344
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
the hour's wild oratory and swearing, and the argument was
finally settled by the payment of a few Palestinian pounds. It
was after one o'clock when we got started.
The Arab drove well on straight, flat ground, but hills,
downgrades, and curves made him nervous. Unfortunately,
the terrain was among the most rugged and serpentine in all
Palestine. The road dipped up and down and twisted constantly. On the far left we passed Bethphage, revered as the
sanctuary from which Christ started on Palm Sunday on his
triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We whizzed past Bethany,
catching a bare glimpse of the churches that commemorate
the spot where Christ performed one of His greatest miracles,
the raising of Lazarus from the dead.
IN THE WILDERNESS OF JUDEA
AS WE plunged down a steep incline, the driver suddenly
slammed the brakes and we all piled up in a heap. Ismail giggled. The truck started fitfully, then slowed to a halt at the
bottom of the hill. It followed a wadi for several hundred
yards, after which it picked up what appeared to be little more
than a goat trail. We creaked and groaned over boulders and
road pits into the Wilderness of Judea. Deeper and deeper
we went into a desolation that had scarcely changed since the
days of Moses—barren wastes, hills with nothing but rocks,
boulders, and occasional patches of scrub.
After nearly two tortuous hours, choking with dust and
aching with the violent battering we had undergone, we came
to a sight that terrified me. The road led straight to the side
of a towering mountain, then crawled along a ledge dug into
the living rock. Below us was the wildest, most frightful gorge
I have ever seen, so deep that its bottom was lost in the mists.
The walls—layers of reddish maroon stone—rose perpendicularly to awesome heights. Separating us from the brink of dis-