G*d

It’s raining in Jerusalem. I just crammed an agnostic elegy into a crack in the Wailing Wall. Is there a G*d somewhere who can reverse our losses? Will this sacred tourist act bring Him to me for the first time? My mother and father came here too, back in the old times; a hat blew over a wall into the monastery.

There are serious men with serious beards, just in front of me, doing what looks like a serious hokey cokey, and I realise I envy them with all my heart. There’s a call-to-prayer floating across from the mosque, seductive, demanding. The market-traders are yelling and selling tat and beauty in equal measure. This afternoon we stood and commemorated - we tried to hug and to hold - the children who died in the Shoah. 1,500,000.

The horns of the cars out on the road to Tel Aviv and the Crusaders’ trumpets blare in wild competition. We get lost on the way back to the hotel and we finally arrive and breathe fire with freedom. Alive.