The Odd Couple
“Excuse me, how do I get to the Wailing Wall?” the slim, young woman with black eye-lined, almond-shaped eyes and a tiny jewel in her nose asks me.
I would not have given the question a second thought; I would have immediately given her directions how to get there from the Jewish Quarter parking lot where we stand were it not for her black scarf, tied in Muslim style, covering ears and neck as well as all her hair.
“Where are you from?” I ask her in reply.
“Azariya,”she mentions the Arab village on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem.
“Not with that accent!” I say, referring to her pure American accent. I am increasingly intrigued by this pretty woman with perfect English and with five children surrounding her, only one of whom wears a scarf like her mother.
“Oh, before that, I come from California – but I’m Palestinian.”
“Both your parents are from here?”
“Yes. Can you tell us please how to get to the Wailing Wall?”
“You want to see where Muhammad tied his horse?” I ask, referring to the Muslim tradition.
She looks at me, not understanding my question.
“I want to show my children where Jews pray.”
The honesty of her eyes attracts me to her.
“You might be hassled by the guards,” I warn her, knowing how stringent the checks are at the entrance to the area of the Western Wall. But my warning doesn’t dissuade her. “You know what, I’ll show you a way to see the Western Wall without the hassle of the guards.”
It is already two o’clock. I am on my way home from the suburb of Bayit Vegan where I had given my slide presentation, tying it in to the Fast of the Tenth of Tevet (today). But how long can it take me to take this lady and her kids over to the Observation Point on Misgav Ladach Street, only a few minutes walk away? And I shall stay out in the warm January sun for another few minutes.
We talk animatedly as we walk down Rehov Hayehudim and across the Hurva Square.
“Let’s sit down for a minute,” I say, pointing to the low stone wall near the edge of the Square. “I want to show you something.”
We sit down and I pull out my pink file with my notes from my morning’s talk. While I flip through the pages, we exchange names. I give her the Arabic version of my Biblical name as I open to the page on the Western Wall tunnel and read:
“A little further on inside this tunnel is a 14th century water cistern, now drained, still damp, which, until our return in 1967, when running water was installed by the Jerusalem Municipality, had supplied water to the inhabitants of the building above. For centuries, both the Jewish and Gentile residents of the area above us had thus obtained all their water.”
I flip some more pages to the sheet of “Swallow & Hurva Arch.”
“When we walk down the narrow alleyways of the Jewish Quarter, it is sometimes easy to forget that the Arabs live around the corner. The view of the pedestrian in the narrow, arched and tunneled alleyways is so different from that of the bird spreading his wings over the flat roofs. But up on our roof-decks we cannot but have an overview of the close physical proximity and yet great social distance of the Arab and Jewish communities. Both Jews and Arabs alike put up with the cold evening air to watch the spectacle of fireworks in the black velvet sky.”
Sureiya reads along with me, with full attention. Flipping some more pages (I have one per slide), I turn to the one on the sixteenth century Istanbuli Synagogue.
“Before 1948, the Istanbuli synagogue had the distinction of housing the geniza, a storeroom for unusable Torah scrolls, defaced prayer books, and other discarded religious texts pending their formal burial. At prescribed intervals a funeral cortege would leave from here for the Mount of Olives or Mount Zion. This interment was carried out as a great festival - generally once in seven years. The timeworn books and pages were heaped into large sacks and escorted by throngs, including Muslims and Christians, to the accompaniment of singing and rejoicing. All the people believed that this procession would assure them of a year of rain and plentiful crops.”
I’ve made my point of the relatively peaceful Arab/Jewish co-existence in a past age. I’ve made my point of today’s Situation being a political one rather than a religious one.
“It’s so sad that both our peoples are suffering so much,” Sureiya says.
I readily agree.
Before we continue through the Square, she asks, “may I have a picture with you?”
“As long as you send me a copy.” Her head-scarved older daughter takes the photo and I give Sureiya my address.
Crossing diagonally towards Tiferet Yisrael Street, I tell her, remembering my talk of a few hours earlier, of how, although the Hurva Synagogue was not a defense position in the War of Independence in 1948, it was nonetheless blown up by the Jordanian Arab Legion.
I am amazed at how easy it is to talk to Sureiya. At the Observation Point at the end of Misgav Ladach Street in the Jewish Quarter, I point out the Arab courtyard below us, and the Wall. By this time, Sureiya gives her camera to another tourist to photograph us arm in arm, with the Wall as background. I point out the two mosques on the Temple Mount where our First and Second Temples once stood, and explain the importance and holiness of the Temple Mount to us.
“Come, let’s go up these steps,” I nod to the steps on our right.
We climb the six steps to HaTamid Street for an unobstructed view of the Wall.
