Story for performance #22
webcast from Paris at 09:52PM, 12 Jul 05

Once upon a time, or perhaps even today, who knows, there was a coffee house in Jerusalem, off the Via Dolorosa and not far from the Holy Sepulchre, called the ‘Danish Tea House’. Those were the days when there was a wall built around Jerusalem, for Jerusalem is a city that crowns a mountain with its ramparts, but there was no wall that plunged through its heart, cutting off its blood-flow, making it into the sterile city that it is today.

There was a spy, an agent of secret things, who was on my payroll. I used to send him to the Danish Tea House to eavesdrop, take the pulse of the people. He would ensconce himself down into deep cushions, sip his mint tea, and merge into the darkness, for the interior of the Danish Tea House was maintained in deep shade, away from the blinding sunlight ricocheting off the pale Jerusalem stone. There was a steady coming and going of people from all walks of life and of all origins, from the local merchants from the market, to the travelling youngsters come from the western shores, seeking adventure and a release from the trap of suburbia so carefully engineered by their parents. They would wear local robes, galabiahs, that they bought in the market, in sharp contrast to the local merchants, in their sober black trousers and white shirts. They would have long uncut hair, in curls or tied back in a knot, while the merchants would have neatly clipped moustaches and little else.

The Danish Tea House was at the centre of the drug trade that crossed the nations that divided this land in unsharing hostility, and young men would sidle up to the travellers and offer them ‘the best Afghani’ or marijuana from Lebanon or produce from other lands. A cloud of blue smoke would come out of the back room, but the foreigners were seldom admitted there, only those who had become regulars. Occasionally a group of soldiers visiting the city, on leave but nonetheless dressed in military fatigues and armed with rifles or submachine guns, would come rowdily in and talk patronisingly to the patron who would bring them a plate of olives and hummous with salt pickles, and sometimes he would be servile, sometimes there would be genuine friendliness.

But my agent had other preoccupations, for the Danish Tea House was the interface between the local bourgeoisie and the guild of assassins, the Hashashins. For in the city of Jerusalem people would meet who were pulling strings from Aleppo to Alexandria, and sometimes it became necessary to modify the business landscape with a little dirty work, usually salutary, for it kept the merchandise flowing and the correct pockets laced. My agent would deploy his ears and hone his senses and bring me information about goings on that might be of use to me…

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Joseph Rabie.