OPERATIONS MEMORANDUM
FROM:
Zealous Magruder, United States Operations Mission
TO:
Editorial Board, NERSC, AmEmbassy, Beirut
SUBJECT:
Privy Publicity
Dear Sirs:
I should like to broach a project of considerable importance to the success of the Point Four mission here in Jordan, and one in which I feel sure you will take a considerable interest.
As you know, malaria, typhoid, amoebic dysentery and other diseases are highly prevalent in the Jordan, in some part due to the pressing lack of proper sanitary conditions. However, the Jordanian Government, under terms of an agreement with USOM, is permitting us to take steps toward the construction of approximately four hundred pit privies in the El Kerak, Ramallah and Jericho areas.
It would be a great satisfaction to me if you were to publish a series of feature articles on this vital project in your fine News Review magazine. Some of the Jordanians might well offer some resistance to the use of these privies, as is so often the case with progress, and a little education and favorable propaganda would certainly help to overcome these attitudes. In addition, these articles would favorably impress the Jordanians with our interest in their well-being.
I am enclosing a fact sheet on the privy project, and a sample photo. I can provide you with many more should you prove agreeable to running this proposed series.
Respectfully,
Zealous Magruder
The memo had sifted down from Jeremiah Web and eventually settled furtively on my desk. “What rare farrago is this?” I murmured, reading it and then suspiciously sniffing the paper for traces of Old Buntline, a brand of cologne laced with absinthe and known to me. I found nothing, and passed the exotic document to Honeysuckle Epstein, who read it and hurled it back in my face: “Whut in the hell are we supposed tuh be, ‘The Outhouse Review?’” she squalled.
“Your cause is just,” I nodded sagely. “But let’s cover the bases. I’ll pass it along to the Arabic editors. There’s no figuring tastes and we’d better get their opinions.”
“Pig feed,” harrumphed Epstein, but in spite of this I relayed the Magruder memo to our chief Arabic editor, Mr. Elia Fazaha, a sophisticated, slightly balding Syrian of forty who pictured the News Review as a sort of Arabic New Yorker.
“What? What is this?” Fazaha squalled, suddenly erupting in front of my desk with the Magruder privy material in his hand. “You want to put this in the magazine? You want us to translate this?”
“Calm down, Eli,” I soothed, “all I wanted was your opinion. We’re not going to print it.”
“But you sent it to me!”
“I know I sent it to you. I just wanted your opinion.”
“I give you my opinion! You cannot make me translate this!”
“I don’t want you to translate it!”
“Then why did you send it to me?”
My scenes with Mr. Fazaha always took a great deal out of me, and I was happy to see the Magruder memo thrust into our “dead” file and forgotten. I sent a perfunctory note to Mr. Magruder, thanking him for his interest, and assuring him that we would “give the project every consideration.” That should have ended it. But it didn’t.
ii
Two weeks later, I received an informal letter from Zealous Magruder thanking me for “considering his suggestion favorably.” He also promised to “forward additional photographs and data within the week.” I so informed the NERSC staff and we all held our collective editorial breath. The Israelis and the Jordanians were snarling at each other across Palestine’s “no man’s land,” and we had high hopes that something wonderful might soon happen to divert and distract Mr. Magruder, like a war, maybe.
But true to his promise and his privy, Magruder barraged us with “additional materials,” which arrived with this somewhat memorable memo:
OPERATIONS MEMORANDUM
FROM:
Zealous Magruder, USOM, Amman
TO:
William Peter Blatty, NERSC, AmEmbassy, Beirut
SUBJECT:
News Review Series on Point Four Privies in Jordan
Dear Mr. Blatty:
As I promised you, I am enclosing several phtographs of privies that might be suitable for use in the News Review. Some are photos of the decrepit and outmoded types standard in some parts of Jordan. The others are the new and modern privies that we intend to put up, plus some interesting accessories. The photos are numbered. Here are the captions:
1. Old Jordanian privy. Notice the narrowness, the crescent in the door, making it a simple matter for flies to intrude, and the shabbiness of the exterior, warped with age.
