A Lower Deep

I walked the Via Dolorosa at dawn.

Dominated by the TempleMount, called the Haram by the Muslims, the OldCity was split into separate quarters: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian. Churches showed the architectural touches of the Byzantine and Crusader eras. Eight gates in the wall of Suleyman the Magnificent opened to the smell of spices and the sound of meuzzins calling Muslims to prayer.

Along with hundreds of others, I'd spent hours last night outside the hotel watching the firefighters and rescue crews battle the blaze. They carried out the wounded and the dead by the dozens. Someone covered me in a sheet and police questioned me at length. The investigators wouldn't be able to determine that the fire originated in my room. The salamanders had scattered flames all across the building so that it went up simultaneously on several different floors.

They cared a great deal about my passport. Members of the American Consulate appeared and asked more questions and made assurances. I was given a gratis room in a different hotel. Somebody brought me some clothes that didn't fit and Self handed over his poker money so I could get some that did.

Now I stood before the Golden Gate, called the gate of mercy, which is situated on the eastern wall of the TempleMount. It was sealed by the Turks hundreds of years ago because of Jewish tradition that the messiah would return through it after traveling from the east over the Mount of Olives. Now it opened toward the mount and the Garden of Gethsemane. Self stared into the distance as if he could see Jesus walking toward us through all of history.

He sniffed and said, He came this way.

Christ?

Herod. And Griffin.

And Jebediah, I was certain. He wouldn't have been able to pass up this place of murder. King Solomon's Temple stands alongside the Muslim mosque called the Dome of Rock. Archangel Gabriel carried Muhammad to heaven from there. It's also the place where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son. Jebediah would have pressed his forehead to the ground, dreaming of an exposed throat offered before heaven, the curved blade edging into the child's skin.

Power calls to power, blood to blood.

David captured the city from the Jebusites in 1000 B.C. It had been conquered and destroyed by everyone from Nebuchadnezzar to Hadrian. There was more bone in this dust than in any other place in the world, and men like Jebediah could put it to use.

Men like him and me.

Israeli flags flew in the Muslim quarter as Jewish Fundamentalist Nationalists gained a foothold by moving into houses in that part of town. The wailing wall comprises the western retaining wall of Solomon's Temple, the only remaining structure still standing from the original shrine. It is the holiest of sites, say the Jews, for it is there where the living God remains.

I could feel the energy throbbing in the stone, but whether from God or from the shrieking faith of misled men, I didn't know.

North of the Haram is the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows, where Jesus dragged the cross into Calvary. It ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, erected by Constantine, the first Christian Roman Emperor, and built over the site of Golgotha, the place of the skull, where Christ and thousands of other men were crucified. To the east of the church is Gethsemane, in which he was kissed by a betrayer and the soldiers came for him while his disciples slept. Jebediah would like the idea that the land itself was tainted with treachery. In his own fashion, he had quite the Christ-complex. So did I.

The bazaars were already busy, the city awake and bustling, selling meat and vegetables, leather, jewelry, pottery, and perfume. The sun was strong and beat down harshly against my fresh pink skin. There was no wind.

Self kept trying to peek under skirts, the heat working on him as well. His thoughts kept veering, circling through the ages, from hell's bedlam to his growing need to lash his tongue against the succulent wound of a torn thigh. My fingers trembled. Nausea swept in low, and within seconds grew so bad that I nearly doubled over.

I said, Stop, and he merely looked at me.

What's that?

Quit dreaming of blood.

Say again?

Of red bellies…

I'm not.

… and ripped knees, the taste of pale-

I'm not, he said, sounding calm and perhaps even concerned. You are.

My fingers kept twitching as the smiles of women turned toward me and then turned away again. A tic in my neck kept going for another minute as sweat coursed through my regrown eyebrows. The nausea finally faded.

You all right? he asked, looking so much like me that I didn't know where I was- here staring at him or over there gazing back at someone just as familiar.

I glanced into my palm and saw that my new hand had a different lifeline that could barely be seen. I wondered how much of this remade body had been born from him.

Come on, I said.

Not the stations of the cross. They're so friggin' boring. And besides, Golgotha calls.

Of course it does.

I walked the Way of the Cross. Scholars argued the actual path-even if the Via Dolorosa wasn't it, enough blood had been spilled here to make Self overjoyed. He dove and rolled in the streets, licking the ancient stone and drinking eras until his drool was as black as the lost epochs. Like a child let loose in a candy shop, he soon grew sick to his stomach.

This place gives me the creeps.

Me too, actually.

I could almost hear the loud, ugly scraping sound of Christ dragging his cross along these stones toward Golgotha, now the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

There seemed to be as many tourists as there were citizens of the OldCity. Heads bowed, hands clasped, their song swelled for a moment and then droned on.

Emperor Constantine the Great had a church erected on this site in A.D. 325. The buildings were destroyed and rebuilt several times through the centuries. Christians-especially Catholics and Greek Orthodox-believed that Christ was crucified on this spot and buried here. Many Protestants conjectured that Jesus was crucified on the hill near the Garden Tomb and buried nearby.

I don't want to go in there.

You just said that Golgotha calls.

It does. For you, not me.

Are you so sure?

I'm gonna get myself a latte.

The church was vast, with many rooms, chapels, murals, and holy areas. I entered the enormous main building, expecting a vast pulse of divine might, or at least a wave of psychic energy, but there wasn't much of either. Perhaps that meant something, or perhaps not. Maybe at its heart this church was no different from any other in the world. I walked along through the chambers and stood before the Chapel of the Nailing on the Cross, also known as the Eleventh Station.

People roamed and whispered. Tourists videotaped the high walls, the altars, and the other faithful as if expecting them to perform in some way. Here were the meeting of the shallow and the mystical, eyes filled with awe and other vacuous gazes. I didn't know what to expect here or what I might be longing for. Perhaps I'd only come because Danielle had spoken of visiting. It was as honest a reason as any.

A woman knelt at the altar in the chapel. I was about to leave when she turned to me and said, 'Have you no idea where you are?'

'Yes, I do.'