Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to other parts of the travelogue:

Sacred Pilgrimage

Secular Pilgrimage

Next part: Up the Mount of Olives

Friday (continued)

There were no buses back to Bethlehem and, it being a Friday, few travellers, so the sherut was filling up extremely slowly and the driver anticipated that it would be hours before he could set off. Unable to wait that long as I had a wife and child to get to, I splashed out and took a taxi.

My driver was a chatty Hebron Arab who conversed freely on contemporary issues as we drove along. He explained that he, like most other West Bankers, voted Fatah; it was those on the Gaza Strip who chose Hamas. Of course, there were issues with Fatah’s corruption and the like, but one had to remember that they were Arafat’s party and Arafat had been a great hero to the Palestinian people.

As we journeyed, he explained some of the intricacies of the Oslo Accords. The road that we were travelling along was administered by the Israelis, as too were the settlements that we passed and much of the waste ground on either side, but the Arab villages and the entirety of the cities of Hebron and Bethlehem were Palestinian, save, of course, for the Jewish enclave (H2) in the heart of Hebron which was a “big problem”. As for the Israelis, he didn’t like them, they needed to stop stealing Arab land, to leave Palestine to the Palestinians. He did not however, define where he thought Palestine starts and ends.

Nearing Bethlehem, we passed through the infamous Dheisheh Refugee Camp. This had started out as a tent camp for Arab refugees forced from their homes during the 1948 War and in 1949 was leased to the UNRWA for ninety-nine years. These days however, only the UN buildings distinguish it to the passer-through from any other tatty Palestinian suburb, although its population density is extremely high with over 11,000 souls crammed into an area of just over a square kilometre. It was prayer time when we drove through and most of those 11,000, (well, the males at least), seemed to be at the mosque which was crammed to overflowing with hundreds knelt in prayer outside on mats, loudspeakers relaying the liturgy.

Back in Jerusalem it was raining so anything more adventurous that exploring a little more of the Old City would have to wait. Not that there was a shortage of things to see in the Old City mind; Jerusalem is so full of world-class sights that it would take weeks to view them all.

We wandered up towards the quarter of the Old City that I had never set foot in before. Unlike the other quarters which are full of bustle and activity, the Armenian Quarter is quiet, its activities going on behind high walls and closed doors. There was one event however, that we were allowed to witness and since I have long had an interest in the Armenians and their culture I wasn’t going to miss out on a small flavour of their long presence within the Holy City.

Armenia was the very first country in the world to adopt Christianity when King Tiridates III was converted in 301AD by St. Gregory the Illuminator, and very soon after this Armenian pilgrims started making their way towards the Holy Sepulchre. Like with all groups of pilgrims, some stayed on, but unlike all the other groups, the Armenians became a permanent fixture, resident in their own little corner of the Holy City through countless wars, invasions, massacres and persecutions, their numbers boosted considerably in 1915 by refugees from the infamous Armenian Genocide.

Armenian Christianity is quite different from that of the majority of Christian churches, for it is monophysite. Monophysite churches believe, unlike the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant branches of the Church, that Christ is one in nature, that is to say, He is not human and divine, but instead solely divine. Such concerns might seem like theological hairsplitting to us today, but centuries ago they were the cause of great debate and much violence, so much so that in 451AD the Council of Chalcedon declared monophysism to be a heresy and all the churches that profess it, to be in error. This greatly damaged the creed, which had one been believed by a majority of the early Christians and the official line won the day, but nonetheless, several monophysite churches have survived into the 21^st century including the Copic, Syriac and Armenian churches, all three of which have a presence in the Holy Sepulchre itself. I however, wanted to see more, to catch a glimpse of this most ancient and exotic of churches in action, so at half past two we made our way into the Cathedral of St. James to view the daily Mass.

It was a surreal experience. The church was almost pitch black, the only illumination coming from a myriad of flickering oil lamps suspended from the high, domed ceiling. Then, from a side entrance came a procession of priests and clergy in costumes so outrageously Oriental that I wondered if I had not stumbled by accident upon some strange Masonic ritual from an Indiana Jones film. That feeling was heightened by the chanting in the Armenians’ alien, ancient tongue and the fact that the congregation barely numbered ten, adding to the sense of secrecy. The sparse church was initially surprising, for coming from a Protestant or Catholic tradition, an empty church is seen as something of a failure, but in the East things are different; their Masses are non-participatory and continue regardless of whether there is a congregation present or not. Like the monks of Mediaeval Europe, the priest prays for his flock and it matters not if they are actually present there with him at the time. Such glimpses are, to me, one of the chief joys of the Holy City: one is confronted with so many radically different ways of approaching the same saviour.

