A Land of Seven Hills

Looking Beyond Borders

Over the years, I have been something of an adventurer—though my greatest discoveries haven't been of geographic places, but of the space created within me when new experiences dismantle old traditions. It is the stark, beautiful contrast between the stories I’ve been told and the complex reality I find firsthand. I’ve learned that the history and faith we inherit often serve as the mortar for the walls we build around our worldview; it takes a specific kind of courage to look past those partitions and see the vast landscape beyond.

Growing up in the Deep South, long before I held a passport, I was gifted an inheritance of vivid, two-dimensional storybook images of the Holy Land: the walls of Jericho, the Sea of Galilee, Bethlehem, and, of course, the holiest of holy cities, Jerusalem. It was a landscape setting for miracles and ancient parables—a simplified sketch designed to feed a child's imagination rather than reflect a modern reality layered with the heavy, jagged complexities of jihad and global politics.

As an adult, my views on the Near East were updated but not deepened, informed mostly by mainstream media stories of conflict, injustice, and suffering. So, as a son of the South, I knew this region only as a litany of Bible stories and abstract political concepts from 60 Minutes. I had never considered that I would one day have the opportunity to step through the gate, go "behind the curtain," and begin the difficult, human work of learning a region so complex from inside.

Guess Who’s Coming to Lunch

My fifth partner was born in the West Bank. His father, an eminent scholar and former editor of Arab Studies Quarterly, holds a deep, academic and experiential understanding of the region. A few months after we started dating, I was invited to my first "meet the family" lunch. As we sat with his parents and sister, the conversation began with the standard, polite sketches: travels, California weather, the safe topics of a first meeting.

Then the table went quiet. His father looked across at me, squinted slightly, and said, "So, John. I’ve reviewed your CV."

Time stood still. Where did he even get a copy of my CV? I wondered, a spike of panic hitting my chest. "I must say, it’s very impressive," he continued, his gaze steady. "You’ve had quite the education—across so many fields. And such important work you’re doing these days." I looked around the table. His mother watched intently; my partner and his sister had suddenly found a desperate interest in their phones, hands moving frantically just under the table.

I took a nervous sip of water and swallowed loudly. "Yes. Thank you. I… um, thank you..." a total betrayal of my mother and the elocution lessons she’d paid for years ago.

Recognizing my struggle, he leaned back a little, but didn't let go. "I imagine you’ve studied under some great educators... and given your background—educational, religious and professional,” he paused as if to rephrase, then said “While I don’t mean to make something so straightforward seem complicated, can you help me understand how you have informed your understanding of Israeli/Palestinian relations?" He paused, then added the clincher: "And because you’re dating my son, more specifically, I would like to understand how you have grown to understand the Palestinian condition."

My mind raced, churning through my "mind palace" for an escape. Suddenly, I saw the cover of a book I had bought after hearing a review on NPR: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter. "Last summer," I replied, finding my wits, "I read Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter and found it very interesting."

The shift was instantaneous. His mother sat back with a smile, and every bit of intensity left his father’s face as he reached for his wine. The gate had opened. But it left me wondering: What would most Americans say if they were asked that same question?

A Borderland Odyssey

In 2010, the family asked me to join them for their annual pilgrimage to Ramallah. Even though I had spent months studying the region, I realized I was still carrying that binary lens: the Israel of ‘God’s chosen’ versus the ‘brutes’ of the West Bank. In my mind, I had prepared for an adventure into a dangerous underbelly—a land of shadows that existed in the margins of that ‘land of milk and honey.’

But when I first passed through the gates of Ramallah, the "Hill of God," the simplified sketches of my youth were replaced by a kaleidoscope of color and complexity. I found myself standing in a living mosaic of humanity, beauty, and kindness—a world of profound faith that simply didn't mirror any culture or tradition I had ever known. The Levant was a textured masterpiece that far outshone the world my Alabama educators painted—a complex reality that can't be captured in a Bible story, a soundbite, or a news scroll—and I was there to be immersed.

In my travels, I had walked the inclines of other cities claiming seven hills—San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Rome—a topographic tradition said to have begun with the legend of Romulus and Remus. In the theology of my youth, however, the number seven was more than a geographic coincidence; it was a sacred shorthand. Seven was the number of creation, completion, transcendence and perfection. It was the seven days of Genesis, the seven lamps of the Menorah, and the seven times the walls of Jericho were circled before they fell.

It felt like a familiar rhyme, then, to learn that Ramallah was another of those storied cities. It was as if the ancient world and my own modern travels were finally speaking the same language. The city itself rises to an elevation of nearly 3,000 feet, etched into a series of limestone ridges. 

