It all starts at Jericho

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A sign made it clear that not just anyone enters there. If you are Israeli you should turn around. It was several hours since we had entered Palestine. A dwarf Chevrolet took us unhurriedly along a road that was accompanied by a fence so that the traveler does not forget that it is not the same, no way, be in Israel than in Palestine.

A uniformed man indicated with gestures that we could enter the city, that he already saw that we were not Israelis. And we parked the car on a sidewalk in the shade of one of the trees that make up the Jericho oasis. Another tree sheltered under its branches a herd of goats. Otherwise, we didn't see any humans on the streets.

Jericho has been the nomads' reward, the squares in which to stop the steps, the shadow in which to build a future.

We were in the desert of Judea, in the month of July, visiting the oldest inhabited city in the world. Water gives life to fruit trees, trade, to the life, in this unbearable desert, where everything is sand and sun. Therefore, always, Jericho has been the nomads' reward, the squares in which to stop the steps, the shadow in which to build a future. Ours stopped at Hisham's palace. We were about to start a trip to the past, moving away century after century from a present that had received us at more than 40ºC under the palm trees.

Today the palace is a set of extraordinary ruins and mosaics. Several sources made the place known as "The place where water springs from the earth" which was perhaps the most ostentatious luxury that could be aspired in the 8th century in that place. The Roman Baths, the statues decorating the halls of the old palace and the columns that no longer supported any roofs challenged the inert esplanade that today surrounds the enclosure. There was no one there either, not a single visitor looking for frames, admiring that wonder of the Umayyad dynasty.

But Jericho is not what it seems, you can't see it coming. You have to go out a bit to see the palace, to achieve its wonders. Today's town is made up of pale little houses, modest among the trees. Its inhabitants try not to leave home, don't quit your jobs, no go out. They drink tea in the air-conditioned shops where people spend a lot of time shopping, before going out on the street. There is little traffic, little activity, as if time slows down, or even out back.

There is little traffic, little activity, as if time slows down, or even out back.

We keep going back in time and for this we got on a cable car that they said was the longest in the world. And the truth is that it took us a long time, Well, the cable car was also slow, affected by the slowness that prevails in Jericho. And we reached our destination, two thousand years ago, on the Mount of Temptation. There a Greek Orthodox monastery has been erected, dug on the steep walls of the mount, where the monks contemplated the oasis from their balconies. Jericho stretches out at the foot of the temple, down there, desert refuge, turning his back on the Dead Sea that a little further extends its lifeless waters.

The monastery is a unique place that, hung about 150 meters, hug a holy mountain. We toured the temple, through a kind of little street that separates the rock from the monks' quarters and in a more secluded place, the orthodox church, somewhat gloomy, reserve your holiest place behind a showcase. On the other side of the glass you can see an indentation in the rock, that the monks claim that from time to time it is miraculously filled with water. That hollow was formed, as they say, by the knee of Jesus Christ, that until there he withdrew to pray for forty days and forty nights. And there, right in that place that the showcase preserves, the devil tempted him and Jesus Christ sent him to fry asparagus, if there were asparagus in the orchards of Jericho.

That hole was formed by the knee of Jesus Christ, that until there he withdrew to pray for forty days and forty nights.

In the cafeteria that precedes the temple, we drank a freshly squeezed orange juice looking up over that strange city. I stared down there, where it seems that there is no one and it turns out that there, that there is someone since memory reaches in the history of the Earth. But, also, it is the deepest city in the world, since it is located at 258 meters below sea level, in the depression that forms the Jordan Valley.

A few meters from the base of the cable car, we saw a small house that overlooks another esplanade. It was three in the afternoon and the thermometer read 45ºC. A man guarded the booth and offered us a plate full of pieces of watermelon. Urged us to eat. He wasn't content with us trying a piece, not two. He didn't flinch until we finished all the fruit. Only then did he give us a couple of tickets to the archaeological site of Jericó. The man was clear that he was not going to let us in if we did not hydrate before. Shortly after we realized that that watermelon was just a way to prevent fainting.

A small tower of bricks, sun-dried clay, represented the origin of the oldest city on the planet.

There was neither a shadow nor, course, a single clueless visitor. Nobody. Under the cover of a cap we toured a site that is nothing spectacular in appearance. They are just bricks, adobe walls. There are holes where constructions are intuited, walls, stacked stones. And between the abrupt heat of the desert, between the dust of the road and the biblical suggestion of finding out in Jericho, it is difficult to assimilate that some of those stones, of those rustic constructions, they were raised ago 11.000 years. A small tower of bricks, sun-dried clay, represented the origin of the oldest city on the planet. They had to spend more than 7.000 years for the first stone of the pyramid of Cheops to be laid and 10.500 years later the Incas built Machu Picchu.

Jericho was born before everything we know, before any other city. As ancient as it is deep, so withdrawn that even Jesus Christ came to his peace to meditate. No bustle, we are tourists, nor pedestrians and yet, this city has been there since the beginning of time and there it will continue among its palm trees, leisurely, oblivious to the rhythm of the world, Although the history of the world began to be written in Jericho.

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Comments (2)

  • Israel

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    I would have loved to meet you in front of that ‘Jericho flower’.
    At the beginning of July I was stepping on that same land.
    Nice article

    Answer

  • Daniel Landa

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    Well we almost almost agreed then. Under the fire of the desert we met that city, those ruins of Hisham, that incredible land. Palestine is one of those places to return, still calling you Israel 😉 Maybe we'll match next time.

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