April 1, 2005
by Alexa Smith

EAST JERUSALEM – Samir Karam sits stringing beads and talking.

He doesn't like Kentucky Fried Chicken, he says; he tried it once, in the United States, and had to spit it out. Fast food, he tells a visitor, is what ensures that overweight Americans will huff and puff their way up the steep streets of the Old City in search of its holy sites.

Karam has lots of advice, because he's lived a lifetime already. Survived a few wars. Started over a few times from scratch.

After a four-year spell of unemployment, he's trying again. He was a casualty of the collapse of the tourist trade when the Intifada exploded and bombs started going off in Jerusalem. It didn't take long for his hotel-based shop to shut its doors.

Now he has opened another one.

He's renting the space cheaply from a friend who had no other takers.

So he has reclaimed the metals and stones he put in storage when he went belly-up in 2000.

"We always have hope, you know? Hope is a part of life. No hope, no life," he says. He is attaching brightly colored beads in an intricate pattern to a head covering for women that he's beginning to market in a country in which Muslim and Jewish women alike conceal their hair. "In this life, we need three things – hope, and two others. Faith. And love. Without those things, life is not complete. Three things that cost you nothing. Nothing. But they are hard to get."

In fact, he doesn't have them himself right now. "It's hard to get all three together," he says.

Karam's lesson is interrupted by one of those overweight American pilgrims he just described. This one is from Miami and she's looking for the Ninth Station of the Cross. It is nearby, but down the hill, not up. And to the right.

It is Good Friday.

Tourists are plugging up the narrow corridors of the Old City's Christian Quarter of a medieval Jerusalem fortress divided into four sections in such a way that Jews have easy access to the Western Wall and Muslims can get to the Dome of the Rock. Armenians are clustered around St. James Church. While Holy Sepulchre Church is at the center of the Christian Quarter, the site traditionally held to be the spot where Jesus was entombed and rose from the dead. Karam's shop is on one of the narrow streets that empty into the heart of the Christian Quarter.

It isn't quite the swarm of pilgrims that used to pack the ancient passageways at Easter time.

It has been a long, dry four years. So dry that many merchants, like Karam, had to quit. Now those who are planning comebacks are hoping that there will be no bombs this time to scare people away.

What's got Jerusalemites on edge are threats by Israeli settlers to occupy the Al-Aksa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon evacuates settlers from Gaza – an unexpected move that stunned his critics. Sharon has been a hard-core advocate of the settler movment and owns an apartment in a settlement in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.

"I was thinking I'd never work again," Karam says. "I'm starting from zero. We'll see what happens."

In a world like this one, where economic survival is uncertain, people get philosophical about life. Or depressed.

With so few customers, Karam has too much time to think.

So the cost of a cross, a pair of earrings or an olive-wood Madonna often includes a cup of Arabic coffee and few words of advice or a reflection on the meaning of life.

The coffee and the advice are free.

Walking up the slope from Karam's shop, one is assailed by merchants sitting on stools, smoking and hawking their goods. "Welcome, welcome," voices call. "Have a look, lady. ... Shopping today? Come inside. Don't buy. Just look."

Their voices lack the energy of years past. Many sit rooted to their stools, too timid or too tired to spursue the occasional customer.

One right turn from Karam's street, a row of religious gift shops spill their contents into the ancient stone corridor. Some of the merchandise boggles the mind: Green plastic Marys. Olive-wood nativities in every size. Religious medals. Gorgeous icons. And then there are the arts: Embroidered Palestinian pillows stitched to perfection. Earrings. Necklaces. It's a bazaar for the eyes and the wallet.

Some items are exquisite, others tacky.

But the shelves inside are jammed with everything from plastic-wrapped crucifixes to bottled Jordan River water. Sheer cotton dresses and black shawls are suspended from the ceilings. Boxes fashioned out of mother-of-pearl are stacked just outside the doors.

A couple darts into a shop to check out the name on the bottom of a carved Virgin Mary, just to see if it matches the name on one they bought the day before.

Europeans and North Americans are looking, looking, and finally buying. Or not. And just moving on. Asian pilgrims wear identical yellow baseball caps, apparently so no one gets lost in the crowd. Four Filipinos, up from Tel Aviv, check out the jewelry in a crammed Armenian shop.

Rami Mraibi, 24, is one of the pragmatists here.

He runs the Jerusalem Art Museum, the shop his dad opened decades ago. It is stuffed with olive-wood carvings and ornate crosses, creations of Mraibi's.

