This veteran evangelist in the Middle East describes his first impressions.
The time is 9:30 am. It is just five hours since, rubbing from my eyes the dust of the Sinai desert, I gazed from the carriage window into the gray light of dawn to see for the first time strings of camels, fat-tailed sheep, and squatting patriarchal figures at Ashdod, Gaza, and other places along the great rolling coastal plain.
From the junction at Ludd (ancient Lydda), we have crept painfully up the rocky valley of the Sorek till our train now comes to rest; and on the station I read, with some emotion, the name Jerusalem!
From a bunch of vociferous garrymen clamoring eagerly outside the station gates, I select the one who shouts a little louder than the rest. He seizes my luggage as if in a state of frenzy; then, rising in his seat, he flogs his bony-looking horse into a gallop, till it seems as though the wheels of his antiquated vehicle will collapse in disaster.
Come what may, I am fully resolved not to allow my mind to be distracted from this long-anticipated thrill of entering, for the first time, the most unique and historic city in the world. Even at this moment, the gray walls of Old Jerusalem are distinctly silhouetted against an expanse of spotless blue. Bathed in the rich Palestine sunshine of this lovely spring morning, they appear neither gloomy nor forbidding, but almost genial to the eye.
The cart stops with a flourish, I thank the driver and join the crowd of pedestrians surging in the direction of the Jaffa Gate.
There is no mistaking the contour of this well-known pile of masonry. Above the venerable archway, green bunches of hyssop, rooted securely between the joints in the wall, look down with benign indifference on a never-ending stream of human ants, passing and repassing through the right-angled entrance of the gateway.
Immediately on our right, as we enter the city, we are overshadowed by the massive Citadel of David. One of the towers, known in NT times as Phasael, is said to be among the few landmarks spared by the victorious Titus after his capture of the city in ad 70.
Our eye next alights on the crowd. Never before have we looked upon such a medley of nationalities; inwardly we think of the strange magnetic power of this isolated and non-commercial city, which is still able to draw within its walls such an amazing contrast of humanity.
An Arab porter, dressed in sacking, passes us with straddling gait. His thin legs seem as if they might snap beneath his enormous load. With head and shoulders bent low, he cannot see in advance, but cries mechanically, “Oo-aare,” to clear the way. If his load be too burdensome, his small assistant will walk beside him, cursing the client who has cruelly allotted him such a burden.
Here is a party of Orthodox Jews returning from the Western Wall. Despite the excessive heat, each is dressed in black, and wears one of those wide furry hats from under which hang the distinguishing side curls as an indication that they have not marred the “corner of their beards.” Dignified and sallow of countenance, we read in their dark eyes hidden fires and thoughts of another world and age than ours.
Passing on our right is a group of stately Bedouin from the desert of Transjordan. They are of the better class. The picturesque headdress, the flowing robes, the general poise and aquiline features all seem to remind us of the patriarchs. One of the party is outstanding. Evidently a person of rank, he carries a sword in his girdle instead of the usual concealed dagger. He is every inch a man and knows it. He belongs to a race that has never, in its history, bowed before a conqueror.
The farmers on our left are from Bethlehem or the surrounding villages. They are early birds, these fellaheen, and crowd into the city before most people are awake. Their women are heavily laden with farm produce, while their menfolk drive before them small nimble donkeys, which they direct to the right or left by smart raps on the neck with a stick. Poor little slim-legged, patient animals! They live out their existence merely for the use, or alas, the misuse, of their thoughtless owners.
We enter the narrow stepped Street of David, leading downward from the Citadel area to the Tyropean Valley and heart of the old city. The congestion of pedestrian traffic here is indescribable. A party of docile tourists, led by a voluble guide, partially blocks the stream of traffic.
Here come smiling Abyssinians with their frizzy hair and snow-white teeth, their tall spare figures draped in robes of black. To complete the medley, pass Greek, Latin, and Armenian priests, dressed in white, brown, or black, according to their respective orders; sisters from the convents, Russian pilgrims (women stranded in Jerusalem since the First World War, and living on a mere pittance from the Church), Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, Germans, French, Italians, sleek Arab effendis with their bright red tarbooshes; beggars, mystics, fanatics, veiled Moslem women, hawkers with sweetmeats on their heads, and yelling at the top of their voices; all these and others unnamed rubbing shoulders together as they jostle in this narrow street.
If you stop for a moment to look at some object of interest, you are butted in the ribs by a sack of meal borne by a donkey; and the owner, thinking only of his right of way, cries mechanically, “Oo-are!”
The small shops of the merchants are entirely open to the street. They display an amount of merchandise that is truly amazing, considering the floor space available. They are marvels of compactness and arrangement, their owners sitting or standing amidst the wares, often alone, dealing out produce or handling haggling customers with a calmness born of experience.
Here is a grain shop. We try to escape for a moment from the surging mass of humanity by pressing hard against the shop front. Look at those neat pyramids of peas, beans, vetches, barley, sesame, peanuts, carob beans, wheat, and what-not. It is really astonishing how so many distinct piles of grain can be arranged in so orderly a manner in such a few square yards. Should you care to buy, you will (if the merchant be but ordinarily honest) receive “good measure, pressed down, and running over.” A privileged cat sleeps on a bag of seeds, unperturbed by the noise and din. The merchant himself, fat and with flowing tussore robes, dominates the scene. His shop may be small, but, as he sips with relish his strong cup of Turkish coffee between his acts of salesmanship, it is not unlikely he will be thinking of his two sons studying medicine at the Beirut University. The bank account of some of these merchants, working single-handed, might prove to be surprising.
