Face in the Water
A Short Story
by
Charles Sheehan-Miles
The Egyptian was dead.
That was all we knew at first. He'd been very quiet and subdued, not much for conversation. Not too many Egyptians in Israel after all. Now there was one less.
The blurring of jurisdictions between the civilian and military police was particularly pronounced in the Old City of Jerusalem, that hodge-podge collection of clashing Western and Oriental culture. We saw it in its fullest confusion when they came to investigate. Tensions were high, particularly among the several Palestinians who lived in the hostel. They were in much more danger than the various travelers from Europe and the Americas.
That was to be expected.
The Brazilian artist, Ambrosia, asked me what was happening. He didn't understand: two weeks before, drunk, he had fallen down the steps and hit his head. Now he couldn't remember his own name. The soldiers stopped trying to question him when he responded "Paris" to their query about where he was.
There's a general misunderstanding about just what sort of place Jerusalem is that needs to be cleared up before I go on. The Christians who come here wearily follow the tourist trap laden trail of the Via Dolorosa, following the steps of their own, personal messiah. Jews come from all over the world to pray at the Western Wall in the hope that their messiah will suddenly appear and storm the Temple Mount. The Moslems guard against such notions carefully, peering out of the green-framed Gate of the Chain, watching for the day the Jews will invade their holy shrine. There's no less than sixteen different sects of Christianity here, all of them fighting over their individual reserved spots on the Way of the Cross.