Great Cities Through Travelers' Eyes Page 17

  Those only who have been in the same situation as the Fathers of the Holy Land can form a conception of the pleasure which they received from my arrival. They thought themselves saved by the presence of one single Frenchman. I delivered a letter from General Sebastiani to Father Bonaventura di Nola, the superior of the convent. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘it is Providence that has brought you hither. You have travelling firmans [permits]. Permit us to send them to the pasha. He will thence find that a Frenchman has arrived at the convent; he will believe we are under the special protection of the Emperor.’

  1949 AND 1967 ELIE WIESEL

  Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) was a Romanian-born American activist and writer, Holocaust survivor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work on human rights. He visited Jerusalem in 1949, shortly after the establishment of the Israeli state, and again following its capture by Israel in the 1967 Six Days’ War.

  When did I see Jerusalem for the first time? I don’t even know. When I visited the city for the first time, it seemed to me that it was not for the first time. At the same time, each visit since then I have had the feeling it is my first visit.…

  Before I even began to speak I dreamed of the widow, the daughter of Zion, who sits alone in the Temple of Jerusalem. I would wait for the little goat that was to give me raisins and almonds and then carry me, and all of us, far away to the city where everything breathes Yiddishkeit, where even the stones tell tales of wonder in Yiddish about Jewish kings and princes.…

  While studying, we seemed to find ourselves in Jerusalem. All the hills, all the little streets, all the buildings looked familiar. Priests and Levites met us with smiles. Talmudic scholars stopped us in the street and asked us to recite our lesson. Students of Talmud pulled us away to hear Hillel the Elder or Rabbi Akiba lecture.

  Though far from Jerusalem we lived between its walls.

  It took a whole year, until the summer of 1949, before I had the opportunity to go to Eretz Yisrael. A Paris newspaper agreed to send me there as a correspondent. My assignment: to portray the life of the new immigrants to the new – yet old – land, theirs and ours. Naturally, I immediately ran to Jerusalem. The city was still divided. The Old City belonged to Jordan. I spent long hours in the tower of the YMCA building facing the King David Hotel, unable to satisfy myself with the picture of the true Jewish Jerusalem, so near and yet so far.

  It was peculiar: the average Israeli citizen hardly missed the Old City. I seldom heard anyone speak of the deep longing that must dominate every Jew who reminds himself of the Kotel Hamaarivi, the Western Wall. How could one go on with his daily activities in the new Jerusalem when the old Jerusalem was in captivity? No one could answer this question for me. The truth is, one gets used to everything.…

  June 1967 Exactly like many other Jews, I also feared the outcome of the war between Israel and her neighbors. Too many elements reminded me of historic betrayals committed by the world with respect to our people. The enemy openly threatened annihilation, and in the UN no one responded.…

  The war still raged in the Sinai, but it was only the fate of Jerusalem that caught the imagination of the Jewish people. The Arabs were still shooting from the rooftops, but Jews, in the thousands, ran to the Old City, and no one could stop them.

  A bizarre, elemental force had suddenly taken possession of all Jews, rabbis and merchants, yeshiva boys and kibbutznikes, officers and schoolchildren, cynics and artists – all had forgotten everything. Each wanted to be at the Kotel Hamaaravi, to kiss the stones, to cry out prayers or memories. Each knew that on that historic day, in that week, the place of the Jew was at the Temple Mount. I had the privilege to run with them. I have never run with such an impetus. I have seldom said ‘amen’ with such devotion as when the paratroops, in their exaltation, prayed Minhah. I have never understood the profound meaning of Ahavat Yisrael, love of Israel, as I did on that day when I stood, as in a dream, under the burning sun and thought with pride of Jewish existence.

  At that time an elderly Jew – I thought he was one of the main characters who had stepped out of one of my novels – remarked to me, ‘Do you know why and how we defeated the enemy and liberated Jerusalem? Because six million souls took part in our battle.’ Then I actually saw what the naked eye seldom sees: souls on fire floated high above us, praying to the Creator to protect them and all of us.

  And this prayer itself was also transformed into a soul.

