William Peter Blatty - Which Way to Mecca, Jack?: From Brooklyn to Beirut: The adventures of an American Sheik

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Table of Contents

AT LEAST FOUR GOOD CHUCKLES TO A PAGE

William Blatty is a real live pixie, a Lebanese leprechaun, so to speak. And a very, very funny man.

From the opening sentence: My mother is an Arab, which would make me half Arab, except that my father was an Arab, too to the end of the book, Blatty manages to produce at least four good chuckles to a page and often they develop into 100 pct. belly-laughs.

His book is a kind of autobiography, but its quite evident the author takes many liberties with the facts of his life. He begins, literally, in Brooklyn, product of a more-or-less broken family. His father wandered away one day and his mother supported the household selling home make Lebanese quince jelly to Park Avenue dowagers.

Blatty manages to get through school and the war, but the bulk of his story, and the most delightful part, takes place when he becomes an information officer with the U.S. Information Service in Lebanon. His experiences there, with his Irish wife and Arab-Irish-American children are hilarious.

Heres a book to make even the holiday season seem funny.

Bill Burkhardt in the

San Francisco Call Bulletin

ON THE morning of July 15, 1958, exactly 754 years following the surrender of Richard the Lionhearted to Saladin, the United States Marines landed on the beaches of Lebanon in what wide-eyed Arab bystanders, unbelieving in their swimsuits, must surely have taken for a Crusader attempt to have another go at it. The Marines, for their part, were equally disoriented by the strange and wondrous nature of the enemy resistance, which consisted in the main of several onrushing waves of befezzed, beswarthied and bewildered Lebanese peddlers intent on vending Pepsi, Coke, Eskimo Pies and fried pine nuts to the invaders.

The Marines were puzzled. The Secretary of State was puzzled. Even Ed Murrow was puzzled. As a matter of fact, I was puzzled, and thats actually a rather creepy bit of intelligence for I had once lived among the Lebanese!

Yes, Grushkin, I was there. For two sunburned years I keyfractured typewriter ribbons in Beirut, Lebanon, for the United States Information Agency. I was an editor. I was a propaganda man. I was sweating. And I wondered, occasionally, how I happened to be there.

Right now Ive got two guesses: the Crusades and my mother. See if you dont agree with me, ducks!

W ILLIAM P ETER B LATTY

MY MOTHER is an Arab, which would make me half Arab, except that my father was an Arab too. But already I digress.

What I actally meant to say was that my parents were born in Lebanon, but I was born within sight of American Legion Post #804 in Manhattan and thats your cue, Dr. FreudIm all yours.

At the age of four I was the Philip Nolan of the infant world: a tot without a country. I was living in America, all right, but on an island Arabya body of odd customs entirely surrounded by my mother.

Naturally, I fought back. At the age of eighteen I escaped to Georgetown University where I traded my burnoose for Ivy tweeds. At the age of twenty-two I invaded Hollywood and hurled tear grenades into arty theatres showing old Rudolph Valentino movies. And at the age of twenty-six I joined the United States Information Agency.

But that was bad. The Agency sent me to Araby where for two years I lived on an island Americaa body of odd customs entirely surrounded by my Ambassador.

Mixed up? Im sick!

Now lets have it, Docam I an Arab, an American or a frumious bandersnatch?

Never mind. Ive figured it out for myself. But I had to wait twenty-eight years and become a prince to do it.

Here is my ghastly story.

The life of a man is like a camels back: littered with one goddam straw after another.

A BDULLAH B LATTY

MY PARENTS emigrated to the United States from Lebanon in 1923, and from the moment I toddled into the age of reason my mother initiated vast attempts at driving me back out of it with incessant verbal blasts about the beauty and wonder of the old country.

Will- yam, she would begin in her inimitable Arabic dialect, Will- yam, when you grow up Im sending you to Lebanon so you can marry an Arab girl. My God, Arab girls are beautiful!

Well-meaning neighbors to our Lower East Side apartment made now and then feeble passes at advising my mother not to nag the boy too much, but trying to intimidate Mama was like buttermilk trying to intimidate Hungarian goulash. A dark-eyed, stubborn, truculent woman, she barreled through life bent on ignoring roadsigns. Only once, when my uncles pressured her to apply for United States citizenship, did she ever give the appearance of being swayed, but when the court examiner asked her to name the Presidents replacement in the event of his death in office, my mother craftily replied, The Presidents son, and scored her usual smashing victory.

Another time, in the summer of 1939, the President himself visited our neighborhood to officiate at the formal opening of the Queens Midtown Tunnel. The tunnel spilled out onto East 35th Street, just three doors down from our apartment building, and I wanna meet him, rumbled Mama when she heard FDR was coming. My unclesMoses, Elias, and Abdullahtold her it was impossible.

On the day of the ceremony, my mother and I, together with my uncles, were standing at the outer circumference of a cordon of spectators about thirty feet from the Presidents automobile. In her left hand, Mama held a mysterious, brown paper shopping bag, but I paid no attention to it at the time.

All eyes were on FDR as he reached out from his car with a gold-plated scissors and neatly snipped the broad, blue ribbon that stretched from one side of the tunnel entrance to the other. Then, before anyone knew what was happening, my mother was grimly advancing on the President. It must have looked like an assassination attempt, because flashbulbs started exploding, the President dropped the scissors in horror, and a covey of Secret Service men drew their revolvers and surrounded the car.

They were too late, Mama had gotten to the President.

I wanna shake you hand, she rumbled at FDR, and then she reached out and crunched the Presidents paw in her effortlessly dynamic grip. FDR smiled weakly.

When Mama leaned over and reached into the mysterious shopping bag, two of the Secret Service men made a dive for her, but they barely got a glove on my mother before she had withdrawn from the bag a large jar filled with a murky, rust-colored substance. She handed it to the astonished President.

Homemake jelly, Mama grunted. For when you have company.

Might be nitro, Chief! warned one of the Secret Service men. But FDR winked at him and accepted the jar. Thank you, Madam, he said.

Quince jelly, added my mother matter-of-factly. Lebanese quince jelly. My God, its delicious!

FDR smiled and shook my mothers hand again, and I had to card him for sheer guts.

Three Secret Service agents escorted Mama back to the spectators circle, and as her gaze fell upon my uncles her eyes flickered briefly with triumph. She was unstoppable and she knew it.