The Jerusalem Puzzle (41 page)

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?

Never give up.

No matter what you write, if you keep going, if you keep learning, working on your craft, being open to feedback, you will succeed in some way. My middle initial is P. I like to think it stands for persistence.

Do you have a daily writing routine?

I get up at five most days, do some research, then start at either seven or a bit later. I revise what I wrote the day before, then write for about three hours, depending on what I have to do. Then I do some more research. I rarely write in the afternoon. The routine started when I had a full time job and had to stop writing by nine a.m. Now I can go on longer.

Do you plan a book from start to finish before you start writing?

I do now. I submit an outline of the book and stick to it, except where new ideas will add significantly to the story. I like to have a plan, but to be open to twists and turns that emerge while I write.

In Jerusalem you can go to hell or heaven in streets just wide enough for two handcarts to pass.

Hell is the Valley of Gahenna, the rocky valley just to the south of the city walls, where the entrance to the underworld was traditionally placed. Heaven is the Temple Mount, the Wailing Wall or the Tomb of Jesus, depending on your religion.

‘They won’t shoot you,’ the pretty Israeli girl on the bus from Ben Gurion Airport had said. I’d just explained that I was staying for a week in East Jerusalem.

It was late February 2012. The sky was blue and the bus was winding up through the hills. I was the last to be left off. The narrow car-choked streets of East Jerusalem were busy with electrical shops, restaurants and apartment buildings. The view from my Spartan hotel room was of a building site. It looked as if it had been abandoned.

I was reminded of the girl’s words the following morning when I was walking through the Islamic quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus’ tomb is and where Golgotha is, where he was crucified. My hotel was near Herod’s Gate. It seemed like a good idea to walk through the Old City, a walled medieval looking city with a Biblical core. Its walls were built by Suleiman I in the late sixteenth century when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire. They are massive, thick as a sand dune ridge at their base and still completely intact.

I decided to take a short cut by sticking close to the walls. I veered off the main alleyway and found myself on a winding lane that skirted sand coloured buildings like prison walls on each side. I rounded a corner and saw a stretch of empty lane ahead with steps and no humans anywhere to be seen.

My feet echoed as I moved fast in what I hoped was the right direction. I heard a shout and turned. But there was no one behind me. Which way now? Empty alleys led off to the right and left. Some of them were stairways. There was another shout behind me.

Two boys were racing down the street with satchels dangling. I hurried on. Soon I was at the great church mingling with the tourists, and glad to be there.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a pilgrimage destin
ation since the early 4th century, was reconstructed a thousand
years ago thanks mainly to donations by a Byzantine Emperor, Constantine IX. The previous church had been razed to the ground.

I went to Jerusalem in February, at the same time that The Jerusalem Puzzle is set, to ensure I experienced the weather, the smells and the feeling on the streets, and to get a good understanding of the daily life of the city at that time of the year.

I also travelled far south to near Taba, the border crossing with Egypt, and through the Palestinian territories via Hebron and Bethlehem, near where scenes in the book are set. I passed through military checkpoints, saw guns drawn and crowds demonstrating.

This is not a political book. I am neither qualified nor inclined to write such a book. But in Jerusalem I found a powerful and evocative city. What surprised me most about it was:

• The small size of the Old City. The Old City is encircled with medieval walls and is where the main historical and religious sites are. You can walk across it in twenty minutes. At its heart it is a warren of narrow alleys.
  
• The fact that the people are so visibly devoted to religion. Coming from a superficially secular country this is striking. Much closes on the Sabbath in Jerusalem, but not only that, it is obvious that all sides there, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, are devoted to following the daily paths of their religion. Prayers are a focus and lives appear devout.
  
• The similarities between the modest dress of the Muslim women, mostly headscarfed, and the Jewish women, headscarfed too, but in different colours.
  
• The numbers of pilgrims from each faith visiting the city despite it not being a time of any great significance for any of the major religions.
  

I went to the Wailing Wall and saw the devotion that people have for this site. I experienced the wonders of the Dome of the Rock and went around and around and deep under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Each of these sites has its own special feeling. Each has its wonders. I will not attempt to list them.

My background led me to spend more time at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is also where some important scenes in the book are set. I was there early in the morning and as it closed at night with a special ceremony, one that is carried on and watched by Christian pilgrims each night of the year since the time of Saladin.

I found the interior of the Church beautiful and intriguing, although the number of Christian denominations in control of the site leaves much to be desired, for me, and illustrates the fractious nature of the descendants of those who follow Jesus.

For me Mount Zion, just outside the city walls, was the most spiritual place I visited. As I went down a stone spiral staircase to the chapel commemorating where Mary died I listened to Polish people singing hymns.

The Negev Desert, the Judean Hills and the Dead Sea were all on my itinerary too. I visited villages off the beaten track and an old house with a palm tree drive that could easily be a model for the villa described in the book.

I wish to pay tribute to the people of all faiths and none who welcomed me to Israel and the Palestinian territories and who let me eat with them and who showed such compassion and faith in an outsider, despite the terrible things that have happened to so many from all sides there and the fact that the conflict in this land is not over.

Finally, I hope for an enduring peace and an end to all the suffering in these lands. Hasn’t there been enough?

Laurence O’Bryan has worked in IT marketing for many years, ten of them in London, until he was made redundant. He then returned to Dublin where he has lived since.

To find out more about Laurence, find him on Twitter @LPOBryan, follow him on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/laurence.obryan
and visit his blog
www.lpobryan.wordpress.com
.

The Istanbul Puzzle

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Publishers
2012

Copyright © Laurence O’Bryan 2012

Laurence O’Bryan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9781847562890

EPub Edition © January 2013 ISBN: 9780007453313

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

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