who and what you are?”
Anxious now to terminate the interview and leave, Cass said, “Well, I really must be going.” She rose and stepped backward, edging towards the door. “It was nice meeting you.”
“And you as well.” The old woman rose and followed her. “But I have a suspicion that we shall be meeting one another again very soon.”
Cassandra nodded. Moving quickly to the door, she fumbled with the doorknob, twisted it, pulled open the door, and stepped outside.
The woman followed her as far as the threshold. “There is a convent not more than a hundred paces farther on. It is run by the Sisters of Saint Tekla, and they offer beds and simple fare to pilgrims of all faiths or none.” She gestured vaguely farther along. “If you have no place to stay, I recommend them without reservation.”
“Thank you,” said Cass. “Good-bye.”
“God be with you.”
Cass stepped away quickly and started off down the narrow, meandering street, aware that the woman was watching her until she was out of sight. A few dozen paces later she saw a small red-andwhite sign hanging into the street from its place over a wrought iron gate. The sign read Le couvent des soeurs de Sainte Tekla, and had a cross in the shape of a capital T with crossed palm fronds beneath it. In small letters at the bottom were the words Troisieme section. Another sign in Arabic featured the same crossed palms and capital T. Slowing her pace as she neared the gate, Cass heard children laughing, the sound drifting up over the convent walls. Although she had no intention of asking for a bed in a convent, Cass paused to look through the gate.
She saw a plain, paved stone courtyard surrounding a neat, white church with small stained-glass windows and wide, brown, nailstudded doors. In one corner of the courtyard a handful of young girls were playing some sort of game with an older woman dressed in a voluminous blue gown topped with a long white headscarf- one of the sisters, Cass decided. Two other nuns were sweeping the already clean-swept courtyard with branches of natural green broom bound together around short handles. The scene looked so homely and happy that Cass lingered longer than she intended.
“Puis-je vous aider?”
The voice and face suddenly appearing at the gate startled Cass. She took a step back. “Sorry! No-I was just passing.”
The face was that of a young woman about her own age with large dark eyes and dark hair beneath a tight- fitting white scarf; she was dressed in the habit of the nuns. “Parlez-vous l’anglais?” she asked, her voice rising gently.
“ Oui,” confirmed Cass. “ Mon francais… is… um- est tres petit.”
The nun offered a blithe smile. “Then we speak English together,” she declared in a workmanlike, if heavily French-tinted accent. “Would you like to come in, mon amie?”
The invitation was so kindly and innocently offered that, as the iron gate swung open, Cass found herself stepping into the courtyard. To one side of the church grew a palm tree; a fig tree with broad green leaves shaded a simple wooden bench upon which another nun sat shelling peas into a big brass bowl.
“Welcome to Saint Tekla’s,” said the nun, closing the gate once more. “I am Sister Theoduline.”
“I am glad to meet you, Sister,” replied Cassandra. “Please, call me Cass.” She glanced around the neat yard. “What kind of church is this-if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Non,” replied the sister. “We are not only a church. As you see, we are also a couvent — an order of nuns and some lay sisters. We belong to a Syriac order. Very old. One of the oldest. Would you care to take some refreshment with me?”
“Thank you, no,” declined Cass. “I had some tea at the Zetetic Society.” Then, feeling the need to explain, she added, “Actually, I am just passing through. I won’t be staying.”
“No?” wondered the nun. “That is a pity. Damascus has many wonderful places to visit-including Saint Tekla’s. Come, I will show you.”
Cass spent a pleasant half hour examining the church with its garish icons and, in the buildings behind it, the orderly little school and dormitory.
“We operate an orphanage for girls,” Sister Theoduline explained. “So many children lost their parents in the revolt, and to disease. We have twenty-seven girls with us, and thirty-three more at Ma’aloula, our parent couvent.”
“I see,” replied Cass. “They seem happy here. I am sure you are doing a very good work.”
“Pray God this is so,” agreed the nun. “But caring for orphans is a secondary service, you might say. We were originally charged with aiding and providing hospitality to pilgrims on their way to and from the holy sites here in Damascus and beyond.” She sighed. “We get so few pilgrims these days-times being what they are. If you have nowhere else to go, you are most welcome to stay here with us during your sojourn in Damascus.” She offered a hopeful smile. “It would support our mission simply to have you here.”
Cass thanked her, but said, “I don’t expect to be in Syria very long.”
“Oh, I thought you said you had been visiting the Zetetic Society, n’est-ce pas?”
“I did, yes, but-” She paused, then changed tack. “Excuse me, why do you ask?”
“We have, from time to time, extended hospitality to the society members. They are very fascinating people. If you are with them, you must be fascinating too, I think.”
“I don’t know about that,” replied Cass diffidently. “I’m not really with them-that is, I’m not a member of the society.”
“Oh,” remarked Theoduline. “Forgive my presumption.” Her smile returned instantly. “But you are still very welcome to stay with us if you wish-however long your visit.”
“Thank you,” said Cass. Considering that she had nowhere else to go and no money anyway, she surprised herself by saying, “I think I would like that.”
This pleased the young nun, who offered to show her to a room at once-a small, clean, cell-like apartment with a bed and table, a chair, and a bright Persian rug on the floor beside the bed. On one wall was a plain wooden cross, and on the other a painting of a young woman in a flowing robe, a halo around her head. Cass took one look at the painting and felt her stomach tighten. The young woman in the painting was making her way between two towering walls of stoneunmistakably a canyon.
It was such a vivid depiction of what Cass herself had experienced that she felt an instant connection to the woman; she stepped closer to inspect it in more detail.
Sister Theoduline, who had been instructing her about soap and clean towels, noticed her interest and moved to her side. “That is Saint Tekla,” she explained. “Do you know the story?”
Cass confessed that she did not.
“It is quite interesting,” the sister said, and went on to tell the legend of the Syrian saint who, as a young woman, became a Christian and was baptised by Saint Paul. One day she was being pursued- perhaps by a ruthless suitor because of her exceptional beauty, or perhaps owing to her refusal to abandon her faith and bow to the emperor-the reason was not entirely clear. But having fled into the wild hills, she found her way blocked by a steep impasse of stone. “Tekla offered up a prayer, and miraculously a way opened through the stone-a sentier. You know this word?”
Cass shook her head.
“It is like a path-a small road-a crevasse.”
“I see,” murmured Cass, transfixed by the picture. “A path through the rocks.”
“Oui,” agreed the nun. “Tekla fled into the rocks and disappeared. Her pursuers were never able to find her. Later she returned to establish one of the first churches in Syria. And it is still there,” concluded Theoduline. “It is at Ma’aloula.”
“The same place as the orphanage?”
“The same, yes. It is our mother church.”
“A fine story,” replied Cass, her mind racing freely along trajectories of extreme improbability. Later, after a nap and a ramble through the city, then a simple supper of soup, bread, olives, and hummus, followed by a sung evensong by the nuns and their young charges, Cass retired to her room and ended her eventful day sitting on the edge of her bed and meditating on the painting of the beautiful young Christian fleeing through the canyon of stone. She went to sleep thinking she knew very well the makings of Tekla’s miracle. The neophyte saint had stumbled upon her own Secret Canyon and, like Cass herself, had travelled a Sacred Road to become a World Walker.
