Summary

Chapter 9 opens with Père Antoine on Mount Gerizim, gazing down at the city below and contemplating the fact that the Nabulsi’s refusal to pander to foreigners made it ideal for his “research,” the “perfect specimen of the Islamic city” (276). Père Antoine had come to be the Professor of Oriental Studies at a French biblical studies school in Jerusalem after an expulsion from France following the Dreyfus affair and an education and apprenticeship with a cleric named Père Lavigne. As part of the opposition to the modernist camp of the Catholic Church, this cohort tried to combat the new movement through literary analysis of the Bible and employing reason and inquiry. However, they were rebuked by Rome. One of the nurses, Sister Louise, joined Père Antoine on the mountain and informed him of the French nurses’ decision to leave...