Part 4

Our young guide knew the method perfectly. Driving the dogs out of the way with his cane, he led us up a steep path to the house of a man who was a dwarf, badly crippled. He was to take us to the tomb of Lazarus which he did, when we had paid the piastres he asked. He insisted upon telling us the story before we went down the long winding stone steps worn smooth by the passing of men’s feet for centuries. He told it in very graphic fashion. We had only the dripping candles to light our way. Following him, we could hear his call at each turn, “Have care! Have care!” We decided not to make the entire descent of sixty steps but contented ourselves with looking down from the fortieth step into the black pit below. The air and sunshine were most welcome when we climbed back and, giving more piastres for the shepherds’ slings the old dwarf took from his pocket, we left him happy. We stood for a few moments at the entrance to the tomb, thinking of all that spot had meant in the centuries since it was recorded that, in warm human sympathy with the suffering sisters, “Jesus wept.”

We stood a long time on the wall of the ruins that covered the spot where the home of the three friends of Jesus had stood. It looked out over the valley on one side and toward Jerusalem on the other. Our guides, big and little, sat down on the stones and were silent. Nowhere in our journeys through Palestine did we trouble our souls over the arguments of men as to exact spots and identical places. If not to the place of this ruined wall, then to some spot near by Jesus came. Came to receive rest for His body and comfort for His soul. Came to forget for the moment Jerusalem with its noise and confusion, its need and its hate. Came to talk with one who seemed to understand and sympathize—and there were so few. What it would mean to us today if we could know the many things about which Jesus talked that have never been recorded for us! We remembered that it was from Bethany over the hills through which we had come that Jesus made his way to Jerusalem on the day when He found the colt and rode triumphantly through the streets to the temple, amidst the shouted hosannas and waving palms that filled the Pharisees with jealous anger. It was here that he may have spent the nights of that last crowded week until the night of the Supper when he sought the Garden. One could feel, standing there looking toward Jerusalem, something of the agonizing sorrow that swept over that household when they learned of the trial that was a mockery of justice and the condemnation of their beloved friend to death on a cross.

When we were ready to leave, the young guide asked if we would like to go into one of the houses and see the upper room where a guest may sleep. We hesitated to walk in this fashion into a home but he explained that we were sure of a welcome and a little _back-sheesh_ would pay.

The upper room was a dean and quiet spot. There were small woven rugs, a cot with handmade covers spread over it. A bed roll stood in the corner. There was a heavy metal basin for washing and two lamps, ages old, filled with oil. The window was open toward the road that leads to Jericho. It was a place where one might rest his soul. “Many guests came to this room before the war,” said the boy, “the family is large. Some live far away in Damascus. They come for the feasts. But not since the war—there is not money and some have died.” The _back-sheesh_ was accepted gratefully with many words of thanks by the two women below—one very young with a baby in her arms.

Our next stop was at the spot where once had stood the home of Simon the leper where a woman did the Great Teacher high honor as she broke her very precious box of alabaster and, in an abandonment of love and gratitude, poured the fragrant perfume over His head. We could hear the petulant voices of those who complained because the ointment had not been sold for a good price and the money given to the poor. But Jesus understood.

“This is all for Bethany,” said the guide of fourteen years. “It is not large and it is poor.” We did not need his words to make us realize it. The little girl who had called herself _guide_ so proudly had not spoken a word, but, as she had climbed over the steep places, had waited patiently, had listened intently to the boy, and had given us at every turn a smile which we remembered for many a day, she had earned her fee. When she received it she ran madly toward a house near by and disappeared. The boy walked with us courteously to the edge of the village. In response to our query as to where he had learned English he said, “Off a merchant I worked for since I was six. He lives just outside the city.” The “off” with which he began his sentence sounded as though the merchant might at one time have lived in America.

At the outskirts of the village, where we had met them as we entered, were the children. They ran beside us shrieking “_back-sheesh_” and holding out their very dirty little hands. We shook our heads vehemently. It meant nothing. Then we stopped and reminded them that we had paid our two guides and all the people who had helped us, but that they had done nothing for us. “We are poor,” said a girl with a baby in her arms as though that were reason enough for her demand. I shall never forget the thin face, the piercing black eyes of a boy, perhaps ten. “America rich,” he said, “plendy, plendy, _plendy_ money.” There was the deepest reproof in his voice.

