Across from the King David, a huge stone phallus rises among the neighboring roofs. This is the YM CA tower, a fertility symbol. It, too, was erected in the 1930s and was considered one of the architectural marvels of its time, designed by the same firm that drew up the plans for the Empire State Building in New York.19 Mandatory administration officials and high society sipped lemonade on its terrace. The men sported pith helmets and the women shaded their faces with white silk parasols. They carefully observed the rules o f good English society. In the afternoon they had tea, and they dressed for dinner. From time to time they could be seen at evening lectures or concerts; sometimes they attended the dances held in their honor by Miss Annie Landau, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school principal, or they might pay a visit to the house of Katy Antonius, wife of George Antonius and a legendary Arab hostess.
The British preserved a rigid class consciousness: soldiers and NCOs spent their time in pubs and brothels; the officers went on fox and jackal hunts. The British hunting club in Ramie offered its members the oppor tunity to purchase red coats and buttons emblazoned with the club name, Ramie Vale Jackal Hounds. (None of the club's members forgot to men tion the jacket in their memoirs.)20 The road paved by the authorities between Latrun and Ramallah was meant mostly to serve British officials off on weekend picnics.21 And they played tennis. People played soccer in Palestine even before the Mandate, but the British brought tennis; it was part o f their colonial culture and mentality.22 Ronald Storrs, governor of Jerusalem, documented the following scene in his diary: Colonial Secre tary Lord Milner came to visit Palestine. He drank tea with the governor o f Hebron and his guests and afterward they went to play tennis. Two Arab criminals were brought specially from the prison to run around the court and collect the balls; their legs were in irons throughout the game. Milner seemed to endure it with fortitude, Storrs wrote.23
The colonial method of government, wrote District Commissioner of the Galilee Edward Keith-Roach, was "totalitarianism tempered with benevolence." 24 Many o f the British brought with them imperialistic arrogance and a powerful sense of cultural superiority. There were those who saw their dominion as a destiny and a mission. Herbert Samuel, the first high commissioner, proposed that his government conquer Palestine in order to "civilize" it.25 When he eulogized one of his men who had died, Samuel honored him with the warmest praise he knew: "as head of the civil service staff he bore the brunt of the work o f building up almost from the foundations the structure of a modern state." 26
There were those in the British administration who identified with the Jews and those who identified with the Arabs. There were those who found both repugnant. " I dislike them all equally," wrote General Sir Wal ter Norris " Squib" Congreve. "Arabs and Jews and Christians, in Syria and Palestine, they are all alike, a beastly people. The whole lot o f them is not worth a single Englishman!" This was a common sentiment. Police officer Raymond Cafferata put it more politely: " I am not anti-Semitic nor anti- Arab, I'm merely pro-British." So felt many, perhaps most, of those who served in Palestine.2
One morning, sometime after General Sir Evelyn Barker had arrived in Palestine to suppress the Jewish terrorist organizations, he heard Irving Berlins " Dancing Cheek to Cheek" on the radio program Musical Clock. That was in the summer or autumn of 1946, at 7:15 in the morning. The general immediately sat down to write to Katy Antonius: "You are the first woman I've ever done it with," he wrote, referring apparently to dancing cheek to cheek. " I enjoyed every moment and wished it could have gone on." She had told him that he had, perhaps, fallen in love with her. Barker appreciated her comment more than anything, he wrote, because in fact he had been in love with her for months.1
Their love story is revealed in close to one hundred letters that the gen eral wrote on official army stationary and sent by special messenger, his driver, to his beloveds house in east Jerusalem, a few blocks from his own home on the city's west side. The letters tell a story of ecstasy and tragedy, pathos, mystery, and deception, danger, hope, and disappointment, romance, tears, and kisses- all against the background of nationalist ter ror, the crumbling of an empire, the birth of one nation and the devasta tion of another.
Barker was forty-two, married, and the father of a son. Before arriving in Palestine in May 1946 he had enjoyed a celebrated military career that began when he decided in his youth, a short time before World War I, to enlist in the army and become a professional soldier like his father. In the 1930s, Barker was sent to Palestine for the first time to help the army suppress the Arab rebellion. In World War II, he participated in the invasion of Normandy. He distinguished himself in the battle to liberate Le Havre, as a result of which the king granted him a knighthood. Afterward he joined the VIII Corps, which crossed the Rhine under General Mont gomery and advanced through northern Germany. On April 15,1945, his men liberated the Bergen-Belsen death camp. An officer of the old school, he exuded colonial arrogance- tall, thin, slightly bent, with a steely, pene trating gaze devoid of emotion. Yet in his letters to Katy Antonius he sounds like a schoolboy in love.
