Kyoto Temples, 1994

Katsura Detached Villa: Kyoto, Japan, 1994

Reading about sushi inspired me to review some old photos we took on our two trips to Japan. The Emperor's villa is open only to invited visitors, and there's a long waiting list, but Mariko and her parents made sure we were on the list. Every detail of Japanese tradition, including a moon-viewing platform, tea houses, stone pathways, water gardens, and self-consciously rustic buildings are all included and utterly beautiful.

The World's Navel

......all that fighting over this place. Every real day, thousands of years into the past, and underlying so much of the background of Chabon's alternate history.

Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Jewish history is complicated and full of opportunists, sell-outs, optimists, altruists, realists, and dreamers. Depressing reversals of fortune and betrayals are fundamental to any part of it. It's hard to grasp any big picture of Jewish history or identity. So much is distorted, intentionally or through accidents to the people who might have told their story.

In the modern Jerusalem I've experienced, the views of history vary enormously. Black-hats (a.k.a. Hassids or Haredi) live, work, study, and possess their own view of history. Every person sightseeing or weeping at the Western Wall of the ancient Temple has his own view, I'd say. The Arabs selling tea and Oriental sweets and Falafal and Arab-logo Coke, the Christian tourists -- everybody has a point of view. Any Jew in Jerusalem surely senses the fragile nature of the Israeli success. Seeing Jewish history alive like this is scary.



In The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Chabon has made up a bizarrrely alternate Jewish history. He embeds a huge palate of characters and events in a consistent invented world where Jewish life continues despite its terrible recent past. Using just a few allusions and references, he creates an alternate end to World War II and to the foundation of the State of Israel. The Zionist dream in Chabon's alternate world means something entirely different than it meant before the war, or what it may mean now, retrospectively. The book is so self-contained that I think the reader has no time to ask if the alternate history is at all plausible. That's just not an issue, I'd say.

Comparison with Philip Roth's The Plot against America, another alternate Jewish history, seems inevitable. But Chabon's whole approach differs utterly. Roth gave us ordinary characters faced with an extreme challenge, and his point is to highlight their survival. Chabon gives us extraordinary characters, primarily policemen, murder victims, and criminals. He creates a Chassidic sect that controls organized crime in the temporary Jewish settlement in the wilds of Alaska (Did I mention that the alternate Jewish reality is in Sitka? Well, it is.) He creates a whole society of transplanted Jews who have named their streets and buildings after 19th century Yiddish heros and authors, and have adapted to life in the modern world -- especially guns and cell phones -- without really abolishing the Shtetl.

Above all, unlike Roth, Chabon never really tells us if his imagined Jewish community survives the ordeal he puts them through. Looking forward, his main character at the end of the book considers: "Any kind of wonder seems likely. That the Jews will pick up and set sail for the promised land to feast on giant grapes and toss their beards in the desert wind. That the temple will be rebuilt, speedily and in our day. War will cease, ease and plenty and righteousness will be universal, and humankind will be treated to the regular specacle of lions and lambs cohabiting. Every man will be a rabbi, every woman a holy book, and every suit will come with two pairs of pants." (p. 407) This is hope? Nah.

Characters in The Yiddish Policemen's Union speak Yiddish and curse in American, though there's rarely a word of actual Yiddish in the text. A few remember a version of Hebrew that was emerging in 1948 when disaster befell the nascent state of Israel. Their speech contains all the good humor and pithy idioms of 1920s American Yiddish, remembered with nostalgia, and written with unbeliveable skill. It's worth reading just for the dialog.

This oddball Jewish settlement has made it past the year 2000, and their lease on Alsaka is about to expire. They face an existential challenge: where will they go and what will they do, as their land reverts to the native Americans.

The plot is a police procedural: someone unknown is getting away with murder, and a cover-up is impairing the honest, committed and personally conflicted police officers (two men, one woman, lots of baggage). Love, loyalty, alcoholism, a chess master's puzzle, parents, unborn infants, a possible messiah with a gift for blessing and a curse on his own existence, international political plots, and a miasma of complicated personal stories mingle. Perhaps the most impressive and unlikely portrait is of the wife of the Chassidic rabbi and her role at the rabbi's court, which is located on an Alaskan island. Or perhaps the most impressive character is the half-Indian half-Jewish policeman named Berko. Perhaps it's the failed messiah.

