Thursday Night in Jerusalem

I wrote this a year a half ago and wanted to archive it somewhere:

Thursday Night in Jerusalem

Last night, Yuval, his friend, Liron, and I drove up to Jerusalem. As soon as we crested the hilltops and entered the city, we rolled down the windows to drink in the air, free of the humidity that has been bogging us down in Tel Aviv. We met two of Yuval’s friends at a café in the heart of the modern, Jewish part of the city. The café is part thrillingly excellent restaurant and part bookstore. We ate lasagna smothered in carrot sauce (I was skeptical, but it was fantastic) and salad with blue cheese and pears that had been sautéed in maple syrup. The walls of the café are plastered in such a way that you can see sections of the ancient stone walls poking through. The friends we met were two women, one a Finnish woman working at the Finnish embassy, the other a Russian Israeli who has been translating books from the Finnish to the Hebrew.

I have been to this restaurant only once before, the first week that I was ever in Israel. Yuval took me there to browse through the English books and sit in front of the window overlooking the new city. I drank milk and honey, reveling at the fact that I was finally in the land of milk and honey and the person across from me was the same one that I had been dreaming about for the last year.

After dinner, we poked our heads into the bar downstairs. The bar is Mike’s Place. The same Mike has a place in Tel Aviv that blew up a few years ago while Yuval’s cousin happened to be in it. These are the kinds of things that I think of that don’t seem to bother Yuval. The bar had excellent jazz and people sitting outside enjoying the breeze. So many people were enjoying themselves that there was nowhere to sit. Yuval suggested an alternative: why not buy a bottle of wine and go to the Old City. He knew a place where we could sit on the rooftops and take in the view.

I knew which spot he meant; the rooftop spot was the location of our first kiss. My first day in Israel, we went to Jerusalem and Yuval took me on a tour of the Christian sites, trying to make a good Mormon girl feel comfortable in Jerusalem. Towards sunset we climbed an iron staircase leading to a cement path created on top of the flat roofs of the market buildings in the Old City. It is the path that the religious Jews use to go from their houses in the Jewish quarter to the gates of the Old City without passing through the Arab section of the market. Old sections of walls stick above the path and we climbed up on one of these and watched the sunset over the Dome of the Rock and kissed. Happy, dumbfounded, and sure that these kisses were a temporarily lapse of reason on Yuval’s part, I had him take a picture of me, so that I would be able to prove to myself later that it had actually happened. It was so dark by the time he took the photo that I am just a silhouette, but looking closely, I can see a smile so large it hurts my cheeks just thinking about it.

This is where Yuval recommended we go. Last time I was in Jerusalem, a few weeks ago, it was to pick up our friend who had arrived in time to see the victim of a stabbing in the Old City and as a consequence, it didn’t seem like such a good idea to me. On our walk towards the Old City the road was blocked by soldiers peering into cars heading to the New City. This also seemed like a bad sign. I told Yuval I was nervous and he shrugged it off. “If you want to live in Israel, you can’t think like that. People get murdered. You can’t let it stop you from living your life.”

As we walked closer to the walls, Liron came up beside me, seeming to calculate to himself: “We are a lot of people and it isn’t too late yet. We will just sit for a little while and then come back out again.” I don’t think Yuval set him up to encourage me, rather I took it as a sign that he, despite being born here, is still thinking like me. I also know that Liron, like all of Yuval’s friends, will not go without him to the Arab sections of Jerusalem. It’s as if Yuval has some magical power to protect them or convince them to come. I think the power he has is logic. Logically, he knows and they would like to agree, that nothing is likely to happen to them. Somehow it is just easier to believe the logic when he is there with them.

We climbed up the iron stairs that led to the rooftop path and stared out at the Dome of the Rock and the green light illuminating the tower of Al Aqsa. We were high up enough that we looked at the beautifully lit golden dome from eye level. We settled in, me still grumpy for being dragged though the empty alleys of boarded up market stalls. The others, long time residents of Jerusalem, had never known this spot existed and were stunned by the view. We settled in and watched the occasional passersby- Ultra Orthodox men and young religious couples out for a stroll. After a while I did relax and admitted to being amazed, in spite of myself. The air was fresh and cold, the moon was waxing gloriously, the stars were shining bright enough to be seen in spite of the city lights, and we were surrounded on all sides by ancient, luminous limestone towers of churches and mosques.

Later one of the women received a phone call. “Oh, we are in the most amazing spot,” she said. “We are in the Old City with a view of the Wailing Wall.” I almost choked. There is no way in the world that it was physically possible for us to see the Wailing Wall which is set well below the Dome of the Rock. The woman speaking would barely pass for five feet tall, counting her three-inch heels, so I know she wasn’t seeing something that I couldn’t. Liron asked sincerely, “You can see the Wailing Wall?” And jumped up to try and get a better view. It’s called selective vision and while rampant everywhere, makes me want to tear my hair out. The woman speaking was a religious Christian, which makes it even weirder to me that she has caught the Dome-of-the-Rock-doesn’t-exist syndrome. It doesn’t exist, even when it is directly in front of us- enormous, golden, breathtakingly beautiful. After a while Liron gave up looking for a view of the Wailing Wall and sat back down.

After the wind became too chilly to be enjoyable, and Liron, the driver, began to feel tired, we said good night and headed back to the car. We passed two more road blocks set up by police and soldiers before we got to his sister’s house where he drank a cup of coffee to prepare for the hour drive back to Tel Aviv. When we stepped out of his sister’s house, the smell of fresh baked bread was overwhelming. It was as if we were standing in front of a giant oven and I could smell the sensation of ripping off a piece of warm bread. In fact, it was as if we were standing in front of a giant oven, as we were next to one of Israel’s largest bread factories with a 24-hour store on the premises. We stopped by the store packed, even at one in the morning, with challa and Ultra Orthodox Jews in anticipation of Friday and the beginning of Shabbat. We stocked up on challa and chocolate buns, so scentful that the house smelled like the Jerusalem bakery when we woke up this morning. On the way out of town we passed the fleet of trucks waiting to distribute the scent to the rest of the country.

We drove down the slopes of Jerusalem, singing Israeli pop songs to help keep Liron from getting tired. The moon set in the distance, the air grew warmer and heavy with humidity. Back in Tel Aviv, the streets, unlike the quiet, holy streets of Jerusalem, were packed with cars and distinctly unholy techno music poured from the bars where the night was only beginning.