The streets of Nazareth by me

One day, I will be good at knowing what signs mean, which buses to take, where streets, places and cities are located. When that day will be, I dont know. For now, it would seem that I am best at remaining in a state of wonder, and awe, travelling on roads, reaching places, only by admitting that I am lost and asking people. Such was the state I found myself in trying to reach Nazareth for my friend's mother's funeral. I had asked which bus to take from Migdal haemek to reach Nazareth. I tried to get an exact address of where the church was and my friend's family's house. "Just get to el-ayn (the fountain). Ask for the family of Jareysseh.

"What do I do with such directions? No name of a street. No idea of where south, north, west and east where, or even which parts of Nazareth. The first van I took turned out to only go to Nazareth Illit, not Nazareth. "I will drop you off here, and you can take bus number 1," said the driver. Drop me where exactly? I thought. I sat at the other bus station, with cars filling the tight streets, storesof cars, tires and furniture with signs writen in Arabic, waiting, for a bus. Typical for families around the Nazareth area who pass their business to their children.

“Amarah,” answered the seller when I asked him the name of the neighborhood where I was waiting for the bus. I walked out of the store for furniture, thinking about the answers I told the seller, “Yes, I am not from here, so I don’t know what the name of this place is.” Bus number one arrived to the bus-stop. “Do you speak Arabic, are you going to Nazareth?” An old man in his fifties answered yes. I rode with a combination of frustration and faith. Nazareth is big, for someone who is not from there, and has no exact directions or name of a street.

The bus seemed to enter heavy traffic, and I remembered from my childhood years that driving through Nazareth took so much time because of the tight streets, the many cars, and people crossing in between. The bus stopped twice, and the second time, the bus driver got off, handing off the shift to another driver. “She is going to El ayn,” said the bus driver to the one replacing him. Was I in safe hands?

I remember a name of El Ayn since my childhood. There Mary, the mother of Jesus, and other women used to get their water, and thus the name fountain came. There used to be a Greek Orthodox church there that I had visited as a child, and used to listen to the ringing of the bells. The fountain and the church accompanied each other: There was a big courtyard in which the fountain was to believed to exist, and next to it was the church. I had always imagined Mary and the other women getting the water they needed, carrying it on their heads in jars to go back to their houses. On other days, the women may have also washed the clothes there, chatted, gossiped, the same way women do today at many social events. At the time, I had either gone there to visit the church as a historical site, or locate a restaurant near there. Now, twenty years later, I was going to the same place, for different reasons. Will I recognize upon reaching that this was el Ayn?The bus driver stopped and told me that I reached my destination.

Nazareth being on a hill, I trusted paths that seemed to go up. Walking I heard some bells ringing. I did not know how far I was from my friend’s house, where exactly I was, but I wanted to run to the safety that hearing bells brought. I stopped, asking the priest if I could ring the bell. The answer was no. “Where is the jaryessey house?” I asked a shopkeeper near the church. “Oh, you are asking because of the family member who passed away? Go up the hill a bit more, it is there,” the man answered. People usually want to stay with their own family in Nazareth, and hence end up building floors on top of each other. The hill up which I went was no different: how many siblings lived in the same building? I wondered.

The crowdedness of buildings on top of a hill reminded me of those in Bethlehem: in both cities families wanted to stay near each other but had no space to expand horizontally. I saw a paper hanging on a wall of a building, saying when Mary Jaraysee’s funeral was. I had found my sought building and went up two floors. Dressed in a pair of gray pants, and a button up shirt, not from Nazareth, I was not sure how the customs went. Women sat on the second floor, and men sat together on the first floor.

On the second floor, women were sitting on chairs, chatting, dressed in black and white clothes. I inquired where my friend was, and went into the kitchen to see her. She was dressed in black, introduced me to her other two sisters that I had long heard about. We then went to be in the sitting room, where she began telling me that her mother passed away on Sunday "even though" she had spent the weekend with her. Her mother was taken to the hospital on Saturday night where the family was told that her mother was dying but her death could happen from day 0 to a 100 days. So, she went back to be with her children and then come back to be with her mother. The time in between was when her mother passed away. “I was with her, and her hands were filled with water, and she was gasping for air,’ my friend said. “Why does water come out?” she asked, being a mathematician herself.

Not sure what to say or how to explain the path physiology of edema in a metastasized colon cancer mother, I opted for a simple answer, “There are many reasons why that could be.” The priest from the Orthodox church down the hill came up to the room. All the women stood up as he began to speak and pray. “ People live day to day, they have spirit but there is also the holy spirit that we cannot forget. Let’s pray for Mary’s spirit,” the priest said. It was the same priest that denied me the ringing of the bells, saying that I was not a priest myself. And after having heard about the last of days for my friend’s mother, and the suffering that she went through, I put on my own black dress that a priest wears- that of suffering.

Unfortunately, such a dress is invisible, and does not allow me to ring bells at churches. It was around 3pm, lunch time. It is customary to feed those who come to give their condolences. I stepped into the kitchen where the women were discussing how much rice and meet to hear, how much to send downstairs to the men, how many spoons and plates and yogurt were needed. There we stood in Mary’s kitchen, though she was not present, her cooking utensils and oven were.

And even though I had wanted to ring bells at churches, listening to the women organize the meal, I knew that I was not different than those women at El Eyn who met Mary, cleaning, collecting water, organizing matters. Hearing the clatter of the spoons on the plates, and then women discussing what temperature the oven should be on to heat the food, I knew that I will always ring a different kind of bells, at a different kind of church.

Medical professionals take comfort and pride in their competence and expertise. I highly doubt that with any kind of training and education, I will be able to read maps well, navigate in towns through street names, and explain that A leads directly to B. It seems that I will always be present amidst loss, chaos, and seem like a visitor from another town, asking the inhabitants where I am at.

Medicine is no different for me: I take comfort not in my own expertise or competence but rather in my continuous state of wonder, and hence collecting waters from fountains and ringing bells of stories at churches of people’s life, while wearing the invisible embroidered dress of suffering.

May Mary's soul rest in peace.