It was midnight. 27 Nov 1917. Khalil al-Sakakini had put aside the book he was reading and was getting ready to go to bed when a knock on the door of his home in the Katamon area of Jerusalem jolted him, gentle though the knock was. “Alter Levin!” gasped Khalil on seeing his midnight visitor. Levin was known to Khalil as an American citizen, an insurance agent, and also a poet of some repute. Worse, Levin was a Jew. “Give me refuge,” pleaded Levin. As an American citizen, he had been ordered to surrender himself to the Ottoman authorities. The War was going on. Khalil could hear the rumble of artillery around Jerusalem rolling like reverberating thunder. The British troops were closing in. Any foreigner who failed to surrender to the authorities would be considered a spy, as would anyone sheltering one. Here was a Jew seeking refuge at the door of a Muslim. Khalil was not a bigot. Rather, he was a scholar, an educator and a writer. “I
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