The end of the world was coming, apparently. There were Messiahs everywhere. A young man from Colorado was arrested for provoking bloodshed after saying he would be killed on the streets of the city then rise again on the third day. The blood shed would have been his own, but they deported him anyway.
A student was found wandering the desert half naked, calling himself John the Baptist, although it wasn’t clear who was meant to be his Christ. There were plenty of candidates. Messiah fever, they called it. Every few days, someone else would declare themselves the Second Coming, out there on the streets of Jerusalem, a city where Christians were only competing to be heard alongside Muslims and Jews.
This is a story about Desmond Tutu, the great South African campaigner, but it starts in Jerusalem in 1999. It was chaos. Glorious chaos. Full of beauty and danger. And this thrilling, clashing city was fully open to visitors, for the moment. There was peace, of a kind, and tourists could come with a freedom that would soon be gone.
I was there to do a piece on pilgrimage for the Independent with a bunch of people from the Church in Wales, pilgrims of a kind I felt friendly towards, even if I didn’t share their faith any more. I knew their stories and the sacred texts, but I had lost my faith, during a difficult part of my life a couple of years before and wasn’t quite sure where I stood on it all. I was there as an observer, allegedly detached, but actually wondering how to react to this place where faith mattered; where faith had been a matter of life and death for so long. Was it all just bonkers? Or was there something beyond all the tourism and strife that I could still connect with, even in my unbelief?
*
The streets were rammed with people around the gleaming golden Dome of the Rock, the third holy place of Islam after Mecca and Medina. I found myself almost standing cheek-to-cheek for a moment with a young woman in a black hijab, her features sharpened by fasting during Ramadan and her eyes alive with awe at this place. An elderly lady in white, perhaps her grandmother, was making rapid movements with her hands as she mumbled prayers, eyes half-closed. The official hour of prayer was approaching, and soon all non-believers would be asked to leave; but for the moment, we shuffled behind each other, in single file, shoeless and mild. For once, the tour parties were quiet and respectful, overpowered by the intensity of the atmosphere. The flat white rock behind a wooden balustrade had been sacred for so long and to so many: it was said to be the place where Abraham brought his son to be sacrificed; where the Holy of Holies stood in Solomon’s temple; where the curtain was torn in two on the day of crucifixion; and where Muhammad ascended to heaven.
Outside, under a cloudless sky, we walked down to the ancient limestone of the Western Wall. The most holy place in Judaism, the last remaining fragment of the temple. Men in black hats, long black coats and matching beards rocked and beat time with their feet as they recited the Psalms. Younger men in prayer shawls passed scrolls around, while their women watched and took photos from outside the enclosure. A teenager with a phylactery tied to his forehead wore Israeli army combat gear. His tallith shawl only half covered an automatic rifle.
Beyond, over the rooftops of the walled city, was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, revered as the site of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. Just before dawn I’d watched a Coptic priest in a black skullcap stand in that echoing church, chanting his liturgy to nobody but God. Now the sun was high the place would be tight with tourists and their guides. And something did strike me, standing there. An epiphany, if you like. A revelation, although perhaps an ordinary one.
Something had been going on here, for a long time.
In this small space, a corner of just one of the many cities on earth, the central events – the central stories, anyway – of three major religions had all, allegedly, taken place. Just here. Abraham standing over his son, trying to work out why the God who had told him to kill the boy was now saying no. The rip in the temple fabric – the tear in the history of humanity – as Jesus hung on the cross. The beat of the wings of the horse-like beast called Buraq as it bore the Prophet up to heaven. Those were some of the tales told of the things that happened here. There were many others. But what were they, really? A conversation of sorts, in this place. A strange, fractured dialogue between humans and the divine. I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t shake off how maddening, frustrating and heart-breaking some of it had been – and still was. All that hurt. But I was suddenly able to see it as a bunch of broken people trying to make sense of glimpses they had seen of something more. And I knew in my bones I couldn’t walk away. Not entirely.
