Walking up a particularly toilsome hill toward Manger Street, my sometimes-colleague Nathan turned to my editor Ghassan with a slight wheeze:

"I really do hate having to make it up this hill every day."

Ghassan, by all accounts a heftier specimen than Nathan, wasn't breaking a sweat. "Stop smoking, then."

"Yeah," Nathan hesitated as we advanced. "...I'd really rather the hill just went away, though."

After making it to the top we three kings caught a bus to a nearby Syriac Catholic church to cover a local story. This was some kind of procession put on by the church, featuring many of its younger elements dressed in red and white uniform; one troupe sported bagpipes and snare drums, the other tenor and bass drums. And one boy twirled a baton. When we arrived they were all warming up in the parking lot near the church. In the street, police cars lurched in front of the traffic to create space for the kids to march through Manger Street. There were at least five police cars, lights flashing, and four officers on motorbikes. I watched the preparations and held Ghassan's video equipment while he confiscated someone's bagpipe and had his go.

(Bagpipes, like tea, were left over by the British. Not sure for which contribution the Semites are more grateful. I have a memory from when I was very young and made to sit through some festive event that featured bagpipes—they scared the shit out of me. They were simply relentless against the ears. Today, while the kids tuned up for the procession, I saw one boy in the crowd, watching with his family, hand to his ear with a pained look on his face. He wasn't feeling the magic, either.)

Just before the parade began, two spotless black Mercedes pulled up to the curb. Out of one stepped a silver-haried priest wearing an equally spotless black cassock. He exchanged some words with the organizers of the event and then slipped back inside, his chauffeur clicking the door shut. Shortly after, the festivities began and the kids started to thump into the street.

Once underway, the parade looked quite odd. The police cars escorting the procession were blaring their sirens for some reason, which didn't exactly create a soothing polyphony with the shrieking bagpipes. The priests rode along slowly, with their police/aerophone escort. It was a thunderous, pious motorcade. I tagged along with Nathan and Ghassan for a while, but eventually the noisy spectacle spilled onto the curb and into a building where the priests were met with smiles and kisses from some public figures. My working day was over and I bid my boss farewell.