Jerusalem: The Biography (84 page)

Shortly before 4 a.m., just as Rabbi Rabinowitz is rising in the Jewish Quarter, a pebble skims across the window of Wajeeh al-Nusseibeh in Sheikh Jarrah. When he opens his door, Aded al-Judeh, aged eighty, hands Nusseibeh a heavy, medieval 12-inch key. Nusseibeh, now sixty, scion of one of the grandest Jerusalem Families,
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already dressed in suit and tie, sets off briskly through the Damascus Gate, down to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Nusseibeh, who has been the Custodian of the Holy Sepulchre for more than twenty-five years, arrives at 4.00 a.m. precisely and knocks on the towering ancient doors set in Melisende’s Romanesque façade. Inside the Church, which he locked at 8 p.m. the night before, the sextons of the Greeks, Latins and Armenians have already negotiated who is to open the doors that particular day. The priests of the three reigning sects have spent the night in jovial companionship and ritual prayer. At 2 a.m. the dominant Orthodox, who are first in all things, start their Mass, with eight priests chanting in Greek, around the Tomb, before they hand over to the Armenians, for their
badarak
service in Armenian which is just starting as the gates are opened; the Catholics get their chance at about 6 a.m. Meanwhile all the sects are singing their Matins services. Only one Copt is allowed to stay the night but he prays alone in ancient Coptic Egyptian.

As the gate opens, the Ethiopians, in their rooftop monastery and St Michael’s Chapel, its entrance just to the right of the main portal, start to chant in Amharic, their services so longthat they lean on the shepherd’s crooks that are piled up in their churches ready to support their weary worshippers. By night, the Church resounds to a euphonic hum of many languages and chants like a stone forest in which many species of bird are singing their own choruses. This is Jerusalem and Nusseibeh never knows what is going to happen: ‘I know thousands depend on me and I worry if the key won’t open or something goes wrong. I first opened it when I was fifteen and thought it was fun but now I realize it’s a serious matter.’ Whether there is war or peace, he must open the door and says his father often slept in the lobby of the Church just to be sure.

Yet Nusseibeh knows there is likely to be a priestly brawl several times a year. Even in the twenty-first century, the priests veer between accidental courtesy, born of good manners and the tedium of long sepulchral nights, and visceral historical resentment that can explode any time but usually at Easter. The Greeks, who control most of the Church and are the most numerous, fight the Catholics and Armenians and usually win the battles. The Copts and Ethiopians, despite their shared Monophysitism, are especially venomous: after the Six Day War, the Israelis in a rare intervention gave the Coptic St Michael’s Chapel to the Ethiopians, to punish Nasser’s Egypt and support Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia. In peace negotiations, support for the Copts usually features in Egyptian demands. The Israeli High Court decided that St Michael’s belongs to the Copts though it remains in the possession of the Ethiopians, a very Jerusalemite situation. In July 2002, when a Coptic priest sunned himself near the Ethiopians’ dilapidated rooftop eyrie, he was beaten with iron bars as punishment for the Copts’ mean treatment of their African brethren. The Copts rushed to their priest’s aid: four Copts and seven Ethiopians (who seem to lose every brawl here) were hospitalized.

In September 2004, at the Feast of the Holy Cross, the Greek patriarch Ireneos asked the Franciscans to close the door of the Chapel of the Apparition. When they refused, he led his bodyguards and priests against the Latins. The Israeli police intervened but were attacked by the priests who as adversaries are often just as tough as Palestinian stone throwers. At the Holy Fire in 2005, there was a punch-up when the Armenian superior almost emerged with the flame instead of the Greeks.
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The pugilistic patriarch Ireneos was finally deposed for selling the Imperial Hotel at the Jaffa Gate to Israeli settlers. Nusseibeh shrugs wearily: ‘Well, as brothers, they have their upsets and I help settle them. We’re neutral like the United Nations keeping the peace in this holy place.’ Nusseibeh and Judeh play complex roles at each Christian festival. At the feverish and crowded Holy Fire, Nusseibeh is the official witness.

Now the sexton opens a small hatch in the right-hand door and hands through a ladder. Nusseibeh takes the ladder and leans it against the left-hand door. He unlocks the lower lock of the right door with his giant key before climbing the ladder and unlocking the top one. When he has climbed down, the priests swing open the immense door before they open the left leaf themselves. Inside, Nusseibeh greets the priests: ‘Peace!’

‘Peace!’ they reply optimistically. The Nusseibehs and Judehs have been opening the Sepulchre doors at least since 1192 when Saladin appointed the Judehs as ‘Custodian of the Key’ and the Nusseibehs as ‘Custodian and Doorkeeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre’ (as specified on Wajeeh’s business-card). The Nusseibehs, who were also appointed hereditary cleaners of the Sakhra (the Rock) in the Dome, claim that Saladin was simply restoring them to a position they had been granted by Caliph Omar in 638. Until the Albanian conquest in the 1830s, they were extremely rich but now they earn a scanty living as tour guides.

