Pretend you know nothing. No politics, no religious conflict; no war, no prejudice. All you know is you’re in the Old City of Jerusalem, strolling along the ancient cobblestones surrounded by towering walls of Jerusalem stone. You’re in the Muslim Quarter. You’re Jewish, obviously so, the fact revealed by your pale skin and the typical characteristic garb not often found milling about in an Arab-populated area. Your mission in the Muslim Quarter is simply to see, observe, and absorb life in Jerusalem.
This is what you see.
A roadblock, created by Arab boys no older than ten years old from cardboard boxes. What do you think?
Personally, I experienced a combination of feelings, both bewildered and just plain dumbfounded. “Adorable,” said my tour guide, a representative of Ateret Cohanim, an organization that brings Israeli Jews to live in properties of East Jerusalem in an effort to reinstate a substantial Jewish population in Arab-dominated areas. (The organization has no website because it doesn’t want to publicize the names of the Arabs who sell their property.) To an extent, I concurred: The young Arab boys were cute, attempting to engage complete strangers in a silly little game.
And while it is, in fact, just a silly little game with no apparent strings attached, why is barricading complete strangers considered a way to have a good time? What pleasure did these boys get from blockading my own cousins and grandparents from innocently continuing on their way down the road? From where did they learn this? I’m a bit afraid to know the answer.
We encountered a troubling dilemma as we approached the carefully constructed cardboard box barricade. The boys demanded a password; without it, we’d be “stuck.” Our tour guide pointed out that the password must be an Arabic one, for that was the boys’ language. What could it be?
Salaam. That was the password.
We broke through the barricade and continued on our way. The boys ran away to halt other innocent passerby with their cardboard boxes.