Armenian Mass: Otherworldly

We left the dark confines of the cathedral and continued round to Mt. Zion where we saw the Tomb of King David and the Cenacle.[1] Even by Jerusalem standards this place was remarkable for the tomb, a Jewish shrine, was downstairs in the same building from the Christian Cenacle whilst above that was a Muslim minaret! Inside the Cenacle I tried to focus on the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist which is central to my faith and which I re-enact weekly in St. Saviour’s Smallthorne or St. Margaret’s Draycott, but I found it impossible to do successfully. The crowds of Korean and Slovenian pilgrims which filled the room to bursting did not help matters, but it was more than that. To my eyes the room itself was wrong, it seemed far too large and its architecture far too Crusader to be right.

With King David on Mt. Zion

By this time the rain was still falling and we were all getting hungry. Again we headed into the New City, this time to find a cash machine so that we could fill our bellies, but cash machines it seemed, were in short supply, and those that we did find did not work. Eventually, after getting soaked through trawling the streets, we found one on Jaffa Street, got our money and then spent it taking a taxi back and buying a well-earned meal in an Arab restaurant close by the Damascus Gate.

[1] The Upper Room where the Last Supper took place.

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Sunday, 23 August 2015

Holy Land: Sacred Pilgrimage: Part V–Hebron

Greetings!

This week’s post is all about Hebron, one of the most miserable and divided cities in the world. Visiting it was a profoundly moving experience that is still seared into my brain and it is tragic to think that the city is no better today than it was back in 2009.

As I write, I am again on my travels, this time exploring the extremities of my own country. I write today from a small bed and breakfast just south of John O’Groats, right at the top of Scotland. It’s ridiculous but before today, whilst I have explored North Korea and Uzbekistan, I have never roamed the Highlands of Scotland. As with my Paris trip earlier in the year, this was obviously an omission which needed to be rectified, but unlike with the French capital, so far this trip has been far from a roaring success. My friend Paul pulled out at the last minute which has meant double the driving which, I have to admit, I’m struggling with, whilst the idyllic campsite where we tried to camp tonight was simply too windy and so we’ve retreated to the confines of a proper building for the night before heading up to the Orkney Isles off the top of Scotland and home to some of the finest Neolithic remains in Europe – what with Stonehenge this year and Bru na Boinne last, this is getting to be a bit of a theme.

I’ll update on that later but for now, back to the mists of early Middle Eastern history and the place where the patriarch of three major world faiths is buried…

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to other parts of the travelogue:

Sacred Pilgrimage

Secular Pilgrimage

Next part: The Armenian Quarter

Friday

There was a place on this trip that I was absolutely sure that I wanted to visit. It was also the one place that I was sure I would not be visiting with Thao and Tom. The idea had been formulated when Lenin had come to visit back in December. His tales of his recent Israel-Palestine trip had been interesting but not particularly inspiring; half the places I’d been to already and the other half I was not that fussed on seeing. One however, did stand out, a name recognisable from countless news programmes over the years, a name synonymous with both religious heritage and religious hatred. That name is Hebron.

It all starts in the Book of Genesis. Abraham, father of the three great monotheistic faiths has a field called Machpelah and…

“after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan.

And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a burying place by the sons of Heth.”

Genesis 23:19-20

And a little later on we hear:

“Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man full of years; and was gathered to his people.

And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah.”

Genesis 25:8-9

So in short, Hebron is the place where the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is buried, along with his wife and – at later dates – a host of other Old Testament notables.

It was asking for trouble.

There were no direct buses to Hebron and I was advised to take the Bethlehem bus as we had done the day before. This took me through the wall and then deposited me at a rough patch of ground just after the checkpoint where several sherut minibus taxis were waiting. I located the Hebron one, waited for it to fill up and then off we went.

The journey was not long, but went through the heart of the West Bank. The landscape was dramatic and the land harsh yet beautiful, but what was most striking of all were the human traces upon it. Every so often we passed a Palestinian village, houses clustered around a mosque, scratty, untidy and poor. In between these villages, occupying the hilltops and built like fortresses, were the Jewish settlements, wealthy, organised and highly secure. The space between was a no man’s land where nothing much grew or happened. Most people, like us, sped through, past the Israeli military checkpoints, guardians over an occupied territory.

