1

Public Announcement
August 11, 2000: U. S. Department of State
Israel and the Occupied Territories

The U. S. Government believes there is an increased possibility of terrorist attacks in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. While there is no reason to believe there is a specific threat directed against Americans, the U. S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and the Consulate General in Jerusalem urge all Americans to increase their vigilance with respect to their security. American citizens in Israel should be alert to their surroundings and be cautious when using public transportation and when in the vicinity of bus stops and crowded areas.

2

Five of us perch, oversized birds, on the balustrade before our Israeli guide from the Rent-a-Guide Professional Guide Services, who told us when he picked us up at the hotel, "You can call me Sol."

The Golden Dome looms behind him, and because today is a holy day and the Temple Mount teems with tourists, I think this may be one of those crowded areas the State Department had in mind.

But I don't say anything.

Since the other four are from Dublin, London, and Cardiff, Wales, they're probably not in danger anyway.

And I couldn't get a word in even if I wanted to since Sol has been expounding without pause for twenty minutes.

3

Sol gestures, educating us about the stone below the blotchy gold dome.

"It is at the heart of Jerusalem and at the heart of the Arab-Israeli controversy. Here Adam and Eve is created from dust."

I reach down and fmger the red brown dirt at our feet, and I'm glad Adam and Eve didn't have the blue-white wormy complexions of Renaissance oil paintings after all.

"And when God throws Adam and Eve out of Eden, they land here. They are coming here to weep over their loss sometimes. Here Cain is killing Abel, and to this rock Abraham takes Isaac. Of course, Muslims believe Abraham don't take Isaac but Ishmael, the ancestor of Mohammad,to the sacrifice. But whichever-" He shrugs. "Both is saved in the nick of time."

He flails his arm toward the dome and barrels on. "This is where the tablets of Moses is brought, where God appears to King David, and where Solomon builds the First Temple in 950 B.C. E. And it is from that rock Mohammad is riding to Heaven on his winged horse. No Jew in all the world is giving permission to barter away that sacred rock. No Arab will let it go."

As we sit in docile silence facing the dome and dutifully listening, a man in a soiled white shirt and broken wing-tip shoes sidles up and murmurs something. Sol answers in the same language. I recognize a couple of words my Saudi students often used in their pre-class banter.

Sol turns to us to explain. "He is Arab. He wants me to tell you that Muslims and Jews is the same Semite stock and that Israel and Palestine is the same land. He is saying that the Temple Mount, which the Muslims callHaram aI-Sharif, the Noble Enclosure, also belongs, in truth, to thePalestinians."

The man nods and beams. He and Sol speak for another minute, andthen he shakes hands with Sol before he walks off.

"Weren't you speaking Arabic?"

Sol shrugs. "I speak many languages."

"But doesn't having a common language give you a chance to agree on the rock?"

"You foreigners." He scowls at me. "You think there is a solution. Your Sadat, Your Disraeli, your Jimmy Carter and Clinton-they think it can be solved."

Everything has a solution."

He gestures toward the achingly brilliant Dome of the Rock. "To this there is no solution."

4

"Today we drive along the coast to the ruins of Caesarea. Everyone has the hat?" Sol revs the air-conditioner, guns the van from the hotel parking lot, and comers into a street of high walls covered with bougainvillea. "Since there is only five of you, I show you more than if your tour adds to fifty."

Only five of us. Megan and Rory, young lovers from London and Dublin, a married Welsh couple-Elizabeth and James-along with me, an American from the southwest.

"Is this group small because tourists are afraid to come to Israel?" Megan asks.

"Tourist seasons come and go." Sol shrugs. "August is not the good time for tourists."

It's actually the hottest August in fifty years. A real sharav, the Jerusalem Post says, with temperatures reaching 45° centigrade. I'm not sure what 45° equals in Fahrenheit, but I'll accept that it's hot.

Sol accelerates past elegant stone residences on the Jerusalem hills, most of which have swimming pools. "Ahead is Tel Aviv, the largest city in Israel. The low buildings is Jaffa. It is old and Arab dirty, but it is the seaport since the Phoenician times."

Bathers stroll along the sand at high tide and they seem to be walking on water.

The beach, white stone skyscrapers, that somehow resemble those in Miami, and palms flicker by.

Sol says, "There is nothing in the towns to see, but in the Jaffa harbor is the stone where Jonah sails and when he is out to sea he gets swallowed by the whale. It is also the rock where Andromedea is chained to be the sacrifice to the sea monster before the time of Moses. She is saved by Perseus."

"Oh, great. Just what we need, another dual function stone," Rory whispers.

His Irish lilt echoes what I'm thinking, and I tum and smile at him.

"See there is the marina for the yachts. Mine is there," Sol says. "But nothing interesting is in Tel Aviv. People make money, watch TV and play the video games."

He glances at me in the rearview mirror. "Just like in your American cities."

5

Soon, another city whizzes past, and Sol says over his shoulder, "That is Netanya where they cut the diamonds. In Israel is the best diamond cutters in the world."

He checks his Rolex. "On the way back, we will have time to stop, and I will get you the good price from my Arab friend at the diamond factory."

Then, almost immediately, he says, "Ah, here is the outskirts of Caesarea. See the Roman aqueduct for bringing the water to the city. It is built before the time of Jesus."

He jolts to a stop, and the Mediterranean looms an intense blue beyond the balanced, fitted stones of ancient Roman arches, over which -hopefully-there will be no dispute.

Sol pauses only a few seconds before he whirls back onto the blacktop, makes a ninety-degree turn onto a road through an avocado grove, and emerges at a bone white parking lot.

"Put on the hats. We don't want to make a sunstroke. Here you buy cold water for a dollar a bottle." He starts his lecture while we scramble from the van. "A camel travels twenty miles in a day. But the camel needs food and drink, and the Phoenicians realize ships is cheaper and faster, so they build ships and Caesarea becomes the biggest port on the Mediterranean."

He proffers our tickets to the Arab attendant as he talks. "In the time of Jesus, when Rome puts King Herod on the throne, he builds a great city here. But he is not stupid. He knows where his bread is buttered, so he names the city after Augustus Caesar. For six hundred years, Caesarea is the residence of the governors. Here is Pontius Pilate, the governor when Jesus is brought to be judged." He stops before a slab of rock.

'Pontius Pilate' is carved in the stone, and Rory, an Irish Catholic, studies it with awe.

Then Sol says, "It is not the real stone of course. The real stone they don't want to end up with the graffiti, so they make the cast of it and put the original in the museum in Jerusalem."
I watch Rory's enthusiasm evaporate since Pontius Pilate plaques could well be cast for Disneyland.

But I don't say anything as Sol leads us to a row of broken columns, torsos, and a huge marble foot.

"See how there is no heads." He puts a hand companionably on the shoulder of a headless figure. "In the Middle East, it is the custom to behead the captives. Then to knock the heads off the statues. To lose the head is to lose the brain and the power. So the victors don't want to take no chances, not even with marble statues."

The stone torsos also lack hands and penises, the symbolic power to act and reproduce, but he doesn't point that out as he wanders off to talk to the Arab attendant. I think that it's no wonder beheading and displaying severed heads on pikes have remained favorites for executioners the world over, and as I stand before the maimed marble statues whose extremities must have been difficult to crack off, I see that the mind-set of the conqueror has always been the same.

6

Sol comes back and herds us away from the broken marble pieces toward the Roman amphitheatre.

The semicircular stage with its back to the sea holds lighting equipment, amplifiers, folding chairs, and miles of black extension cords.

"See. There is the rock concert tonight. The Romans build the theatre so the sound bounces off the water and is good for every seat."

So the noise will be deafening.

No one says that and Sol takes up his guide lecture again.

"In 646, Caesarea falls to the Persians, then the Persians lose it to the Crusaders, who rebuild the ruined city as a fortress to attack Jerusalem. When the Christian knights capture Jerusalem, they don't make the distinction between the Arabs and the Jews, of course, so they slaughter everyone. The streets run with blood up to the knees of the horses."

7

"Our next stop is Megiddo, a ruin older than Caesarea. It is not interesting. But since it is on the list the tour promises you, I give you what the tour people promise."

Rory whispers to me from the back seat, "Did you notice Sol uses present tense no matter how far in the past things happened?"

"I think the past is the present here."

Sol drives with one hand and lectures over his shoulder. "Megiddo is known as Armageddon. It is the ruin of twenty-five to thirty cities, all destroyed and rebuilt. It is mentioned eight times in the Bible, and Revelations says that when the fmal battle is coming, it will be at Armageddon, at Megiddo. Centuries ofmen prays here. Seventeen altars is being found on the same holy rock. Here we are. Everybody out."

The sun on twenty-five layers of holy rock is searing.

"The oldest discoveries is 3300 B. C. E. in the Bronze Age, and at the sixteenth level, King David is fighting his battles. Here stands the great palaces for the kings and the stables for four hundred horses."

We start up the path, and I see broken pottery everywhere. Sol stops beside me. "The archeologists discard insignificant shards. Take what you want."