Can we really picture this all happening against a background of midnight sun (like in this photo I stole from some chamber of commerce website, unlike my own original photos of Jerusalem!) Can we see these yids, as they consistently call themselves, in an imaginary Alaska November with snow, sleet, rain and cold? Well, we have to.

Did I mention that I loved every word of this book, and that I'm lost in admiration for its combination of totally improbable choices of topic, style, language, and subject matter? The way it toys with the big issues of Jewish history but doesn't make them burdensome. Or almost doesn't?

My friend Olga brought me the book, and was pleased that she had chosen so perfectly. I'm grateful to her for this choice.

Greenfield Village

"WE'RE going through!" The Commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. "We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me." "I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg," said the Commander. "Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! We're going through!" The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. . . .

"Not so fast! You're driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"

So begins "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." For him, all engines went ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa especially when he heard his own old car making the noise, a background to whatever adventure he was having.

As we drove along in an ancient and venerable Ford today, Olga suddenly understood what sound Walter Mitty was hearing: poketa poketa... went our vehicle's distributor, sparking its sparkplugs and just its general reluctance to go slow enough for the safetey concerns of the village, using its two forward gears. Does it use unleaded gas? Well, yes, it was built before gas was leaded (and later unleaded).

After our ride in the old ford, we enjoyed a number of different sights in the village.

Shakespeare in the Arb

The isle was full of noises. A flute, drums, and thunder-making devices supplemented the sounds in the Arboretum on a beautiful evening, mild and not particularly humid. The rumbling of the train and once its whistle, the songs of birds, a woodpecker drumming, a very loud creaking of a branch in the wind, a helicopter heading for one of the nearby hospitals, and the puffing of an occasional runner rounded out the noises.

"The Tempest" in the Arboretum used the entire Arb as Prospero's island. Before the performance, we ate a snack beside the Huron River, where the remains of the shipwreck that begins the play were visible on the other side of the river. (Admittedly, although we suspected they were the shipwreck we thought they also might be a homeless person's belongings.)

The play began in a rather open space beside the woods. As Prospero explained Miranda's mysterious past, an airy spirit was standing in the limbs of a pine tree. Several sprites shared Ariel's lines, as well as haunting the woods as the 150 members of the audience moved to the part of the island where the action took place, under the direction of the artistic director. Ushers in identifiable "Tempest" t-shirts guided the lines of "groundlings" who like us had brought a blanket to sit on, and the others, who had chairs or chose to stand up. Two golf carts transported those who couldn't walk.

The constant changes of scene, the movement of the sprites in the trees, and the changing light as the sun set on the longest day of the year made an extraordinary setting for an excellently acted production, which used no artificial lighting or amplified sound. As in Shakespeare's time, it began early in the evening and ended at sunset.

Prospero was excellent as particularly were the two drunken courtiers, Stephano and Trinculo. Caliban was fantastic. He walked on his hands and feet, and snarled most effectively as Stephano drank from his bark bottle:Here is how the audience filed through the woods. In the foreground is my friend Olga, who's visiting us this week:
The players bowed as the audience applauded and the sun was setting behind the trees. The only odd sensory experience was a miasma of insect repellent that people sprayed on themselves throughout the play.

Anthony and Cleopatra

I'm dizzy from reading this play where each scene moves to a different location all around the Mediterranean, and where the personal and the political swirl together more confusingly than the current political scene in France. (Parallel in the news: the loser of the recent election, Segolene Royal, has dismissed her lover and rival for political leadership of the French socialists. Bedfellows make strange politics there. They will soon be forgotten in France, and have hardly been noticed at all over here.)

In movies, there are often examples of swirls like this. By chance, in the midst of my reading the play, we watched the film Babel, which jumps between Africa, Japan, San Diego, and Mexico with alarming jumpiness, and a lot less skill than Shakespeare. (I didn't like the film much and wouldn't even mention it except for the coincident jumping.)

Shakespeare usually has a more coherent focus. At least I usually find it a lot easier to follow the action and thematic development of a play. Here, he includes many descriptions of the exotic locales. Maybe he would have been pleased to have the filmmaker's choice of showing the many settings visually, but the richness of the descriptions suggest that he loved doing it the way he did.