It was raining when we reached Hebron and that seemed apt for it was a run-down, untidy place like so many Arab towns seem to be. It seemed devoid of any appeal whatsoever, just peeling concrete buildings lining pot-holed streets and I wondered why Lenin had found it so interesting. Nonetheless, I was here now, so I alighted from the sherut and walked through the streets lined with market stalls, utensil and barbers shops and throngs of people, heading in the direction of the Ibrahimi Mosque.

And then I was all alone. The crowds had dissipated and I was walking down a deserted street. On either side the shops were boarded up and there was an eerie feeling in the air. I glanced heavenwards and was shocked to discover a metal grill covering the roadway. On the floors above the grill were apartments and sentry boxes. I felt afraid, I had made a wrong turn, I was somewhere that I wasn’t meant to be. But to turn back would be an admittance of failure. I walked onwards.

The street that I walked down by accident

Halfway along the street was a bridge. On either side machine gun wielding soldiers patrolled the rooftops. Then on the right a street branched off, only to be blocked off a few metres later by some huge concrete blocks, metal sheets and barbed wire. Someone had sprayed ‘Zionism is racism’ on one of the blocks. Where the fuck was I?

At the end of the street was a small square. On its right-hand side was a fortified gateway guarded by two military posts. I looked in and saw the eyes of soldiers peering out from within their fortified perches. I continued on my way but then the gates opened and a platoon of men in full combat gear carrying machine guns came out and started edging their way up the very streets that I had just come down. It was like watching the 10 o’ clock news except with me as the headline. The phrase ‘friendly fire’ now sounded far more menacing than it had ever done in the past.

The reason behind all the high tension and military presence is a group of Jewish settlers. I’ve already mentioned the Cave of the Patriarchs, but the significance of Hebron does not end there, (although that alone would be enough one suspects). The city has often played a significant role throughout Jewish history and was for a time the capital of a Jewish state. Over millennia there has continually been a Jewish presence there, but that long unbroken tradition horrifically came to an end in 1929 when the local Arabs massacred the majority of the city’s Jewish population and then drove out the survivors. The link with thousands of years of history had been severed and for one group of New York based fundamentalists that was simply too much to bear. In April 1968 they checked into the city’s Al-Naher Al-Khaled Hotel ostensibly as tourists, and then refused to leave. Later, in a deal with the Israeli government, they agreed to move to a former Israeli army base on the edge of the city and there they established the Kiryat Arba Settlement. That however, was not enough and in April 1979, Miriam Levinger (wife of Moshe Levinger, the Rabbi who led the original Al-Naher Al-Khaled Hotel occupation) and Sarah Nachshon led a march to the centre of Al-Shuhada Street in Hebron, and occupied the in Beit Hadassah building, that had been a police station during the Ottoman Era. When the authorities found out they were not impressed. The then-Prime Minister, Menachem Begin did not want any settlements within the ancient city itself but at the same time he did not want to forcibly expel the squatters. So it was that soldiers were posted around the building and it existed in a state of siege for over a year until in May 1980 authorisation for a settlement in the ancient heart of the city was given.

That settlement has continued until the present day, gradually expanding but at not always successfully, as with the controversial occupation by the settlers of a building called Beit HaShalom from which the Israeli military forcibly removed them in 2008. Under the Oslo Accords of 1997, the city has been divided into two sectors, H1 where around 130,000 Palestinian Arabs live and H2 which is home to around 30,000 Palestinians and 500 Jewish settlers. H2 was the area in through which I had been walking and relations between the two groups are extremely poor, even in comparison with the generally low-level of Palestinian-Jewish co-operation across the region. Having inadvertently walked through the most controversial street in the city – Old Al-Shallalah Street – where the ground floor shops (all boarded-up) are Palestinian and the upper storeys, Jewish, and judging from the empty wine bottles (remember, Muslims don’t drink alcohol), and rubbish thrown down from the settlers onto their Palestinian neighbours, it is no surprise that relations between the two groups are rocky. It becomes even clearer though, when one hears the story of February 25^th, 1994 when a Jewish settler named Baruch Goldstein from Kiryat Arba, (the former military base on the edge of Hebron), walked into the Cave of the Patriarchs and opened fire on the Muslim worshippers inside, killing 29 and wounding another 125. The crime horrified the world, for the attack was unprovoked, in a place holy to both Goldstein’s religion as well as that of the Muslims, and that he had managed to enter carrying an automatic rifle past a checkpoint put in place to guard both Jews and Arabs, carried with it implications of complicity by the soldiers on duty. Although Goldstein was widely denounced by the majority of Jewish and Israeli society, to the settlers of Hebron and Kiryat Arba, he has become a hero and his grave had to be demolished by the IDF in 1999 as it was becoming a place of pilgrimage. As I said, with goings on like that, it is hardly surprising that the city exists in a state of permanent hatred, with the Israeli-controlled H2 area by and large a ghost town.

