Old Jerusalem, an ancient city in a modern age

I am spending time in the old city of Jerusalem. If I stay here any longer I’ll probably have to apply for a resident’s permit. And as I am staying in East Jerusalem that may be tricky.

My reason for being here, aside from the welcome February sun, is to research the next stage of Sean and Isabel’s adventures. If you read The Istanbul Puzzle you’ll probably know that there are a few questions at the end still hanging.

The Jerusalem Puzzle, due out January 2013, will move the story forward and answer some key questions.

As part of my research in old Jerusalem, where the book is mainly set, I have spent a lot of time in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the legendary site of Jesus’ crucifiction, his tomb and the burial place of Adam’s skull, according to some 2nd century sources. Whatever your beliefs, this place is an extraordinary building, a mix of mainly Crusader and 19th century, Armenian, Catholic and Orthodoxy all rolled into one. This was the place a lot of people died for before the crusades, during the crusades, and ever afterwards. Richard the Lion Heart and Saladin fought over this place and almost every other Empire since has had plans to capture it.

Here is what the entrance to the legendary tomb of Jesus looks like now (click each image to see it in all its glory):

Queuing to get into the tomb of Jesus, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

This church is the most important place of pilgrimage in the Christian world. Bar none.

What I found though, at the end of my last visit, was a less than spiritual place. I had queued to get in to the small chapel where Jesus’ tomb is supposed to be with cries of “hurry, hurry, we are closing,” echoing in my ears. I’d visited where Mary, Mother of Jesus fell into an eternal sleep (legend says), on Mount Zion the day before and I was lucky that I went down into that underground tomb with the sound of a Polish group singing hymns echoing in my ears. That place was spiritual.

Near the Damascus Gate, the Muslim Quarter, Jerusalem

Much of the rest of the old city is a heady mix of the Arab souk, with plastic toys and wooden crosses for tourists, and a wedge of Abercrombie and coffee shop Westerness pushing up close to the city from the Jewish and modern western side.

To me Jerusalem is where three great faiths, Christianity, the Jewish faith and Islam all overlap with their bits fraying.

The Islamic faith is well represented here in the famous Golden Dome and mosques and the regular call to prayer filling the air.

The Western Wall, Jerusalem.

The Jewish faith is evident in the devotion at the Western Wall, the Orthodox faithful almost everywhere, and through the joy of young men being escorted with drums and horns through the crowds.

The Christian faith is evident  in the extraordinary churches and the pilgrims from all parts of the Christian world walking the Via Dolorosa carrying crosses and following the legendary route of Jesus to his death.

This city is an ancient fraying tapestry of faith and colour, tradition and prayer, belief and culture, the old and the modern mixed and interwoven.

I know there are many things in serious dispute here, but I hope to God compassion comes into play for a unique people and a unique place when this city’s future is decided.

The Jerusalem Puzzle, my next novel, will take readers to the heart of Jerusalem. It will expose some of the very real puzzles that are at the core of this truly amazing city. I hope you’ll like it as much as you liked The Istanbul Puzzle.

What if common infections could kill in great numbers again?

Is our optimistic faith in science about to be shattered? Are we heading back to the dark ages in medicine?

Before the early 20th century, treatments for infections were based primarily on folklore. Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming and other scientists worked hard and suffered to produce the treatments that we all now take for granted.

Chief among these are the antibiotics that most of us take as a first defense against all sorts of common infections. Before the era of antibiotics, before 1941 that is, in some countries as many as 20% of women died after giving birth because there was almost no way to treat many infections.

The list of diseases we are all in danger from in the next five years, as the era of effective antibiotics ends includes:

• dental infections
• blood, kidney and urinary infections
• TB, pneumonia and other chest infections
• Gonorrhea and other STDs (Chlamydia is the leading cause of infectious blindness in the 3rd world)
• Surgical wound infections – most surgery would not be possible without antibiotics
• Chemo and transplants will not be possible
• Typhoid fever, diphtheria, leprosy, Bubonic plague - which kills 2 out 3 infected individuals without antibiotic treatment.

Why is this happening?

Bacteria of all the above classes are becoming immune to antibiotics as they evolve. In some cases even the strongest antibiotics are ineffective in treating simple infections. This evolution was bound to happen. Our willingness to take antibiotics as an easy cure-all and our unwillingness to finish a course of treatment have all contributed to the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

It looks very much like the future is going to end up like the past. There are not enough antibiotic development programs worldwide, profits are low in this area, and despite our knowledge of all this governments are still not intervening to make it easier to invest in groundbreaking science. Even if they did start now we are likely to face a period where your doctor might shake his head when you come in with an infection and say, “We can’t treat this infection anymore.”

