A Tail of a Shirt

By Ronnie Bray

One year Maurice and Linda took a holiday to Israel because of their fascination with exotic places.  Israel lived up to their expectations.  It was exotic, the sun shone all day long, there was plenty to see, and lots of interesting people for this amiable and sociable couple to meet.  Their hotel accommodation was excellent, and they delighted in visiting places of interest that previously they had only heard about. 

I don’t know if it is proper to call it a highlight, but one eventuality was interesting and illuminating, although it was a complete surprise and, as all surprises are, it was unexpected.  Recounting the experience now produces unrestrained laughter, but at the time it brought consternation and fear. 

The pair knew that there was some risk involved in a visit to the Holy Land, but as things seemed then to be reasonably quiet and they had been assured by their travel agent that security in Jerusalem was tight and highly visible, so they put their money down and went ahead with their holiday plans. 

They visited the old city, marking the manifest contrast between ancient and modern Israeli cultures and customs, and were intrigued by artisans making goods on the pavement in front of their unpretentious shops.  They fabricated a slew of items ranging from the functional to the decorative, using techniques that had been employed for over a thousand years.  Some of these they purchased as souvenirs. 

The historic sites connected with the life and work of Jesus piqued their interest.  They visited Golgotha, the site of crucifixion, the Garden Tomb, from which Jesus emerged alive again, and the Mount of Olives where Jesus had gone to pray, had leaned against olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane growing on rootstock almost as old as time, and gazed at the Church of All Nations that overlooks Gethsemane. 

Although not outwardly religious, they felt stirrings within them as they walked in the places where Jesus and his disciples had walked almost two thousand years before.  They trod the Via Dolorosa, where tradition holds Jesus walked carrying his cross to the place of his execution, saw the Tomb of Absalom in the Kedron Valley, and marvelled at the ancient stonework of the Western Wall dating back to the time when King Solomon ruled a united Israel. 

Other excursions included visits to the area of the Muristan, the Persian name for the hospital built during the Crusades, but which was taken over by Saladin when he conquered Jerusalem in 1187, and the may other places that are holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims in that troubled territory.  But the incident related here took place, not in Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem, five miles distant from Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity. 

The Church of the Nativity is built over a small cave or khan where the Virgin Mary is said to have given birth to Jesus.  For centuries it was one of the most hotly disputed holy places, having been seized and defended by a succession of armies that included Muslims and Crusaders.  It was inside that memorial that Maurice feared there was to be yet another outbreak of brutality as he and Linda stood among the crowd and gazed at the ornate decorations that recount the story of the birth of Jesus. 

Access to the basilica is by a small door called appropriately, The Door of Humility.  Visitors can only enter the church by bending over, as if entering a cave.  Having assumed the attitude of humility, easier for Linda than for her super-sized husband, they entered and stood agog inside. 

The interior is divided into five naves by four rows of Corinthian pillars decorated with portraits of the apostles.  Their names are inscribed in Greek and Latin, and many eager pilgrims have added their own signatures.  A hole in the floor that allows sight of the remains of the Byzantine mosaics that once covered the whole floor.

Underneath an ornamented silver and gold candelabrum sits the Altar of the Nativity.  A star of silver with fourteen points inlaid in a white marble slab marks the place where Jesus was born.  The inscription reads, “Here Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary."  Fifteen oil lamps surround the spot and provide a warm glow and ambience suitable to the place.

Illumination is for the most part provided by many banks of votive candles lit in gratitude by pilgrims who then stand in awe and prayer in the silence of a place that generates awe even in the minds of the uncommitted.

Standing close by the marker for the place of the Nativity, and lost in his meditations, Maurice was shocked to find himself attacked by a stranger from behind who struck his back repeatedly and with some vigour.  He turned to see his assailant and was stunned to find it was a well dressed middle aged lady.  He demanded an explanation, but as his skill in Hebrew and Arabic were at the same level as his command of the Martian tongue, so he could only fluster his attacker since it transpired that her understanding of English was as good as Maurice’s comprehension of Mandarin Chinese once he had put down the menu in a Chinese restaurant. 

However, nation often speaks to nation, not with the tongue but through signs and gestures.  In a few seconds she had conveyed the intelligence to him that her beating him about his back was not an attack but an attempt to put out the spreading conflagration that his free-flowing summer shirt had appropriated from a nearby candle.  Her explanation was helped immensely by her grabbing hold of his shirttail and thrusting it upward towards his face as far as she could. 

Maurice would say later that he had noticed a little heat, but had written it off as a combination of the Palestinian summer and the throng of hundreds of fellow travellers inside the church making what was intrinsically a warm place even warmer. 

Once he grasped the matron’s motives for pounding on him, he frankly forgave her, was effusive in his apologies, and told her that felt like a complete ass, all of which he concluded in extemporaneously concocted sign language. 

The lady understood his gesticulating, especially the part where he put his fingers to his head as if it were a gun and shot himself with his thumb, and she also smiled before saying something gently in an unknown tongue and disappearing back into the crowd from whence she had emerged like a Fire Brigade Angel to extinguish a Yorkshireman who did not know he was on fire. 

There is a lesson in this for each of us, especially when people do things to us in unexpected ways that in the first place seem hostile, for it could well be that when their motives are brought out into the open, they will be seen to have had our best interests at heart.  The poet William Wordsworth had similar thoughts when he wrote:

There is a comfort in the strength of love;

'T will make a thing endurable, which else

Would overset the brain, or break the heart.

Our challenge is to acquire the wisdom to distinguish when we are being attacked and when we are being comforted, and in discerning whether the actions of those we distrust are detrimental to us, or disposed towards our welfare.  It is fortunate that few of the circumstances that elicit this question will be as drastic or as immediate as having our shirttails on fire. 

Copyright © 2007 – Ronnie Bray

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED