p.

time, have a weekend leave - & every few
months, to have a few days leave.
Surely, they will be able to see that we have suffered
enough - & now we deserve some reward. I shall
pray & pray & hope & hope. And apart from that,
I must try & stop myself from thinking about it
until the reply begins to become due. So, if
some of my next few letters say nothing about it
at all - you will know that I am avoiding the
subject on purpose. But you should have a AG first.
Sunday - Feb 15th I resume this letter with a strong desire to go
on talking about my application & its chances. But I must
not, because really nailed down, I just am overt to the
fact that I have made it & we are waiting for
the result - & in any case, this will probably all be
stale news by the time this letter is in your dear hands.
I went up to Jerusalem today with Ben, to have lunch
with the [Shah?]. Instead of going directly there, we went
by way of a place called Ramallah, which is a
Christian Arab small town, on top of the Judean hills,
north of Jerusalem. We only stopped there for a few minutes
& had a coffee in a funny little place, where the proprietor
treated us as honoured guests & refused to take any money.
They are like that, the Arabs - whereas I have never had
anything like that from the Jews, except when I have
been to a Kibutz for a meal & look sound with Ben.
But I cannot stop now to discuss the Jewish-Arab question
- it is so complicated and I am pretty muddled about it,
& of course I cannot help being rather biased.
In Jerusalem, I first of all went to a shop to