Songs of seduction

Although he entered the city twice, the second entry provoked the storm, in the first half of December 1917, the English general, the victorious Allied commander, stopped in the Sheikh Badr locality outside the wall ... a solemn celebration from the men and elders of Jerusalem ... and welcoming speeches glorified the victory of the Allies over a bewildered caliphate ... Then the mayor, Hussein Salim Hassan Effendi Husseini, handed him the key to Jerusalem, to enter the Old City from the Gate of the Column, as the holy city is decorated and the hero is waiting on the sides of its paths, arrogantly he took the key and arrogantly said: I will enter Jerusalem when I want, on a date determined by me, his second entry after a whole week... Like his predecessors, he entered on foot from Hebron Gate on a Sunday... To the music of the bagpipes, the beating of drums, between the flags of the scouts, and in a majestic military ceremony, he entered as a conqueror... Jerusalem has been used to the entry of conquerors since it was.

It is true that our sects exaggerated in welcoming him and prepared a hero's welcome for him in the Holy Sepulchre, as none of us knew the Englishman's intentions and what he was hiding, so we were stunned by what he said, and shocked us before others... as if he were imitating Richard the Lionheart! He stopped arrogantly at the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and said: “Today the Crusades have ended.” Did the general imagine that he was repeating the history of the Franks? Did he forget that he would not have reached Jerusalem if not for the Arab revolt against the Turks and their support for the Allies? God knows, O comrade, that his words wounded our hearts, and we bled in pain and anger, and put us in a quandary, and our throats dried up for fear of sedition, and the Englishman brings the scourge to the Christian Arabs as the Crusaders did after each conquest, and what we thought happened...

Jerusalem and the whole country erupted with rejection and denunciation... There is no blame or reproach for them, as rejecting what the general said is a national duty, and we all have the right to revolt against him and denounce him, but, unfortunately, they held us responsible for the guilt of the Allied commander, and the burden of what he said! As if he were one of us and we were not, or as if we knew what was in his conscience! Or as if we could stop him! And where were they when their senior men and elders stood in his hands, welcoming and cheering, and were silent and helpless while he refused to enter the Old City? No one asked: Who helped the Allies against the Turks? ... Were they not the Muslim leaders of the Levant, the Sharif of Mecca and his sons, and if not for the Arab revolt, the general would not have entered Jerusalem? The day he bared his fangs, they said: "A Christian repeating the Crusades?" ... The anger spread throughout the country, and the misunderstanding is a spark that has spread, and will ignite a sedition that will not stay or go away ... It hurts, comrade, that we are always forced to confirm our Arabism ... to stand in the line of defense of our belonging ... to remain the object of doubt and hidden accusation no matter what we do, which wounds the soul and hurts the soul.

Enlightened young people, Christians and Muslims, intellectuals, writers, journalists, clerics, politicians, heads of clubs and parties, gathered at the Arab Orthodox Club, and we said to the Prophet, "The Prophet is a true Christian, but we are Arabs and he is English ... Palestine is our country since ancient times and he is an outsider, and we Orthodox handed the key to the city to Umar bin Khattab, not to the English general! We fought the Crusaders alongside Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi and helped him to enter Acre... And, good people, since Islam entered our country, have the Muslims been victorious? Bring one and hold us accountable... We hugged ... and emphasized our unity and cohesion ... We wrote a joint statement, signed by those present, denouncing what the general said, and emphasizing that the Christian Arabs have nothing to do with him, as he is English, and we are from authentic Arab tribes, and our only loyalty is to our country and our nationality... The sedition subsided... Did it sleep?

From the private to the public, from the stories of the aunt to the stories of Jerusalem, the footage moves to record the presence of a Jerusalem that has faced and is still facing more and more events, and of Jerusalemites who are still destined to prove their existence on a piece of land that is heavenly with its heritage, glorious with its history ... wonderful in its demographic composition ... and how not when its creator allocated it a religious mix to have that status and be a real model for the possibility of coexistence between people, whatever their beliefs...

The author draws the reader strongly to follow events that go between fact and fiction, infused with style, and in line with the characters who played their roles perfectly, you turn to the central character ... Aunt Milada Abu Najma ... you find her from the time of great labor, and stormy transformations, she was born and Jerusalem took off one era and lived another, so in her days the lines of politics and religion intertwined, and society changed and the conditions, ideas and lifestyle changed ... A surrealist brush painted the city with people and people who were subjected to its ancient wall... In the successive eras, the change of rulers and the succession of events, the bubbles of the public overshadowed the private, burying the stories of the people and scattering them like them...

The narrator is Issa's daughter, who visits Jerusalem with the idea of a new movie about Jerusalem, to live the period of recounting incidents with Miladah in the hosh, from the womb of the past, visions and shadows of people are born, questions that restrict the imagination, abort every resistance to what is coming ... and the whirlwinds of anxiety roar ... Aunt Miladah, her father Salem, her brothers Habib and Ibrahim, the fun, the extension of the Jaffa-Jerusalem railroad, ways that were not absent from any family meeting... For a long time, the aunt waited for someone to come to hear her, a witness to a time that shines in her memory and insists, she clings to its details so as not to escape into her forgetfulness, and without reservation the events of a past life flow...