Summary

In Chapters 372 through 343, as Bassam and Rami drive home from the monastery, Rami points out that Bassam’s taillight is out and offers to drive him home, but Bassam knows that is not permitted. The monks did not know when the wall would be built that would separate them from the nuns, as they told the men while they made barrels for their wine which they sold to the church in Bethlehem built at the site of his birth. Before his death, Jesus likely carried the crossbeam of his crucifix with his crown of thorns, not the entire cross, before being nailed to it by the Romans. Christian women in nineteenth-century Bethlehem wore elaborate dresses that told of details in their lives, while extreme sects of Jewish zealots during Roman rule would wear long cloaks to hide the daggers they used to kill the...