10 Soul Candles

The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.

Proverbs 20

The little-known Samboski Cemetery on the north-eastern slope of Mount Zion has been a burial ground since at least the seventeenth century. It served the inhabitants of Jerusalem too poor to pay for burial elsewhere. Plots were marked with simple stones, some of which did not even carry the names of the dead. In cases of extreme poverty, the graves were marked only with squill flowers, tall white perennials that bloom for two weeks a year at the end of the summer. During the 1948 War of Independence, the area was captured by the Jordanian Legion, and the tombstones were desecrated, taken for use as building materials. The squills remain, shining like memorial candles for the souls of the dead.