BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON - Book review

Nelson DeMille’s By the Rivers of Babylon was published in 1978. He’d had about eight books published before this, but this was his breakout novel. 

Although written and published over forty years ago, it has chilling relevance even today.

A UN conference in New York is on the cusp of bringing peace to the Middle East. Two brand-new Concorde planes (01 and 02) have just been delivered to Israel to take about fifty peace delegates in each aircraft to the conference.

Onboard the 02 aircraft is Miriam Bernstein, the Deputy Minister of transportation, who was a child-survivor of the Nazi death camps. Her lover is Air Force Brigadier Teddy Laskov; he is flying an escort F14 plane. Among others on 02 are El Al’s Security Chief Jacob Hausner, an ex-intelligence man; General Benjamin Dobkin; and the pilot Captain David Becker.

A Lear private jet contacts the two Concorde planes shortly after they take off, advising their pilots that there is a bomb in the tail of both aircraft which can be activated remotely. The terrorist in the Lear plane is Rish, a man Hausner has encountered before. The terrorists’ purpose is to wreck the peace conference.

The planes are ordered to land next to the River Euphrates – by the ruins of Babylon. Waiting for them are over 150 Palestinian terrorists – Ashbals – orphans of the wars with Israel. ‘They’ve been indoctrinated with hate since the day they could comprehend. They reject all normal standards of behaviour. Hatred of Israel is their tribal religion’ (p159).

The tension never lets up as the Israelis crash land and, with a handful of weapons, make a desperate stand. There are heroes, cowards, betrayers and villains aplenty, and both good and bad people die...

Unputdownable.

THE MANDELBAUM GATE - Book review

 

Muriel Spark’s novel The Mandelbaum Gate was published in 1965; my copy was dated 1985, following five other paperback reprints.

‘The Mandelbaum Gate was hardly a gate at all but a piece of street between Jerusalem and Jerusalem’ – at the time of the story, 1961, it was a crossing point from Jordan to Israel. This was also the first year of the Eichmann trial. 

Freddy Hamilton is a diplomat for the Foreign Office: ‘he hated wearing sunglasses. which made one look so much like a rotten gigolo or spy’ (p54). He is friends with the Ramdez family (father, son and daughter) who work both sides of the border. Abdul Ramdez is a fascinating character: Freddy had asked Abdul about his English schoolmistress (when he was fifteen) who was the daughter of a colonel in the British Army. And asked, did she plant wild-flower seeds in the countryside, (a trait endorsed by some of Freddy’s friends)? Abdul replied: ‘I don’t know. But I planted Arab wild-flower seeds in her. She was my first woman’ (p85).

Abdul knew of the Palestinian refugees massed along the border; ‘he discerned then what a foreigner could not so accurately foresee, that there was a living to be made out of the world by preserving a refugee problem’ (p100).

Freddy made friends with Barbara Vaughan, a tourist. ‘They took her home to lunch, treating her as rather more than a new acquaintance, not only because she was Freddy’s friend, but because one always did, in foreign parts, become friendly with one’s fellow-countrymen more quickly than one did at home’ (p75).

Barbara was visiting the Holy Places and often used a guide, but not always: ‘she was tired of the travel agency guides. They had plenty of good information to offer, but they offered it incessantly. Through the length and breadth of the country the Israelis treated facts like antibiotic shots, injecting them into the visitor like diligent medical officers’ (p22). She’d had a love affair with Harry Clegg who is now on a dig in Jordan: ‘It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist. Over at the Dead Sea, she thought, just over there, he is ferreting about in the sand or maybe he has discovered an inkwell used by the Essene scribes or something’ (p48). She intends to interrupt her pilgrimage to cross the border to join him.

There is more than one mystery. A main character suffers memory loss – a blank space for a few days only. The doctor is not happy about resorting to a psychiatrist:  ‘In fact, I haven’t got a great deal of time for them, myself. They all hold different theories. There’s hardly two who would treat a patient in the same way… They’re a lot of bloody robbers…’ (p123). [Having previously read a novel about Jung (The World is Made of Glass), I can see where the doctor – or the author – was coming from!]

To complicate matters, Barbara goes missing! Her pilgrimage becomes a flight, because she is half-Jewish (though converted to Catholicism) and would therefore be persona non grata in Jordan. The Ramdez family is involved, including Abdul’s sexy sister Suzi, and to complicate matters spies are discovered working for the Arabs… And there will be blood spilled – from a surprising angle, too!

The author seems to have captured the febrile times perfectly, treating all nationalities with empathy and humour. Perhaps there is a little too much religion thrown in (Muriel Spark became a Roman Catholic in 1954). Even so, sometimes tongue-in-cheek and droll, there’s a serious aspect to the whole adventure.

Editorial comment:

This is omniscient narrative. Frequently, the thoughts of more than one character are shown in the same scene, and speech of more than one person will be within the same paragraph. Past and present are interwoven – as in real life – through thoughts, yet the reader is never lost or confused.