On the 44th anniversary...

Conversations with residents of 4 quarters of Jerusalem’s Old City prompts reflections on the past, present and future of the city.

By JEREMY SHARON
Jerusalem by night view_521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Jerusalem by night view_521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
‘Jerusalem is like an apple tree,’ says Harout, the proprietor of an Armenian tavern in the Old City. “It’s completely unpredictable.”
As Jerusalem Day approaches once again (on June 1), 44 years after the city was reunited, this piece of folksy wisdom doesn’t seem to be too far from the truth. Political machinations are afoot, and the future of the city, along with the wider region, is increasingly murky.
But in the Old City of Jerusalem, very much a focal point of the political conflict, life continues as usual for its motley collection of residents and assorted tradespeople. The four quarters of this Turkish-built stronghold contain within them as broad a range of ethnicities, faiths and cultures as one is likely to encounter in such a small space, and their day-to-day lives reflect this diversity.
YASSER BARAKAT owns an art emporium in the Christian Quarter.
Silver lanterns hang from the ceiling, hand-woven rugs and other embroidered works line the walls, and lithographs of the Holy Land are stacked up against them.
“Life in Jerusalem is uncertain,” he says recalling the disastrous years of the second intifada. “It was a catastrophe, there were no tourists, nothing, it was very hard.”
Business is better now for this former mathematics lecturer, but not like it was in the ’90s. Tour guides hasten groups between sites, and the array of trinket shops hawking carved-wood depictions of the Nativity alongside cheap hanukkiot makes people suspicious of even his more authentic wares.
“Tourist numbers have gone up, but they’re not the same as before, they’re backpackers with less money to spend,” says Barakat’s son Ihab, looking up from his MacBook for a moment.
“You can’t plan, not like in Europe or America,” he sighs, recalling his time spent studying in London.
“It’s as the Prophet Joseph said,” interjects his father. “There are seven years of plenty, then seven years of famine, but here it’s usually one of each, and that makes things complicated.”
LIFE HAS also changed for Helmi in the Muslim Quarter. Born in 1960 and a graduate of Hebron University in Arabic literature, Helmi works with his elderly father, Saleh, running a fruit and vegetable store in a quiet alleyway off one of the main thoroughfares in this bustling section of the city.
Too young himself to recall much about life pre-’67, he says his father had little money back then and that work was scarce.
Today, life is financially more secure, business is steady and the family owns property in the Silwan neighborhood just south of the Old City.
But there are other problems these days.
“Ten years I’ve been trying to build a house for my son, but I can’t get the permits,” he grumbles. “I have the land, but I can’t build.
Where can they live when they get married? It’s impossible.”
And despite these relatively more prosperous times, he feels uncomfortable in the city nowadays.
“The Jews should leave,” he says simply. “There should be Arab control.”
The unsettling, unpredictable nature of life in the Old City is clearly a common theme among the quarters, but as Helmi underlines, an underlying tension is also present, caused by the broader political environment.
“JEWS, MUSLIMS, Christians, they all used to live together on the same streets and share courtyards,” says Harout, an Armenian tavern owner, recalling the stories of his grandfather from before 1948. “But now outsiders have come in and they have no idea of what it was like here, and it’s causing trouble.”
Harout’s family fled their homeland in 1915, as the Armenian genocide was raging. They settled in the Armenian Quarter and have run their restaurant ever since. Descending steep stairs into this grotto, ornate chandeliers cast a soft light down upon the establishment, while fabulous murals depicting Jesus and scenes from the New Testament in traditional Eastern style adorn the walls.
“There’s too much intolerance now,” Harout says as he passes two cups of dark, aromatic Turkish coffee to a waiter. “The old Jerusalemites respected each other, but now everyone’s been brainwashed, and neither side sees the other as quite human.”
The situation doesn’t seem to have had much tangible effect on Harout or his family, though. Relations between the Armenian and Jewish residents are good, business is fine and he would never think of leaving Jerusalem to live elsewhere.
But on occasion, he says, he has to get out and go over to Tel Aviv, away from the pressure-cooker of life in Jerusalem and the Old City.
THIS KIND of intensity is less apparent in the Jewish Quarter, and even harder to imagine in the courtyard of Mira Eliav.
Eliav and her husband, Yossi, have lived together in the Jewish Quarter since 1971, and under the broad, shady leaves of a towering banana plant, with wind chimes tingling and birds chirping, she talks of what it was like to be part of the Garin Moriah settlement group during the days when Jewish life was being revived in the Old City.
“Immediately after 1967, Arabs were still resident in the Rova [Jewish Quarter],” she says. Relations were good, and she remembers being invited over by her Arab neighbors for coffee.
“But the Arab residents were living in formerly Jewish-owned property, and so the government moved them out, gave them housing in Silwan and provided us with rent-free accommodation,” she continues.
Life in the Old City was tough back then, says Eliav. Her first apartment had no electricity, and the only running water was a tap outside the building. The streets weren’t paved, and it took 25 years before the Jewish Quarter was properly renovated.
And in that time, the character of the area, as well as its physical appearance, has changed greatly. Eliav and her husband moved in with another nine families who were either religious Zionist or secular. But a growing number of yeshivot were established, and the makeup of the Rova became increasingly haredi. Of the original 10 families that moved into the Jewish Quarter, just three still live there.
“No community has changed as much as the Rova has,” Eliav says, and agrees with Harout that the different communities are less tolerant of each other.
“The children even have separate playtimes in the courtyard,” she notes, and talks of some unsavory incidents of prejudice and intolerance.
“It’s a special place, though,” she says. “It has a special, spiritual atmosphere. I would never consider leaving.”
No one in the Old City appears to be entirely content, and this reflects, perhaps, the wider problems Jerusalem faces as a whole. Socioeconomic concerns abound, and the political conflict frequently erupts in the city, be it rioting in east Jerusalem or international indignation over construction across the Green Line.
As for the future, it’s clear that no one in the Old City has any idea.
“Live in the present,” says Eliav. “Everyone needs to do the best they can – haredim, Jews, Muslims. Only God knows the future.”
For a city like Jerusalem, this seems to be the best forecast one can expect.