(Israel)…One first impression of the Old City of Jerusalem is that it is a warren, a place of hidden spaces and forgotten lineages. I snooped beneath arches half my height to find courtyards, some showing the green, red and white of Palestine, others showing the blue and white of Israel or Greece; a large white cross against a red background showed the centuries-old home of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, a Christian military order who safeguarded pilgrim routes and pilgrims and cared for the sick among them, who later in its history was also known as the Order of the Knights of Rhodes and the Sovereign and Military Order of the Knights of Malta.
I saw a Greek Orthodox priest scurry across David Street, known to Arabs as Suq el Bazar, and disappear, aptly, along Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Road. I followed and saw a noisy group of Palestinian schoolchildren bearing bright pink backpacks on their way to school. Two nuns in white robes with blue trim, members of Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity, disappeared under a dark arch past shuttered stores selling junk, souvenirs, maps and religious paraphernalia. Some shopkeepers were taking a broom to the Roman flagstones outside these stores. I came across a street called Ethiopian Monastery Street and another named after St. Francis, his Franciscan monks also present here.
The sun was still not up in the sky. I stumbled left and right and suddenly came across one of the most famous streets in the world, the Street of Sorrows, or the Via Dolorosa, where Jesus Christ was judged, bore his cross, fell down three times, died and was buried. Religious or not, this amount of history is difficult to imagine. The 14 stations of the cross (some say that the 15th is when Jesus rose again over the Mount of Olives) are marked along this road, and all day, and especially in the evening when trying to get from A to B is slow going, religious groups reverently trace his last steps. I saw religious groups of Koreans in bright baseball caps, Greek and Armenian Orthodox in sober clothing and Congolese in printed cotton suits dyed yellow, green and red. Some pilgrims carried wooden crosses, and at every station prayers, hymns and sermons were said.
Walking the length of Habad Street and then zigzagging along Bet El and Hayei Olam I came across the Western Wall, the holiest site of Judaism. Small pieces of paper were stuck into the wall, and the devout rocked gently against it. Behind the wall is the one of the holiest Muslim sites, the al-Aqsa Mosque, on the grounds of the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount, where Solomon built the first Jewish temple. That area is off-bounds to all but Muslims.
The machinations of all this history I found impossible to grasp, so I just reveled in the majesty of it all. Disputes also occur at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which contains the last five Stations of the Cross. It is tucked down St. Helena Street, which looks as though it stops at a dead end, only to turn left and then right. A second arch leads to the Arab souk, or suq, the market. Muslims act as doorkeepers here, for the arguments between Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Syrian (aka Syriac) Orthodox (a tiny population), Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Ethiopian Orthodox and other Christian interests run so deep that much-needed repairs cannot be started and occasionally fights break out over which order should care for which step or roof top.
For me, the most fascinating walk, no more than 100 yards, starts in the small square in front of the main entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the right-hand corner is a small heavy-stone doorway that leads to the first of two dark Ethiopian Orthodox chapels. Monks sit silently in dank corners, the thin passage leading up steps before turning left into the second chapel. Walking around this takes you to another small set of steps that lead out to a roof with a dome, which is the roof of another part of the overall church below. Across this roof is the entrance to the Coptic Church. Ethiopian priests do not cross a magical line somewhere on this roof, as neither do the Coptics. Just along from here I visited a school with children learning Arabic and reading the Koran, and above them on a balcony I saw an orthodox Jewish reading the Torah.
Back in the church I discovered the burned chapel of the Syrian Orthodox and the first of a series of small caves that are said to go for some distance beneath the city and where Joseph of Arimathea is supposedly buried. Jesus’s tomb is here, too. Writers are supposed to withstand the desire to use adjectives, and I will definitely do so here. Okay, just one—everything here is incredible. Just get here early when the crowds are small or nonexistent.
Two spots to enjoy views of the city are the Austrian Hospice and the Church of the Maronite Patriarch Exarchate. In the 18th century, all the world’s superpowers scrambled to buy property in Jerusalem, and the Austrian Hospice is one piece of evidence of that. It contains guest rooms, as does the Maronite church, and I cannot think of anywhere better to stay to feel just an infinitesimally small bit of what has happened and is happening.
Arrive at the Austrian Hospice 15 minutes before dusk, order a double espresso and walk up to the roof. Gaze across the city, at the roof of the Dome of the Rock sparkling golden, at the inhabitants bustling along streets and at the green edging coming to life on the minarets just before the taped muezzins announce the call to prayer for Muslims. For five minutes the sounds from a dozen or so minarets echoes across the air and thousands of years of history—and conflict—peal away to one single moment.