Hotel Tiberias: A Tale of Two Grandfathers. Sebastian Hope
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and racing.
What colonized countries adopted from the British sporting heritage can be seen both in terms of political attitudes towards the colonizers and of class. Cricket is a useful indicator. In Ireland resistance to English rule extended to boycotting ‘barrack games’ like cricket, while in Southern Africa, Australasia and initially in the Caribbean it was the preserve of the white settlers. Where British rule lasted longest – in India – the game became a part of the indigenous culture, chiming with the way time passes on the subcontinent; where they came latest – Malaya – the game is hardly known. The fellow feeling that existed between the British officer class and the Indian warrior caste led to the mirroring of the British Army in India by the Indian Army and the creation of a truly Anglo-Indian game: polo. The Indian and Pakistani armies of today preserve more of the ethos of Empire than any British regiment.
‘People here never played cricket,’ Madame Wafa’a asserted, ‘and very few play polo today. Some members keep horses here for show-jumping. The racing, of course the racing still takes place. I have never been.’ Madame Wafa’a disapproved; there was betting: addictive, impoverishing and un-Islamic. Shan Hackett had certainly found it impoverishing; his mounting debt to Ladbroke’s is one of the reasons he gives for applying in 1937 for a secondment away from Cairo.
‘I am glad to meet an Englishman who wants to know about his past. If you know the past you can tell the future. We Egyptians know every moment of our past, but we do not like to talk about the time of the British. You do not want to hear my opinions. Do not make me start.’ The cooling sound of watering came through the window from the cottage garden that surrounded the old clubhouse with shade, a building of an Anglo-Indian type common to hill stations. Madame Wafa’a’s large assistant brought tea. She started anyway, her English slipping in her haste: ‘How do you think we feel, you come here and take our house? Share with me of course, live with me, why not, but to take only? It is because there is nothing left in European countries that they come to take from other places. And the Israelis, more Europeans who come to take. They think we have no feelings? They think we have no civilization? But they cannot take our thoughts, our heart, our soul. We have a religion too, and Jerusalem is holy for us too – I tell you Jerusalem is not a place; it is an idea. It is holy for everyone, let it belong to everyone. Israel has been there only fifty years. The British were here for seventy. We have been here for seven thousand years. We can wait. The British had to leave when we took the Canal back. The Israelis will either have to leave or live with us in peace – why not live with me? Share with me?’ It was encouraging to hear tolerance, albeit of a tough variety, being put forward by an orthodox Muslim as a solution to the perennial problem, but her assertions about Egypt’s Jews were disingenuous. ‘There were many Jews in Cairo who lived with us and shared with us. Why did they leave to become our enemies? There was no danger for them. Right now the main synagogue in Cairo is being guarded by Muslim soldiers. It has not been damaged.’ As is true of most stories, hers was one with two sides. Her view of the British was equally polarized. She had once visited England, she said, and her abiding memory was of a sign in a boarding-house window; ‘“No dogs. No cats. No children. No blacks,”’ she quoted. ‘The British never let any Egyptians into this club as members. Never.’ This was not true. In January 1952 when the club was ‘Egyptianized’, of the 2453-strong membership 1116 were Egyptians.
For all her indignation at British exclusivity, the Egyptian members continue to discriminate against their fellow citizens without qualms; it is the nature of a club, after all, that the majority is excluded. Their list of those not welcome would read ‘No dogs. No cats. No poor masses.’ In the ‘new’ art deco clubhouse, built in 1935, the notice board for polo fixtures may be empty, but the terrace by the swimming pool retains the atmosphere of the Lido – rattan chairs and checked tablecloths below huge white parasols, liveried waiters, the whitewashed vaguely nautical wings extending from the main building that enclose the space. An old man in a grey cotton suit sat alone at a table reading the papers, a large jug of fresh lemonade in front of him. His ears stood out at right angles and from behind the lobes could be seen to wobble when he moved his head. In the pool two elderly couples stood and chatted at the shallow end. It would have been busy on the day of the races, but that week the meeting was being held at Nadi-l-Shams, another club near the airport.
It is hard to imagine a more troublesome handful of words than those contained in the letter written to Lord Rothschild by Arthur Balfour on 2 November 1917. There are 117 of them, but the 67 which really count are those Balfour put in inverted commas, expressing the Cabinet’s ‘declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations’:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use all their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The British Mandate for Palestine, approved by the League of Nations in July 1922, used more or less the same form of words and gave recognition ‘to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country’. Churchill spelt out the British position in 1922 when he asserted that the Jews were in Palestine ‘of right, and not on sufferance’. The resulting influx of European Jews was met by sporadic Arab violence that escalated to widespread rioting in 1929. The British aim was the gradual creation of a multi-racial, multilingual, multi-faith and eventually independent state and so they sought to regulate the numbers of Jewish immigrants through a system of annual quotas. After the rise of Hitler in Germany and anti-Semitism elsewhere in Central Europe, the system broke down, unable to cope with the flood of refugees. Although the quotas were increased – sixty thousand for 1935 – the majority of those fleeing persecution were forced to enter Palestine illegally. Even at the approved rate of sixty thousand a year, the Arabs calculated that they would be outnumbered in their own land by 1947. The quota was reduced to thirty thousand for 1936, but that was thirty thousand too many for the Arab Council. In May of that year they met to demand an end to all Jewish immigration, a ban on further Jewish land purchase, and an Arab majority government. The demands were accompanied by a general strike and countrywide attacks against Jewish property. Twenty-one Jews were killed by Arabs in the month of May, and 140 Arabs were killed by the British in suppressing the violence.
Of more concern to the British was the appearance of armed Arab bands from outside Palestine. The 8th Hussars were among those sent to counter this more organized threat. Still a lieutenant and in the middle of writing his thesis, Hackett was appointed liaison and intelligence officer for the Gaza-Beersheba district; his time was soon taken up with a different kind of writing. He took to composing reports in such quantity and so much detail that they were regarded almost as an annoyance. He came to be known, somewhat mockingly, as ‘Hackett of Gaza’, but from the reports it is evident how much relish he took teasing out the connections between the various Arab factions and analysing the internal and external dynamics of urban, rural and nomadic elements of the population.
Gaza was the quietest area of Palestine during the general strike owing to the lack of Jewish settlement in the district, but the local notables, divided into two factions, were engaged in their own squabble ‘under the cloak of the general disturbance’. The Shawa and Shaba’an families were playing out the old civic drama, and at that moment the Shawas had the upper hand. The Mayor, a Shaba’an supporter, had been put in fear of his life by Shawa-sponsored bombers and had fled to the Lebanon. ‘Eighty piastres is said to be the price paid for the throwing of one bomb. The people named on the above list as bomb throwers or snipers are often to be seen at the offices of the [Strike] Committee. They come for payment, it is said. A Receipt would be a very good thing for us to get, but very few are given.’ Usually the bombs were set to damage only property. The Shawas seemed to control most of the guns as well, and the snipers’ targets were British patrols. One Shawa was said to have brought six new rifles to Gaza from Jerusalem, but more usually firearms went in the other direction