Encountering Christian Arab sales clerks takes me by surprise. Shopping done, we reboard the motor coach to see the city's main attraction, the nativity scene. With each upward curve of the serpentine street, the condition of shops and houses improves. Visitors stream into the dark, cavernous interior of the Church of the Nativity. The wood ceiling of the Greek Orthodox nave soars up to a point.
Walls bear designs of flowers, pomegranates and grapes.
Scarcely discernible, faded paintings of the apostles grace the pillars. In this land of honeycombed limestone hills, inhabitants used grottos for living quarters, storage and pens. As early as the third century AD, this site was designated Jesus' birthplace. Emperor Constantine built a basilica with its altar centred over the grotto in the early 4th century. About 200 years later, Emperor Justinian erected the current basilica over the ruins of the earlier one.