Jerusalem Notebook

Jerusalem is a wonderful city for hat-spotting. There are the black fedoras and other varieties worn  by Hassidic and ultra-orthodox Haredi Jews, sometimes magnificent in height and breadth, and there is also an almost infinite gradation of birettas, hoods and bonnets and headgear defying easy definition worn by Christian clergy of various denominations. We had an ecclesiastical fashion show one afternoon while lingering in an alley leading to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Unexpectedly, along came the King of Jordan’s cousin Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad on an official visit, proceeded by a dragoman who banged the ground with a staff and rather roughly pushed us out of the way, and accompanied by differently bearded and clothed representatives of Christendom. The latter were not fighting in an unseemly fashion as they occasionally still do over the right to various nooks and corners of the Holy Sepulchre — which contains the sites of both the crucifixion and the tomb of Christ — but beaming.