A Muslim at the Feast

Ghada Karmi

A Palestinian-born writer now living in London, where she is a research associate at the Centre of Near and Middle East Studies, recalls her childhood in Jerusalem. But the days are gone when many Muslims would happily join the Easter processions.

EASTER in England is a sedate affair. But for the chocolate eggs in the shops and the bank holidays, one might not know that anything at all was happening. How different from the Easters of my childhood in Jerusalem, week-long festivals which started with a great procession on Palm Sunday. For us Muslims, this was a wonderful spectacle, a long line of people walking all the way from the village of Bethany, over the Mount of Olives, from there to the Old City through St Stephen’s Gate, and then along the winding lanes to end in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The crowds would be preceded by children holding palm branches in their hands and gaily coloured ribbons, strewing flowers all along the way.

The other striking event of Easter week was the so-called "Saturday of Light". This occurred the day after Good Friday and was celebrated only by the Greek Orthodox. People went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre the night before and lit candles in the early morning. Then, at noon on Holy Saturday, the Greek patriarch entered the church clad in his splendid robes and made his way to the holy tomb, where a great crowd of people awaited him. There he led the service and when this was finished, and to our astonishment, a great light emanated from the tomb which illuminated the church brilliantly. It was a truly magnificent sight.

I remember how before Easter our Christian neighbours used to stop eating their favourite things for the forty days of Lent, even the children. "What, no chocolate?" we asked in disbelief. When Easter arrived, we were ready to enjoy it almost as much as they did. And on Palm Sunday, we walked in the procession with them and ended up in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, gazing at the crowds and the great ceremony.

Of course, as Muslim children, we understood little of the religious meaning of these celebrations. But we enjoyed the fun. It was the same at Christmas time, although this festival properly belonged to Bethlehem, as Easter belonged to Jerusalem. We too celebrated Christmas after a fashion, with a small Christmas tree of our own.

That a Muslim family like ours should have participated in these Christian festivals was not strange in the Palestine of the 1940s. We lived in a predominantly Christian neighbourhood in the western part of Jerusalem and it was natural for us to join them in their religious festivities and for them to do the same with ours. But on our feast days, because there is little that is comparable in Islam to the outward ceremony of Christian festivals, they did not have to do any more to call and give us their greetings.

Our neighbours were mostly Greek Orthodox, although there was a small number of Protestants and Roman Catholics, whom we called "Latins", in the area. These latter groups were a recent phenomenon in Palestine. Until the nineteenth century, the vast majority of Palestinian Christians, who formed about 10 per cent of the population, belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church. From 1830 onwards, however, when Britain established the first foreign consulate in Jerusalem, Christian missionaries from a number of European countries began to arrive in Palestine. Despite their strenuous efforts, the missionaries succeeded only in convincing other Christians; they made no headway with either Muslims or Jews. Some Greek Orthodox now crossed over to other denominations.

So, as the century drew to its end, there were now in Palestine Roman Catholics, German Lutherans, Russian Orthodox Christians, Anglicans and Scottish Presbyterians. The missions set up schools, hospitals and other institutions. By 1900 the number of institutions built by missionaries totalled 100.

The Muslim Palestinians, who formed the largest group in the country, accepted this foreign Christian invasion with equanimity. Many Muslim families sent their children to missionary schools and appreciated the advantages these offered. There was no such equanimity with regard to the other foreign invasion which was penetrating the country at the same time, that of European Zionists intent on setting up a Jewish homeland in Palestine; the missionaries were seen as concerned only with religious matters, the Jews with taking over the country.

If there was friction between Muslims and Christians, it was with these Christians who had crossed over to other denominations. People sometimes suspected them of being closer to the Europeans who had evangelised them than to their fellow Palestinians. They also tended to speak foreign languages and to choose European Christian names for their children, which is how today we have Palestinians called Edward or George or Patricia. These practices tended to set them apart from the rest, including the Greek Orthodox community, who felt closer to Muslims. As a Greek Orthodox friend of my father’s used to put it, "We are the Muslims of the Christian world".

The British administration which ruled Palestine from 1918 to 1948 gave the Christians preferential treatment, appointed them to senior positions, and generally bestowed favours on them.

