April 14, 2002

Happy Birthday, Mom (your son didn't forget - check's in the mail).

Icon of St. Thomas at the Syrian Catholic Patriarchate of Jerusalem with Arabic and Syriac writing at the top.

We headed early this morning towards Damascus Gate to the Syrian Catholic Patriarchate and the church of St. Thomas for worship. Abuna William from the Latin Patriarchate officiated, since the Syrian Catholic parish priest is stuck with his other parish in Bethlehem - members of that community have taken refuge in the Syrian Catholic Convent. There is a marked difference in liturgy between the two rites, but because a Latin Rite priest was officiating the only difference was the recitation of the Lord's Prayer - done in ancient Syriac. Normally, there would be much less Arabic than there was today.

After church we were supposed to go to Zababdeh at least to see some folks, drop off some goods, and grab a few more things - it was winter when we left, and now it's approaching summer weather. However, our driver decided that with the news from Jenin that today was not a day to go. Instead, we visited with a friend from Zababdeh staying with her family in Beit Hanina, just outside Jerusalem. They have the benefit of having Jerusalem IDs (kind of a second-rate Israeli citizen status), but because our friend moved to Zababdeh, her children's status is in question if not in jeopardy. Since the annexation of Jerusalem by Israel, the municipality has been notorious for its overzealous revoking of Jerusalemite status for Arabs.

In any case, for us it meant another day on the lam. We made our bed at our favorite hostel near Damascus Gate which has become a sort of staging ground for the growing international solidarity movements and for freelance budget journalists trying to uncover what's happening in the "Closed Military Zones".

Jerusalem’s Old City streets are eerily empty.

We spent a great deal of time wondering about what it is exactly that we're doing here. There's no school in Zababdeh, so teaching there isn't an option. There's no telephone, so even if we decided to stay out of solidarity in the relative quiet of the village, we couldn't communicate with the outside world - something with which our parents would no doubt take issue. We can write, but feel like frustrated by the collective silence (or is it horror and thus silenced shock?) that the world seems to be expressing at the situation here. We could leave, and go on a speaking tour, but that simply feels like abandonment.

We took a walk in the Old City to grab dinner and to re-evaluate - perhaps we were hoping that the empty streets would be symbolic of clearing our minds. It helped, no doubt. But this will require much discernment and prayer.