One morning, my partner and I sat quietly at a sidewalk cafe near Al-Manara Square. In the center of the roundabout, four stone lions stood sentinel—one accompanied by three cubs, representing the seven founding families of the city. As the sun climbed higher, the city began to glow. Nearby, the signature white Jerusalem stone of a mosque shimmered against the blue sky, its minarets topped with speakers that carried the melodic call to prayer over the hills. I sat sipping thick, cardamom-scented Turkish coffee from a small porcelain cup, watching a taxi navigate past a modern Zara storefront—the ancient and the ultra-modern colliding in a single street corner.

My partner’s family occupies a distinct place among these rolling hills. Their history is etched into the city's origin, a story of five brothers who fled their ancestral lands to find a place to worship freely. They found these seven hills and built a sanctuary. 

The family compound felt like a hidden Eden. Inside the high walls, a lush front garden overflowed with vibrant pink roses and tropical greens, watched over by a stone hawk perched among the branches. The entrance to their compound was guarded by a heavy iron gate protecting a three-story home of pale stone.

The family remains a pillar of an ancient Catholic lineage there. On Sunday, we walked to the family church, a structure of the same pale stone that seemed to grow directly out of the hillside. Inside, the air was thick with incense and the hushed, melodic Arabic of the liturgy. Arabic wasn’t a barrier for me - I don’t understand Latin either, but it’s beautiful all the same.  When the time for Eucharist arrived, the congregation surged forward in a rhythmic, practiced motion.

I knew the rules. I knew the bread was a boundary and that, as a non-Catholic, I was technically a trespasser at the rail. In the South, we are raised to respect property lines and pew positions, but some fences are just begging to be jumped. There is a certain part of me—maybe a byproduct of years spent navigating the rigid hierarchies of the South—that feels a low-simmering defiance when faced with a 'No Entry' sign. I didn't just want to watch the ritual from the safety of the pew; I wanted to experience it. So, with a bit of desire to stir the proverbial pot, I joined the queue.

As I approached the altar, the drama of my own making began to unfold. My partner’s mother turned and noticed me behind her, her eyes flickering over me. She frantically whispered to her daughter just behind her who in turn whispered to my partner behind her. “Remind him he can’t do this!  He can’t take communion.” When the word reached me, I nodded in recognition and continued moving forward as they each nervously fidgeted through the ceremony. 

When I finally reached the priest, I didn't reach for the host. Instead, I crossed my arms firmly over my chest, the universal signal that I sought only a blessing. It was a silent standoff: I was forcing the tradition to acknowledge my presence without letting them claim my soul. There was a microscopic pause, a moment where the entire architecture of the Church’s tradition stood between us, before he placed a hand on my head with the heavy, solemn weight of an ancient gavel. I recall walking back to the pew feeling both truly blessed and possessed by a quiet, rebellious satisfaction.

Because the extended family was aware of our relationship, my partner and I were told that it wouldn’t be acceptable for us to stay within the family home beyond the gates. Instead, we were positioned at a local hotel. This arrangement relied on an ironic form of gender-sorting: to maintain cultural propriety, we were paired with two female cousins to ensure every traveler was gender-matched. But the same heteronormative logic that excluded us from the compound resulted in my gay partner and me being assigned to the same hotel room. Oddly enough, tradition had, in its very rigidity, carved out a private space for our truth.

Sanctuary

The Mövenpick Hotel stood as a monument to wealth and global standards—a self-contained world of luxury intentionally disconnected from the dust and friction outside. The outdoor pool was a shimmering blue crescent, its water perfectly still and clear, reflecting the high, sun-drenched walls of the hotel and the rows of green lounge chairs waiting in the heat. It felt like an oasis of manufactured calm, a pristine fortress of pale stone and glass.

But, even in this modern sanctuary, tradition and cultural norms remained absolute. To maintain our cover, we performed a daily ritual: pushing our two single beds together under the cover of night and meticulously separating them every morning—a preemptive defense against the possibility that friends of my partner's family might be on the hotel staff. It was my first lesson in how to maneuver through the friction of the region.

As the sun set that first day, the gilded palace gave way to a different kind of sanctuary. We traveled across Ramallah into the absolute chromatic opposite of the Mövenpick: a refugee camp on the city’s periphery. Here, the shimmering silver of the olive trees and cool, blue water of the hotel pool vanished, replaced by the ashen geometry of raw cinderblock. The camp is a vertical labyrinth of gray; buildings are stacked precariously atop one another, draped in a tangled web of overhead wires. Narrow alleys are choked with the shadows of lean-tos and corrugated metal. Children darted through the narrow alleys, their laughter ringing out as they kicked a tattered soccer ball across the dusty pavement, seemingly indifferent to the shanties and porch-front washing machines that framed their playground.

