What It Feels Like to Grow Up in a Christian Village in Galilee

If you returned to the village after being away for a few months, word somehow traveled faster than the telephone.

Before evening, relatives began appearing.

An aunt carrying food.

A cousin dropping by for coffee.

A neighbor saying he had heard you were back and wanted to say hello.

Someone would insist you come eat.

Someone else would insist you visit their house first.

Refusing food was nearly impossible.

A visitor might say he had already eaten.

The host nodded.

Then brought more food.

The discussion was considered finished.

You quickly learned that returning home was not entirely your decision.

The village had plans for you.

A voice calls from a balcony.

"Tfaḍḍal! Come in!"

Another comes from a doorway.

"Where have you been? We heard you came back!"

An old woman you've never met insists she knew your grandmother.

An old man sitting outside a café asks whose son you are.

When you tell him, he laughs.

"Your father? I knew him when he was younger than you."

Now you are sitting beside him drinking coffee whether you planned to or not.

This is how many villages in Galilee have always been.

The village remembers.

Even if you have been gone for years.

Even if you have grown a beard.

Even if you have changed completely.

Somewhere, someone still remembers you as a child.

Or remembers your father.

Or your grandfather.

Or the house where your family lived.

As a child, you quickly learn that the village belongs to everyone.

The woman living across the street knows your mother.

The shopkeeper knows your grandfather.

The priest baptized half the people you know.

The old men outside the café know more about your family history than you do.

And somehow, they all feel entitled to give you advice.

Especially about marriage.

In Arabic, a man is often called Abu, meaning "father of."

Traditionally, this name comes after he has a son.

In many families, the eldest son is named after his grandfather.

The old men of Galilee are not always interested in waiting for such details.

If a boy's father is named Elias, they already know what his future eldest son will probably be called.

So a boy can be ten years old and already find himself being called Abu Elias.

"Abu Elias!" someone shouts across the street.

The boy turns around.

The entire café is laughing.

"When are you getting married?"

The boy is still in primary school.

This changes nothing.

The conversation continues.

By morning, the village is already awake.

The sun climbs quickly over the hills of Galilee.

The white stone walls catch the light so fiercely that you squint as soon as you step outside.

Coffee with cardamom fills the air.

Somewhere bread is coming out of an oven.

Somewhere else a grandmother is calling children home for breakfast.

The figs are ripe.

A group of boys disappears between the trees carrying nothing.

They return with purple fingers, stained shirts, and pockets full of fruit.

No explanation is required.

Everybody knows where they have been.

Life moves differently.

Birthdays were rarely organized affairs.

Someone remembered.

Someone else told three more people.

By evening there was coffee, cake, fruit, and twice as many guests as anyone expected.

An old woman kissed your forehead.

"May God give you one hundred and twenty years."

Nobody found this unusual.

People had been saying it for so long that nobody stopped to wonder where it came from.

A village does not always remember the source of its customs.

Only the customs.

An old woman placed her hand on a child's head and blessed him.

An old man answered with a blessing of his own.

The words sounded older than either of them.

Nobody stopped to think about them.

They came as naturally as breathing.

As naturally as prayer.

They had been spoken for so long that nobody remembered when they began.

Like the olive trees.

Like the hills of Galilee.

Like the stones beneath their feet.

And like many things in Galilee, nobody felt much need to explain them.

The villagers usually had more important concerns.

Whether the olives would be good this year.

Whether enough rain had fallen.

Whether somebody's son would finally get married.

The village was not interested in categories.

It was interested in people.

That was usually enough.

An old man might point toward a pile of ancient stones at the edge of the village.

"My grandfather used to play there."

The conversation would continue.

Only later would somebody mention that the stones had once belonged to an ancient synagogue.

Then later still that a church stood nearby.

Nobody seemed especially surprised.

The old people carried stories about the place the way they carried stories about their own families.

Who had lived there.

Who had prayed there.

Which ruins were considered holy.

Which stones were treated with respect.

Some stories were warnings.

A man once moved his family, his animals, and all he owned into an old place of worship.