A map of the H2 area of Hebron, with the Old City, Cave of the Patriarchs and Old Al-Shallalah marked

I continued on my way, after the somewhat unnerving incident regarding the Israeli soldiers in full combat gear, through the Old City of Hebron towards the Cave of the Patriarchs. There had been some sort of scheme financed by the international community to beautify Hebron and the streets were beautifully paved which, along with the atmospheric old buildings, made one realise that, if there were no political problems, Hebron would be a magnet for tourists as its Al-Qasba district truly encapsulates the aura of the Middle East. However, at the current time, with part of the city’s heart occupied by a group of extremists antithetical to the majority of the population, that was never going to be, and I was again reminded of the current day problems just outside the building where I was confronted by a border post similar to those one find where one country meets another.

“Where are you going?” asked the Israeli guard.

“To the Cave of the Patriarchs,” replied I.

“You can’t go in now, the Friday prayers are on and it is full.”

“Is there not a Jewish part as well?”

“You are not Muslim?!”

“Of course not, I’m Christian!”

“OK then, no problem, you can go in the Jewish section. I just need to see your passport first…”

I went on through, as if entering a new country, from the Arab Zone to the Jewish Zone, and there in front of me was the Cave of the Patriarchs, the burial place of half of the Old Testament. It looked neither like a mosque or a synagogue, more an immense block of stone that had been there since time immemorial. Mind you, that should perhaps, have been expected; after all, the building dates from Herodian times, before synagogues took on their current shape and mosques had not even been thought of.

The Cave of the Patriarchs

Inside it was a strange mix of being very Jewish and yet also very Arab. The style of the furnishings and decoration, and in particular the tombs reminded me of the many Ottoman buildings that I have visited in Turkey and the Balkans, but this should come as no surprise for Herod’s building was merely an enclosure, open to the air, whilst the present, roofed in interior dates from Crusader and Arab rebuilding. The Jewish element however, came from the people who populated it; the building was abuzz with activity for there was a Bar Mitzvah on and the courtyard in the centre crammed full of smiling, celebrating Orthodox Jews.

I moved away from the crowd and took up a place in between two of the tombs, (not being able to read either Hebrew, I hadn’t a clue as to whose they were),[1] where it was quieter, and taking out my rosary, I began to pray. My mind still in overdrive from the harrowing reality of modern-day Hebron, I prayed fervently for God to heal the bitter divisions between His people, tears running down my cheeks as I reflected on how Abraham’s children hated each other to such an extent that a wall had to be built to separate them through the heart of the prophet’s own resting place. I reflected too on how the cruel apartheid of Hebron is, in many ways, merely a microcosm of the separation of the wider world, between First and Third World countries. There the barriers are not so visible, but they exist, with highly-trained soldiers being deployed to protect the interests of the rich minority, regardless of the legal facts and feelings of the dispossessed poor majority. Hebron was a gospel, a bell sounding out a powerful message loud and clear, that hate can triumph over love, even in the most sacred of places. For a follower of a faith based on love, the Gospel according to Hebron was a most depressing and cynical one indeed. And yet it was perpetuated by people, normal, everyday, human beings. I looked up from my musings at the party going on in the main part of the synagogue. They were nice guys, with kind faces, smiling and singing at one of those events that cross all cultural and linguistic barriers, the joy of a boy becoming a man. Yet were those normal, happy people not the very same settlers who threw wine bottles and litter down onto their Palestinian neighbours, who took over houses and land that they had not bought, who drove the defenceless from their homes with the connivance of one of the world’s most advanced and efficient military machines? These guys were pious, they loved God! How come they could hate so vehemently at the same time, a hate that even the most committed atheist cannot muster? Why is it that, as the French philosopher Pascal Blaize once put it, ‘Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions’? Such was true of Baruch Goldstein, but such was also true of the Inquisition, the Crusaders, the September 11^th bombers and the countless other religious fanatics who have sullied history with their actions.

