Holy Fire by Victoria Clark

Author:Victoria Clark [Clark, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447204831
Publisher: Macmillan

EASTER 2003

‘We believed, and I still believe, that there was

in the world no aspiration more nobly idealistic than the return

of the Jews to the land immortalised by the spirit of Israel.

Which nation has not wrought them infinite harm?’

– COLONEL RONALD STORRS,

BRITISH GOVERNOR OF JERUSALEM 1917–20

Easter again, but George Hintlian is not celebrating Christ’s victory over the grave, or even the natural world’s over winter. All the way from Jaffa Gate to the confectioner’s, past the locked-up souvenir stalls and through the twilit bustle of the souk, he bombards me with bad tidings.

For the time being, Jerusalem’s history has lost its power to console my friend. The present is too big to ignore. First comes talk of the war in nearby Iraq, ‘America’s new Vietnam’, and its implications for the entire Middle East. Next he tells me how the Israelis’ ‘security fence’72* is slicing through orchards and olive groves, severing Palestinians from relatives, hospitals and livelihoods. I want to tell him what Nasra told me the moment I arrived in Jerusalem this morning, that a section of the barrier in front of her apartment block in Bethlehem will prevent her crossing the street, but his attention has already shifted. A dear friend of his, a Greek bishop, stands accused of trying to hire a Palestinian hit man to assassinate Patriarch Irineos.73* ‘Scandal like this is shaming,’ he says, ‘not just for the Greeks, but for all Christians here.’ I would like to know more, but his focus has narrowed again, to the threat of war breaking out at Saturday’s Holy Fire ceremony.

A whole year has slipped by without a settlement of last Easter’s dispute. The question of whether both the Greek patriarch and the Armenian priest, or only the patriarch, is entitled to take his Holy Fire directly from the oil lamp has not been resolved. The Greeks are refusing to give an inch and a large majority of Armenian bishops has persuaded their old patriarch that history will never forgive him if he compromises. For the past three weeks the Israeli Department of Religious Affairs and Jerusalem’s police chief have been trying to broker a truce, but without result. George is deeply offended by their interventions: ‘The Israelis have inspected all the documents and interrogated both sides, so of course they know now exactly how the miracle is managed, the role of the oil lamp and everything! We all look like fools!’

With less than forty-eight hours to go before the ceremony, the situation is horribly dangerous. A cross word, an angry shove or a stray spark of Holy Fire is all it would take, says George, to reignite the conflict. But I have arrived too recently from another world to begin imagining scenes such as Curzon witnessed in 1834. I have to assume that the toxic fumes of regional turbulence, combined with what Edward Lear called Jerusalem’s ‘squabblepoison’, are impairing George’s judgement, but listen with mounting alarm as he declares, ‘We Armenians don’t want a fight, but we can have people ready to take up strategic positions around the church .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.