So I gather pottery fragments that could be from the American southwest. Among them is a small clay sphere fired to the consistency of stone. I pick it up and roll it in my palm. "Look at this, Sol. It doesn't have a hole so it's not a bead, but what do you think it is?"

He studies it before he spills it back into my hand. "It is a marble or a counter. Maybe for poker or the roulette. For a game. Like now."

Like typical Americans in typical American cities. Or typical Israelis in typical Tel Aviv. Making money, watching TV, playing games. While waiting for Armageddon

8

"In Meggido Ahab, the husband of Princess Jezebel, has the headquarters, and here Josiah, last heir of the House of David, is killed. Most important battles in Israel is being fought on this spot, and maybe Solomon brings some of his thousand wifes here."

James lowers his camera and looks aghast at Sol. "Solomon had a thousand wives?"

"He marries all the daughters of the neighboring kings to bring peace to Israel."

"Maybe somebody should try that today," Rory murmurs.

Sol ignores him.

9

Sol drives away from Megiddo while he talks over his shoulder. "Remember. The important city must have three things. It must survive the conquerors, it must have the water, and have the marketplace. Megiddo sits on a tel, a hill, beside a spring so the people can have water during the many sieges and they can watch for the invaders. It is also the crossroads of the Via Marius and the Perfume Road. For centuries, the Arabs is bringing spices and perfumes and silks from the East to this place to trade."

He gestures toward another ruin of a village on a dry hill. "All the goods that Marco Polo thinks he is fmding, the Arabs have been selling for years already. The Arabs know the routes across the desert and the watering places for the camels, so for centuries they have the monopoly. Under the Roman Empire, the Arab gains great wealth. But the Arab don't know nothing. He don't know what to do with his money, so he builds the fine palaces along the route at the oasis sites. Then the Roman merchants know to follow the palaces from one watering hole to the next, and they don't need the Arab to bring the silks and the cinnamons any longer."

He shrugs and presses the accelerator. "It don't pay to show off your wealth."

James selects a camera from those around his neck and photographs the dry landscape while the rest of us look out the van windows.

None of us mentions the Rolex.

10

Sol takes us to an Arab cafe that serves falafel, pickles, olives, tomato and cucumber slices, boiled eggs, goat-cheese, and pita with black-bean paste and hummus, and as we finish eating, he beams. "You like this food?

You are now ready for the good Arab coffee?"

He signals the owner without waiting for a response, and the two of them speak loud Arabic while waiters scurry to collect the empty plates.

"He sometimes sails on my yacht with me." Sol nods toward the Arab. "The coffee is the best here. Like the Bedouin coffee you get in the desert. Each Bedouin has his own secret recipe of coffee beans, ginger, cinnamon boiled to the right consistency."

The smiling Arab who sails with Sol returns from the kitchen with a plate of dates and a tray of tiny cups the size of those in a doll tea set.

Sol says, "The Bedouin serves you sweet tea when you come into his tent to show that your coming is sweet. He serves bitter coffee before you leave to show that it is bitter for him to have you go." He deals out the cups. The black-brown liquid has the consistency of paint and tastes like boiled pine bark. A fme grit coats my teeth with the first swallow, and on the fourth mouthful, I reach the sludge. But I manage one more sip.

Sol is savoring his coffee. "Good, yes?" But fortunately he turns to Elizabeth and James before I have to answer. "And you are both teachers? My degree in archeology-how do you say in English-qualifies me to teach, but conducting the tours pays more, so I do that for thirty years. It is the only way to get the yacht and the good watch."

"Teaching is hard and underpaid all right," James agrees.

"And half the children we get aren't teachable," Elizabeth says.

I haven't mentioned that I'm a professor, but I can't let that pass, and I take a breath. But Sol frowns and says before I can open my mouth, "That is not true. Sometimes damage keeps the child from learning. But 90% of all children can be taught."

I look at him. "You're including Arab children in that 90%?"

He takes a date, and I notice that his eyes are the same shade of glossy brown.

"Of course the Arab children," he says.

11

We wait under a pomegranate tree for James to take a photo. The red/orange fruit hangs low, brushes my shoulder, and I run a finger over the rind as hard and unyielding as a nut.

Sol comes up. "This is the pomegranate. It is not good until November, December, during Chanukah. Did you know that this year, 2000, the Christian Christmas, the Muslim Id-EI-Fitr, and the Jewish Chanukah is falling together?"

"I didn't know that."

"It happens only once in forty years." He digs a thumbnail into the pomegranate shell and pries it open. "When the fruit is ripe, the seeds is red as rubies. Now they show yellow and they don't taste like nothing." He tosses the fruit away.

James joins us and as Sol ushers us to the van, he says, "There is the dispute where is Eden, but I say 'Why not here?' The twenty thousand square miles of Israel has the four climates. The Mediterranean seashore, the desert, mountains with snow, and jungles for every kind of animal and plant. We have enough animals for Noah's Ark and enough fruit for the Garden of Eden. Some people is saying the fruit in the Garden of Eden is the apple, but I say why not the pomegranate."

12

Sol is saying, "I am Jewish, but I know well all religions, and I know that traditions have lifes of their own. I am guide for thirty years, and I do not dispute beliefs or practices."

Elizabeth looks up from the guidebook she thumbs through as he talks. "But you were trained as a teacher. How can you not educate?"

He looks in the rearview mirror. "Some people get educated, some not. I tell the traditions that make good sense, but-"

He shrugs.

"The Torah says not to eat pig, not to eat rabbit. In ancient days when cooking is hard, when to boil the meat you drop the hot stone in a basket of water, pork is not getting done, and the people is dying of trichinosis. In those days you skin a rabbit, a bone goes in your fmger, you get tularemia and die. So it is not good to eat pig or rabbit."

"Those don't exactly sound like acts of faith," Rory says.

Sol shrugs again. "It is the same in much of Jewish law. We do the shiva for the week after the person dies, and then we go to the grave a year later, after a year of the shabon. It is good for the family to take something to the grave to show respect. But when the poor cannot take the flowers or the gifts and still feed the children, then the families don't go to the graveyard. So the High Priests say to take a stone to the grave instead of expensive presents. Everyone can pick up the rock and obey the law, so it becomes the remembrance. That is the act of faith."

13

"The world's three important religions is coming together in the Holy Land, but Mohammad don't actually start here. Jesus does, so today we go see where he is beginning. We go first to Zippori, the town were the mother of Mary lives in the first century B.C.E."

The dirt road is narrow and twisting, but Sol accelerates with his usual nonchalance and whirls with his usual speed into the parking lot.

He ushers us to an excavation site. "When the Jews rebel against the Romans in 70 A.D., Zippori don't join the revolt. The Romans defeat the rebels and destroy Jerusalem and Herod's Second Temple, but they spare Zippori. He gestures toward the site. "Later earthquakes is destroying the city, but the earthquake don't act hard on cities like the conqueror."

Each reconstructed mosaic floor has geometric designs or scenes of birds and fish.

"The artisans who make the mosaics in the time of Jesus don't tint the stones. They use the stones of different colors."

He speaks briefly to the Arab guard near the roped-off paving before he leads us to a barny structure protecting the ruins of a synagogue.

We walk around the scaffolding and look down at the floor glowing with chips of malachite, coral, turquoise, and jasper.

"Here is the most famous mosaic of all the Zippori mosaics. It shows the Dionysian wine feast. Wine is the important ingredient in the Jewish celebrations, and you must drink enough so you are not telling the good guys from the bad guys." He gestures toward the floor. "See. In the center is the 'Mona Lisa of Galilee'"

14

"Look, here is the date palms. This grove belongs to the kibbutz where my son, who is colonel in the army, is stationed. We stop for a moment at the gate to the kibbutz. The date palm takes fifty years to make the dates."

Then he points beyond the dates toward a great field of prickly-pear cactus. "And this is the sabra."

Hundreds of plants display flattened oblong cactus pads that each support a row of spiny pears along their crests. The thousands of pricklypears are turning purple.

"The sabra is delicious, but you have to know how to peal it." He gives us his rearview mirror smile. "This is what the first generation of Israelis born after the war is called. We are the Sabra. Hard and spiny on the outside, but sweet on the inside."

He drives into a parking lot and stops beside a dusty Arab on a bench with ajar of water filled with cactus pears. The Arab watches us climb down from the van into the heat.

Sol says something to him, then turns to us. "There is nothing to see here, but we stop so he can peal you the sabra. A shekel apiece. As I say, it is very sweet, and his fruit is the best in the area."

15

"No matter what the tour book says, Nazareth is not like in the time of Jesus. The sacred
places is once in the old city, but through the centuries the Arabs is covering them up. Then the
Christians come and build churches over the sacred sites, so now you can't see nothing."

He honks at pedestrians on the narrow streets.

They skip nimbly out of the way.

"But I show you where the Angel Gabriel is appearing to Mary."

He gentles the van down an incline of the cobbled street as if it's a horse. "There is the church over the site, but it is not interesting except for-how do you say in English?-the steeple."