Reaching the bottom of David Street, we turn sharply to the left, and find ourselves in the suks or markets of the old city. They are narrow and completely arched over, with here and there an aperture admitting shafts of light. The idea, one supposes, in constructing them thus is to ensure shade and coolness in summer, and protection from rain in winter. These human warrens are a never-ending source of interest to the stranger. There is the meat suk (pronounced “sook”), the vegetable suk, the saddlers’ suk, the gold suk, and so on. Instead of avoiding each other’s competition, those of like occupation seem to club together. Apparently there are no trade secrets. For instance, the most delicate jewellery is made before the eyes of the passers-by. The deafening din of hammers indicates where the coppersmiths are at work. The shops are all small, single-roomed, open to the street, and barred and shuttered at night.
We come upon two men making wooden plows, probably similar to those used in the days of Elisha. We shudder as they bring down their adzes to within a fraction of an inch from their bare toes which hold the wood in position. One man wears a special headdress indicating his direct descent from Mohammed.
Here are the butchers’ shops. Carcasses of lamb and mutton are adorned with pink roses and jasmine to catch the eye of the customer. The meat is wholesome, but the older sheep have been too athletic to make good eating. A number of cats crouch a few inches below the meat, waiting for stray fragments to be thrown to them. No one seems to ill treat this favored house pet, except that small kittens not wanted are turned adrift on the streets to be picked up or die of starvation. The dog finds no favor as a pet either with Jew or Gentile.
We now approach the north wall of the city, and soon find ourselves at the famous Damascus Gate, second in importance only to the Jaffa Gate. From this focal point, a road runs due north to Galilee and Damascus. Just outside the city wall, and to the right of the gate is the little mound known as Gordon’s Calvary, believed by many to be the place where the Lord suffered death for the sins of the world. But we will now turn back and traverse the city by another route not so congested as the one through which we have just passed.
The old city is extraordinarily compact. In days when it was not safe to live outside the walls, every foot of space within the city was valuable. In consequence the streets are narrow and the courtyards of the average house are cramped. Many of the streets are partly built over. Everything is of stone. The houses have small, barred windows, narrow stairways and heavy arched doors often thickly studded with iron bolts.
Parts of the old city of Jerusalem form a literal labyrinth of stone, and one wonders how people could ever find their way about. Some of the narrow alleys seem thinly populated, while others teem with life.
Wearied in body, but by no means bored in spirit, we retrace our steps along David Street to our hotel near the Citadel. I fling myself upon a divan, and begin to meditate on the kaleidoscopic events of the day. We have been permitted to see with our own eyes Jerusalem, the so-called Holy City—this city of mixed religious systems, of unreasoning fanaticism and fictitious sites; a city where deceit, trickery, and casual indifference, politeness, hospitality and friendly helpfulness exist side by side; where autocracy, democracy, and priestcraft, seem equally to prosper. We have had a peep at its narrow streets and its restless throng of humanity, a mere glance at the great exterior; the best and the worst we have not yet seen, and, whatever our impressions may have been, we certainly cannot say we have found this either dull or uninteresting.
The time is now 9:30 pm, just twelve hours since we arrived at the railway station outside Jerusalem. Though the day has been strenuous and exciting, one feels, after rest and refreshment, a strong urge to venture from the hotel alone, to view the city from a new perspective, under cover of darkness.
The sun has long since departed amidst a blaze of glory behind the mountains of Judea, and in its place a full moon has climbed from the tops of the Hills of Moab some distance in the eastern sky, flooding the thousand and one flat or domed rooftops, towers and minarets with that weird light which turns the harshness and glare of day into soft beauty, and divides each object into ghostly paleness or mysterious gloom.
What we have seen hitherto was but a turbulent stream of human restlessness. Now we have made contact, as it were, with the very soul of this ancient city. We gaze in awed silence on the scene around. These domes, these walls, these eternal landmarks—what an immense, immeasurable part they have played in the destinies of men, of armies, and of nations!
But where are the crowds in David Street? They seem to have completely vanished. A death-like stillness has descended where before all was noise and confusion. The shops are bolted and barred. The fat merchant in the tussore robes will long since be ensconced at home with his family, counting out the profits of the day. The city seems to be given over to a few police or watchmen, while an occasional pedestrian, hurrying from a neighboring cafe, turns down a cobbled side street and disappears from view.
Two watchmen squat in the gateway. It is chilly, so they warm their hands over a brazier of glowing coals. Imagination takes flight. Two unwitting actors, oblivious, in all probability, to the priceless setting which surrounds them, and of the presence of the spell-bound, one-man audience, have succeeded in doing what the greatest actor longs to do, to enchant and chain the imagination of his audience.
Instantly one’s thoughts leap backward across two millenniums of time to another scene in old Jerusalem, a band of watchmen keeping guard around a fire of coals, before the door of a High Priest’s palace. Behind that door, proud and ruthless fanatics, under the guise of religion, are baiting an innocent and unresisting Victim.
Could it be possible that these huge blocks of beveled masonry had been on guard that night of nights in the world’s history, when the same full moon flooded with its rays these self-same landmarks, and the sacred hollow of Gethsemane at the foot of Olivet, still wet with tears; that night of nights, too, when the little skull-like knoll outside the north wall was awaiting its wondrous morrow, and the bloodstains from the middle cross—“precious blood,” which alone could cancel man’s guilt, and free him from the penalty of sin?
Unwilling to risk a challenge by remaining overlong beside the chink in the door, I steal reluctantly from the shadows, and, slipping silently through the streets to my lodgings, fall asleep, thinking of the Lord who once traversed the streets of Old Jerusalem when He came to “seek and to save that which was lost.”
—excerpted from Palestine, Land of My Adoption, pp. 11-19