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Wall?"
    "The Western Wall. You can't have come to Jerusalem and not have seen it."
    "I came to see you." She poked me. "The Wailing Monk."
    "If you only knew." I seized her finger and held it.
    A few moments later we were walking hand in hand down the broad cobblestone ramp that led to the huge open plaza. We had been frisked by soldiers twice. The streets of the Old City and this route in particular were mobbed, even at that hour. Well before we saw them we could hear the throng at the Wall, the hum of prayers hung in the air like an electric effect, an otherworldly moan. When we came around a last bend the sight leapt at us, stunningly. Floodlights illuminated everything, the plaza, the mammoth Wall, the sea of black-hatted men. But, dominating it all, suspended above the Jews and their shrine, dwarfing them, dwarfing even that block-long construction of hewn boulders were the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa, the great Mosque, which sat on the Temple Mount, occupied it, as if it was built at the beginning for Mohammed, not Moses.
    Molly pressed my arm, her nails bit through my shirt. She had gasped and was not breathing yet. We stood where we were, straining to take in the spectacle. Thousands of bobbing Jews, beseeching not Yahweh but the stolid indifferent stone; the brilliant blue tile and the golden egg, the mammoth Faberge, of the Arab shrine; and between them at intervals along the top edge of the Wall, like forged spikes, scores of Israeli soldiers at perfect attention with Uzis between their arms and breasts. Set in the blazing light against the pitch black of night, it was like a de Mille version of the apocalypse an instant before his "Action!"
    "There is a rock under that dome, an ancient boulder. Moslems believe Mohammed ascended into heaven from it, and that makes this shrine second only to Mecca. Jews believe that Abraham offered to sacrifice Isaac on the same rock, Molly. When God spared Isaac their religion was born. That's what they're fighting over."
    "What are all these people doing?"
    "They are reciting the antiphon of Tishah-b'Ab. 'Every generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt is guilty of its destruction.' They'll be here all night, praying for the restoration of Solomon's Temple, which implies the destruction of the Dome and Al Aqsa. The Arabs are right to be afraid of piety like this."
    "Are you against the Jews?"
    "No. I am afraid for them. And I am afraid of them. Many Jews feel the same way. What I wanted you to see was that
this
land is different. Step over here." She followed me up a set of stairs that led to a narrow alley winding back into the Jewish Quarter. From the top of the stairs was another view of another dome. This one was not illuminated, but even from several blocks away, its black unornamented form stood out sharply against the sky. "That is the Holy Sepulchre. Christians revere it both as the site of Calvary and of the tomb from which Jesus was raised. This patch of earth is less than half a square mile in size; the three great religions of the world all believe it to have been touched directly by God."
    "And so they fight over it?"
    "Yes. It's absurd, isn't it? What does God think, do you suppose?"
    "I don't believe in God," Molly said. "I never understood why until now."
    "You can't blame God for the madness of his people."
    "He made them, didn't he?"
    I poked her. "Not if he doesn't exist."
    But she refused to treat this lightly. She turned from me. "I didn't say he doesn't exist. I said I don't believe in him."
    "It is not easy here to believe in God. You're right about that." I was speaking softly. Molly gave no sign that she even heard me. "When I first came to Jerusalem I was put off by the shrines, even by the Holy Sepulchre. Bad art, contentious monks, superstitious tourists. The tomb of Jesus isn't even empty; a Greek priest with bad breath and no teeth waits in there to sell you candles. I hated the decadent religiosity of this place."
    "But you stayed." She faced me.