Oh Little Town...

Ea and I decide to go to Bethlehem, and before we know it we have a taxi full - Mette and Camilla are keen to come too. There are others; Marie in her principled way sticks to cycling to show support to the Palestinians who have prepared for us. Others just cannot fit in our taxi and it's too late to find their own. Later, people are eaten up with jealousy when they hear, and I start to feel even worse about nominally still being a part of the group.

But it was awesome.

We are dropped at the Church of the Nativity, but head straight to the Peace Centre on the other side of the square. It's huge and new, and very welcoming: Mette is directed to toilets and I stay to hear about activities in Bethlehem, which are many. We pick up a map and sundries: the programme for the Palestine Literary Festival (which has unfortunately just finished - organised by Ahdaf Soueif; other delights included Seamus Heaney, William Dalrymple, Esther Freud, Andrew O'Hagan...I'm researching into how many went straight onto the Israeli Literary Festival.)

(And "Palestine Now" - substantially bigger than Time Out Jerusalem (or was it Israel - I remember events for Tel Aviv; Mette or Jutta, will you let me know?).)

We head up the hill, looking for coffee, and revelling in the bustling life, pretty buildings, souqs stacked with fruit and veg...we stop and look at George making pancakes; they're a food for Ramadan, but he, as a Christian, cooks them all year round and is therefore very popular with Muslims. We want to buy some, but he explains that they're for taking home and stuffing with nuts and honey and baking. At our crestfallen faces he takes some fresh ones and sprinkles them with sugar for us, refusing to take money.

We continue up, eventually stopping for water and coffee. We then walk down the hill, stopping to take photos of churches (there seem to be hundreds and hundreds), buy raq chickpeas (which we eat like peas in the pod), browse in the souq...we then try and find a restaurant to meet my friend Ben in. This involves lots of walking (despite the endless "just 10 minutes from here") and getting lost, and so we see a lot of the city: streets which remind us of Italy, streets which remind me of a richer Damascus, churches with posters for Christian martyrs...and all the time we do not see a single other westerner. We are given free bread when we ask the way, and then a lift when it happens again: "We want you to know that this is a good place to visit" says the man taking us. We have a coke at the restaurant while waiting for Ben, but a text comes to say he's down the street: the waiter refuses to take money just for drinks. We have so far been given pancakes, bread, a lift, and drinks, for free.

We track Ben down and have lunch, and pick his brains about the region: finally we have a chance to ask anything we like, and we take it. (Sorry Ben. Come back to England soon and I'll buy you a pint.) So we finally understand about the different dates for the "celebrations" of the founding of Israel (different calendars, and the "birthday" happening in the evening whereas Nakba, the "catastrophe" starting the next day); we learn about Christianity in Palestine (a not as great a proportion as in Syria, but it's up to 30% in Bethlehem): we even learn to hope for the area. Ben's lived and worked in Palestine, and is still optimistic...it was so wonderful to see him...

But he is busy, so we wend our way back to the Church of the Nativity. We have a brief stop to commiserate with the poor dying tree of peace (I tried to give it the kiss of life), and then have our only negative impression of Bethlehem. A man shows us the way to the Milk Grotto telling us that "it shuts in 10 minutes, we must go now, now" - we had an hour or more, but he took us via shops of his friends. "Very good prices for you, you know our children are starving, we have to feed our children" he tells us manically, again and again, and it gets horrible claustrophobic. I know that their tourist industry has died down somewhat, but that hassling that happens all over the world never goes down well with me. I gave money in the church, but I'm afraid we didn't give him anything to help feed his children.

The Milk Grotto, where Mary stopped to feed Jesus to keep him quiet on their flight, was naff: the Church of the Nativity was glorious. We get an equally hyperactive guide, but he was entertaining and fun and nice. He whipped us around the three churches (Catholic, Armenian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox), and took us down into St Jerome's little cave (WHY did he work in the dark anyway?) and then to the sight of pilgrimage itself: the stable. Or rather, cave. We tried to fix our childhood nativity scenes into the place but it really was tough, and our guide objected to my notion of an inn: "It's a church!" It made me laugh too much to explain: the idea that Mary and Joseph and the donkey stopped at a church and asked to stay in their stable. But anyway...we couldn't see the real manger, we were told, as the crusaders stole it and took it back to Italy, but we did see the exact spot Jesus was born, marked by a star, and we felt the circle in the centre of the star and made our wishes known to Jesus...

The Catholic part was newer and plainer (and there was a big tour group singing Away in a Manger! Brilliant): the small Armenian and the large Greek parts were fantastically bling. We asked if there were ever fights "Oh yes" the answer came breezily, "sometimes a lot". He claimed his pitiful fee and a tip and ran off.

We got a public service back to Ramallah in time for the dinner on the schedule, but of course the group were behind, and were at Yasir Arafat's tomb. (I managed to say in front of Palestinians, "oh, I don't care about Yasir Arafat." Oops. One told Camilla "Your friend really should be careful." Oh dear.) We sat in the hotel lobby with tea and computers. Dorothy and Carolynne (Irish) joined us and listened with jealousy to our stories...