“Look, the men are on the left side, the women on the right. It’s crowded because today is the fast of the Tenth of Tevet….”
“Oh yes, I’m just reading about it now.”
“The fast commemorates the beginning of the Seige of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchanezzar…”
“And how many times a day do you pray?”Sureiya asks, looking at the sea of black-clad worshippers below us.
“We have three prayers a day – and you have five. How many times a day do you pray?”
“Whenever I hear the muezzin call, I pray.”
“And how many times a day is that?”
“Usually four.”
“Do you live near a mosque?”
“Yes.”
“And your children, do they pray too?”
“I’m teaching them.”
There is something totally innocent about Sureiya, and the more I talk to her, the more I like her. I imagine her at her kitchen sink, hearing the muezzin, and leaving her half-soaped pot to pray.
She needs to get to the main street leading to Damascus Gate. I walk her down to where Misgav Ladach Street meets the suq, pointing out the courtyard where both an Arab and a Jewish family used to live until about eleven years ago. I point out a Jewish studio apartment next door to an Arab restaurant on
Misgav Ladach Street. Yes, I want her to know that a level of co-existence still exists, even in these troubled times.
She is impressed that Jews and Arabs mingle freely in the market.
“You remember what I read you in the Square? They are side by side, yet a great social barrier divides them. Not many will be talking to each other as I am with you.”
I wonder if heads will turn to stare at us, an odd couple, Jewess and Muslim, on the street of the suq. But even though we stand near the corner of the all-Arab section of HaShalshelet Street, close to the green gate giving Arabs access to the Temple Mount, no one stares. We hug before parting, as if old friends.
“Am I crazy?” I ask myself as I walk towards my home, up HaShalshelet Street, an hour after meeting Sureiya in the parking lot. Am I as naïve as I take her to be? How do I know her husband or other relatives in her village have not planted her with her children in the Jewish Quarter to take in someone as gullible as myself? How do I know the rest of her family are not aligned with terrorists? Maybe I’m endangering my entire family by giving an Arab, whom I’ve never met before, my address and telephone number? These questions race through my mind as I hurry up the cobblestone market alley. But these cynical and real questions are what block any communication with the “other” side, I counter. If I react through fear, I cannot act towards peace on the personal level. Only by acting fearlessly can I give peace a chance. And maybe Sureiya will return to her village and tell her relatives that, yes, she found a Jewish woman who treated her with respect and an open heart.
“Excuse me, how do I get to the Wailing Wall?” the slim, young woman with black eye-lined, almond-shaped eyes and a tiny jewel in her nose asks me.
I would not have given the question a second thought; I would have immediately given her directions how to get there from the Jewish Quarter parking lot where we stand were it not for her black scarf, tied in Muslim style, covering ears and neck as well as all her hair.
“Where are you from?” I ask her in reply.
“Azariya,”she mentions the Arab village on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem.
“Not with that accent!” I say, referring to her pure American accent. I am increasingly intrigued by this pretty woman with perfect English and with five children surrounding her, only one of whom wears a scarf like her mother.
“Oh, before that, I come from California – but I’m Palestinian.”
“Both your parents are from here?”
“Yes. Can you tell us please how to get to the Wailing Wall?”
“You want to see where Muhammad tied his horse?” I ask, referring to the Muslim tradition.
She looks at me, not understanding my question.
“I want to show my children where Jews pray.”
The honesty of her eyes attracts me to her.
“You might be hassled by the guards,” I warn her, knowing how stringent the checks are at the entrance to the area of the Western Wall. But my warning doesn’t dissuade her. “You know what, I’ll show you a way to see the Western Wall without the hassle of the guards.”
It is already two o’clock. I am on my way home from the suburb of Bayit Vegan where I had given my slide presentation, tying it in to the Fast of the Tenth of Tevet (today). But how long can it take me to take this lady and her kids over to the Observation Point on Misgav Ladach Street, only a few minutes walk away? And I shall stay out in the warm January sun for another few minutes.
We talk animatedly as we walk down Rehov Hayehudim and across the Hurva Square.
“Let’s sit down for a minute,” I say, pointing to the low stone wall near the edge of the Square. “I want to show you something.”
We sit down and I pull out my pink file with my notes from my morning’s talk. While I flip through the pages, we exchange names. I give her the Arabic version of my Biblical name as I open to the page on the Western Wall tunnel and read:
“A little further on inside this tunnel is a 14th century water cistern, now drained, still damp, which, until our return in 1967, when running water was installed by the Jerusalem Municipality, had supplied water to the inhabitants of the building above. For centuries, both the Jewish and Gentile residents of the area above us had thus obtained all their water.”
I flip some more pages to the sheet of “Swallow & Hurva Arch.”
