About 30 years ago, when I was still rather new in Israel, and the country itself was both newer and older than it is now, I saw a film about Jerusalem as it was then. A recurrent image was a scene of pedestrians crossing at Jerusalem's very first traffic light, at the junction of King George St., Strauss St. and Jaffa Road -- then the heart of west Jerusalem. Then as now, you could cross that junction in six directions when the light was green for pedestrians, and the bustle was so great that the film's dizzied protagonist passed out in the middle of the x created by the striped pedestrian crossings.
This morning I darted across that junction on red, making for Ma'ayan Stub, one of Jerusalem's oldest commercial establishments. Go into Ma'ayan Stub, soon to exist no more, and forget the glitz of modern Israel. The salesladies, piously bewigged, were all older than I am, and I'm no young bird any more. Worn, dark wooden floors, shelves, counters. I asked where the towels were and was directed to the kind of creaky old staircase that takes me back to childhood haunts in America. With the help of another aging saleslady, I picked out two towels and asked where to pay. "Go downstairs, and I'll take the towels down," she said, and she walked to a railing overlooking the cashier's desk and dropped the towels straight down. Back down the staircase, I asked if I'd come to where my towels had fallen. "They didn't fall, they landed," replied the aggrieved cashier.
It'll be gone soon, to make way for some gentrified development or modern store. Go in there and smell it while it lasts. It's not the perfumed reek that greets you in the Mashbir, still Jerusalem's only department store. Go in there and remember that the smell of Jerusalem is -- also -- the smell of old wood and dust.
