Disciple: Journal from Jerusalem

[Image: Some of the faces of the Holy Land: Ahmad, Nourooz and Imad. Photos throughout courtesy of the Rev. David Umphlett]

Old friends, new perspectives

By the Rev. David Umphlett

In his 2012 book, The General’s Son, author Miko Peled writes that if Abraham was brave enough to speak up for the righteous of Sodom and Gomorrah, then, “Who is there to speak for the people of Gaza? There can be no doubt that among the 1.5 million people residing in Gaza there are more than 50 righteous men and women.”

A year in and the battles in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon continue to rage on. As a frequent traveler in those holy lands, I have found myself consumed by the news from halfway around the world. WhatsApp and email have been my connection to friends who hide in their stairwells when the sirens blare. It’s the faces and stories of those people that make the situation present to me. In May I was able to travel to Jerusalem and Bethlehem to check on friends. What follows are excerpts from my journal. I share them to share with you the stories of a few living the headlines we read, whose lives are sacred and worth knowing, whose very existence might change the way you watch the news at night.

May 21, 2024

Iyad, my good friend and guide, was waiting for me in the arrivals hall in Tel Aviv. He’s a Palestinian Christian Arab Israeli. Let that sink in. Iyad hates coming to the airport, and now he said, out of boredom, he’s glad to pick up anyone coming to town. On the way to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, I was amazed at the normal pace of life everywhere around me. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

After checking in at St. George’s Guesthouse in Jerusalem, I made my way via Nablus Road toward Damascus Gate, which was empty. Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the church containing the spots of both Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, is always my first stop in town.

The streets of the Old City were bizarrely empty. It was actually nice to enjoy the Old City with so few people in it, though I simultaneously recognized I was able to experience this version of the city only because tens of thousands of people were dying only 70 kilometers away.

[Images: On a recent trip to the Holy Land, the Rev. David Umphlett visited important, usually bustling pilgrimage sites, including Church of the Holy Sepulcher (left) and Church of the Nativity (right). Due to the ongoing war, he found the sites—and the city—eerily devoid of pilgrims, tourists and locals alike.]

No one called out to me as I walked along Khan Al Zeit, the main street separating the Muslim and Christian Quarters. The usually bustling street, though more an alley by Western standards, was unnervingly quiet.

Holy Sepulcher was virtually empty. After a visit up at Calvary, I walked around the church to reach the edicule and its rotunda. The edicule is built over the spot where the church remembers Jesus’ resurrection. I couldn’t believe how deserted it all was.

I sat for a bit on the stairs overlooking the parvis, or pavement, outside the church. The quiet was both reassuring and off-putting. How were people making it?

On the way back to St. George’s, I stopped at Al Mihbash, a place I’d always wanted to go. It has three little balconies on the second floor that are usually packed—except now. I walked upstairs to the gritty bar and lounge, where the music of Bob Marley played, and a waitress invited me in perfect English to sit wherever I’d like. I
sat on the center balcony, facing the Old City. I ordered fresh mankousheh and a Taybeh beer, brewed in the last all-Christian town in the West Bank. I asked the waitress how they’d been doing. She was obviously a little uncomfortable answering and said it had been “complicated.” I asked how they were making it. She shrugged and said, “We’re getting by.”

The mankousheh and beer were tremendous, but again, I couldn’t help but think that the only reason I’d gotten this balcony seat was because of the war. I sat there for a favorite treat while 70 km away, hundreds of thousands were starving. This juxtaposition pervaded everything I did.

May 22, 2024

This morning Iyad drove me to the Princess Basma Centre, a therapeutic center for children, owned and operated by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. Violette, the director, and Julieann, head of development and wife of St. George’s College dean, were both wonderful hosts and caught me up on all the work going on, especially in Gaza. In Gaza, Musa, the only Christian on staff, is a social worker by training but is learning physiotherapy from the therapists in Jerusalem via the internet so that he can help the children around him. Al-Zahraa, an occupational therapist, has moved four times since the war began. She was sheltering in a school with 30 people in the same room, eating two hot meals a week and sleeping closely side-by-side in the winter to keep warm.

I met a boy who was wounded by an Israeli Defense Force bullet in the West Bank. He was wheeled around in a standing wheelchair with his mother at his side. They showed me their room where they were living at Princess Basma, a simple dorm-like room with beds for the mother and child and one locker for their belongings. Earlier, Violette mentioned a little girl from Gaza stuck in Jerusalem since before October, when she first arrived for cancer treatment. Violette was worried about her because when she’d seen her earlier in the day, she wasn’t smiling as usual. When we ran into her, she grinned from ear to ear. Violette reminded me that “basma” means “smile” in Arabic. The girl and her mother live at the Lutheran hospital, where they are clothed and fed. Their passes from the Israeli government don’t allow them out on the streets, though, so they spend their days in their room, the hospital for treatment, or Princess Basma for rehab.

