Читать книгу The Middle Way - Poems and Essays from 'The Theosophical Path' - Talbot Mundy - Страница 5

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THE MOSLEMS call Jerusalem El-Quds 'The Holy' not without justification. They hold it next in importance and sanctity after Mecca and Medina, while painfully aware that Christians and Jews give it first place in their imaginations, if not actually in their hearts. Moslems own most of the property, and practically all the historic sites; the mayor is a Moslem, and so are the majority of the Legislative Assembly; but the Governor of the city is an Englishman, and the High Commissioner of Palestine a Jew. The police are mostly Moslems, with a small army to support them composed mainly of Indian troops under British officers. And under the eyes of that nervous administration, meet, move, and quarrel, representatives of all this world's fanaticisms.

The city is not visible from far-off, as one might think from studying the countless hymns and paeans in its praise. It stands about 3800 feet above sea-level. From the summit of the Mount of Olives one can view, like a turquoise framed in the yellow of the Mountains of Moab, the Dead Sea, 6000 feet lower and only twenty miles away. But the bald and rock-strewn Judaean Hills — with laden camels usually on the skyline — shut off the view in all other directions; so that even from the railway station there is nothing of the city visible but one corner of the medieval walls and a huge French convent.

However, romance begins from the moment the train leaves the plains at Ludd and begins to follow a spur-track into the limestone mountains. In the train are 'Parthians, Medes, and Elamites' — Jews from New York, Poland, and Bokhara; Abyssinians; Turkomans, Punjabis, Armenians, Egyptians, Englishmen, — representatives of nearly any nation and religion all the way from China to Peru — a Christian bishop, maybe, chin-by-jowl with a Moslem sheik. And there is always someone leaning from a window lecturing the rest, with plenty of material for his sermon.

They boast, and with sufficient truth, that every yard of those hills and gorges, among which the train toils noisily, has been fought over a thousand times. Not even Belgium has been such a battle-ground. They say the little red anemones, that grow wherever a pinch of dirt has settled in the crannies of the rocks, mark places where the dead fell fighting. And they point out dry stream-beds that "once ran blood for days." No two tales are quite alike; they vary with the creed of the individual, and again with his political prejudices, which are almost as divergent. But all take pride in the fighting, and are in agreement as to that if nothing else.

There are no trees. Men cut those down to fight with; and amber-eyed, black goats, that look like swarms of insects in the distance, devour the new shoots. There are ruins everywhere — caverns for hunted men to hide in -sepulchers, long looted — pralaya plain to see.

And then Jerusalem, with her domed roofs golden in the sunset, and history underfoot. You drive from the station up a dusty road, across a score of battle-fields, between stones once set in place by Solomon (whoever he was), with walls on your right hand built by the crusaders and repaired by modern British troops.

The walls are magnificent and perfect; there are no such city-walls elsewhere. They stand for the most part on the first foundations. There are stones in them that have been torn down and replaced a dozen times, as army succeeding army sacked the place, and men inspired by undying zeal rebuilt. It is safe to say, the only time when Jerusalem was taken and not sacked was this last, when Allenby, after terrific fighting, walked in alone on foot, when an Arab servant had surrendered the city keys to a British cook with the rank of private. The British army set to work at once to spare and preserve; prisoners and destitutes were paid to remove dead donkeys and the rest of it from the moat and drains; the Order of the Bath was introduced; the city was washed; Solomon's Pool, outside the walls, was cemented up and filled with water for the first time in centuries for the use of troops. The water-works left incomplete by Pontius Pilate were rediscovered and finished. Jerusalem still smells of everywhere and everything, but she is tolerable nowadays.

What strikes you first? Red heads. The boot-blacks at the Jafa Gate, who yell for your patronage, are blue-eyed, red-haired — almost certainly descendants of the Scots crusaders; Moslems all since Saladin prevailed, and recently Turk conscripts. There is no ill-will on that score. All concede that the Turk fought handsomely — all that is who fought against him and have lived beside him since. Islam, sword in hand, attends to business; having sheathed the sword, is tolerant. It is due to the humorously patient Turk that Christians in Jerusalem did not Kilkenny-cat themselves out of existence long ago.

