Stromata

Procession below
my room

At 4.30am the bells of the Holy Sepulchre were ringing very loudly, waking most who are light sleepers. A procession wound down the 800m pass my house ... the kawas (traditional guards) pounded their maces on the ground, making a loud noise to announce the coming of a procession. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch carried the silver icon of  Mary "asleep" (koimesis in greek or "dormation") which is equal to our Assumption feast. The icon is brought to the Tomb of Mary in the Kidron Valley and remains there till the feast of the birth of Mary. Behind the Patriarch were the bishops and priests in procession, followed by the lay people. Police were at hand to separate groups of 50 people each time, so some form of social distancing is maintained. At the Tomb, rituals were celebrated till 7am when the crowds dispersed, each holding a bunch of blessed flowers.

I stayed home in the morning working in our library till 11am when I visited the new library of the Missionaries of Africa at St. Anne's Church down our road. We discussed the steps to take in order to adapt the old and huge holding of books into the new but smaller space. Hopefully some positive solution is found for the unwanted books. It would be a pity to throw them away so I offered to take as many of them as I can.

Bedouin woman selling fruit

In the evening, I went to Mian restaurant to visit Billy the owner who's recovering from his brain haemorrhage. Linda his wife had boiled some chinese medicinal soup for me as well. It was a good 1.5km walk and there was a strong wind blowing which cooled the hot  afternoon. As I was passing Damascus Gate, I realised the nuncio was walking behind me briskly. I guess it was his exercise ... but he lives up on the Mt. of Olives. His walk back and forth would cover 5km which includes the deep Kidron Valley and up Mt. Scopus. And he easily overtook me ... and he's older than I am. I fertilised how sick I have become ... unable to even walk like a normal person anymore. A 10 minute walk takes me 25 minutes now.

On the national front, Gaza sends more incendiary balloons into Israel, causing lots of fires. And Israel continues to bomb Gaza. And our Corona Czar ... head of the corona commission as he's called here ... lamented that Israel has one of the world's worst record of infections and predicted one third of the arab population will be infected soon ... and the ultra-orthodox community is catching up with the High Holy Days coming. Not much of a good-news day.