OUT OF EDEN WALK

More than 800,000 people. At least 5,000 years of history. Two thousand archaeological sites. Hundreds of shrines sacred to the world’s three great Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And the site of two proposed capitals — one for Israel, and another for a future Palestinian state. Such is Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, Al Quds. The shining city on a hill, exalted by the faith of billions. And an embattled civilizational crossroads — one profaned across millennia by conquest, by blood, by zealotry, by religious strife.

How does one begin to walk Jerusalem?

Straight lines are unsuitable. (Nothing is simple here.) So we embark one morning from the western edge of this global city — from a modern landmark called the Bridge of Strings — and walk counterclockwise, peeling back centuries, spiraling into a famous walled core: the Old City, which cups holy sites such as the Western Wall, Al Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This inner sanctum we must leave to a thousand travel guides. Instead, the Out of Eden Walk’s urban path explores the larger metropolis where 95 percent of Jerusalem’s residents actually live. A city whose transporting beauty is made poignant by its deep fractures. West Jerusalem is mainly Israeli and Jewish. East Jerusalem is mostly Palestinian and Muslim. In between snake miles of painful borders, divisions, barriers. Trekking inward to the Old City, we transgress many of them, real and imagined, over the course of 23 hilly miles and three walking days. Sadly, few Jerusalemites ever do the same.

Paul Salopek’s partners in documenting this narrative map — the second in a series of digital walks through major cities along the route of the Out of Eden Walk — were writer and musician Yuval Ben-Ami, peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah, journalist Noa Burshtein and peace activist Osnat Skoblinski.

The map was created by Patrick Wellever at the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT and Jeff Blossom at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard. Its text was edited by Don Belt.

— Paul Salopek

May 7 2014, 8:40 pm

A heavenward view of the Bridge of Strings in West Jerusalem — the starting line, and a symbolic entrance to the divided city from the direction of the Mediterranean coast.

May 7 2014, 8:40 pm

Yuval's Jerusalem

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Walking partner Yuval Ben-Ami at the Bridge of Strings, the starting line of the walk’s “snail route” into the Old City of Jerusalem.

Audio: Yuval on the enigma of Jerusalem.

May 7 2014, 8:43 pm

Hint #1: Jerusalem isn’t your average city. Leaflet from a fundamentalist Jewish group soliciting volunteers to help rebuild the Third Temple, ushering in the next Messianic Age.

May 7 2014, 8:49 pm

Jerusalem Light Rail: Perhaps the only urban transit system in the world whose construction was delayed by both a First century Roman-Jewish archaeological site — and the objections of the UN Human Rights Commission (for linking Israeli neighborhoods built on lands allocated to a future Palestinian state).

May 7 2014, 9:03 pm

Walk’s first war monument: the Ottoman mayor surrenders Jerusalem to two lowly British kitchen sergeants out looking for water in WWI. British Army restages the ceremony three more times for progressively superior officers. Mayor catches a cold after surrendering so often on a chilly hilltop.

May 7 2014, 9:11 pm

Roadside Prayer

May 7 2014, 9:29 pm

Cinema City

May 7 2014, 9:31 pm

Hint #2: Jerusalem is not your average city. Cinema City mall connected by pedestrian skyway to the Israeli Supreme Court building.

May 7 2014, 9:41 pm

“Israelis and Palestinians even live in different botanical worlds. In West Jerusalem — pines and lawns. In East Jerusalem — pomegranates, figs, carob trees, olives.” Yuval Ben-Ami in Wohl Rose Park.

May 7 2014, 9:44 pm

The Israeli parliament, or Knesset, behind panes of blast-proof glass.

May 7 2014, 9:56 pm

The misnamed Bible Lands Museum, home to Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Hittite, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, and other pagan gods.

May 7 2014, 10:01 pm

Bible Lands Museum

May 7 2014, 10:45 pm

Israel Museum

May 7 2014, 11:17 pm

Downhill, into the Valley of the Cross.

May 7 2014, 11:20 pm

Holy Cross Monastery

May 7 2014, 11:26 pm

The floor hole marking the spot where the crucifix tree reportedly grew.

