“You couldn’t hear that behind a bus ticket!”
1989, Strandtown Primary School, Belfast. It’s assembly and our slightly demotic teacher, Miss Ireland (emphatically not a beauty queen) is urging us on to ever greater efforts in the performance of the anthem Jerusalem. For Miss Ireland volume is all, if they can’t hear us in the next postal district, we’re not singing loudly enough.
The soaring melody is magnificent (even the fiftieth time round) but the lyrics are more than a little silly. “Did Jesus ever visit England?” is the basic gist of the song. I’m going to go out on a limb and say “no”.
All over the world people sing about Jerusalem, pray for it, dream of it even, in the case of the Jews, define themselves by their absence from it. For any monotheist, it’s not a place one comes to without baggage.
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The bus journey from Tel Aviv takes less than an hour, emphasising the minuscule size of this country. “Much hate, little space” as we say in Ireland. We arrive in an Orthodox neighbourhood of the city and I gawp out the window like a child at a safari park. I’d never seen an Orthodox Jew before in my life. Now everyone around me is Hasidic. I feel pleasantly bewildered, as if I’ve just stumbled on to a film set. Finally after Tel Aviv’s studied modernity, a bit of old-fashioned culture shock.
Soon enough we arrive at our hostel and the welcome there could not be more different from the frosty reception in Tel Aviv. The manager, Jibril, is a gem of a guy, taking his Arab duty of hospitality to extremes. Business is not good; there are maybe six guests in all, so we each get lots if attention.
Jibril is full of suggestions about where to go, what to do, how to get to Ramallah next week. He’s lending me books and suggesting we have a barbecue that night. I half expect him to lean over and say “You know, Barry, my sister is single.”
Later on that night the pair of us retire to the roof for a little chat and a little weed. As we sit smoking, there is gunfire in the distance. I feel exhilarated by this, I am in no danger but I like the idea that I’m in a city with a bit of edge.
Between puffs Jibril explains the drugs situation in Palestinian East Jerusalem. According to him, the Israelis turn a blind eye to narcotics in Arab areas on the “junkies don’t fight back” principle.
“You know you can get any drug you want down at Damascus Gate? It’s a fucking disgrace.”
“Here Jibril, stop hogging the spliff.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, here you are.”
Later on, I discover why Jibril spends all day every day getting high and listening to Bob Marley. He is not from Jerusalem; he was born a few miles outside the city. This means he’s a West Banker and is thus living and working “illegally” in his own capital. If he is found out he could be sent back to the West Bank, or even imprisoned.
Palestinian society is so riddled with Israeli informers that Jibril has to keep his distance from the locals. On an average day he spends more than 23 hours in the hostel, only venturing out to buy a few groceries, and of course a quick trip to Damascus Gate. He is a prisoner and, like many prisoners, drugs help him to deal with the tedium of imprisonment.
In a later conversation, I learn that Jibril is no stranger to life behind bars. Like many Palestinian men in their late twenties, he speaks fluent Hebrew, picked up during his many spells in Israeli jails during the first intifada.
I imagine as a teenager, Jibril would have been a fearless stone thrower, a determined petrol bomber, but the years have taken their toll. He is sitting out the second intifada, just trying to eke out a living and keep his sanity. He seems to bear no grudges, against the Israelis or the Jews; he is a markedly tolerant man.
In fact he even employs a Brazilian Jew, Bibi, to run errands for him. One night Bibi returns from the New City with a tale to tell. There was heightened security because of fear of a suicide attack. Bibi was stopped at a checkpoint and a quick search revealed that he was carrying a certain substance which you can buy at Damascus Gate.
Carted off to the police station, he faces deportation. He has been in Jerusalem for several months as a tourist but has no intention of settling permanently there, or anywhere I would imagine. But nevertheless, he pleads with the cops to let him go.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it. But please, I want to make aliya”
The cop, obviously a good Zionist, lets Bibi go on his way. As he tells of how he extracted himself from the predicament, we laugh. Bibi is no more likely to make aliya than me. I can’t see him fitting in in the IDF somehow.
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Shortly after arriving, Meghan and I take a stroll around the Old City, a truly remarkable place. The city is divided into four quarters: Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Jewish. The Arab quarters seethe with activity; it’s shoulder to shoulder as you walk past the dozens of tiny fruit stalls and souvenir shops. What, I wonder, must this place be like during a normal tourist season?
Business is not good so shopkeepers haggle desperately to sell their wares. There is a heavy military presence in the Arab quarters. Jewish settlers who have moved in routinely carry Uzi sub-machine guns as they go about their daily business.
By contrast, the Jewish quarter is an oasis of calm. There is plenty of room, the streets are spotless and the stone walls have been restored quite beautifully. The Arab quarters, filthy and dilapidated, have been left to rot in the hope that their inhabitants will give up and leave.
Meghan goes off to make a phone call and I sit down on a wall, glad to take the weight off my suffering feet. It is nightfall now, the start of the Jewish Sabbath. A group of young men walk past on the way to the synagogue. One of them, no more than 16 years of age, is lugging an M-60 rifle with him to the shul. It is frightening to see such a deadly weapon in the hands of a boy whose face looks like it has never seen a razor. I have seen nothing so far on this trip to convince me that he will be able to put the gun away anytime soon.
On Saturday we take a tour of the Old City taking in some of the famous sites: the Tower of David, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Via Dolorosa and, from a distance the Western Wall. As our guide explains the history behind each site, I’m struck by the veritable rivers of blood which have flowed to control these few acres of real estate, as Romans, Turks, Crusaders et al have taken their turn in charge.
While Meghan is praying in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I get talking to our guide, a stocky man in his early forties. He is a Coptic Christian which intrigues me, as I had presumed that this was a purely Egyptian denomination. As a young boy, he and his family were cleansed from the Jewish quarter after the 1967 war.
I’m curious as to what the quarter was like during the period of Jordanian rule from 1948-67. Were there any Jews in the quarter during this period? I ask. He pointedly refuses to answer my question, leading me to believe that the answer is “no”.
Like many people in conflict zones, my Coptic friend will not acknowledge the narrative of the other. I sympathise with him over the loss of his house but still I want to know what happened to the Jews of the Old City after the Arab Legion’s victory there in 1948. He’d rather not say.
Listening to his tales of history, both ancient and modern, I’m conscious that I’m standing in the centre of the universe. Just to be in the Old City is a life-changing experience. For me, a devout atheist, this is a troubling realisation. There is a wonder to the place, something which my fiercely logical, secular mind can’t quite explain.
No matter how secular Europe becomes, it can never fully escape its past, which is mainly a Christian past. To be in Jerusalem is to be where many of our ideas, our traditions, our morality came from.
I leave Jerusalem with my deep and abiding antipathy to religion very much intact. However I realise that, no matter how much I dislike religion, I will have to learn to live with it.
* Some names have been changed.