Aug 21, 2001
The road north from Damascus runs parallel to a long line of dry cliffs where the Antilebanon drops down from the Lebanese plateau to the Syrian plain, which must once have been the bed of an inland sea. Nowadays it is mostly desert except where spring water seeps down from Lebanon and feeds an occasional oasis. In such places there are villages which seem to have remained unchanged since before the days on King Solomon. Here and there the cliffs jut out into a kind of promontory and on one of these there is an elegant little stone church. It is said to contain the earthly remains of the Virgin Mary.
I don’t know whether Ali Mahmoud had decided that the infidel needed further education, or whether he simply wanted me out of the way while he caught up with the paper work back in his office, but he assigned Yussef, who, though a muslim, was well informed and spoke English easily, to take me to visit the holy shrine.
We left the vehicle at the foot of the cliff and climbed up to the church. I was surprised to find it was in fact perched on top of a large crypt hewn from the raw rock. The crypt contained a kind of altar at one end and on it pilgrims had placed perhaps a hundred tall white candles whose abundant light reflected from fifty-two elegant polished brass censers hanging from the ceiling. It gave the place a sort of magical air of Aladdin’s cave.
In one of the side walls was an alcove containing the sacred remains in something like a sarcophagus faced with a brass plate and draped with embroidered linen. A queue of pilgrims had formed around the wall, taking turns to buy and light a candle, and then kneel and kiss the brass plate and presumably utter some prayer to Mary. Some of them seemed to have a good deal to say, so the queue was moving very slowly.
I turned to Yussef who was waiting in the doorway, and suggested we might as well get moving. He raised his brows and nodded towards the sarcophagus as if to ask whether I was not going through the procedure.
“No.” I said, “I’m not a Christian.”
As we made our way back to the car he asked, “Well how come you know about Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel?” referring to a previous visit we’d made to Abel’s tomb.
“Well,” I said, “I’m civilized, but I’m not a Christian.”
In the car he said, “Well who do you pray to?”
“I don’t pray to anyone.”
“What will become of you when you die?”
“I don’t know. Compost, I suppose.”
“But what about your immortal soul?”
“I’ve seen no evidence of an immortal soul.” I said. I might have added ‘And neither, if you’ll pardon my saying so, have you.’, but I didn’t.
We drove on in silence for a mile or two. Near the road a shepherd sat in the shade of his donkey, idly tending a dozen or so long legged sheep as they foraged for something digestible among the salt bushes. His job description can’t have changed in three thousand years.
“Do you believe in Paradise?’ Yussef asked.
“No. I’m afraid not. This is all we get.”
“Do you believe in Hell?’
“Only the hell we make here for ourselves on earth.”
He thought for a bit and then said, “But how will people keep the law if there is no prospect of punishment hereafter”
I said I didn’t think God would be very pleased if he thought people were only obeying the law out of fear of punishment. Yussef didn’t respond to that. Perhaps there was something going through his mind about the devil quoting scripture, but if there was, he was too polite to say so. We let the subject drop, and drove on to Damascus.