By Jordan Pelc

There are many terrible answers to the question “where do you stand,” and the worst I can ever remember giving was “in Jerusalem.”  Jerusalem?  I’ve heard of that place before.  An imaginary place.  It lies directly between the edge of reality and the end of time.  It lies at the centre of the universe.  How strange to end up so far away.  I’d just gotten off the bus from somewhere that seemed a lot closer.

Like only the best of imaginary places, Jerusalem was wondrous to experience.  Oh, I remember Jerusalem.  I remember dancing through the night with the living streets, the stars, the smirking moon, the night breeze.  I remember disappearing through narrow alleys marked by ancient arches, religious hippies with their dreadlocks and their night celebrating the place itself in their private corners of timeless stone.  I remember bars without ceilings or entrances, stepping between the definition of in and out of doors, while the city, delighting in this, presented us everything at once: moonlit food vendors beside kippah stands and accessory shops, an uncountable range of difference among this same people wandering the streets in their respective, identical joy; this particular, infinite night, this tiny thing living and breathing upon the eternal bones of our total history, each of my dancing footsteps upon the invisible imprint of every other child of Israel who had ever seen the night.  The city was with us.

“I’ve got to show you something,” said the accent to my left to the rest of us strangers, to his foreign family convening from different hemispheres of geography and language and religious thought, pulled towards the epicenter through thousand-year-old gravity.  Down, down we went through the gate to the Old City herself, down to nearly the Wall, even.  The rest were too shy to come into the yeshiva with us.  “This way.”

I chased him up those enormous steps, twisted out the window and up to the roof, my eyes suddenly cupped closed by those foreign hands from behind me, as I was pushed farther and farther along the blind rooftop in the universe’s most perfect summer breeze.  “Open them.”  Everything, Jordan.  Everything.  The lights of Jerusalem at night.  The spires of time itself.  Every Passover, every postcard, every desperate prayer I was ever taught.  All of the pain, and hope, and broken promises of Israel, all these things always etched upon my heart, redeemed by this infinite candle at the centre of the world.  It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, the deepest gift to the Jewish soul.  Home.  The City herself was glowing.

“Isn’t it amazing?” someone said, when we finally convinced the rest to come up with us, “that full moon, it’s the same moon in Canada and Australia and Mexico, the same moon we all always see, here on this other point of earth.”

Earth? I thought.  Not the place with the Western newspapers?  We’re at the centre of time, man.  That’s not the smirking moon.  I left that at home.

“Why aren’t there any Palestinians in your photographs?”

“What Palestinians?”

“Weren’t you in Jerusalem?”

“Where?”

Like all imaginary places, Jerusalem appears on the tongues of people lamenting their exploded relatives, their old homes, their traditions and their dead.  Like all imaginary places, Jerusalem appears regularly in Western newspapers, photographs of people’s fragmented skulls, and such, scattered as politics and entertainment through curious eyes – mine, for instance – who think the dead are quaint or entertaining.

My unofficial tour began with the bullet holes in the Ottoman wall.  “From the Six Day War,” she explained.  An imaginary war of the ancient history of this ancient town.  “Like Quebec City,” I thought to myself, looking at the costumed young people, dressed like antique soldiers with their enormous assault rifles.

It is a strange city, dripping with history like no place I’d ever been.  Don’t tell me you understand this place; I won’t believe you.  Don’t tell me the museums of the city can be understood by men.  For the city itself is the museum.  Exhibits built into the layers of time and stone, as all around them modernity keeps on building.  How many times has this place been conquered and reconquered?  How many have proclaimed it their rightful gift and home?  Strange that people used to live and die for this city.

I’ve heard of this place called Jerusalem.  Invention of an old textbook, capital of kingdoms, dream of crusaders’ hearts.  I’ve heard of the make-believe cemeteries where real bones are buried, as if such things could be housed upon the earth.  Beside checkpoints and exploded buses, if they are to be believed.

“I truly believe it is the centre of the world,” Eitan said with a smile.  “You’ve seen those olds maps, haven’t you, where it was shown as exactly that?  A holy city of three faiths, the centre of the world’s religious soul.  The meeting place of timelessness with the modern world.”

“Isn’t that weird?” I said, looking at the pavement carved around ancient walls, at a city to which I’ve never been.  “People are looking for parking.  It’s the twenty first century.  They’re not living in history, anymore.”

