Innocence and War

by Ian Strathcarron

  Ruin and desolation befell Mount Tabor until six years after Twain’s visit when the Franciscans bought permission from the Ottomans to colonize it again. Initially lack of funds prevented serious excavation or renewals and it was not until 1921 that a rich American benefactor enabled work to start on a new basilica. Using many of the ruins that were lying around during Mark Twain’s visit, and copying as far as could be known the original design, the basilica took twenty years to complete.

  It is a wonderfully gracious design, a truly spiritual space - and, as the Franciscans themselves say, a sort of transfiguration in itself. One enters between two towers that rise to form an arch. The vault is sky blue and all the space around is lit by a complex of tripled windows, a direct copy of the original Byzantine design. Incorporated into each side of the basilica are chapels to Moses and Elijah, the latter with a mosaic floor excavated from the original, and both surrounded by sympathetic modern frescoes. There are three naves which can all be seen immediately and in full on entering the basilica. Below one can see the crypt which still has the original walls and a copy of the original altar, rising to the altar in daily use and above that in the upper apse a glowing mosaic of the Transfiguration itself. It is a fine space in which to experience the sublime and a very far cry from the modern monstrosity in Nazareth we shall see tomorrow.

  It is also a fine place to sit and watch the pilgrim groups come and go. The Nigerians this afternoon are especially enthusiastic and hold a beautiful unaccompanied sung service with their own priest and his assistant, female, who travel with their own vestments. The Italians are chattier and less reverential until the service starts, when they all fall into place and sing as boisterously as the Nigerians had rhythmically. An American group comes and goes in a hurry, leaving enough time only for the tour guide, Bible32 raised in right hand, to give rather a haranguing - and inaccurate as it happens - lecture on the New Testament account of the subject in hand. As I am leaving I ask one of the monks, rhetorically, if they ever have the place to themselves. In Italish we joke that thirty years ago we would have been able to have this conversation in Latin, a skill recently lost to both of us. The answer is yes, at sunset the forty monks reclaim their basilica and enjoy the silence.

  By the way, the Greek Orthodox church mentioned in Twain’s account, “It has its Greek Convent, and the coffee there is good,” is still very much there if tucked away around the corner. In spite of trying twice to sample the coffee I find the place occupied by Orthodox monks but locked.

  At the bottom of Mount Tabor one finds, then as now, the village of Endor. Endor of now is a top security gated ghetto. On the map it promises to house a museum in its midst - presumably having some relation to the biblical Witch of Endor33.. One follows the usual brown museum sign and soon comes across a large yellow reinforced sliding gate. There’s a sentry box but no sentry. A telephone number lies across the gate. One dials accordingly.

  “Hello, I’m at the gate. I’ve come to see the museum.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Ian. I’m a tourist. To see the museum.”

  “No, we don’t want.” Click.

  Possibly they suspect I’m an unsympathetic historian; the Arabs of Endor were subjected to some particularly unpleasant ethnic cleansing by the Israeli Golani Brigade on 24 May 1948.

  ***

  It sounds just as grim back then, even if from a different end of the grim scale: “We found ourselves at Endor, famous for its witch. Her descendants are there yet. They were the wildest horde of half-naked savages we have found thus far. They swarmed out of mud bee-hives; out of hovels of the dry-goods box pattern; out of gaping caves under shelving rocks; out of crevices in the earth. In five minutes the dead solitude and silence of the place were no more, and a begging, screeching, shouting mob were struggling about the horses’ feet and blocking the way. ‘Bucksheesh! bucksheesh ! bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh!’ It was Magdala over again, only here the glare from the infidel eyes was fierce and full of hate.

  “The population numbers two hundred and fifty, and more than half the citizens live in caves in the rock. Dirt, degradation and savagery are Endor’s specialty. We say no more about Magdala now. Endor heads the list.

  “A spring trickles out of the rock in the gloomy recesses of the cavern, and we were thirsty. The citizens of Endor objected to our going in there. They do not mind dirt; they do not mind rags; they do not mind vermin; they do not mind barbarous ignorance and savagery; they do not mind a reasonable degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and holy before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shudder and grow almost pale at the idea of Christian lips polluting a spring whose waters must descend into their sanctified gullets.

  “We got away from the noisy wretches, finally, dropping them in squads and couples as we filed over the hills - the aged first, the infants next, the young girls further on; the strong men ran beside us a mile, and only left when they had secured the last possible piastre in the way of bucksheesh.”

