NOTE #1 JERUSALEM´S UNDERWORLD

I seem to be drawn to political powder kegs. Perhaps because I want to understand the human motivations behind political conflicts. At the age of 22, I found myself in the middle of such a powder keg when I decided to write my law thesis on the implementation of human rights using the example of ‘Religious freedom in Israel?’ Armed with a rucksack and laptop, I got off at the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's Old City and let the sight of the millennia-old city sink in. There is no place on earth that exudes such a captivating yet destructive energy as this city. For me, at least.

I wanted to write my thesis in the epicentre of this religious powder keg and found a room very close to the Western Wall, which stretches like a bridge over a small alley between the Jewish and Palestinian quarters of the Old City. From one window, I could watch the activities of the Orthodox Jews and from the other, those of my Palestinian neighbours. It was the perfect place to write about religious freedom in a country where this human right is constantly in conflict with itself. My new home had only one catch: my landlady Ilona, who suffered from bouts of insanity and whose second home was the Jerusalem mental hospital. Ilona had survived the Holocaust as a child and later became a renowned doctor in Israel. The origin of her illness lay in her childhood experiences, but it was only in old age that her seizures and nightmares became more and more frequent.

Ilona thought my thesis idea was brilliant and insisted on helping me. She had friends in the highest circles and even knew Arafat personally, whose son she had once saved. As a doctor, she was respected by both Palestinians and Jews. She helped both sides and believed unwaveringly in peace. For four months, I lived with her as the daughter she never had. I owe her many unforgettable experiences, which became increasingly bizarre and adventurous the closer she came to her next seizure. For weeks, she was obsessed with organising a personal meeting between me and Arafat and made cryptic phone calls to the highest circles. She said she was being bugged by Mossad and had to be on her guard. To this day, I don't know if she really knew Arafat or if he was just part of her delusions. Perhaps I would have actually met him back then, had her schizophrenic episode not thwarted my plans.

Once, Ilona woke me up in the middle of the night, saying she would show me the underworld of the Wailing Wall, a place normally inaccessible to non-Jews. The place where the remains of the First Temple were supposedly still located. A secret labyrinth of thousand-year-old corridors lit by oil lamps, known to very few. So I stumbled after Ilona in the middle of the night, down to the Wailing Wall and then into this underground Jerusalem, this secret city beneath the city. Deep inside this labyrinth of underground water channels, ancient walls and caves, I saw them: countless ultra-Orthodox Jews. Each prayed at their own pace, each on their own. It was very peaceful down there, like in a dream. And then I understood: Ilona had taken me there to show me, the non-believer who wrote about religious freedom, the essence of her Jewish faith. Not with words, only with images. Later, I often descended the stairs to the Western Wall and secretly looked at the ancient iron gate that blocks the entrance to Jerusalem's underworld. But I never saw it open again.