Jerusalem Journal # 209
Having recently crossed the bridge of my seventy-second natal anniversary last month, I am hammering out these words on the laptop from a panoramic window view of Jerusalem’s Old City, where antiquity and modernity collide. Structures like the 638 A.D. golden Dome of the Rock shrine planted atop ruins of two Jewish Temples and the Holy Sepulcher stand cluttered by a sightline of rusty hot water tanks and calcium-clouded solar panels, creating a jumbled dichotomy.
Staring out the window, my mortal “antiquity” confronts the press of fast-paced news analyzing wars around me and worldwide. Too much screen time adds stress, but an insatiable appetite exists to know, be aware, and use wisdom. Technology is opening ever-multiplying windows onto the entire universe. To stay current, I scan the landscape for evidence of change—increased soldier presence at my corner or rocket alerts along my usual driving route between Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee. These details inform me how to prepare for “Plans B, C, D” and onward.
I am one of many women throughout the millennia
called “The Woman in (or at) the Window.”
What was a tiny worldview when I was growing up in the days of three television stations and no such thing as Microsoft Windows has surpassed the fictional world of Star Trek’s warp speed and caused many “mind wrinkles” as I have watched the decades roll. My stark image in the reflective mirrored windowpanes tells me that an exterior version of wrinkles has mercilessly accompanied my struggle to keep up with change.
I scan the tapestry of stone buildings on the western ridge stacked one upon the other like cordwood and observe numerous types of privacy screens intended to shield Muslim women from the eyes of outsiders. There are metal grates, lattices, and even the more recent woven green plastic vine-covered wire panels designed to obscure.
Islamic men of the 19th and 20th centuries used hollow clay pipe mashrabiya, or screens in a triangular formation, to hide women from the eyes of men outside of their family unit, in examples seen throughout today’s Muslim Quarter. The clay pipes worked double duty as a type of air conditioning. I love the look of these, but they are disappearing as they age! Women could peer out and appreciate the surroundings as they dried laundry on upper terraces without wearing their hijabs and free from invasive eyes.
These hollow clay pipe mashrabiyas are relics of an era past but still function.
Once upon a time, there was a popular Ancient Near Eastern artistic motif termed “The Woman in (or at) the Window.” A balustrade of short stone pillars topped by a stone ledge held a limestone-framed female face, looking out at her surroundings from the safety of her home. Artisans of the time created more miniature versions of that image to embellish table or chair legs in luxurious homes and palaces. Archaeologists have uncovered these decorative images in Samaria, Jerusalem’s City of David, and at a site near the Euphrates River adjacent to Aleppo in Syria.
These and similar reliefs now adorn museum displays worldwide.
I close out these thoughts while tucked into an intimate window seat perched above the Sea of Galilee with a view of Lebanese mountains, the snowy peak of what was Syrian Mt. Hermon (now, for security reasons, held by Israeli forces), and across the Golan Heights where just beyond lie rebel forces composed of Druze, Kurds, and tribes once affiliated with Al Qaida and ISIS.
With a peaceful view like this, what could possibly go wrong?
The world witnessed Damascus and the over fifty-year rule of al-Assad crumble within days in a blitzkrieg by the disparate rebel forces. Overhead, a steady stream of Israeli planes is systematically blowing up weapons depots and air defense systems while facilitating on-the-ground efforts to create a buffer zone along the Israeli border.
I am watching history unfold from my window, sobered by the Biblical prophet Ezekiel (Chapters 38-39) speaking of alignments between ancient lands considered by some as today’s Russia, Iran, and Turkey, who have been meeting these days in Doha. Isaiah’s prophecy of Damascus becoming “a heap of ruins (Is. 17:1),” a not-so-unbelievable scenario today, is followed with a lament, “You have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the rock of your refuge (Is. 17:10).”
Are these volatile world and moral clashes causing you to be anxious or lose hope? I am trying to balance my time “in the window” with time spent reading words of hope from the God who is my Rock and then stepping out into the street with my oil lamp to be a light before all of my days are history.
Enjoying the walk home,
Cindy
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