it could be the Garden of Delights, it could be Alamut, we enter through walls into clean mythology, away from the day-to-day rush of Ramallah’s crushed cat on a street-corner, to a platform and tomb of Jerusalem stone, a trio of white flagpoles with ‘Flags of Arab Revolt’, scenery two-dimensional, as if projected on a screen
look beyond the foreground and centre-stage to the background and backstage of ultramarine sky and olive trees, blue and green peace
look through the window of the mausoleum to a green garden, a blue pool, ashlars glowing in light, unreal as a paradise of trees in skies (the British headquarters a lost inferno)
a dead man bodyguarded, the Kaaba-like tomb is manned by green-uniformed soldiers in Palestine braids, one black in beret, heroically handsome, who checks and ushers, two capped at either side of the calligraphied monument, all armed
as so many dream of Jerusalem
Arafat is no different,
the mausoleum is temporary
and the tomb detachable,
it too dreams of the holy platform,
it too is moving to Jerusalem
Poetry: Niall McDevitt
Photography: Julie Goldsmith
.