So what can we all do?

1. Stop taking antibiotics unless there is a very good reason. Otherwise the above situation will come even quicker.

2. Wash our hands before meals & when we come home, like your mother used to teach you.

3. Encourage others to do the same.

So what has this to do with The Istanbul Puzzle, my novel launched January 19, 2012, by Harper Collins? It’s a part of the plot.

The Istanbul Puzzle cover art

Dracula, vampires and Islam

Count Dracula feasting on his victims

In early April 1453 Mehmet the Conqueror, Sultan of all the Ottomans, and only 21 years old, began the last great siege of Constantinople. He had an army of 200,000 men and a navy of 320 vessels at his command. When the city fell 57 days later a tremor passed through Europe. Ottoman Muslim armies appeared to be unstoppable.

The voyages of Christopher Columbus, financed to avoid Ottoman control of the spice trade, were one outcome. Constantinople’s change of name to Istanbul was another. A third was the birth of the legend of Dracula.

Vlad the Impaler, Prince Drăculea, from the Latin draco meaning dragon, was 22 when Constantinople fell.  He had spent four years while a teenager as a prisoner in the Ottoman court. For much of that time he was beaten and abused for his stubbornness, particularly his unwillingness to convert to Islam. For his courage he was later inducted into the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric order of the late Holy Roman Empire, which required its members to defend Christianity, by whatever means necessary.

When Vlad came to power a few years later he decided to impose law and order the hard way. He had his enemies impaled and raided his rivals territories, forcing one to read his own eulogy while kneeling before a grave prepared for him. Rampant criminality, treachery and the wars all around him were the backdrop to what happened next.

When Dracula refused to pay tribute to Mehmet, a small matter of 10,000 ducats and 500 boys, the Ottomans decided to put down the upstart Prince.

So began a war of infamous savagery. Raids, where men, women and children who were not Christian were impaled, burnt alive or beheaded were a feature of Vlad’s tactics.

Mehmet then marched on Vlad’s home town on Targoviste in Wallachia with an army of 90,000. The Prince had about 30,000 troops at his command.

When Mehment saw the decaying remains of 20,000 Ottoman soldiers on the road into Targoviste he was sickened. Legend tells that he returned to Constantinople leaving the conduct of the war to his generals.

The Prince’s territories were occupied and devastated. So began a guerilla war of night attacks and endless raids that became celebrated across Europe.

The Genoese later thanked Vlad, as he saved them from an attack by Mehmet’s ships, so absorbed were the Ottomans in campaigns against the Prince.

Prince Dracula died fighting the Ottomans after treachery on his own side undermined him. Soon after his name became associated with unmitigated cruelty. Pamphlets detailing grisly impalements of whole villages were circulated by his enemies.

There is no doubt though that Prince Dracula was an exceptionally cruel ruler. Thieves, adulterers and liars could expect no mercy. Skinning alive, boiling and slow impalement were some of the treats he enjoyed inflicting on those unfortunate enough to cross his path.

The legend of vampires, people who live forever and drink the blood of their victims, was common in Wallachia and Moldovia, the Prince’s hunting ground, long before the Irish author Bram Stoker married such cruelty with a tale of the undead. Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, about an English solicitor who travels to a remote castle in the Carpathian mountains has never been out of print since.

Whatever your view on the clash of civilisations, the cruel way that Europe once defended itself from Islamic conquest is the ultimate source, in my opinion, behind the Dracula and vampire stories that are now so popular they need their own section in many bookshops.

Cruelty has a fascination that lasts for a hell of a long time.

The New York Puzzle

Cost, as of April 2010, of the financial bail out in the U.S. alone:

* $29 billion for Bear Stearns
* $143.8 billion for AIG (this far)
* $100 billion for Fannie Mae
* $100 billion for Freddie Mac
* $700 billion for Wall Street, including Bank of America (Merrill Lynch),
Citigroup, JP Morgan (WaMu), Wells Fargo (Wachovia), Morgan Stanley, Goldman
Sachs, and a lot more
* $25 billion for The Big Three in Detroit
* $8 billion for IndyMac
* $150 billion stimulus package (from January ’09)
* $50 billion for money market funds
* $138 billion for Lehman Bros. (post bankruptcy) through JP Morgan
* $620 billion for general currency swaps from the Fed

ROUGH TOTAL: $2,063,800,000,000

Yes, over $2 trillion dollars. As of the end of 2009.

That’s about $6,800 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.A..