New Paths through Old Palestine — Reading Companion

Motor Cars and Soft-Footed Camels

The opening pages establish a persistent tension between the expected and the actual. Slattery notes that from childhood, Palestine is associated with camels—'those great awkward ships of the desert'—and donkeys bearing Mary and Joseph. But she arrives by train with 'comfortable leather seats,' and a motor car takes her past the Wilderness and the Dead Sea in less than a day. The juxtaposition is not merely scenic; it signals a shift in how the land is experienced. The old paths—trodden by pilgrims and patriarchs—are now covered by new conveyances, yet the landscape itself remains stubbornly biblical. Slattery does not lament this change but observes it with a reporter's eye, noting that the women still grind corn and the shepherds still wander, even as a plane passes overhead.

The Upper Room and the Back-Sheesh Economy

In Bethany, Slattery visits an upper room where a guest may sleep. The description is precise: small woven rugs, a cot with handmade covers, a bed roll, a heavy metal basin, two oil lamps ages old. The window opens toward the road to Jericho. The young guide explains that many guests came before the war, but now there is no money and some have died. The transaction is frank: the guide assures a welcome, and 'a little back-sheesh would pay.' Slattery accepts the exchange, and the money is received gratefully. Later, children run beside her car shrieking 'back-sheesh,' holding out dirty hands. A boy of ten insists, 'America rich, plendy, plendy, plendy money.' Slattery's attempt to explain American poverty is met with disbelief. The scene reveals a stark economic asymmetry, where the visitor's wealth is assumed and demanded.

The Guide's Language and the Merchant's Shadow

Slattery's guide, a boy of fourteen, learned English 'off a merchant I worked for since I was six.' The preposition 'off' suggests the merchant may have lived in America, and the phrase carries the trace of colonial commerce. The boy's English is functional, acquired through labor, not schooling. Slattery notes his courteous walk to the edge of the village, his careful explanations of Bethany's poverty. The guide's presence is a reminder that the 'new paths' are also paths of economic dependency. The merchant, the motor car, the plane—all are agents of a modernity that reshapes not only travel but human relationships. Slattery records these details without commentary, letting the reader sense the weight of history and inequality behind each transaction.

Slattery's narrative does not resolve the tensions it records. The old Palestine of scripture and the new Palestine of motor cars and airplanes coexist, each casting the other into sharper relief. Readers attentive to the interplay of description and dialogue will find a travelogue that is also a quiet meditation on encounter—between past and present, visitor and resident, expectation and reality. The book rewards those who read not only for landscape but for the human exchanges that mark every path.

The rain kept me indoors, and Slattery's motor cars intruding on camel trails left a strange ache. I wanted somewhere quieter, older. That afternoon, drifting shelves, I found Peeps at many lands: Wales — Reading Notes. Its slate villages felt just as haunted by change, though the hills held their silence better. A different pilgrimage, same weather in the heart.