Thankfully, none of those I toured the holy sites with believed they were the Son of God. ‘Some of the details may be mythical,’ said one of the bishops. ‘That doesn’t bother me.’ Nor did they believe the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were about to bring morning coffee, although we did visit the plain of Megiddo, which is where the Bible says Armageddon will begin. And this was 1999, we were on the verge of a flip of the calendar that some saw as ushering in the End Times. The visitor centre in Megiddo had a webcam trained on the plain, so I wrote a news story saying ‘The End of the World Will Be Televised’. Just for a bit of fun. There was so much reaction to the piece online they took the webcam down, so a week later I wrote another story: ‘The End of the World Will Not Be Televised’. That was the headline I’d really wanted, because of the Gil Scott-Heron song ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, which is about something else altogether. These are the games journalists sometimes play with ourselves, as a defence mechanism against the huge, terrifying ideas we are dealing with. And it doesn’t get much more terrifying than Armageddon, does it? I believed in it once, completely. Now, not so much, although the idea of the Y2K bug causing computers to malfunction on New Year’s Eve and planes to drop out of the sky was distinctly worrying. And I was maybe a bit nostalgic for my days of certainty, when I’d known what the hell was happening in the world and how to deal with it. So even though I was profoundly disenchanted with religion and religiosity, and had lost my old faith, I was looking for a way to connect with whatever might be behind and beyond all that. And something did happen in Jerusalem that was completely unexpected and surprising, like being mugged by God. It was emotional, but rooted in the natural.
We were at the Pool of Bethesda, the place in the city where the sick and ailing would come in search of healing in the old times. Once a day, the legend said, an angel would stir the waters and whoever was in them or touched by them could be blessed. I’ve heard that the stirring of the waters actually came from the temple altar being cleaned, the blood of the sacrificial lamb being washed away and the mixture of blood and water going down into the drainage system, eventually reaching the pool and causing ripples, which were taken to be the actions of an angel. I don’t know if that’s true, but blood and sacrifice and cleansing, that’s a very old idea. One of the oldest. Again, I was struggling though. These were just ruins. Crowded, faded remains. None of it meant anything, until I found myself going down some steps to stand beside a pool of dark water.
Nobody else was there.
Suddenly it was me and the water and the stones that made the high walls around me and the blue sky up above.
Nothing else.
Suddenly it was elemental.
Suddenly I could feel connected, somehow, like I was there, back then, when things happened. This was all instinctive, not thought out. I was just reacting. Feeling.
And as I did, I became aware of someone coming down to stand behind me. One of the Welsh. I didn’t know his name then, or I’d forgotten it. He knelt down beside me, wordlessly, and scooped up water from the pool. Then he stood with it still cupped in his hands and turned to me. And he looked me in the eyes, still without saying anything.
My hands happened to be clasped together. He poured the water over them and enclosed my hands with his. I felt the cold water, then the warmth of his skin.
He was looking at me with kindness. Then he smiled. He nodded. He dropped his hands and walked away, back up the steps, leaving me there, and I wept.
I still don’t know why.
*
The Welsh were on what they called a Living Stones pilgrimage. They would go to see the Holy Land and all the usual sites, but they would also visit fellow believers in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Life has not been easy for Christians in those places. It’s not been easy for anyone. So it was that we took a coach out of the city to a place two hours north, where the Bishop of Jerusalem was to celebrate communion and we were to meet Palestinians. There were not many of us – from memory only thirty or so – who gathered in a chapel to take the bread and wine that are for some the body and blood of Christ.
I was there as an observer. That’s what I told myself again. Then the bishop announced that he had a friend coming to speak to us and in walked a man that some considered a living saint and I certainly saw as a hero: Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town, hero of the struggle against apartheid, leader of the attempt to bring truth, reconciliation and therefore healing to his country, against all the odds. Friend and ally of Nelson Mandela. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. Blimey. The congregation received him with a joy that might only have been matched by the Second Coming.
Tutu was approaching seventy at this point, he looked more tired and older and smaller than when I had seen him on the television, but we later learned he was on a private visit to meet members of the Israeli government and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority. That must have been a bit stressful. The old peacemaker was trying to work his magic here. And when he spoke, it was electrifying.
Even in weariness, his voice had an intensity that lifted us, an authority that came from experience and a clarity that was thrilling.
He drew a clear parallel between the suffering of black people in South Africa under apartheid and that of the Palestinians. I wrote down what he said: ‘I told my people, “These others might think that you are nothing. They may trample on your dignity with hobnail boots but know that God loves you with a love that will not let you go.”’ Then he turned to the bishop and said: ‘Our God. Your God. The same yesterday, today, forever.’
If change could come to South Africa, he was saying, it could come anywhere, including here. I could almost believe it, in that moment. Being with him felt special. Was that because he was a wonderful human being? I wasn’t sure.
He was energetic, and he had an entertaining way of chuckling, a persuasive way of jabbing the air while he was making a point, frowning for the difficult bits and breaking into a wide, winning smile. But I also had the feeling this elfin man was really quite human – and I was about to find out how true that was.