  LHASA

  Lhasa became the political and religious capital of Tibet in the 17th century, when the Potala Palace, winter home of the Dalai Lama, spiritual and religious leader of Tibet, was built, as well as many large monasteries. It was taken over by the Chinese Qing dynasty in 1750. A British expedition in 1904 took the city and the Chinese left shortly thereafter. A closed city that was rarely visited by Westerners, Lhasa was retaken by the Chinese Red Army in 1950, and following a rising in 1959 the Dalai Lama went into exile in India. In recent decades, new transport links and large-scale immigration by Han Chinese has changed the character of the city, with traditional Tibetan culture sidelined as a tourist attraction.

  1811 THOMAS MANNING

  Thomas Manning (1772–1840) was a scholar of China and the first Briton to visit Lhasa, where he met the seven-year-old ninth Dalai Lama, as he recorded in his journal.

  We passed under a large gateway whose gilded ornaments at top were so ill fixed that some leaned one way and some another, and reduced the whole to the rock appearance of castles and turrets in pastry work. The road here, as it winds past the palace, is royally broad; it is level and free from stones, and combined with the view of the lofty towering palace, which forms a majestic mountain of building, has a magnificent effect. The road about the palace swarmed with monks; its nooks and angles with beggars lounging and basking in the sun. This again reminded me of what I have heard of Rome. My eye was almost perpetually fixed on the palace, and roving over its parts, the disposition of which being irregular, eluded my attempts at analysis. As a whole, it seemed perfect enough; but I could not comprehend its plan in detail. Fifteen or twenty minutes now brought us to the entrance of the town of Lhasa.

  If the palace had exceeded my expectations, the town as far fell short of them. There is nothing striking, nothing pleasing in its appearance. The habitations are begrimed with smut and dirt. The avenues are full of dogs, some growling and gnawing bits of hide which lie about in profusion, and emit a charnel-house smell; others limping and looking livid; others ulcerated; others starved and dying, and pecked at by the ravens; some dead and preyed upon. In short, everything seems mean and gloomy, and excites the idea of something unreal. Even the mirth and laughter of the inhabitants I thought dreamy and ghostly. The dreaminess no doubt was in my mind, but I never could get rid of the idea; it strengthened upon me afterwards. A few turns through the town brought us into a narrow by-lane, and to the gate of a courtyard, where we dismounted, and, passing through that yard, entered another smaller one surrounded by apartments. We mounted a ladder, and were shown into the room provided for us.

  1901 EKAI KAWAGUCHI

  The Japanese Buddhist monk Ekai Kawaguchi (1866–1945) made four visits to Tibet between 1900 and 1915, where he posed as a Tibetan doctor; he was not impressed with conditions in Tibet. His account of them was seen by the British and influenced Francis Younghusband, leader of the 1904 expedition that brought Tibet into the British sphere of influence.

  There are many cheap inns in Lhasa, but as I had been informed that they were not respectable, I desired to stay with a friend, a son of the premier of Tibet. While at Darjeeling I had become acquainted with this young noble, and he had offered me a lodging during my stay in Lhasa.… So I called at his house…and asked if he was in, but heard that my friend had become a lunatic. They told me that he had gone out of his mind two years before, and that he went mad at regular periods.… I waited there for over two hours, as I was told he might come, and then I reflected that it would be of no use for me to see a madman, on whom I c
ould not depend, so I made up my mind to direct my steps to the Sera monastery, for I thought it would be better for me to be temporarily admitted in the college, and then to pass the regular entrance examinations. So I at once hired a coolie to carry my baggage, and started for the monastery.…

  I arrived at the monastery at four o’clock and at once called at the dormitory of Pituk Khamtsan, giving myself out as a Tibetan. Hitherto I had passed for a Chinaman, but…I had not trimmed my hair nor shaved my face, nor bathed for a long time, and I cannot have been much cleaner than a Tibetan, so I made up my mind to pass for one and to live among them. The examinations for a Tibetan might be too difficult for me; still I could command the Tibetan language almost as well as a native, and I was often treated as one. I thought, therefore, that I could pass without detection, and so for my own safety I entered the monastery in this guise.…

