A local by the name of Noam took us to Shalom Falafel to get some lunch: exquisite. Then we wondered in this neighbourhood: rows of low two-storey houses flanking a pedestrian area. On a hill, as customary.
The whole city occupies hilltops. The city is just patches of built areas on hilltops, leaving to roads and parks all the low-lying areas. It is fragmented. It shines like warm gold in the beautifully dry air of a summer dusk, as it is all built of this Jerusalem stone.
It is fragmented and it feels magical. The Old City is a textbook orientalist city landscape, with covered cobbled streets and innumerable Palestinian shop owners. The Tomb of Christ is guarded by a rude and abrasive Greek Cerberus, a rough and harrassing Greek monk, of the petty type that Greeks would call ‘stern’ or ‘strict’, a character ultimately disrespectful of what he was doing, i.e. guarding the entrance to the holiest shrine of his faith. Next to me was standing a Russian woman of an unworldly beauty, with a beatific expression all over her but desirable at the same time. The Sepulchre itself is an Experience.
A propos, Israeli women are stunning in the literal sense: they stun you and you cannot help looking at them.
And I understand why one could love this city, even if one does not care about religion and mass delusions.
"... neither reveals nor conceals" 