This year the festival linked western and eastern Easter rites, writes MICHAEL JANSENin Jerusalem
BENEATH A hazy blue sky pilgrims from the world over flow through the gracious gates of the walled city of Jerusalem, gather behind guides holding green, red, yellow flags on poles, and wend their way through narrow streets flanked by shops selling souvenirs.
Greeks, Bulgarians and Russians in European dress, Ethiopians wrapped in white gauze cloaks, and Egyptians in yellow peak caps trip over cobbles and stumble down steps in the dim depths of the souq, making for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Orthodox Jews in prayer shawls or round fur hats and caftans stroll toward the Wailing Wall for prayers the day after the Passover festival, which this year connects the western and eastern Easter weekends.
Greek Orthodox priests in stovepipe hats and cassocks and a few score laymen form a ragged procession behind Palestinian worthies, Ottoman red felt hats on their heads, black staffs topped with silver knobs in their hands. They pass a small gate to the magnificent Dome of the Rock, an octagonal Muslim shrine faced in Persian tiles and capped in gold leaf, and turn into the courtyard of the massive Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where a throng, fenced off by Israeli toops and police, awaits the ceremony of the Opening of the Doors.
While bells high above toll in low, hollow tones, a priest pounds on the door, pauses and pounds again until a wooden ladder is put against the door and Wajeeh Nusseibeh, a Palestinian in suit and colourful silk shirt, climbs to an ancient iron lock and twists it open with a foot-long key. He steps down and hands the key to Abed Jawdeh, the elderly keeper of the key who has held this post for half a century. Due to squabbles among the denominations that share the church, the key has been safeguarded by Muslims since 1545.
The great door swings open and we enter the cathedral hush of this ancient house of prayer where caretakers are lowering and lighting oil lamps and priests are making preparations for tonight’s climax of Easter celebrations, the late Mass marking Jesus’s resurrection.
As priests hurry up a stair to the Greek chapel built on Golgotha, the Hill of the Skull where Jesus was crucified, a line forms outside the red granite edifice that houses his tomb. Copts settle on benches opposite their altar at the back. Territorial disputes are frequent and are occasionally violent.
Television cameras lead the way to the Via Dolorosa, where Ethiopians carrying wooden crosses and candles climb the shallow steps to Khan al-Zeit street and make their way, singing, to the stone steps to the roof of the church where their sanctuary is located.
Greek novices in black cassocks, cold sweat springing on their brows but steady on their feet, labour up the narrow street with a heavy wooden cross. A tight throng of Greeks follows, some holding aloft small crosses or video cameras.
Israeli police have locked us into the Christian quarter, forcing us to scrape through a narrow opening in an iron fence held firm by two lines of officers. Outside the Easter security cordon, clothiers, butchers and grocers display their wares, a man fries felafel in a cauldron of boiling oil and audio systems blare Arabic songs. The steps of Damascus Gate are covered in rows of shoes, T-shirts and perfume bottles.
A five-minute walk from the gate, I turn into the Garden Tomb, where Protestants, who celebrated Easter last Sunday along with Catholics, believe Golgotha and Jesus’s tomb are located.
There is no crush, no rush, no babble of liturgies, no Israeli police. Half a dozen people take their ease on shaded paths, delighted by delicate pink cyclamen springing from dry walls, the peace broken briefly by the caw-caw of crows.