Jerusalem

White-brilliant-dazzling, limestone houses in the morning light between cypresses and laurels, the fragrance of the East passing through narrow lanes of the Old City. The Arab merchants praising their goods - over there carpets, there Bedouin-dresses, Christian devotional objects between the smoke of water-pipes. Hawkers and tourists hurrying through Damascus Gate. Sun and dust are tinting the air. At the bus station are shovering passengers between Israeli soldiers with shouldered guns, observing the crowd, omnipresent. A small group of Orthodox Jews are hurrying with their fluttering caftans towards Mea Shearim, their home - a piece of the Middle Ages embedded in the New City of Jerusalem, there is the Shtetl vivid. Children are playing, laughing, with their temporal locks dancing. Today is not Sabbath, no roadblocks are hindering the quickly flowing traffic. There, close, a Falafel-stall, spreading its scent. Near the Old City, at the Arabic Bus Station, an industrious coming and going. There leave the old and rattling buses for Hebron and Jerico. I am going back to the Old City, her walls surround me like stony guards of a long and lost age. Near the Wailing Wall I am awaiting my friends. Above me the shiny roof of the Dome of the Rocks, towering up into the deep blue sky.