the dry leaf fall for its breakfast. Other birds squabbled and gossipped in the fronds of a palm tree, an eagle rode the heating air high over our heads, a pair of lizards came out to bask on the rocks, and once I caught a glimpse of a turbanned head passing by on the track on the opposite rim of the wadi. I could begin to understand the appeal of a monk’s cell in the desert. If only the vow did not include obedience…
Breakfast was bread and sour milk and dried apricots, and afterwards we went for a final interview with the abbot. He greeted us by holding out a letter.
“This is to my brethren in the monastery in Jerusalem. Would you please see that the abbot there receives it?”
“Certainly,” said Holmes, tucking it inside his robe.
“In it I mention the two of you. As you appear, shall I say, rather than as you are. It is possible you may need assistance in the city. That letter will ensure that you receive it.”
“Thank you, Abbot.”
“I wish you good hunting, my son. I shall pray for you.”
“Thank you.”
“And you, my silent daughter. Uncharacteristically silent, I suspect.” The gleam in the old man’s eyes was unmistakable now; it was nearly a twinkle. “I give you my blessing.”
I hated to disappoint him, but I had to tell him gently, “I am not a Christian, Abbot Mattias.”
“God does not mind, my child. He was, after all, your God before He was ours.”
“In that case I accept your blessing, with thanks.”
“And now you have before you a long and dusty walk. I have arranged safe passage for you. Not, I fear, an armoured vehicle; you will have to walk. However, you need not worry about being seen by your enemy. Gasim!” he called.
The door behind him opened and a Bedouin came in, looking enough like Ali to be a younger brother. “This is Gasim ibn Rahail.” the abbot told us in Arabic. “His people are on their way up to Jerusalem. You will go with them. Gasim, these are my friends. Care for them as brothers.”
“Your word, Holy Father,” the young man said, and gave us a grin that made me wonder if he spoke in mockery. It was, however, merely affection untempered by awe, and it suited us very well. We took our leave of Abbot Mattias and his monastery, and turned our faces, at long last, to Jerusalem.
EIGHTEEN
?
—
BAEDEKER’S
,
1912 EDITION
We came to the city in the afternoon, climbing up the dusty road from Jericho in the company of six tents of Bedouins, ten camels, and an uncountable number of goats and fat-tailed sheep. The Bedu chose to stop the night on an over-grazed flat to the east of the city near a well called the Apostle’s Spring, the water of which was possessed of numerous small red wriggling creatures. After we had drunk a final cup of coffee with the sheikh (Gasim’s father), been presented with all his camels, goats, and horses, given our own meagre possessions to him in return, then reciprocally given back each other’s gifts with lengthy and painfully gracious protestations of unworthiness, we thanked him for his hospitality by declaring our worthless selves his slaves for eternity, and finally took our leave.
Walking towards the setting sun, we came to the Mount of Olives, a great sprawl of tombs and gravestones, and there at our feet lay Jerusalem.
She is a jewel, that city, small and brilliant and hard, and as dangerous as any valuable thing can be. Built in the Judean hill country at the meeting place of three valleys—the Kidron, the Hinnom, and the long-buried Tyropoeon—Jerusalem had moved uphill from the year-round spring that had made her existence possible. When I first laid eyes on her, some of her structures were already thousands of years old. It was 401 years since the Turks took the city, 820 years since the Crusaders under Godfrey of Bouillon had slaughtered every Moslem and Jew within the walls (and a good number of unrecognised native Christians as well), eighteen and a half centuries since the Romans had last razed her stones to the ground, and still she rose up within her snug, high walls, a nest of stone set to nurture the holy places of three faiths, a tight jumble of domes, minarets, and towers, dominated from this side by the flat expanse of the Temple Mount, the holy place called by Arabs Haram es-Sherif, the largest open space in the city, a garden of worship set with tombs and mosques and the enormous, glittering, mosaic and gilded glory of the Dome of the Rock.
Built towards the end of the seventh century, the Dome of the Rock cost its builders the equivalent of seven years’ revenue from all of Egypt. It is constructed as an octagon of three concentric stages, at the heart of which lies the Rock, an uneven grey slab some forty-five feet by sixty. If Jerusalem is the
Beyond the Haram es-Sherif, the city itself clusters close, all whitewashed domes and pale golden stone. A soft breeze came up, and I watched as her colours deepened with the approach of night. When the sun lay behind her, despite the scurry of lorries and the dust and the smoke of the evening fires, she took my breath away, that city. There were tears in my eyes and a psalm on my lips, and for the first time I knew why Jews, as one, declare that we will meet “next year in Jerusalem.”
The sun had gone and the lights were up before I recalled my companion, seated near me on the stone wall smoking his pipe.
“Holmes—I’m so sorry, you must be famished. It was just so beautiful.”
“Quite.”
“And the moon will be over it before long…” I said wistfully.
He stood up and smacked his pipe out against his boot. “We don’t have to be in the city until tomorrow,” he said impatiently. “I shall find someone to sell us our supper. All my life I have wanted nothing better than to spend a night amongst the tombs on Olivet.” I ignored the sarcasm: it was a gracious gift, if churlishly given. I sat and waited for the moon to climb, peripherally aware of the night noises, pilgrims returning late from the Jordan, the occasional army lorry grumbling its way towards Bethlehem, the jackals and donkeys to which I was now so accustomed blending with the calls of the
