It didn’t take long for Tamar to explain that she was worried that maybe I’d changed over the last few months, “You know…with the war.” But it wasn’t until she pulled out this gem, “Don’t you hate Jews, after living so long with them?” that it suddenly became clear that she was afraid of me.
It took a second for my body catch up with the tempest of emotion swirling in my head, but when it did my face heated up. It was a unique feeling, a horrible feeling, but when I tried my best to tell her so—my voice shaking in humiliation and anger, she still went on “…but now that you live there in the Territories…they teach their children to hate us. How can you not hate, now with the war?”
“Tamar!” I interrupted, “do you have any idea what I’ve been through to even get here today? I’m the one passing through checkpoints and running into soldiers in my driveway. I’m the one who should be afraid, and if anyone is teaching my kids to hate, it’s the soldiers pointing guns at them,” I said, my voice shaking.
She looked at me in silence for a moment, as if I were a dense child simply unable to engage in reasonable, adult conversation.
“I don’t know, Jenny,” she said. “Do you want to go and get a coffee?”
Whatever.
“Sure.”
And with that we dropped the conversation, drove to the mall for lattes (Tamar’s husband in tow), finished the day with some superficial chitchat and said goodbye.
I never saw her again.
CHAPTER 26
It’s All About Who You Know…
Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.
-AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
I started to feel that time was speeding up once I decided to try to gain access to the off-limits sites on the Temple Mount. But the information I was getting online wasn’t exactly encouraging. There were complaints from everyone, from Western archaeology buffs to the faithful who wanted to see the Temple restored to modern-day explorer wannabees (kind of like me) who were angry that they couldn’t get access to the Mount. On top of that, the internet buzzed with interest in the underground structures Wilson had described years earlier in his journals.
One of the most worrying articles was from National Geographic magazine, entitled, “Jerusalem’s Mysterious Well of Souls,” which clearly showed how hard it would be for me to accomplish what I had in mind. In the article, Shimon Gibson, co-author of the work, Below the Temple Mount in Jerusalem: A Sourcebook on the Cisterns, Subterranean Chambers and Conduits of the Haram Al-Sharif, said, “Since the nineteenth century, no Westerner has been allowed access to the subterranean chambers on the Temple Mount…I would have liked to disguise myself as a local Waqf worker and infiltrate these sites, but I wouldn’t want to run the risk of creating an international incident.”
International incident?
Still, the idea had merit. After all, I thought, I’m a Westerner, but I’m also a Muslim. For the first time, I thought maybe the combination could work to my advantage.
Ahmad was discouraging when I told him about the idea on Skype. He fell silent, as if embarrassed by my naiveté and confused by my desire to do such a “strange thing.”
“They aren’t going to let you in,” he said. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
The only problem was, he was right; the aura of suspicion in the Holy Land was as thick as congealed gravy. Add to that the fact that I didn’t really know anyone outside of the village who had any connections that could help me with such a daunting goal, and with no connections, professional credits, or expertise to recommend me, I was stuck. Worse, I was a foreigner, and as such, suspicious. I was just Jenny Jones—Jenny Jones—could you get more “Western” than that?
I finally realized that the only way I could get near the places I yearned to see would require getting permission from the Islamic authorities, known as the Waqf, who controlled the structures on the Mount. In order to do that, I’d have to exemplify what I was—a Westerner and a Muslim—a unique identity I’d neglected to develop and start building some relationships.
I just had to find out with whom.
The tradition of the Waqf, or Islamic trust, in the Holy Land, is to ensure that religious sites remain protected and maintained. Waqf employees are the “keepers of the holy places,” in theory beholden only to God. Of course, under the umbrella of the Occupation, it wasn’t that simple.
One of the best things about the Holy Land is that it’s a kind of religious beacon for all three of the Abrahamic faiths. Just the thought of the power of the countless prayers spoken either in the land, or aimed at it, seemed to make it almost hum with energy. Unfortunately, many of the most famous holy places have fallen into disrepair because no one can agree on who is responsible for fixing them. After all, whoever does such repairs could indicate that group had a greater claim on them.
Perhaps the best-known example of “holy site hoarding” is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. This church is considered to be the holiest site in the Christian world. The actual building is dark, smoky and mysterious inside, a jarring mix of architectural styles, from Byzantine to Crusader, with a labyrinthine floor plan. One could easily wander around for hours, up tiny stairs, through passageways, even up to the roof, where Ethiopian Orthodox monks claim the space as their own.
In spite of the church’s eclectic style, it is a beautiful place—all swinging censers, candlelight, stone, with tiny, dark cavernous chapels opening into soaring cathedral ceilings above. There is an apse through which the Jerusalem sun filters in pale ethereal beams, stretching down to the tomb of Jesus below. There, pilgrims line up one at a time for their moment alone in a tiny tomb hardly large enough for three or four adults to stand in at a time, presided over by a stern Greek Orthodox nun who will abide no nonsense from the faithful (or anyone else for that matter).
Still, the part that was so uniquely Jerusalem was the way the different denominations, represented by their particular priests, monks, nuns and local faithful, fought—literally, and often—to the point of injury with sticks, flying chairs, whatever they could get their hands on. Nobody was allowed to infringe on anyone else’s traditional portions of the church—even to clean or repair them. In fact, you can still see a 2008 YouTube video of a melee that erupted when one of the Coptic monks moved his chair from its usual location on the roof a mere twenty centimeters to get a little shade on a hot day. When the Ethiopian monks who control most of the roof, however, noticed, a fistfight between them ensued—hardly an atmosphere that pilgrims from afar expected to find in their holiest of holy places.
It was Peter Shaneb, the Christian Palestinian I’d met before my trip to Jacob’s Well who told me, “We can’t even agree on who’s allowed to sweep the floor of the church. Imagine! The church is filthy in places, and we can’t just go in and clean it. You have to get permission from each denomination—Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Roman Catholics, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and Syrian Orthodox churches—and that’s just not going to happen.”
Still, the most famous example of this stalemate (which applies to maintenance, worship times, chapel “ownership,” and prayer locations, and a schedule for the times monks may walk through each other’s areas), is an old wooden ladder that was placed during the first part of the nineteenth century against the outer wall of the church, where it continues to lean until this day. It serves no purpose, nobody uses it, but it remains immovable, lest someone tip the delicate balance of power over the square inches the small ladder occupies, dusty and gray from the weather.
Of course, the Christians weren’t the only Jerusalem residents to fight amongst themselves over their holiest site. Just a short, five-minute walk away was the Kotel, or Western Wall, the holiest place in modern Judaism, and there, too, a divide has opened, this time between the Orthodox community (and the Wall’s chief rabbi) and those Jews who
feel they should be able to either pray with their spouses (men and women are strictly segregated inside of the prayer area at the wall), and a group of religious, Jewish women who call themselves the “Women of the Wall,” who feel that they should be able to pray at the Wall in a manner traditionally reserved for men. These women, many of whom consider themselves to be Orthodox as well, believe that it is their religious right to wear prayer shawls, as well as read out loud from the Torah as a group—something only men are presently allowed to do by religious law.
Unfortunately, just as at the church, the disagreement has led to violence, especially between the women and the ultra-Orthodox, who see these activities as an affront to the site, as well as to God.
It only makes sense, then, that when the hoarding goes even farther—jumping religions, as it were—the result would either be self-segregation within the shared locations, or de-facto ownership making them completely off limits to those of other faiths, at sites that used to be shared. Some examples of this kind of exclusive use are Rachel’s Tomb, Joseph’s Well, the Temple Mount, and countless others across the Holy Land. For tourists and pilgrims, that meant it wasn’t enough to have a guidebook in hand to tour the place, and you couldn’t just “walk the Bible,” even if you wanted to. Still, you could—in all but the most hotly contested sites—at least visit. You just couldn’t pray in them—which for many was like getting into Disneyland but not being allowed on the rides.
Because behavior at most of the sites in the Holy Land was “iffy,” I had to be very delicate in formulating my requests to the powers that be at the Temple Mount. But first, I had to find out who those powers were. By then, I knew that the Temple Mount had a group of Islamic authorities in charge, called the Waqf
However, I didn’t know whom to approach, nor had I figured out exactly what I was going to say when I did have a chance. After all, I didn’t want to blow it by just breezing in to ask (in my baby Arabic) to see their secret chambers-n-stuff. Because of this, I decided to start small, at one of the scariest and most dangerous places in the West Bank: Hebron’s Old City.
Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs, or as Palestinians called it, “The Mosque of Abraham,” the reported burial site of Abraham and his wife, Sarah, is one of the hottest of hot spots in the region. It is literally divided between the Jewish and Palestinian communities with a harshness found nowhere else in the country, and that’s without even considering the neighborhood it’s in.
The city’s once-thriving old city center is now a ghost town. Its once-bustling shops and produce market closed when the crowds stopped coming, after the settlement and the constant presence of the military. Even those who tried to stay had their shop doors welded shut by the military or by the settlers, themselves. Now the only way to get there from the “Palestinian side” of the city was to walk through a series of fenced corrals snaking through checkpoints and blocks of eerily deserted walkways. These were covered over with chain link to shield pedestrians from the garbage deliberately thrown on them from the settlers above.
The sanctuary itself, built by Herod the Great, resembles an immense rectangular stone box, without visible windows or much detail on the outside. However, inside it’s beautiful. There are tapestry-covered cenotaphs, chandeliers, and hand painted arches and vaults. Still, the building shows its age, and its tragic history fairly seeps through the bullet-marked walls. Back in 1994, one of the area’s settlers—a physician—entered the mosque during morning prayers and shot and killed twenty-nine worshippers, wounding more than a hundred as they sat in prayer. Now, more than eighteen years after the attack, the tension remains, and soldiers and security are everywhere, often outnumbering visitors.