A plan of the layout of the Cave of the Patriarchs. The blue section is that used as a synagogue and the yellow as a mosque. The white area was originally a courtyard but now has a roof over it. It was here that the Bar Mitzvah ceremony was taking place. I prayed in between the two tombs to the far left.

As I left the Cave of the Patriarchs, the Muslim Call for Prayer began. Immediately, loud music started blaring from the Jewish settlements so as to drown out the mosque and remind people that this was Jewish land. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach, for the action was pure, unbridled intolerance and there is no place for such things in my worldview.

I tried to go back the way that I’d come, through the checkpoint into the Arab sector, but a soldier stopped me. “You can’t go that way,” he said.

“Why not?” I replied.

“Because that’s the Palestinian area.”

“But I’ve just come from there!”

He looked puzzled. “You’re not Jewish…?”

“No, I’m Christian.” I produced the rosary from under my shirt as proof and his face changed back into a smile.

“Ok then, no problem! Through you go!”

Back in the Arab Al-Qasbah district, I stopped for tea in an atmospheric café full of old men playing backgammon and smoking shisha pipes. It was like any other souq café in the Middle East save for the fact that just outside the door was a guard post manned by men with M16s. As I sipped my tea I mused on the fact that I was probably the only tourist in this beautiful, ancient and fascinating city. It is the fourth most holy place in Islam and the second in Judaism, with Christian connections as well and so should have been heaving with guests, its shops, instead of being boarded up, stocked with tacky souvenirs or craftsmen making the famous Hebron glass in time-honoured fashion. Instead though, it was empty, the only foreigners who entered being peace activists or screwballs like me or my mate Lenin who’d visited the year before. All the others in that café were locals, most doubtless having lived in Hebron all their lives and yet I was probably the only one in there, and aside from the soldiers, possibly in the whole city who had been able to cross the line and visit the other half of their most famous and sacred building.

And there was something fundamentally wrong in that.

[1] Later research has led me to identify them as being the tombs of Leah and Jacob. See the plan for details.

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Friday, 14 August 2015

Holy Land: Sacred Pilgrimage: Part IV–Exploring the Old City

Greetings!

The other day I was messing about on the internet as one does when I came across an article entitled ‘30 ways in which living in Israel has ruined you for life’. As such articles often turn out to be, this was not the best piece of net journalism that I’ve ever stumbled across, but there were a few of them that I found myself nodding along to. 1). In Israel it is socially acceptable to yell at people – definitely, and 8). Direct public involvement in every aspect of your life – ditto. 20). Wallah and yallah become the centre of your vocabulary this also rings bells, as too did 26). Six-day working week – now that can ruin anyone. But generally speaking, this is Nedida’s list (she’s the blogger) and not mine. So, how has Israel changed me, the Top 5:

5). You actually know what people are talking about when they pontificate on social media about the Arab-Israeli conflict and know just how biased and misinformed their pronouncement are, (whatever side they prefer).

4). You forever long to be sat around a campfire with a bunch of weird international hippies drinking cheap lager or vodka.

3). The Bible is more than an abstract book about bearded guys and camels in a land of palm trees and square mud huts. Nazareth and Bethlehem become real places just as familiar and flawed as Nottingham and Birmingham.

2). You learn that being polite is not a virtue, it’s hypocritical and it is far better to be blunt and straight with anyone. Very blunt and straight.

1). You realise that the bad guys can be really good and kind and the good guys can be arseholes because in fact, there are no such things as good guys and bad guys, only people.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to other parts of the travelogue:

Sacred Pilgrimage

Secular Pilgrimage

Thursday (continued)

Back in Jerusalem, we took a walk around the Old City. Thao wanted to see the Dome of the Rock, (or “Golden Temple” as she termed it), so we headed to the Wailing Wall from where one gains access to the Temple Mount itself. Thao was also acutely feeling the absence of Vietnamese victuals and in particular, rice, so she declared that she was cooking that evening. So it was that our stroll out to some of the holiest places on earth was lengthened by various detours and forays into shops that might sell rice.

