Jerusalem: The Biography

Jerusalem was a favourite refuge for exiled kings – George II of Greece, Peter of Yugoslavia and the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie all stayed at the King David. The emperor walked barefoot through the streets and placed his crown at the foot of the altar in the Sepulchre. Indeed his prayers were answered: he was restored to his throne.^*

Day and night, the corridors and bars of the King David were so crowded with Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian, Serbian, Greek and Ethiopian princelings, aristocrats, racketeers, courtiers, loafers, tycoons, pimps, gigolos, courtesans, film stars and Allied, Axis, Zionist and Arab spies, as well as officers and diplomats in French, British, Australian and American uniforms, that visitors had to fight their way through its corridors even to reach its bar and get the desired dry martini. In 1942, a new guest checked in who was one of the most renowned Arab stars of her time and personifies the decadence of Jerusalem as Levantine entrepot. She sung under the name Asmahan; everywhere she went, this dangerous but irresistible woman, who contrived to be, among other things, a Druze princess, Egyptian film star, Arabic popular singer, grande horizantale

and spy for all sides, managed to create her own breed of gorgeous havoc and mystery.

The scion of a princely but impoverished family, who had fled in 1918 to Egypt, Amal al-Altrash, born a Druze in Syria, was discovered as a singer aged fourteen and made her first record at sixteen, achieving instant fame on the radio and then in movies, always recognizable by the beauty spot on her chin. In 1933 she married her cousin, the amir of Mount Druze in Syria, for the first time (she married and divorced him twice). She insisted on living as a liberated, Western woman, even in his mountain palace, though she spent much time at the King David. In May 1941, the princess – or amira – was recruited by British intelligence to return to Vichy Damascus to charm and bribe Syrian leaders into backing the Allied powers. When the Allies retook Syria and Lebanon, she was personally thanked by General Charles de Gaulle. With her singing, invincible chic and utterly uninhibited libido (with bisexual tastes), Asmahan soon beguiled the Free French and British generals in Beirut, playing them against each other and being paid by both as an agent of influence. Churchill’s envoy, General Louis Spears, was so smitten, he said ‘she was and will always be one the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Her eyes were immense, green as the sea you cross to paradise. She bowled over British officers with the speed and accuracy of a machine gun. Naturally enough she needed money.’ It was said that if you were her lover it was impossible to be lonely in her boudoir, where you were liable to find one general under the bed, one in the bed, and Spears dangling from the chandelier.

Furious at Allied betrayal of the promise to grant immediate Arab independence, the princess stole military secrets from a British lover and tried to offer them to the Germans; when she was stopped at the Turkish border, she bit the officer who arrested her. When the Free French broke off her salary, she moved to Jerusalem. Still only twenty-four, she became ‘the Lady of the Lobbies’ in the King David, staying up all night drinking her favourite whisky-champagne cocktail, seducing Palestinian grandees, more British officers (and their wives) and Prince Aly Khan. A French friend recalled: ‘she was all woman. Elle était diabolique avec les hommes

.’ As her surname was Altrash, the English women called her Princess Trash, and she so shocked her Druze compatriots that they fired shots at the screen when her first film was shown in the cinema – she was years ahead of her time. She could be her own worst enemy: she tried to throw the Egyptian Queen Mother Nazli out of the best suite while starting an affair with the royal chamberlain. A competition with an Egyptian dancer for a man culminated in the ritual mutilation of each other’s dresses. She regarded Zionism as a fashion opportunity: ‘Thank God for these Viennese furriers – at least it means you can get a decent fur coat in Jerusalem.’ After over a year in the city, and marrying a third husband, an Egyptian playboy, in 1944 she went to Egypt to star in the movie Love and Vengeance, but before the film was finished she drowned in the Nile in a mysterious car crash arranged, it was said, by MI6, the Gestapo, King Farouk (whom she refused) or her rival, Umm Kulthum, the pre-eminent Egyptian singer. If her brother Farid was the Arab world’s Sinatra, she was its Monroe. Asmahan’s angelic singing, particularly in her hit song ‘Magical Nights in Vienna’, is still much loved.