Eitan is an old friend, someone I knew for years in Canada before his family moved to Israel when he was nine.  Eitan has been to Jerusalem; I’m sure of it.  He taught me not to fear the buses the first time I was there: I ride them every day, Jordan; I have ridden them for years, Jordan; this is my life, Jordan.  We traveled there together, him on the way home from his army base for the weekend, me to spend Shabbat with his family as one more stop on my vacation.  How strange to see him carrying an assault rifle.  It looked a great deal heavier than my bottle of water.

“I could never live anywhere other than Jerusalem,” he said to me.  “It is the best city to live in.”  He paused.  “A complicated city to live in.  But the only city for me.”

“Indeed,” I said, dreamily, “imagine living in Jerusalem.  All those fabulous, endless nights with the wind and the lights, the days with the rebuilt temple.”

“A complicated city to live in.”

“Complicated indeed.  Imagine trying to figure out what year it is, to interpret the eternity of our people.”

“I mean the conflict.”

“Conflict?”

“With the Palestinians.”

“What Palestinians?”

“Weren’t you in Jerusalem?”

“Never heard of them.”

“What?”

“Oh, those Palestinians.  No, I wouldn’t worry about that.  I’m sure if you guys just talked it over no one would be upset anymore.”

“A complicated city to live in.”

“The centre of the world?” I laughed.  “My god, Eitan, you’ve been out of Canada too long!  Get some perspective.  It’s not like everyone on earth cares about this place.  Holy city for three faiths, indeed.  Only three, Eitan, only three.  Nobody even lives here!  No Sikhs, no Hindus, no Buddhists, for example, no Muslims, no Christians, no Jews.  The centre of the world is Toronto, Ontario.  The intersection of two lines in the middle of the Atlantic.”

“This is our stop.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

“I don’t know, man.  This looks like a real place.  I see people looking for parking.  I see your parents waiting with their gas-powered automobile.  I see children trembling with fear.  Let’s try the next one.  I think it’s the end of time.”

“So you hate the Palestinians?”

“What?”

“Isn’t that what you just said?”

“What?” I asked, shocked.

“You said you’re with Jerusalem.”

“Jerusalem?  I thought I told you.  I’ve never been there.”

“So you hate the Israelis.”

“What? I thought I told you.  I’ve never been there.”

There are many ways out of Jerusalem.  Well, only one, if you mean the bus station, but I think you’ll agree that’s not what you mean.  I’ll take you from Jerusalem the way I got to leave, in a taxi with a driver who wasn’t ready for me to go.  “When’s your flight?”

“Eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Then I have to show you something,” he said, turning the wheel with tremendous gravity and duty.  “I have to show you what has happened here.

“A bomb went off there.  And there.  And there.  And,” he said, dutifully, entirely matter-of-fact, “my brother was killed there.

“Come back here.  This is your home, brother.  Promise you’ll come back here.”

“Yup, eight o’clock,” I said.

It reminded me of this concert Eitan took me to.  He wanted to show me Jerusalem at night, knowing and not knowing that I’d already seen it.  There we were, Eitan and me, these old friends, carriers of assault rifles and bottles of water, dancing upon living history and eternity in that same place of the perfect night breezes and endless time, the old, Ottoman train station reverberating electric with modern rock.  They sang of peace in the Holy Land, of not caring which side you were on, and as I heard the words I was overcome with joy that at last the people of this sacred place had matured their way out of history.

I could imagine it then.  An historic way out, the way by the train station.  Don’t get me wrong, it didn’t happen, not even in my imaginary world.  But I was wondering if it could have.  A bomb.  The tearing flesh and lights of this rock concert.  Eitan charred and in pieces.  Not me, of course.  I was safe.  I was in Canada at the time.  I was on vacation in Jerusalem.

Uh, yeah, so in answer to your question, it’s sort of hard to say.  I’d say I’m in Jerusalem, of course, but I know I’ve never seen it, I know I just can’t get it.  I’m in Jerusalem, of course.  If you could be where I have been, I’m sure you would agree.

Biography

Jordan Pelc grew up in Toronto.  He is now in his fourth year of a bachelor in arts and science degree in physics and philosophy at McGill University in Montreal.  He spent part of last summer volunteering for Magen David Adom in Israel.