But whatever friction such things might have aroused, it was relatively mild and transitory. And, in our neighbourhood, we were quite unaware of any basic differences between Muslims and Christians. I even went with my brother and sister to Sunday school, which was held not far away from our house. My mother thought this was a good way of keeping us off the street and she had no qualms about its religious instruction.

So when, in 1949, my sister and I were enrolled in a Catholic convent school in north London, it seemed just like a continuation of the tradition we had known in Palestine. We had come to England as refugees after fleeing our home in Jerusalem in April 1948; the fighting which had attended the birth of the new state of Israel in our country made it impossible for us and many thousands of other Palestinians to stay. Our schooling had been interrupted and my father’s first thought was to put that right as soon as possible. He preferred for us to go to a convent school because he thought the nuns would be kind and patient, as we were foreigners and I spoke no English at all.

So there we were at La Sagesse convent school in the autumn of 1949. Christianity was nothing new to us, although we had had no experience of this brand of it before. In particular, it never occurred to my father for a moment that I could be lured away from Islam into the arms of Roman Catholicism. He did not understand that, in London, things were different. The Muslim children who went to missionary schools in Palestine might have been immune to Christian influence because their environment was largely Muslim. In London, our family was isolated and, dislocated as I was by the loss of Palestine, I felt the need to belong somewhere.

From the very beginning, the nuns were the epitome of kindness to me, to the point of indulgence. They chose me to clean the statues of the Virgin Mary and the saints, for which I was rewarded by being given time away from lessons. This was justified on the grounds that, as I knew no English, I was better employed in tasks which did not require the use of language. I was given only the prettiest statues to clean, milky white marble figurines small enough to hold in one’s arms. I used to have a comfortable little seat and table to work on and as I polished the beautiful features of the Virgin’s face and they started to gleam like satin, the nuns would hug me and stroke my head and speak in kind voices.

AT TIMES, they would take me into the chapel which, like the other non-Catholic girls in the class, I did not normally enter. Its colours were all turquoise and gold and it seemed to me the loveliest place I had ever seen. The statue of the Virgin in the chapel was larger than life-size and her robes were edged in shining stars. Candles burned everywhere and filled the room with a magical radiance. The nuns would take pleasure in my evident delight and make even more fuss of me. On Christmas Eve many of the Catholic girls stayed on after school because, as I found out, they were all going to midnight Mass in the beautiful chapel. I wished I could have gone too.

Things went well until I began to discern something at the convent which I had never felt with any of our Christian neighbours in Jerusalem: a subtle, gentle yet persistent, attempt on the part of the nuns to save my soul. This alarmed me and, inchoately, I began to draw away. Each of our lessons at school used to begin with a Hail Mary, which we all recited with the teacher. I had understood that this was a Catholic prayer and had accepted it without demur, but now I began to close my eyes each time it was recited and say the Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Koran, in my head. I saw this as the only way to preserve my identity from being overwhelmed by the Christian forces around me.

I continued to resist in this fashion until I left the convent to go to another school at the age of 13. So, the nuns of La Sagesse were never able to convert me, but they succeeded far more than they knew. To this day, I cannot enter a Catholic church without feeling a special tug of affection at my heart. And when I went to an Anglican school after the convent, I could not warm to that version of Christianity which seemed to me ineffably dreary, with no Virgin Mary or pretty statues. In particular, it put an emphasis on the Hebrew prophets and the Jewish people’s connection with the land of Israel which struck a discordant note with my sensibilities as a Palestinian.

Thus, my encounter with Christianity in Britain was complex and had none of the easy harmony we had known in Jerusalem. Easter will come again to the Holy Land this year, but things are different now. In the 1940s, when we were there, the Christians of Jerusalem numbered some 29,000 people; now they are 10,000, a third of what they were, and more are leaving. The Old City, where the Easter celebrations will take place, is now an area of bitter strife, contested by ultra-religious Jews and stalked by armed Israeli soldiers. On the route to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands an old Arab house flying the Israeli flag, a bizarre sight in that place. Guarded day and night by soldiers, it now belongs to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli minister of national infrastructure and son of Russian Jewish immigrants. In this new atmosphere of religious intolerance, few Muslim children will be joining the Easter procession, as we used to.

It is only 50 years since we left Jerusalem, but already that harmonious, multi-religious, multi-ethnic city is but a distant memory.