<font color='#5A2863' size='' >Impressions of Jerusalem</font>



Eliette Abecassis
Robert Littell
Steffen Mensching
Erri DeLuca
Bernard Werber
Norman Manea


Eliette Abecassis

Dear Jerusalem,

Here I am again, coming to you, after all those years, coming back endlessly, and coming deeply, looking for you and yearning for you, but knowing deep inside that this love of ours is an impossible love. Do you remember the first time we met, when I was only fifteen, and I was already falling in love with you? You gave me then this look of yours, this golden look towards the end of the day that I will never forget. You took me in your arms and gave me a feeling of wellness that I never knew before, and already I had to come to you everyday, to be with you, because of this appeal that I could not resist, you were so lively and so young and happy to share your new existence with me in your crowded streets and your musical cafes. You had me the first and you made my adolescent heart beat faster than before.

But life goes on, and I had to go back to the place I thought I belong, thinking about you so deeply, crying for you romantically and telling you that I would come back to you very soon But I did not, because life goes on, and I went to study in my far away country, always dreaming of you, wanting to see you again. I met you everywhere, every time I saw one of your friends, at each glimpse and each view of your beauty, I though I would come back to you because you were my first love and you were my only love. Then, by chance I met a lover of you, who was born in you and who lived through you and so I became close to him so I could get close to you. I went to live with him, but it was to live with you, I said I love him, but I loved you, I had to see him, but I only wanted to see you, to be in your walls, to walk to you under the moon, to dream in your splendid arms and wake up in your light, to dwell in your whiteness. Every time I went back to the place where I thought I belonged, I missed you so bad I had to come back to you, even if I thought I was coming back to him. And him, this son of yours, this lover of yours, was no good to me and I had to go away from you to escape him, so I left you again with tears in my eyes and sadness in my heart, and if I cried a lot when I left, it was not because I left him but it was because I left you. And today here I am back again, after all those years coming to you and there you are receiving me in the most splendid clothes, unveiling me to your purest beauty, and showing yourself to me like I never saw you. You set the most amazing place to receive me, and I was happy to show you I grew up into a writer, a story teller, and that I often write about you.

And here I am falling in love with you again. My love to you is that of a woman for a man, and a man for a woman, and also a woman for a woman because you are beautiful like a woman, and you are strong and fierce like a man, and I sometimes want to take you and be taken by you, so I have all the love for you. And here I am again wandering like a wandering Jew and knowing deep inside that you are the aim, and here am I, feeling holly in your holiness, sharing your serenity on the day of Sabbath, when you are so quiet and so calm that I dare only whisper to you, slowly walking in your empty streets and feeling your soul so deeply, and here I am, going down in your womb underneath you, inside you, experiencing you from inside, and here I am, hearing your sorrows and your cries, and feeling sorry for you, and hoping that you will find peace after all that you had to bear, all the violence that was done to you, and here I am, rejoicing with you like a man with his bride, and coming up to you dressed in white like a bride, and the heart beating fast, hardly breathing, and here I am, sad already to have to leave you soon, and to leave you again because I think my life is elsewhere, because love is impossible between us. For I am but a Jew of Diaspora, and can only love you from far, but before I go I will kiss you again and again, a long and endless kiss, because my love to you is intact and my love to you is complete, hoping, yes, hoping that one day I will be yours and you will be mine.