“Some people are _very_ poor,” I said, “the children cry for bread. In the winter they are very cold. There are many very poor people in America.”

“No,” said the boy stoutly, and I saw that he did not believe me, but he repeated what I had said to the others. It was very hard to refrain from giving them money, but we remembered the request that we should not help to train a new generation of beggars and steeled our hearts. When we started on again a few accompanied us but we paid no attention and one by one they dropped out, having followed us almost a mile. Some said good-bye cheerfully, others made gestures of disgust. One lone lad still walked patiently beside us. He had great hollows under his eyes and, now that we could see him separated from the others, we noticed how very thin and pale he was, how ragged and dirty. In his arms he carried a baby whose eyes were in a pitiable condition, one so swollen that it was entirely closed. He said faintly in a weak, tired voice, “_back-sheesh—back-sheesh_” over and over. He looked as though in dogged determination he would follow us back to the city gates. Unable to resist the pleading we yielded, gave him some coins, watched the light come into his eyes, saw him turn and make his way slowly back—one of these little ones who so easily perish while waiting for the coming of the kingdom of God—the kingdom that Jesus said was _theirs_. It may be that the school now being opened in the little village will help to bring them their rights.

When we told Jamil next day of the children he said, “Ah, that is why you should have me! The guide saves you. You should not go alone, and walking you cannot get away.”

“Where are the parents of these children,” we asked.

“Poor,” he said slowly, “very, very poor. Always poor and the war has made it very hard. It will be better now, but they have learned bad habits.”

A turn in the road and the village was entirely out of sight. We overtook a flock of sheep and for a time walked slowly behind them. The bleating of the lambs who seemed weary sounded like the voices of the children. The shepherd turned into a narrow path between the hills, called in clear, urging cadences, and the sheep followed him. We climbed up from the road and sat on the rocks under gnarled old trees. A tower on the mount of Olives stood out clear against the sky. We read aloud of the Holy City from the words of the prophets and the Psalms of David.

Night would soon steal down over the valleys, so reluctantly we moved on past a cluster of tiny stone houses, past the cemetery of the Hebrews, when, flying up the hill at reckless speed, shaking us rudely back from the past into the present, came a motor rushing toward Bethany. Bethany that seemed to be out of the world of motors! It was the doctor’s car from the hospital, they told us when we described it. Just before the road drops abruptly into the valley we stopped to look again at the City. There was always something strangely gripping in the sight. The words of Jesus wrung from Him as, in deep compassion that was agony, He looked at the City, feeling the weight of its sin, its pain, its need, came back to us—“O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” We hurried on through St. Stephen’s Gate.

On the hills it was light but in the narrow streets with their gateways and buttresses it was quite dark. We took out our faithful flashlights, and with our canes to help over the shadowed steps went rapidly up to the hotel that stood as a strong and sheltering friend in the faint glow that still lingered in the western sky.

“Not much in Bethany,” they said to us at the desk as they had said of Bethlehem. “Too far to walk for the few stone houses and the ruins.”

How could they know what we saw in Bethany? How could they know the overwhelming sympathy that surged in upon us as we stood on the walls of “the house of Mary and Martha,” looked upon the hills and valleys He saw in their purpling shadows, thought how much harder the friendship and fellowship of that home must have made it to remain true to the message that was to take Him to Jerusalem to die, thought of the short day of triumph, waving palms and lavish praise, thought of his youth and his glorious undaunted soul!

No, they did not know what we saw in Bethany.

I GO OUT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

_He turneth a wilderness into a pool of water, And a dry land into watersprings And there he maketh the hungry to dwell, That they may prepare a city for habitation, And sow fields and plant vineyards._

_Instead of the thorn shall come up the figtree; and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off._

_The latter glory of this place shall be greater than the former, and in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah._

—_The Bible._

I GO OUT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

Before we met our carriage at the Damascus Gate to ride out to the farthest point on the Mount of Olives we walked through David Street to the Wailing Place of the Jews. Every book we had studied warned us of the unspeakable condition of the narrow filthy streets in this Jewish quarter of Jerusalem the Golden. But they were all written before British arms had captured the Holy City and, even in these short months, made it in so many ways a new Jerusalem. In the windows of the shops we had seen the quaint pictures of the water-carrier with his leather bag, but not one had we seen in the streets of the city. The menace of the water bag with its myriad germs is already a thing of the past. For the first time in all its long history, under rulers of many great faiths and names, the City has water, plenty of water, fresh, clear, safe. What that simple statement means can be appreciated only by those who know by experience what a priceless boon water is to cities that have little. One could change the whole record and history of Oriental cities with water systems!