We were led through the dark into a small, box-like home, its walls a patchwork of weathered asbestos tile. Within this cramped space, every luxury had been stripped away, leaving only the warmth of a humble hearth and a staggering depth of hospitality. The matriarch of a family shared their story—a heart-wrenching legacy of an olive grove lost in 1948 and a displacement from an ancestral village that now lived only in the useless, yellowed deeds they held in their hands like sacred relics.

After they spoke, my partner’s mother offered a bridge across the sectarian divide. With a simple, quiet communal grace, she presented her offerings—gifts and food that seemed to momentarily mend the air between us all—before embracing them as kin.

As we walked back to our van, I felt deep gratitude for my own home and everything my upbringing had afforded me; it was a weight I felt in the very soles of my shoes. I looked back at the dim light of the cinderblock home and realized the cruelest irony of our itinerary: the family we had just visited, the very people whose ancestral stories were etched into these hills, were barred by an invisible gate from the luxury where I would sleep that night. They lived in the shadow of a sanctuary that was as inaccessible to them as the olive groves they had lost.

I thought of the marble floors of the Mövenpick, cool and indifferent, and compared them to the rough, unforgiving concrete of the camp. It occurred to me that maybe both were sanctuaries—one built to keep the world out, and the other built to keep the spirit in. 

Oases and Walls

The descent from the Judean hills toward the Dead Sea basin is a transition into a landscape of extremes. We traveled through the Jordan Valley, where the environment shifts abruptly from scorched, lunar whites to the prehistoric green of Gan HaShlosha, or Sahne. The sensory experience is defined by the play of shadows against high canyon walls and the sound of water—cool, clear springs that have flowed since the time of the kings. It was a startling, translucent turquoise—a sharp, revitalizing contrast to the heavy, salt-laden air of the basin. We bathed in those pools, the water cool against the desert heat. It was a natural oasis, a place of ancient stillness that seemed to exist entirely outside the world of gates and walls etched into the maps above it. 

Nearby, the Monastery of the Temptation clung defiantly to the sheer, 350-meter-high cliffs of Mount Quarantal. It is a vertical fortress of pale stone carved directly into the rock face—a silent witness to centuries of seekers looking for their own version of sanctuary on the site where Jesus traditionally spent forty days fasting.

The Greek Orthodox monks maintained a strict code of 'appropriate attire' so because my partner had insisted on wearing shorts, he was barred from the interior. I watched him waiting in the stagnant shade of the cable car station, another victim of a rigid 'Status Quo' of tradition.

As I climbed the final steps alone, the irony of our presence there wasn't lost on me. Here we were: two gay men, one invited to enter; another barred, but both descendants of a different, but invisible kind of temptation according to the theology of these hills, standing at the very spot where Christ was said to have looked out over the Jordan Valley and resisted the devil’s lure. There was a quiet, cosmic humor in it. 

I looked out from the cliffside at the panoramic view of the Jordan Valley and the mountains of Moab. It was a natural oasis of ancient stillness, half-sanctuary, half-fortress, in a land accustomed to defining and dividing who was 'in' and who was 'out'."

On the return to Ramallah, the topographic rhythm of those rolling hills was interrupted by the reality of another checkpoint. As we waited in a long, idling line, a young boy approached the window of our van. He couldn't have been more than eight, his face sun-darkened, wearing a smile that felt heartbreakingly out of place against the looming shadow of the 26-foot wall. He held up small trinkets, his eyes searching ours through the glass for any sign of hope.

I remember I was so consumed by the checkpoint nonsense—the heat, the delays, and my own bone-deep exhaustion. But as he stood there, his eyes bright with an anticipation that transcended all time and tradition, my annoyance faded away. He was the personification of a struggle I was only beginning to understand, yet his hope was so universally good that it momentarily dissolved the barrier of the glass between us. 

When our van finally reached the gate, armed officers flagged us to the roadside. Our driver’s only guidance was a hushed command: be agreeable and do not speak. They took the bags from the van and from our hands, disappearing with them into a nearby tent. For ninety minutes, we stood in silence on the radiating asphalt. As I wiped my brow with my bandana, I looked across a fallow field toward the grey concrete of the barrier. There, painted onto the wall, was the Banksy stencil of a young girl clutching a cluster of balloons, her feet just leaving the ground as if the sheer lightness of her hope might lift her over the obstruction.

