Jerusalem. The Biography

depend on me and I worry if the key won’t open or something goes wrong. I first opened it when I was fifteen and thought it was fun but now I realize it’s a serious matter.’ Whether there is war or peace, he must open the door and says his father often slept in the lobby of the Church just to be sure.
    Yet Nusseibeh knows there is likely to be a priestly brawl several times a year. Even in the twenty-first century, the priests veer between accidental courtesy, born of good manners and the tedium of long sepulchral nights, and visceral historical resentment that can explode any time but usually at Easter. The Greeks, who control most of theChurch and are the most numerous, fight the Catholics and Armenians and usually win the battles. The Copts and Ethiopians, despite their shared Monophysitism, are especially venomous: after the Six Day War, the Israelis in a rare intervention gave the Coptic St Michael’s Chapel to the Ethiopians, to punish Nasser’s Egypt and support Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia. In peace negotiations, support for the Copts usually features in Egyptian demands. The Israeli High Court decided that St Michael’s belongs to the Copts though it remains in the possession of the Ethiopians, a very Jerusalemite situation. In July 2002, when a Coptic priest sunned himself near the Ethiopians’ dilapidated rooftop eyrie, he was beaten with iron bars as punishment for the Copts’ mean treatment of their African brethren. The Copts rushed to their priest’s aid: four Copts and seven Ethiopians (who seem to lose every brawl here) were hospitalized.
    In September 2004, at the Feast of the Holy Cross, the Greek patriarch Ireneos asked the Franciscans to close the door of the Chapel of the Apparition. When they refused, he led his bodyguards and priests against the Latins. The Israeli police intervened but were attacked by the priests who as adversaries are often just as tough as Palestinian stone throwers. At the Holy Fire in 2005, there was a punch-up when the Armenian superior almost emerged with the flame instead of the Greeks. * The pugilistic patriarch Ireneos was finally deposed for selling the Imperial Hotel at the Jaffa Gate to Israeli settlers. Nusseibeh shrugs wearily: ‘Well, as brothers, they have their upsets and I help settle them. We’re neutral like the United Nations keeping the peace in this holy place.’ Nusseibeh and Judeh play complex roles at each Christian festival. At the feverish and crowded Holy Fire, Nusseibeh is the official witness.
    Now the sexton opens a small hatch in the right-hand door and hands through a ladder. Nusseibeh takes the ladder and leans it against the left-hand door. He unlocks the lower lock of the right door with his giant key before climbing the ladder and unlocking the top one. When he has climbed down, the priests swing open the immense door before they open the left leaf themselves. Inside, Nusseibeh greets the priests: ‘Peace!’
    ‘Peace!’ they reply optimistically. The Nusseibehs and Judehs have been opening the Sepulchre doors at least since 1192 when Saladin appointed the Judehs as ‘Custodian of the Key’ and the Nusseibehs as ‘Custodian and Doorkeeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre’ (as specified on Wajeeh’s business-card). The Nusseibehs, who were also appointed hereditary cleaners of the Sakhra (the Rock) in the Dome, claim that Saladin was simply restoring them to a position they had been granted by Caliph Omar in 638. Until the Albanian conquest in the 1830s, they were extremely rich but now they earn a scanty living as tour guides.
    Yet the two families exist in vigilant rivalry. ‘The Nusseibehs have nothing to do with us,’ says the octogenarian Judeh, who has held the key for twenty-two years, ‘they are merely, just doorkeepers!’ Nusseibeh insists ‘the Judehs aren’t allowed to touch the door or the lock,’ suggesting that Islamic rivalries are just as vivid as those among the Christians. Wajeeh’s son, Obadah, a personal trainer, is his heir.
    Nusseibeh and Judeh spend some of the day sitting in the lobby as their ancestors have for eight centuries – but they are never there at the same time. ‘I know every stone here, it’s like home,’ muses Nusseibeh. He reveres the Church: ‘We Muslims believe Muhammad, Jesus and Moses are prophets and Mary is very holy so this is a special place for us too.’ If he wishes to pray, he can pop next door to the neighbouring mosque, built to overawe the