“When we walk down the narrow alleyways of the Jewish Quarter, it is sometimes easy to forget that the Arabs live around the corner. The view of the pedestrian in the narrow, arched and tunneled alleyways is so different from that of the bird spreading his wings over the flat roofs. But up on our roof-decks we cannot but have an overview of the close physical proximity and yet great social distance of the Arab and Jewish communities. Both Jews and Arabs alike put up with the cold evening air to watch the spectacle of fireworks in the black velvet sky.”
Sureiya reads along with me, with full attention. Flipping some more pages (I have one per slide), I turn to the one on the sixteenth century Istanbuli Synagogue.
“Before 1948, the Istanbuli synagogue had the distinction of housing the geniza, a storeroom for unusable Torah scrolls, defaced prayer books, and other discarded religious texts pending their formal burial. At prescribed intervals a funeral cortege would leave from here for the Mount of Olives or Mount Zion. This interment was carried out as a great festival - generally once in seven years. The timeworn books and pages were heaped into large sacks and escorted by throngs, including Muslims and Christians, to the accompaniment of singing and rejoicing. All the people believed that this procession would assure them of a year of rain and plentiful crops.”
I’ve made my point of the relatively peaceful Arab/Jewish co-existence in a past age. I’ve made my point of today’s Situation being a political one rather than a religious one.
“It’s so sad that both our peoples are suffering so much,” Sureiya says.
I readily agree.
Before we continue through the Square, she asks, “may I have a picture with you?”
“As long as you send me a copy.” Her head-scarved older daughter takes the photo and I give Sureiya my address.
Crossing diagonally towards Tiferet Yisrael Street, I tell her, remembering my talk of a few hours earlier, of how, although the Hurva Synagogue was not a defense position in the War of Independence in 1948, it was nonetheless blown up by the Jordanian Arab Legion.
I am amazed at how easy it is to talk to Sureiya. At the Observation Point at the end of Misgav Ladach Street in the Jewish Quarter, I point out the Arab courtyard below us, and the Wall. By this time, Sureiya gives her camera to another tourist to photograph us arm in arm, with the Wall as background. I point out the two mosques on the Temple Mount where our First and Second Temples once stood, and explain the importance and holiness of the Temple Mount to us.
“Come, let’s go up these steps,” I nod to the steps on our right.
We climb the six steps to HaTamid Street for an unobstructed view of the Wall.
“Look, the men are on the left side, the women on the right. It’s crowded because today is the fast of the Tenth of Tevet….”
“Oh yes, I’m just reading about it now.”
“The fast commemorates the beginning of the Seige of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchanezzar…”
“And how many times a day do you pray?”Sureiya asks, looking at the sea of black-clad worshippers below us.
“We have three prayers a day – and you have five. How many times a day do you pray?”
“Whenever I hear the muezzin call, I pray.”
“And how many times a day is that?”
“Usually four.”
“Do you live near a mosque?”
“Yes.”
“And your children, do they pray too?”
“I’m teaching them.”
There is something totally innocent about Sureiya, and the more I talk to her, the more I like her. I imagine her at her kitchen sink, hearing the muezzin, and leaving her half-soaped pot to pray.
She needs to get to the main street leading to Damascus Gate. I walk her down to where Misgav Ladach Street meets the suq, pointing out the courtyard where both an Arab and a Jewish family used to live until about eleven years ago. I point out a Jewish studio apartment next door to an Arab restaurant on
Misgav Ladach Street. Yes, I want her to know that a level of co-existence still exists, even in these troubled times.
She is impressed that Jews and Arabs mingle freely in the market.
“You remember what I read you in the Square? They are side by side, yet a great social barrier divides them. Not many will be talking to each other as I am with you.”
I wonder if heads will turn to stare at us, an odd couple, Jewess and Muslim, on the street of the suq. But even though we stand near the corner of the all-Arab section of HaShalshelet Street, close to the green gate giving Arabs access to the Temple Mount, no one stares. We hug before parting, as if old friends.
“Am I crazy?” I ask myself as I walk towards my home, up HaShalshelet Street, an hour after meeting Sureiya in the parking lot. Am I as naïve as I take her to be? How do I know her husband or other relatives in her village have not planted her with her children in the Jewish Quarter to take in someone as gullible as myself? How do I know the rest of her family are not aligned with terrorists? Maybe I’m endangering my entire family by giving an Arab, whom I’ve never met before, my address and telephone number? These questions race through my mind as I hurry up the cobblestone market alley. But these cynical and real questions are what block any communication with the “other” side, I counter. If I react through fear, I cannot act towards peace on the personal level. Only by acting fearlessly can I give peace a chance. And maybe Sureiya will return to her village and tell her relatives that, yes, she found a Jewish woman who treated her with respect and an open heart.
This story first appeared in Poetica Magazine, Spring 2010