Blood in the Monastery
Killer on the Loose
The Greek Orthodox Patriarch Benedictus passed away in late 1980 and the elections for a new Patriarch were deadlocked.
Fights broke out among the supporters of each candidate outside the The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The battle for being elected Patriarch began to get violent and was on the brink of disaster.
There were 3 candidates. One of them was accused of being an agent for the PLO the other an agent for Israel, and the other from Amman seemed to be the best choice, but he could not gather enough votes.
The Bishop of Amman, Jordan was favoured but he could not gather enough votes. One day I overheard a conversation between some priests who were lamenting the fact the King of Jordan could not give his blessing to the Bishop from Amman. They said the Israeli government had told King Hussein to stay out of the elections. The Israelis had a candidate they wanted to see become Patriarch and knew that if King Hussein endorsed the bishop of Amman it would break the deadlock and he would be elected the new Patriarch. King Hussein was greatly respected and his recommendation in favour of the bishop from Amman would sway the voting in his favour. But King Hussein did not want to get on the bad side of the Israeli government so he stayed out of it.
When I heard this I immediately took Archimandrite Narkissos aside and told him I have an idea. What if Father Theodosius was to write a letter to King Hussein personally asking the King for a favour to intervene and give his blessing to the Bishop from Amman? Do you think the King would deny this request from the man he regarded as his father and still stayed in contact and respected and honoured him for saving his life 30 years earlier?” Narkissos looked at me with a look of horror. He froze in place for what seemed like an eternity. Then his face softened and he smiled. “Would you come with me? Would you like to meet the King?” he asked. His response surprised me. I wanted to jump up with joy, but I had to keep my composure. So I said: “as long as it does not interfere with my performing schedule” I reply with “as serious as I could” look on my face.
Unfortunately I could not go with him because it meant I would have to cross in toJordan from the Allenby bridge. Only diplomats and religous figures could cross at the time.
Archimandrite Narkissos travelled to Amman, and returned with a letter from King Hussein to the synod giving his support to Bishop Diodoros. Consequentrly Diodoros was elected Patriarch.
Following the successful election of Diodoros as Patriarch in Jerusalem in 1980, I happily returned to training and performing wherever I could.
One day about a week following the return of Archimandrite Narkissos from Amman I was rehearsing for a show at the Jerusalem Theatre. I suddenly and unexpectedly began to feel ill. I was dizzy, I could not concentrate, and I had this feeling of dread like a dark cloud descended all around me. I literally could not see clearly.
I was rehearsing for a big show that night. Flora was teaching me a new choreography but I could not follow her instructions. I told her I felt sick and I had to return to the monastery immediately. There was a performance scheduled that night. I told Flora I would return.
I bolted out of the Theatre and practically ran back to the monastery. As I got closer I could feel something really bad happened. I checked the front door it was locked. I went to the back where there was a steel door and I did have the key. The door was unlocked. This is the first time I saw it unlocked since moving in. I locked the door behind me and ran up the stairs as the water was streaming done the steps. The tap was still running and the water was overflowing from the marble sink that Narkissos used to wash his clothes on to the marble floor on the third floor and down the stairs.
I knocked on his outer steel door but there was no answer. I panicked. At this point I knew something bad happened. I went back down and looked to see if the kitchen window was open. Luckily it was. He never closed it. There was a thin water pipe running straight up to the side of the window. I climbed up like Spiderman. Adrenalin was ruching though my veins giving me super strength and power. I made it through the kitchen window and ran toward his bedroom door. This was no ordinary door it was a very thick wooden door. I knocked on it and there was no answer. It was locked and bolted from the inside.
His bathroom was at a right angle to his door and I looked inside for something to hit the door with. What I saw was a bloody mess. There was blood everywhere. On the walls, in the sink in the toilet. It looked like someone was bouncing someone’s head against all the walls. It left big round blotches of blood streaming down the wall.
This sight broke me. Anger suddenly rose up and I became superhuman. I ran back to the door and with one kick broke it open. I saw Narkissos on his bed with a huge bloody towel around his head. I got some cold water from the refrigerator and splashed it on his face. He opened his eyes as I began asking him who did this to him. He told me they came to kill him. Who came to kill you? Who? He did tell me who it was but then he denied it afterwards renegged and made me promise to never to say it to anyone. A promise that I have kept.
