Tuesday August 14th 1945

This morning I went to Holy Communion, had breakfast and then we set out to walk to Kubeibeh ie the ‘little dome’, or the supposed site of Emmaus. After walking north up the hilly Nablus road for about three miles we turned west along a broad track of beaten earth across wild limestone country to the Arab village of Beit Hanani. From there we were directed by some of the village children, who were playing near the end of the road, to go along a narrow field path steeply down into a little, dry, valley and up the terraced opposite slope. At the summit of this hill a mosque with a tall minaret is very prominent. The hill and/or the mosque is known to the Arabs as Nebi Samuel, the prophet Samuel. The summits of hills are often called Nebi somebody or other, usually the name of a Moslem prophet. The mosque is built on the ruins of a Crusader Church, but the Crusaders called the place Mons Gaudii, as the road from the west passed near the summit in those times and it was from the Mons Gaudii that the pilgrims got their first glimpse of the Holy City.

From Nebi Samuel we followed the track of trodden earth for several kilometres more till Qubeibah, a fertile western slope, came into view, sixteen kilometres from Jerusalem. One of the Franciscan Fathers came up to ask if we would like to see the church and the excavations. We said we would and he called a much younger brother who seemed to be showing us round as an exercise in English. He knew only just enough of the language for the purpose. The Roman Catholic church has, or claims to have, the house of Cleopas for its north aisle. The floor and part of the walls of a house of the Roman period are certainly there. Outside, however, very extensive excavations have revealed ruins of quite a big village of the time of Christ. The buildings, which were dug out in 1943, run along either side of a main street for nearly a kilometre we were told. We saw many of them and nearly all had a press, winepress for olive oil possibly, according to the Franciscans. These consisted, mainly, of a rectangular pit about four feet by two feet by three feet deep with an opening at one end leading into a deeper cylindrical hole in which the wineskins would be placed. It is deduced that, in the time of Christ, Emmaus was the centre for the vine and olive production of the area, lying, as it did, on the Roman road from Jaffa to Jerusalem.

The Franciscan gave us half an inch of wine in a pint glass filled up with water and apologised that they could not give us a meal as their hostel has now been taken over by the Army as a Con Depot. Our guide then took us across the road, showed us their gardens, water supply - a reservoir which they also use as a fish pool – and then pointed us on our way back to Jerusalem. A Palestine Police truck had been out to the remote villages that morning and gave us a lift back over the steep earth track to Jerusalem.

In the afternoon Frank slept off the effects of his fifteen kilometres while I went through the Old City, got turned back by the Temple Guard, an Arab “civilian”, who pointed out that the Mosque of Omar and the Temple Area are out of bounds every day between 9 and 2 every day but Friday. I therefore strolled through the Jewish quarter to the wailing wall. This is certainly high, but perhaps because it is comprised of such huge blocks of stone, it did not seem as high as I had expected it to be. It runs at tight angles to the city walls, inwards, dividing the Mohammedan Sanctuary (the “Temple Area”) from the Jewish quarters. The blocks of stone are big enough to suggest natural rock and this appearance is heightened by the quite big plants which sprout from the cracks and crevices between the stones. A number of Jewish women were at the wall reciting prayers, really crying, and kissing or at least banging their heads against the rocks. Meanwhile their friends and families squatted on the ground at the other side of the enclosure two or three yards from the wall.

I returned by way of the Dung Gate, at the bottom of the Jewish quarter, nearest to the Temple area and the wailing wall, round the road which runs inside the wall to the Sion Gate. For a great part of the way I was passing a very large rambling block of poor Jewish tenements. A small girl tried to sell me a booklet in Hebrew; while a notice of the wall gave instructions to women about dress, before going to the Holy Wailing Wall, in Hebrew, German and English.

In the evening I walked past Gethsemane, climbed to Et Tur and walked along the ridge, seeing the sun set over the Holy City before I reached Mount Scopus with its fine, modern Jewish buildings and descended into the city myself.