  I had trimmed and shaved neither hair nor beard in my journey of over ten months, so that they had grown very long. On the day after my arrival, therefore, when I got a priest to shave my head, I asked him to shave off my beard also. He wondered why I wanted to have it shaved off, and told me that it would be very unwise of me to do so when it had grown so beautiful. He seemed to think that I was joking, and I was obliged to let it grow. A beard is much valued by the Tibetans, because they generally have none, though the inhabitants of Kham and other remote provinces grow beards. They are so eager to have a beard, that after I was known to be a doctor I was often asked to give medicine to make the beard grow. They would say that I must have used some medicine to make my beard grow so long.…

  I bought a hat, a pair of shoes and a rosary, according to the regulations of the monastery.… I went to the chief professor of the department which I was to enter…but found that no examinations were to be given. I called on the professor with a present of the best tea to be procured in Tibet. His first question was: ‘Where are you from? You look like a Mongolian; are you not one?’ Being answered in the negative, he asked me several geographical questions, for he was well acquainted with the geography of the country. But I answered well, as I had travelled through the provinces on my own feet. It was thus settled that I might be admitted on probation. So I saluted the Lama with my tongue out, and he put his right hand on my head, as usual, and put a red cloth about two feet long round my neck as the sign of my admission.

  1904 FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND

  Francis Younghusband (1863–1942) was a British army officer who led a British expedition to Tibet in 1904 that defeated the Tibetans at Gyantse and, against orders, advanced to Lhasa and signed a treaty that secured British influence in Tibet, which was at that time under Qing Chinese sovereignty.

  Practically, then, the religion of the Tibetans is but of a degraded form. Yet one does see gleams of real good radiating through. The Tashi Lama whom Bogle met was a man of real worth. His successor of the present day produced a most favourable impression in India, and excited the enthusiasm of Sven Hedin. Deep down under the dirty crust there must be some hidden source of strength in these Lamas, or they would not exert the influence they do. Millions of men over hundreds of years are not influenced entirely by chicanery or fraud. And I think I caught a glimpse of that inner power during a visit that I paid to the Jo Khang Temple….

  I visited this temple with full ceremony after the Treaty was signed, and was received with every mark of cordiality by the Chief Priest. I was even showed round what might be called the high-altar, in spite of my protestations that I might be intruding where I should not go. The actual building is not imposing. The original temple, built about AD 650, according to Waddell, has been added to, and the result is a confused pile without symmetry, and devoid of any single complete architectural idea. One sees a forest of wooden pillars grotesquely painted, but no beautiful design or plain simple effect. Moreover, dirt is excessively prevalent, there is an offensive smell of the putrid butter used in the services, and the candlesticks, vases and ceremonial utensils, some of solid gold and of beautiful design, are not orderly arranged.

  Still, this temple, from its antiquity, from its worn pavements marking the passage of innumerable pilgrims, from the thought that for a thousand years those wanderers from distant lands had faced the terrors of the desert and the mountains to prostrate themselves before the benign and peaceful Buddha, possessed a halo and an interest which the beauty of the Taj itself could never give it.

  Here it was that I found the true inner spirit of the people. The Mongols from their distant deserts, the Tibetans from their mountain homes, seemed here to draw on some hidden source of power. And when from the far recesses of the temple came the profound booming of great drums, the chanting of monks in deep reverential rhythm, the blare of trumpets, the clash of cymbals, and the long rolling of lighter drums, I seemed to catch a glimpse of the source from which they drew. Music is a proverbially fitter means than speech for expressing the eternal realities; and in the deep rhythmic droning of the chants, the muffled rumbling of the drums, the loud clang and blaring of cymbals and trumpets, I realized this sombre people touching their inherent spirit, and, in the way most fitted to them, giving vent to its mighty surgings panting for expression.

  1946 HEINRICH HARRER

  Heinrich Harrer (1912–2006) was an Austrian mountaineer who was interned in India during the Second World War. He escaped to Tibet, where he entered Lhasa and befriended the young Dalai Lama, staying from 1946 to 1952.

