I GO TO BETHANY
One afternoon when we were driving about the busy semi-modern streets that lie outside the walls of Jerusalem we suggested to Jamil, our guide, that some afternoon we walk to Bethany. He answered briefly that it was too far and turned to call our attention to the well-equipped postoffice, the modern looking shops, the Italian hospital, the well-built hospices of the French, Italians and Russians which before the war were thronged at the feasts with devout pilgrims. There was an atmosphere of western life about the outer city. Signs over some of the shops looked amazingly like New York’s East Side. Books, pictures and maps, school supplies, men and boys’ clothing of every sort, girls and women on the streets dressed in European fashion, together with Cairo papers in French and English, helped us to see the trend of the new, growing city without the walls. The streets were wide and well kept. The church of St. George was an artistic, beautiful reminder of the reason why the word of the capture of the Holy City had been received with solemn joy in every English household. We passed the dignified Damascus Gate and the Sheep Gate before which camels knelt grunting and little groups of sheep huddled close each around its shepherd; lorries passed us on the road, then a motor taking General Storrs to confer with the High Commissioner on important business. We stopped to visit the British High School for girls, doing its work against great odds in a former German orphanage poorly equipped for school work. The girls of twelve nationalities with most excellent ésprit de corps were studying there; the principal, a real educator, formerly head of the girls’ school at Beirut had wise, far-seeing plans for the future of the school and, through it, for the welfare of the city. As I listened to them I wished that my purse were well filled that I might make some of them possible now in the day of crisis when the whole future of Palestine is in the making. Surely there are new paths through old Palestine.
When we again entered the city through the Jaffa Gate it seemed centuries older than when we had left it, so great was the contrast between the air, sunshine, and breathing spaces outside the walls and the narrow, dark, and crowded little cobble-stoned alleys, shared by man and beast, where no full ray of sun ever shines. Only the flat roofs of the houses save the people within the city from life in a semi-dungeon. It was this plunge back into the city of age-old days and deeds that made us long the more to walk leisurely to Bethany and so, on Saturday night, we told Jamil we should not need him until Monday morning at nine.
We left the city just after noon on Sunday by St. Stephen’s Gate, stopping reverently for a few moments close by the steep hillside to think of the brave words of the young martyr as he looked into the hard faces of his accusers and his wonderful address, recalling to them each step of their history and the reason for each great defeat. We remembered the daring words: “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom you have been now the betrayers and murderers: who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.” In fierce anger they ground their teeth and hissed their reproaches at him. But he did not even see them. Suddenly, looking up to heaven, they heard him saying, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man on the right hand of God.” It was enough. Seizing him, they rushed him through the narrow street and cast him out of the city. They laid their garments at the feet of a keen young man named Saul, who watched with approval as they hurled down upon their helpless, suffering victim the jagged stones of the hillside. But above the noise of their mutterings of revenge the young man Saul heard the words of prayer: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And again, “Lord, lay not their sin to their charge.” And Stephen died—but Saul never forgot.
From St. Stephen’s Gate the smooth, broad road makes a steep descent down to the valley of the brook Kedron, then it climbs again around the shoulder of Olivet, where we stopped to look back at the city with the dome of the mosque of Omar glistening in the sun. The air was clear and the hills, with the light, shifting clouds above them, changed color every moment. Jamil had told us that the hills about Jerusalem bore always “a luxuriant crop of stones” and his words seemed true indeed, a crop made even more abundant by the heavy shell-fire of the months past. Still, in little square patches between the ridges, men were plowing. One plowman had a thin, patient ox and a donkey together under what seemed a heavy yoke. Here and there thick vines leaned against sunny walls as in the days when Jesus used them for the text of His great sermon “I—the vine: ye—the branches. Without me, ye can do nothing.”
It was when we walked out a little from the main road to Bethany to look over into a deep valley that we saw a carpenter at work in his sunny yard, making yokes for the oxen. He worked deftly with his clumsy tools at his primitive bench. The court-yard was swept clean, save for the corner where the shavings fell. There were green things growing in a garden. After a moment a woman appeared in the doorway. She looked curiously at us but answered our smile. “Ing-leesh?” she queried. We shook our heads. “American,” we said very distinctly. The man at the bench turned quickly. A shower of words in the Hebrew tongue and a motion to wait answered us. The woman hurried into the house and was back in a moment with a photograph in her hand—a man, a woman, two children. The photograph was taken in New York! She pointed proudly to the word. As we were about to leave, being limited to conversation by means of nods, smiles and gestures only, a boy came from the rear of the house. He had great, dark, dreamy eyes, his head was a mass of thick curls, in his hands he had two irregular blocks of wood which he gave to his father. He smiled at us shyly, but turned to look again with frank interest and curiosity when his mother repeated the word American.
It was hard to tear ourselves away from this picture of the carpenter with his little son and the mother at the door, but there was no excuse for lingering. We could only hope that this young son of a carpenter might sometime know the story of that other Son, of whose early days in the village of Nazareth he served so forcibly to remind us.
It was here that He came to talk with one who seemed to understand—and there were so few.
It is not a long walk to Bethany, a little over four miles they told us, and we soon saw the low gray stone houses with their roofs of mud not far ahead. As we approached the village, a veritable host of children rushed to meet us, calling, with a score of accents, words supposed to be English. At first we covered our ears then motioned to one child to speak. We learned that they were offering their services as guides. The moment we appeared to understand, the babel began again. “Mary and Martha,” they called. “Simon-Lazarus, I will show.” When we spoke they listened, but only for a moment. “You cannot all be our guides,” I said. “If you all follow we will go back to Jerusalem and no one will have back-sheesh—not one. We shall not look at the house of Mary and Martha.” The tallest among them, a lad of fourteen, he told me afterward, evidently repeated our words and he emphasized them with a flourish of a stout cane which he carried. He showed us a soiled card with a name written upon it which he said was his. We chose him and one other guide, a little girl of six who had pointed to herself proudly, saying, “I know—I know, Mary—Martha—Lazarus.” At a word from a villager passing on his donkey the children scattered and it was a great relief.