RAMALLAH, West Bank — Almost every year for over one hundred years on the Saturday before Orthodox Easter, the main street in Ramallah has been overtaken by marching boy scouts and girl scouts banging drums and blowing trumpets before tens of thousands of onlookers.
It isn’t much of a parade. The music is as loud and out of tune as it is enthusiastic. Yet I try never to miss Sabt el Nour and the rowdy procession celebrating the miraculous light that beamed from Christ’s tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem the day before his resurrection.
For 1,200 years, every Great Saturday, the Greek Patriarch has awaited the light in a small dark chamber of the church. After a time he emerges with a candle and reassures the gathered throngs that the miracle has occurred again. That flame is used to light many candles, which are then transported to Christian towns throughout Palestine and placed in churches. Some people take the light home and try to keep it flickering throughout the year.
For the small minority of us Palestinians who are Christian — meaning, mostly, Greek Orthodox— Easter is the holiest of festivals. There used to be other big festivals in Jerusalem, like the ones commemorating the Way of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa or the Annunciation, for which Christians and Muslims would camp out on the hill outside the Lion Gate. But since Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem, either these celebrations have been canceled or Palestinian Christians from outside Jerusalem have not been able to participate because they can no longer freely enter the Holy City.
Today, all we have left is Sabt el Nour. And now the people of Ramallah can no longer bring back the light from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre themselves; they have to wait for it to be delivered to them at the Qalandia checkpoint near Jerusalem. From there, they carry it to Ramallah’s main square, the Manara (or “lighthouse”), and hand it to the Greek Orthodox priest. Local dignitaries and scouts from the city, nearby refugee camps and the adjoining Christian towns of Jifna, Aboud, Birzeit and Taybeh. The Islamic Club of Ramallah is present, too.
Last Saturday my wife and I watched the procession on the main street from the balcony of a friend’s office, a policy research group. Walking up the stairs, I remembered that in 2002 this office was destroyed by the Israeli Army when it invaded Ramallah during the second Palestinian intifada. There were no Sabt el Nour celebrations that year.
I was also reminded of a remarkable incident on this holy day in 1989. It was the first year after the first intifada that the Israeli authorities allowed the procession to take place, and they had decreed the Palestinian flag could not be flown. Still, a young man had climbed to the roof of the Salah pharmacy, which overlooks the Manara, and placed a flag on top.
Another young Palestinian was asked to remove it. As he ascended, we watched him with bated breath, wondering whether an Israeli soldier might shoot him down. He reached the flag. Then he wrapped it with great care, brought it up to his lips and kissed it, tucked it in his shirt and came down. Where had this young man, who surely had been born under the Israeli occupation, learned to treat this forbidden flag with such reverence?
Last Saturday, the Palestinian police handled the procession superbly. Traffic was diverted; no fights broke out; the flame from Jerusalem was duly delivered. The first group of scouts who marched down the main street did predictable violence to their drums and trumpets. The next group played bagpipes — that was an innovation. (Who had taught them?) Another innovation was the capes some marchers wore, red and white and with prominent crosses.
On the return journey from the Manara to the Greek Orthodox Church in the Old City of Ramallah, the priest gave a flame to two men walking at his sides: the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, a Muslim, and the district governor, also a Muslim. That scene, glimpsed from the balcony of my friend’s office, brought out in me a yearning for the time when Sabt el Nour was first celebrated in Ramallah. It was so normal back then for Christians, Muslims and Jews to partake in each other’s religious celebrations.
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