As I say, I feel somewhat lost in the plotting. Anthony has much to lose, and he loses it: his political power, his family connections, his military might and reputation, and his relationship with Cleopatra. She of course is suggested to be older than most women in their prime, but to have an inexhaustible prime to call on.

I could start pulling up all the utterly famous quotes that set the exotic scenes, create the amazing character of Cleopatra, and cause one to share the depths to which Anthony falls. But I don't feel the need to do what's been done so often.
Bevington's Wide and Universal Theater demonstrates that every age had a new way to visualize and present Shakespeare, and that the 19th century was especially prone to make every word into a concrete onstage image, while 20th century performances sometimes are more abstract than the original productions at Shakespeare's Globe. Here's an image I found that really goes over the top, painted by Alma-Tadena in 1883.

Marianne Wiggins: "The Shadow Catcher"

The Shadow Catcher is a highly enjoyable novel. The frame story uses a device that seems to be coming up in a lot of very recent books: the main character, who tells the story, has the same name as the author, and seems to have many similar characteristics. "Marianne Wiggins" -- the character who might be the author -- begins with some observations about artwork: "Let me tell you about the sketch by Leonardo I saw one afernoon in the Queen's Gallery in London a decade ago, and why I think it haunts me." (p. 1)

The first two chapters could possibly be autobiograpical: the narrator is a writer, trying to sell a script to an unnamed Hollywood personality. She lives in LA and obsesses about traffic and alterate ways to avoid the worst congestion. She knows about celebrities. She has a home and a car. Her book is about Edward Curtis, photographer, who created the common understanding of what it looked like to be an Indian. All the details of her life could be either truth or fiction: it's not a critical matter.

On page 43, the novel turns to "her" book. It starts with the early life of Edward Curtis's wife Clara, daughter of a painter whose works are no longer desired because photography has replaced his skills. We see how she and her younger brother happened to travel out to the territory of Washington to live with his family. As Clara meets Edward Curtis, we meet him. As he develops into a skilled and artful photographer, we see him through her eyes, and we find out how she teaches him what she's learned about painting: the link to the first thoughts of "Marianne Wiggins" and her passion for Renaissance Italian art.

A marvelous aspect of The Shadow Catcher is the constant reference to the works of Curtis, which are reproduced so much that every reader can probably visualize them. In case you don't have the photos in your mind's eye, very small reproductions of the works and of other relevant material appear in the text: I think the use of illustrations in a novel is another 21st century trick that's coming into its own. You can also find very good reproductions online -- as I showed.

Eventually a completely unexpected turn of events in the Frame Story causes an unexpected nexus between "Marianne Wiggins" the narrator, the legacy of Edward Curtis, and even the title of the book. The author leaves behind the early themes of creating visual art and of comparing photography to painting. There's nothing wrong with the way the book treats these themes, but the unexpected plot element is what makes a seemingly predictable work into an exciting read. I don't want this to be a spoiler, so I'll stop now.

Shakespeare on Stage

Around a month ago, I read reviews of several new books on Shakespeare, and decided to read David Bevington's new book This Wide and Universal Theater. I've now obtained it, and I'm in the middle -- and finding it better than I even expected.

The author has one chapter comparing how Shakespeare's own company (and contemporaries) presented battle scenes, and how they have been presented more recently. This is really fascinating.

All of Shakespeare's nine history plays and several of his tragedies "stage military confrontations, more often than not as the climax of the play's dramatic action," writes Bevington -- in fact, the importance of war was a true reflection of the reality of history during the depicted era of Henry IV onward, and continued into Shakespeare's own time. (p. 74)

"Siege warfare is a staple of the dramatic presentation of war in Shakespeare's theater," he writes. In addition, Shakespeare often depicted an open battlefield. Both of these types of warfare received conventional depiction in Shakespeare's time, and were "strikingly different from the conventions of stage fighting with which modern audiences are familiar." (p. 74-75)

The back wall of Shakespearian stages included doors, a curtained recess, and a higher-up area. This served for presentation of the battlements or gates to a besieged city. Bevington repeatedly points out that the stage was not set up in any special way, either as a gated city, a balconied mansion, or other architectural element: rather, a character voiced the descriptive detail, setting up the viewers' imagination to see the scene as Shakespeare wanted it seen. In producing battles, Shakespeare placed a variety of statements in his characters' mouths to clue the audience in to what they should imagine the stage to represent.

