Travel Biography - Week 6.

Life in the Spihu household in Silwan, East Jerusalem, in the middle of 1976 wasn't much different to any western home. Daily life continued as usual. Ghanem attended high school, and Abed went out into the streets with a tray selling pottery (a task shared by his younger brother when not at school) whilst their uncle busied himself with some local maintenance, and his wife dealt with the housework, including cooking. One major difference between a Christian and secular home was during the Islamic call to prayer, Abed's uncle arrived home, crouched in the middle of the lounge floor and recited his Muslim prayers completely oblivious of my presence. 

Turkish Bath Visit.

It was on one evening that my host, Abed, along with a couple of his friends, decided to visit a Turkish bath located in the Old City, and I was invited to accompany them. After making our way along the Kidron Valley towards St Steven's Gate facing the Mount of Olives (where tradition holds as being near the site of the first Christian martyr, recorded in Acts 7) the four of us arrived at an insignificant-looking entrance along the souk and entered.

We sat in this beautiful ornate waiting room. The interior was furnished with a traditional eastern decor depicting Turkish culture. However, although impressed with my surroundings, I wasn't feeling 100%. I recognised the symptoms. I was aware that I had caught a bug, and I'm about to go down with a fever.

But this didn't deter me from wanting to try out this new experience. Back at home, I was already a sauna addict, and by trying out a traditional Turkish bath, I was able to compare one with the other.

Eventually, after a wait of around 30-45 minutes, we were allowed through into an antechamber where we all stripped naked. Then we went into a larger room with a steam fountain at one side, filling the chamber with steam but with little significant heat, thus, I rated the Turkish bath unfavourably with the Finnish sauna. Although I was longing to feel some heat, nevertheless, I could see how those three Arab young men were so familiar with the facility, just as I'm so familiar with the sauna back home, that what I felt was a lack of heat was normal for them. This was the real significance of Travel, to become acquainted, and possibly blend with their cultural habits I was, up till then, unaware of.

The Turkish Bath in Jerusalem looked a little like this.

After returning to the family home, I began to feel unwell. The next morning, I asked the lady of the house if she had a thermometer, and with it, she took my temperature and advised me to stay in bed for the rest of the day. Too bad there was no "quick fix" medicine such as Paracetamol, especially under the trade name of Neurofon or Beecham's Three-in-One. With such medication, by the end of the day, I would have been well on the road to recovery. Instead, I had to lay in bed for three days - such precious time in Israel forever lost. At least I was fed and nursed into full recovery by the morning of the fourth day after the Turkish bath experience.

Bethlehem.

Once recovered, I made my way alone to the Arab bus station to board a bus to Bethlehem. This bus station, on Nablus Road outside the Old City but close to the Damascus Gate, was noisy and chaotic when compared to the Egged Bus Station of Jewish management, about a mile away along Jaffa Road. At the Arab Bus station, salesmen were shouting as they presented their cheap merchandise on trays, adding to the noise and bustle. Even the bus drivers shouted as each called to each other as the bus pulled out.

Some distance outside Jerusalem, the bus halted at a checkpoint and we all had to show the inspector boarding the bus our passports. This was because we were leaving Israel proper and entering the West Bank of Palestine, where Bethlehem was located approx five miles south of Jerusalem Old City.

Having arrived at the small Arab town of Bethlehem, it didn't take long to find its main attraction, the Church of the Nativity. It was a huge structure with a very small entrance doorway. This was to force everyone to slow down and bow when entering.

I strolled through the ancient Eastern Orthodox chapel, fascinated by the coloured baubles hanging at the altar and elsewhere within the basilica. However, near the altar, a stairway led to the crypt. It's within this underground natural cave that I saw the 14-pronged star marking the exact site of the birth of Christ. This was the icon that Mr Chapman, our school deputy head, was telling us about (Week 4) nine years previously. As I knelt next to it, I thought about this ex-military officer taking a break from his Mandate duties and paying homage to this very icon. If only he foreknew back then that I had taken heed of his testimony. Indeed, he would have been impressed!

The 14 prongs radiating from the star were no accident or mere coincidence. Tradition says that they represent each of the 3x14 generations separating Jesus Christ from Abraham as recorded in Matthew's Gospel. They were the 14 from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile to Babylon, and 14 from Babylon to the birth of Christ. The 14 prongs also symbolise the 14 Stations of the Cross of the Catholic Catechism. Close by, a ledge marks the site of the Manger where the newborn was placed after birth.

The Cross of Christ.

In 1976, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City was not accessible to the lone tourist without a guide. Therefore, whenever the church was open during the day, a group of young Muslim men stood in the forecourt just outside its doors. Whenever a tourist or even a couple approached to enter the edifice, the visitor was obliged to accompany the waiting guide and of course, pay his fee. The guide then escorted the tourist around the interior of the church.

This was very unlike my second visit in 1993 when large crowds piling in had eliminated such Muslim guides, but the near-overcrowding, including a long queue to the sepulchre, made the whole experience far more "touristy" than a pilgrimage. I find it amazing, perhaps rather shocking, that the rise of tourism over just seventeen years could dramatically change the atmosphere within, transforming a site for prayer and meditation into little more than a museum.

