THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
by Ina Friedman
The Jerusalem Report
March 19, 2007
When I discovered that, because they could not travel freely around the
country, the refugees from Darfur and other parts of Sudan had never
been to Jerusalem (see "Forgotten Lessons," February 5, 2007), I called
my brother, Steve, and offered him an opportunity to do a mitzvah.
A systems engineer by profession, at age 67 he had just embarked on a
second career as a licensed tour guide, and he immediately volunteered
to lead these unusual guests, who have been released from prison to
the custody of kibbutzim and moshavim around the country, on a day’s
outing in the holy city.
Organized by a volunteer from the Hotline for Migrant Workers, the
day did not begin auspiciously, as the bus bringing them to Jerusalem
arrived three hours late. But no matter: Good cheer prevailed as we
set off on a lightning tour of West Jerusalem on the way to our main
target: the Old City.
The planning, on Steve’s part, had entailed no little angst. We
desperately wanted to ensure that these 25 accidental tourists,
all but two of whom are Muslims, would be able to enter the Haram
a-Sharif (Temple Mount) and visit the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa
Mosques. But because they lack passports and other official papers,
we feared they would never get past the Israeli security guards
near the entrance to the Mughrabi Gate – the only one through which
Jewish Israelis and foreign tourists can access the mount. And then
the whole issue became academic, as the Mughrabi Gate was closed in
early February due to the unrest sparked by the excavations below it.
The alternative was for the majority of the group to reach the
esplanade through one of the gates in the Muslim Quarter, as all
Muslims are permitted to do. Steve had in fact contacted a few Arab
colleagues who lead tours on the Haram, asking whether they would
fill in for him there. But they asked for fees beyond our modest
means. Then, three days before the tour, the Mughrabi Gate opened
again, and he was told that visiting hours were between 1 and 2:30 p.m.
So we drove up to the Mount of Olives, with its spectacular view of
the Old City, for the nutshell version of Jerusalem’s complex history
and arrived at the Mughrabi guard post at 1:25 – only to discover
that the entry hours are actually 12-1:30. No exceptions.
Eschewing despair, after a felafel lunch we made our way to the Cotton
Market Gate in the Muslim Quarter to try our luck there.
Strategizing along the way, I suggested that we Israelis lay low and
allow the Sudanese, all Arabic-speaking black Africans, to negotiate
their entry to the Haram on their own.
But at the gate, when we happened |upon an affable Arab guide who
gave his name only as Majid, my brother told him the whole story. As
afternoon prayers were about to begin, to verify that these visitors
were indeed Muslims, Majid asked one of them to recite the opening
passage of the Koran and then took the rest on good faith. He calmed
us about his fee by saying, "Don’t worry, we here are good Muslims"
(and in fact, we later learned, asked for only a token five shekels,
just over $1, apiece).
As we waited for them by the gate, seated on low stools outside a
caf? and one of the two Christians in the group smoking a nargileh,
Steve received his earthly reward by talking about the nooks and
crannies of the Old City with a young, Jerusalem-born researcher from
Al Quds University, whose office is nearby. (Purely by coincidence,
his family hailed from Chad, to which many Darfur refugees have fled,
and his father had come to Jerusalem, via Jordan, after making the
hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.) Our luck held as we arrived at the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher just in time for Vespers, organ and all.
But it changed when we emerged from the market and the heavens opened
in a downpour – a contingency for which we had not come prepared.
Still, we had one more stop to make. In the vestibule of St. James’
Church, in the Armenian Quarter, Steve talked to these survivors of
mass murder about the Armenian genocide. He hoped to give them heart by
explaining that two other peoples that populate Jerusalem’s Old City,
Armenians and Jews, had endured horrors parallel to their own and
rebuilt their lives as sovereign nations. As he took all this in, the
English-speaking Armenian guard had no idea who these strangers were.
Yet as we turned to leave, he could not stop thanking them for their
kindness in stopping to pay tribute to the suffering of his people.