By describing what can be known of 16th and 17th century performances and contrasting them with the visual details of modern stage productions and films, the author clarifies how our theater experience differs from the original (though he constantly reiterates that he doesn't mean to criticize modern choices at all, just elucidate them). Modern stage conventions, he explains, use "armed men in one-on-one combat, parrying each other's swords and timing their choreographed blows so that the actors will not get hurt.... Today's theater fighting is neither modern warfare nor Elizabethan siege warfare; it is an understood theatrical convention about the way Elizabethan warfare is 'supposed' to look on the modern stage." (p. 82)

The history plays recieve much other discussion on other topics; I found the comparison of war-presentation and attitudes especially interesting.

Eight Days in Fairfax

The first photo shows Evelyn last night, just back from 5 days at a conference. Miriam and Alice were completely cooperative while she was away, but they were really glad to see her!

A week ago, they were preparing for Miriam's birthday party:




My only expedition was to Leesylvania park.

The Home of "Lighthorse" Harry Lee

I visited a beautiful park today: Leesylvania State Park, on the Potomac River and Occoquan Bay south of Fairfax. The brief historic information in the visitor center was intriguing: Captain John Smith came through here while exploring the area; the Lee family owned it throughout the 18th and some of the 19th century, and it ended up the property of a man named Daniel Ludwig, an early-20th-century billionaire who made a fortune in tanker shipping. Ludwig seems to have been the last private owner. It's been a wilderness, an Indian village, a plantation, a strategic Civil-War military blockade site, a private estate, an amusement park with a gambling pier, and now a recreation area. Today it was so hot that scarcely any people were around, but I imagine it's really busy on summer weekends.

For more photos, see my story blog post: Leesylvania State Park, Woodbridge, VA

Birthday Presents in Fairfax

Miriam got a huge pile of presents for her birthday on Saturday. She really likes them, and is sharing them with Alice. One great gift was a snap-circuits toy from Aunt Elaine. As soon as she saw it, Miriam -- who had played with snap-circuits at school -- said she wanted to make a flying saucer. This involves wiring up a twirling device that launches a wheel into the air. The 2-story front hall is a perfect location for launching this. She has also made a sound detector and an OR-logic gate with a lightbulb, following the directions with a little help and explanation. We also played one game of Mousetrap: a very nice gift.

Both girls were very enthusiastic about a makeup kit Miriam received; Tracy helped them put on makeup and nail polish. They have been hoping for makeup for a while, especially because of a couple of false alarms when a "makeup session" for ballet classes turned out NOT to be a fashion expert, but just a re-scheduled class. Here is Alice wearing makeup and Miriam drying her nails:





Last night and this morning, Miriam and Alice were playing with two Bratz dolls: Yasmin, a gymnast, and Chloe, a soccer player. As documented in Consumer Reports, removing the dolls from the fetters and shackles of cardboard, plastic, nylon rope, and metal twisters was challenging and time-consuming, but I succeeded without snipping off any hair, clothing, or limbs.

Chloe kicks the soccer ball and gets a trophy. Yasmin does tricks on the balance beam and also gets a trophy. She owns a gym bag and a water bottle. I'm really impressed by these dolls, as they at least channel imaginative play into action, rather than just dressing the dolls and brushing their hair. Each doll in fact does own a color- coordinated hairbrush, but it is only a minor part of the game.

Like most adults, I find it unnerving that the Bratz girls' shoes are removable, but they come off with a peg into the leg which also removes their feet. Yasmin's feet are bare but they come off anyway. Unfortunately, Chloe's shoes are too big to fit into the foot-holder of the balance beam, so she can only play soccer, not join in the gymnastics contest. Alice traded their feet briefly so that Chloe could try the balance beam, but this didn't seem to appeal to them.