He can be seen from the street, sitting in the rear of his store, bent over his jewelry. He's offering a 25 percent discount on everything.

Nonetheless, he says, "People ask prices and they go. Or they just look."

Mraibi wonders if peace will always be so elusive here. Sometimes Palestine seems destined to be ruled by outsiders, he says. The Turks. The British. The Jordanians. Now the Israelis.

Even Jesus' words from the cross, he says, translate: "I cry this country."

But he isn't a politician. He's a jeweler. So he sits in the back of his shop, crafting the perfect setting for a sparkling stone. Or creating a cross so ornate that only a bishop could wear it.

"It's fun for me," he says, explaining that staying creative is important in itself. "I make it and I put it out. If people don't buy it, so be it."

But as the street slowly fills, he is hoping someone will buy today. "I hope they do," he says. "Until now, no."

A few shoppers stroll by but do not stop. Mraibi shakes his head and walks toward his work bench, where he can focus on something beautiful.

Peering into a glass counter a few doors down, another merchant – who doesn't want his name used – is giving a lesson in crosses. He's pointing to a silver Jerusalem cross with a ruby in its center. Its beams are anchors for smaller crosses at each corner.

"This is the Terra Santa cross. The Maltese cross. The St. George Cross. The Crusader Cross," he says, pulling it out for a closer look. It's a favorite among his customers. "The important thing: They got it in Jerusalem," he says.

Crosses are literally falling from the shelves in this cubbyhole. Protestant crosses, empty of Jesus. Wooden ones that spell Jesus on the cross-beam. Catholic ones, with Jesus suspended in agony. Orthodox crosses with icons of Jesus, his mother, Mary, the Magdalene, and God the Father, surrounding the dying Christ.

He's been selling here for five years.

He's seen tired tourists come by, feet aching, necks sore from heavy backpacks. He keeps on hand a linament that can be made at home from ethyl alcohol and two peeled lemons, packed into a pressurized container.

It will cure what ails you, he says. It halts migraines for the sales clerk next door. Just drench a tissue with the remedy and apply it to what hurts.

He's as sure that the elixir works as he is that no one is too old for love. That prompts a more complicated conversation about how men lie and how women shouldn't put up with it.

To drive his point home, he pulls out a Christmas card with a photo of an 85-year-old friend with his girlfriend.

"See," he says, "Age doesn't matter."

Take an abrupt left turn and follow the winding street to Holy Sepulchre Church.

The cathedral's broad plaza is packed, after months of emptiness.

A Tennebrae service has just ended.

Russian immigrant women are bowing and crossing themselves as they exit the sanctuary, their hair discreetly covered by scarves.

Digital cameras are everywhere.

A woman smokes as she reclines in the sunshine.

Four men – one wearing a camouflage hat with "Israeli Army" embroidered on it – try to have their portrait taken in front of the church, but passers-by keep walking through the shot.

Two U.S. backpackers, slightly sunburned, are curious to see the inside of the cathedral, but ambivalent about the faith that built it.

A guide holding a striped umbrella and wearing a multi-colored clown's wig – presumably to remain visible to her charges – leads a line of docile pilgrims through the melee like ducklings.

There's a cautious optimism at work here.

Two young clerks near the Holy Sepulchre say that the tourists are slowly coming back. And that's good.

But the sales are nickel-and-dime. That's bad.

A package of film. A rosary.

"Life is bad. Business is bad," one says with a glower.

But just around the corner, Zaid Abdeen, who has been selling for 28 years, says he's now seeing tourists every day. For the past five years, he says, he saw maybe one every five days.

The Abdeen family operates about 65 shops in the Old City. That's counting all the cousins and nephews.

When folks are buying, he says, his best-selling items are embroidered handbags and olive-wood nativities.

He disses the negativity of the guys around the corner. Things could be worse, he says. "They used to make $500 a day," he says. "Now they make about $100 a day, and $50 of that is profit. That's enough. What do I need?

"I need food for the day and gas for my car. ...

"To tell the truth: We're better off than the people on the West Bank. The people in Bethlehem, in Ramallah. They can't leave. They have no permits. I can get in my car and go to Tel Aviv, wherever."

A distant relative, Nidal, 26, stands next to his shop nearby, a bit closer to the heart of the Old City. It is full of tapestries and pillows, a rich tumble of fabric and color.

"Living here is hard," he admits. He says he also has just opened again after a two-year hiatus.

"This year," he says simply, "is better than last. Thank God."

Presbyterian News Service