Iyad was insistent on trying one last time to get me a meeting with Archbishop Hosam Naoum. While at Princess Basma, he texted that the archbishop would see me at 11 a.m. The staff at Princess Basma put me in a taxi and sent me on my way back to St. George’s Cathedral, understanding how hard it was to get any time with the archbishop. Archbishop Hosam is a remarkable man doing extraordinary work under terrible circumstances. He was kind, warm and genuine. I told him that I pray for him, his wife and his children every day. He had been in Jordan for diocesan convention (Majma), then ordinations, then back to Jerusalem an hour before I saw him. After I walked out of his office, he was literally out the door back to Jordan for something else.

The afternoon was spent walking from St. George’s up the Mount of Olives to find both Pater Noster and Dominus Flevit closed. However, I had the Garden of Gethsemane and the Church of All Nations to myself. It was an eerie and uncomfortable silence. The photographs I took were amazing, but the circumstances creating those pictures were excruciating.

May 23, 2024

Iyad drove me to Bethlehem. It was an easy drive because the main checkpoint was open, though Iyad reminded me it is often closed without warning.

In Bethlehem, we went straight to the Bethlehem Souvenir Center, which is the shop Iyad has used for the last several years. The owner, Issa, met us and opened for us. Iyad joked that Issa didn’t want to open as early as Iyad wanted to arrive. With no business, there was no reason to open early. Issa is his friend, and Iyad goes over once a month to visit with him. Issa welcomed us into his office, where we chatted as other employees began arriving. One made us coffee, and I mostly listened as they chatted. My one semester of Arabic doesn’t get me very far. Issa had played football (soccer) over the weekend with his boys out of boredom. When the boys were growing up, they played every weekend. His sons are now grown, but the tradition is being revived for lack of anything else to do. Issa said they open only three days a week now and that the last time they had a group was 10 days prior. The last group before that was before the events on October 7, 2023.

I was glad to spend some money there. Issa has continued to pay his employees at half-salary, even without any income. Iyad said that Issa is in the minority, as he was able to support his employees and their families. Most employers can’t do the same.

Omar, Iyad’s current bus driver, and Mohammad, Iyad’s old bus driver, joined us on the porch of the shop for coffee. Omar asked about my wife, Lorinda. He told me he was well; there’s just no work.

Omar, Mohammad and Iyad drove me to Bethlehem Bible College for the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference. It’s an annual event directed by the Rev. Muntheer Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Christmas Lutheran Church. I joked that I was like a diplomat with all these drivers: Iyad, and now Omar and Mohammad as the security detail. They dropped me at the front entrance to the college, and we said our goodbyes.

One of the first speakers was a woman on the faculty at the Bible College. She told the story of her great-aunt and uncle dying in Gaza, her uncle from an air strike and her aunt from an illness for which she wasn’t allowed to leave Gaza to get treatment. A third relative had had a hip replacement without anesthesia! All of this since October 7. She also talked about her high school-age daughter, who was in the United States on an exchange program. The speaker lived in a tiny town in the west somewhere, and after October 7, she was suspected of harboring ill intentions for Israel. They doubted her whenever she talked about what was happening with her family back home. Someone in the school administration reported her for “spreading false information.” All of this before her aunt and uncle died. It took their deaths for the tiny community to begin believing the truth of what she said was happening.

[Image: Even a surprise treat—a favorite meal on the scenic balcony of a Jerusalem restaurant usually too packed to find a table—is inseparable from the ongoing cost of war, exemplified by the children recovering in the Princess Basma Centre and a speaker at the Bethlehem Bible College’s Christ at the Checkpoint Conference, who lost family members in Gaza to the war.]

The session ended, and I walked the 25 minutes to Manger Square. The streets felt normal, with the locals going about their business. But when I arrived in the older part of the city, the touristy part, there was a visible difference. Half of the shops were closed, and there were few people on the streets. I didn’t see another tourist. The Church of the Nativity was empty, save for two guards. There was a hollowness to the space without the throngs lining up to descend the stairs to the grotto. Several people outside offered to be my guide, and one followed me inside. They finally left me alone, though I knew that they were just desperate for work.

I walked back out into Manger Square to look for George and Father Issa. George arrived first. I knew him from another shop in Bethlehem. I first connected with him on Instagram, and I saw him in person only once before, though we’d chatted on the phone in January when he was in California with his brother. It’s both dorky and super cool that we have gotten to know each other that way, though it is always odd how social media makes it feel like you know someone until you actually get to speak. Issa walked up soon after.