Robert Littell

The 21st Jerusalem International Book Fair

On Thursday, the morning of my departure from Jerusalem, I accompanied a friend who is a member of one of the several women’s groups that opposes the occupation and monitors Israeli checkpoints around the city. We started out at 6 a.m. with the first rose-colored hues touching the top of the Temple Mount. Circling the Old City into East Jerusalem, we passed the Golden Domed mosque and came to Abu Dis, the town that abuts Jerusalem and was originally supposed to house the Palestinian Parliament if and when a Palestinian state came into existence. Nowadays Abu Dis is divided in half by a cement-block wall, topped by barbed wire, that the Israelis have constructed for security reasons. At several places along the wall Palestinians continue to cross from one side to the other simply by climbing over it when there are no Israeli patrols in sight. I saw a group of about a dozen teenage girls, in robes and white headscarves, climbing over from the Israeli side to the Palestinian side. I saw a man appear on the top of the wall from the Palestinian side and lower a small girl into the arms of a man passing underneath. I saw young boys scampering over the wall with ease. In a back street on the Israeli side of Abu Dis there is actually a gap in the wall and most of the Palestinians going from one side to the other, in both directions, use this “passageway.” You must climb up some rubble on the Israeli side and then make your way down to a makeshift ladder that has been placed against a slab of cement on the Palestinian side. There was a steady stream of Palestinians coming into the Israeli side. Dozens or so minibuses were parked at the nearby intersection, waiting to take them into the Israeli parts of Jerusalem – presumably to try and find work for the day. Accompanied by my Israeli friend, I followed an old woman and a young woman carrying a baby through the passageway, and then took a Palestinian taxi on the other side about ten kilometers to the first Israeli army checkpoint on what turned out to be a back road to Bethlehem. The Israeli soldiers, wearing the green berets of border guards, were filtering the individual Palestinians going in both directions, as well as the trucks and cars. The soldiers were young and pleasant and not at all rude (in other trips to checkpoints I have seen some that were extremely rude). Palestinians without valid passes (which, my Israeli friend told me, must be renewed monthly) were turned back. Some of the Palestinians who passed, including two men with a flock of goats, must have been known to the troops because they were waved through without having their papers checked. One young woman coming from Bethlehem was turned back. She began to argue furiously in Hebrew with the young soldier. How can you say that my papers are not valid if the other checkpoint (visible three or so kilometers down in the valley leading to Bethlehem) let me through and encouraged me to walk all this distance in the hot sun? she demanded. The argument raged for ten or so minutes. The young soldier consulted with a young Israeli officer, who appeared to give in to the logic of the young woman’s argument and she was waved through (which would seem to indicate that the rules of engagement are rather flexible). Another young Palestinian, around twenty years old, paced back and forth in the sun for the entire two hours we were there. He told my Israeli friend that he had been caught working illegally in Israel and had spent a month in prison. Because he had a prison record, the soldiers had taken his ID papers to check him out with the police. The problem was that their computer was down and they had no idea when it would become operational. Before we left my Israeli friend spoke quietly with the officer. Couldn’t he check the young man’s ID by phone rather than keep him in the sun for hours? The officer agreed to try. Minutes later he gestured for the young man to come get his papers and then waved him through the check point in the direction of Bethlehem. (It is possible that he would be stopped and his papers checked again with the police at the next checkpoint in the valley, and the next after that.) As he left the young man turned and smiled his thanks at my Israeli friend, her reward for coming out morning after morning at 6 a.m. to try and make sure that the Palestinians and their rights are respected. Before we left I spoke to the soldiers in English and exchanged high fives with one of them when he discovered that I was American. I asked them how long they were on duty at this check point. Eight, nine, ten hours one of them said. I asked if they were bored. Yes, a second soldier said, but someone had to do what they were doing. I asked if they were nervous. No, another said, with what I thought was a nervous laugh.

In Friday’s newspaper I read that at about the same time I and my Israeli friend were at this particular checkpoint, two Israeli soldiers manning another checkpoint near Hadera shot and killed two Palestinian terrorists who were trying to get into Israel. Both of them were carrying knapsacks filled with explosives.

And so the vicious circle rolls on.

Bob Littell


Steffen Mensching

I did not heed the advice of my friends, and when in Jerusalem I did all the things they impressed upon me to avoid. Don't go to the markets, shy away from crowds, and travel around by taxi only. I went to the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, and during rush hour I ventured into the shops on Jaffa Road. I did things I was urgently warned against doing: bus rides in the city, on Route 19 through King George Street, Route 1 through Mea Shearim. In the beginning I had the feeling I was playing an exotic game, of being a tourist of horror who is looking for the titillation of danger. Maybe I wanted to challenge fate? Or to be – at least for a moment – in the same situation with the people of this city?

Shabbat Shalom. Standing on the square at Ha-Mekubalim Road is a Christian tourist group wearing red baseball caps. Young Black Americans. Near them, two Hassidic teenagers perform a dance, arms hooked together, turning around, and shouting ''lei-lei-lei''. One of the Baptists asks the guide if this is a Jewish song. To this he replies that he would bet on it. The two singers disappear; the square becomes quiet, pastoral, and familiar. A couple is sitting under the beautiful maple tree which throws its shadow upon the northern side of the area, chess players are moving the pieces quietly; next to me on the bench, two cool boys are sitting, dressed in white shirts, black trousers, skullcaps (kipot) and dark sunglasses – chewing gum. The prohibition against smoking on the Sabbath seems to be a problem for them. Married couples are passing by with baby carriages. The father of a Hasidic family is running along, his sidelocks (peyes) fluttering in the wind, his two sons are following him like goslings. To the Western Wall.

“Josephus Flavius wrote only good things about Titus,” says Ari, our well-read tour guide with the New York accent. This was not astonishing as he was a guest of the Romans and therefore, he fulfilled his duty. Somewhere over our heads, at the wall of the Temple Mount, a falcon or hawk is calling. The sun dazzles. “Whose bread I eat whose song I sing,” I think and ask myself what my host expects from me. Doves are crouching on the cornices of the wall; the bird of prey is not revealing himself to me. Jerusalem, city of peace.

One soon becomes accustomed to the people carrying weapons. The young security has stuck his pistol into his jeans, and is chatting with some girls. Young solders are standing in groups, their machine guns hanging loosely around their bodies, on the side they carry their backpacks. Their attitude is quiet, earnest. One has the impression that they know what they are doing. I am not in favor of subordination and military service, but I realize that in Israel people are proud of these young men and women in uniform. Here they have something to defend.

The poster claims: “We are all settlers. All of Israel is an outpost.” It advertises a concert to which rabbis, Knesset members and other distinguished guests are also expected. Information at jewishlegion.com. I have the feeling that it deals with militant settlers and I consider whether the basic thesis they are claiming is even correct? The colonization of Eretz Israel. This is how it started. But does settlement necessitate displacing others? The waiter in the hostel shrugs his shoulders when I ask him if things will eventually get better, if he believes peace and cease fire have a chance. It is like a wave, mountain and valley, storm and tranquility. Two peoples who want the same thing, how can it work? He takes the bottle of beer and demonstrates, “Here, if two guests want it, how will one share it? One could pour the beer into two glasses and drink.” I think about this, but I am silent because I know that the image of the beer bottle is not very helpful.

Everywhere there are crossings. Layers upon layers. Sediments. Rebuilding. Destruction. Conquests. Conversions. Victories and defeats. Treason. Persecution. Burials. Excavations. Jews. Romans. Greeks. Turks. Arabs. Byzantines … I ask Ari if he goes to the eastern part of the city. No, he feels Israeli. Only sometimes, to buy food, he adds. The confession surprises me. Obviously, the Arab delicatessens must be very tempting if they allow a cool, Flavius-quoting rationalist like Ari to forget his national convictions for a few hours. I ask him if it is safe to go there. Of course, yes, but there is no guarantee. During the Intifada he was in East Jerusalem with a Polish friend. Stones were thrown at her car, they were attacked with fists. A shock for the woman from Warsaw, but essentially harmless. Hamas does not throw stones.

I want to know if it is possible to go to the Temple Mount. It is not. Two Israeli policemen are sitting at the Lions Gate; one of them wants to see my passport. Pointing to the gate I ask where it leads to. “I don’t know,” the other one says, “I’m new here.” I enter through the door. An Arab in uniform – in contrast to his unarmed Jewish colleague – is rushing towards me. He is holding a thin whip in his hand. “Stop. Where are you from?” “Germany.” “Go out, it's closed.” He shoves me through the gate. The Israeli makes a gesture of regret. This is not our fault, he seems to be saying. At the Cotton Market in the passage at Suq El-Qattanin, I make a second attempt. Eleven steps separate me from the passage; I see the golden Dome of the Rock, the blue mosaic, partly hidden behind some scaffolding. On the left, in front of the gate stand two Israelis; on the right, two Palestinians. One of the Muslim guards raises his hand; I should stay where I am, at the foot of the staircase. I watch them for half an hour. Not a word, not a glance. Passers-by cross the gate without being stopped. A man arrives, shows the contents of his briefcase to the guards on the right, talks to the Arabs, opens the briefcase, takes out a pair of scissors and starts to cut the beards of the two Muslims. Third attempt. At the Dark Gate. I am asked if I am Jewish. “No,” I reply. “Then please, go ahead,” the blue uniformed Israeli says. He points to the open gate, in front of which there is no Palestinian. The policemen are calling him. I am almost across the threshold when a young guy in a white shirt runs towards me, his cell phone attached to his belt. “It's closed.” “Why?” “It's closed.” Grinning he is talking to the two Israelis. “What nonsense, why are you chasing me away from here?” A game, I think and disappear.

