This is a contribution that appeared in This Week in Palestine June 2013 issue entitled My Friend and My Neighbour. Dr. Bernard Sabella PLC Member My friend and neighbor, Ahmed, is a pious Moslem. He prays daily and he goes regularly to the Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers to be with the thousands others who come from all over Jerusalem and Palestine. With this neighbor and friend I always feel that there are no Christian, Moslem, Jewish and Armenian Quarters in the Old City for he always gives me the feeling that Jerusalem is one belonging to all who want to live in it in good neighborliness. Ahmed prides himself, like I do, that he educated his children, both girls and boys, in the best of the “Christian” private schools and there are a score of these for boys and girls within and around the Old City. His children and mine became friends at school; played basketball and volleyball together and frequented the same youth clubs. They took part together in the folkloric dance groups, choirs and other musical events of their schools. They, the children, invited each other to their birthdays and other happy occasions. After school, they often shared the culinary delights that are found in popular restaurants in the streets of the Old City. Not that they did not like the food or sweets prepared by their mothers but the spirit of companionship, humor and togetherness won over. When it was time for them to enter the “marriage cage” they consulted with each other on the best practices to follow and shared their experiences. They also intensely discussed what careers to follow and which universities to go to for further professional advancement. Jerusalem is not simply the holy shrines of the different religious traditions; it is the people who make the city what it is. A visitor, whether tourist or pilgrim, usually misses the complexity of the relationships across Quarters as she/he never shares the living experiences of people like Ahmed. With the limited time and a heavy itinerary of visits to holy and unholy places, the visitor may find it more expedient to rely on generalizations and stereotypes. The tourist guide, whether local or international, becomes the coach to an understanding, albeit flawed, of the city and its different communities. The Old City of Jerusalem has always prided itself of the very good relations that particularly brought together its different inhabitants. At a certain time, the “old” Moslem families of Jerusalem developed special relationships with the different Christian and Jewish communities. Like the Christians who originally resided near the Holy Sepulcher and other holy places in the Old City, hence the Christian Quarter; the “elite” Moslem families originally lived close to Al Haram Al Sharif Compound and with them hundreds of other Moslem families; hence, the Moslem Quarter. The higher the status of a family the closer it lived to the Compound. Near the Western Wall, Jews chose to make their residence for the expediency of worship and reverence; hence, the Jewish Quarter. The Armenians, with their Church founded in Armenia in 301, had had a presence in the city since the 5th century. By early 14th Century, the Armenian Quarter was well established on Jerusalem’s maps. I am much impressed with the narrative of Khalil Sakakini, a Palestinian Christian educator prior to 1948 when he related how he hid Jews at his home during the First World War when the Ottoman authorities sought to jail them. But Khalil like the rest of us Palestinians became despondent with the developments and eventual dispossession wrought on our people by the insistence of Zionists to create an exclusive state on our lands. Ahmed keeps reminding me that in the earlier part of the twentieth century it was customary for Christians of the city to take part in cleaning the Aqsa Mosque and the Mosque of the Rock. It is a privilege that symbolized inter-religious openness and communal togetherness. I remind Ahmed of the fact that the keys to the Holy Sepulcher are in the hands of an “old elite” Moslem family of Jerusalem that is trusted for opening and closing the Church by the thirteen Christian Heads of Churches that are present in Jerusalem. I remember as a child the great fire of the Holy Sepulcher that took place in the late forties, in 1949 to be exact. Moslem and Christian merchants and nearby residents hurried to the Church in order to extinguish the fire and to evacuate the injured. The fifties of the last century also bring back memories of the experience of the Jerusalem families, both Christian and Moslem, who ended up refugees from the Western part of the city in 1948. As they coped with the refugee experience, they sought to recreate the social life that was in the Western part of the city and they continued for a decade or so after 1948 to visit each other on special occasions, on the religious feasts and on New Year. But many of the Jerusalem refugee families that made up its social, economic and cultural life before 1948 ended up settling up in Amman, Jordan then a small and developing town while others opted to leave for more distant destinations thus carrying their memories and remembrances of the city with them. Those of us, who remain adamant to stay put in our city of roots, always fall back to the social and communal bonds that make of Jerusalem a livable place. As we rub shoulders with each other in the streets and narrow alleys of the Old City, we are aware that we share the history of the city with its different experiences and perspectives. We insist, in spite of the many challenges and problems facing Arab Palestinians, both Moslems and Christians, as the result of the Israeli occupation of the Eastern part of the city, to keep going and to model our lives on the example set by Ahmed and his grown up offspring. It is true that the times in Jerusalem are achanging with a population soon to approach a million and with politics still undetermined about the future of the city and its social, economic and cultural disparities dividing its two parts. But in spite of these changes and challenges, it is people like Ahmed that link us to the past and propel us to the future. I was particularly touched by Ahmed when I told him recently about an appeal I wanted to launch on Facebook for the liberation of two kidnapped bishops in Syria. He said that I should mention that he too appeals to the kidnappers and that he prays for the freedom of the two bishops. This is the Jerusalem in which I live and this is the city I want my children and all other children to inherit from our generation. Ahmed’s openness, expressions and behavior remind me that I am, as a Palestinian Christian, an integral part of the city of Jerusalem. Another Moslem friend told me in response to the Facebook appeal that he could not imagine Jerusalem without the presence of Christians in it. These are lofty sentiments that remind me of a statement made by the late Nicola Ziadeh in his book Christianity and the Arabs as he strove to show some of the Arab origins of Christianity and, the affinities that tied Christian Arabs to Muslim Arabs: “I and Jeries and Tannous and Shanoudah (these are Arab Christian names) are inheritors of one Arabic and Islamic civilization. We have worked, at a certain period, to build its foundations. We are the children of the earth where this civilization grew. We are as much Arab as other Arabs who inhabit this land. Yes, this is our civilization which was started some six thousand years ago, at least." (Ziadeh, Nicolas, Christianity and the Arabs, Fourth Edition, Sinbad, October 2002, pp.256-257.)
Posted on: Thu, 30 May 2013 22:12:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015