As he regained full consciousness his head cleared and I asked him again why would these people want to kill you? He then changed the story and told me he fell and hurt his head. I reminded him that I saw his bathroom. It looked like a slaughter house. But he insisted.
The time had finally arrived for me to do my job as security guard for the Monastery of the Holy Cross.
I ran to the telephone booth a couple of hundred yards down the path and called the Magen David which is the Red Cross version in Israel. They came very quickly and I brought them into Narkissos bedroom and as soon as he saw them he began yelling. “I need to got the hospital in the Old City of Jerusalem! Send them away now!” They will kill me in the Jewish hospital. Call me a Taxi.”
I convinced the young ambulance attendants to leave because he was a monk and needed to go to his own hospital in the old city of Jerusalem. I helped Narkissos get up and put on his robes and got a small black towel to wrap around his head under his hat.
As I came out of the Monastery the second time there was a dark skinned tall man with a square face and jaw who reminded me of military. He looked to me like a Palestinian Arab or an Israeli of Moroccan descent. He just stood there at the embankment at edge of the road just above the path to the telephone looking at the Monastery. I stopped. I turned and looked at him but our eyes never met. This was unusual that he would avoid my stare. That convinced me he had military training. Looking back at it now I see that he had a well developed peripheral vision. That meant he was either military, a ballet dancer or a monk; they all need a wide peripheral vision. But he didn’t look like a monk or a ballet dancer…
Adrenalin was rushing though my veins even more now and I was in no mood to back off. But I had a phone call to make. So I walked a little bit until I found a couple of rocks and bent over to pretend to tie my shoes and picked up the two rocks. I stood up and turned around to look at him again, making sure he saw the rocks I picked up. He did not waver. He was calm and still looking at the Monastery as if he was a tourist. With that I kept walking as fast as I could to the telephone booth. I never looked back. I called an Arab taxi company from east Jerusalem. As I returned to the Monastery I saw the man on the hill had left so I began to run back to the Monastery. I did not know if he had a key to the back door and had returned to finish the job. I picked up 2 bigger rocks this time and was ready for a fight if I found him inside.
The door was still locked. I entered the monastery and stopped. I tried listening to hear if there was any noise. Before I left, I locked the door to the residence and had the key with me. I also closed and locked the kitchen window before I left to call the taxi.
All was secure. I helped Narkissos get cleaned up and wrapped his head in a small black towel to hide the bleeding. Then he put his tall Priest’s cap over it. He looked as if nothing had happened.
We arrived at the Hospital and as soon as the doctor examined him he came out and asked me: “What is going on? Are the priests still killing each other over the elections?” I reply quickly: “The elections are over he tripped and fell.” He looks at me with a look of disbelief and says: “How did he fall on top of his head then? I just put 24 stitches on top of his skull”. This time I had to really think quick. “I saw him as he lost consciousness and fell forward as he was bent over and hit his head on the ledge” I said and even demonstrated how it happened. He did not respond he just smiled and walked away.
That night I did not return to the rehearsal or to perform at the Jerusalem Theatre. It was the first and only time I ever missed a performance.
The next day Patriarch Diodoros arrived for a visit to the Monastery with a few bishops. Nobody could believe I climbed up the pipe and got in through the kitchen window. I tried to demonstrate and could not even get my feet off the ground. He promised to give me a medal of some kind and have a ceremony to honor my brave deed. It never happened.
Instead a few years later I was robbed of a great deal of money. A story for another time.
Adrenalin is our secret power. Use it or lose it. Learn how to channel it and let your emotions free to express themselves. It is not an easy task to accomplish that feat while immersed in everyday life. I achieved it because of my experience on stage. I had such stage fright that I would shake uncontrollably before a performance. I soon realized it was not fear it was adrenalin. So I got a handle on it by running up and down the stairs until exhaustion. Then when I stepped on stage I had the perfect amount of energy to achieve the impossible and perform beyond my capabilities.
This is the secret of my own personal success in dance. We all hold within us the secret of our own success. The grand majority never even look for it. They settle for the obvious, the socially accepted and the mediocre.
A few months later father Narkissos identified the man who attacked him when visiting the Sea of Galilee. He was an Israeli Arab working managing or owning a restaurant on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. But he refused to tell me which restaurant it was, so I can go and confirm if it was the same man I saw standing on the embankment beside the entrance to the monastery.
He knew that I would not keep myself from confronting him.
The rest of the story and many others will be published in my upcoming book tentatively titled: “The Naked Truth” Adventures in Consciousness.