The rifles of the army patrol, which turns from Sultan Suleiman Road into Salah-a-Din Street, are ready. An Arab is talking with a soldier. Young men at the edge of the street in front of the clothing shops are watching the quarrel, making comments. Silent contempt. City of peace? A powder keg. The jeep that accompanies the patrol has protective wiring over the windshield. On the bumpers one can see marks left by stones. Some meters north, at the mini-bus station, hundreds of unemployed men are waiting. Opposite the School for Bible and Archaeology there is an enormous crowd. On the sidewalk, men are sitting with typewriters on make-shift desks. Forms, office papers. I ask a red-haired woman with pale skin what the people here are looking for. “The East Jerusalem office of the Interior Ministry of the Interior,” she explains. “People have to extend their passports or submit official notifications. Some are already waiting in line at midnight. Many women come with toddlers.” The red-haired woman is Norwegian and has been living in Jerusalem for thirty years. This city is a crazy place and this – she is pointing at the crowd in front of the entrance – is so useless. A hundred and twenty people in the heat of the day, protecting themselves against the sun with umbrellas and newspapers. At the revolving door men are holding ID cards and driver’s licenses. The main crowd is standing in front of the fenced entrance. A woman with a baby in her arms is standing in front of the cage and talking through the fence with the uniformed man behind it. On the floor, between old papers and empty plastic bottles, an elderly woman is crouching. The only one who is pleased with this gathering is the owner of the High Life Food & Liquor Store next door. Sales of bottled water are impressive.

The Garden Tomb is closed. It opens only at two o'clock. Another missed attraction. I go ahead. From the tower of the mosque, the voice of the muezzin blares from the loud speakers. Further northward are new, expensive hotel buildings. Royal Plaza. They stand here, ghostly, unoccupied. Empty. Three white points are coming towards me. We meet at the gas station. Three Palestinian youngsters, eleven or twelve years old, in brand new Judo outfits. They are going to their first class and are very proud of their white tunics. “This is how they should fight, like this and not otherwise,” I think and look at them until they disappear around the corner.

The Old City is indifferent or tired, blinking
In the evening sun, with half-shut lids,
She is dreaming of unprecedented passions, too banal
For the High Priests, too pathetic
For the merchants. Cats and children understand them
In the moment of awakening and forget them immediately.

Her skin white with scars, pitted. Innumerable
Surgeries, experiments and lectures
She had to endure, proud and stoic
She turns her back to all admirers, as far as I am concerned
You can beat your heads bloody on my walls for another two thousand years.

My heart is empty like the Inner Temple.
Violence cannot move me anymore,
I have seen to much, leave me
In peace.


Erri DeLuca

The sky, the light of the stars sparkles
in one of Jerusalem’s nights you are compelled to ask: who is the spectator and
who is the actor? We or the sky, one is a comedy of the other.
In Jerusalem, the answer is given: we are the wandering theater
of one spectator, one only. He claimed loneliness and he got it,
and now from infinity he watches our multitude
grow out of the dust.
Here the sky receives light from the earth.
Here the pilgrim gets drunk from the air.
Here the bird is the parrot of the angels.
Here you can walk barefoot, the cobbler history which enlaces the sandals of whoever       came to conquer lends you the sole.
Here you can toast with tap water
      more precious than blood, sanctified by the drought.
Here the dog that barks at the moon which stood still
      above the Ayalon valley.
Here a wall inflamed with prayers acts like an omnipotent stone.
      The prayers show the existence
      of the spectator and make him flush with shame, especially
      the prayer of thanks.
Here the sky creeps to the earth, it’s border and gets entangled
      In the briars of shrubs, crescents of moon, crosses.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The man in love carves on a tree
The initials, the shape of a heart,
He does not chop it down.
But the book I am writing in the notebook
bears the inscription of a chain saw,
the cover is made of pulp from a conifer that was killed.
      Writer, plant a tree for each new book,
      restore the leaves in exchange for the pages.
Each writer owes the world a forest.

Erri De Luca            June 2003


Bernard Werber

As the early morning sun rises over the Dormition Abbey, all the scents of the past seem to rise with it.

Pollen mixes with the fragrance of the ancient olive trees. The walls built by kings and ordinary people are still saturated with the flow of history.

From Mishkenot Sha’ananim, the most beautiful city of the world offers its loveliest profile. To be right here is always a source of calm and reflection. Here one feels part of the twists and turns of human history.

It was in this region that agriculture and metallurgy were invented. It is here that weaving and pottery first emerged.

It is here, I hope, that peace and harmony will be invented, and that the Jewish people may at last know happiness and calm.


Norman Manea

Speaking to the Stone

You who dwell in the silence of eternity,
Here, in the stony hills,
You don’t know what a man is.
You no longer know how a man struggles
In the swamp of ephemeral days,
The superb days and nights of uncertainty.