2. The same, interior shot. There is nothing but a hole in the floor. Very nasty business.
3. Point Four, modern design fly-tight pit privy, symbolic of the progress that the U.S. hopes to bring to the Jordanian people.
4. The same, interior shot. The difference is plain. The seating arrangement is up-to-date and comfortable. Again, this privy is fly-tight.
5. The same.
6. The same.
7. The same.
8. The same.
9. The same.
10. The same.
11. Automatic fogging machine for adult insect control.
I trust these photos will prove interesting.
Respectfuly,
Zealous Magruder
“These photos” couldn’t have proved more “interesting” had they been candied slithy toves, and I gyred and gimbled a while, pawing through them in disbelief and meditating on Mr. Magruder’s manifestly abnormal preoccupation with the interiors of these structures.
I reached into the top drawer of my desk and pulled out a recent letter from my mother, wishing to compare it with Magruder’s, for it was a point of scholarly interest as to which was the more bizarre. I reread my mother’s:
Will-yam, My Baby Jesus:
Etmekdjian, that dopey thing, I got rid of him. I told him to write to President Eisenhower for me about the rent, and he said he couldn’t because he didn’t have the right kind of envelope. Mrs. Quimby, a nice old lady who comes here for free lunch and who has been to school, writes for me now. I told her she can have some of the million dollars when I get it.
Last night I dreamed of General de Gaulle. He was in Lebanon when I was a little girl and I think he was in love with me. He must have been in love with me.
I dreamed I was with de Gaulle in a movie house in Jerusalem and somebody in the film pointed at him and then looked right out at me and shouted, “Watch out, Mary, de Gaulle is no Frenchman, he’s a creepy Irishman!” What the hell does this mean?
Your loving mother
P.S.: Mr. Blatty, please help me. I’m frightened to death of your mother. She makes me write these letters to Eisenhower and MacArthur and Freddy Bartholomew and Lucky Luciano and Clare Boothe Luce and people like that. I don’t want to but I’m afraid not to. I’m 83 years old and not very strong. Could you speak to your mother?
(signed) Stella Quimby
“Lots of luck, Stella Quimby,” I murmured, hopelessly indecisive as to which letter, Magruder’s or my mother’s, deserved the Pulitzer Prize for Weird Journalism. Then my eye fell upon a line in Magruder’s. “Honeysuckle, what’s an automatic fogging machine?” I called out, and, “You hush yuh mouth in front of a lady,” she scowled, “yuh heah?” I showed her the memo and the photos, although I didn’t see much profit in exhibiting them to Mr. Fazaha. Then, girding my loins in the traditional armor of editorial deviousness, I composed another letter to Mr. Magruder. In it I stated:
Your most interesting photos have arrived and we are now in the process of scrutinizing them intently. As for the articles, however, there will be some slight delay, I fear, while our translators investigate the problem of finding a suitable Arabic equivalent for the word “privy.”
I posted the letter
and nibbled contentedly at a yogurt bar. I was happy, for the moment, with a stand-off.
But I had reckoned without the dedication of Zealous Magruder. He was no more to be stood off than Tamerlane at the walls of Damascus:
OPERATIONS MEMORANDUM
FROM:
Zealous Magruder, USOM, Amman
TO:
William Peter Blatty, NERSC, AmEmbassy, Beirut
SUBJECT:
Privy Symbols
Dear Mr. Blatty:
You will be happy to hear that progress on project “Privies for Jordanians” is advancing splendidly. Construction is now completed, and we are readying the privies for installation. There is one final problem, however, with which you and the News Review staff might be of some help. We want these Jordanians to know, and in fact, to be constantly reminded, that the privies are a free gift of the United States Government. The question is, how best to do this?