  ***

  At the hotel that night Bruno is leafing through a rather smudged coffee table book of nineteenth-century paintings of Asia Minor. The scenes are idyllic: camels standing or kneeling, kindly camel-herds tending them, happy children laughing around the donkeys and unmasked straight-backed maids carrying water pots on their heads heading to and from the well. In the background well dressed and well fed Arabs are reclining and smoking narghiles, in the foreground goats and sheep graze on the luxuriant grasses. “A far cry from Mark Twain’s view,” Bruno says. “Hang on,” I reply, remembering a particular passage from The Innocents Abroad. A few minutes later I hand him my equally smudged copy of the book and he reads aloud: “Here was a grand Oriental picture which I had worshiped a thousand times in soft, rich steel engravings! But in the engraving there was no desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly features; no sore eyes; no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the countenances; no raw places on the donkeys’ backs; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a couple of tons of powder placed under the party and touched off would heighten the effect and give to the scene a genuine interest and a charm which it would always be pleasant to recall, even though a man lived a thousand years. Oriental scenes look best in steel engravings. I cannot be imposed upon any more by that picture of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. I shall say to myself, You look fine, Madam but your feet are not clean and you smell like a camel.” And for the first time even the sullen Bruno laughs out loud. “Awesome.”

  Early next morning:

  I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin’ about half past dead;

  I just need some place where I can lay my head.

  “Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?”

  He just grinned and shook my hand, and “No!”, was all he said.

  Sorry about that, these old tunes keep coming into my head. When Jesus lived in Nazareth it was a tiny village, when Mark Twain visited Nazareth it was still a village but one now with a church and grottoes and a multitude of recent relics, and when we roll into Nazareth it is vibrant and most welcoming city of 75,000 people, at the last count. After our recent biblical wanderings Nazareth is so modern, its people so young, its traffic so blaring, its street so alive. We are rejuvenated by big city life as Bruno double parks and we scamper off to seek out the annunciation scene.

  ***

  Mark Twain only spent a morning here and probably had to stretch that out. They saw the chapel “tricked out with tapestry hangings, silver lamps, and oil paintings” built over the spot where Mary was annunciated and were shown the recess from which the angel Gabriel stepped. But for Twain, if not for the New Pilgrims, it was all too reminiscent of the relic trade of Catholic continental Europe:

  These gifted Latin monks never do anything by halves. They have got the “Grotto of the A
nnunciation” here; and just as convenient to it as one’s throat is to his mouth, they have also the “Virgin’s Kitchen”, and even her sitting- room, where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour play with Hebrew toys eighteen hundred years ago. All under one roof, and all clean, spacious, comfortable “grottoes”. It seems curious that personages intimately connected with the Holy Family always lived in grottoes - in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus - and yet nobody else in their day and generation thought of doing anything of the kind.

  When the Virgin fled from Herod’s wrath, she hid in a grotto in Bethlehem, and the same is there to this day. The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was done in a grotto; the Saviour was born in a grotto - both are shown to pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly strange that these tremendous events all happened in grottoes - and exceedingly fortunate, likewise, because the strongest houses must crumble to ruin in time, but a grotto in the diving rock will last forever.

  It is an imposture - this grotto stuff - but it is one that all men ought to thank the Catholics for. If it had been left to Protestants to do this most worthy work, we would not even know where Jerusalem is today, and the man who could go and put his finger on Nazareth would be too wise for this world. The world owes the Catholics its good will even for the happy rascality of hewing out these bogus grottoes in the rock; for it is infinitely more satisfactory to look at a grotto, where people have faithfully believed for centuries that the Virgin once lived, than to have to imagine a dwelling place for her somewhere, anywhere, nowhere, loose and at large all over this town of Nazareth.

  ***

  Today the Christian aspect of Nazareth disappoints for different reasons. It is hard to believe that the same Franciscan order that oversaw the wonderful basilica on top of Mount Tabor was also responsible for the hideous Basilica of the Annunciation that dominates the Nazarene skyline today. It is the largest church in Asia Minor, is built on one of Christianity’s holiest shrines and yet somehow manages to have absolutely no spiritual bearing whatsoever.

  Catholic communities from all four corners of the world contributed artwork with which to decorate the walls around the extended courtyard. All are indescribably puerile, the less puerile tacky, the less tacky politically correct, the less politically correct just plain bad. Inside the basilica is worse. The architect is clearly not a Christian, although that in itself is no restriction as long as he has some spiritual awareness - and this one has none. The whole point of a spiritual building is to maximize the space within its physical bounds thereby removing as far as possible the physical restrictions on what one hopes will be a transcendental experience. To have concrete girders fly by just above one’s head rather negates the whole object of going to a spiritual building in the first place. I keep thinking I’m in Stuttgart airport and about to miss my flight.

