The Jerusalem Puzzle Read Online Free PDF Page B

to life. It had originally been built by Herod the Great in the early Roman era. Beside it was a gap in the old city wall, which cars could drive through. The gap had been made in 1898 to allow the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, to drive into the Old City.
    On either side of the gate the crenulated city wall ran away left and right.
    When General Allenby took Jerusalem in 1917, recovering the city from Islam after seven hundred years under its control, he entered the city on foot, through the original arched Jaffa Gate.
    The gate is to the west of the warren of flat-roofed, sand-coloured buildings and alleys which make up the Old City. Once inside, to the right is the Armenian quarter, to the left the Christian quarter and straight on, the Muslim and Jewish quarters.
    The road for cars curved to the right beyond the gate and there was a small paved area on the left lined with shops and cafes. These buildings were all three and four-storey high Ottoman-style shops with tall windows, rooftop balconies and arched entranceways. Plastic signs, canopies, and racks of postcards lined the pavement in front of the cafes, tourist offices and money changers.
    ‘I’ll have the lamb kebabs and a coke,’ said Isabel to the white-shirted waiter who hovered over us. I ordered the same, with a coffee. Talli just ordered coffee.
    ‘I hope he doesn’t let us down again,’ she said.
    ‘Let’s enjoy our lunch, whatever happens,’ said Isabel. ‘We don’t get lunch in Jerusalem every week.’
    ‘What do you do, Isabel?’ Talli asked.
    Isabel spent the next few minutes telling Talli about the low-level job she used to work at in the British Consulate in Istanbul. I think she overplays all that. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else who makes their previous job out to be so lacklustre. Talli’s eyebrows kept going up as Isabel described rescuing drunken businessmen from the wrong bars near Taksim Square.
    Beyond the window of the cafe, I watched people walking up from the gap in the Old City wall. Three policemen were talking to each other by a set of concrete bollards near a taxi rank on the far side of the road.
    All kinds of people were passing the window: priests in black habits, monks in brown, nuns with their hair covered, a group of Arab women similarly modest, American tourists, Chinese tourists, Israeli girls giggling.
    A white police car drove slowly by.
    The rain had stopped but the clouds hadn’t gone away. They were stuck above us, like a lid over the city.
    ‘My grandfather’s brother died near this gate.’ Talli turned, pointing out the window.
    ‘When was that?’ I thought she was going to tell me about some suicide bombing incident.
    ‘In ’ 48. He was in the Haganah. He fought against the British, then against the Jordanians. At this gate the fighting was fiercest. The Arabs wanted to kick us all out of Israel. I’m not kidding. He was shot in the head. He lay right there for four hours before his comrades could get to him.’ She pointed at a spot halfway back to the gate.
    ‘We didn’t win the Old City that time, but he opened the way for Jerusalem to be free for Jews after fourteen hundred years of ill treatment and exile.’ She paused and looked down at the red and white chequered tablecloth.
    ‘His girlfriend, Sheila, she never married. I met her once. Her eyes were pools of sadness. She was so incredibly beautiful when she was young. But she was old and grey when I met her. And now she’s dead.’
    I glanced out the window. Two Orthodox Jews, seemingly pressed to each other for solidarity, moved fast past the window. Their long beards were black and thick, their shirts crisp and white.
    Walking towards us was an older man in a faded cream suit. The girl who had approached me in the university car park was beside him. A vein thumped in my throat.
    Why was she here?

9
    The British Embassy in Cairo is in Ahmed Ragheb Street, in an affluent suburb called Garden City, on the eastern shore of the