Jerusalem

No American novel makes me think of Israel/Palestine like John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The smoldering anger of the Joads as they are displaced from their land and forced into exile captures the emotions of many Palestinians I've met.  Ma Joad, for example, struggling to keep the family together always makes me think of a woman named Om Rajah in Jenin Refugee Camp, and her son Tom reminds me of so many young Palestinian men, not least when he says things like, "Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop.  They're workin' on our decency."

But much of the book, like much of life in Israel/Palestine and every other place, is full of family wisdom and brokenness and love that isn't necessarily all that connected to the politics and history of one's setting.  Some things are just universally shared among us.  And so when the mother and daughter in this photograph passed me in Jerusalem's Old City and stopped for a moment to reply to my sabah il-xher (good morning) and to ask where I was from, I then listened as they continued on up the steps and talked with each other about the ordinary things in life.  They -- through their physical movement, their voices, their relating to each other -- gave life to these aging alley walls.  It was they, not the stones and arches and steps, which comprised the heart of this city.

I don't know what kind of wisdom Jerusalem's mothers pass on to daughters, but I bet that sometimes it isn't too unlike the following passage, in which Ma Joad is talking to her daughter Rose of Sharon:

When you’re young, Rosasharn, ever’thing that happens is a thing all by itself.  It’s a lonely thing.  I know, I ‘member, Rosasharn.” … And Ma went on, “They’s a time of change, an’ when that comes, dyin is a piece of all dyin’, and bearin’ is a piece of all bearin’, an’ bearin’ and dyin’ is two pieces of the same thing.  An’ then things ain’t lonely any more.  An’ then a hurt don’t hurt so bad, ‘cause it ain’t a lonely hurt no more, Rosasharn.  I wisht I could tell you so you’d know, but I can’t.”  And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Rose of Sharon’s eyes, and flowed over her eyes and blinded her.

If interested in another short vignette from Jerusalem, this one about two Palestinian men dancing to a Whitney Houston song hours after a suicide bombing, click on "A Dance in Jerusalem." 

Among the many sacred sites in Jerusalem’s Old City is the Holy Sepulchre, best known as the traditional burial place of Jesus.  Here you can find pilgrims weeping, candles burning, history hovering.  And occasionally, particularly around Easter, you can even find monks and other Christians engaged in fistfights with rival factions.

Whatever one’s faith, all can agree that Jesus’ life and death shaped and continues to shape a lot of what goes on in the world, not least in the realm of literature.  One of my favorite examples is found in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, in which a visitor from outer space looks at the story of Jesus' execution and makes an observation about human nature and violence: 

The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.

But the Gospels actually taught this:

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being of the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:

Oh, boy -- they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!

And then that thought had a brother: "There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.

So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.

And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!