Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [21]
“Now it’s Russian against Russian in Jerusalem,” Uziely went on. “The Soviets against the émigré Russians. They’ve been battling in Israeli courts for years. At stake are millions of dollars of ecclesiastical properties in Israel.”
In 1948 the new State of Israel, desperate for diplomatic recognition, acceded to the Soviet demand that all Russian religious holdings in Israel be turned over to its Orthodox Church in Moscow—despite their belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, now headquartered in New York City. The crowning irony: after the Six Day War in 1967, the Soviet Union severed relations with Israel.
It is the eve of Easter in Jerusalem—Easter by the Orthodox calendar. From early morning, pilgrims have filled the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the ceremony of the holy fire, to me the most exalting ritual of the Eastern churches.
Squeezed against a parapet amid that press of humanity, I watch black-clad women kneel to spread oil on the Stone of Unction, said to be the slab on which the body of Jesus was anointed, and press their weeping faces against it.
The thump of maces and rhythmic clapping and chanting draw my eyes to phalanxes of the faithful slowly moving around Christ’s tomb in the center of the rotunda. In the banners and gleaming vestments I see Byzantium pass in review: skull-capped Syrians, Armenians in pointed hoods, turbaned Copts of Alexandria, Greek Orthodox in cylindrical hats and robes of gold and crimson and black.
Thrice circling the tomb in solemn procession, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem pauses at its entry. He steps inside. The clamor in the rotunda fades to silence. The church is dark, the tension electric.
Suddenly I see a lighted taper thrust from the tomb—the holy fire, symbolizing Christ rising from the dead. Flames leap from taper to taper until the darkness is punctured by a thousand fiery holes. Tower bells thunder, shaking the very walls. Cries rise in a multitude of throats as the splintered churches of Byzantium coalesce into a single mass of believers celebrating the Resurrection.
“He is risen!” Through faith in this miracle, Byzantium lives.
“This is the most mysterious city on earth. I love the houses along the Bosphorus, the dervishes, Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, the fortune-teller who told a truth, the raucous greetings of the rug merchants (“I can take your money!”), and the fantastic Topkapı complex that looks like an ideal liberal arts college. But most of all I love the strange call of the muezzin, especially when it splits the air between dark and dawn. The voice begins with a drone, a wobbly shriek, then works up to intensity. It’s old, old, primitive—it sounds like something pulled up from a deep fissure. Sometimes it sounds like an otherworldly cry from beyond, sometimes like sawing through cellophane. When I wake up hearing that call, I always get a delicious flash, I am somewhere very far from home.”
—Frances Mayes, author of A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller (2007) and Under the Tuscan Sun (1997), among others
Turkish Delights
NORMAN KOTKER
READERS OF my previous books know that I’m a huge fan of Horizon, now defunct, sadly. Horizon magazine was published in a beautiful hardcover format and featured outstanding articles, and would probably never survive if it were published today. (I have quite a collection now, my biggest cache obtained in a single swipe: my husband and I were house-hunting, and as we left one appointment, I noticed that the owners had thrown out a huge box of the magazines. It was raining and I couldn’t bear to see those copies ruined, so to my husband’s great embarrassment, I grabbed piles and piles of them and threw them into