Yerushalayim
Luggage squeezed in, shomer in tow, everyone counted twice, we rode two-thirds of the way across the country of Israel. It took an hour.
The night had fallen and we were entering the world's holiest city to a third of its people. Even more, over half of the world, consider it sacred.
Jerusalem.
As we rode in, the guide played a beautifully haunting song, City of Gold, and I tried to see what hundreds of thousands of people had died fighting for. Was it the buildings made of stone? The soil that grows olive trees? The ancient walls? Are their ancestors buried here?
No, none of that, really. They just seem to think that their god resides somewhere here. They believe it with a passion that, to a partial observer, is intense devotion and, to an impartial one, mass psychosis.
Whatever it may be, thousands of years don't seem to have lessened it and it is Jerusalem in particular that the fight rages on about.
The night had fallen and we were entering the world's holiest city to a third of its people. Even more, over half of the world, consider it sacred.
Jerusalem.
As we rode in, the guide played a beautifully haunting song, City of Gold, and I tried to see what hundreds of thousands of people had died fighting for. Was it the buildings made of stone? The soil that grows olive trees? The ancient walls? Are their ancestors buried here?
No, none of that, really. They just seem to think that their god resides somewhere here. They believe it with a passion that, to a partial observer, is intense devotion and, to an impartial one, mass psychosis.
Whatever it may be, thousands of years don't seem to have lessened it and it is Jerusalem in particular that the fight rages on about.