Stones lie, water flows

It is strange that in Israel you can just take and fly. It’s still like if at the box office of the Belarusian station sold tickets to Eden.

Although one who has already been to the Middle East or at least on our own south, in the first minutes, Israel is not impressive: Well, in Tunisia, we saw the Arab Bazaar and more abruptly; Brown Mergel under the legs are also familiar – in the cockthel; Exactly the same man-made beds-terraces with olive trees on the slopes of the mountains can be found in Greece; The Red Sea with the opposite, Egyptian side, will be in aproter than in Eilat, Tel Aviv does not impress after Abu Dhabi. None "Rahat-Lukuma", no "Thousands and one night". The connoisseur of spicy Eastern exotic – is too clean, chinno and expensive, although a reference European center, on the contrary, is too homely and southern provincial (well, what it is, in fact, is a waiter in a hotel restaurant for the second time itself, without invitation , greet hands. )

Water. Even the Israelis go through the streets with plactic one-and-a-half-liter "bombs". "Water" and "life" – Synonyms. And to us, Northerners – mandatory norm: one and a half liters of water per day; The first half the morning, in one reception, the rest – during the day. And this is not a joke: Many Balazals, youthly despicable guide warnings ("The first sign of dehydration – I do not want to drink at all"), with a sacrificent face suddenly settle on hot stones. Thirst here is not the fact that in Russia: pampering, a lazy desire to rinse the throat with a sweet carbonated dissolve. Here not to fat: the baroque puffy of all sticky "Coca-Col" and "sprite" retreats before the Divine Antique Simparity of Her Majesty of Water (some modern strategies are even afraid that the next war in the Middle East may begin not because of oil, namely due to moisture reserves). At the same time, the local water from under the crane without fears give to drink children.

By the way, the Roman underground tanks of the sheep font, choke in Jerusalem gold limestone two thousand years ago, perfectly retain moisture until now. And somewhere under the pavement flows the stream of Gihon, one of the four biblical rivers, which in front of the arrival of enemy troops, the inhabitants of Jerusalem two more than a thousand years ago were let down on a new channel, in a multi-meter tunnel, hiding him inside, for city walls. And, besieged, were able to survive – fucked the water from the precipitated.

Water flows, stones lie. They are the main shrines of this land. One of them split from top to bottom of a vertical crack and called Calvary. Over another on the temple mountain Muslims, a thousand three hundred years ago, a mosque of the rocks, the Golden Dome, who covered the shrine of the destroyed once Jewish Solomonov Temple – a huge stone creation of the world. Another one lies on the oilseed grief and keeps the fingerprint of the leg of Christ, his last touch of the earth before the Ascension.

Here you understand that God is one, and that he is not by chance that it was on this earth that he spoke with his children, and they heard them. Christian or Jew, Muslim and Atheist, these stones say: "We begin the beginning", And in general, it does not matter, the ancients are stones or new. Let the current Via Dolorozo take two meters above and aside from the ancient street for which Christ is carried by the cross – all the same every Friday at two o’clock in the afternoon from the Franciscan monastery begins the march of pilgrims who repeat this path.

It is strange that in Jerusalem you can just live: receive letters with the address "Sorrowful way, house 9", Waving along the Valley of Iosafat, climbing in Calvary, go down the fire.