May 7 2014, 11:34 pm

Concrete pillbox built by British Mandate army during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt. It is bookended by a neglected monument to Jewish artists and writers killed by the Soviets and public billboards advertising punk rock concerts.

May 7 2014, 11:40 pm

Gaza to Berlin

May 8 2014, 12:08 am

Talbiya, a leafy neighborhood built by rich Christian Arabs in the 1920s. Ethiopian monarch Haile Selassie lived in exile here. The old phone book listed him: “Haile Selassie — Emperor.”

May 8 2014, 12:15 am

Orde Wingate Square: The urban “continental divide” in Jerusalem — a ridgeline shedding Mediterranean-bound and Dead Sea-bound waters. Brutal toward Palestinians, Gen. Wingate was an early British advocate of Zionism. He wore an alarm clock on his wrist and garlic strands around his neck, and he once bicycled across Europe to reach a duty post in the Sudan. Churchill’s physician deemed him borderline mad. Today his square is a circle.

May 8 2014, 12:18 am

Graffiti near the German Colony.

May 8 2014, 12:19 am

Arabesques

May 8 2014, 12:29 am

A dash of color on West Jerusalem stone.

May 8 2014, 12:32 am

Jerusalem Museum of Natural History

May 8 2014, 12:54 am

German Colony

May 8 2014, 1:48 am

Street pavements as signage.

May 8 2014, 1:49 am

The Kabbalah of public transport, Jerusalem.

May 8 2014, 2:01 am

Made by very small stone masons.

May 8 2014, 2:02 am

Noa near the boundary between Israeli West Jerusalem and Palestinian East Jerusalem. The walk curves back north.

May 8 2014, 2:07 am

View of the Old City from the Promenade. This was Abraham’s first view of Jerusalem, say some biblical scholars.

May 8 2014, 2:08 am

Ultimate Border City

Musician, writer and walking guide Yuval Ben-Ami explains the origins of Jerusalem.

May 8 2014, 2:09 am

View towards Government House, the UN Truce Supervision Organization established to oversee the creation of Jewish and Palestinian states — staffed since 1948.

May 8 2014, 2:20 am

May 8 2014, 2:27 am

Sur Baher

May 8 2014, 2:44 am

Green lights mark a mosque at sunset in Silwan. The neighborhood has been the scene of tense land battles between Palestinian residents and Israeli archaeological projects and settlers. But kids shouted “I love you!” in Hebrew at Noa.

May 8 2014, 2:46 am

End of the first day: Completion of a semi-circle in Silwan.

May 8 2014, 5:48 pm

Day Two

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Day two begins: In sideways Silwan, walking out of the ancient Kidron Valley towards the Mount of Olives.

Audio: Salesmen hawk used furniture from a truck, Silwan, East Jerusalem.

May 8 2014, 5:51 pm

Wadi Kidron, Silwan neighborhood.

May 8 2014, 5:56 pm

Silwan — East Jerusalem. In the End Times, according to Muslim belief, a bridge over this valley will lead to Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City, and to salvation. For the righteous it will be a mile wide; for the fallen, as thin as a hair. Jewish tradition also holds that the Messiah will enter Jerusalem from this direction, through the Golden Gate.

May 8 2014, 5:59 pm

Flowered alleys in Silwan.

May 8 2014, 6:00 pm

Hint #3: Jerusalem isn’t your average city. First urban olive grove. Silwan.

May 8 2014, 6:06 pm

A home bulldozed by the Jerusalem municipal authority in Silwan. Since occupying East Jerusalem after winning the Six Day War (1967), the Israeli government has declared most open space in this densely populated area to be state land. Only a handful of building permits have been issued to local Palestinians in the decades since. This policy of limiting the growth of the Arab population has resulted in a cycle of “illegal” construction and “legal” destruction.

May 8 2014, 6:08 pm

Shelters, ancient and new. Caves possibly occupied since the late Bronze Age vie for space with apartment blocks in crowded Silwan.