The widow of George Antonius, Katy was the daughter of Dr. Faris Nimr Pasha of Alexandria, senator, expert on the Arab language, and owner of the prestigious newspaper Al-Muqadam. From a young age she had been taught that her culture was European. She kept company with Western diplomats and spoke a number of their languages as if they were her own. Her sister married Sir Walter Alexander Smart, a high official in the British embassy in Cairo.f " Katy Antonius was an intelligent, bright, and witty woman, full of humor and charm," Anwar Nusseibeh said of her, "always up-to-date on the intricacies of political events, pretty, good- hearted, and generous." She lived in a house that was owned by the mufti and was a high-society hostess; her guests included everyone who was anyone in the British administration- Western politicians, journalists, artists, notables from around the world, as well as many leaders from the Arab countries.5
One of her guests, British journalist and politician Richard Crossman, described her house as a political salon in the French style. He wrote of one magnificent party: " Evening dress, Syrian food and drink, and danc ing on the marble floor." As far as he could make out, the guests were a mix of Arabs and Britishers. " It is easy to see why the British prefer the Arab upper class to the Jews," Crossman went on. " This Arab intelli gentsia has a French culture, amusing, civilized, tragic and gay. Compared *George Antonius had died in 1942, after having gained fame as the author o f The Arab Awakening, published in 1938, the most important book written to date on the history of the Arab national movement in Palestine.2 Khalil al-Sakakini was one of his pallbearers, as was Musa Alami. When Sakakini began to eulogize Antonius by his grave on Mount Zion, tears welled up in his eyes and he was almost unable to speak.3
George Antonius's love for Katy also produced a large collection of letters written in En glish, some of them on official Mandatory Education Department stationary. A supporter of the mufti, he nonetheless preferred to tie the fate of the Arab national movement to the British Empire. His love letters indicate that the relationship was fairly tormented.4 with them the Jews seem tense, bourgeois, central European" In the car that took Crossman back to the King David Hotel, a British official explained that there were two societies in Jerusalem, not three- one Anglo-Arab, the other Jewish, and the two could not mix.6
Barker seems to have fallen in love with Katy Antonius at one of those parties. When they saw each other at social events they would keep a dis creet distance; the following day he would write how hard he had found being in her company without touching her. He frequently visited her home in the evenings, and the next morning would write to her how much he enjoyed her company, how important she was to him, how much he loved her. " I am not sentimental," he wrote once during a flight home, "but am sensitive to love and kindness. I could not keep the tears away from my eyes as I drove off this morning- stupid as you may think me." 7 By the time Barker's plane had landed he had written Katy another letter.8 He promised over and over again that he was on the Arab side and made her party to several military secrets, including some dealing with the fight against Jewish terrorism.
In the wake of the King David bombing, Barker translated these instructions into an order declaring all Jewish establishments, including restaurants and places of entertainment, off-limits to British soldiers. He knew this would be difficult, Barker wrote to his men, but the Jews had to learn just how much the British despised them, and the best way to pun ish them was by striking at their pockets, which the race particularly dis liked. His choice of words was unfortunate. They were interpreted as antisemitic and caused an uproar. Katy Antonius preserved among her papers a caricature that appeared in England showing Barker brandishing his statement while standing on a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf. Barker was soon returned to England. Many years later he claimed, in a conversa tion with Lord Nicholas Bethell, that it had been "a rotten letter written on the spur of the moment." 43
But Barker's disclaimer was false. Sometime after returning to England, he wrote to Kate Antonius. "They do hate having their pockets touched, as I said in my letter," he noted, adding, "I hope the Arabs will no longer think we are afraid to hang Jews." Two terrorists had committed suicide in prison before being executed, and Barker commented, "So that's two more less." His hostility to the Jews was clearly an inseparable part of his love for his Katy, and that love was part o f his hostility. He would gaze at her picture, his eyes growing damp: "Katy, I love you so much, Katy," he wrote her. "Just think of all this life and money being wasted for these b- y Jews. Yes I loathe the lot- whether they be Zionists or not. Why should we be afraid o f saying we hate them- it's time this damned race knew what we think of them- loathsome people."44
General Evelyn Barker felt obliged to apologize. His government had not been fair. It should not have returned the mandate to the U.N. in New York, since the atmosphere there was so pro-Jewish. On the other hand, he wrote to Katy Antonius, he could not blame the British- even Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former mufti, thought only of his own interests and not of his people, and had done the Palestinian Arabs a great disservice. The mufti sought only to augment his political power. The Arabs had only dissension and petty jealousies. Their tragedy was that they had no real leadership.
