In the morning in a strong wind and icy rain, we mount near the Jaffa gate. We are leaving Jerusalem under storm clouds.

This is the district of European concessions, hotels, red-tiled roofs; the holy city recedes behind us with the appearance of any other town. It then disappears among the folds of the desert, where there are no houses or trees and where stony ground alternates with barley fields. There is no road yet between Jerusalem and Damascus, where we are heading as we cross ancient Galilee. We go from village to village along single tracks, death traps more dangerous for the horses than the surrounding fields. Suddenly, we are in the wind- and rain-swept wilderness. This evening, in some spot on this dismal landscape, we shall shelter in these already rain-soaked tents, carried laboriously behind us by mules which slip in the mud at every step.

Barley and stones as far as the eye can see – nothing else and no shelter.

The impressions of the last hours in Jerusalem, so heart-breaking and agreeable, disperse and die away into the emptiness, into the cold, into the dampness, into the continually lashing winds. We are now only wanderers, physically struggling against the winter weather, and sometimes against our horses, as they turn their backs against the slashing rain, refusing to move on. An ominous departure which makes us want to turn back.

We halt after four hours in an isolated hamlet called Beitin. The wind is blowing a gale. A hospitable Arab offers us his house as a refuge; it is a cube of stone entirely blackened by smoke and he lives in it with his children. Chilled to the bone, we dry off in front of a large wood fire so smoky it makes us cry. In the surrounding rocky desert, the gusts of wind whistle and the raging rain beats down. One after the other, workers with dripping cloaks come in from the neighbouring fields, brought in out of curiosity, and they form a circle with us around the fire. Soon the steam rises from all our clothes and mixes with the acrid smoke. It is almost night inside this windowless shelter, where daylight enters only through the door.