I was back in Israel on a business trip, staying with Yeela in Jerusalem. My phone buzzed, it was Benny. We were friends since we were five years old.‘Are you up to a ride on my motorbike through Eastern Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives?’
‘Sure,’ I answered, not so sure at all. In the previous weeks two bulldozers operated by residents of Eastern Jerusalem drove into Israeli buses killing and wounding dozens of people. I tried to tell myself that Benny knew what he was doing, and if not at least he knew good doctors. He had just recovered from a breakthrough computer guided surgical reconstruction of his pelvis which he broke when he drove the motorbike into a traffic divider. If he was back in the driver’s seat who was I to cower out?
‘Where are you going?’ Yeela asked.
‘For a bike ride with Benny’
‘That’s nice, where is he picking you up?’
‘The number 15 bus station’
‘Did he say which station?’
‘He didn’t have to; it’s always been the one across the street.’
She munched happily on this tidbit of my childhood.
I went on to embellish the tale how the bus used to be the only mechanized means of transportation out of the neighborhood. A bus ride to see a movie downtown had to be setup during school hours because it did not qualify as reason enough for using the phone in one’s house. We would flock to the station which was just a pole planted at the curb, a square sign, with a red background, with the large black ‘15’ painted in the middle of a gray circle, showing the name of the bus company אגד (Eeged) painted white at the top and bottom of the sign. Back then the signs were as informative as a postage stamp. It would be years before someone had the insight to add route information so you could figure out where the bus was going. In those days route information was passed from father to son and from passenger to passenger – perhaps it was safer that way, lest the bus stop sign fall into the wrong hands…
By now the pole had been replaced by a modern metal frame supporting transparent plastic panels. Four plastic seats offered themselves with little enthusiasm. I preferred the curb. A foreign worker from the Far East joined me waiting to be picked up by a local contractor. He looked at me, probably thinking that I was the stranger.
Benny showed up. I fitted the helmet strap and off we went. We passed the museum of Islamic art and the president’s residence. Both were empty fields when our bus station was a pole. Unknown to the president his house stands atop a hammer I lost among the boulders, a few months before bulldozers and graders flattened the rocks, burying my hopes to ever recover my belonging. As we descended from the Belgian Consulate towards the King David Hotel Benny shared reflections on his recent accident.
‘You know If-tah’ he began, mispronouncing my name as all my childhood friends do. The way they pronounce my name has become a sure way to know when I first met people. ‘When you buy a motor bike you sign up for an accident…’ I could see where he was going, but had problems with his sense of inevitability – he seemed to be confusing between blind driving and blind karma. Driving without one’s eye glasses on a rainy night seemed pretty clear cut to me. We crossed the water shed, the imaginary line where water drops have to make up their mind whether they flow to the Mediterranean or the Dead Sea. Life philosophy switched to reviewing the recent projects of renovation of the historical buildings in the Mammilla compound east of the Jaffa gate. We crossed the former green line, driving right through an intersection where a concrete wall used to shield the number 15 bus route from Jordanian snipers on the Old City walls. Once over the line, part of me couldn’t help but thinking a little like a target does, but Benny seemed to be very comfortable as he weaved between the traffic jams opposite the Damascus Gate. When we reached the North Eest corner of the wall we descended to Wadi Joz and up the Mount of Olives to the vantage point outside the Inter Continental Hotel. Tourists were taking turns on a camel’s back to the joy of its owner who was charging valet parking fares for each rising and kneeling of the camel.
‘Do you want to grab some coffee at the hotel lounge or should we go into the Old City and look for place to eat?
I was feeling lucky, ‘let’s go into the Old City.’
We headed back along the ridge, through the village of A-Tur. Benny parked the bike on the sidewalk opposite the Damascus gate right next to a pair of merchants cooking meat on skewers, flavoring them with fumes from the exhaust pipes of passing cars. In the state of mind I was in I would have had no problem eating what they had to offer. We crossed through holes in the guard rails on both sides of the road and headed through the open market in to the gate, down the stone walkway of Souk Khan El Zeit, passed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, crossed the Via Dolorosa, turned left into the cotton weaver’s market, found a huge empty restaurant, ordered, ate, paid and traced our footsteps back to the motorbike. I was surprised to see how calm things were. Did Benny know what he was doing?
He dropped me off opposite the number 15 bus stop. ‘Thanks, that was fun, it’s been so long’ I said. ‘How often do you do this?’
‘It’s been at least ten years since I’ve been to the Mount of Olives’ he answered.