Jerusalem

8 October 2012
I am sitting at a cafe in the Old City just inside the Damascus Gate.
It's Sukkot and being a Jewish holiday no buses, well no Jewish buses to the Dead Sea are running so we have an extra day to chill. This cafe is the only one in the whole old city that we have found that serves alcohol, so we are enjoying a bottle of 2008 Gamla Cabernet Sauvignon from the Golan Heights and watching the world go by. To our right and less than 3 metres from me are 4 Israeli soldiers in full battle kit touting automatic weapons, some with sub machine guns. Most of them look under 20 years old. They are rather bored and spend most of their time on their cell phones. All the shop keepers and fruit sellers are Arabs and so are all the customers, mostly women in long dark coats with coloured headscarves. The younger girls wear jeans and long tops but hardly any of them show their hair. Young Arab men have a uniform of trainers jeans and t-shirts and smell of cheap aftershave .  They spend a lot of time in the barbers' shops, getting just-so haircuts involving at least 3 different lengths of clipper and loads of gel. A steady stream of Orthodox Jews pass by on their way to the Western Wall to pray. They don't dawdle around here at all, as if they would rather not mix with the riff-raff, but have no other choice if they want to get to the Holiest of Places. Some read the Torah as they walk . Mostly dressed all in black, suits or silky long coats that look like dressing gowns, they have ringlets of hair on either side of the face and knotted strings dangling from their waists. Some just wear yamulkahs, but others have black top hats or round fur hats perched on top of their heads. They rush by to the sound of the Islamic Messuin calling the Moslems to prayer. The Christian locals are less common.  Nuns, Francician monks in brown friars habits and Greek or Russian Orthodox priests with beards and black robes. The groups of Christian pilgrims don't tend to come this way or use this gate much. They stick to the route through the old city called the Via Dolorosa; the route Jesus is believed to have taken carrying the cross up to Calvary ;now the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulche. They are in groups, many singing or praying as they make the journey. There are groups from all the Western European countries with their comfortable walking shoes and cameras but there are a far greater number of Asian Christian groups from countries like the Phillipines, India and South Korea. The Eastern Euroeans from places like Russia and all the Stans, have come in their Sunday Best and battle along the crowded cobblestone paths in high heels, carrying glitzy handbags. The African pilgrims wear brightly coloured robes depicting biblical scenes or fake priests robes. Some pilgrims carry big wooden crosses, which can be hired for the day.
 It's a truely amazing place; the meeting point and holiest of sites for the 3 great Monotheistic Religions of the World. Jerusalem should be a place of peace and tolerance and mutual respect for the fellow human beings we meet. The respective religions teach this, but sadly this is not the case. I have only been in Jerusalem 4 days, so what do I really know about it ? The keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulche are held by a Muslim family to stop in-fighting amongst the Christian Denominations claiming rights to it. Muslims and Jews don't live in the same suburbs or even ride on the same buses if they can help it. It's a public holiday today for Jews and the Jewish busses are not running but the Muslim busses are, and the Muslim kids had school today. We saw man with a yamulkah spit at the feet of a Christian priest outside the tomb of David and groups of Muslim school kids scream deliberately outside churches where services are taking place.
And then there's the military presence everywhere and the wall and check points, which send a clear message. And the fact that Jews and Christians can't enter the Temple Mount. It seems sadly like a situation without a solution. And yet somehow we love it, with all the chaos and litter and diversity. There's no place like this anywhere in the World, so I am going back to my wine and my view of life passing by.