Thinking of Istanbul

One year ago I was just about to fly from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. I started thinking about this because I just read this report about Orhan Pamuk in the Guardian online:
Guardian Article on Pamuk

I have enjoyed two visits to Istanbul, and I always keep hoping that the modernizing elements in Turkish society can prevail and support all the good things I've experienced there. Pamuk's books Snow and Istanbul also contribute to my positive view of Turkey.

Here is a repeat of a photo from my last morning in Istanbul: the Grand Bazaar. We enjoyed the vastness of it all, the painted archways, narrow streets, and constant invitations to look at rugs, scarves, jewelry, tiles, purses, shoes, leather jackets, trinkets, inlaid boxes, more rugs, and so on, I wrote.

UC Davis Arboretum

The Arboretum on the Davis campus is divided into regions reflecting international geography. The Australian region has bottle-brush trees and some odd-shaped small flowers. The California region includes coastal redwoods, wildflowers, valley oaks, and native redbuds. The Arboretum is very narrow, as it follows a watercourse that's inside concrete banks, and goes under several big roads that give access to the campus buildings. At intervals, the paths alongside the banks go up the hillside towards one of the buildings. The design is impressive: you feel as if you are in a natural area, separated from city life -- but you aren't.

Dan, Lara, Theo, and Tessa

Theo likes to pretend to be a lion just like Alice does! We had a great visit with all the Bs! More photos later or tomorrow!

Spring in the Garden

It's raining today, but finally, we have lilacs.

Cymbeline

Shakespeare begins his play Cymbeline in the middle of a mess at the court of the title character, a king in Britain. His wife had died long ago, leaving two toddler boys and an infant girl, Imogen. Cymbeline had banished Belarius one of his most loyal noblemen, and as he fled, Belarius had convinced the children's nurse to kidnap the two boys and go with him to live in the woods, where a few scenes into the play, we see them -- now adult men -- in their cave.

At the start of the play, Imogen is a young woman, and has just eloped with a visitor to court, Leonatus Posthumus, a Roman. We quickly learn that Cymbeline's second wife was beautiful and manipulative in a very evil way. Her aptly named son Cloten (rhymes with Rotten) was a very dumb clod who could hardly speak prose and virtually never spoke the native iambic pentameter of the other characters. Cloten and his mother had had a plan: he would marry Imogen and take over the kingdom. Obviously, Imogen's love marriage thwarted that, and they were angry and vengeful. The Queen can make Cymbeline do anything: she has him banish Posthumus.

Next we have a tricky part of the plot. Leonatus Posthumus brags about Imogen to the wrong people, who wager that she can be led astray. One of them has himself smuggled into her bedroom in a chest, and while she sleeps he memorizes all its secrets and steals the bracelet that her husband had given her. Wronged and innocent, she is cast out of court and soon assumes the disguise of a boy.

Now we are set up for a series of wanderings in the woods and finally a long series of recognition scenes, as fathers and children and husbands and wives are reunited. But only the good ones: Cloten, on his way to rape Imogen and kill Posthumus, is beheaded by one of her unrecognized brothers, and Cymbeline's Queen dies, repenting all her evil deeds. Spirits and Roman gods appear in dreams to Posthumus, predicting justice and harmony. And the predictions come true as Cymbeline emerges as a more kingly figure, no longer just henpecked and stupified.

Why does it read so well? Shakespeare made it all work. The interactions, though improbable, are very dramatic, and the poetry is as impressive as any. Imponderable, I think.

Mother's Day Brunch

Here are some of the guests at Linda and George's Mother's Day brunch. For the food, see the food blog --

Food for Mother's Day

More on Islamic Fundamentalists

In my previous post I wrote about the book No god but God by Aslan. I just read about another book that makes a similar point -- though in the words of the reviewer, the author, Ed Husain, is even more forceful about the moral deficiencies of the extreme Islamists. The reviewer criticises westerners who find Islamist inditements of our society to have moral merit:

In his new book, The Islamist, Husain identifies a professed horror of western decadence as the next, infinitely promising excuse for Islamist murder. "When the political pretexts of Palestine and Iraq have been dealt with," he writes, "Wahhabi-inspired militants will turn to other social grievances. Drinking alcohol, 'impropriety', gambling, cohabitation, inappropriate dress - these and a host of miscellaneous others will become excuses for jihad, for martyrdom, feeding the tumour of Islamist domination which grows in the Wahhabi and Islamist mind."

