Gazelles

• The number 17 bus crosses the Valley of the Cross winds up almost to the Knesset Building, crosses between the Israel Museum and the Bible Lands Museum and goes down into the next valley, past the Itzhaak Rabin Hostel. Then it turns into Givat Mordekhai, a middle-class neighborhood of uniform apartment blocks and little greenery.
• Up it goes and down again, out to Hertzog. The woman in the front seat on the right is talking with the driver about mutual acquaintances, or maybe relatives – a wedding, who’s going to a mechanics course – when the driver says, "About here. Start watching."
• The passenger looks out the window, and I do, too. "There!" the driver says. "And there! A nursing mother." In the wild field opposite Paht, a herd of gazelles.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox