NOVEMBER

Paris

Alberto Giacometti is capable of destroying all the work he has done in the last couple of years because it isn’t good enough. His friends find this very upsetting, but Simone de Beauvoir admires him for it. He has a particular conception of sculpture which he has to measure up to, so he tries time and again, never satisfied.

On 4 November, Simone visits him in his studio, and while the rain falls she takes a close look at her friend. Giacometti is grubby, with plaster in his hair and on his hands, his clothes are dirty, and he looks as though he never washes. His garden is a wilderness. Next to his studio is a large, empty building, a kind of shed. The roof is full of holes. Pots and pans are placed on the ground to catch the rainwater, but they too have holes, so the water trickles out, forming rivulets and puddles.

She writes to Nelson that she has finished writing the book about her time in America and that she is reading Gunnar Myrdal’s book An American Dilemma. The similarities between the situation of African-Americans and that of women nudge Simone into resuming work on the book she has long meant to write — on the second sex. She wants it to be just as substantial and just as important a work as Myrdal’s.

Jura

George Orwell types away non-stop in the upstairs bedroom, chain-writing, chain-smoking, chain-coughing. His temperature is up. The incident in August when he, his son, and two friends nearly drowned in the cold Atlantic has made his already debilitated body even more frail. He is obliged to work in bed. But he will not consult a doctor, he has no time, the book is in progress, has to be finished. He drives himself on: loose leaves, additions, crossings-out, and so the work grows into one of the most terrifying texts his publisher has ever read.

On 7 November, he finishes the first draft of the book that, more than any other, defines his authorship, our contemporary world, and the fears we harbour about our future. His account of a country where the individual is always subordinate to the state — Big Brother is watching you — and where the ruling party modifies history to show that the party is always right will generate both nightmares and new words. But the book has yet to be published. He has yet to be diagnosed with tuberculosis. George Orwell is still alive. He still has a further couple of changes to make to his manuscript, and he knows nothing of the huge impact his words will have. He lies in bed after a spring, a summer, and an autumn on Jura, in the course of which he has killed adders and counted eggs, observed the shifting skies, the quantities of rain, and the breathing of the ocean. He lies in his sickbed, writing the words that will make up his last work, and names the book 1984.

New York

Bill Gottlieb publishes his article and declares Thelonious Monk the inventor of bebop. After that, it’s not long before Monk is contacted by a white married couple who come to his apartment on San Juan Hill. They sit down on the bed, their legs stretched out in front of them, while Monk takes his seat at the piano and plays with his back to them. Tune after tune. Few words are uttered, but by the time Mr and Mrs Lion leave, Thelonious Monk has a contract with their record label, Blue Note.

The band line-up on 21 November is George Tait on the trumpet, Sahib Shihab on the alto sax, Bob Paige on the bass, and Art Blakey on the drums. The piano isn’t perfectly tuned but sounds fine. They record a total of 14 versions of four of his compositions. A single take is all they need for ‘’Round Midnight’.

The composition has already been recorded, but never by Monk himself. That’s how it is and that’s how it’ll stay: he writes the music, others record it. Only one other jazz composer, Duke Ellington, has more works recorded than Thelonious Monk, but then he did write around a thousand pieces. Monk wrote 70.

The fragmentary playing, the truncated snatches of melody, a kind of hesitancy that suddenly creates a breathing space — all that could be mistaken for errors or uncertainty. But it’s Monk himself: it’s the hesitancy, the irregular heartbeat of the times. He holds music in his hands, sculpting it.

‘Sometimes I play things I never heard myself.’

Never the same as other people, always his own man, unable to be anything but himself. He plays, composes, works at the piano for a week, scarcely eating, so full of musical ideas that he can’t manage to write one down before it is displaced by five new ones. Then he sleeps for several days in a row.

The launch of Monk’s first record under his own name creates the myth of Thelonious Monk as an oddball genius and eccentric. Success is finally within reach; no one, it seems, thinks of bipolar disorder; a myth is a myth.

Some years later, when Thelonious makes the cover of Time magazine, the accompanying article is entitled ‘The Loneliest Monk’.

Husseiniyeh

Ten-year-old Meriam Othman lives with her mother, father, and younger siblings in a house in the village of Husseiniyeh, in Safad district, Palestine. Rain will fall in April, a bomb will explode in the middle of the road, a buried mine targeting the Zionists. People — she doesn’t know who — will spot footprints in the mud, leading from the mine all the way to her village. The Zionist soldiers will realise that someone from Husseiniyeh is behind the bombing.

Five days of rain are followed by five days of silence. The villagers wait. The soldiers wait. Then they attack from three sides — the south, east, and west — but leave the north open. Why will Meriam remember that?

The soldiers go into the family’s barn and shoot the cows. What should the family do? Meriam’s father takes out a small pistol and tells his wife and children to prepare to die.

Meriam Othman, her little brother, her little sister, and the baby have to lie down on the floor. Their mother and father lay mattresses on top of them. They hear the soldiers working with spades just outside their door, digging out earth so they can reach under the house to plant a bomb. Meriam’s parents lie down on the mattresses to protect the children with their bodies. Then the house explodes.

The next day, people from the neighbouring village come to dig them out. Meriam is seriously injured. Her little brother is dead. Watching as they pull her sister out from under the rubble, Meriam sees that part of her skeleton is exposed. The baby lies dead, with a stone in her mouth.

New York

As though history takes abrupt turns, when it is actually slow and sluggish.

The UN Special Committee on Palestine has put forward its proposal for a partition. Now it is time for the UN General Assembly to vote. It is 26 November. Everyone is gathered together in the UN building at Flushing Meadows, Queens, but as the session proceeds, the Zionists realise there will not be enough votes in favour of partition. If the vote is held today, there will be no Jewish state.

The President of the General Assembly, the Brazilian Osvaldo Aranha, advises the Zionists to play for time and drag the session out. The Uruguayan and Guatemalan delegates are prevailed upon to request speaking time, ‘Read from the Bible … Read the Psalms, the promises of the Prophet Isaiah’ — all to take up more time so the vote cannot be held. A filibuster.

Thus, the moment when everything is to change is delayed by 72 hours, from 26 November to 29 November.

United States public opinion favours a partition. Even Americans without Jewish connections are waving placards outside the UN buildings. Influential voices are openly and forcefully advocating a Jewish state. Dorothy Thompson, one of the US’s most respected journalists and radio broadcasters, is among them. Only one other woman is more admired by the American people — year after year, the Gallup polls show the same result — and that is Eleanor Roosevelt. She, too, openly supports the Jewish state, and uses her network of contacts to influence the vote.

Under the Grand Mufti’s leadership, and with strong backing from the other Arab states, the Palestinian Arabs advocate an undivided Arab state with a Jewish minority. Otherwise, their representatives reiterate, there will be a bloodbath. With 11 states already against the partition proposal, they need only to win over a further eight to block partition. There are rumours of attempted bribery and vote-buying.

And President Truman? He listens to the Palestinian Arabs’ plea for the southern part of the Negev desert to remain Arab. But when that reaches the ears of Chaim Weizmann, the Zionists’ leader, he travels to Washington for a meeting with Truman, who immediately changes his position. The Negev will be part of the future Jewish state.

The days and nights between 26 and 29 November are used by all parties to win votes. Serious threats are both hinted at and articulated: national threats, economic threats, diplomatic threats. The Liberian ambassador will later complain that the United States threatened to withdraw its economic support to several countries if they voted against the proposal to partition Palestine. The Philippines were intending to vote no — it would be wrong to give someone’s land to someone else — but after a call from Washington they change their decision to yes.

Haiti is promised a US loan of $5 million, so Haiti votes for a partition. Initially, France is concerned about stirring up unrest in its Arab colonies and plans to vote against the proposed partition, but has a change of heart — possibly to avoid jeopardising Marshall Aid. Chaim Weizmann contacts an old friend, the president of the United Fruit Company, who in his turn exerts pressure on Nicaragua and other small Latin American countries. The vote is broadcast live on radio worldwide.

A majority of UN member countries now support the proposal. Thirty-three countries vote for, 13 against, and ten abstain. The decision is taken to divide Palestine into two states: an independent Arab state and an independent Jewish one, with joint government of Jerusalem. The British troops are to pull out. By 1 October 1948 at the latest, there will be two states, with economic cooperation and protection for minorities’ religious rights in place. Jubilation and pain, deep and simultaneous. 29 November is still happening.

Hasan al-Banna declares that the UN is a Russian, American, and British conspiracy under Jewish influence. The Grand Mufti urges the Arabs to join forces and annihilate the Jews the very moment that the British leave Palestine. The Supreme Muslim Council instantly calls a three-day strike. In Jerusalem, the Swedish and Polish consulates are attacked. Riots, plundering, physical violence. The Jewish terrorists of the Irgun burn down Arab property. Romema and Silwan, near Jerusalem, are attacked, as are villages in the Negev, near Kfar Yavetz, in Khisas, and in Galilee. The British troops do not intervene.

One of Palestine’s most influential families, the Nashashibis, can see another solution. They are open to co-existence and a divided country, and the Zionists seek their support in the hope of an Arab uprising against the Grand Mufti that will wrest power from his hands once and for all.

But Haj Amin al-Husseini’s influence is deeply anchored in family connections, wealth, the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and threats of violence. Moreover, many regard him as a hero, the only person who has consistently defied the British and never caved in. The Arab League supports the Husseini family, and al-Husseini himself grasps all the power within his reach. What else is the point of power?

Friendship between people, the Jewish schoolchildren who visited the school in Khirbet and were welcomed, the peace meeting between Jews and Palestinians in Samaria, the conferrals, the attempts to stave off violence before it even began — all in vain. Sandstorms, waves of wind, hopes that blow past.

In Jaffa, there is no work, but plenty of fear. Burglary and theft. The doors are flung wide open in preparation for flight, wide-open flight in a thousand directions, with a thousand nails through the heart.

In Lifta, Jewish Irgun terrorists push their way into the village coffee house and murder six men, injure seven. The children, who play while the men chat and smoke water pipes, see it all: their murdered fathers, gunned down, bleeding. After that, the people of Lifta flee too, and the stone houses on the hillsides are left as empty as the wells are unused. Until the Irgun returns and blows everything to bits.

Paris

The French postmen are on strike. No letters from Nelson Algren reach Simone de Beauvoir, and no letters from her reach him. On 29 November, she sends a telegram: ‘Strike stops letters not my heart.’

’Arab al-Zubayd

Within a few months’ time, the darkness will reach the village in the mountains of Galilee; as well: dust, weapons, troops.

Sixteen-year-old Hamdeh Jom’a, her family, and all the other villagers will have to leave their homes one day in April, and go elsewhere. No place to go, just going away.

Carrying your possessions, walking. Carrying what you own, owning what you carry. Something that existed no longer exists. Weapons, loss, abandonment. The limit has reached Hamdeh Jom’a: this is the night.

All the buildings in the village of ’Arab al-Zubayd are razed, leaving the view over the valley — the river, the springs, the greenery, and the shadows — alone with itself. The cave where Hamdeh once hid, the night she stole the eggs, remains empty, echoing with gunshots. The man with the magic box will not be back; there is nothing to come back to.

Refugee camps.