Afterwards, there was a lunch with extraordinarily good food and stories that warmed and broke the heart, as well as some lengthy and stupefying speeches. A twelve-year-old girl sang a song about the lives lost during the uprising called the Intifada. I was sitting there the whole time frantically trying to remember what I knew about Tutu and what on earth I could ask him, because somehow I had managed to persuade his people that it would be okay, even a good idea, if he let me interview him. ‘Sure,’ they said. ‘After the lunch. We’re driving back to Jerusalem. Come with us, sit in the back and talk to him.’
This was astonishing. A career-defining moment for a kid who had not been on the nationals long. The chance to get a story out of a man who had been at the centre of one of the biggest stories of our time in South Africa and who was now apparently at the centre of another, even bigger story: the Middle East peace process.
More than that, on a personal level, I was about to be close up with a man I really admired. I spent half the time trying to think of sensible questions and half the time panicking that I was not up to this. Not by a long shot. Then the time came. The speeches ended. Goodbyes were said. Tutu and his people moved towards their vehicles. Again, from memory I think he was in a black diplomatic car, of the kind you find at embassies, presumably with bulletproof windows.
The minders were in suits, with sunglasses hiding anxious eyes.
They knew what was happening though.
They knew it was okay for me to be there.
They knew it was all right if I opened the door of the car.
They watched me get in.
I got in.
And he screamed.
He yelped, maybe.
I know it was primal. I know there was panic and fear in it.
I know it was a shock to find him yelling at me: ‘Get out! Get out of my car!’
The Nobel Peace Prize winner shouting in my face.
And with good reason. Nobody had told him.
He didn’t know who I was. He didn’t know what I wanted.
He only saw this big blond stranger get in next to him, in this troubled foreign land. He must have thought he was about to die. I would have screamed too.
I got out fast; one of the minders who was still standing there shrugged and his car left in a hurry, without me.
Gone.
Absolutely gone.
I stood there watching the dust cloud settle again, feeling a bit stupid. Wondering what had just happened, with the connection I was longing for, the moment of humanity between us, broken in tiny pieces on the floor.
*
The next time I saw him was in South Africa in December 2013, so fourteen years later. The country was mourning the death of Mandela, and I was there to report. Giddy and confused and still adjusting, trying to find something to say about this great moment of national and international convulsion and sorrow but also celebration, I found myself that Sunday at another Mass, this time to celebrate Mandela’s life, in Soweto at the Catholic church of Regina Mundi, Queen of the World.
Some of the thousand or so people there wore ANC scarves, others their own colours. The Sodality of the Immaculate Heart came in their powder-blue uniforms, looking like holy nurses. They danced to songs and hymns in English, Zulu and Xhosa and it was strange to be standing among them with other members of the media, wishing I could dance too. Watching the photographers move among the mourners, cool and dispassionate at first, thinking of nothing but getting the shot, even if it meant blocking an aisle, being in the way, focused and intent, but then slowly being won over, because the music and the dancing and the smiles, and the tears, and the warmth, were contagious. By the end, their body language had changed. They were smiling, their cameras down, letting the moment and the emotion touch them. They’d got the shot but they’d also got the point.
Here, there were still bullet holes in the ceiling. This was the spiritual heart of the biggest township in the old days, a centre for the struggle against apartheid, the place to which young people fled for sanctuary during the Soweto uprising of 1976, when the police entered and opened fire. A church described by Mandela when he came back as president after twenty-seven years in prison as ‘a battlefield between the forces of democracy and those who did not hesitate to violate a place of religion with tear gas, dogs and guns’.
It was also a place where Desmond Tutu had come with the truth and reconciliation commission to hear those who wanted to be heard. Tutu heard hundreds of testimonies from people who had been beaten, tortured, imprisoned or bereaved, and from people who had done those things, who wanted to own up to them and tell the truth in the hope that it might set them free, at least emotionally. Or that they would be given amnesty for saying so. Families were finally able to confront those who had hurt or killed their loved ones. Hidden bodies were discovered and given decent burials. Secret crimes were brought into the open. The history of apartheid and all its sins was laid bare.
Some people saw this as truth without justice, but South Africa did begin to heal a little. Tutu played his part. And at the root of it was a thing he called ‘ubuntu’, which he expressed in five words: ‘I am, because we are.’
This was his take on a way of living and being he said he’d learned from tribal and traditional beliefs: that we are only able to be fully human when we are with other humans. He called it: ‘The ancient spirituality of humanity’s oneness with our creator, the other and nature. We are all one.’