Others did the same in later years.

The old people would lower their voices when they told what happened afterward.

By the end of the story, the lesson was usually clear.

Some places were not ordinary places.

They had been set apart long before anyone living could remember.

Nobody learned these stories from books.

A grandfather heard them from his grandfather.

Who had heard them from the old people before him.

The names were gradually forgotten.

The stories remained.

The village still knew which ruins had once been places of prayer.

It still remembered what they had been called.

It still remembered why they mattered.

The memory passed from one generation to the next.

Like family names.

Like blessings.

Like prayers.

God alone knows how many prayers rose from those stones over the centuries.

The generations changed.

Empires came and went.

The Romans disappeared.

The Byzantines disappeared.

The Crusaders came and went.

The Ottomans came and went.

Languages shifted.

Governments changed.

Yet somehow the people remained.

The village had been worshipping God on those hills for longer than anyone could remember.

That was usually the important part.

For the people of Galilee, the world of Scripture never felt separate from the world around them.

The Bible felt different when you grew up among its place names.

Nazareth was not an idea.

It was where your cousin lived.

Cana was not a chapter.

It was where somebody got married.

Tiberias was where people swam in the lake.

Children learned these names long before they learned they were famous.

In spring the hills smelled of wild za'atar.

Children returned carrying armfuls of it.

Grandmothers spread it on rooftops and balconies to dry.

By morning there was olive oil, fresh bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, and za'atar on the table.

People trusted God in much the same way they trusted the seasons.

Not philosophically.

Simply.

Rain would come.

The olives would grow.

God willing.

The harvest would arrive.

God willing.

The children would marry.

God willing.

Everything important in Galilee seemed to end with the same words.

God willing.

Perhaps that was why people worried less about making grand plans.

Life unfolded much as it always had.

People remained where they were.

Families remained close.

A son married and built beside his parents.

Or above them.

Or down the road from them.

Grandparents were never far away.

Children moved between houses so freely that it was sometimes difficult to know where one household ended and another began.

If a child misbehaved in the street, it was entirely possible for a neighbor to correct him before his parents even heard about it.

And somehow, his parents would hear about it anyway.

Farmers headed to their fields.

Shepherds set off toward the hills.

The shepherds were often gone for the entire day.

Sometimes longer.

A young shepherd might leave before sunrise and spend days moving from hillside to hillside in search of good pasture.

He learned the land the way sailors learn the sea.

Every spring.

Every valley.

Every cave.

Every place where snakes gathered.

Every place where rainwater remained longest.

He knew which hills turned green first after the winter rains.

He knew where sheep were likely to wander.

He knew where to sleep if darkness arrived before he could return home.

And while the shepherd spent his days among the hills, life in the village continued.

Old men gathered in cafés and under trees.

Arguments were settled.

Stories were told.

News traveled.

The olive harvest was perhaps the most anticipated season of all.

By October the entire village seemed to move toward the groves.

Families arrived carrying blankets, baskets, food, and endless conversation.

The old folk songs began.

Someone started singing.

"ʿAla Dalʿona, ʿAla Dalʿona..."

Others joined immediately.

The song drifted between the olive trees.

It spoke of olives, almonds, za'atar, and the land itself.

Children climbed where they were not supposed to climb.

Grandmothers unpacked enough food to feed an army.

Olives fell into baskets.

Voices echoed across the hillside.

The harvest was work.

But it was also reunion.

A wedding carried the same feeling.

Two people were getting married.

But in some ways, so were two families.

The celebration belonged to everyone.

People danced.

People sang.

People arrived with gifts.

Not because they had received a printed invitation six months earlier.

Because that was what communities did.

Life was shared.

Joy was shared.

Sorrow was shared.

Responsibility was shared.

Even today, traces of this life remain throughout Galilee.

You still find old men who know your grandfather.

Families who have lived on the same land for generations.

Olive groves planted long before anyone alive today was born.

Church bells ringing on Sunday morning.

And houses where the first words spoken to a visitor are still:

Tfaḍḍal.

Come in.

Have some coffee.