  It was 15 January 1946, when we set out for our last march.… We turned a corner and saw, gleaming in the distance, the golden roofs of the Potala, the winter residence of the Dalai Lama and the most famous landmark of Lhasa. The monument compensated us for much. We felt inclined to go down on our knees like the pilgrims and touch the ground with our foreheads….

  Nobody stopped us or bothered about us. We…finally realized that no one, not even a European, was suspect, because no one had ever come to Lhasa without a pass.

  As we approached, the Potala towered ever higher before us. As yet we could see nothing of the town itself, which lay behind the hills on which the palace and the school of medicine stood. Then we saw a great gate crowned with three Chorten [stupas], which spans the gap between the two hills and forms the entrance to the city. Our excitement was intense. Now we should know our fate for certain. Almost every book about Lhasa says that sentries are posted here to guard the Holy City. We approached with beating hearts. But there was nothing. No soldiers, no control post, only a few beggars holding out their hands for alms. We mingled with a group of people and walked unhindered through the gateway into the town.… We spoke no word, and to this day I can find no terms to express how overwhelming were our sensations. Our minds, exhausted by hardships, could not absorb the shock of so many and such powerful impressions.

  We were soon in front of a turquoise-roofed bridge and saw for the first time the spires of the Cathedral of Lhasa. The sun set and bathed the scene in an unearthly light. Shivering with cold we had to find a lodging, but in Lhasa it is not so simple to walk into a house as into a tent in the Changthang [western Tibetan plateau]. We should probably be reported to the authorities. But we had to try. In the first house we found a dumb servant, who would not listen to us. Next door there was only a maid who screamed for help till her mistress came and begged us to go somewhere else. She said she would be driven out of the quarter if she received us. We did not believe that the government could be as strict as all that, but we did not want to cause her unpleasantness and so went out again. We walked through some narrow streets and found ourselves already at the other side of town. There we came to a house much larger and finer-looking than any we had yet seen, with stables in the courtyard. We hurried in to find ourselves confronted by servants, who abused us and told us to go away. We were not to be moved and unloaded our donkey.…

  We too felt far from comfortable at the idea of exacting hospitality by force, but we did not move. More and more people were attracted by the din…. We remained deaf to all protestati
ons. Dead-tired and half-starved we sat on the ground by our bundles, indifferent to what might befall us. We only wanted to sit, to rest, to sleep.

  The angry cries of the crowd suddenly ceased. They had seen our swollen and blistered feet, and, open-hearted simple folk as they were, they felt pity for us. A woman began it. She was the one who had implored us to leave her house. Now she brought us butter-tea. And now they brought us all sorts of things – tsampa, provisions and even fuel. The people wanted to atone for their inhospitable reception. We fell hungrily on the food and for the moment forgot everything else.

  Suddenly we heard ourselves addressed in perfect English. We looked up, and though there was not much light to see by, we recognized that the richly clad Tibetan who had spoken to us must be a person of the highest standing. Astonished and happy, we asked him if he was not, perchance, one of the four young Tibetan nobles who had been sent to school at Rugby. He said he was not but that he had passed many years in India. We told him shortly what had happened to us, saying we were Germans, and begging to be taken in. He thought for a moment and then said he could not admit us to his house without the approval of the town magistrate, but he would go to that official and ask for permission.

  LONDON

  Roman London was founded c. AD 43, and built at the northern end of the bridge over the Thames; following the Norman Conquest the city was dominated by the Tower, built by William I from 1066 to subdue the native people. London, and its closely associated city of Westminster — which became the seat of government with the royal palace at Whitehall and home of Parliament — was one of the great cities of medieval and early modern Europe, its cultural importance emphasized by the emergence of Shakespeare’s theatre. Following the Great Fire of 1666, the late 17th and 18th centuries saw a building boom both within the City of London itself and expanding its close suburbs in the ‘West End’, culminating in the major building projects of the Prince Regent (later George IV) including Regent Street and Regent’s Park.