16

"Here is the fountain that brings water from springs into the city. Once there is three springs, but now only one. And you cannot drink the water." He pulls close to the ornate columns and bolts upright. "Look at that! What is he doing here?"

He's staring at a lithe young man pulling a green plastic bucket from the pool. Water splashes over the pail rim as he carries it to a silver Mercedes parked on the sidewalk.

"He is the Palestinian spy for the Israelis. I know him. He is the greatest thief in all of Israel. He brushes by you and you don't feel nothing, but your watch and your wallet and your gold rings-all is missing." He quickly checks to see that his Rolex is still on his wrist. "He is hired by the
Israeli government to tell what is going on in the West Bank, and it don't matter how many complaints the police get about missing money or the stolen passports, he goes right back to the street."

The young man has stunning dark eyes, tightly curling black hair, and the chiseled features of a Byzantine icon. He concentrates on pouring water over the Mercedes hood.

Sol's stare bores into him. "Even ifhe don't know what the Arabs do on the West Bank, he gives the information to the Israelis anyway. And they pay him for that lying."

He eases the van by the young Palestinian. "Now I take you to the Church of the Annunciation. It is the only church ever built for Christians by Jews."

"Why would they do that?" Megan looks slightly shocked.

He gives her his scowl. "It is not for the faith. It is for the money. But what does it matter why it is built? It gives the Christians something to see where nothing is before. And the stained glass windows is very nice."

17

"Today we go into Arab territory to reach Bethlehem, but we don't stop at the checkpoints. Checkpoints is for Palestinians. The Palestinian cars has the different license plates, and all the Arab cars is old. That Toyota is Arab, the Lexus is Israeli."

We hurtle past the guards in their booth at the border. Two darkskinned young men stand side by side with automatic rifles over their shoulders, and they look exactly alike in their khaki uniforms except for their different colored berets. They're laughing at something one of them has just said, and their teeth are white and straight in their tanned faces.

"One is Israeli, one is Palestinian," Sol says as we speed by.

I glance back, but the dust obscures the checkpoint and the two identical young men.

18

"Here is Bethlehem. It is more clean than most Arab towns, but it is still the Arab town."

He doesn't slow down as we curve into a cobbled street and park. "Ruth and Boaz live in Bethlehem, so their great-grandson, David, has to be born and anointed king here. The early Christians want to make Jesus fit the family tradition of the line of David, so he too must come from Bethlehem."

He points toward a church facade. "There is the Church of the Nativity. It is being built in the fourth century by Queen Helen, the mother of Constantine, over the manger where the Christians decide Jesus has to be born."

We crane toward the square, packed tight with tourists. They're dripping with sweat.

"When the Persian troops come to Bethlehem in 614, they burn the churches. But they spare this church of Helen's because they think the mosaics of the Magi is pictures from Persian myths."

He locks the van and nods at a young Arab boy to watch it.

"We don't start early enough today," he says morosely as we reach the square. "It will be two, three hours before these tourists enter the church. So I go ask the favor. The Arab guard here is the friend of mine."

"Isn't breaking into a queue at bit unchristian?" Megan says softly.

"I think here it's traditional," I say.

19

Sol goes to consult with the uniformed Arab on the stone steps and within minutes the guard leads us around the church and through a narrow wooden door into a twilit nave.

Sol edges us neatly into line.

Immediately we're hemmed in by the mass of tourists ahead and behind us.

Guards peer into the crowd to make certain no one is in shorts and that all the women wear skirts and something on their heads.

Greasy, dust-choked incense burners-with oily film of farm plates hang overhead, and in the murky light, the mosaic walls are buried behind statuary and nativity scenes.

Scores of additional Madonna-with-child canvases lean against the walls. Baby Jesus has a halo and the stem, blank countenance of a miniature man.

20

"Downstairs is the grotto of the nativity," Sol says. "I wait for you up here."

We follow the crowd to a set of stone steps.

"I didn't know the manger was a cave," James observes.

"Tradition," I say.

We can't see or feel the cave, however, because of the expensive hangings that cover every inch of the stone stairwell. But whatever the original opulence, the designs of pomegranates and lilies droop in tired pleats, the metallic tassels hang in tarnished weariness, and the gold threads
are frayed and thick with dust.

We reach the cave floor and line up to touch a gold-plated star around a stone where the baby apparently hit the floor as he fell from Mary's womb.

We kneel one at a time to touch the stone.

It's cold and moist with cave drippings and seepage.

"I just wish they could let well enough alone," Rory says as we unflex again and he stares at the tapestry-covered walls.

I pat his clammy arm. "I don't think religions work that way. I don't think they ever let anything alone."

21

Sol says we'll start much earlier today since the sun on Jericho is fierce by ten 0' clock, so we've gathered under a palm outside the hotel and wait for him.

He's told us each palm tree costs $30,000, but since every hotel wants one to simulate an oasis for its guests, hotel investors are willing to pay for the planting.

I've read an item in that morning's paper about a dig in Syria uncovering clay 'minie-balls' like the one I found at Meggido. The stone hard fired clay balls were apparently lobbed from sling-shots, and I want to tell Sol that what we thought was a game counter was actually an ancient
bullet.

But when the van arrives and we pile in, I miss my chance. Sol launches at once into his soliloquy. "Jericho is one of the two oldest cities in the world, maybe the oldest. It is famous in the Old Testament for the battle Joshua fights. In the New Testament, Jesus walks from Jerusalem to Jericho many times. It is taking ten hours. We do it faster. But tourists are more
disappointed in Jericho than in any other place in Israel."

"Why is that?" We lean forward together.

"Because there is nothing to see." He sounds impatient this morning.

"Back in 1941, a woman archeologist gets the permits to excavate and find the famous walls that tumble down for Joshua. She spends four days digging, then she drives to Jerusalem and she gets killed in the car wreck. Since the permits do not run out for her, the antiquities office is not issuing new ones, and no one is coming to dig at Jericho since."

"What a waste," I say.

He gives me his rearview mirror nod.

"See, coming up is Jericho. That tel, that hill, is all there is left of the ancient city."

A low patch of green, an authentic oasis with natural palm trees, rises from the brown expanse of desert. There is nothing but the tel and one archeological cut.

We speed by it into a town whose main square is shaded by broadleafed trees. "Here is the new city of Jericho, built just before Jesus is coming.

As he parks on the square and gestures us out, he says, "In the first century B.C.E. Mark Anthony gives Jericho to Cleopatra. She leases it to Herod, who puts up the winter palace."

He leads us to a tree protected by wire fencing. "And here is the fig tree Zechariahs is supposedly climbing to see Jesus go by. Most tour guides tell you this tree is the exact one. But they don't know nothing. When the archeologists do the tree dating, this tree is only seven hundred years old, not two thousand." He looks at James. "But it is a good tree for pictures."

As James produces one of his cameras and shoots a photo, Sol indicates a placid camel folded onto the sidewalk.

"This is the typical camel saddle. You can take a ride on the camel if you want. It is the good price."

An Arab in robes and white headdress holds the lead and waits nonchalantly beside the animal. He doesn't acknowledge us as Sol talks in his usual loud monotone.

"But you see how the Arab is making his living. He stands and takes the money, but the camel is doing all the work giving the rides to the tourists. But the camels make the good pictures, too."

22

"This is the Yardenit of the River Jordan, the Place of Baptism, where John is baptizing Jesus. The true place of the baptism may be farther south, but because farther south is in Jordan and the river is dried up there, the place I show you could be the right one."

Rory grimaces with disappointment.

The river at this bend is narrow, shallow enough to wade across to Jordan in less than fifteen minutes.

"Much of Christianity is found in the teachings of the Essenes. So people think John the Baptist is maybe the Essene and is telling Jesus the ethical teachings of the Essenes."

We don't stop at the Jordan, and Sol says, "Now I show you the Golan Heights. It is not on your tour, but it is something you should see. Look down there. That is Israel. When the Syrians control the mountain, five million Jews is surrounded by a hundred million Arabs, and Syria can fire the shells into Israel any time. The Arabs want back the Golan Heights fifty years later now that we grow here apples, grapes and the fmest cherries in the world. We plant the fruit, and now the Arab is wanting something for nothing."

"You've been arguing with the Arabs over this land for fifty years?"Elizabeth asks.

He sends her a withering glance in the mirror. "Not for fifty years. For centuries."

Again I don't mention the clay projectile flired from sling-shots, but I think of Yeats' line, "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart."

As we spiral up the mountain, Sol adds, "Here I watch the road. On each side is the land mines left over from the 1967 war." But he nonetheless says casually over his shoulder, "Before that war, this mountain is called Mount Galilee. This is the Sea of Galilee down there. It is of course not a sea but a lake. Just as the Dead Sea is not a sea but a lake."

He gestures while he keeps only one hand on the steeringwheel. "Here hot sulfur springs break through the surface around the shore of the Galilee. See the system used to siphon the sulfur water off so it don't harm the fresh lake water."

