Not until the first streaks of gray showed on the horizon did I realize that I was in totally strange territory. I was lost -- on a narrow road dug into the side of a scrubby mountain. Not even the famous Tower of the Russian Church on the Mount of Olives, highest landmark outside the Old City, was visible. Before me spread range after range of Judean hills. Below me -- at the bottom of a chasm some five hundred feet deep -- was an Arab mud village. Behind me an escarpment rose to the height of fifty feet. From my left a husky young Arab came down the trail, prodding his laden donkey before him.

"Sabah il-kher," I said. "Good morning."

"Sabah il-kher," he replied, and moved on.

A moment later another Arab came down the road. He was an oldish man with close-set eyes, no brighter facially than the donkey on which he was mounted. He rode on it with his stubby legs astride, his sandaled feet sticking out on each side, keeping step with the donkey's hopping stride.

"Sabah il-kher," he said.

"Sabah il-kher," I answered.

A talkative old man, he stopped the animal and jabbered...

"Ana Inglisi. Muta'asif la ahki Arabie," I said. "Assalamu aleikum. Peace be upon you."

He looked at me a moment, his eyes narrowing into slits.

"Yahoodi! Anta Yahoodi! You are a Jew! You are a Jew!" he screamed.

I whipped out an identification card, the one issued by the Mufti's Arab Higher Committee in Jerusalem. He held it upside down.

It dawned on me that the old man was illiterate.

"Yahoodi! Yahoodi!" he screamed like a siren, in a voice that carried deep into the mountain crags and the village below. He jumped off the donkey, snatched at his dagger and, still yelling Yahoodi, Yahoodi, roared down at me.

I took to my heels down the trail. He was easy to out distance, but racing toward me was the young Arab I had met a minute ago. He was brandishing his dagger above his head; the sun's glare made it dazzle like a fiery sword. I felt for a moment as though Damocles' blade was about to fall on me. There was absolutely no escape! Below me was the chasm, with precipitous sides. I'd roll to the bottom without stopping. Above me was the escarpment. I'd be overtaken easily if I tried to flee. Flee where? The old man would have awakened the countryside -- racing through it like Paul Revere on a donkey souynding the alarm against the Yahoodi. A hundred daggers would have sought me out.

As I ran toward the young man I kept yelling: "Armani, Inglisi! Ana mish Yahoodi!" I girded myself for the inevitable hand-to-hand encounter on the mountaintop, for I had no notion of letting myself be stabbed in the throat. I noted the Arab's guard was open. I would try to knock him down the cliff with a quick right uppercut before the old man reached us, then push the latter down and flee. I have no idea what made me address the young Arab in English, for he was the last man on earth I'd expect to understand me, but I screamed just before closing in: "Hold back your knife till you've seen my papers!"

"You are English, or Armenian, which?" my incredulous ears heard him say.

"Read this quick. It's from the Mufti. Read this, and this. I'm a friend of all Arabs. I love the Arabs. I'm no Jew."

The old man was upon us, his dagger all set, the blood lust hot in his eyes. At his age he wanted to make sure of getting into Allah's heaven and there was no easier way than by killing either a Yahoodi or a Gentile. The young Arab grabbed him and held him back. The two struggled briefly on the mountain trail, a dagger in the hands of each. "Yahoodi! Yahood! the old man kept yelling, trying to get at me. Up the trail two more Arabs came into view and prodded their donkeys as they saw the struggle. The young man won out in the nick of time, for the newcomers had dismounted and were coming down upon us with their daggers out.

My benefactor began to argue vigorously with the old man; he showed my papers to the newcomers, and they, too, agreed I was a pro-Arab Christian and that every courtesy should be shown me. The old man kept muttering "Yahoodi!" At last he was quieted down and put his dagger away...

...We walked on for a while, then the Arab pointed to a fork in the road.

"That way is Jerusalem."

They all wished me peace and a safe journey, except the old man whom I had cheated of his place in heaven, for which he'd never forgive me.