Susan's Blog: Pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine. Sounds of the early morning in Jerusalem.

Sounds of the very early morning in Jerusalem:
The muezzin.
Roosters.
A car alarm.

Members of our group arrived last night from our disparate locations, many having suffered much from flight delays and lost luggage. There are 26 of us, several from two parishes in Tampa, Florida, but the rest just folks from around the US and England.
Normally pilgrimage groups run by St. George's College stay in the guest house there, but there is quite literally no room at the inn, due to a large group of youth on pilgrimage, some of them from St. Paul's in Richmond. So the college has put us up in a hotel nearby, the 'Holy Land Hotel.'

Both St. George's College and the Holy Land Hotel are located in East Jerusalem, an Arab neighborhood just outside the walls of the Old City. Over lunch today, several of us told different versions of this story: Some kind seatmate on a flight or co-worker asked, "Where will you be staying?" And when the response came back, "Oh, in East Jerusalem," they frowned, or looked concerned, or even just said, "You can't stay there. It's not safe." One of the course staff, an archdeacon from New Zealand, told stories of taxi drivers who refused to drive her home. 

Not safe?

One wonders what that really means.

No, it's not an affluent neighborhood like the predominantly Jewish areas on the west of the Old City. Yes, street signs are in Arabic. Women walk about with headscarves and long overcoats that cover their wrists and ankles. It's not a tourist area. It's an Arab neighborhood. The hotel is run by Arab proprietors. They served us an excellent dinner last night and and have been nothing but hospitable and tolerant of our idiosyncrasies. From the hotel roof we can see the Herod Gate and the Dome of the Rock. Yesterday I walked around the surrounding streets, picked a sandwich shop, and got an excellent falafel sandwich for 7 shekels (3 bucks?), without knowing a word of Arabic other than 'Shukran,' which means thank you.

This morning we walked a few blocks up to St. George's Cathedral, where we celebrated the Eucharist and then had introductions to the College itself. The dean spoke about the layers of history here--literally, the archaeological layers that cover millennia. And, more practically, the fact that from the hotel rooftop you can see the marks of many different eras of history in Jerusalem. The fact that, while using the wifi on my computer to post this blog entry, I can listen to a muezzin, a rooster crowing, and a car alarm, all at the same time. There is so, so much to learn and synthesize here. Not just about the history left by thousands of years of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian heritage--but also about the lives and hopes of the people who live here now.