Channels have been dug across the land, and wooden and metal sluices bend in awkward angles to supplement the canals that wind through grape arbors and apple groves.

"What do they do with the sulfur water?"

"These ducts carry it below the Sea of Galilee to the Jordan River.

The Jordanian farmers use the dirty water for their crops."

"Do the Jordanian farms have any choice except dirty water?" I ask.

He glances at me in the mirror and holds our reflected look for a moment. "No."

23

"Cana is the Hebrew for Hanna, so the wedding here, where Jesus is turning water into wine, is the wedding of Hanna. She comes from the poor family with no good wine and not much poor wine either. As I already tell you, wine is the very important part of the traditions in Israel. Shabat and all the celebrations uses the candles and the wine."

His shaggy eyebrows contract. "In Jesus' time the wine is also much a part of Hebrew celebrations, so when the wine is running out at the wedding, Mary asks Jesus to help. At first he is refusing and saying that it is not the time, but his mother asks until he says all right to the request."

"It was Jesus' first miracle," Rory says and takes a reverent breath.

Sol gives him an ironic glance.

"People today is often coming here to make the miracles. It is a favorite place to cure the blind. I don't know if it works, but-" He shrugs. "At any rate, at the wedding, Jesus is filling the six jugs with water, and when the water is poured out, it is wine."

He swings his arm toward the church. "The Christians is building their church over the synagogue where the wedding is taking place. You can see under glass on the floor the mosaics that is here then. There is also the stone jars in the crypt."

Rory takes another audible breath.

"Maybe the jugs is the same. Maybe not."

24

When we leave the church with its mosaic and jugs, Sol glowers at us in the rearview mirror. "You see the place of a miracle, but most miracles is not miracles. As I tell you, Galilee is not a Sea, the Dead Sea is not dead, and the Red Sea is not red. It should not be translated 'Red' at all but 'Reed.' Because of the rushes that grow there. When Moses is crossing the sea, he is
parting the reeds, not the water. Then the rains come, and the reeds turn into a swamp, and the soldiers of the Pharaoh is getting stuck in the mud and drowned."

He passes a Lexus without glancing at it. "People is always getting things wrong."

"What about manna?" Elizabeth prompts over her guidebook. "Isn't that a true miracle?"

"Naw," Sol repeats with disgust. "Manna is from nature. In the desert where Moses is leading the people, there is a certain tree that has leafs to attract caterpillars. The caterpillars come to eat, and as they chew, their saliva drips on the plant. It dries to a white powder that can be collected and used for the meal to make the bread. But as soon as the sun comes out, the white powder evaporates. Each morning, it comes with the caterpillars, each sun-up it is gone, just like the Bible story says."

"So manna is really just caterpillar spit."

"What people want to be the miracle is no miracles at all. Here is the Mount of the Beatitudes. It is where Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount." He pulls into the parking lot with his usual alacrity and waves us from the van. "The church is built eight-sided."

"Octagonal," James supplies.

Sol doesn't look at him. "Eight-sided for the eight Beatitudes. The ninth Beatitude is etched on the ceiling." He gazes beyond us a second before he quotes, "'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.' I am telling you, this is where Christianity is going wrong. No one is getting
anything by waiting for the hand-out. That is where the Muslims is like the ancient Christians. Wanting something for nothing."

A mass is being conducted in the shade of the olive trees on the path to the octagonal church, and a nun in a black habit frowns at Sol and puts her finger over her lips.

Sol merely looks at her coldly and continues in his loud, accented English. "The Germans have the charge of the church before World War I, but when they lose that war, the Italians take over. They are here ever since, and Mussolini gives the money to build the church that you see."

We dutifully look where he points.

"The Italian fathers who run the church don't want the tourists to know about Mussolini. They deny that the funds comes from the fascist dictator, but I am telling you. It is the fact. The money for this fme church to celebrate the meek and the peacemakers don't come from nobody but Mussolini."

25

"This is Tabgha, the Place of the Loaves and Fishes, the Church of the Multiplication. You will see the mosaic and the stone table where the multiplication begins."

"Now that's a true miracle isn't it?" Elizabeth glances at Rory. Despite her pale complexion and pale eyes, she looks almost impish.

"Naw. Here is not a miracle but the sharing. When the crowd comes to hear Jesus, it is getting late and the people is getting hungry and restless, so Jesus tells his disciples to feed them. But the disciples have only the two fishes and the five loaves of bread, so Jesus breaks into pieces the little fishes and the chunks of bread, and when the people see he is sharing what he has, one man is remembering he brings a fish in his pocket. So he gets out the dried fish. Another man remembers he has the chunk of bread he is going to eat on the way horne, so he brings it out and breaks it in two, three pieces to give to his neighbors. It is the same through the crowd. People is getting out their lunch and sharing."

He does his usual gesture at the church. "Ifyou like, that is the miracle. All the people being made to feel guilty and getting fed because of the two little fishes and the five little loaves of bread."

26

Arafat and Barak have left Camp David without an agreement.

I don't know if the others care or not, but no one mentions the report in the Jerusalem Post this morning, and I don't try to bring it up as Sol points at various ruins through the van windshield.

"You see here the forts ofthe Crusaders. The Arabs take over these lands in 648, and when the Crusaders is coming to conquer the Holy Land back from them, the Christians don't trust nobody, so they have to have the fortresses. "

We pass a McDonald's but he doesn't point that out.

"The Crusaders is staying for 240 years, but in 1187, there is the dry summer, and the Arabs is setting all the grasses afire. When the Crusaders is fleeing from the fortress, the Arabs kill them one at a time. The survivors sail away and they don't come back."

He stops the van. "Here we are at Capernaum, the home of Jesus and Peter. They go out and come back here many times. It is the very rich city during Roman times because it is on the Via Marius. Five of the apostles is from Capernaum. Maybe more, but the Bible mentions five."

He gestures at an Arab in a kiosk. "Here is the other good place to buy water at a dollar a bottle."

Then he looks at me.

"Did you notice that we have our money in shekels and in dollars? Most countries have only their own coins, but we have both. It is showing the close ties between America and Israel. All right. Everybody out."

27

Tall carved columns, shored up and fastened with iron bars, shimmer white in the sun.

"This is the synagogue being built at Capernaum in the second century," Sol says. "The three religions from this country believe in paradise, and they have the common symbols that can be carved much the same. The Jews have the conch shell, the Christians the tail of the peacock,
and the Arabs use the five fingers."

I look at him. "With all of that in common, why is it so hard for everyone to get together?"

"You Americans," he says with disgust.

28

"We go again into the desert today. Make sure you have the hats and the water bottles."

He accelerates through another checkpoint. But again, the dual Palestinian and Israeli guards don't glance at us or at the vast white nebula in our wake.

James snaps a picture of a flag and asks, "Is that the flag of the Palestinians?"

"Of course. This is the West Bank."

We bounce past and he waves toward a hilltop above another limp flag. "This is the Mountain of the Temptation, but we don't stop. It is nothing to see."

29

He drives on, scowls, and indicates an adobe house with another flag drooping in the sun from a rooftop.

Beside the Palestinian flag is a plain white cotton square on a pole, as if the occupant of the house is surrendering to someone, and James switches cameras so he can zoom his lens toward the house as Rory asks, "What's that for, Sol?"

Sol glances disdainfully at both lengths of cloth. "The white flag means that the Arab has a daughter of twelve years to sell."

"To sell?" James gives a spasm of shock even as he keeps filming.

Sol nods with disgust. "Beside his national flag, the Arab is hanging out his white flag. He makes the competition to see who brings the most cows or sheep to exchange for the daughter. He becomes a rich man for a few months because of the men who come to bid for the twelve-year-old girl, and he don't have to work for maybe a year until his next daughter is old enough to be for sale."

30

"Look down there. This is the wadi, a dry river bed millions of years old. Up on the hillside is the Monastery of St. George, but you don't want to cross the wadi to go there. There is nothing to see in the monasteries. But you get the good picture from here."

The white sand blows hard around us as we get out to stare at the Monastery of St. George. I shield my eyes against the sun and the stinging bits of dry earth from the ancient riverbed.

"Miss. Give me your watch, miss. Please. I am very hungry. I sell it for food."

A child, who may be five or six, has padded up beside me. He plucks at the cheap Timex on my wrist and gazes pitifully skyward, over-acting to emphasize his hunger. He's dressed in a long-sleeved striped sweater too hot for the day, a pair of child jeans, and sandals that expose his grimy little feet.

"My family Bedouin. Very hungry."

He produces two toy sheep from a pocket while his little face screws into lines of excess lamentation. "My mama make. You buy? Only ten shekels."

The little sheep still have their 'Made in China' tags, and I say, "I don't have any change with me."

"I come to the car, miss. Only ten shekels. Please, miss. My familyvery hungry." He chomps his teeth to simulate eating, produces a practiced smile close to a leer. "Please, miss."

I turn and start down the rock slide that's the rim of what was once a river, and the little boy lifts a tiny hand, miming a Victorian gallant, to assist me.

