September 10, 2003

Alison on Aliyah:  The games we play

            “Did you hear that?” Greg called to his roommate.  “That boom was pretty loud,” I heard Yonatan yell back.  I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, in the apartment of two friends in Baka, an area about ten blocks away from the German Colony in Jerusalem.  To be honest, I didn’t hear “it.”  But I came out into the living room as I heard my friend, who made aliyah two months ago from Boston, say, “Well, let’s see if we start to hear the sirens.”  Sure enough, they began screaming through the streets around the apartment, as if surrounding us.  We all exchanged a brief look and then a flurry of action began.  Greg immediately went to Ha’Aretz online, Yonatan punched on the TV and began switching channels while simultaneously leaving a message on his mother’s phone in Connecticut.  I just stood there, butterflies in my stomach.  All I could think, almost incredulously, was, “Why here?  Why now?”

            You see, I’ve already begun playing the game – the “It could never happen right here, right now, where I am, because…” game.  I’ve been on my short fact-finding mission in Jerusalem now for three days, and I’m already a pro at it.  When I’m in the city center, I look around and think, “Nah, not enough people around.”  When I went to Hebrew University on the Mount Scopus campus at 3:00pm, I thought, “Too late in the day.”  When a bus passes me, I look to see how full it is – no way an empty bus will be a target.  If I’m on a bus line that has never been bombed, I feel safe behind the track record; if it has been bombed, I figure it won’t possibly happen to the same line twice.  When I took a cab back to Baka this afternoon, I thought I was in safety paradise.  To be totally honest, I even caught myself thinking, “Maybe things will just be OK from now on” – you know, now that I am here.

            But no.  This time it happened in an area surrounded by residential neighborhoods, at 11:20 at night.  It happened approximately one and a half hours after I had dinner with friends on the same block.  And it shattered just about every illusion I had that I could keep playing these games.  “Café Hillel, Café Hillel,” I kept murmuring to myself as the news reports came pouring in, wondering why it sounded so familiar.  Then I realized it was one of our two choices for dinner that night.  Yonatan meets his friend there every day to go over their Hebrew homework.  I heard him tell her, “Tomorrow, 5:30, Café Hillel, right?” as we left our restaurant two doors down at 10:00pm.  I know now that this game of endless rationalizations that I play, that we all play here, is ridiculous and crazy.  And yet, we all cling desperately to it for survival.  If we didn’t, no one could ever leave their houses.

            So as I listened to the sirens in our neighborhood, and watched the scene on the news, and heard my friends calling their friends one by one, almost robotically (“Hi, are you OK?  Where are you?  I’m OK.  I was home.  We’ll talk tomorrow.”), I wondered, for the millionth time, why I’m here and why I’ve chosen to live in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, in one of the most dangerous periods of time it has ever seen.  Indeed, from outside it must seem pretty insane – and most of my friends and family have told me just that.

            And then I remembered how I felt when I walked into Jerusalem two days ago, how intensely I felt the power of the city and the spirituality pouring through me.  I realized that Israelis live here because they must, because they feel they belong here, because they cannot imagine living anywhere else.  Yes, this is true; even with all the pain and the fear and the violence that I know exists under the surface.. I felt utterly drawn to Jerusalem, like a moth to a flame.  And already I cannot even entertain a desire to be elsewhere.

And as I sat in a chair earlier this afternoon in my real estate agent’s house and signed a lease on an apartment in Nachlaot, one of the most beautiful and spiritual areas of Jerusalem, I knew I had made the right decision, the only decision for me.  I have spent the past three days scouring the city for apartments and trying to decide which area would be best, which Ulpan program is closest to which neighborhood, where the closest dog park is.  I saw some nice places – a few that were very modern, clean, freshly painted, new tile.. apartments I would normally jump at.  But when I walked into Nachlaot – that’s when I came home.  Immediately I felt it, like a hand on my shoulder.  And I knew, and I know, why I am here.  As I walked into what was to become my apartment, surrounded by pedestrian alleys and buildings of Jerusalem stone, I felt a warmth flood my body and a deep smile spring irrepressibly to my lips.  I’ve found my home.  Finally.  I have been here for three days, and I have already built up an infrastructure, albeit fragile, of a livelihood and community.  I have an apartment, and some furniture, and Hebrew classes to attend, and a job.  I will have a life here.. all I have to do now is play the game.