Quick Old City Note
I have to meet my Al Quds contacts in half an hour, so don’t have time right now to describe much of yesterday’s Old City wanderings and conversations. I will repeat something I wrote two years ago here: Despite my non-relegious, even anti-religious, leanings, hanging out inside Jerusalem’s walls makes it impossible, at least for an occasional visitor, not to mull over the incredibly convoluted contrasts that provide the everyday backdrop to ordinary life. Jesus carried his cross, according to believers, a few steps from where I sit now, on his way to his death a few hundred meters away. The Dome of the Rock, which I got close to yesterday before soldiers said only religious Muslims could enter on Saturday, stands over everything. The Western Wall, which I visited last time I was here, draws a steady magnet of Jewish visitors through the Muslim and Christian quarters I walked through yesterday. It’s all here, as I discussed with a Japanese guy from Seattle who sat down with me across the street yesterday while I had some pizza for lunch (that’s another story); he’s just finished a book on the life of Mary who, according to a sign I passed on Via Dolorosa, was born just down the street.
Gotta run.
A better view from the roof, once the sun changed direction:
