The structure can be seen by satellite. It rises 26 feet into the air.
It is made of concrete. Its surface is crusted with graffiti—with signs and curses, with poems and taunts, with cries—with portents. To see its top, while you stand at its foot, you must crane your neck and squint up at the sky. It runs crookedly through the city—perhaps it rolls on forever.
“They put up the wall here in one single day in 2003,” Claire Anastas tells me. She is a lifelong resident of Bethlehem. “The children went to school in the morning, and when they came back they found the house surrounded.”
Claire Anastas in her front yard—an accidental prison—in Bethlehem.
Paul Salopek
Anastas refers to the famous “Separation Barrier” erected by Israel to contain the violence of the Second Intifada. Government surveyors plotted its construction right through Anastas’s living room. Anastas, a Christian shopkeeper, refused to budge. So the engineers built the barrier around her. Her home is now encircled on three sides by towering slabs of concrete. Her shop, which is nestled on the first floor of her house, sells small, hand-carved Christmas mangers. Each contains a carved Mary and Joseph. They lean over a baby Jesus. A toy Separation Barrier runs through the manger. Unlike the real thing, in the souvenirs the wall is easily removable.
My guide Bassam Almohor and I walk through the Bethlehem checkpoint.
“You!”
The voice buzzes over an intercom. I am standing next to a metal detector. No human being is visible. Puzzled, I look around.
“Yes, you!”
“Where are you?” I say. “I can’t see you.”
“Behind you! Behind the glass! What is in the pack?”
“Laptop, video camera, audio recorder, satellite phone … “
“Where do you come from?”
“Ethiopia.”
“No! Where do you come from?”
“United States.”
“Welcome to Israel.”
Two friends meet us on the other side. Evan and Christa: a language student and a journalist. They welcome us. They walk us into Jerusalem.
We dodge traffic on a wide boulevard. We climb urban hills, past an old kibbutz that has evolved into a resort. We photograph ourselves at the Promenade that overlooks the Old City. Domed. Steepled. Walled. A city of hills. Its pale stones the color of early morning clouds. It glows and glows. A city that conjures birds, flight.
Bassam, on the outskirts of Bethlehem, gets a first glimpse of Jerusalem.
Paul Salopek
Alone later that afternoon, I drop my pack inside an empty, borrowed apartment. I stand in its dim spaces. I blink in silence at its books, at its potted plants, at the electric kettle. I splay my sunburned hands on the cold kitchen counter. Alema Hassan. Mohamad Banounah. Ali al Harbi. Awad Omran. Hamoudi Enwaje’ al Bedul. And now, Bassam Almohor. Guides and pilgrims. I think of sanctuary. I think of the crossroads of the world. Jerusalem. Yerushalayim. Al Quds. We’ve all been there.
