An alien city

Summary

I was born in Jerusalem; I lived there as a child; when I was nine I went through the siege and the shelling of Jerusalem. That was the first time I saw a corpse. A shell fired from the Arab Legion's gun battery on Nebi Samwil hit a pious Jew and ripped his stomach open. I saw him lying there in the street. He was a short man with a straggly beard. His face as he lay there dying looked pale and surprised. It happened in July 1948. I hated that man for a long time because he used to come back and scare me in my dreams. I knew that Jerusalem was surrounded by forces that wanted me dead.

Later I moved away from Jerusalem. I still love the city as one loves a disdainful woman. Sometimes, when I had nothing better to do, I used to go to Jerusalem to woo her. There are some lanes and alleys there that know me well, even if they pretend not to.

I liked Jerusalem because it was a city at the end of the road, a city you could get to but never go through; and also because Jerusalem was never really part of the State of Israel: with the exception of a few streets, it always maintained a separate identity, as though it was deliberately turning its back on all those flat white commercial towns: Tel Aviv, Holon, Herzlia, Netanya.

Jerusalem was different. It was the negation of the regular whitewashed blocks of flats, far from the plains of citrus groves, the gardens with their hedges, the red roofs and irrigation pipes sparkling in the sun.