I have come from Babylon,
From the ephemeral Babylon of the New World
To the Eternal City
Here
At the grave of a man who is no longer a man.

This is not the pilgrimage of the wanderer.
A Journey to the Fair
Was the name of the flight over the ocean,
Over the colorful mist of the present.
Book fair
Is the name of this mission.
That is how I once more landed here,
In front of the eternal stone
That once was a man.

A man
Rich in days and nights,
The superb days and nights
Of uncertainty.

I have come to the Book Fair
To Jerusalem,
As I did two years ago,
And four years ago.

The same desert sun
Cuts me in two, in four, in forty-four pieces,
Here, in the ancient hills
Among the whitel stones,
Torrid and mute
As the sun
Of this perfect day.

Once more the stubborn, archaic Jewish sun
Sets the Givat Shaul cemetery
On fire
Just as it did two years ago, four years ago.

I have come to the Fair
In a place that gave birth to the Eternal Book
To face the stone
That once was a man.

Four years ago
The old man was suddenly unloosed
From the ephemeral mud, the muddy ephemera,
From the intense, desperate last pain that stabbed
The walls of the aquarium-hospital.
He was separated from the days and nights
Of senile amnesia
And became a stone.

I returned to the BookFair
Two years ago
And I come back now
On this mute and torrid day
In the old hills,
In the silence of eternity.

Trips to the Holy Land
Of the faithful are cheap now.
Travelers and pilgrims are rare,
And rare, too, are the guests at the Book Fair
In the city of the Eternal Book.

Eternity is dirt-cheap
These days.
At every street corner,
On every deadly bus,
The ephemeral grenades are ready
To silence uncertainty.

In front of the stone with a human name,
In the cemetery with perfectly cut stones,
White as a hot iron,
Primo Levi is praying
In front of my father
Who has become a stone.

Primo Levi did come, yes,
This year he came to the Book Fair.

Not many had the courage to face
The hysteria of that summer.
The festivities shrank
In the Eternal City, but he is here.

Ignoring the friendly advice
Of readers, millions of them,
Who had befriended his books,
Primo Levi came to the Givat Shaul Cemetery
To raise his questions once more
In front of the stone,
In front of the Unknown Soldier
Of yesterday’s disaster
Here, in Jerusalem’s current disaster.

He is not only speaking to eternal stones.
Primo Levi is once more asking something
From those who lodge in the nest
Of the ephemeral
And return in the evening among friendly faces,
Among neighbors joined by the spectacle of the last explosion,
By the frenzy that transforms mind and body and soul
In pitiless bombs.

Consider if this is a man
Who has become a robot tearing to pieces
Old women and new-born babies
And the table where hot soup is waiting.

Consider this other man
Who sludges through the mud of uncertainty
Struggling for a scrap of bread,
A scrap of piece,
And is suddenly blown up
Without even a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman
Hidden under the tar of dynamite,
Under the jubilant hypnosis of assault,
A woman without hair and without name, only a mask of hatred
On her face, delicate as a crescent.

Consider this other woman,
Demented, with her empty eyes,
Like a frog in winter,
Tearing out her hair, suddenly white,
Like getting rid of an ancient curse,
A woman who can no longer remember
The name of the child still in her arms
A moment ago,
The last moment
When he turned into a bloody ball
Thrown up to the deaf sky,
The sky serene and boundless,
And mute as the salty chasm
Of the Dead Sea.

Consider what happens in ephemeral streets, in houses and beds,
In gardens where the laughter of lovers bears fruitm
In the vigilant night where you hear the ivory xylophone
Of the desert.
Consider the drunken funnel of phones that have swallowed the code of illusions
And listen to the shrapnel, the hatred roaring
At every minute of every hour of every day
Of the centuries that turned into stone.

Carve the memory of horror
In your day and night calendars
And repeat it to your sons
And the sons of your enemies.

If this is a man.
Consider the wanderer
Asking this question
And, nearby,
The shadow
Who came to the Eternal City
To ask the same question.

The ephemeral captive
Of uncertainty
And, next to him,
The emissary of Eternity,
Are listening together
To the silence of the stone
That had been a man.

The silence of the Givat Shaul cemetery
Is cryptic and deceptive, absolute.
Ultimate silence, ultimate certainty.
The two of them are listening together
To the silence of the stone
That was once a man.
They are blinded by the staged harmony in that peaceful, bloody hour
Of the dust’s complicity.

(translated by the author with Edward Hirsch)

