The arch at St Thomas Gate glows golden at
mid-morning as the party of peace activists led by Irish Nobel laureate
Mairead Maguire straggle along the cobbled street of the old city.
A couple washing their car greet the dozen
foreign guests from North and South America, Europe and Australia. Most
shops are closed as it is the weekly holiday, even though this is the
Christian quarter.
A soldier, his Kalashnikov slung over his
shoulder, walks ahead, eyes peeled for potential attackers, as the
sounds of not-too-distant exploding mortar shells remind us this city is
at war. Here peace needs guns for protection.
Maguire and her colleagues have come to provide
moral support to peacemakers of the non-denominational National
Reconciliation movement, which strives to bring people together and free
prisoners and abductees.
Church
Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III Laham, a slight man with a white beard and ready smile, shows us into his splendid high-vaulted church adorned with icons.
He is joined by an array of bishops of oriental
churches, wearing distinctive crosses and medallions, robes and
headgear; the representative of the papal nuncio, in white with a wide
red sash; and Muslim notables in flowing cloaks trimmed with gold braid.
Fluent in seven languages, Patriarch Laham leads us in the Lord’s
Prayer in English and Arabic.
While we are served juice and coffee in
Patriarch Laham’s typically Damascene reception room, he expresses
disbelief over the civil conflict that is tearing Syria apart. “How can this happen in Syria? It is not in our religion, not in our vocabulary.”
The sprightly octogenarian patriarch hurries us
along streets where St Paul once walked, pausing to greet parishioners
and hug children, to the house and the underground church of St Ananias,
a building which dates to before the birth of Christ.
As we walk to our next destination, a mortar strike shakes the ground. “That’s about 500 metres,” one of the clerics estimates.
We lunch on delicious Syrian specialities in
the courtyard of a traditional 19th-century Damascene house with thick
stone walls layered in black and white stripes.
Reconciliation committee member Rafiq Martini,
an agricultural engineer who works to free abductees, introduces us to
Bland Mrad, a young man scarred by torture while held for 14 days by
al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, the most feared and efficient rebel
faction.
As we make our way through the Muslim quarter to the Omayyad Mosque, Syrian Orthodox Archbishop Dionysius Jean Kawak,
who studied English in Dublin, says: “What is happening here is not
like the uprising in Egypt. Although protests here were peaceful at the
beginning, they became violent within weeks. And now . . .” His words
are interrupted by more mortar fire.
An outer section of the wall of the Omayyad
Mosque is from the Roman temple that stood here more than 2,000 years
ago. On its foundations was built the Byzantine church that predated the
massive 8th-century mosque, considered the fourth most holy in the
Muslim world.
The reception hall has gleaming marble floors,
arched windows, furniture of mother-of-pearl inlay, and a fountain in
the shape of an eight-pointed star.
Syria’s most senior Muslim cleric, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, wearing a wide white turban and black kaftan, strides into the reception hall surrounded by aides.
He appears in public rarely these days.
A
popular preacher was assassinated a few weeks ago in a mosque along with
40 congregants.
Mufti Hassoun elicits a chuckle from the
gathering when he states: “All Muslims are Christians because they
believe in Jesus and Moses.”
Son killed
He speaks of his slain son and says he forgives the killers.
In
a plea for an end to the war, he says that “words can be weapons for
peace”, and urges his guests to call on their governments to halt the
flow of fundamentalist fighters into Syria.
We shed shoes to enter the vast rectangular
prayer hall, its floor covered in red carpeting and with sparkling
chandeliers overhead. It is almost empty.
An old man sits crosslegged
against a pillar reading his Koran.
At the far end we gather before the
tomb where, according to tradition, the head of St John the Baptist is
buried.
Our spry shepherd, Patriarch Laham, asks us to pray silently for peace.