...Following a period in modestly dressed, porn-loving Saudi Arabia, Husain concluded that the Islamists' depiction of the west as morally inferior was nothing more than "Islamist propaganda, designed to undermine the west and inject false confidence in Muslim minds". And whether through accident or design, the propaganda is working brilliantly, as it coincides with an epidemic of binge drinking, super casinos and intermittent moral panic.

I especially like this quote:

Writers whose suspicions would be instantly aroused by, say, a smarmy TV evangelist who seemed obsessively interested in fornication, or a politician who relied on divine inspiration as a justification for war, seem to have no difficulty listening to the strictures of angry young men whose primary moral interest appears to be in telling women what to wear on their heads.

This is a really good article in the Guardian online -- see: Catherine Bennett: Why should we justify ourselves to those who would bomb us?

Recent Reading

I've recently read two good books, very different from one another. Both are relatively new -- first published in 2005. One way or another both books were on my amazon.com reading lists, and I recently ordered and received them, leaving only a few hundred more books to go.

The first book, No god but God by Reza Aslan is a historic study of Islam, with lots of attention paid to the modern ramifications of each historical development. I heard John Stewart interview him on "The Daily Show," and decided to read the book.

I can't get really committed to learning details of quarrels and power struggles among the desert tribes of Arabia in the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages (to use the European names of those eras). However, I was particularly interested in the portrayal of the pre-Moslem religions of Mecca and the region, and in the author's conviction that the current disastrous confrontation between the West and Islam is really a side-effect of an internal struggle between Moslems. Specifically, Aslan sees the fundamentalists vs. the modernizers as the real struggle, and the Moslem-Western battles as peripheral.

The second book, The Genizah at the House of Shepher is a novel by Tamar Yellin. I read that it won the first Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, awarded by the Jewish Book Council in March. Besides the honor, the prize equals $100,000.

At times The Genizah... is a little romance-like for my taste. The plot is slightly forced: about an ancient codex over which a large family are quarreling, with a variety of motives. The main character -- who narrates the tale -- has roots in both Israel and England, and her family connects to other Jewish centers going back into the 19th century. Despite the constant mental and physical changes of location, the book seemed very coherent to me: a personal and family story of discovery and searching.

I found The Genizah... very beautifully written, especially the descriptions of Israel and the portrayals of the main characters. Here's an example of a passage about the narrator's English childhood that I enjoyed:

Mine was a kind father but a melancholy man. All day long he worked at the factory, measuring lengths of timber with his thick fingers. He fed the timber to the jigsaw with his workman's hands. Sometimes in the evenings he would tell me stories, for in late middle-age he had remembered the stories of his youth: about Sandalfon, the guardian angel of birds, who was responsible for forming children in the womb, and about Metatron, author of the Book of Secrets and God's heavenly scribe. About Moses, who saw God through a clear glas and Elijah, who saw him through a darkened one. About the dangers of moonlight and about the resurrection of the dead. At weekends we walked the streets of our neighbourhood, stole raspberries from Mr. Mankin's garden, bamboo sticks from the municipal park. We picked up coins from the pavement and jewellry from gutters, and wherever we went I ws taught the pleasures of being light-fingered and sharp-eyed.

There was also education by omission. My mother took responsibility for that. (p. 146)

Another passage, about her return to Jerusalem, that I liked:

I came to Jerusalem at night, in darkness, after a long absence, rain streaking the windows of the taxi as we rode from the plain to the hills. Outside, at first, there were bright signs, a golden egg, a drive-thru takeaway, a gian smile surrounded by flashing lights. We might have been in America. We might have been anywhere. Then we were on the highway. We were nowhere. Darkness, hunched trees. A change in the air. A whiff of petrol and bitumen, a hint of the sea or the desert. Strangeness. Rain.

Then as we began to climb I closed my eyes and thought I had recognized the old route, its rises and turns inscribed on my memory. But the road had changed. It had flattened, uncoiled and stretched itself into something unfamiliar. And when I opened my eyes, instead of the darkness of the hills there were masses of lights, strings and clusters of lights as far as the eye could see.

"What's that?" I asked.

The driver answered: "That's Jerusalem." (p. 11)