Then, if it is night, and the modern meanness is invisible, all ancient history beckons. You pass by proud-looking Bedouins (some not too proud to beg, though wearing amber worth a farm or two) and plunge between laden camels into the dark throat of David Street, where the roofs nearly meet overhead, above rows of arches (now vegetable stalls) with open fronts, in which Knights Templar used to live. To right and left roofed passages, and darkness lit at intervals by feeble lamp-rays. Here and there the shadow of a Sikh on guard, silent, all-observing, mindful of his duty — and eleven rupees monthly, less deductions for his family in India. Greeks, Jews, Arabs, Levantines, brush by you, fitting less awkwardly by dark into the ancient molds. Then coffee-shops, where men in red tarboosh talk politics by candle light, and spies listen. Snatches of song in Arabic. Melancholy 'cello-music, by a Jew from Chicago or somewhere. Explosive bursts of quarreling. Silence.

Narrower and narrower the street grows, until in places you can touch the walls with either hand. Through key-hole arches you can peer down dark courts and passage-ways, where the mystery reigns. A door opens; a man in Arab robes steps out; stands for a moment as if conscious of the picture; disappears. Beyond another opening a shadowy camel trudges round and round, grinding out semsem, blindfolded, and cursed by someone stridently whenever he pauses for a rest.

Then the walls, and the Haram-es-Shariff, where Omar's Mosque stands; and the Dome of the Rock above the far-famed Rock of Abraham. They are lovelier by moonlight than the fame of Fars, and mounting the walls you can make the whole circuit of the city. Below lies the Valley of Jehoshaphat, glistening white with crowded tombs — "dry bones in the Valley of Death." The Hospice on the Mount of Olives, now government headquarters, looms against the sky, and around it and about are silhouettes of mosques, and churches, where once on a time the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Roman armies camped. From the walls you can see the place where Titus rode to reconnoitre, and came within an ace of being taken (which might have changed a deal of history).

On the other side, within a stone's throw of the walls, is Golgotha, where four roads used to meet, and crucifixions were. Some say the place where they buried Jesus is within a hundred yards of that skull-shaped hill, and they are probably right if the account in the gospels is at all accurate. The moonlight emphasizes the resemblance to a skull, leaving hardly any doubt of the locality. But the Christian sects have chosen to adopt as authentic a site within the walls where neither execution nor burial can possibly have taken place; and there the sects fight and bicker, while a soldier stands on guard to keep them from bloodshed. He used to be a Turk, but is nowadays an Indian, or a stalwart from some plough-tail in the English shires.

Most sites within Jerusalem are doubtful, although all are labeled, and those possessed by Moslems have at least the merit of really ancient tradition and logical argument. The Christian claims all date from the crusades, when 'proof' was what a priest or a monk said, and 'fragments of the true cross' became almost a drug on the market.

It is indisputable, for instance, that an enormous and very ancient building once stood on the site of the Haram-es-Shariff; and it may have been Solomon's Temple. The titanic, squared foundation-stones are there, and one wall is standing, to which go the orthodox Jews to mourn the departed glories of their race. No orthodox Jew will enter the courtyard surrounding the Dome of the Rock, for fear he might tread unwittingly an the spot (unknown now) where the Holy of Holies stood. And in any case, Jews are not welcome within the mosque, for the Moslems regard them as would-be usurpers.

Once, when Mohammed shaped his creed and welded Islam into one, he sought to attract the Jews by incorporating Jewish legend and the laws of Moses into the doctrine; but the Jews rejected all overtures, and ever since, although the Moslem has permitted synagogues, he has regarded the Jew as a hereditary enemy. He is forever suspicious of Jewish plans to regain possession of Jerusalem; the scorn and distrust are mutual, and there is not much love lost when Jew and Moslem meet.

