Innocence and War

by Ian Strathcarron

  I suspect that Twain’s love bells were easily rung. Here in Mars Saba the message was of impersonal love: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, the Golden Rule. He was also open to personal love and a year later met and two years later married Olivia, sister of one of his Sinner shipmates. It was “love at first sight” and so it stayed until Olivia’s death thirty years later. In Paris, two months before visiting Mars Saba, he had made a special effort to see the tombs of the legendary lovers Abelard and Héloïse; he even wrote a skit on their romance in The Innocents Abroad. These lovers were an early example - from the twelfth century - of the new Western idea of love between two people who willing chose each other - rather than having the state, church or family choose each one for the other. From then we also find for the first time the romantic tragedy Tristan and Isolde; it was a time when troubadours sang of “what the eyes had made welcome to the heart”, when Guillaume de Lorris wrote of “noble and gentle hearts”. In these sound bite days we might say it was the triumph of libido over credo.

  Time to move on. All concerned left early to reach Bethlehem before the desert furnace made traveling intolerable, the hardy Excursionists and their caravanserai at five, the soft Saxon Daewoo-ers and their faithful Fergy at seven. Twain left with the words: “Our party, pilgrims and all, will always be ready and always willing, to touch glasses and drink health, prosperity and long life to the Convent Fathers of Palestine.” I’m trying to avoid saying “I’ll drink to that,” but I’ll drink to that. Then: “So, rested and refreshed, we fell into line and filed away over the barren mountains of Judea, and along rocky ridges and through sterile gorges, where eternal silence and solitude reigned.”

  ***

  The rocky ridges and sterile gorges are now a particularly depressing part of Palestine. The Judean desert actually ends about fifteen miles west of Mars Saba and then one is upon the outskirts of what certain parties would like to call Greater Jerusalem. There is desolation here, but of the human kind, abandoned concrete shells, rusted cars, the obligatory rubble and rubbish. This used to be near from where Palestinians commuted to Jerusalem to work, but since the Wall/Fence have been prevented from doing so. It’s a forlorn, listless, forgotten corner of Palestine, without the enormous aid dollars keeping north of Ramallah buoyant and without the Russian one-way tourism that keeps Jericho with its head above the below-sea-level water.

  I ask Mr. Farki if any of the Palestinians we see loafing about can get into Jerusalem to find work. “In theory yes, in practice very few. There are qualifications. You have to be married and have a family, you must be over forty and never involved in any political activity. Unofficially it helps if you are a Christian. Half the population is under twenty and if you are over forty it’s hard not to have been involved somehow in the two intifadas. It means they can pick and choose.”

  “But if I was an Israeli,” I reply, “I would, say fair enough. We have profiled suicide bombers and seen that they are unmarried, under forty and politically active. So we’ll just let in those who, demographically, are unlikely to blow us up. What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with that is that the desperation it brings just breeds more suicide bombers.”

  “So I finish off the wall. You have to admit that the wall and the profiling have stopped the suicide bombers.”

  “If you say so. All I have to admit to is that it’s a mess. Both sides are in the wrong,” Mr. Farki replies.

  “Or in the right. That’s the problem.”

  “And anyway,” he says, ‘the Israelis started the suicide bombing.”

  ***

  We are soon just short of Bethlehem and the magic spell of Mars Saba is wearing off. Mark Twain “reached the Plain of the Shepherds, and stood in a walled garden of olives where the shepherds were watching their flocks by night, eighteen centuries ago, when the multitude of angels brought them the tidings that the Saviour was born.

  “The Plain of the Shepherds is a desert, paved with loose stones, void of vegetation, glaring in the fierce sun. Only the music of the angels it knew once could charm its shrubs and flowers to life again and restore its vanished beauty. No less potent enchantment could avail to work this miracle.”

  ***

  Mr. Farki has no idea where the Plain of the Shepherds was or is; Twain’s description could apply to any of the abandonment around here, and by then we are in Bethlehem.