When the history of Palestine in the war is fully recorded, one of the most thrilling chapters will be written about the lead pipes now standing boldly in the city streets two feet above the ground, capped by very modern shining faucets. The girls and women who come to them with their water jars beamed with joy as they watched the silver stream pouring out in the sun. For four hundred years the Turks ruled in Jerusalem and in all that time no attempt was made to establish a water system although more than once the inhabitants were taxed with the promise of water that was some day to come. In a little over two months the British engineers had brought running water into every street of the city. New paths are so rapidly making their way through old Palestine!

For its water Jerusalem had depended upon winter rains to fill its great cisterns. The houses had underground reservoirs, some of which had not been cleaned in more than twenty years. At the Mosque of Omar was a large reservoir where the water from the springs about Solomon’s Pools flowed down through a great aqueduct built by the Romans when Herod ruled over the Jews. The searching engineers had found springs in the hills with fresh, pure water running to waste and, at the rate of fourteen thousand gallons an hour, it is now pumped up to the top of a high hill, run by gravity down through a long pipe-line to a great reservoir that has been built and carefully protected on the outskirts of the city. Direct lines take this pure water to the hospitals and into the city streets. Despite the shrinking of the population, caused by the evacuation of the Turk, more than ten times as much water has been used as in previous years, which silences the oft-repeated statement that the people would not appreciate the water if they had it. We were interested to learn that some of the pipes had been sent to Egypt to be forwarded for use in Palestine by the American Red Cross Commission after we entered the war. But the Commission found that the need for water which we had anticipated had been practically answered by the Royal Engineers.

One is deeply impressed by the change in the record of contagious diseases. The reduction in cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and typhus is remarkable. Even under the sound of booming guns, children’s welfare bureaus were organized, lessons in health given, nurses trained and kitchens opened to provide food for the babies, the sick and the old. The workers of the American Red Cross deserve and receive full gratitude for their enthusiastic and intelligent work in and about the City in those days immediately following its surrender.

The people on David Street seemed to have lost something of the fear that writers of the past saw in their haunted faces. It may be the fact that now they are free. The old-time pressure and petty persecution by corrupt officials is past. The Turkish prison no longer yawns threateningly. A trader may go unmolested about his work. The heavy taxation demanded in the past by a succession of officers, from the least to the greatest, has disappeared. Contentment not known for untold generations reigns in humble homes.

It may be for this reason that on both occasions of our visit to the Wailing Place there were but few present and they were old men, old women, and some very young children. Young manhood was not there, it was hard at work. Many of the older boys and girls were in school. The leader of the group chanting the Lamentations that morning was an old white-haired patriarch with eyes of fire. He was the only one of the group that did not interrupt his wailing to look at us. One tall, strong, impressive specimen of womanhood moved along the line to quiet some women whose wailing had become a piercing shriek or to straighten out a child who irreverently chased a playmate up and down the path. The guide said that her name was Miriam and that she had a son with much money in England. Erect and fine, forceful and devout, she reminded us of that other Miriam who led her people to victory. Here and there one saw women’s strong faces stained with tears and marked with suffering. They leaned against the foundation stones of the old Temple area in an abandonment of emotion and sorrow. Near the end of the line was a very old man leaning tremblingly upon his staff. Jamil said that he was repeating one phrase over and over. “O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance!” His voice was bitter and full of anguish. A great wave of pity swept over us for these and all they have suffered, and yet survived. Against those massive walls of the past, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian had hurled their hosts and battered them to earth. They had risen again only to meet the Roman and the Saracen, the brave Crusader and the unspeakable Turk until in very truth they lay “in heaps.” Piled one above another, the various cities lie waiting until the hammer and spade of the excavator shall open up all their secrets for us. Buried deep down in the earth is that early city of the Jebusites, over it the glorious city of Solomon, the city heroically brought again into being by Nehemiah, the city of Herod which Titus hammered into ruins and Hadrian rebuilt, above it the city of the Saracens built after their wave of conquest, the city of the Crusaders, and now the city of the Turks, standing boldly above the ruins of the long past. It stands, the protected property of a new conqueror who loves it, whose army chose the hardest road to victory to save it from the marks of war, whose people have come into it with knowledge that they may overcome its ignorance, a conqueror who bears no malice, who is tolerant of the Jew and the Mohammedan though he worships at the Cross which they hate.