Yet the two families exist in vigilant rivalry. ‘The Nusseibehs have nothing to do with us,’ says the octogenarian Judeh, who has held the key for twenty-two years, ‘they are merely, just doorkeepers!’ Nusseibeh insists ‘the Judehs aren’t allowed to touch the door or the lock,’ suggesting that Islamic rivalries are just as vivid as those among the Christians. Wajeeh’s son, Obadah, a personal trainer, is his heir.

Nusseibeh and Judeh spend some of the day sitting in the lobby as their ancestors have for eight centuries – but they are never there at the same time. ‘I know every stone here, it’s like home,’ muses Nusseibeh. He reveres the Church: ‘We Muslims believe Muhammad, Jesus and Moses are prophets and Mary is very holy so this is a special place for us too.’ If he wishes to pray, he can pop next door to the neighbouring mosque, built to overawe the Christians, or walk the five minutes to al-Aqsa.

At precisely the same time as the Rabbi of the Wall is waking up and Custodian Nusseibeh hears the pebble on the window announcing the delivery of the Sepulchre key, Adeb al-Ansari, forty-two years old, a father of five in a black leather jacket, is coming out of his Mamluk house, owned by his family
waqf
, in the Muslim Quarter and starting the five-minute walk down the street, up to the north-eastern Bab al-Ghawanmeh. He passes through the checkpoint of blue-clad Israeli police, ironically often Druze or Galilean Arabs charged with keeping out Jews, to enter the Haram al-Sharif.

The sacred esplanade is already electrically illuminated but it used to take his father two hours to light all the lanterns. Ansari greets the Haram security and begins to open the four main gates of the Dome of the Rock and the ten gates of al-Aqsa. This takes an hour.

The Ansaris, who trace their family back to the Ansaris who emigrated with Muhammad to Medina, claim that they were appointed Custodians of the Haram by Omar but they were certainly confirmed in the post by Saladin. (The black sheep of the family was the Sheikh of the Haram, bribed by Monty Parker.)

The mosque is open one hour before the dawn prayer. Ansari does not open the gates every dawn – he has a team now – but before he succeeded as hereditary Custodian, he fulfilled this duty every morning and with pride: ‘It’s firstly just a job, then it’s a family profession, and an enormous responsibility, but above all, it’s noble and sacred work. But it is not paid well. I also work on the front desk of a hotel on the Mount of Olives.’

The hereditary posts are gradually disappearing on the Haram. The Shihabis, another one of the Families, descended from Lebanese princes, who live in their own family
waqf
close to the Little Wall, used to be Custodians of the Prophet’s Beard. The beard and job have disappeared yet the pull of this place is magnetic: the Shihabis still work on the Haram.

Just as the rabbi walks down to the Wall, just as Nusseibeh is tapping on the doors of the Church, just as Ansari opens the gates of the Haram, Naji Qazaz is leaving the house on Bab al-Hadid Street that his family have owned for 225 years, to walk the few yards alongthe old Mamluk streets up the steps through the Iron Gate and on to the Haram. He proceeds directly into al-Aqsa, where he enters a small room equipped with a microphone and bottles of mineral water. Until 1960, the Qazaz family used the minaret but now they use this room to prepare like athletes for the call. For twenty minutes, Qazaz sits and stretches, an athlete of holiness, he then breathes and gargles the water. He checks that the microphone is on and when the clock on the wall shows it is time, he faces the
qibla
and starts to chant the
adhan
that reverberates across the Old City.

The Qazaz have been the muezzins at al-Aqsa for 500 years since the reign of Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay. Naji, who has been muezzin for thirty years, shares his duties with his son Firaz and two cousins.

It is now one hour before dawn on a day in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is open: Muslims are praying. The Wall is always open: the Jews are praying. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is open: the Christians are praying in several languages. The sun is rising over Jerusalem, its rays making the light Herodian stones of the Wall almost snowy – just as Josephus described it two thousand years ago – and then catching the glorious gold of the Dome of the Rock that glints back at the sun. The divine esplanade where Heaven and Earth meet, where God meets man, is still in a realm beyond human cartography. Only the rays of the sun can do it and finally the light falls on the most exquisite and mysterious edifice in Jerusalem. Bathing and glowing in the sunlight, it earns its auric name. But The Golden Gate remains locked, until the coming of the Last Days.
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THE MACCABEES: KINGS AND HIGH PRIESTS 160
BC
–37
BC

Rulers are in capitals; dates refer to the dates of their reigns

THE HERODS 37
BC
–
AD
100

Rulers are in capitals; dates refer to the dates of their reigns.
This family tree shows only the Herodian rulers. The Herodians frequently
intermarried making a full family tree extremely complex.

THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD AND THE ISLAMIC CALIPHS AND DYNASTIES