We have been pondering the possibility of incorporating some symbol or design into the privies themselves. One suggestion has been that we affix the Great Seal of the United States, with decals, of course, to the doorknobs of the privies. A suggested variation is that we place the Great Seal on one of the interior walls, or even on the floor, where it might best be seen or contemplated for more extended periods of time. Some have suggested, however, that instead of using the Great Seal, we should substitute the Point Four symbol: two hands clasped in friendship over a field of red and white stripes.
My own thought on the matter is merely to paint the exteriors red, white and blue. Would you put these ideas to your highly creative colleagues and see if they can come up with some opinions?
Meanwhile, you will be happy to hear that King Hussein has been informed of the forthcoming privy series in News Review and is anxiously awaiting publication.
Respectfully,
Zealous Magruder
“Respectfully, Zealous Magruder”?… “King Hussein anxiously awaiting”?… Bill Blatty sealed in cement?
I pounded my head furiously against a filing cabinet, and considered going downstairs to stop the presses—specifically, by hurling myself into them. King Hussein is anxiously awaiting … What was he awaiting, my death at the hands of Eli Fazaha and Honeysuckle Epstein? Eh? I could no more get their consent to run such a series than fly naked, and yet if the King of Jordan were displeased and mentioned it to the U.S. Ambassador there—who in turn mentioned it to the U.S. Ambassador here—ech!
iii
Dazed and unthinking, I handed the Magruder memo to Yusef, with instructions to deliver it to Mr. Fazaha for his “opinion.” But a minute later I had to leap up and hide in our fly-tight men’s room until the screaming stopped, and then I slunk out of the office and went home without saying good-night to anyone.
Waiting for the elevator at the apartment, I saw Ali padding about the lobby, munching on a raw onion, and I remembered that it was time for his gratuity. For his many kindnesses to the children, whom he no doubt considered blameless for their birth as Americans, I was in the habit of tipping Ali about fifteen leera each month. The prospect dimly cheered me now, for this was the one moment in our relationship when Ali would let down the barriers of his suspicion. “Ali,” I called, and when he mousefooted over, I handed him the fifteen leera. His reaction was as usual. He kissed my hand, and frothed in a torrent of emotional, nearly weeping Arabic: “May Allah keep you, and bless you, and guard you, and stave off evil from you and your wife and your children, and may He pour wondrous graces upon you, heaping you with gold and riches and long life and all good things, and may the sun always shine brightly over your head, and your beard remain dry, and your star of good fortune hang high above you, for you are wondrous kind, wondrous good, indeed, sir, a living saint!” I could not help reflecting, at that moment, that the maître d’ at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn had certainly never addressed me in those terms and, for fifteen leera, was never likely to. And had I detected a shade more warmth in Ali’s performance this time? I looked at the hugely smiling Palestinian. How impossible that his happiness could cheer me at a dark moment like this, and yet, it did. I was beginning to appreciate Ali. I’d grown accustomed to his fez.
The elevator arrived and with it my brooding worries. “Toyland, please,” I murmured distractedly, and I ascended with all the foreboding of the crew of the “Hindenburg.”
In the apartment I closeted myself, although it was kind of dark in there and I had to swat a few moths before it was quiet enough to think. And think I did. What had been my greatest crisis in Beirut? I wondered. Answer: The Festoon caper. And how did I get out of it? Answer: With the help of Afif, Mahmoud, the Arab time sense and a bizarre sense of humor. Humor. That was Mahmoud. And how like to Mahmoud was—Eli Fazaha! Both intellectuals, both sophisticates—indeed, how very like! Was this the way? Was this the answer? How the hell did I know? But the next day I found out.
