the British Mandate of Palestine during the late 1930s.

The view point in this novel contrasts strongly with those of  Elias  S Srouji’s  in his memoir ‘Cyclamens of Galilee’  and with  flashbacks in  Michelle Cohen Corasanti’s  novel ‘The Almond Tree, ’ which I read earlier in the year.  

I hadn’t expected to enjoy this novel as much as I did.  The reason it appealed to me was that it put into words aspects of my own behaviour that have long troubled me, but I haven't been able to define properly.

The protagonist Joseph is a character who can’t settle for the axiom ‘moderation is best’.  In any strongly  emotional or dangerous situation he stands back from himself  and critiques his own or others’ corny cliché ridden words and exaggerated actions as if he were a member of an audience watching a tragedy that ought to be given more gravitas.  He can’t enjoy praise, without the embarrassed feeling that people wouldn’t feel the same about his accomplishments if they realised his true egotistical motivation.

Perhaps these character traits are more common in writers than in other people.  Any comments?

With regards to ultra-Zionism, an issue at the centre of the novel, the following conversation Joseph has with an Irgun member he admires, probably sums up the situation in 2013 as well as it did in 1938.

"I wish my Arabic was as good as yours," said Joseph. "What was the old Sheikh explaining so solemnly?"

"He explained that every nation has the right to live according to its own fashion, right or wrong, without outside interference. He explained that money corrupts, fertilizers stink and tractors make a noise, all of which he dislikes."

"And what did you answer?"

"Nothing."

"But you saw his point?"

"We cannot afford to see the other man's point."

Authors versus Characters

I've just finished reading The Almond Tree by Michelle Cohen Corasanti  (It's important to give the author's name here.  Three books with that title can be found in Kindle Store.) This one is a novel set in Israel,  an historical saga spanning 54 years ending in 2009.
Strong threads of determination, optimism and family values run through the  narrative consisting for the most part of only too believable tragedies that beset the rural Arab-Israeli family at the heart of the story.
I found the story gripping and was impressed by its historical accuracy.
However, I have one query which is relevant not only to this novel but to many others where the action is seen through the eyes of a single protagonist and there is no author narrative.
A character in the novel  passes on information which he/she believe to be true and which supports the main thesis of the novel, yet  nowhere in the book is the misinformation denied so the reader is left with the impression that the falsehood is historically accurate.
Here is an instance. The children are listening to nostalgic conversations between their uncle and their father, I quote,
'From these talks, Abbas and I learned how in the nineteenth century Palestinians developed the Shamouti orange, also known as the Jaffa orange.'
The political importance of this statement is that both Arabs and Jews claim to have bred the Jaffa which proved to be a major element of  19^th and 20^th century prosperity in Palestine and use it to assert their right to the land.
In historical fact the Jaffa orange was developed neither by Palestinian Arabs nor by Palestinian Jews but by Germans or more strictly, as the reunification of Germany had not then taken place,  by a group of Christian Westphalians who sold their surplus nursery stock to fellow citrus growers, both Arab and Jewish.  All three grew rich on the export trade the Jaffa orange provided.
Now, I believe it is quite legitimate for an author to allow a character whether deliberately, or in this case unwittingly, to pass on unreliable information.  My query-  is it legitimate, in an historical novel for the author to allow that information to go unchallenged?

King Richard 3 The making of a website.