But going back to 1976, Ghanem offered to accompany me to the church. As we approached the doors, there rose an argument between Ghanem and one of the guides standing outside. No doubt, to the latter, there was a visitor who will not hand over the much-needed payment that would have placed food on his table. No wonder the door guide was irate! But my own personal escort won the argument and the two of us then entered the church that was empty of people except for an occasional clergyman.

The 14-pronged Star of Bethlehem. Stock photo.

After a tour around, the climax came as I stood with trembling excitement at the very spot where the Cross of Christ stood, which was marked by a lifesize crucifix with the image of Jesus hanging upon it. To get to it, a short flight of steps at each end of a raised platform seem to confirm the truth in the hymn we all sang at school under Mr Chapman's directorship, that there is a green hill far away outside the city walls. There, our Lord was crucified, he died to save us all. Only that there were no green hills of English landscape model around the Jerusalem area. Rather, the whole desert landscape on which the city was built was more of a golden brown, so well attested by the neighbouring Mount of Olives.

The Sepulchre itself, just a few metres away from the site of the Crucifixion, was represented by a small white building within the main church apse. Back then in 1976, it was inaccessible to the public, but when my wife Alex and I visited in the year 2000, all we saw inside was a solid marble ledge at one side within a tiny marble room.

The Sherut to Hebron.

Abed, with the agreement of his uncle, showed me the sherut, a communal taxi that takes up from six to eight passengers, each paying his share of the fee. Unlike the conventional taxi which takes the sole passenger to his chosen destination, each sherut is destined for each particular destination, very much like a bus or train service. The one Abed was leading me to, parked in a specially assigned sherut bay in East Jerusalem, was destined for Hebron. Except that instead of paying his own share of the taxi fare, I had to pay for him as well as for myself. But it wasn't too expensive. Indeed, this trip will prove to be an enlightening experience.

Abed and I arrived at Hebron, and we found ourselves standing outside what looks to be a Roman fortress. As we approached, I saw several Orthodox Jews milling around. On their foreheads, they had a black wooden or leather cube tied around their heads. I have seen these whilst walking through the souks of the Old City. When such Jews passed by, I thought, Wow! Pharisees! Did they really look like this?

The little black box is known as Phylactery, and Jesus mentions these in the Gospels. These little boxes contain portions of the Scriptures, and devoted Jews wear them during times of prayer and as a reminder of God's requirement to keep his laws. It was from an instruction taken from Exodus 13:16, but by Jesus' day, the motive for wearing them was to show others of their devotion to God.

As we approached the building, we realised that headwear was mandatory when entering the building. Since this site does not offer free Yamaka or Kippah as the Western Wall does, we had no choice but to buy a hat. This time, Abed bought his own headwear and I bought mine.

We entered the fortress. This, so I was told, was the burial site of three Hebrew patriarchs and their wives. They were Abraham and his wife Sarah, Isaac and his wife Rebekah, and Jacob and his wife Leah. All were buried in the Cave of Machpelah. Around me were what I thought were coffins, and I mistakenly believed that I was standing in the cave. In fact, I was standing inside the building itself, and what I was looking at were not the coffins, but the cenotaphs of the patriarchs. The cave itself, as I found out years later, was under the floor of the fortress, sealed and of no access for the public or clergyman alike.

If I were to say that the survival of the whole of mankind rests with the existence of this cave, would I be exaggerating? Would I be talking any sense? According to the Prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament of the Bible, he wrote that if we humans can reach the foundation (the core) of the earth, count all the stars in the sky or stop the night following the day, then God will break his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for all the sins committed by Israel.

The sheer impossibility for us humans to override God's universal creation speaks for itself. As long as God's covenant with the Jews stands, the whole of mankind will never be obliterated! The fortress itself stands as a testimony to this and other promises. It was completed by Herod the Great a few years before the birth of Christ, and having survived the Roman onslaught of AD 70 which razed Jerusalem and its Second Temple to the ground, the fortress of Machpelah survives intact to this day and it's used as a centre of both Jewish and Islamic worship.

Aerial view of the Fortress at Hebron.

The fortress also acts as a sentinel standing as a witness that the land on which it's built belongs to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the latter who was renamed Israel, a name meaning, Striving with God, and itself an anagram of- 

Isaac,  

Sarah, 

Rebekah, 

Abraham, 

Elohim, 

Leah.

The name also means that God (Elohim) is in the midst of his people and also has a special compassion for Leah, who felt unloved by her own husband Jacob. Thus, the six bodies buried in the cave under the floor of the fortress spell Israel.

But all this I learned since then and not back then. Rather, as Abed stood around, I took in the interior of the fortress, with a mistaken belief that I was standing within the Cave of Machpelah and the cenotaphs around me were actual coffins. In those days I was so naive, such a spiritually young fresher of this fascinating faith and the historical truth of the Bible, and probably aware that I have a long, long way to go.

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NEXT WEEK: Solo backpacking continues to the Sea of Galilee.