  Nazareth escaped the worst of the ethnic cleansing during and after the 1948 war because there were so many Christians as well as Muslim Arabs living there. The Israelis sensibly preferred not to have an international outcry about Christians being forced to flee and so the Muslim Arabs survived there.

  Nazareth is now Israel’s largest Arab city.

  And what a relief to be back in an Arab city! After marveling at Israel’s achievements over the past two weeks, and coming to believe there is something superhuman about the Israeli endeavor and not being able to avoid being overwhelmed by what they have achieved - overachieved by any applicable standard - it was a relief to be back among the poetry and humor and joie de vivre and frail humanity of Arab street life. No Endors or endomorphs here! The pavements themselves seem animated with the fripperies of conversation, the air resounds to shouted emotions and faux-shock responses - and there are cats and dogs and shrieking birds and bad tempered taxis and scampering children and fluttering chickens, and all of this all at once.

  I’m enthusing about the street scenes with Bruno over Turkish coffee (for Gillian and me) and Diet Sprite (for him). He is relentlessly unimpressed by all before him and can barely hide his disdain for what he sees: dirt and danger.

  Then he light-bulbs and asks: “OK, Ian, you are stuck on a desert island, shipwrecked, no way out. Who would you rather have with you: twelve Jews or twelve Arabs?”

  A sip of Turkish coffee, then: “Interesting question. I’m assuming this desert island is a bit of a dump and I actually want to get off it. So, if I thought there was any chance at all, even the remotest, vaguest, the most intangible possibility I’d choose the twelve Jews. I’d know that somehow they’d figure a way of getting me off there. But if we’re all stuck together on a desert island they’d have to lighten up a bit.”

  “That’s a condition,” says Bruno. “No conditions, just twelve random Jews or twelve random Muslims.”

  “And if the Jews there were any fun they wouldn’t be the type who’d be able to get you off the desert island anyway,” says Gillian.

  “True,” I reply. “Twelve earnest Jews it is. But let’s say there was no hope of escape, that we were so far off planet that not even twelve Einsteins could conjure up a way out, then I’d rather go down with the Muslims. Leave it all to Insha’Allah and hope for alien assisted escape. But no Korans.”

  “No conditions, remember,” says Bruno. “You could choose Christian Arabs.”

  “What if they’re Maronites?” I reply. “No, I’ll go down with the Muslims, Korans and all. There’ll be poetry in our demise, laughter at our helplessness.

  We’d be charming to each other as one by one we perish. The others will be waiting hospitably in heaven34 to welcome me. I’ll feel at home with fellow chronic underachievers. I’ll even give up my share of the virgins.”

  “So the answer is?” Bruno insists “Stay clear of desert islands.” “No, seriously.”

  “OK, I’d take twelve Jews and tell them six are to be excused. Ditto the Arabs. The ones who stay can select the other ones to leave. I’d make the Jews an escape committee, surround them with books and kosher grub and leave them alone. Of the Arabs, three would have to be women who’d do all the work. The other three, the men, would play backgammon and smoke narghiles and drink coffee and discourse about life’s injustices with me all day. We’d have the women bring the Jews whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it.”

  “But I’m a Jew,” says Bruno, “and I know what would happen. Your six smart guys planning the escape would say it’s easier for six to leave than twelve, and anyway what have these bums done to deserve a free ride? That’s how it would go.”

  “Yes, I suppose,” I reply, “and I guess the Arabs would say it’s all a Zionist plot to take over the island. They’ll get us all into a boat and reckon that as the Koran hasn’t told us if we are allowed to swim, let alone how to swim, they could just push us off and we’d all drown, and we would. Then they’ll turn round and take over all the island.”

  “So there’s no hope,” says Gillian. “No, none really,” Bruno agrees.

  22 They examine passports on the Italian frontier for fear an honest man may slip in. Notebook 1878

  23 Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

  24 There ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. Huckleberry Finn

  25 It’s a marvelous race - by long odds the most marvelous that the world has produced, I suppose. Letter, 1897

  26 To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, “Our country, right or wrong,” and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation? Glances at History, 1906

  27 Religion
consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes, and wishes he was certain. Notebook, 1878

  28 They all laid their heads together like as many lawyers when they are getting’ ready to prove that a man’s heirs ain’t got any right to his property. Letter, 1856

  29 As near as I could make out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it. Huckleberry Finn in Tom Sawyer Abroad

  30 The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example. A Tramp Abroad

  31 In certain public indecencies the difference between a dog & a Frenchman is not perceptible. Notebook, 1879

  32 The Bible is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood- drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. Letters from the Earth

  33 There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain. “Bible Teaching and Religious Practice”, Europe and Elsewhere