I guess by now that most people have heard that the bones discovered in GreyFriars,  Leicester have been confirmed as those of King Richard of Leicester, whose body, after he died at the battle of Bosworth,  was publicly displayed at the High Cross Street Butter market before Henry 7th buried him in a modest tomb  in the  grounds of Greyfriars monastery.
For centuries legend had it that when Henry 8th dissolved Greyfriars monastery, the people of Leicester so hated the memory of Richard 3rd that they rushed onto the site, demolished his tomb and threw his bones into the nearby River Soar.
There was even a plaque erected on a bridge to mark the site from which the bones had been thrown.
Many years ago, as an enthusiastic young junior teacher I had the task of teaching The Tudors to Standard 3.  The junior school history syllabus in those days went chronologically from Dinosaurs in Standard 1(seven year olds) to WW1 in Standard 4 (eleven year olds).
I decided to liven up the syllabus with local primary sources and local legends.
I went to the County Records Office (then housed near Victoria Park) and read an (as far as I can remember) uncatalogued letter from Christopher Wren , father to the famous architect of St Pauls, mentioning he had visited Robert Herrick, uncle to the famous poet and brother to the first of eight  William Herricks of Beaumanor Hall, and been shown the intact tomb of Richard 3rd in the garden of his house that had been built on the Greyfriars site.
I also found a copy of the penny ballad printed after the 17th century murder of the Innkeeper's wife of the Blue Boar Inn while she slept in the bed King Richard had left behind before marching on to the Battle of Bosworth.  The ballad linked the murder to the Leicestershire legend of 'Black Anis' (not to be confused with another Leicestershire legend  'Black Anna') and also to a cache of  gold coins the innkeeper's wife had found in the bed.
From this I cobbled together a serial story that  solved discipline problems for the last half hour of each school day.  It also enabled the class and I to escape the claustrophobic classroom on several occasions ,  while we explored on foot sites in the city associated with King Richard.  Twice we even went on  coach trips, once to Bosworth  (it didn't have a posh visitors' centre then so it was very much a DIY affair) and once to the delightful Donnington-le-Heath museum.
Twelve years ago, about a decade after I had retired, I created a website about King Richard and his Bed. Linear was even more OUT  then  than it is today. Countless links between pages  (there must have been over  100)  left the luckless reader drifting between dinosaurs, Cain and Abel the Vikings, Druids, Houghton on the Hill, Cheapside, Bow Bridge, Beaumanor, the Blue Boar, Bosworth and Donnington-le Heath to mention just a few.
Websites are like the electric cables that attach devices to one's computer.  Left neglected  they come adrift and tangle themselves up into fiendish puzzles.
When I resuscitated this website a week or so ago, it was completely unusable. I stripped it down ruthlessly - gone is the walking tour of Leicester - (during the past decade the council has demolished half the items on it). Gone is the history of the Herricks both in Leicestershire and America. Gone is the trail of  evil from amoebas to Idi Amin. Gone are javascript and frames. The site is now unashamedly linear, simply,  if old fashionably, coded and has only 19 pages. On my computer all  forward links work and all the images come up, although I haven't yet tested the backward links, so if you try it - keep going forward!  Here is the link.
http://landofbrokenpromises.co.uk/kingdickan/

Submitting at last.

 All three novels of the series , 'Land of Broken Promises, completed
so - Time to submit the first novel - Maftur which in its final version spans 1933-1948, (although a reader who is a bit squeamish and wants a Happy Ending can choose not to read the last chapter but finish in 1944).
 I want an agent interested in the Middle East so  googled  'literary agents uk middle east'
Amidst all the non-fiction stuff  I found a fiction agent who had been brought up in Israel.  He only took submissions by snailmail  but  welcomed queries by email.
 The Agency had a doggy sort of name which sounded very British and there was an Abbey in the address line which sounded cosier still.
It was only after sending off the email that I looked at the snailmail address more closely and realised  it was actually New York - so much for google accuracy.
 I envisaged a log cabin office set in a wooded area of New York State close to the River Hudson near the Canadian Border, and sharing the autumnal glory of Vermont until I received an automated reply saying sorry the office was currently shut because of power failure due to Sandy,   and then felt embarrassed at the insensitivity of sending a query letter during a time of catastrophe.
The power cut finally over,  I received  a response.  The agent was pessimistic about American Publishers being interested in a tale of an Arab woman living in the British Mandate of Palestine in the thirties and forties of the last century, however, he himself would be interested in reading it, so would I send the manuscript by snailmail.
After a last final polish I lugged the manuscript up to our local post office and found it would cost £33.60 to send  by air mail (four days travel time) or £25 to send  by sea (56 days travel time, - would posties row it over?)
 I chose the airmail option but instead of sending return postage I emailed the agent asking him to recycle the manuscript when he had finished with it and so save airmiles.
I guess,  I won't be trying any more foreign agents unless they allow email submissions.

 I'll probably give myself a year of  submissions and then start rejigging to make the series suitable for Kindle.

One Job Accomplished now for the Big One

I am not a natural leader.  At every management course I've attended when we  fill in questionaires to discover our best team functions,everyone else has finished up with a self-defining function such as co-ordinator or shaper or implementer. I, on the other hand always  end up as a plant!
Whenever I've asked course leaders to define the function of  a plant  they've looked embarrassed.
One said a team would be in a pretty bad way if there were two plants on it but sometimes it might be useful to have just one, another said it wasn't altogether a bad thing to be a plant, another said just act normal and it would be all right, but no one ever defined the role.
Realising then my leadership skills are obviously a bit dodgy, I was somewhat apprehensive last year when elected as the annual president of our local Writers Club last year. I sat down and created a list of targets.I had wanted to accomplish for a long time

• Getting readers and writers to discuss at an open meeting what each expects from the other.
• Raising the profile of SF within the club. Most members claimed never to have read any!
• Having an open meeting with  a panel of authors, technicians and librarians to discuss where epublishing is now and how best to do it

and  hardest of all

• Getting a consensus on the revision of our 50+ year old constitution.

  My term of office is now over. To my amazement  every target was achieved. This had nothing to do with my non-existent leadership skills but  was due entirely to our multi-talented club members' unique blend of loudly assertive, argumentative co-operation and their ability to make last ditch compromises. Leicester Writers Club I am so grateful to you.

Now, having at last finished two years of copy editing I can concentrate on trying to market my trilogy Land of Broken Promises

Anyone know an agent interested in novels set in the British Mandate of Palestine between 1933 and 1948?