Christis


	Contents page \| Christis archive \| Submissions \| Advertising \| Links page \| Meet the team \| Cartoons \| Subscribe \| Christis timetable \| Search Christis

A Day Trip With a Difference

If you ever get the chance to go to the Holy Land, then go! These are a few of my memories from a hot August day about 5 years ago.

We were on holiday as a family in Cyprus, and from Cyprus you can take “day trips” to Israel, with overnight ferry “cruises” there and back. My parents decided to splash out, as at the time there was as near to a state of peace as you ever get in the Middle East and there might never be another chance.

We left the ferry early in the morning, with our school-trip lunchboxes, for our “luxury air-conditioned” coach. Yep, you guessed it, the air conditioning was by virtue of being able to open the window, I’m not sure what happened to the luxury bit! It’s a couple of hours drive from the port of Haifa, through Tel Aviv and then the steep climb up to Jerusalem. Our guide for the day told us his name, which was unpronounceable, so told us just to call him Moses!

In Jerusalem we did the standard tourist route, round the walls, through a multitude of cathedrals and churches, which were dazzlingly decorated, but all seemed to be the same somehow. And in the crush of pilgrims, tourists and pickpockets around you, there wasn’t the time to stop and look at anything, never mind, think of its significance. Amazing markets and bazaars where you are accosted by wave after wave of sights, sounds and smells. I could have wandered there for weeks, but time was short and the next stop was the Wailing Wall. We had to show our Western passports to be allowed in. Teenage conscripts with terrifyingly big rifles (a reminder of the fragile peace at the time) scrutinised them and allowed us to pass. The variety of peoples and religions at the Wall was fascinating, all queueing together, each to place a piece of paper with a prayer in the wall. Above us were six large blue and gold stars each to remind us of a million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. And the midday sun poured its heat over us.

It’s not far by coach from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, on the West Bank. Yet more heavily armed teenage soldiers at the border (the semiautomatics at Gatwick airport are nothing compared to this), young children on the street trying to sell postcards, and all manner of souvenirs, and they’ll accept any currency: dollars, sterling, Cyprus pounds. All the prices we saw for things were quoted in dollars, I suppose this is a sign of a country with an economy which is struggling to support the army. Moses told us that everyone had to do several years service in the army and that the basic rate of income tax was 49%. He was a university lecturer who had to work as a tour guide on his days off to keep his family.

Bethlehem was a maze of churches too, so many that I don’t remember their names or who built them. All were baking hot inside, as if the air never moved, you almost wondered if the metal candlesticks ever melted with the excessive heat! We queued in the heat to go down into the crypt to see the Star of Bethlehem, which is thought to be where Christ was born. The air was even heavier and darker down there, but the gold star on the floor still shone.

We slowly made our way through the complex of churches, looking at the paintings and decoration of each one. In one, which I seem to remember was a Catholic church, I thought I’d just sit on one of the back pews and rest my feet for a moment.

And then time stood still.

There may have been people sitting near me, or looking around the church, but it all blurred away as a wave of cool surrounded me, with a total feeling of welcome and belonging, both at once. Every other place I’d been that day, each church or cathedral had felt distant: hot and bright, or hot and dark, gilded and mosaic-ed to its eyeballs, but this place was different. Cool and dim, quiet and peaceful, refreshing after the madness, exhaustion, noise and crush of people outside. I could have sat there for hours, it felt like I had, but it can only have been a few seconds.

Something definitely happened to me in that short time, I still don’t know exactly what it was and I don’t really have the words to describe it. But it is now deeply a part of me and has strengthened my faith. I was a Christian long before I went to Bethlehem and I certainly wasn’t expecting anything like this to happen, but I’m so glad that it did. I still treasure the Jerusalem cross necklace that my parents bought me (in dollars!) in Bethlehem that day. It is a reminder to me of that amazing cathedral that I can’t remember the name of, only a few metres from where Christ was born. So, if you ever see me fingering my necklace, which has the word Jerusalem engraved on the back of the cross and I’m in a busy, noisy, chaotic place and staring away into space, there’s a fair chance that my mind will be in Bethlehem, where there is a cool, calm and quiet place where time stood still.

So, if you ever get the chance to go to the Holy Land, then do go. But take plenty of dollars with you! Oh, and expect to get heat stroke from your luxury air-conditioned coach.

Keira Curtis

Last modified: 25th November 2005