As I give him my hand, it accidentally brushes his curling black hair as stiff as wire with dirt and oil.

When we reach the van I say to Sol, "Do you have a shekel I can give him?"

"Get away, you little thief," Sol growls. But he nonetheless hands me a coin to pass on.

Already a trained beggar, the little boy pockets it with the speed of a magician.

Just then the others return and Elizabeth says, "Oh, what a cute little boy."

He instantly switches his blackmail to them. "Give me your camera. Give me your watch. You rich Americans. Give me bon-bons, miss."

James and Elizabeth give him some shekels, and Megan says, "We don't have bon-bons, but would you like one of these?" She reaches in the van for the sack of mangos we bought earlier from a vendor beside the road.

The child scoops up a mango in each hand and sprints across the desert without looking back.

James takes his picture as he runs, and Elizabeth says again, "Isn't he cute."

He's only tragic.

But I don't say anything as I watch his striped sweater and little jeans disappear into the sand dunes.

31

"See that fence." Sol points toward barbed wire strands and posts. "The white dust along here helps guard against the suicide bombers. The footprints show if someone comes across the fence. Sometimes the terrorists try to walk only on the rocks."

"Beyond this point it looks like there are only rocks," Rory says.

"But the Bedouin tracks even on the rocks. The Bedouin is the best tracker in the world."

After a moment, Megan says, "I thought deserts were sandy."

"A desert is a place with less than two hundred centimeters of rain a year. It don't matter about the land. Rock or no rock. To be without rain is what makes a desert."

"Oh."

Sol points to a jumbled draping of red and blue rugs interspersed with canvas and cotton sheeting in clashing prints. The bundling of cloth is supported by leaning stakes, and it's obviously a huge, make-shift tent. "Three, maybe five families live there."

"Is that a typical Bedouin encampment?" James aims his camera toward it.

Sol nods. "Sometimes the Bedouin builds walls. But he still covers the roof with the canvas like a tent. It is what he is used to. See the TV antenna."

"Is that for real?" Megan asks. "There's telly out here in the desert?"

"The head man has the TV. The women do the work while the men gather to watch the soap operas."

"Where do they get electricity?"

"Sometimes they use the car battery. Sometimes solar panels. They have nothing in the tents to eat, but every chief of the tribe, he has the TV to watch."

White dust envelopes the squalid settlement. The tents and antenna disappear.

Just then a girl walks by on the side of the road. Blond and thin, she's wearing khaki shorts and a white tank-top, and her swaying pony tail is shaded by a red ball cap.

"Stupid tourists," Sol says. "They don't know nothing. Last month, two women is killed in the desert for the money in their purses. This girl has the expensive camera."

I tap him on the shoulder. "Shouldn't we stop and warn her?"

"Girls that age. They know everything. What can you tell to warn them?"

The Bedouin child a few miles back leaves no doubt how his grown siblings or parents will react to a young foreign woman in shorts.

"I think we need to stop and tell her it's dangerous to be out here alone."

Before I finsh my sentence, the van reaches a rise and races downhill again, and Elizabeth indicates a tour bus parked beside a kiosk. "I imagine that's her group. She's probably only walking ahead a little to stretch her legs."

I glance back.

The girl's red hat has disappeared behind the dust and the dunes.

"I still think we need to say something to her," I say.

"What can you tell girls who thinks they know everything when they don't know nothing?" Sol repeats.

He doesn't stop.

32

"At Qumran is many caves. But that cave up there is where they find the jar holding the Dead Sea Scrolls I show you yesterday in the museum."He makes his perfunctory gesture toward the bluff and we dutifully peer up.

"In 1947 two Bedouin shepherd boys come here looking for the sheep. They toss a rock in that cave to scare out the sheep or the snakes. The rock hits pottery, and they find the seven big jars. Of course, it don't matter to the Arab what is in the jars. The Bedouin thinks of making money out of anything he fmds."

This is the hottest day we've had in the desert and we all drip with sweat.

"But when the Bedouin boys take the scroll out of ajar and carry it to Bethlehem to sell, the scholars know what it is they are seeing. They begin the study and they find the fragments from every book of the Bible except the Book of Ester wrapped in the linen and preserved in the jars. The scrolls is made by the Essenes."

33

He leads us, almost at a trot, through the ruin of Qumran.

"In the first century B.C.E., the Essenes leave Jerusalem because it is too commercial, so they come here to make the Torahs."

He urges us into the outline of another collapsed room. "This is the scriptorium, where they do the writing of the Torah. The Torah must be perfect. It can have no blemish, so if the copier gets even one drop of sweat on the scroll, he must start over with the new scroll."

No one asks if the months other than August are any cooler in Qumran.

"The good Jew must read the Torah three times a week. But each time he finishes, he don't stop. He reads another page. Since the Bible is unending, the good Jew knows that he is reading the circle, not the end of the story."

We file behind him, and the square stones of the square rooms of Qumran begin to merge with all the other rubble we've seen.

"All the material of the Torah must come from the animals, so the Essenes must work the leather for the pages and use the veins to sew the sheets together into the scroll."

"The scroll we saw yesterday was made of leather?"

"Naw. It is made of plastic. You would not expect to see the real scroll that is coming from here in a jar. The electric lights fade the letters, and it is not good to ruin the authentic scrolls only for the tourists to look at, so the museum makes the copy."

Behind me I hear Rory sigh.

Sol doesn't hear or chooses to ignore the sigh. "At Qumran is much fresh water, and-"

"There's fresh water this close to the Dead Sea?" James says behind his camera.

"Of course. Every place you see the rushes as we drive to get here is the fresh water. The desert animals all come to drink, and maybe on the way back, we see the ibex coming for water. The ibex is the beautiful animal."

34

"King David is coming to this oasis, En Gedi, and Jesus is coming here often, too. This is the deepest place on earth. The Dead Sea is four hundred meters below sea level, and in the center of the lake, the water is four hundred meters deep. When I am a child, the teachers say that in
twenty-five years the Dead Sea will be dry because it evaporates so much water so fast. Now they are telling my granddaughter in school that in twenty-five years the Dead Sea will be dry because it evaporates so much water so fast."

I'm standing with Sol, looking at the arid mountain looming disquieting and inhospitable behind a palm of the oasis. We're waiting for the others to change into bathing suits to go swimming in the water of the Dead Sea, and Sol tells me about his son, the colonel, and his daughter who thinks she knows everything and has left home.

35

Sol watches the others come down from the bath house and says to me, "You still want to go down to the shore of the Dead Sea?"

"Yes, but since I refuse to put on a bathing suit in public, I won't go in"

"I put my reputation on the line as the tour guide to pledge that you don't go in. They say you don't have to pay the thirty-five shekels if you don't swim."

"I won't go in the water."

As the others stop beside us, I add, "I'll hold the cameras and jewelry so they won't get spoiled by the salt or the sand."

The two-car trolley pulls up beside us, and we climb on the open cars. Sol says to me, "Remember your promise."

The carrier moves away, and Rory asks, "What did you promise?"

"Not to go in the water."

"You can put a foot in, just to feel it."

"No. That's okay. I can look at it. Sol's very nervous, so I gave my word that I wouldn't even step in."

"Who's to know?" James says behind his camera. Megan and Elizabeth add in unison, "None of us will tell."

I can't allow them to expect all Americans to shave the truth. Megan and Rory are the age of my youngest. They don't need duplicity reinforced. I shake my head again and smile. "A promise is a promise."

And when the double trolley cart halts beside a row of benches on the sand, I take their towels and rings and Rory's saint's medal before they walk to the water and read the placard to me.

"You can't swim and splash minerals into anyone's eyes anyway. You have to just float."

"The water's hot, too," Rory adds.

The Dead Sea is an excruciating turquoise, and delicate waves peak in the roped-off area where tourists can't swim but bob to the surface and float. The distant horizon is a deeper blue, and at the blue-green shoreline, great mounds of salt glisten.

I sit on a bench and gaze across the hot sand at the sea that's actually a lake.

Abruptly Rory appears. "Are you sure you won't put even a toe in the water to feel it?"

"I'm sure."

"Well, then-" He exhibits a plastic bottle. "I found this, and I thought if you were going to stand by your promise, I could at least bring the Dead Sea to you. That's all right, isn't it? That wouldn't be going back on your word, would it?"

I smile. "If I don't go to the water but the water comes to me, that's all right."

He tips the bottle over my feet and water runs across my sandals in a lukewarm flow. He beams down at me.

36

"This is Olivet, the Mount of Olives. Olives is almost as important in Jerusalem as the wine. From the time of Solomon, the kings of Judea is anointed with olive oil. When someone is dying, he is covered with olive oil and wrapped in cloth. Once this hill is covered with olive trees, but the
Romans cut down most of them when they have the rule of Jerusalem. They don't know the importance of the olives."