As if reading our thoughts, the guide said quietly, “Some day it will be only the wall for the wailing that we shall see. There will be no more need for wailing, and the children will forget. So the young prophets among the Jews say in the markets. We shall see.”

We walked through a section of the Temple area and out past the Austrian Hospice through the Damascus Gate where, according to agreement, the carriage waited.

The road out to the spot where the Mount of Olives drops abruptly to the plain has been repaired, stray shell holes filled in and a large section of new road built since that wonderful day when the last line of Turks were driven from the position they thought secure. The air was as clear as an October day at home and the shining city “compact together” seemed substantial and strong. It was along the high ridge of Olivet that, in the pressure of the days when relief workers toiled twelve and fifteen hours without respite, they came to renew their strength. In the home of the Greek Patriarch more than one strong soul, overcome for the moment by the ceaseless stream of dirty, hopeless, despairing human things that he must strive to save from the wreckage of war, found, in the white moonlight sifting down over the hill, in the kindly stars, in the silence and in sacred memories, courage to attempt again tasks that had been called impossible.

We had been gazing so steadily at the city that when the driver suddenly stopped we turned in surprise. There on a gently sloping stretch of ground, close to the road at the left, stood row after row of crosses over the resting places of Scot and Londoner, Welshman and Irishman, Indian and Anzac who had paid for the Holy City with his life. On some of the crosses fresh green garlands were hanging, and on one a wreath with English holly.

We got down from our carriage and walked slowly along, looking now at the crosses and now at the place where in agony of soul Christ had prayed for the strength to meet the test of Calvary that has made the Cross forever the symbol which shall mark the spots on earth most sacred to us. These lying out on the hillside had also been to Calvary.

A little farther on in the road we passed men in the British uniform. They had survived the terrible test of those wind-swept hills with the rain falling in torrents, the benumbing cold, the soft, thick, gray mud, the night in the open with no shelter save a little wall of stones built up with care only to be blown over by a sudden vicious blast, with little food and only the ammunition that could reach them on the backs of the pack donkeys. It was through this they had won that peaceful city lying contentedly there in the sun, even the shining dome of its Mohammedan Mosque unharmed.

The German hospice, Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, lies out on this road. It is exceedingly well built and untouched by shell fire. Although the Turk utterly demolished the mosque of Nebi Samwill and shot away its stately minaret, he turned no gun on this that was German property. Even when his airmen, flying over Olivet, knew that an enemy signal station had been set up in the garden of the hospice no shot fell upon it. “This house,” said Jamil, “is like a German castle on the inside. The tower was built higher than any tower on the Mount, the trees set out with care. The picture of the Saviour is painted in the chapel and the pictures of the Kaiser and the Kaiserin are on the long wall. It was common talk at the beginning of the war that the Crown Prince should live here when he became King in Palestine. Now it is the Headquarters for the British Army.... It is the Will of God!” he added solemnly after a moment. We took a picture of the hospice with two British Tommies standing at the gate.

We had to leave our carriage and walk to the point where the Greek Church tower looks down over the stretch of rugged upland crossed by many a wadi, over the walled-in level spaces where green things were growing, over the plains of the Jordan and the Dead Sea so blue in the distance, away to the far mountains of Moab. It was a wonderful picture at which one could look for long hours and come back to enjoy again and again. It was from this point of vantage that the relief workers watched the taking of Jericho. In the grove we found the “husks that swine did eat,” lying about on the ground. Jamil picked one of the long brown pods from the tree and under the pressure of his urging we tasted it. It was sweeter than sugar cane, nauseatingly sweet. It took no imagination to understand why one would accept it as food only as a last resort. In this grove we found the hyssop which the women at the hospice use both as medicine and for the whitening of their clothes. In a sunny sheltered spot we found violets, although we were wearing our warmest wraps.