Jerusalem

Imagine yourself on a balcony in those soft moments just before sunrise. The haunting strains of the call to prayer have faded now, and you watch as a glow builds in the sky—the world laid before you like so vast an ocean, endless, a world of chaos slowly turning into millions and millions of homes and walls and streets and ruins and shacks—as the Dome of the Rock, Abraham’s rock, God’s rock, the very place worshipped as the center of creation, emerges, shining, the sun reflecting off its golden dome as that glowing sky explodes into thousands of refracting prisms of lights, bouncing in pink and orange and gold onto millions of strands of clouds, and it’s as if the entire world is shouting out to you—

 “You’re here! Can you even believe it? You’re here.”

And you step back inside, pinching yourself, dressing carefully in loose clothing,

You pass a morning that’s both lazy and industrious: lazy because you hardly moved from your plush lecture seat; industrious because your minds spun in an attempt to retain and process all of the information that you were fed, ofttimes lapsing into distracted thoughts during a particular uninteresting lecture, but then spinning and choking like a misguided stick shift engine when forced into the correct gear. It’s sixteen thousand eternities all crammed into four hours of lecture, then—

Lunch. Sweet freedom. And then, all of a sudden—

Blink. You’re running down that steep hill—the hill where Jesus taught, but now noisy busses run and children shout and grimy men loiter—and you’re passing the Israeli guards with their machine guns, wondering if someone will be stabbed today, too, but that doesn’t matter because—

Blink. Now you’re inside. Soldiers and guns fade like lenient professors during spring break. Feet pounding stone. Wind-whipped hair. More laughter. Happy chaos, students flowing like water, filling cracks and rushing like tides before dispersing, slipping into unseen alleys, everywhere and nowhere. Baklava, sticky and sweet. Treasured moments with adopted family. Honey dripping down fingers and smiling chins.

Blink. Late afternoon sun filtering through roof peaks around you. But you’re safe in a hidden world between the markets below and the walls above, and it’s all magic, and then—

Blink. Those sun rays are turning to shadows, and you’re running, laughing, shouting, sprinting back up that hill to your new home. And as you fall into bed, you hear again the minaret’s melody, and it strikes you again, like it does every time: you’re here.

Blink. You’re seated at a desk, thousands of miles away from those golden exploding sunrises and wall-like military guards and those Jesus-stepped stones and whirling streets, brimming with history that’s thousands and thousands of years old and you’re only a small, unimportant visitor.

Now the streets are orderly. There’s no boy carrying bread on his head, no vendors shouting at you from rickety shacks, no unwanted musical alarm bursting from siren-towers outside your window five times each day.

And yet, you hear again that melody, streaming through your mind like it always does, the rhythms twisting into the background of your thoughts, and just for a brief moment, once more, you’re there.