42. Jerusalem, 1997 - Crystal veils
In which Eleanor loves a thunderstorm. Again.
Eleanor finds comfort where she can as she tries to settle into her new home. 
Eleanor
It’s the most stunningly clear crystal evening. Stepping out of Damien’s place on the Mount of Olives earlier tonight, looking out west across Jerusalem’s hills and valleys, the lights seemed like jewels. Today’s oppressive heat lifted with a stunning electrical storm earlier in the evening. We stood and watched it from Damien’s garden as the lightning lit up the sky. Occasionally a fork broke through the clouds, but otherwise it was like a silvery incandescent veil was drawn across the night sky.
Now I’m sitting up on the roof of my own apartment building. It was quick and easy to find—I’d spent just over a week in the American Colony Hotel. Wissam had worked some magic to line up options that were all entirely acceptable. I chose this one for its views. It’s in Beit Hanina, one of the well-to-do Palestinian neighborhoods, and is in one of the newer buildings there.
Hettie, the Administrative Officer from Tel Aviv, had confidently driven me around the various East Jerusalem neighborhoods. She drives up from Tel Aviv about once a month, the only person from the Embassy to come regularly. She reminds me a little of Magda, but is much less severe.
As a junior diplomat, and with no family with me, I get an apartment. Francois has his residence, a stately old Arab villa with a garden, in the American Colony neighborhood. He’s within walking distance of the Old City. In my building, across the hallway from me is the deputy head of UNRWA1, and downstairs is someone from the German Consulate-General. I haven’t met all the other residents yet. The building’s caretaker is from Ghana. Unlike Cairo, there are no bawaabs here.
As always, it’s the view that pulls me up to the flat roof tonight, Themba and Tlali happily scampering up the stairs, eager to get outside. The building’s water towers and satellite dishes, one for each apartment, are located on the western side of the roof. On the eastern side are deck chairs and picnic tables.
The storm has cleared the air. It is so crisp and crystalline I can see the lights of the Jordanian villages twinkling on the hills across the Jordan Rift Valley. It’s like I could reach out and touch them, they feel that close.
Night hides the rubble and construction debris that is everywhere here. Night hides the ugliness of the hills continuing to be torn up as the settlements expand, expand, expand. Israel builds out, deeper and deeper into the West Bank, taking more and more Palestinian land. Palestinians build up—it’s the only place they’re allowed to expand to. If they can even get a permit to build on the land that has been theirs for generations. And if they can’t—and that's the norm rather than the exception—and they build anyway, then they risk Israel bulldozing the homes they’ve worked so hard to raise a family in.
I can sit here on the roof, the settlements of Pizgav Ze’ev obscured by the roof’s parapet wall, and see the dark shadow of the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley beyond and far below. Beyond them, blurred by distance, is the jumble of the rugged Jordanian hills, the greener mirror image of Judean Desert, rising to Amman. Amman is just over the eastern horizon, its lights lightening that part of the eastern night sky.
I breathe it all in, my body still, my heart full. It is truly beautiful tonight. I can forget, sitting here under a crystal studded sky, what the reality on the ground below and around me looks like. Sometimes the ache for the beauty of South Africa, the majesty of the Drakensberg, feels overwhelming. But tonight that ache is filled with this sparkling, jeweled beauty.
Themba and Tlali come to thread between my legs, then return to nosing every inch of the roof. They chirrup and I chirrup back. Call and response.
“I’m here, you there?” they seem to be calling.
“I’m here. We’re all safe,” we all respond.
We’re all still a bit anxious, not quite settled in yet. We are family, needing each other as we create our new home. Magda’s advice from when I first arrived in Cairo still sticks vividly in my brain. “Do not make the mistake,” she had admonished me then, “of thinking that because you’re only here for two years, that you don’t need to really unpack and settle in. Unpack everything as quickly as you can. That is your job this next week. Make your apartment home, really home, and your time here will be enjoyable.”
I’ve remembered what she said and followed her advice here too. I’m on a full four year posting now—but still, I didn’t waste time. As soon as all my stuff arrived from Cairo I got to like a demon. Themba and Tlali jumped into boxes, batted paper, chased each other around the apartment—everything both so familiar, but also unfamiliar with strange scents. Everything’s unpacked now: Bedouin carpets from Dahab and my three new carpets, made in Cairo to my Ndebele designs, on the floors; Siwan shawl framed and hanging beside the other paintings and art I’ve collected; South African and Iznik pottery displayed in the hutch. I’ve put photos of Mom, Dad, Henry and Tig in the room that I’ve made my study. I’ve letters to write to Granny and Meredith, Fiona and Wendy, and others—but they can wait.
I linger up on the roof, relishing this moment of stillness in this unquiet land.
This is home now, for the next four years.
But it’s not home—not quite yet…
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Bonus Material
Jerusalem apartment: getting settled in
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). It was established on December 8, 1949, to provide relief and support to Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. Recently UNRWA had become yet another fault line in the conflict, with competing claims about it’s role and operations, which are beyond the scope of this book to address. My personal experience of UNRWA staff, both international and Palestinian, is of dedicated aid workers trying to alleviate suffering. The politicization of aid and refugee work all across the world is nothing new. And it is always devestating to those who are most in need and vulnerable: the refugees themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA