Once upon a time in Jerusalem,
And this time, the intersection of the Xs during the time of the British mandate.
The Xs intersection is the intersection of Jaffa, King George Streets and Strauss Street.
The British policeman, who looks reddish from the Mediterranean heat even in black and white, directs traffic away from the famous British coolness, in soul and weather.
The local bobby stood on a wooden platform with arrows and direction signs in English, and a small umbrella to shade from the hot sun.
To the left of the policeman’s stage is the columned building that still stands in all its ugliness,
that occupied stores like Freiman and Bain where kids would go with their parents to buy shoes, and between measurements they would go around on a small wooden merry-go-round, a kind of extreme entertainment and the attraction of those days,
Really Disneyland.
Schul shoes, fur shops, carpets, and a cafe,
The heart of the old city center.
To the left and behind are two buses of the Linker, at the entrance to the first central station of Jerusalem, well before Herzl and Romema avenues.
Today the new and the old live in constant confusion,
The columned building still stands and the sheltered tenants in the shops cling by the tips of their nails to the old stone walls,
The buses of the linker were replaced by the light rail,
The trees on both sides of the Strauss Street rise still constitute a night hotel for the hundreds of surrounding birds, and a source of bombardment of bird secretions for the passers-by who pass below and are unaware of the public toilets on the tops of the thick trees.
This is our Jerusalem,
Shabbat Shalom to all, far and near, from Jerusalem.
