Roald Dahl in Palestine

“You seem surprised to find us here,” the man said. “I am,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting to find anyone.”

“We are everywhere,” the man said. “We are all over the country.”

“Forgive me,” I said, “but I don’t understand. Who do you mean by we?”

“Jewish refugees.”

I really didn’t know what he was talking about. I had been living in East Africa for the pasts two years and in those times the British colonies were parochial and isolated. The local newspaper, which was all we got to read, had not mentioned anything about Hitler’s persecution of the Jews in 1938 and 1939. Nor did I have the faintest idea that the greatest mass murder in the history of the world was actually taking place in Germany at that moment.

“Is this your land?” I asked him.

“Not yet,” he said.

“You mean you are hoping to buy it?”

He looked at me in silence for a while. Then he said, “The land is at present owned by a Palestinian farmer but he as given us permission to live here. He has also allowed us some fields so that we can grow our own food.”

“So where do you go from here?” I asked him. “You and all your orphans?”

“We don’t go anywhere,” he said, smiling through his black beard. “We stay here.”

“Then you will all become Palestinians,” I said. “Or perhaps you are that already.”

He smiled again, presumably at the naivety of my questions.

“No,” the man said, “I do not think we will become Palestinians.”

“Then what will you do?”

“You are a young man who is flying airplanes,” he said, “and I do not expect you to understand our problems.”

“What problems?” I asked him. …

“You have a country to live in and it is called England,” he said. “Therefore you have no problems.”

“No problems!” I cried. “England is fighting for her life all by herself against virtually the whole of Europe! We’re even fighting the Vichy French and that’s why we’re in Palestine right now! Oh, we’ve got problems all right!” I was getting rather worked up. I resented the fact that this man sitting in his fig grove said that I had no problems when I was getting shot at every day. “I’ve got problems myself,” I said, “in just trying to stay alive.”

“That is a very small problem,” the man said. “Ours is much bigger.”

I was flabbergasted by what he was saying. He didn’t seem to care one bit about the war we were fighting. He appeared to be totally absorbed in something he called “his problem” and I couldn’t for the life of me make it out. “Don’t you care whether we beat Hitler or not?” I asked him.

“Of course I care. It is essential that Hitler be defeated. But that is only a matter of months and years. Historically, it will be a very short battle. Also it happens to be England’s battle. It is not mine. My battle is one that has been going on since the time of Christ.”

“I am not with you at all,” I said. I was beginning to wonder whether he was some sort of a nut. He seemed to have a war of his own going on which was quite different to ours.

I still have a very clear picture of the inside of that hut and of the bearded man with the bright fiery eyes who kept talking to me in riddles. “We need a homeland,” the man was saying. “We need a country of our own. Even the Zulus have Zululand. But we have nothing.”

“You mean the Jews have no country?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said. “It’s time we had one.”

“But how in the world are you going to get yourselves a country?” I asked him. “They are all occupied. Norway belongs to the Norwegians and Nicaragua belongs to the Nicaraguans. It’s the same all over.”

“We shall see,” the man said, sipping his coffee. …

“You could have Germany,” I said brightly. “When we have beaten Hitler then perhaps England would give you Germany.”

“We don’t want Germany,” the man said.

“Then what country did you have in mind?”

[From Going Solo, the chapter titled “Palestine and Syria.”]