A Slice of Tranquility in a Sea of the Complicated

This afternoon, I rode my bike to the Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City, and wound my way over the ancient stones of Via Dolorosa to the Austrian Hospice. Outside Damascus Gate and along the narrow passageways into the Old City, the bustling, hawking, noisy, chaotic life of East Jerusalem filled the air and shoved me this way and that as I picked my way along the smooth stones. Today, on Shabbat, all of West Jerusalem is silent and still. Nothing is open, save a few places that you'll only find if you know what you're looking for. But half a mile and a world away, East Jerusalem is bustling with life -- children chasing each other through the grass outside Damascus gate; women sitting in the middle of Via Dolorosa with their piles of leafy vegetables, parsley and nana (fresh mint) arrayed around them; men pulling hot pita out of ovens and others sailing down the Old City smooth-stoned streets on tires pulled behind laden carts; vendors of all sorts shouting prices and deals in the la-la-la singsong sounds of Arabic.

I managed to brush past nearly all of them and arrived at the Hospice only a 5 shekel bag of nuts heavier. A giant, heavy, and very locked wooden door faced me, and I nearly walked around the entire city-block sized complex before a kind woman, sweeping the alleyway in front of her home, told me how to get inside. I found the bell she had described and rang it. From the close-quartered hustle and bustle of one of Jerusalem's most crowded alleyways, I pushed open the doors into a space of indescribable and mesmerizing tranquility.

I am convinced that the garden patio in Jerusalem's Austrian Hospice is one of the loveliest man-made spaces in the whole world. I spent the afternoon in the tranquil, tree-shaded garden, sipping cappucino and savoring delicate apple strudel while reading my books, warmed by the soft Jerusalem sun streaming in through the trees -- delicate fern-like droopping branched trees and palm tress and cacti and pines. The rooftops of Jerusalem climbed upward beyond my view, piled atop each other, made of sacred stone older than imaginable and adorned by domes, crosses, and satellite antennae. I could still hear the cries of children in the streets, the patter of a thousand footsteps, voices of those buying and selling. The close-quartered chaos of the Old City. But seated at my pretty tiled table, beneath the trees and between the flowers, I was wrapped in tranquility, the chirping of the birds, the sun playing with its shadow through the old stone arches, around the flowers, and along the walls of the Hapsburg hospice. Occasionally, a white-robed nun walked by and smiled at me. Once or twice, the strains of song drifted into the patio - a touring church group singing inside; monks chanting from the alley below.

I climbed the stairs through the heavy old building, founded in 1857 for the Austrian Consul and as a protector of the Catholics and Ashkenazi Jews. From the rooftop, the whole world stretched into view. East and West. The Old City and the neighborhoods, hills, and valleys beyond. The defining golden Dome of the Rock, echoing yesterday with the prayers of Muslims observing their holy day, and practically touch it the Kotel (Wailing Wall), its plaza today full of Jews observing the Sabbath. Mount of Olives, Mount Moriah. Churches, synagogues, mosques. A thousand rooftops on a thousand homes on the foundations of thousands more, built over by conquerors and centuries and time. It's impossible not to feel God in this place, or awed by what dreams of God have inspired.

Yesterday, I strolled barefoot through the Mediterranean sands in Tel Aviv as the sun was setting, danced till dawn at a reggae festival, and fell asleep against my friend and his puppy dog as our Arab-driven mini-sherut sped into still silent and slumbering West Jerusalem. Today, I studied Hebrew in a Catholic Hospice in the Muslim Quarter of an ancient city, bought tahina from Ramallah, pita warm from the oven, and fresh vegetables from street vendors, before biking home through streets empty and silent in religious observance, rode my bike to my climbing gym (closed because of a popular post-Sabbath football match in the stadium it occupies), and typed a report on Palestinian-Israeli cooperation in science in a German Colony beit-kafe (coffee shop) with the only drip coffee I've found in the city. Tomorrow I go to Be'er Sheva in the Negev Desert to visit unrecognized Bedouin Settlements and work with a local Iman and a group of academics on their the Israeli Bedouin's terrible infant mortality problem.

A typical weekend in Israel, what a crazy place. It can make your blood boil, it can confuse you relentlessly, and it will probably haunt your dreams. But it's impossible not to love. Something about it -- the air, the sun, the soil. The absolute spontaneity and unpredictability. The white rocks, blue sky, and dusty rolling hills. The everywhere art and music, the long-haired religiously unreligious hippie types, the homes of so many kinds of prayer, the history and meaning inscribed into every last bit of dust. It sucks you in and inspires to distraction. Impossible not to love. Maybe that's the problem.