My first trip to Jerusalem: At the Wailing Wall with Simeon, Elton, Adrienne and Pepa

Of course, I had been to both the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock before. Back on my very first visit to Israel on February 22^nd, 1997, I’d gone to both with Elton and Adrienne, Pepa and Simeon, and I still have a framed photo of us all stood in front of the wall on the wall behind my writing desk. More powerful however, had been the visit a year later when it was just me and Pepa. It was Christmas 1997 and she was in a difficult period of her life. After booking into the hostel, we had gone to the Wailing Wall and simply sat there in silence for around half an hour. The holiness and power of the place was all-consuming and I have respected it ever since. The following day, Christmas Day, we climbed up onto the Temple Mount itself, but this time could not go into the Dome as we had done previously, and instead had to make do with photos outside.

Pepa and I, Temple Mount, Christmas Day 1997

But back to 2009, I’d explained to Thao beforehand that we were going to the holiest place on earth for the Jews, their #1 temple you might say. When we got to the Wailing Wall however, she was less than impressed.

“Where?” she asked.

“Here!” I declared.

“But there’s no temple here,” she replied.

Looking out across the vast plaza in front of the Wall, one had to admit that she had a point. There was no temple in the normal sense of the word.

“The temple is over there; that wall is their temple.”

“A wall?”

“A wall.”

“Stupid!” She was most indignant. Praying to a big stone wall evidently does not make much sense to the Oriental mind. I decided to explain.

“Well, they used to have a temple, up there, where the Muslim Golden Temple is now, but they got beaten by the Romans in a war and it was knocked down.”

“Why don’t they build it again?”

I looked up at the big golden dome. “Because the Muslims got there in the meantime and built their temple there instead.”

She looked at the dome too. “Isn’t there room for two temples up there?”

I recalled the vast, windswept expanse of the Temple Mount with the tiny Dome of the Rock in the middle. There was room up there for a dozen temples if they were so inclined.

“Maybe the Muslims wouldn’t like it if they tried to build one?”

She sighed. “Ok then, why don’t they build the temple here instead?”

I looked at the huge plaza in front of the Wailing Wall. There was room there for a Temple of all Temples.

“But the temple must be there, not here!”

She sighed again as if talking to a child. “In Vietnam, if they build something where the old temple was, we just build new temple again next-door, no problem.”

“But this is not Vietnam!”

“Like I’m say to you, stupid!”

And with that she walked off, leaving me to think that whilst culturally insensitive she definitely was, at the same time there was a lot of common sense in what she said. More sense in fact, than one usually heard from Jerusalem’s religious authorities, be they Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

The Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock

We were not allowed up to the Dome of the Rock so we moved on into the Jewish Quarter. I have to admit that this is my least favourite part of the Old City, not because it is Jewish, but because it is new. That’s not the fault of its residents of course – the whole area was flattened during the fighting in 1948, proof if it were needed that it’s not just the Jews who go in for clearing out people who’ve lived in the same houses for centuries. Most Jews that I have met are decidedly proud of the job that the Israelis have done in rebuilding the quarter after it was recaptured in 1967, but I beg to differ: the houses are too modern in appearance and in amongst the creamy Jerusalem stone, there’s an awful lot of concrete.

What is remarkable, however, is just how different the atmosphere is in the Jewish Quarter to those of the Arab, Christian and Armenian Quarters. In an instant all the clutter and chaos is gone, replaced by affluence and order. We stepped into a shop to buy some food and I found charitable leaflets asking shoppers to donate presents to Israeli soldiers “protecting our land” alongside those for a local synagogue or yeshiva. Hebrew is totally ascendant and Arabic noticeably absent. These people are not only Jewish, but serious about it.

On my last visit to the Quarter on Christmas Day 1997, I stopped at a restaurant for a falafel. The establishment in question did not sell falafels, but the next-door one did so I ordered from them instead. They however, did not sell any tea, so I went back to the original restaurant for my cuppa. I then sat outside at one of the tables shared by both establishments to enjoy my snack, when the proprietor of the first restaurant came rushing out to me shouting “No! No! No!”

“Why?” I asked, somewhat mystified.

“Meat and milk!” he declared, (Orthodox Jews cannot drink milk within six hours of eating meat, vice versa though, it’s only an hour).

“But this is a falafel, there’s no meat in it!”

“Yes, but that restaurant, that is a meat restaurant!”

“But this is not meat!”

“No matter, meat and milk! No! No! No!”

“But I’m a Christian anyway, I can eat meat and milk!”