May 8 2014, 6:09 pm

East Jerusalem’s effluent flows down the Kidron Valley towards the Dead Sea. On the hilltop on the distant left, behind a high “Separation Wall,” the unfinished headquarters of the Palestinians’ proto-parliament.

May 8 2014, 6:18 pm

Home decorated to congratulate a returnee from the pilgrimage to Mecca.

May 8 2014, 6:39 pm

A slow walker on the old Jericho Road, a byway in use since biblical times. It’s now divided by the Separation Wall between Israel and the West Bank.

May 8 2014, 6:41 pm

Pool Hall

May 8 2014, 6:56 pm

Trick Shot

Pool at a Palestinian neighborhood coffee shop, East Jerusalem.

May 8 2014, 7:14 pm

Old Jericho Road.

May 8 2014, 7:15 pm

A familiar surface: the yellow-red brick roads of Arabia.

May 8 2014, 7:23 pm

Fifty years ago, he would have been driving a donkey—also without a license. Old Jericho Road.

May 8 2014, 7:25 pm

What is Volcano College?

May 8 2014, 7:35 pm

An accounting school for women, of course. “We also provide classes in metallurgy and English.”

May 8 2014, 7:47 pm

Barrier

May 8 2014, 8:05 pm

Convent

May 8 2014, 8:05 pm

The sadness of rain-filled shoes. East Jerusalem.

May 8 2014, 8:24 pm

Maamoul — traditional Arab date and nut cookies. The gift of convent nuns. Chewing, we floated, not walked, the next few miles.

May 8 2014, 8:45 pm

Approaching the Mount of Olives in a rare summer rain.

May 8 2014, 8:58 pm

Pater Noster Church

May 8 2014, 9:06 pm

An antique surface.

May 8 2014, 9:26 pm

Mosque cat. Mount of Olives.

May 8 2014, 9:29 pm

Tomb

May 8 2014, 10:35 pm

"Everything and Nothing"

Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah on the meaning of Jerusalem.

May 8 2014, 10:35 pm

Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian peace activist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer, joins the walk near Mt. Scopus. “As a kid I used to run through these hills to avoid Israeli checkpoints,” he says. “I would come up here to study. I got to be pretty fast.”

May 8 2014, 10:43 pm

Aziz presents the Great Rift Valley yawning east from Jerusalem’s edge: straw hills roamed by a few displaced Bedouins, dotted by Israeli settlements, sliced by walls and fences — humankind’s ancient corridor out of Africa, and his conflicted home.

May 8 2014, 10:56 pm

No-man’s-land. Trying to untangle Jerusalem’s maze of political frontiers: the 1948 War “Green Line,” the 1967 War cease-fire line, the Separation Barrier, municipal boundaries. Near Mt. Scopus.

May 8 2014, 10:59 pm

Turning left, back into the core of Jerusalem. Aziz, Noa, Yuval.

May 8 2014, 11:03 pm

Mt. Scopus

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Jewish youth from the diaspora visit Mt. Scopus — an old Israeli enclave from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war — as part of a Taglit or “birthright” tour.

May 8 2014, 11:07 pm

Patriotic curbs? Not the blue and white of Israel’s flag, but the hues for validated parking.

May 8 2014, 11:26 pm

“This isn’t a dead end street,” says Aziz. “It’s the road to Isawiya, a Palestinian neighborhood. It’s where my parents live.”

May 9 2014, 3:44 am

Peace activist Osnat Skoblinski (center) takes the night shift westward into central Jerusalem.

May 9 2014, 3:50 am

A soldier of the Great War in a grassy patch of vanished empire: Jerusalem British War Cemetery, Mt. Scopus.

May 9 2014, 4:03 am

French Hill

May 9 2014, 4:34 am

Inching past “Faith” — a public sculpture.

May 9 2014, 4:56 am

Osnat pulls on a long skirt before entering Mea Shearim, a neighborhood of Haredi Jews who reject modern secular culture. “You need to carry spare clothes to move between these places as a woman.”

May 9 2014, 5:01 am

Orthodox boys playing a late-night game of backgammon. The boys stepped back. They didn’t wish to be photographed.