He's sitting on a stone bench, and he spreads both arms toward the twisted olive trunks still growing on the stony hill. "The olive tree is hollow, so the tree dating cannot be done. These trees can be three thousand years old, and maybe they are here when Jesus teaches the Lord's Prayer to his disciples. Inside the Church ofthe Pater Noster is the prayer in 106 different
languages. And see there is the rock where Jesus is praying when the
disciples fall asleep."

"Is this the same view Jesus would have seen?" Rory stares, hungrily, toward the wall ofthe Old City opposite the Mount.

"This particular wall is not here when Jesus is coming. This wall is built by Suleiman in the sixteenth century. But it is built on the line of the old wall, so it looks much the same. The Dome of the Rock, of course, is not here when Jesus looks at the city from Olivet."

37

When we come back from viewing 106 versions of the Lord's Prayer, Sol still lolls on the stone bench, but he points across at the Suleiman wall.

"See the cemetery at the foot of the wall. It is the most expensive graveyard in the world. You can buy maybe the Trump Tower in New York, maybe a small country, for what it is costing to be buried there."

"Why is it so expensive?" Elizabeth is trying to find it in her book.

"When the Messiah comes at the End of Days and enters the Temple through that Golden Gate-See, that one that is blocked now-the stones will fall away, and the wealthy buried in that cemetery will be first to follow the Messiah on the Day of Redemption."

Rory opens his mouth, but before he can mention the Christian version of the Messiah, Elizabeth indicates the Temple Mount and asks, "Is the dome really gold?"

"It is the new layer of solid gold. Forty kilos of fourteen karat, put on by Saddam Hussein. But the Jerusalem weather is not good for the fourteen karat roofs. See how the dome already shows blotchy."

He stands up and dismisses the view. "Now we go see the Basilica of the Agony and the rock where Jesus is sweating blood and is betrayed by Judas. It is on your tour."

38

It's Saturday again, and men in wide-brimmed black payess and black suits covered by shawls pray eight deep at the Western Wall. They're on the men's side of the fence, and only a few women stand, reverent, in their partitioned area before the wall.

We wait with other tourists behind them.

Because we're in the courtyard before the Temple, and it's a Sabbath, we've been told to put away our pens and cameras.

"The devout Jew cannot write on Shabbat," Sol says. "You cannot work. You cannot do nothing if you are strict Orthodox. If you walk too far to the synagogue, then it becomes work."

He swings his arm toward the wall. "See the borders cut in the stones here. These are the same as you see at Zippori. They come from the time of Herod, before the Temple is destroyed by the Romans. This is the Wailing Wall because nothing else is left. It is the holiest part of the Temple Mount for the Jews."

He watches a young guard step in front of another tourist who is about to snap a picture.

"I show you the good place to take the pictures that don't bother nobody." He frowns at the tourist before he turns back to us. "But if you want to write the message and put the paper between the stones of the wall, you can go outside in the alleyway. There it is all right to use the pen."

"Isn't that a bit hypocritical?" Elizabeth smiles an innocent smile at him.

"I am not the strict Jew or I would not be bringing the tourists here on the Sabbath," he says sternly.

"I think I'd like to write a prayer." Rory nudges me since I'm the one with the pen and sketchpad.

"You'd think there'd be no room left to chink paper between the stones after all these centuries," James observes.

"Once a year they take the messages out and bury them on the Mount of Olives." Sol watches as I tear off slivers of paper. "The message is between you and God. You make the wish, the request, and you don't tell nobody. Nobody reads what you write."

"Like making a wish and blowing out the candles on a birthday cake," Elizabeth says brightly.

"But don't you think that's a bit superstitious?" She looks at Sol. "Do you believe in it?"

He gives his shrug."What can it hurt?" he says

39

We bunch together, clearly foreign, clearly marked, in the Palestinian market where vendors sell loaves of intricately patterned bread and tee-shirts that say 'Jerusalem' in wild colors.

Sol has told us we'll do the Via Dolorosa and the Stations of the Cross today, and Rory is obviously trying to shut out the shopkeepers. He's brought out a rosary, and I know he's trying to capture some emotion that should go with this portion of the Holy Land tour.

But the shoppers are too boisterous.

40

Sol counts us, then lopes off through the crowd, angling past the stalls of embroidered, mirrored dresses and cheap silver bracelets.

We follow him on sloping EI-Wad Street, and a young Palestinian skids past with a cartload of tennis shoes. He's attached an old tire to the back of the heavily laden cart, and he's standing on the rubber rim to slow his descent.

The tire brake doesn't work, however, and he flies past, holding white-knuckled to the wooden panels.

As he zooms by, Arab vendors jump aside, knocking askew their white headdresses and black bands. They shout angry Farsi after the young man, but he's going too fast to look back.

In the push of the crowd, we're shoved against the weave of hanging Persian carpets, and Megan puts her hand on one of red and blue with a pattern of pomegranates. "Look at this. Isn't this nice? Are these a good bargain, Sol?"

Sol shakes his head and turns his thumb down in rejection. "These carpets are the fakes. The real ones, the best ones is made by the Arab boys from six to eleven years old with the little fmgers to do the elaborate patterns."

"Children do the patterns for the rugs? I never heard of that."

"And by twelve or thirteen years old, the boys becomes blind."

He moves on. "This is the First Station of the Cross. The building is a school today, but in the time of Jesus it is the Praetorium, where the Roman soldiers is stationed. Pilate is in town from Caesarea for the holidays, and since Herod is wanting Jesus out of the way, Pilate is obliging. Here is the Chapel of the Flagellation and the Chapel of the Condemnation."

Life-sized statues of Jesus and Pilate 100m in Disney colors behind the chapel altar. Jesus is clad in vivid primary blue, Pilate in fire-engine red.

James takes pictures before we're hurried off to the Chapel of Ecce Homo. "Here the people is mocking Jesus and shouting 'Behold the man. '"

At every stop, in every niche, marble statues of Jesus stare down in agony. It's as if no sculptor could conceive of Jesus having triumph in a job well done or anticipation of a resurrection.

"Here is Station Three, where Jesus fITst is falling with the cross."

We file by.

"And here is Station Four, where Jesus and his mother is meeting. This is only tradition, of course. No meeting is in the New Testament."

For some reason the chapel here is called the Church of Our Lady of the Spasm, but we're rushed away before anyone can ask Sol why.

"Over there is Station Five. The street starts uphill here. It is the place Jesus gets help from Simon, the Cyrenian, who carries the cross for him."

The ascent is gentle, but the flagstones are as white and slick as polished bone, and struggling upward with anything would produce a terrible backache.

"Station Six, the Church of St. Veronica, is where Veronica comes out and wipes the blood and dirt from the face of Jesus. The handkerchief she is using to wipe the blood makes the imprint of the face of Jesus."

"Is Veronica's famous veil here in the church?" Elizabeth asks.

"Naw. It is too famous. The Christian churches don't leave it here to make money for the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. They take it to St. Peter's in Rome. There is Station Seven. Jesus falls the second time. Crosses is heavy."

He leads us to a narrow street packed with vendors of rubber sandals, boxed pink plastic dishes, and soft drinks. "This is Station Eight."He points to an even narrower alleyway. "But there is nothing to see."

Rory nonetheless ducks into the alley as Sol turns the comer beside a stall of brass hookahs with curling stems and brass coffee pots with spouts in the same brass curves.

"Where's Elizabeth?" James asks suddenly.

41

"Maybe she went with Rory down that passage to the Eighth Station," Megan says.

But just then Rory reappears alone.

"She must have gone ahead," James says.

Sol grabs his arm before he can wedge himself into the crowd to go look for her. "Nobody is to follow anyone who is lost. This I know from thirty years as the tour guide. One disappears, someone follows in one direction, someone else in the other direction, and then more gets lost. When someone is missing, you wait until the person sees that he is alone, and then he comes to where he left you."

We're waiting beside a fruit stand, overflowing with shrink-wrapped packages of dates and Turkish delight, pyramids of oranges, and pastel Jordan almonds in a bushel basket ready to be scooped up by the pound.

"You have tasted this sweet?" Sol points to the candy-coated almonds.

"Every Christmas when I was a kid." I marvel that it never occurred to me the candy-coated almonds got their name because they originated in Jordan.

"When I am wounded in the 1967 War, I am getting these for treats each afternoon in the hospital where I stay for eight months."

"You were wounded in the war?"

"We win in six days. But the war is over too fast for us young men. We want to act the heroes. So we chase the Arabs who are retreating. We are young and foolish, and we are having fun running after the Syrian soldiers."

He stares down at the basket of almonds coated in pink, pale green, and baby blue. "And so we get careless. But I am the lucky one only to get hit in the leg. My two friends is killed."

Elizabeth shoves breathlessly through the crowd. "I thought you were up ahead."

James says something harsh in Welsh.

We all ignore the marital crisis, and as we start again, Sol turns to me. "I am fighting the Arabs forty years ago, and now I think my son, the tank commander, must fight them all over again."

42

"Up ahead here is the Ninth Station. This is where Jesus is falling for the third time. From here he sees the hill of the crucifixion. But you cannot see the hill because the church is now built over it. The last stations is in the church."