If that sounds a bit high-minded, there’s no point in me trying to sum it up. Let me quote him: ‘Ubuntu is the essence of being human and it says a solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. I can’t be a human being on my lonesome. I wouldn’t know how to speak as a human being. I wouldn’t know how to think as a human being. I wouldn’t know how to walk as a human being. I have to learn from other human beings how to be human – and so ubuntu says my humanity is bound up in yours. I am, only because you are. We then say a person is a person through other persons, and that we need this communal harmony if we are going to survive at all.’
The survival of the species has always depended on human beings working together for mutual protection and support, said Tutu, who had witnessed or been told about many terrible deeds but never stopped believing that people are essentially good. Made for goodness, to quote the title of one of his books. Forgiveness was a way to healing, he said in the television interview I just quoted. ‘Anger and revenge and bitterness are corrosive of this harmony. Forgiving is not being altruistic, you’re not being nice to the other guy. You’re actually being nice to yourself. Forgiving, apart from anything else, is actually good for your health.’ He chuckled when he said that, in his infectious way. And there’s something else Desmond Tutu said that still makes a huge impact on me, coming from the place I had been: ‘God is not a Christian!’
Think about that for a moment. The Archbishop of Cape Town is saying it. He’s doing so as an African brought up to believe in the invisible world, the world of the spirit, even before he was a Christian.
‘All of us belong to God. God reveals God to all of us and we have different understandings of God,’ he said in an interview with Christian Egge of the magazine Herald of Europe in 2006. ‘I don’t believe I have a God who sits and worries that a Buddhist may come up with a wonderful idea. I do not feel obliged to think it cannot be a good idea just because it is a Buddhist idea. No, I am thrilled that a Hindu could be such a leading exponent of non-violence, and affect and influence so many people as Mahatma Gandhi did. I am not upset that one of the most brilliant scientists, Einstein, happens to be a Jew. You see it points to the wonderful bounty of God that none of us has a proprietary claim on God. God is God, God is forever free.’
And that takes me back to the Western Wall, to the Dome of the Rock, to the Pool of Bethesda and the feeling in my gut that something wild and crazy and real and bigger than all our stories, rules and rituals has been happening.
*
They say rain is a blessing, because it brings life. The day after Regina Mundi there was a downpour. I felt the rain come down hard on my neck and shoulders as I stood at the back of a marquee, half in and half out, waiting to see if there would be room at the tribute to Mandela that was being held at his charity foundation’s headquarters in Johannesburg. The Soweto Gospel Choir was to sing. All Madiba’s old allies were there. His closest companions on the long walk to freedom. And it felt like a family affair, something close and intimate, on a humid night, under the thundering rain, as Tutu took the microphone and hit that room like lightning. ‘What would have happened had Madiba died in prison?’
That made them gasp. They knew the truth.
‘Wonderfully, of course, the anti-apartheid movement triumphed and sent that vicious system reeling into the gutters of history.’
Peering though his spectacles, giggling occasionally at his own jokes, rolling his words with relish, baring his teeth in a smile and jabbing that finger in the air again, he talked about his friend’s first night of freedom, spent at Tutu’s official residence in Cape Town. ‘He did something I have seen him do many, many times. When he went to a banquet Madiba would go to the kitchen and thank the staff. Because Madiba was really saying to people: ‘Not many of us are VIPs but all of us are VSPs.’
We got there before him, of course. Some of us had heard this before.
‘Very Special Persons.’
Then he shouted: ‘Now I want you to stand, to pay homage to Madiba and say: “I am a VSP!”’
So we did. The cynic in me kicked in, of course. This was monumentally cheesy. On another level though, that night, it was beautiful. These were people who had lived through the hardest of times together and seen terrible things; but who had also seen miracles in their country. They were sad at their loss but grateful too and willing to share their friend with the world. Finally, I felt a sense of connection with him and with everybody else in the room, which I had not earned, but which was being given freely, with such generosity and grace. Not like when he chucked me out of his car, but a bit like the way I felt when that stranger scooped the water from the Pool of Bethesda, held my hands and looked into my eyes. Finally, I could say with Desmond Tutu and all the rest of us lesser mortals in the room: ‘I am, because we are.’
Cole Moreton is an author and broadcaster exploring who we are and how we love. This is an extract from Cole’s new book “Everything Is Extraordinary” published by Hodder & Stoughton. Available from all good bookshops and online. For more details and to contact Cole go to www.colemoreton.com