  Well, Bethlehem looks abandoned too. We have no problem parking the car, always a bad sign, prosperity-wise. We park in a side street next to the Church of the Nativity; all the fronts of all the souvenir shops are boarded up. As soon as we open the door a guide is offering his services.

  “It’s dead town, Mr. Farki. The Wall/Fence again?” “Yes, it’s the Wall/Fence again.”

  Opposite the Church of the Nativity is Manger Square, now a fully concreted commercial center but, according to models at the Palestine Heritage Center nearby, where the Excursionists and their caravanserai would have stopped on their quick visit to Bethlehem. On one side of it is a newish white building called Peace Center, kindly donated by Sweden, as Sweden is often kind enough to donate ivory towers to good causes. Our old amigo TLUC showed up again when the Israeli Army thanked the Swedes very much for their foresight and commandeered the Peace Center as its HQ during the 2002 Siege of Bethlehem during the Al-Aqsa, or second intifada.

  ***

  After the faux-religiosity at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher Twain was expecting the worst at the Church of the Nativity and he wasn’t disappointed. “In the huge Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built fifteen hundred years ago by the inveterate St. Helena, they took us below ground, and into a grotto cut in the living rock. This was the ‘manger’ where Christ was born. A silver star set in the floor bears a Latin inscription to that effect. It is polished with the kisses of many generations of worshiping pilgrims. The grotto was tricked out in the usual tasteless style observable in all the holy places of Palestine.

  “As in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, envy and uncharitableness were apparent here. The priests and the members of the Greek and Latin churches cannot come by the same corridor to kneel in the sacred birthplace of the Redeemer, but are compelled to approach and retire by different avenues, lest they quarrel and fight on this holiest ground on earth.”

  I don’t believe he was there long enough to see the inter-denominational cleaning routine. If he had, he would have been amused by its absurdity. This is what happens. The church is divided up into three chapels, one for each denomination of Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Orthodox.

  Under the Greek Orthodox chapel is Christ’s manger and a fourth tiny chapel has been built there. This they share. They have a strict rota system for masses in the manger chapel. After each mass priests from the two absent denominations have to decontaminate the chapel and its surrounding areas in preparation for whomsoever’s turn is next. Why so? Because either of the other sects would surely have left heretical dust behind in their semi-pagan service in the sacred space.

  Down in the manger this morning the Armenian Orthodox are holding a mass. Two Greek Orthodox priests are waiting in their chapel above, one with a multi-colored fluffy duster, the other with a purple plastic soft broom.

  A Franciscan friar is leaning on the gatepost of the Roman Catholic chapel with a broom in his hand. The house-husband in me can’t help noticing that they are all brooms and no pans.

  After the mass an Armenian cleric climbs the few steps up to floor level and carries his icons to a cupboard and locks them away in it. He then walks over to his own ground-floor chapel, right next to the Greek one, pulls a rope and rings a bell three times. All eyes now turn to a door leading into the Catholic chapel. Presently the friar arrives with his long wooden broom. The two with brooms now start sweeping where the Armenian priest has just walked, while the one with the fluffy duster is now fluffy-du
sting the venerable old stone pillars which the Armenian has just walked past. A minute later all three descend to manger level and, out of sight, presumably sweep and fluffy-dust away down there. The whole process takes ten minutes during which time a queue of several hundred flustered and impatient tourists has built up. Now one might have thought that at some stage over the last thousand years and more one of the patriarchs might have said to the other: “Hey guys, this is a bit daft. If we have to clean up after each other’s non-existent mess six times a day why don’t we each chip in a few euros a week and get a cleaner?” but alas, no.

