First Well: A Bethlehem Boyhood

With a Proustian attention to details, Jabra, a prominent Arabic author who died in Iraq in 1994, recaptures his youth in British-mandated Bethlehem and Jerusalem, where he attended Greek Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, and ``National'' schools. With humor and tenderness, Jabra recalls the old caravansary or khan where he lived, with the church upstairs and ``the scent of incense'' which ``had the kindness to come down to us''; the shock of going to school at five with ``fifty boys of different ages,'' some of whom wore ``large boots left to their parents by the Ottoman army''; and acquiring a love for the Arabic language and stories, whose ``words glowed in my mind; they glittered like gold and sparkled like jewels. I imagined myself walking on colored silk carpets spread over the waves of a wondrous sea of dreams.'' There are a lot of firsts here: first fights with school playmates, first school indoctrinations about serving ``the idea of Arabism'' and ``the Arabism of Palestine.'' In the end, however, readers may find Jabra's book too self-absorbed and superficial in its treatment of the politics of the times. Other readers will be offended by Jabra's casual, uncritical reference to Jewish ritual murder: ``Our mothers continually warned against those Jews, saying they kidnapped children in Jewish festivals, in order to slay them and mix their blood in the dough of unleavened bread.'' (Nov.)