Three Days, Three Shuqs, Three Falafels
I catch a lift with my cousin Ronital from her home outside the city into the honking streets of Jerusalem. She drops me on her way to the university, a few blocks away from the city centre. It's been ten years since my last visit to Israel, and memories float back with ease. A favoured pub, a well-shaded park, a common spot for buskers.
I remember the route towards Jaffa Gate, one of eight entrances into the fortressed city of Old Jerusalem, and make my way towards the forty-foot high stone-block exterior walls. With the walls to my left, it's easy to imagine away the traffic to my right, replaced by sparse forests of previous millenia, this city first established on a moutain top three thousand years ago. The fortress walls, a mark of the 14th century Ottoman rule, surround the ancient city, which has been built and destroyed on six previous occassions, successful regimes building atop the rubble of the conquered. Today, the city is divided into three neighbourhoods, Jewish, Muslim and Christian, with the Jaffa Gate opening on the divide between the Jewish and Muslim sections.
Through the gateway, the sounds of traffic are replaced by men offering their guiding services and the quiet conversation of congregating tourists. There's a road that extends the perimetre of the Old City, a modern-day contribution, the space providing a view on the tightly-packed frontage of buildings three stories tall. Between two of the buildings sits an opening, maybe eight feet across, that leads to a downwards-sloping cobblestoned corridor. This is an entrance onto the Shuq Aravic, the Arab Market.
The market is divided into small, windowless stalls, from which merchants sell everything from cups to rollerblades to meat to carpet to jewellery to hot tea to anything else of possible interest. Displays are simple, with small tables and cloth-covered crates extending stalls into the corridor, adding to the already dense and dark feel of the market.
(I will return to finsh this later)
Posted by Eric on 03.03.07 @ 10:23 AM EST [link] [No Comments]