May 9 2014, 5:18 am

Mea Shearim

May 9 2014, 6:14 am

Thursday night rush. Deitsch deli, Mea Shearim.

May 9 2014, 6:23 am

Pashkvilim, or traditional handbills, exhorting Orthodox Jews to torch computers with unfiltered access to the Internet. Mea Shearim.

May 9 2014, 6:26 am

Exiting Mea Shearim.

May 9 2014, 6:34 am

The palimpsest of Jerusalem. Osnat switches back into her miniskirt.

May 9 2014, 6:39 am

Jaffa Street. The heart of West Jerusalem.

May 9 2014, 6:42 am

Two-hearted city. Jaffa Street.

May 9 2014, 6:50 am

A Border of Desire

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Outside of Al Beer, a chic Palestinian bar in the core of secular Israeli Jerusalem.

Audio: Palestinian and Israeli disc jockeys alternate performances.

May 9 2014, 7:06 am

“The Finger of Og, King of the Bashan”: a mysterious 40-foot column unearthed outside the Jerusalem central prison, whimsically named for a monarch in Deuteronomy. “Nobody knows what this is! It is just a thing!” First walking circuit of the city completed.

May 9 2014, 7:28 pm

“It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.” But Plato was wrong. In Jerusalem, even the deceased are soldiers in Arab-Israeli skirmishing. The Mamila cemetery, the most prominent Muslim burial grounds in the city, now lies within the western or Israeli half of Jerusalem. For decades, identity politics and real estate projects have paved over much of the ancient graveyard where Islamic scholars, Jerusalemite leaders, and thousands of Salah Ad-Din’s soldiers are said to lie. The latest, only-in-Jerusalem controversy: A new Museum of Tolerance is being built at the shrinking, melancholy site, inviting charges of desecration from Palestinians.

May 9 2014, 7:33 pm

The only top hat in Jerusalem. The Waldorf Astoria.

May 9 2014, 7:35 pm

Why are cobbles so pleasurable to walk on? Because for 200,000 years the human foot knew only uneven surfaces.

May 9 2014, 7:37 pm

Osnat reflecting on her reflection. In Yemin Moshe, one of the poshest neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

May 9 2014, 7:40 pm

King David

May 9 2014, 8:02 pm

Windmill

May 9 2014, 8:05 pm

Chasing the Breeze

Jonathan Joaquín, the Argentinian-born operator of the Montefiore Windmill in Jerusalem, coaxes his 154-year-old machine into grinding whole-wheat flour.

May 9 2014, 8:57 pm

Back in East Jerusalem. Yuval and Osnat breaching the outer defenses of the Old City.

May 9 2014, 9:04 pm

Holy occupation and counter-occupation: the site, according to tradition, of King David’s tomb. The building presumed to hold the remains of the second Jewish King of a united Israel was first a Byzantine Christian church. Catholic Franciscans took it over during the 14th and 16th centuries. Muslims ejected the friars in 1524 and turned the complex into a mosque, barring Jews from praying at the site until Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war. Today, it is a yeshiva, or Jewish religious school.

May 9 2014, 9:09 pm

The unmistakable flagstones of the Old City, in East Jerusalem.

May 9 2014, 9:11 pm

Zion Gate trail food. Edge of the Old City.

May 9 2014, 9:12 pm

A mezuzah — a Jewish doorpost recalling the Exodus from Egypt, when Jews smeared lamb’s blood on their doors so God would pass them over during the biblical plague killing all of Egypt’s first-born. This one, at Zion Gate, is made from a bomb casing to commemorate the 1967 war, when Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan.

May 9 2014, 9:14 pm

Our final lap outside the walls of the Old City, East Jerusalem. When Christian armies of the First Crusade reached Jerusalem in 1099, “the Crusaders marched around here seven times blowing trumpets,” Yuval says. “When the walls didn’t tumble down, they breached them and slaughtered everyone anyway.”

May 9 2014, 9:23 pm

Pilgrims exiting the Dung Gate — where refuse was carted out of the Old City.