Eventually, our bags were returned one by one, delivered with the calculated, heavy pauses of those who hold the monopoly on time. When we were finally waved on, the van was quiet, the exhaustion of the sun settling over us like a shroud. As I drifted in and out of sleep, I thought of my life as a young gay man in Alabama. I had spent years searching for the source of my own boost of courage to carry me over the barriers set by the religious nationalism of my upbringing. I realized that sometimes the hardest walls to rise above aren’t the ones made of stone and rebar, but the ones we carry with us, mortared by the stories and traditions we are too afraid to unlearn.

The Mosaic of the Old City

Our journey into Old Jerusalem truly helped me understand the multi-layered complexity I had heard so much about. It was the absolute antithesis of the placid, welcoming scenes from my Sunday School picture books. In those stories, the Holy Land was a backdrop for everyone's faith, a universal stage for the divine. But in reality it was a bustling riot of sensory overload—stalls overflowing with pyramids of vibrant red cherries and towers of aromatic spices that filled the air with a heavy, earthy scent. The limestone streets were slick with the footfalls of millennia, a labyrinth where a taxi might push through a crowd of vendors and a woman in a dark abaya might carry her child past a shop selling the latest Western fashions.

I realized then how little my upbringing and education had prepared me for this. In the South, I was taught a version of the world where Islam didn't exist and the Jewish tradition was merely a historical prologue to my own. I hadn't expected that in modern times, these ancient stories would be guarded by such rigid partitions. I found that in the City of Peace, the gates weren't just historical landmarks, they were literal boundaries of faith and tradition.

In the Jewish Quarter, we stood before the Western Wall, its massive, weathered stones stuffed with the paper prayers of thousands—a silent wall of longing. Even here, tradition held firm. Because I was not part of the tribe, I stood at the edge of the plaza, a spectator to a conversation with the divine that I was not invited to join. I watched others lean their foreheads against the cool stone, but for me, the Wall remained a barrier I could not approach and a prayer I was not welcome to speak.

In contrast, we found a momentary respite in the dim, ancient silence of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There, a single, magnificent shaft of light pierced the dome, cutting through the shadows with divine light from above.

At the Temple Mount, we approached the sanctuary looking out over the Old Jerusalem city walls, and the air grew heavy with the presence of authorities. I was instructed to stand aside; as a non-Muslim, I was strictly forbidden from entering the sanctuary itself. Security was so absolute that even moving your lips in silent prayer or carrying a religious text could get you escorted out. It was the ultimate irony: I had traveled thousands of miles to the source of much of the world’s faith and tradition, only to find that even here, faith is sorted by walls that dictate not just what you believe, but exactly where you are permitted to believe it.

The Art of Living

On our last full day in Ramallah, we visited the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit. The flyer for the event, Picasso in Palestine, was a vibrant explosion of color—a testament to a culture that refuses to be defined solely by its struggle. Inside, the space was an architectural masterpiece of modern Palestinian identity: clean lines and a hushed atmosphere of intellectual pursuit.

It was here that I encountered one of the most absurd scenes of the trip. Stationed within the gallery was a young Israeli soldier brandishing a high-powered rifle. He stood directly next to a priceless Picasso - the cubist features of a woman distorted and fractured on the canvas. Just over his right shoulder hung a sign that read: "No Flash Photography." I felt a pang of localized discomfort. Was it the jagged, cubist face on the canvas that mirrored the fractured reality of the room? Or was it the sight of this boyish man with his finger resting on a trigger in a room meant for quiet contemplation? I found myself thinking: Wow. They are really serious about enforcing their rules here.

Afterward, I recalled clearly that the only moments I had felt a genuine sense of unease on our trip, were those involving the presence of authorities brandishing weapons—a part of a ubiquitous pantomime performed in the name of 'safety.’

I left the Levant realizing that the geography of faith and geopolitics I had been given as a young man was a simplified sketch—a child’s drawing of a world that is, in reality, a terrifying, complex masterpiece. In an age of fifteen-second clips, relentless chumming for outrage, it is tempting to settle for a version of history that is cleaner and easier to digest. We retreat into the black-and-white because the gray scale of 2,000 years is simply too heavy for the human heart to carry.

I saw that both the U.S. South and the Near East are places where tribal affiliations offer the seductive comfort of a binary: the "good-guy" and the "bad-guy." It is a marvelous, ugly trick—taking the anxiety born of systemic failures and channeling it into the cheap, satisfying hatred of a neighbor. But in a landscape this old and this scarred, I found no simple heroes and no pure martyrs. There are no villains in this story, only millions of people caught in the friction of an unresolved map, layered so thick with grief and claim that it has become nearly impossible to navigate without walls and gates.

Though inherited traditions often serve as the mortar for our walls, the true art of living is in the courage to expand our horizons - open our minds - until those walls are no longer the boundaries of our world, but merely part of a much vaster, and infinitely more textured, complicated, landscape.