We walked to Sagafredo coffee shop, one of the few that was still open. Issa insisted on buying us coffee, though I protested. He said, “Your prayers are enough. We are more hospitable,” and laughed. It was a lively and easy conversation. Issa was ordained in 2011. He’s from Bethlehem, studied in upstate New York at a Russian seminary, and then returned to Bethlehem. He’s married with two children. There are three priests for the 3,000 members of the Greek parish at Nativity, all of whom need him constantly. He is invariably out visiting and helping financially as he can, though that has been deeply cut by the lack of pilgrims and donations to the poor boxes. Hunger is now rampant because of the lack of work. Bethlehem depends heavily upon tourism, and the people employed as laborers in Israel are no longer allowed to enter to work.

Father Issa lamented the decline in the number of Christians in Bethlehem and the West Bank. Ten of the families in his congregation fled after October 7. One village he mentioned has only one Christian left. The Holy Land without its living stones will be wholly different. Issa was resigned to serving the community in Bethlehem, whoever is there.

Issa left for prayers at the church, and George walked me to a taxi to get the bus back to Jerusalem. We boarded the bus and made our way to the checkpoint. At the checkpoint we had to disembark, stand in line next to the bus in the sun, and wait for soldiers to appear. Though it wasn’t busy, it took them at least 10 minutes to arrive. One by one, we filed past them and showed them our identification. A soldier checked the visa in my passport and waved me on.

I got off at the last stop, near Herod’s Gate, and walked back to St. George’s. That night I was to meet Ahmad, Nourooz and their nine month-old son, Imad, for supper. Ahmad’s family owns an English-language bookstore on East Jerusalem’s Salah-a-Din Street. They are part of the Palestinian intelligentsia in Jerusalem.

I walked up the hill in Sheikh Jarrah to a restaurant called Cloves. Ahmad, Nourooz, and Imad arrived soon thereafter. Precious Imad! What a wonderful baby boy. After hugs and ordering drinks, we jumped into conversation. Ahmad asked, “Why are you here? There are no groups to bring.” I replied, “I’m here to visit with people I care about.” He seemed surprised, pleased and, perhaps, a little suspicious. We talked about Lorinda and my boys. I asked Nourooz all about her work. She’s an art therapist and works three days a week in three different locations, mostly with children and teenagers who have been removed from abusive homes. You could see the weight of the work and climate on her face.

My conversation with them was the most realistic conversation I had while there. They are struggling. Nourooz grew up in the north and knew that sirens meant rockets from Lebanon. One even landed in her front yard when she was 11, though it miraculously didn’t explode. For her, these sirens are triggering. She looked tired, and not just new-mother tired. Nourooz’ s parents are still in the north and live east of Akka. They don’t live far enough east to be in the line of the current rockets from Lebanon, but they live close enough that their lives are ruled by the sirens. They just keep going, though. Nourooz and Imad were with her parents after his birth, and Ahmad picked them up and brought them back to Jerusalem late on the evening of October 6.

I asked them, “What’s it like to parent in this environment?” They answered, “We’ve only ever parented in this environment.” What a way to start a family.

Nourooz said that after October 7, she was afraid to speak Arabic in public. She chose to speak Hebrew so as not to give herself away. Though she speaks Arabic in public now, she does so quietly and only when she absolutely must.

I asked about how she felt about Ahmad being on the news so much, as he’s often interviewed by Western sources for a Palestinian perspective. I’ve heard him multiple times and told him about the day I was driving down the road in North Carolina, heard his voice coming from my radio and recognized his distinctive r’s right away. That made him chuckle.

The news appearances make Nourooz nervous. She knows that Ahmad chooses his words with precision, but she still worries. It makes them public figures of a sort. Her whole being is heavy: a young mother, wife and woman living in an unsafe world. Ahmad, who is a combination of laid-back and pensive, now carries an additional weightiness. He’s worried too.

They spoke of the guilt of being fine, of having food, of having a roof over their heads.

I asked where they were finding joy these days. They both responded that it was in Imad, but without him, they’d not know from where it would come.

[Images: The faces of the Holy Land: George and Father Issa; Iyad, Issa, Mohammad and Omar in Bethlehem; Iyad (with Umphlett).

In his newest book, The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, “But passport stamps and wide vocabularies are neither wisdom nor morality. As it happens, you can see the world and still never see the people in it.” When we’re inundated with news from all around the world—the Sudan, western North Carolina, and the Middle East—it’s easy to become numb to the personal stories that underly those major movements within humanity. We can see the world on the internet, on the television, and in the newspaper, and still not know the people whose lives are turned upside down by the upheavals, natural disasters and violence.

Remember Iyad, Violette, Julieann, George, Issa, Hosam, Nourooz, Ahmad and Imad. You know their names. Carry that with you into your prayers, into your conversations and into your reading of the news from the Holy Land. The stones that make up the buildings and sites of the Holy Land are doing just fine. The same cannot be said for the living stones who make those sites come alive.

Pray for peace.

The Rev. David Umphlett is the rector at Holy Trinity, Greensboro.

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