May 9 2014, 9:28 pm

Who owns the past? School children leaving the City of David — a controversial archaeological site south of the Old City’s walls that is reported to be the cradle of Bronze Age Jerusalem. Managed by an Israeli pro-settler organization, the digs have been criticized by scientists and Palestinian human rights activists for being politically motivated: condemning local homes and “Judaicizing” an Arab neighborhood.

May 9 2014, 9:30 pm

Ancient quarries outside the Old City ramparts.

May 9 2014, 9:53 pm

Panorama overlooking the Al Aqsa Mosque, the southeastern Old City walls, and Wadi Kidron — the site of Gihon Spring, the fabled water source that may have encouraged Bronze Age pastoralists to settle at what is today Jerusalem. More than 5,000 years later, the spring still gives water.

May 9 2014, 9:54 pm

Eastern Walls of the Old City.

May 9 2014, 9:59 pm

The descent to the first tombs of the eastern necropolis, East Jerusalem.

May 9 2014, 10:04 pm

Buddhists too? No — it’s not a stupa. The purported tomb of Absalom, the rebellious son of King David in Wadi Kidron.

May 9 2014, 10:09 pm

The vast biblical necropolis on the slopes of the Mount of Olives — the site of thousands of Jewish graves ranging from the Prophet Zechariah to Prime Minister Menachem Begin — has been desecrated for years by local Palestinians. A Jewish preservation group says that during 19 years of Jordanian rule, some 40,000 graves were destroyed, and new Muslim graves built atop Jewish ones. Motion sensors and remote video feeds now alert police to vandals.

May 9 2014, 10:17 pm

The olive trees at the Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ prayed before being crucified, get new night lighting. DNA samples taken from the grove — holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims — date the oldest trees to 1092 A.D. All the trees are clones of the same parent plant.

May 9 2014, 10:28 pm

Tomb of Mary

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A glittering rain of lamps. Mary’s Tomb.

Audio: An orthodox pilgrim singing.

May 9 2014, 10:29 pm

The cavernous entrance to the Tomb of Mary, an Orthodox shrine.

May 9 2014, 10:38 pm

Old Muslim cemetery outside the Lion’s Gate of Jerusalem, across from a Mormon university on Mt. Scopus.

May 9 2014, 10:41 pm

Looking for lunch in East Jerusalem near the Tower of the Storks, where Muslims battled the Crusader Godfrey de Bouillon 900 years ago. Legend holds de Bouillon died from eating a poisoned apple.

May 9 2014, 10:48 pm

Sheikh Jarrah, the main commercial center of East Jerusalem.

May 9 2014, 10:49 pm

I’ll take the camel.

May 9 2014, 10:51 pm

The love poems of Darwish and tea. Foreign language bookshop on Salah Al-Din Street, East Jerusalem.

May 9 2014, 10:59 pm

“He opened this place 50 years ago. He was my grandfather.” Salah Al-Din Street.

May 9 2014, 11:05 pm

Westward, towards Damascus Gate.

May 9 2014, 11:07 pm

Friday Prayer

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Small mosque near the Arab Bus Station. Damascus gate.

Audio: The mosque summons the faithful to prayer.

May 9 2014, 11:12 pm

Hint #4: Jerusalem is not your average city. Door to 16th-century cave used by Suleiman the Magnificent to quarry the walls of Jerusalem. It is located under the rock outcrop believed by Anglicans to be the true Golgotha, the site of the crucifixion of Christ. “We use the cave to ripen bananas,” a Palestinian neighbor says. “They arrive green from Jericho.”

May 9 2014, 11:20 pm

Bus station sweets. East Jerusalem.

May 9 2014, 11:28 pm

Kebab Maestro

May 9 2014, 11:47 pm

Shoes enough for walking out a continent, for a lifelong prayer: an end and a beginning. The Old City of Jerusalem awaits through Damascus Gate.

May 9 2014, 11:50 pm

Crossroads of the World

At Damascus Gate — a poem of human motion in a holy city riddled by walls, real and imagined.