I reeled into Fazaha’s office, doubled up with laughter. It was rather an unusual opening gambit and Fazaha didn’t know whether to move P-K4 or go blind. So instead he raised an eyebrow. “What is the joke?” he asked quietly in his cultured English accents. He had done his undergraduate work at Judas College in England had even been awarded the annual thirty pieces of silver for maintaining the highest average in the senior class. “Eli,” I said to him between guffaws, “Eli, I just thought of the most comical thing. Wouldn’t it be a scream if——.” And I told him. At the end he chuckled drily, and “Yes,” he said, with fervent interest in his voice, “yes, what a marvelous bit of fluff!” Eli and I went to work, Eli making the necessary arrangements with the Arab compositors and pressmen. We didn’t see any point in dragging in Jeremiah Web or the other English editors, and so it was largely a clandestine affair, Fazaha, da Vinci and I huddling after office hours, doing what it was that we had to do.
iv
Within three weeks, Zealous Magruder, clucking anxiously over his privies in Amman, received a large shipment of a “special Jordan Issue” of the News Review. It was “special” all right. Published in the Arabic version only, the entire issue was devoted to “Privies for Jordanians”! The cover photo, which always took up three-fourths of the page in our format, depicted a fly-tight privy, and across it the blaring caption: JORDANIANS! THIS IS YOUR PRIVY! Inside, along with several articles, we ran photos of more privies than had been seen by a generation of Iowa farmers, and there was even a very erudite feature on automatic fogging machines.
I was most pleased, however, with the page facing the inside cover, for it carried an ode of my own composition, patterned after some lines by Catullus, and artistically framed in a highly emotional privy motif designed by the talented Mr. da Vinci. It might prove inspirational to repeat it here:
ODE TO A JORDANIAN PRIVY
Oh, thou still, unravished bride of Sani-Flush!
What scenes, what scrawlings have decked thy welcome walls!
What visions of Bedouins, huddled with a nameless grace,
Safe within thy confines, saving face!
What stern alarums in the night,
What cries of “Mama, take me baffoom”
Have echoed in thy sanitary sphere,
A delight to the Point Four ear!
Mayhap the world, gross, untutored, a merchant,
Will trammel full o’er thy ethereal boards,
Erecting, its shadow hulking over thine,
A pay toilet. Mayhap.
But thy bacterial purity shall weather the onslaughts of the night,
Thy walls remaining, forever,
Fly tight.
(Anonymous but Grateful)
It suffers a little in translation.
News Review’s regular readers all across the Middle East received their usual copies, which bore no similarity, of course, to those pressed upon Magruder’s heaving breast. But Magruder was delirious with joy.
“Thanks,” he telephoned me from Jordan to say.
“A privilege,” I replied.
A
week later I ran across the Ambassador browsing in Khayatt’s Bookstore on Rue Bliss, opposite the American University. “Been staying out of trouble, Blatty?” he quizzed, blowing the dust off a copy of “Among My Souvenirs,” by the mother of the Gracchi. “Yes, sir,” I said hesitantly. The Ambassador smiled. And now I was delirious. For there was hope! Yes, there was hope that I wouldn’t have to join the Foreign Legion, after all!
But you know me.
22. Beirut Confidential
“PARTY! PARTY! Party!” squealed Peggy, jumping up and down ecstatically, and I leaped up onto the dining-room table and joined her. Yes! There would be a party! The Ambassador had smiled at Will-yam!
But there was even more to celebrate: after a year among the Lebanese we were beginning to enjoy them!
Instead of Charles Addams’ characters in fezzes, the sons of Phoenicia now impressed Peggy and me as mischievous but colorful brownies. And they earned their bowl of milk. They were exceeding warm and generous toward us, and I, for my part, began finding much that warmed my liver in their often touching ways.
I would enjoy coming home late at night, and, walking along Rue Bliss, listening, in the stillness of the early hours to the melodic Arabic singing of a cheerful baker as he popped his unleavened loaves into an oven.
I would look forward to the frequent invitations of the keen-minded, deep-thinking shopkeepers along my street, who would ask me to step into the oasis-like shade of their stores and talk of poetry, philosophy, Lawrence of Arabia (whom most Arabs regarded as an utter fraud) and the subtle differences between Pepsi and Coke, while we sipped Turkish coffee and ignored time and the cash register.
And driving conditions no longer alarmed me, for the cabbies proved amazingly skillful and it was funzies now to drive by free association, trusting to Lebanese reflexes and never fearing a collision.