The Rock (14 page)

T
he hour was late. The crowd was getting fidgety because of the time it had taken to go down the mountain, and Sophronius had services to attend. He now took the lead. Hardly had he passed through the Gate of the Sheep’s Pool than he took a sharp turn to the right toward the healing pools for which Jerusalem was famous. There he stopped to point out the Church of the Paralyzed Man, which overhangs a double pool with splendid porticoes on all four sides and another across the middle dividing it into two equal squares.

Here the sick and the melancholy come to sleep under the porticoes. Often they are awaiting a dream or the coming of an angel
who will reveal himself to them by a sign, after which they wash themselves in the waters and are healed. Usually, people of every religious faith can be seen lying about at all times of the day and night. But not on this occasion. Apart from a handful of cripples, everyone had already joined the crowd following the Patriarch and the Caliph into Jerusalem.

Sophronius explained that, although the Church marked the place of Mary’s birth, it was named after her son’s miraculous healing of a man paralyzed from birth. “Arise, take up your bed, and walk,” Jesus had said to him, and the paralytic had. His bed is kept in the Church. But Umar did not care to go and see it.

As a young man growing up in the Holy City, I often found myself visiting the pools, watching peasants who, after a hard day’s work selling their produce, lingered by the cool waters to gape at the intricately carved marble inlay on the columns of the porticoes. There is much to delight in the passage from reflected light dancing on the water, to the cool shade of the portico, to the dark and enveloping enclosure of the old church. Perhaps it sparked memories in the old Patriarch. According to Ka’b, he did not move on right away in spite of Umar’s impatience and the religious services that awaited him at our destination. Instead, in an inspired moment, and in a gently lilting voice, he began to recite a poem composed in his youth. Don’t ask me how or why, but the poem written so long ago retraced the journey from the Mount of Olives to the Church of the Paralyzed Man:

My father remembered this incident because he could see that, in spite of the blasphemous references to Jesus and his mother, and the clumsiness of the translation, Umar was moved. Sophronius may not have known it, but sweet words more than beautiful things moved the first generation of Believers. Umar, like my father, believed that the only reason for building anything was utility; he shrank from one who intentionally sought to add a gratifying effect to an object or a thing. Were one to give him a cheap building over a beautiful one, he would receive praise for being thrifty with the goods of the Lord. Building rudely was religiously justified, he said. How, asked his Companions? Because it meant elevating worship over place, Him over things, content over form, the next world over this one—and this surely was what the Lord intended.

(photo credit 12.2)

T
he stone-cobbled street down which Sophronius had chosen to travel headed due west from the healing pools, turned north, and led to a large open space inside the city walls opposite Saint Stephen’s Gate. Since the conquest, Muslims and Jews had called this gate the Gate of the Column.

The name is derived from a great column that stands in the center of the semicircular forum around the gate. At one time, circuses and games were staged there. Some people say the column is a leftover from those pagan times. A cross sat on top of the column when Umar visited the city, reminding people, Sophronius explained, of how much the Roman empire had changed, and, more importantly, that this was where the Jews had tried to seize the body of Mary as it was being carried by the eleven Apostles for burial in Gethsemane. They didn’t succeed. Later, Ka’b would agitate for the removal of that offensive cross. But no Caliph ever thought it politic to do so in such a Christian city, and it is still there to this day, lording it over the most important gateway into the city.

It was at the Gate of the Column, Sophronius was quick to point out to Umar, that Christianity had given up its first martyr to the faith.

“What happened?” Umar asked, genuinely interested.

“Filled with the Holy Spirit, and gazing intently up at Heaven, Saint Stephen saw the glory of God,” said Sophronius, “and he cried out to the people, ‘Look, there is a rift in the sky. Behold the Son of Man standing at God’s right hand!’ His words made the Jewish elders in the crowd grind their teeth in fury. They uttered a great cry and called upon the people around them to stop up their
ears. Then as one man they rushed upon the blessed Stephen, flinging him out of the gate and down the steps, whereupon they set about stoning him. As the stones rained upon him, Stephen fell to his knees, and with his last breath, said, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Do not hold this sin against them.’ ”

But Sophronius did hold it against them, as could be seen from the way he told the story. He had already surmised that Umar’s advisor was a Jew. And he must have discerned Ka’b’s mounting anger and discomfort. But this was not the time or place for Ka’b to intervene. His senses were still reeling from the Christian stamp that had been affixed to every street and building of the City of David and Solomon. He had never imagined there could be so many crosses.

Grateful for my father’s restraint, Umar turned to him and whispered, “What drives these Christians! They are like women. No sooner do they have a memory than they turn it into an ornament.”

From the Gate of the Column, the party turned sharply south for the final stretch of Sophronius’s tour. They were now heading down the most important commercial street in Jerusalem—the Cardo—and into the wealthiest section of the city. The buildings were solidly constructed and finely finished; the markets were the cleanest in Syria and overflowed with cheeses, figs, olives of every variety, tanks of pressed oil destined for export, celebrated raisins of diverse kinds, apples, bananas, and pine nuts, whose equal was not to be found. To each craft, there was a separate bazaar, where one could purchase the finest quality leather and silver work, mirrors, lamps, jars, and needles, cotton from Egypt spilling from brightly colored baskets onto the large smooth paving stones of the street, all in such abundance that it was enough to take a man’s breath away.

But this is not what my father and Umar saw on that most extraordinary of days. The stores were tightly shut, and the crosses that one tended to lose sight of in the hustle and bustle of people and goods stood starkly at attention.

S
ophronius was silent. Everyone was now on foot, having handed over their horses, and Umar’s ass, to attendants at the Gate of the Column. Umar broke the silence:

“How in God’s name do you manage to keep your streets so clean?”

Sophronius needed to have the question repeated to make sure he had got it right. After a pause, the Patriarch replied, “Whenever too many camels, horses, asses, oxen, and their dung, clog the city streets, a truly wonderful event occurs to free us. An abundance of rain will pour during the night, washing away the dirt off the streets and freeing them of filth. God made the terrain of His city slope down from the mountain upon which His Church is built, toward the lower ground of the former Jewish Temple. In this way the heavy rain never collects in the streets, but rushes downhill. The flood of water from the Heavens flows out through the Eastern Gate by which we entered, taking with it all that disgusting dung and filth. The moment Jerusalem has been thus baptized, the downpour stops.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than an enormous complex looming from afar suddenly came into full view through an opening in the colonnade. Arriving at that hour when a man can barely distinguish another in the light, a sequence of interconnected buildings marking the journey’s terminus rose gradually in height as they stepped back from the street. The Church of the Resurrection, like the Jewish Temple that had inspired it, was situated on a longitudinal axis facing east, overlooking the desolate ruins of the Temple. Towering above it in the distance, Umar and Ka’b could see the great rotunda built over the tomb of Jesus. Not that the edifice had been constructed to look like a memorial. Far from it. The church was a celebration in stone to Triumph, to the Glory of Christ the Conqueror, he who had overcome death.

Capping the tall cylindrical tower of the rotunda was the largest dome in Jerusalem, the Dome of the Resurrection. A hole was cut out at the apex of the spherical surface, exposing the rockcut tomb to the sky. The Dome bore a striking resemblance to the round, shaven top of Sophronius’s head.