  Now, when the cleaner priests have finished buffing up the manger the crowds are allowed in but it is such a tiny space that it is entry Noah’s Ark-style only. Sensibly enough there’s a one-way system. There’s a glitch, however. Tourists who have employed Fergusons are allowed into the manger through the exit - they follow their guide to the exit, he tips the security men, and the guide shows them down to the exit. In the manger this causes total logjam. Eventually a gaggle of breathless visitors stagger out up the stairs. Within moments from both the official entrance and unofficial exit more of them meet in the manger middle - and so the slow and tiresome procedure repeats itself.

  Sadly here even the normal helpful and cheerful Franciscans have been supping at the same bloody-minded cup as the Greek Orthodox. One can have sympathy for the Franciscans. Presumably they joined for spiritual reasons and they have been sent here, to this most deeply unspiritual place. I presume this is a hardship detail, a kind of penance.

  But we can have some sympathy. If the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Jesus is supposed to have died, is the least spiritual place the writer has ever visited, then the Church of the Nativity, where Jesus is supposed to have been born, comes a close second. Maybe it’s all these “supposeds”; even the most unquestioning cleric must have heard by now that modern investigations have placed the birth and death elsewhere, close by but still elsewhere, and once the authenticity has been lost only the pretence remains. And one imagines a young Franciscan friar did not join to pretend.

  At least now one is spared the horrors of “the troops of beggars and relic- peddlers” who plagued Mark Twain’s visit to this and all the other holy sites. After leaving the Church of the Nativity he wrote that “You cannot think in this place any more than you can in any other in Palestine that would be likely to inspire reflection. Beggars, cripples and monks compass you about, and make you think only of bucksheesh when you would rather think of something more in keeping with the character of the spot.”

  The next day he was more reflective about the irony involved with feeling unholy in a holy site: “It does not stand to reason that men are reluctant to leave places where the very life is almost badgered out of them by importunate swarms of beggars and peddlers who hang in strings to one’s sleeves and coat-tails and shriek and shout in his ears and horrify his vision with the ghastly sores and malformations they exhibit. One is glad to get away. Shrunken and knotted distortions, with scarred and hideous deformities, and the discordant din of a hated language, and then see how much lingering reluctance to leave could be mustered.

  “We do not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that has passed away.”

  ***

  It’s time for us to leave the spiritual tackiness and material depression of Bethlehem behind, but any positive feelings about saying goodbye to either of these are tempered by also having to say goodbye to Mr. Farki. He drives us to the Wall/Fence and we both bring out the profusions: his of gratitude and mine of appreciation, and both of ours for the memories of our time together against the official nonsense from both sides in this faux-war zone of Palestine. I promise to send him a copy of this book. One day he will reach this very sentence and will read: As-Salami Alaykum, Farki effendi - may peace be upon you, your family and your country.

  Time to put way the hankies and move on. Mr. Farki drops us at the Wall/ Fence crossing point at Bayt Jala. We are becoming dab hands at the push and shove at the turnstiles and masters of the art of obsequious posing for the cameras. This crossing has large signs in Arabic and English48 forbidding those crossing from dropping litter; as a result, underneath the sign is a veritable mound of empty coffee cups, Coke tins, scrunched up cigarette packets and other detritus of minor victories. TLUC? Maybe.

  Twain does not say very much about their overnight stop in Ramla except to note that they stayed with “the good monks at the convent”. One has the impression - well, one knows, that by now the Excursionists had had quite enough of the rigors of excursioning and were racing, literally horse racing the next morning, to re-join the Quaker City at Jaffa and start the long, slow voyage back to the comfort and certainties of New York.

  But the convent at Ramla, actually the Franciscan Church and Hospice of St. Nicodemus and St. Joseph of Arimathea, was of some interest to me as in March 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte stayed there during his Levantine Expedition. He was on his way to meet his first Waterloo at Acre courtesy of my hero, Sir Sidney Smith, of whom Napoleon later said: “That man has cost me my destiny.”

