The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

As I have said before, many of the streets are vaulted over, and we often pass for a half-mile through what might be called a subterranean cavern lighted by openings from the top and pierced at the sides with cavelike stores. The smallest business shops in the world are in Jerusalem. A great many of the stores are no bigger than a dry-goods box. They have no windows. I stopped this afternoon before a shoe repair shop, and, out of curiosity, took its measurements. It was a hole in the wall with its bottom edge four feet above the cobblestone street. A rude stone two feet high was the step by which the shoemaker crawled in. It was just three feet wide, five feet high, and eight feet deep. It was as dark as a pocket, and the shoemaker squatting in the entrance with a board on his lap filled it completely. He was working at a pair of rough Bedouin shoes the owner of which sat cross-legged and in his bare feet in the street outside. As the cobbler waxed his thread he was careful to move his hands toward the street and back into the shop. The place was so small that had he pulled his thread in the ordinary way he would have barked his elbows against the walls.

Next to this shoe shop there was a Jerusalem restaurant. It was an oval hole cut into the hill twelve feet high, eight feet wide, and forty feet deep. At the front was the cooking stove of Jerusalem, a rude slab of limestone with holes cut in the top as big around as a workman’s dinner bucket, and with other holes piercing these from the sides. A few inches from the top of each hole was a rude iron grating upon which the charcoal was laid. The draft which came in from below kept the fire going. The slab was mounted on cord-wood posts and had five fireplaces. At the back a rough table without a cloth was set for the guests. The only chairs were little stools a foot high and about a foot square the seats of which were of woven cords.

Each kind of business, or trade, has its own bazaar. There is a shoemaker’s bazaar where scores of cobblers are working. At the entrance to each cavelike shop two shoemakers sit sewing away with untanned calfskin aprons tight about them. Between them on a block of wood, an olive tree stump it may be, rests a slab of white marble. This is the shoemakers’ bench, upon which they pound the wet leather to make it soft with what looks like a brass paper weight. It is as big around as a tumbler and of about the same height, tapering from the top to the bottom.

The shoes are all made with needle and thread. The soles are of camel hide and the uppers of kidskin or goatskin. These are the common shoes of the peasant. As I watched the cobblers I asked about their wages and was told they received from forty to sixty cents for labouring from sunrise to sunset.

In another street tinsmiths are at work making pots and pans out of oil cans. Their shops are not much bigger than cupboards, and the workmen are long-bearded men in fez caps and gowns.

Farther on is the grain market, consisting of many great vaulted chambers one or more of which belongs to each merchant. The vaults are filled with piles of wheat, corn, barley, oats, and millet spread out on the floor. The grain is sold by measure. I saw a Bedouin come in to buy two bushels of oats. It was dipped out by the peck, the merchant shaking the measure to make the grain solid, and then heaping up the top with his hands so that the oats formed a cone. This was the “good measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over,” as mentioned in St. Luke. The people here never buy grain by the sack, for they want to see it measured out before their eyes. But I am told that the grain sellers are sometimes able to impose upon those who purchase, making them think they get more than they really do.

Much of the grain of the Holy City is ground at home and a great deal of that of Palestine is made into flour with hand mills. Some flour is imported and some is ground in mills worked by camels or donkeys. In baking bread the dough is kneaded at home and brought in great lumps to the public ovens to be found in almost every street. They are cave-like vaults running down below the street level. At the back of each vault is the oven with a sort of well before its open door. In the well stands the baker with a long paddle in his hand upon which he puts in and takes out the loaves. I have seen many bakeries of this kind. The fuel is olive wood, and the oven floor is marked out in blocks, so that the baking of each family may be put on a separate block. The loaves are about an inch thick and the size of a tea plate. Each has a hole in the centre. The baker gets a few cents for each half-dozen loaves, or he may instead take a toll of one loaf for each dozen. Before starting the baking he greases the floor of the oven with olive oil.

The reason for these public bakeries is the great cost of fuel. The Arabs have a proverb showing that such baking is the cheapest. This runs: “Send your bread to the oven of the baker even though he should eat the half of it.”

I frequently see boys carrying dough to these bakeries, or bringing bread home from them. They use trays which they bear on their heads. Ancient Jerusalem had its Bakers’ Street, for we read that King Zedekiah put the prophet Jeremiah into the court of the prison and commanded that they “should give him daily a piece of bread out of the Bakers’ Street.”

During my stay in Jerusalem I have enjoyed the salad which is served at the hotel with an olive oil dressing. This is a land of olives and the oil is delicious. It is as clear as honey with a tint like the green of chartreuse. I say I have enjoyed it, but I doubt whether I shall enjoy it hereafter. Why? I have seen how it is made.