The shrine itself is divided between the Jewish and Palestinian communities in an uneasy “temporary status agreement.” Eighty-one percent of the structure is under control of the Muslim authorities, or Waqf, and the remaining under the Jewish community. However, the Israeli military has surrounded the structure and the neighboring streets with a series of pedestrian checkpoints, which means that they have the final decision over who gets in and when—just like at the Temple Mount.
After I entered the Mosque I headed for the guard office, a tall, narrow room made entirely of stone pierced by a large, recessed window that showed the immense thickness of the walls, and explained to the two men present that I would like to learn about their work at the Waqf. “So, what’s it like taking care of such an important place?” I asked, addressing the small gathering of guards who’d congregated after word spread that someone wanted to learn more about them.
“Well,” said one (a dead ringer for Rod Stewart), “it is very difficult…You won’t use my name, will you?”
“I don’t have to if that’s what you prefer,” I answered, closing my notebook and placing it on my lap to reassure him.
“It is very difficult, you know…The Jews give us a very hard time, and it is difficult for us to even come to work some days.”
“Yes, and the checkpoints are very difficult,” said another, the youngest, baby-faced and earnest-looking, sitting at the top of several stone steps leading down to the room’s floor.
“Okay, but do you feel proud of the work you are doing here?” I asked, desperate to prevent the conversation from turning into a lament against the Occupation. “I mean, you are taking care of a holy place that people around the world love. Do you feel proud of that?”
“No,” said Rod. “Take for instance, this guy here,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of Babyface. “He has been working here for a year, and he still hasn’t been paid. The ‘big’ people don’t care about us and they don’t respect us. You know what? When people in the government come here, they don’t even greet us. They treat us like garbage, and they pay us almost nothing.”
“And how did you guys happen to work here?”
At that, the men gave a list of the names of several old Hebron families that were historically charged with maintaining the site—and whose descendants (as most of the guards were) continue the tradition today. Then, warming up to the topic over a pot of tea and some cigarettes, they all proceeded to complain about the haughtiness of their superiors and the government officials who paid their meager salaries.
Taking this opportunity, I asked for and was given the name and contact information of their superior, so I could talk to him, hoping I could figure out who I needed to approach about my hopes for a Temple Mount visit.
At this point, I was excited, feeling that I’d taken a small step toward my goal, and I thanked the men for their time and their tea, wishing them good luck in the future. Before I left, however, I did ask them to show me the old access tunnel to the caves below the shrine. Here, legend said, death or blindness awaited anyone so bold as to disturb Sitna Sarah, “Lady Sarah” in her grave. It was hidden under the prayer carpets and now cemented over, lest the faithful from the synagogue next door try to break into the cave as they had in the past, seeking a connection with the remains of their ancestors. This would, of course, have been in violation of Islamic sensibilities, which prohibit “disturbing the dead.”
In the end, it was a satisfying day. I had negotiated the neighborhood and the checkpoints, my Arabic had stood up pretty well, and I’d gotten the all-important Waqf contact information to start my journey toward the Mount. In fact, I felt pretty darn proud of myself.
All that changed the moment I logged onto the Internet that evening, did a new search, and discovered that the Waqf governing the rest of the Holy Land’s Islamic sites was a different entity entirely from the one on the Temple Mount (which, strangely enough, turned out to be under the authority of the Jordanian government as a legacy of the 1967 War, not the Palestinian Authority as I had supposed). It meant the day’s “connection” wouldn’t help me at all.
Ah, well, back to square one.
I had always passed Hebron University on my way to work, and I often wondered what it was like inside its walled campus, but I’d never had
had a chance to stop in. One day, though, it occurred to me as I stopped at the main traffic light near the campus, students strolling by in tight little single-sex groups, that a job at the Islamic university in the West Bank might give me the credibility I need to make some real connections. There were just two problems: I only had a Bachelor’s degree, which made me under-qualified to teach there, and I had a nasty public-speaking phobia—a bit of a problem for an aspiring university instructor.
Sure, I had taught at the software company, but there my only “audience” was a handful of software engineers sitting around a conference table. Still, the idea somehow stuck in my mind and I decided to apply anyway, let them consider my qualifications (or lack thereof), and worry about my public speaking terrors another day.
Less than a week later, I received an email from the Vice President of the University, Dr. Atawneh. It just so happened they had a vacancy!
When I arrived for my meeting with Dr. Atawneh, I strolled through the large, domed gate straight into a student demonstration in the courtyard. It appeared to be something straight out of a political cartoon. It was an impressive tableau—all satin headbands, flags and raised fists—only without any of the real heat you’d see in the street, which I confirmed as I made my way through the crowd toward the administration building. These students just smelled too good, smiled a little too much, and somehow seemed too shiny to be fierce. It was my first exposure to the university’s student culture—intense, romantic, perfectly angstridden, and always impeccably dressed.
I entered the administration building, a modern cement structure at the front of the university, and introduced myself to the receptionist, whose jaw dropped slightly as I spoke to her in my accent. It was a common reaction, especially when I approached people suddenly, before they had a chance to check me out, and they realized the sounds coming out of my mouth were not as expected. It was as if I’d lifted a mask and said, “Boo!”
All Roads Lead to Jerusalem Page 15