We cross a stone courtyard to a domed tower, which may once have been silver plated. But its silver has the dullness of lead in the Jerusalem weather that tarnishes even fourteen-karat gold. The windows of the tower are barred and glassed to protect against relic hunters.

"The Tenth Station is where the clothes of Jesus is taken away. It is in this church built in 1102 by the Crusaders when they rule Jerusalem."

After they cleaned the streets that ran with the blood of Jews and Saracens deep enough to cover the horses' hocks.

43

"Here is Station Eleven where Mary is suffering the most while her son is being nailed to the cross." He doesn't pause. "But maybe Jesus is not being nailed to the cross. Maybe there is crucifixions in the first century. Maybe not."

He maneuvers us smoothly through the church arches and through troops of other visitors lining up before an altar. The statues hovering above the altar have been haloed in gold leaf, crowned and clothed in sterling.Before the altar candles, the metals shine.

"Station Twelve is the exact spot where the cross is standing."

The exact spot is commemorated by a silver disk, three feet in diameter with a hole in the center. The pilgrims kneel and reach in.

"Before he dies Jesus is losing heart and is asking God why he is being forsaken."

I'm tempted to explain that Jesus is actually quoting Psalm 22, "My God, why have you forsaken me, far from my prayer, from the words of my cry?" But here on the final round of stations, it doesn't matter, and I approach the silver disk.

"Jesus dies here and the earthquake cracks open the stone where the cross is standing."

My arm goes in the silver opening to my elbow before I touch cold stone. I have the same sensation I had in the nativity cave, that the stone is oozing. Water or blood. But as I pull my hand out again, of course, it's not even damp.

"At Station Thirteen Mary is getting the body of Jesus off the cross." His loafer taps a slab of granite embedded in the floor. "At the Stone of nction, the body is washed and anointed with olive oil. It is not the real stone, of course. It is put down later."

I think I hear Rory' s sigh.

"Now go downstairs to the Holy Sepulcher where the body of Jesus is put after he is dead. At the foot of the stairs on the right is the tomb of Adam. It is not where Adam is buried, of course. But the grave of Jesus is not the same either. In his time, it is only the hollow in the ground, and
maybe there is the stone across the entrance, maybe not. But no one wants to look at only the hole, so the priests is putting a marble boulder at the mouth of the cave in 1555."

I'm certain I hear a sigh this time.

44

"The tradition is that Mary is weeping in this church for her son, and that she falls asleep and sleeps forever here."

He weaves through traffic and gestures at another church. "But it is also tradition that she is buried here. We know in it is buried Baldwin, one of the Crusader kings." He gives his shrug. "But maybe Mary, too."

Sol and I are the only ones in the van this afternoon since the others opted to swim in the hotel pool rather than see another museum. "How long do you want to stay?"

"A couple of hours. But I can take a taxi back to the hotel."

"Naw. The museum is promised so I take you. I come back at five. If I don't come, then you get the taxi. But wait for the half hour since traffic at five is bad."

He lets me out, and I take the white stone walkway into the museum. As I go through the Christian wing I remind myself to tell Sol that the archeological evidence for crucifixions is housed here in the bones of a first century male with a nail in his heel. The nail, the size of a railroad spike, bent going in and couldn't be removed, but since no nails were driven into
the man's palms, archeologists are assuming the arms of the crucified were tied to the cross pieces.

Nearby is a collection of ossuaries.

In Biblical times, the dead were oiled, wrapped in fine linen, and laid in caves, but after the bodies decomposed, the bones were gathered, placed in ossuaries, two-foot stone boxes, for a second burial. So the body of Jesus or Mary or Joseph would have to be found in a stone ossuary rather than in a cave.

The tradition of the church neglected to tell us that.

45

I wander on through the archeological displays, lingering beside glass cases, reading the explanations written in Hebrew and English, and I'm pleased somehow that the scrapers and hand axes, mortars and pestles dating to 13,000 B.C.E. could well have scraped hides and ground com in the American southwest.

But also under glass are exotic Middle-Eastern dried barley, chickpeas, ostrich eggs, carnelian beads, alabaster vessels from Egypt, and cuneiform tablets from Babylon.

Delicate bronze oxen and gold jewelry sparkle from the polished cubes of glass.

I pass on to clay images of large-hipped females, and I'm comforted to see that the patriarchy of
Judea revered fecund women.

But then, of course, I see that the images have no eyes or mouths.

46

Sol arrives at ten after five, and when he stops the van at the door for me, he asks what I liked best in the museum. I don't tell him about the crucifixion wing after all and tell him I can't decide what was most intriguing.

But as the van crawls through five 0' clock rush-hour and we're stalled beside a white stucco wall festooned with the omnipresent bougainvillea, I look at the tissue-paper plant and realize the flower doesn't look like a flower at all but like a leaf that's pink rather than green.

And I decide that perhaps most intriguing is the fact that here in the Holy Land nothing is what it seems at first glance.

47

"Masada is the pet project of Herod, a winter palace for when it is snowing in Jerusalem. It takes him many years to build. He don't need another winter palace, but after he drowns the brother of his wife Miriam in his swimming pool, he is afraid, and he thinks to take the small fortress of
Masada and make it the grand escape. It is in the middle of nowhere and cannot be conquered, so he builds the showy estate. And he dies alone like an old wolf."

Despite Bethlehem and Nazareth and the Via Dolorosa, I feel I know Herod better than anyone in the Bible. I can see him gazing hungrily from this 1300 foot-high plateau onto the arid desert below. Waiting for letters and death.

As Sol talks, we sway in the cable car over an ominous footpath that winds and rewinds in a narrow ribbon of dirt cut from the mountain.

"This is the Snake Path." Sol points it out, and Rory holds tight to the hand bar.

"I have a touch of acrophobia," he says. "I think I'll walk back down to the van if you'll come with me so 1 don't faint."

I don't try to calculate how many miles the switch-back path curves back and forth, and I don't look down. "All right. I'll go with you."

The gondola banks to a stop.

Sol heads toward the Arab in the tourist kiosks while he says over his shoulder, "I get the tickets. Everyone buy the bottle of water."

When he returns, he's jauntily cocking a green felt hat with a wide brim like an Australian trooper's. It looks wintery.

"Masada is hitting 120 degrees today," he says. "They are closing the Snake Path. Nobody is walking down."

I try not to show my relief.

"You forgot to remove the price tag, Sol." Elizabeth reaches for the little tab stamped $12.

"No." He catches her hand. "I don't buy it. After we walk around Masada I take it back to the shop. My friend will sell it to the tourist who is stupid and don't bring a hat."

48

"The Romans and the Jews is living side by side in Jerusalem under Herod the Great. He is the one who is doing all the building, but when he dies in 4 B.C.E., Herod Antipas, his son, is taking over the kingdom."

"So it was Herod Antipas, not Herod the Great, who gave Salome the head of John the Baptist? He's the one who crucified Jesus?" Elizabeth has left her guide-book in the van, and she seems lost without it.

"Of course it is Herod Antipas." His eyebrows furrow. "But he is not powerful like his father, and before he is dying in the year 40, things is falling apart. Nobody is happy, nobody lives side by side any more. In 66, when the Romans is putting the statue of Jupiter in the Temple, the Temple Mount is defiled, and the Zealot Jews revolt.. The Romans put down the revolt, destroy the Temple, all but the piece of the Western Wall, and this is when the Zealots escape here to Masada."

He leads us to a crumbled rampart and points to the plain below, where three remarkably well-preserved-or perhaps reconstructed-squares are visible. "The Zealots don't harm nobody. But the Romans don't let well enough alone. They can't let Jews get away with rebelling, so they surround Masada in a siege that is lasting three years. This is when they build these camps around the mountain."

A troop of young Israeli soldiers, boys and girls in uniforms and army boots, trudge by. They're chattering and elbowing each other like school children on an outing, but each carries a machine gun slung carelessly over a shoulder. Ammunition clips are strapped to their gunstocks.

Sol watches them peer into the valley and then tramp away again. "After three years, the Roman generals get smart. They know it is against Jewish law to kill Jews, so they use the Jewish slaves to build a ramp up to the fort. The Zealots don't want to shoot their own people, so they watch the ramp get bigger and bigger. They know the Romans is coming, and they have the debate what to do. Killing and suicide is forbidden, and so the question is difficult in the religious war."

The sun beats down on us beside the wall and the ramp built with hand-carried baskets of dirt.
"The leaders cast the lots, choose ten men to kill the 960 people in Masada, then cast the lots again to see who kills the last nine and himself. When the Roman soldiers march up, they don't fmd nobody alive."

A burst of laughter comes from the toppled tower where the child soldiers are milling, and Sol grimaces. "The young Israeli soldiers is receiving the machine guns after they take the oath not to kill."

49

"The Yad Vashem Museum is not on your tour, but you are here and you need to see it."

"Why isn't the Holocaust Museum on everyone's tour?" I ask.

