Peace be with you

What is true?  That Bethlehem is eight kilometres from Jerusalem, that the sun casts deep shadows on layered white stone walls and flat roofs as it has done for generation upon generation, that the landscape is a timeless palette of azure blue and dusty olive.

Beyond that, all is myth and mystery. Some of the foreigners on the bus come to pay homage to a fair-skinned virgin and her blue-eyed child. Hurrying past invisible black-clad women in market alleys, they queue to enter a church built over the miraculous grotto, where garish Orthodoxy honours the humblest of births.

   

Others set out from Manger Square to locate Shepherds’ Field, down steep stone steps where idle men smoke and narrow their eyes against the sun.  The men fall silent as the visitors walk by, maps in hand. The pilgrims seek the hillside where terrified shepherds fell to their knees beneath a sky ablaze with angelic hosts. They find no starlit Christmas card scene.  Rather, they pass high-fenced schools and rundown shops, old cars parked on weedy roadsides.  As the shadows lengthen they retrace their steps, hearts quickening and hands on their wallets until they reach the sanctuary of the bus.

I am looking for fact; for what is unchanged after two thousand years.  I want a view of Jerusalem on the next hillside, to meander in winding alleys and listen to the mysterious sounds of Palestinian people going about their lives.  Instead, I find Bethlehem in an olive-skinned boy on a donkey, dangling feet almost touching the ground. I raise my camera and he stares into the lens. Before I turn away, he holds out his hand.

“Five shekel.”

In his young eyes I see ancient wisdom, and meet God made flesh.

His hand closes over the coin.

“Peace be with you,” I say. He nods and watches me walk on.

Rosemary McBryde