Remembering.

Today a child came into my bedroom and pointed at my scarves. She jingled the coins on my belly-dancing skirt softly, so I wouldn’t hear from my place on the living room couch. My roommate—her sister—told the girl I had been to Jerusalem, where Jesus was, like in the New Testament, and I heard her small voice whisper, “Really?” Furtively, she shot a glance at me as I lay wrapped in a pink blanket on my couch, writing Arabic. I saw decision in her eyes. “Um,” she called, brown hair soft around her face. I looked up.
“Did you go in the tomb? Jesus’s tomb?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “I did.”
“Was it cold?”
Cold? I suppressed a grin. The one pressing question this child has about Jerusalem concerns the temperature inside the Garden Tomb.
“No,” I babbled, “Jerusalem’s pretty hot in the summer. I hear it gets cold and rainy during the winter, but the tomb itself isn’t necessarily cold.”
She smiled, like I’d validated a fact she’d always known to be true.

It isn’t cold in the Garden Tomb. The tomb itself is carved from stone, and visitors are only allowed to walk on the left side. There’s a metal grate that separates the stone where Jesus may have been lain from hordes of passionate visiting pilgrims; judging by the dramatic displays observed regularly at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, it seems appropriate that here, one can see, but not touch. A carved wooden plaque inside the makeshift door reads, “He is not here, for He is Risen.”

People often sing inside the tomb; I’ve heard hymns in languages from Ethiopian to Swedish exuding from that famous rectangular hole in the wall. I would sit in the garden on many occasions; we visited at least every other Sunday. I read scriptures or wrote in my journal on the limestone bench across from the tomb, my upper body swathed in vibrant Middle Eastern flowers. Sometimes I’d join a tour group led by one of the few British theologians responsible for the garden’s upkeep and be moved almost to tears by the guide’s sweet Christian testimony, no matter how many times I’d heard it. Other times, I’d find a spot away from the main attraction, like the shady bench under the ivy-frosted bridge, and, in the words of Anne Shirley, “just feel a prayer.”
Oh, how I miss Jerusalem.