Forty years ago, an early Monday morning, I left the Collège des Frères near New Gate, at the Western tip of Jerusalem (the old city intra muros), passed by Abu Atta’s café and walked fast through the narrow lanes, then Damascus Gate, to reach the Ecole Biblique and its famed library on Nablus Road. I was twenty, ignorant of politics, Islam, Judaism, or Christianity in the East. Knew little about teaching either: during the two years I was doing “coopération” in Jerusalem (a sort of French Peace Corps that could be substituted for military service), I began to learn how to teach French to high school students. And I loved to study at the Ecole.

I don’t remember what I was studying at the time: probably the paleolithic period, neolithic agriculture in the Zagros, and such topics. Around 10am, Père Benoît who was the director of the Ecole came to the library to talk to me and my cooperation friend. War had started in Egypt, he said, the Egyptian aviation apparently had been crushed on the ground, and hostilities were beginning on the Jordanian-Israeli border.
[to be continued]