The former mufti had managed to extricate himself from the ruins of Berlin at the very last moment. He reached France, where he was arrested as a Nazi collaborator, but he managed to escape and make his way to Cairo. "There was great joy," Khalil al-Sakakini wrote in his diary when he heard of this.37
The U.N. debate might have been avoided had the Arabs come forth withconstructive suggestions instead of turning down all the British ideas, Barker wrote. The Arabs needed to use a Western approach in evaluating their problems, he added, and he imagined himself serving as political adviser to the Arab Higher Committee. Katy Antonius seems to have agreed with at least some of his criticism. It was too bad the Arabs didn't listen to her, he said- maybe they dismissed her because she was a woman.38
Barker was serving as commander in chief, eastern command, in May 1947; Antonius had left her home in Jerusalem and moved to Egypt. "I shall always love you for your own sweet self and for your grand fighting spirit which I so much admire," he wrote her.39 He was pained that the British were imposing such a situation on their Arab friends, he wrote a short time after the General Assembly had adopted the partition plan; he was angry at President Truman for selling himself to the Jews. But as a military man he had no doubt: the Jews would not be able to withstand the force of the entire Arab world, and in the end they would all be eradicated. They could blame their destruction only on the Zionist policy they had adopted, and on Lord Balfour, of course. Even though Barker had not been appointed adviser to the Arabs, he offered them advice through his lover. They had to unite, to be more cunning, to work according to a plan. He would willingly fight at their side in order to exterminate Zionism, he reiterated.40
A year had gone by since Barker had last seen his Katy, yet his heart was full of her. A lot had happened in the meantime, but his deep affection for his dear little love remained constant. He recalled one evening in particular, when they had consummated their love. Yes, he wrote, perhaps she had been right in saying he loved her more than he should, but he was so happy to have had those rapturous months in Jerusalem- her friendship was a pearl of great price. He thought of her at night when he went to sleep and in the morning when he woke, when he was in the bathtub and at work- always always he thought only of his Katy, with the white streak of hair, whom he loved and still loved.41
One day Barker was nearly caught. He left some letters on his desk, and his wife noticed the Egyptian stamps. Luckily, another letter from Egypt was in the pile and he was able to explain away the correspondence some how. But the moment was very alarming for him. Now he asked Katy to send him, along with her real letters, something formal for him to show his wife. Please, do this even if you think it is cheating, he wrote her.42 Sometimes he had friends over who also knew Antonius, and her name would come up in conversation. One evening he had supper with Musa Alami. Barker held him in high esteem, and would have liked to see him leading the Arab movement in Palestine, despite some concern that Alami would be too uncompromising.43 Alami was connected to the Husseini family by marriage; for a time he had indeed been considered the chief representative of Palestine's Arabs.
Alami had been expelled from Palestine during the Arab rebellion but had since been allowed to return to Jerusalem, where he worked as a lawyer. For a time he coordinated Arab public relations in diplomatic circles, setting up liaison offices in London, New York, and Washington. This venture was financed by the Arab League, which had been established in ^During their meal, Barker wrote, he and Alami discussed a recently published book by Richard Crossman containing a description of a party at Katy's house. Alami liked the book, while Barker was angry about several inaccuracies and was wondering whether to write to the author. Crossman is such a nasty little man that I hardly feel it's worth the trouble, he wrote to Katy.44 Not long after his meal with Alami, Barker heard on the BBC news that the "bloody Jews" had blown up Antonius's house in Jerusalem. He had always feared that would happen, he wrote her, but he had hoped that she would at least be able to remove her belongings in advance. He did not know that the Jews had taken a large quantity of documents from the house, including his love letters.