“That girl is a devil,” the man points to a huddled figure with knees clasped on top of the Ramparts wall that overlooks East Jerusalem. “Do you believe in devils?”
“No,” me and my friend say in unison.
“Well this girl stayed at my friend’s house and he tried to have his way with her you know,” he circles his cigarette stub in the air. “She wouldn’t have hm. Then one night I find my friend against the wall, his eyes bulging out of his head and speaking verses from the Quran. She’s gone." The man looks at us with hooded hazel eyes. “If you don’t believe that, her right eye bounces like a golf ball sometimes.” He jiggles his finger in the air. “She’s been kicked out of every hostel. She sits and prays all day, on Sundays.”
The sky is starting to turn a dull lavender. Our guide re-tucks his coral sweater into his jeans. He leads us along, his shoulders hunched and his feet turned out. And we roll with it, giving in to the spirit of the day. We take a secret path past a cave of bats and up through a winding dark staircase within the wall itself. We go from church to church, greeting all the old men in Arabic. He lists facts about the Catholics and Lutherans and their strange art. Then we’re on the rooftop of King David’s tomb, Ben Gurion’s first President’s Room. “This is the crazy land, not the Holy Land,” our guide mutters.
On our way down we pass by groups of Russian tourists with full faces and pink skin, religious Jews with eyes darting, and overweight Americans giving us uneasy looks. I take a cigarette, a drag, and then suddenly I’m not sure if I’ve ever been more or less aware of the people around me. Magic slips off the buildings and I see things for what they are. Actions are actions, word are vapor, and we're having a good time.
"You know I was here one night and I saw a ball of light land on the Dome of the Rock and shoot back up into the sky. "
And then I start smirking and shaking my head, because I've seen that video too and I know the person behind it. I look up at the pumpkin city night sky that shields us from the stars. What does truth matter?
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