The place Adam chooses is an old, walled-off portion of the city where a heavy wooden door is set into an ornately carved stone gatehouse. A blue plaque affixed to the wall reads SHARIA MARI GERGES, but that is only the name of the road, not the landmark. Although there are small clusters of tourists here and there, it is quiet and not crowded with people.
Adam holds open the door for me. I sneak a glance up at his face as I pass and find him watching me with those light brown eyes. Curious eyes. He offers a shy smile and I’m not sure what’s happening, but I think I like it. I smile back. Look away first.
We pass through the gatehouse into a long, narrow courtyard where cacti and palms rise up from garden beds that run down the middle. At the opposite end of the courtyard, a stone staircase leads up to a double-spired church with a cross atop each spire.
“What exactly is this place?”
“The Coptic section of the city is where the oldest Christian churches stand,” Adam says. “And just beyond the walls you will find the oldest synagogue in Cairo.”
“I didn’t realize—I mean, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I didn’t think other religions were allowed here.”
“I will not try to tell you that Christians and Muslims always worship peacefully in Egypt,” he says, “because Christians were killed a few months ago in a bombing of the Coptic cathedral. But Egypt has a small Christian population and this place holds some of their history. Maybe your history too?”
Adam could have taken me to a famous mosque or even to a modern Egyptian shopping mall—either of those things would have been perfectly fine—but to bring me to a place of Christian history strikes me as a deliberate choice. A really thoughtful choice. “Thank you.”
“I confess that I have never been here,” he says. “So everything I am telling you is only what I have learned on the Internet this morning.”
“That’s still more than I know.”
“So this church is Sitt Mariam, which means St. Mary, but it is more commonly called al-Muallaqah—the Hanging Church—because it was built on top of an ancient Roman fortress. Inside I think we will see how it is possible to build a church without no foundation.”
The courtyard walls are adorned with brightly colored mosaics of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, angels, and either saints or holy men—even I’m not completely sure—their halos set in golden tiles that sparkle in the sun. One mosaic depicts Joseph leading a donkey carrying Mary and the infant Jesus on its back. I know this image. “This is the holy family’s flight to Egypt.”
When I made my first communion, Grandma Rose gifted me with a thick book filled with Bible stories that I would sometimes read at night before bed. One of the most exciting and scary stories was about how King Herod ordered all the firstborn sons of Judea to be killed because he feared Jesus would one day take his throne, so Joseph took the family and escaped to Egypt. In the story, angels appeared to him in a dream when it was safe to go home.
“None of the Bible stories ever describe what their everyday lives might have been like. They focus on Jesus as an adult, performing miracles and dying on the cross,” I explain as we make our way up the stairs to the church. “So it’s a little surreal to think about his family living here, just being regular people.”
Grandma Irene has a picture of Jesus hanging on the wall of her living room. He has white skin and blue eyes, and Dad always calls him Classic Rock Jesus. Never have I believed Jesus was white—geography and history say otherwise—but being here in Egypt makes it that much easier to imagine. The holy family would probably have looked like the people around me; they would have had brown skin like Adam.
“They traveled through the country for more than three years,” he says. “And it is believed that while in Cairo they lived on the site of what is now the crypt beneath the Abu Serga church. We can see the site if you like.”
“I would.”
Even though my brain has wrapped itself around the fact that Christianity has roots in this part of the world, it doesn’t stop me from expecting the Hanging Church to look like our church back home. Ours is also called St. Mary’s, but it is a Gothic-style Roman Catholic church nearly the size of a cathedral, with soaring arches and big stained-glass windows. So I’m stopped in my tracks when I see that this church is covered in the arabesque patterns of Egypt. Painted designs tangle themselves around the arches between the pillars. Carved wooden patterns cover the walls. Even the woodwork of the pews is an intricate lattice so different from the plain benches at home. But as I stand in the main aisle, the smell of polished wood and candle wax and the faint scent of incense are exactly the same.
“This is really beautiful.”
“It is,” Adam agrees. “The seating is strange to me. At the masjid we have only a large empty space for worship.”
“Honestly, I’m not really sure how Masses work in this church because I don’t think Coptic Orthodox and Roman Catholic are the same,” I say. “But we sit for Scripture readings and for the homily, and stand and kneel for everything else.”
“Now I must admit I thought all Christians believed the same things.”
“There are more kinds of Christians than I could possibly name,” I say. “And I don’t really know what makes them all different, other than they disagree on parts of the theology.”
“It is the same with Islam.”
“Really?”
“Sunnis and Shiites have different ways of believing and there are other smaller sects,” Adam says. “But all Muslims worship the same God.”
“Same with Christians.”
We stand in silence for a moment and I’m not sure if we’ve bridged a gap or made it wider.
“So I have an idea.” Adam beckons me to follow him to where a small tour group is gathered around a Plexiglas panel in the floor. We stand close enough to hear their guide explain that each end of the church is supported by a tower from an older Roman fortress, and that it’s about eighteen meters to the original ground level.
“The roof,” the guide says, “is made of wood because the weight of a stone roof would have collapsed the church.”