in the sunlight and the silver olive trees twisted their trunks in
graceful agony upon the terraces which were the monuments to six
thousand years of man's patient labour.
It was so familiar and yet subtly different from those fair and
well-beloved hills of the southern cape he called home. There were
flowers he did not recognize, crimson blooms like spilled blood, and
bursts of sunshine-yellow blossoms upon the slopes, then suddenly a pang
that was like a physical pain as he glimpsed the bright flight of
chocolate and white wings amongst the trees, and he recognized the
crested head of an African hoopoe, a bird which was a symbol of home.
He felt a sense of excitement building within him, unformed and
undirected as yet but growing, as he drew closer to the woman he had
come to see, and to something else of which he was as yet uncertain.
There was, at last, a sense of belonging. He felt in sympathy with the
young persons who crowded close to him in the cab.
See, cried the girl, touching his arm and pointing to the wreckage of
war still strewn along the roadside, the burned-out carapaces of trucks
and armoured vehicles, preserved as a memorial to the men who died on
the road to Jerusalem. There was fighting here. David turned in the
seat to study her face, and he saw again the strength and certainty that
he had so admired in Debra. These were a people who lived each day to
its limit, and only at its close did they consider the next.
Will there be more fighting? he asked.
Yes, she answered him without hesitation.
Why?
Because, if it is good, you must fight for it, and she made a wide
gesture that seemed to embrace the land and all its people, and this is
ours, and it is good, she said.
Right on, doll, David agreed with her, and they grinned at each other.
So they came to Jerusalem with its tall, severe apartment blocks of
custard-yellow stone, standing like monuments upon the hills, grouped
about the massive walled citadel that was its heart.
T. W. A. had reserved a room at the Intercontinental Hotel for David
while on board the inward flight. From his window he looked across the
garden of Gethsemane at the old city, at its turrets and spires and the
blazing golden Dome of the Rock, centre of Christianity and Judaism,
holy place of the Moslems, battleground of two A thousand years, ancient
land reborn, and David felt a sense of awe. For the first time in his
life, he recognized and examined that portion of himself that was
Jewish, and he thought it was right that he should have come to this
city.
Perhaps, he said aloud, it's just possible that this is where it's all
at.
It was early evening when David paid off the cab in the car park of the
University and submitted to a perfunctory search by a guard at the main
gate. Here body search was a routine that would soon become so familiar
as to pass unnoticed. He was surprised to find the campus almost
deserted, until he remembered it was Friday and that the whole tempo was
slowing for the Sabbath.