Directly under the Dome of the Rock, protruding through the floor and surrounded by an iron railing, is the red rock said to be that on which Abraham offered up Isaac (although who first said so is not so clear). Underneath it is a cavern (conceivably a cistern once) lit by one small lamp, and the guide points out corners in which David, Solomon, Elijah, and Mohammed habitually prayed. There is a hollow in the low roof , which they tell you receded to let the Prophet of Islam stand upright when he rose from prayer, and they also permit you to stand on the very spot from which he rode to heaven on his horse Barak.

The floor of the cavern sounds hollow, and there have been many attempts to burrow secretly and discover ancient treasure there — the true Tomb of the Kings perhaps, or the hiding-place of ancient treasures. Some say that when Jerusalem was taken everything of value, chronicles included, was hidden down there. But the Moslems believe, or at any rate say, that underneath that cavern is a hole which reaches to the center of the earth, and thither the souls of dead men come once a week. So they guard all approaches carefully, and he who seeks to dig a tunnel does so at his own risk, which is imminent and not to be withstood by argument.

There is another story that the Rock of Abraham is the identical "threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite" that David purchased for the site of the temple his son should build. But there is nothing mentioned in the Old or New Testament whose exact location has not been identified by some enthusiast and accepted as authentic by others. Within the city-walls they show you Pilate's judgment-hall, the tomb of David, the upper room in which the Last Supper was held; and he who wishes may believe. Most of the city that Pilate knew lies seventy feet below the present level, smothered under the debris of centuries; but there are excavations now proceeding that are likely to throw wholly new light on history.

There are people in Jerusalem who have come there from the earth's ends to await the last blast of Gabriel's trumpet. The valleys are crowded with the graves of Jews, whose bones are expected to arise reclad with flesh and clothing when the time comes. Moslems declare that on the last day a hair will be stretched across the Valley of Jehosaphat, and over that the resurrected True-believer will be required to walk, to save himself from hell-fire. Christians have sent their hearts in hundreds to be buried near the Holy City. There is a profession, decidedly profitable, whose members receive steady remittances from oversea in return for prayers prayed in Jerusalem. It is a city of frauds, faith, fanaticism, and sudden death.

Easter is the riot season. Then, as is so well known, the Christians fly at one another, while the Moslem hot-heads are encouraged to attend a rival ceremony that takes them in procession to the reputed tomb of Moses, near the Dead Sea, an affair that lasts a week and gives the Christians time to control themselves. Nothing, not even danger, brings the Christians into unity; there is quite likely to be a fight in the Holy Sepulcher on any Easter morning, and troops are kept well within hail. The Moslems have their differences, too, and have learned these latter days, the art of accusing everybody else; but religion unites them at a touch, and they are one at the first suggestion of danger to Islam.

Zionism is regarded as a danger, and for the first time in history has found Moslem, Christian, and orthodox Jew making common cause. The Zionists base their claim to a national home in Palestine on Old Testament history. In fact, they have no other basis for their claim. The Moslems meet them on that ground and reply, that if the story of the conquest of the 'Promised Land' is true, as stated in the Jewish records, then that is reason enough for not admitting Jews today. They point to the accounts of butchery of the inhabitants, of intolerance, and of ruthless destruction of cities. They claim that they, the Arabs, too, are descendants of Abraham, and were there first, with prior right of inheritance. They declare, and the Christians and orthodox Jews admit it, that under Moslem rule there has been tolerance of other men's religions; and that, whether or not the Jews once owned Palestine, confessedly they took it by the sword, and by the sword were turned out.

Nowhere on earth stands the law so plainly written as in Jerusalem, that "as ye sow, so shall ye reap." It is a city whose Karma has overtaken her before the eyes of all the world, and again and again.

And Jerusalem stands "beautiful upon a mountain," recleaned, rebuilt, rerising like a Phoenix from the ashes of her past, as a symbol that something survives in spite of all men's treachery and hatred. Dome, minaret, convent roof, and synagogue stand crowded there; and among them and within them rivalries persist like worms in a camel's carcass. But the stars smile down on all of it — yet greater symbols, each in its appointed place. The flowers bloom and blow in league-long carpets. City of Peace is the meaning of the word Jerusalem. And there is peace for him who earns it, even there, as everywhere.