Post Cards from the Attic – real stories of journeys I’ve made round the world.
I was living in Cairo and as Christmas approached and friends were making plans to go down to the coast for the weekend. I couldn’t get enthusiastic about lying on a beach on Christmas Day, so I decided to travel to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Egypt is still a developing country and I remember information was sketchy and I set off with no certainty I’d actually make it but luckily, I did.
The journey itself was generally unremarkable for Egypt, the old rickety bus with no air con, the lack of places that you’d actually risk going to the loo, the usual. Except to say three things stick out in my memory. The first was that I had to negotiate getting my visa on a separate sheet to ensure my passport didn’t have an Israeli stamp, not conducive to travel around the Arab world. The second was on entering Israel’s boarder the number of young, quite glamourous, girls in Army uniform with weapons took me a back and the third, and most bizarre, was a song on the radio. The words so explicit I’d even be shocked to hear it back home. I had defiantly left the ‘Arab’ run region.
I arrived late on Christmas eve and had missed the concert in Bethlehem Square, but it was still crowded with people. I had consciously booked into a Christian run guest house and when I arrived the hospitality was amazing. I hadn’t realised the owners ran their own little church on the premises and I have to say I’ve never been more pleased to be Catholic. On Christmas morning I was able to legitimately excuse myself after breakfast to go to mass. This avoided any awkwardness about having to decline the invitation to join their service as I did worry that I had checked into some form of mini Christian cult. Thankfully, not so and some of the wonderful people I met I am still in contact with today.
I actually went to two services, one the mass in St Catherine’s sitting under the stunning stained-glass window with a scene of the nativity. The air was filled with the familiar waft of church incense and the eclectic mix of people at mass all coming together in Bethlehem on Christmas. I sat there still a bit stunned that I was actually there.
The second service was in an underground crypt that if I recall joined St Catherine’s and the Church of the Nativity. The air was thick and damp from the sheer volume of people and the sandstone walls raw and exposed the same as when they were formed. Mass was over and I was doing a bit of sightseeing and seem to have got caught up in something. The Church of the Nativity is shared with Greek Orthodoxy and Armenian Apostoli’s and as it wasn’t in English, I wasn’t sure what it was. However, having negotiated my way, even by accident, in to such a small premium space on Christmas Day I felt it inappropriate to leave early.
After mass I went to sit in the square and people watch and as time passed, I noticed a heavier and heavier military presence. Two of the men came over to me and politely enquired what I was doing. I had my guidebook in hand and was wearing a waterproof Dublin GAA jacket, forgive me this was before I knew any better, so when I told them I had just been to mass and was just watching they seemed satisfied. I asked the men if this was normal for Christmas Day and he said no. The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abass was coming to the Mosque. The same as 2020 Christmas Day fell on a Friday which is the Muslim day of prayer. The presence of such a figure would attract a crowd and the military were now positioned everywhere, on the rooftops, on the streets and the irony of the large group standing outside the peace centre was not lost on me.
Yet in all of this activity I felt quite safe perched on my concrete toadstool. As the priests and nuns and religious people from the various Christian denominations crossed the square from left to right towards the Church, and the Muslim men and women crossed from right to left towards the mosque, it was peaceful enough that I recall the billowing noise of their different attire. All long and down to their ankles and all swooshing as they walked.
Unlike in Jerusalem, where the tension was a bit more palatable, here I realised that in the place that makes up the very core of our religion, the infamous story of the journey to Bethlehem and the place where Jesus was born, Christians, of all denominations are low on the pecking order. They are a minority in an unofficial state and there was no tension because on the West Bank there isn’t the power struggle that some of the other geography has to endure.
As the minaret of the Mosque ‘called the faithful to pray’ they lined the square. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, the sheer number that spilled out made the synchronisation of the ritual of Friday prayer, with the backdrop of nuns and priests passing, on Christmas day, in Bethlehem Square, simply magical.
I called my mum and dad to wish them Happy Christmas from Bethlehem and they couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t told them before I was gone – I’d made that mistake before, but that’s a whole other story.
Rosaleen Bond