  There is a sign on the convent door: “By previous Appointment only, Admission”, but I ring the bell anyway. Nothing happens, no-one at home. As we are leaving a beaten up old white and rust Toyota Corolla pulls into the driveway and a handsome-looking friar jumps out. “Hi,” he says, “can I help you?” On the wall across the street someone has graffitied “No Arabs No Terrorism”.

  “I’d recognize that accent anywhere,” I say. “Seattle.”

  “Ah, well I got that wrong.”

  “You’re English? That’s not too hard.”

  “Right first time, and so is my wife here, Gillian.”

  He had been out on a dry cleaning errand and we follow him into the sacristy. I nearly put my foot in it when he says his name is Friar Engelbert;

  I’m about to say “like the popular singer Engelbert Humperdink” when he says “like the German composer Engelbert Humperdink.” I explain about being here officially in the footsteps of Mark Twain, and unofficially in those of Napoleon Bonaparte. “Not likely bedfellows but they both stayed here.”

  Fr. Engelbert knows all about them both and shows me a visitors’ book signed on Saturday 29 September 1867 by “William Denny Esq., & Co.”;

  Denny was in fact the New Pilgrims’ group leader.

  “They probably stayed in some of the hospice rooms. How many were they?” he asks.

  “Eight Americans. Twenty odd more in the caravanserai, they’d have stayed outside.”

  We snoop around upstairs. Napoleon’s room is clearly marked, but plain and empty. Above the door are signs in Arabic or Hebrew. Fr. Engelbert reads them both aloud and translates: “Here stayed the Emperor Napoleon. 2-11March 1799.” Ahead lies a long passage with a dozen clean and simple rooms on either side. Fr. Engelbert assumes that the Excursionists would have stayed in these.

  We take tea in the refectory and I admire his trilingual skills. He reflects that Arabs and Jews have a lot more in common than a similar language. They greet each other with shalom or salaam, which both, irony apart, mean peace. They are both genetically Semitic. They both seek to regulate all aspects of a person’s life, not just their personal faith. Their death rituals are remark- ably similar - and obviously have the same source. They both have invented a system of religious jurisprudence - the rabbis’ responsa is not dissimilar to the imams’ fatwa. They both worship one god and trace their theology from Abraham - and are more monotheistic than Christianity with its doctrine of the trinity. In the days of Christian supremacy - either crusader or Byzantine - they sided with each other. They both abhor pork, among other dietary restrictions. They both have a day of rest. They both revolve around their familie
s. They both specialize in selective memory syndrome. And they are both quite prepared to resort to terrorism for their piece of the Holy Land, the Israelis against the British and the Arabs against the Israelis.

  “That’s right,” he says, “in 1948 the Jews exploded a bomb in Ramla market killing fifty Christians and Muslims.”

  “Did many Christians leave then?” I ask. “Oh yes, many fled,” Fr. Engelbert replies. “There were very few Christians here after 1948. The Israelis evicted twelve thousand Muslims and Christians from here and Lydda, now called Lod, at gunpoint. Hundreds died on the forced march to Jordan.”

  Gillian pours more tea; I ask him more questions. He says: “Everyone talks about the Israeli massacre of hundreds of Arabs, all Muslim this time, at Deir Yassin. But many more died here. This was an Arab city, one of the main ones. Deir Yassin was just a village. The Israeli viewed themselves as freedom fighters, but the Christians must have thought them terrorists.”

  “It has always been thus,” I reply, “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. The Americans backed the Mujahideen, now they’re the Taliban. They also sponsored the IRA bombers for years, thought of them as freedom fighters; the Brits called them terrorists - which is what they were.” I tell Fr. Engelbert about a random paragraph I had read in a Jerusalem Post supplement. The Israelis justify the Occupation by abhorring terrorism. When the Israeli were terrorists, when they were shooting and hanging the British, the British High Commissioner summoned David Ben-Gurion to a meeting. Ben-Gurion said that of course he deplored terrorism - but in view of the British occupation, what else could the British expect? Once more perspective and irony in the Middle East run for cover.