“Just go around the corner and eat them,” advised Pepa quietly, who had lived in the country long enough to know not to argue.[1]

This time there was no stopping for falafels – or milk – and we strolled straight through, down the elegant Cardo – the restored main street of Byzantine and Roman Jerusalem – back to the poky, chaotic and yet less-sterile Arab Quarter and our hotel where Thao was eager to cook up her Asian meal. I retreated to the room with Tom to keep him entertained and wait, but within half an hour I was confronted by an irate Vietnamese woman who was still struggling to cope with the realities of the Middle East.

“That woman, that crazy woman!”

“What woman?”

“That Sarra. She say when we come here, ‘Use the kitchen, it’s for your cooking, no problem,’ but now when I’m cook she’s complaining, says that the kitchen is only for small food like toast or soup, not to do big cooking. But I am the guest here, I am Vietnamese, Vietnamese cannot eat toast and soup, we need rice and seafood! Crazy woman this Sarra, I’m tell her she is crazy!”

Atheists and observers of the Middle East often declare that all of the world’s problems, (and the problems of that small corner of the world in particular), are solely due to religion, a force that the world would be better off without. At that particular moment however, the antagonisms between Jew, Christian and Muslim seemed slight compared with those caused by women, whose bickering always seems to be behind any woe. Unable to confront such formidable opponents, I bid a hasty retreat to the terrace to leave Buddhist and Muslim to fight it out to the death in the kitchen. There on the terrace, I enjoyed the tranquillity of the evening in the City of Peace, one of the most violent places on earth. Taking out my rosary, I meditated over the events and sights of the day; the Nativity, the Shepherds, the Magi, the miracle of the Milk Grotto, the Security Barrier – good versus evil, the Palestinian girl at the checkpoint, the tragedy of Israel which has been plagued by violence ever since its establishment. I recalled the words of my good friend Paul Daly, an active supporter of the Palestinian cause who would talk over the issues of the day in the pub and talk about a victory for the Israelis for a defeat for the Palestinians, and thought, no, no and thrice no, Paul, you have got it all wrong. In such a conflict where brother is set against brother, there is never any victory, for either side, only defeat. If only the men with the power could see that, then there might be a glimmer of hope. At the moment however, like 2,000 years before, the peacemakers are not listened to and instead crucified, metaphorically if not actually.

Why does man never learn?

Next part: Hebron

[1] To be fair to the restaurant proprietors, discussing the issue with Paul Lewis back in England, he informed me that they could easily have their license to run a Jewish eating establishment taken off them for compromising with gentiles such as myself and that can cost a lot of money, which perhaps explains why they were so serious about it.

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Friday, 7 August 2015

Holy Land: Sacred Pilgrimage Part III–Bethlehem with a Baby

Greetings!

My knee improves slowly, (no doubt helped by two remarkable test matches), and I’m able to move again a little and thus start to think about life beyond my settee. And with that comes thoughts of future trips. I’ve ordered a load of books about Cuba which I will read through to give me a bit of a background on that fair isle, but prior to that there’s a more immediate travel concern for in a couple of weeks or so I’ll be off to tour the Highlands of Scotland for the first time ever with my son and mate Paul. To prepare I’m ploughing through Magnus Magnusson’s ‘Scotland: The Story of a Nation’, several thousand years of history condensed into 700-odd pages. It’s a readable tome I suppose, but far too concentrated on kings and battles for my liking and I’m struggling to get a feel for the place so far. Maybe when I get there…?

Another book of interest that I read last weekend was Patrick Thomas’ ‘From Carmarthen to Karabagh: a Welsh discovery of Armenia’.

Thomas is a Welsh clergyman, (I’ve read another of his books on the very different topic of Welsh saints), who discovered Armenia on a pilgrimage a decade ago and has been transfixed ever since. The book is the tale of his love affair with the land, its faith and its people and I recommend anyone thinking of heading to Armenia to give it a go. True, I found the history chapter at the start to be very basic and unfulfilling, but as an introductory guide it would work much better and the later chapters which pick out certain intriguing aspects and episodes from Armenia’s story were fascinating to read and managed to teach even someone like me whose read a bit on the topic some new things. My only criticism is that it can be a tad politically one-sided at times and contains traces of nationalism which, as any regular reader of mine will know, can turn poisonous if consumed too often. That aside though, like with Armenia itself, give it a go!

For those who wish to know more about my trip to Armenia, here’s the link but for now, from one holy land to another, let’s head to Bethlehem…

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to other parts of the travelogue:

Sacred Pilgrimage

Secular Pilgrimage