He gives his shrug. "Some people it makes sad."

"It should make everyone sad."

He holds my glance in the mirror a moment before he swings his hand at the backhoes carving off a hillside. "It is once Mt. Zion. But now it is especially for the Holocaust."

He honks the horn. A gate lifts and he drives through. But he doesn't pause beside the iron sculpture forming statues of emaciated dead into the rigidity of barbed wire. He merely jockeys the van into a parking space, and when we get out, he strides down the sidewalk.

"This is the Memorial for the Children."

A carved child's face smiles down at us from above the entrance, and lighted photographs of six more happy children swirl in shifting mirrors before the darkness envelopes us. "Stay close to the railing," Sol whispers above the carpeting that muffles our steps.

Six small candles bum behind a glass, and revolving mirrors reflect and multiply the tiny flames into six million pin-points of brilliance.

Clinging to a cold metal banister, we walk single-file through a night clear with millions of stars before we emerge into the sunlight again.

My eyes water with more than the brightness, and I try to wipe surreptitiously beneath my sunglasses, but Rory nonetheless hands me his handkerchief.

Sol walks on and indicates a bronze bas-relief of a man with a group of children. "This is Mt. Hertzle, it is named for the Polish teacher who isn't giving up the Jewish children to the Nazis. He is taken to Auschwitz, too. None of them is coming out."

We pass a grove of strange bent trees, each bearing a brass plaque.

"What are these?" Megan asks.

"This is trees dedicated to Gentiles who try to help the Jews. Some die, some don't." He stoops, picks up long brown beans, dried to the consistency of leather. "Try This. It is John Bread."

We dutifully bite into leather sheath.

"It tastes like chocolate,"Rory says.

Sol nods. "Carob. Here in Yad Vashem, it is planted to show that out of the bitter comes the sweet. They want the fruit, but not the ordinary fruit like peaches or plums. They want to remember the victims and show that life is unchanging. So they plant the John Bread."

He waves us into the entryway of another building whose lobby is ringed with bas-relief scenes in gray stone. "Here is the story of the Holocaust."

The figures are caricatures with the straight-on eyes of hieroglyphs set in profile faces. The bodies have cartoon, four-fmgered hands and thickened and thickened arms and legs.

Sol sees me looking at them. "In tradition, it is not good to make the representation of human forms, so the artist is making the people with three fingers and the thumb."

"Like Mickey Mouse," Elizabeth says.

Sol ignores her. "Here is the Jewish people going about their business,making the cakes, fixing the horseshoes, like everybody. The Jews is fitting in with the lifes of the people around them. But then the Nazis come-"

The imaged Nazis are fat and comic."

"The Jews try to get away, but they cannot. See, this man is running. Many is killed, and the ones left is taken away." He steps to the next stone scene. "Here is the smokestacks of the ovens of the concentration camps."

The gray stone sculpture has been too sanitized, and I look away. Iresee the memorial in the Israeli pavilion at the 1967 Montreal World's Fair. On a simple gray pedestal rested a worn pair of child's high-tops. The laces hung from the eyelet holes as if the four-year-old had just untied and dropped his shoes.

"But after the war, the good is coming," Sol is saying. "Here is people coming to Israel to make the new country. Out of the bad comes the good, just like with the carob. Israel is being made out of the ashes of the six million."

50

Then he directs us toward an archway. "Go through there, and you see the photographs and the artifacts from the Nazi era. I go to the cafe down the block to wait for you."

The five of us go through the archway.

"I don't know much about World War II," Rory says.

Beyond the arches placards, jutting like stele, indicate important dates of the 1930s and 40s as if this is an ordinary historical museum.

It isn't.

As a child, I saw the newsreels and read the accounts in Life and Time before the events slid into history, and now I lose the others as I walk quickly through the exhibits.

Glass cases are surrounded by black and white photographs I've already seen. A child raises his hands before a dozen Nazi rifles. An old woman in a babushka tries to protect a baby from a Nazi guard. The difference now is that the photographs have been blown up to life size and 100m above me as I pass beside the cases.

Light glares down on a hexagonal star cut from yellow sacking that's the applique from a Jewish jacket.

I know Hitler's propagandists chose symbolic hues. Virgin white combined with ominous black and passionate red for swastikas, the yellow of cowardice for the Star of David stitched to clothes of the Juden.

The electric lights haven't faded the star's authenticity.

I turn away quickly and collide with another case.

Zyklon D pellets spill from a green tin canister labeled 'Giftgas.' The pellets that produced poisonous gas for the fake showers are lavender, the size and shape of gravel.

I veer into a passageway of photographs, and hopeless faces of internees stare through barbed wire. Even in black and white, I know their eyes are blue.

I can't breathe, and I make a quick right turn.

It's a theatre where images of the doomed and clouds of smoke billow across the screen. The narrator says over the filmstrip, "The ovens were kept burning night and day."

I retreat through the exit.

But I'm in another hallway of giant pictures. Black and white photos show mounds of spectacles, pits of ashes, piles of rigid bodies too skeletal to render into grease.

The next archway opens into a second theatre, narrated in French but showing similar flickering images. There's no light except that reflected from the screen.

I take another passageway, and when I see a man in uniform at the end of the hall, I rush toward him. "I have to get out of here."

He may not understand my words, but he understands my panic, and he swings aside a curtain. Behind it fortunately is an emergency exit.

Somehow I've ended up on the second floor of the museum, and I flee down the stone stairs toward the sidewalk and the cafe where Sol waits.

51

We've gathered at the King David Hotel for a final glass of wine, and since a wedding reception is going on in the main dining room and people are dancing a hora in the lounge, the waiter brings our drinks to the lobby.

The stucco on the walls is riotous, and the velvet cushions and crystal chandeliers are nearly smothering. Every copper vase on every side table is crammed with fresh lilies, newly budded white roses and orchids, or lavish displays of bird-of-paradise plants.

"Here Arafat and his henchmen come to drink and plot," Sol says as he leans back on a too-deep, too-bolstered couch. "Here is going all the aid money he receives from the Americans."

"I thought Arabs weren't supposed to drink or smoke," Megan says.

Sol shrugs and finishes his glass of wine. After a few seconds he gets up to leave. "I see you tomorrow. Ten o'clock."

Elizabeth looks after him and says, "The guide book says we're supposed to give him a good tip."

Megan nods. "I heard that. I saved some of the shekels I changed yesterday to give to the cheeky bastard. What do you say we combine our tips so it looks like more?"

We all nod. "Good idea."

Then Elizabeth says to me, "Why don't you give it to him? He seems to like you better than any of us."

"I get the impression that he doesn't like any of us very much."

James swallows the last of his glass and signals the waiter for another round. "Why did he just tell us that leaving a group of tourists after ten days makes him sad?"

"Why did he say it would be like losing a piece of his heart for us go?" Rory seconds.

I accept the new glass of wine from the waiter. "Tradition," I say.

52

"This is the good place for the photograph."

We're on the hill opposite the Temple Mount, and we stare across at sunlight glistening on the dome, on the white buildings easing up the hill to the horizon.

James unwinds the straps of his camera equipment once more before Sol says, "This is the last stop. You are on the Christian tour, so we end the tour where Jesus ends his. Then I drive you to the hotel for the good lunch and one final cup of good Bedouin coffee."

So we walk once more up the gravel paths of the Mount of Olives, once more face the sacred hill that harbors the sacred rock.

"Judas comes from that gate into the garden where he is betraying Jesus. Then they bring Jesus to the judging and to death, as you know already." He swings his hand once again toward the city wall. "And now you are seeing everything. You have the good tour, yes?"

We chorus our assent before Elizabeth says, "I do wish Bethlehem had been less dirty and less tacky."

"Remember, it is after all the Arab town, with much poverty and much tradition. The Arab has maybe more restrictions than even the Israeli, and he must stop work to bow to Mecca five times a day."

A stream of tourists winds up the path to the church, and in the silence after they pass us, I press the wad of shekels into Sol's hand. "We wanted you to have these."

He doesn't unfold bills. "Now that you fmish your tour, you see why Arabs and Jews don't give up Jerusalem to the other. You see why nobody can do nothing."

Rory looks around the hill. "Is it all right if we take an olive branch?"

Sol looks chagrined at the non-sequitur, but then he shrugs. "Nobody is using the olives from these trees right now."

Rory steps over a low fence and ducks under the nearest tree. When he comes back, he holds out leafy olive twigs to Elizabeth, Megan, and me. "I didn't see it before, but did you notice how the roots of the tree grew right through the stone?"

I look at him. The young may not know history, but somehow they understand from the heart.

I nod as I take the branch. "Maybe that's the answer, Sol."

He raises questioning eyebrows. Look at this branch. You said the sacred stone under that spotted dome can't be divided, can't be split between Israelis and Arabs, but earthquakes and olive trees part stones all the time. Why can't we just trust nature? You said yourself the carob shows that the sweet can follow the bitter."

He shoves the colorful shekels into his shirt pocket and gazes toward the gold dome. "This is different," he says.