The old city

     First, a correction or addition: the title of the post a couple of days back is: "Kanafeh and pizza in Nablus."
     It's another beautiful day on the edge of Jerusalem.  Yesterday I spent most of the day in the old city in East Jerusalem.  Like so many sites in this part of the world, the old city is built over several older cities, including the Jerusalem Christ would have known.  The current Via Dolorosa (Way of the Cross) is at least ten feet above the route Christ apparently carried the cross.  The old city you wander in today is a late medieval city, I think.

Samir Turman, Al,  Dr. Khalad Hammad & The Dome of The Rock

Rafat

     Before exploring the old city with Rafat, a twenty-seven year old Palestinian friend who was in Maine, thirteen years ago, in our summer program at The Theater Project, I had a meeting with two men from the Ministry of Education.  After a few misunderstandings that may have been a result of Rafat's having to translate for me some of the time, or perhaps it was the timing of our visit, not long before the office closed for the day; at any rate, we were soon talking about my work here and clarifying what I am doing.  The Ministry has to approve any outside activity in the schools, so it took me a while to explain my work with Nasser, the counselor at a local boys middle school.  Once that was clear, they told me they needed a proposal to take to the Minister of Education; this will lead to a meeting with a higher-up at the ministry to get approval for my work.  Ah bureaucracy, often necessary and seldom simple or direct.
     Rafat has a motorcycle, a good choice given Jerusalem's traffic and we rode from his apartment to the old city on it.  He obviously knows how to drive in traffic, and though a couple of times I thought I might lose one or both knee caps, we made it to the Damascus Gate of the old city unscathed.  When Samir, one of the men I talked to about the work with Khitam, learned we had come by motorcycle, he was surprised "an older man" would ride on a motorcycle.  I think he saw it as appearing undignified, a risk most older men here would not want to take.  If he thought I might appear undignified riding behind Rafat, he should have seen me getting on it!
     Rafat is at one those places in his life when he has to make a difficult choice.  He has been offered a job with a bank in East Jerusalem, a job that is a step in the right direction for improving his work status and making himself eligible for better jobs, but it involves a cut in pay, and he isn't making all that much now.  In order to make ends meet, he will probably have to work a few nights a week if he takes the bank job and he is willing to do that.  I think he'll take the job and begin to move up.  He is bright and a hard worker, and I'm sure he's reliable.  He has his BA in business after taking a couple of years off to learn Hebrew so he could attend the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  The choices he has to make are similar to those of young men and women in the States with a couple of major differences: he is a Palestinian and right now all the good jobs are in Israel, which is okay as long as he maintains a residency inside Israel; and he has to decide whether or not to continue the process of acquiring Israeli citizenship.  He's figuring it out.

In the old city

     We wandered in the old city for hours.  I never get tired of it, though the crowds are tiring.  We stopped at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the spot where Christ was originally entombed.  It is a big church with a warren of additions belonging to a variety of Christian sects.  There was a large crowd waiting outside, and I'm sure a larger crowd inside.  After we left, we encountered a scene that is probably replayed many times every day: two men arguing about religion.  One, an American, was quoting the Bible and arguing that the other, a Palestinian shopkeeper, was just plain wrong.  The Palestinian saw the futility of arguing further so he conceded that each was entitled to his own opinion, but the American was not going to let go, so the argument raged on.  I think the Palestinian also saw that as long as the American argued so vociferously, he was unlikely to get much business from tourists who were passing.
     We stopped for hummus and foule, a bean dish originally popular with Egyptian peasants and eaten with bread, like hummus.  Rafat told me it was the best place for hummus in the old city and knew right where to find it.  I couldn't direct you to it without visiting it several more times!  It was small, like most shops and eateries in the old city, and simple: hummus, foule, Arabic salad and a couple other dishes, water, soda and mint tea with a tea bag to drink.  And it was good, very good.  It was the best hummus I've tasted in a long time.  The place was packed most of the time we were there.
     We saw the Dome of the Rock, Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina, the golden domed mosque built over the the rock from which Mohammed is supposed to have ascended to get the word of Allah which became The Koran.  The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque are built over the site of the Temple of David, sacred to Jews, so it is a contentious site.  As a result, tourists are only allowed to view the two mosques at certain hours, and to view them, it is necessary to enter via the "Wailing Wall," the foundation of the Temple where Jews pray and leave messages.

Old city walls

     Rafat said, often searching for the word or phrase in English that is better than he thinks it is: "I am not so religious, but I think different religions are okay.  People can have their own religion and let other people have theirs.  Why they have to fight?  Over what?  A place?"
     When you're in the old city, you feel how important it is to Christians, Jews and Muslims.  Why not share it without fighting?  Why challenge someone else's right be there, to say his or her prayers?  Why not look at other religions' monuments and acknowledge different beliefs?  The old city cries out: "There isn't room for this kind of disrespect, hatred and fighting and all of them are antithetical to these three religions.  Rafat said: "Most of the wars now, they're because of religion, I think."