I took this photo on the light rail on my way into Jerusalem yesterday.  The train comes in from Pisgat Ze’ev, a large settlement north of the city, and goes through some Palestinian neighborhoods on its way south.  At the Beit Hanina stop, where I boarded, having taken an Arab bus from Ramallah through the Qalandia checkpoint, the soldier on the left and the woman with the Orthodox head covering were already on the train–his crocheted kippa is the style of yarmulke preferred by settlers.  Both had probably boarded at Pisgat Ze’ev.  The two little boys, who got on at the Shu’afat stop, were Palestinians, coming home from school.  Closer in to the city we were joined by the young man in the black hat.  A utopian vision of a desegregated city, achieved through the constraints imposed by fixed paths of transportation.  Perhaps the most surprising element in the photo is the arm to be seen resting on the back of the seat occupied by the young Haredi:  it belongs to a Palestinian, just out of the photo, who’d been seated there and who simply didn’t move his arm when the man in black joined him.  Not exactly a friendly embrace, perhaps even a defiant refusal to budge, but available for a sentimentally hopeful reading.  There have been “incidents” on the light rail but it does serve two populous Arab neighborhoods and is much used by Palestinians coming in to the Old City or to the shops along the main drag in Jewish Jerusalem, Jaffa Street.

Like families that keep two sets of dishes, milkisch and fleishisch, Jerusalem keeps two fleets of busses and two fleets of taxis, Jewish and Arab.  A couple of weeks ago, having missed the last bus back to Ramallah, I found a cab by the Damascus Gate and we headed north.  As the road turned into a broad highway, we came up on a young Haredi, earlocks flying, running across the road, waving his hand in a Don’t Hit Me signal.  The driver veered around him, then said to me, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but (I’m sorry) they smell.  Yes; No: I’m sorry, but they do, they smell….I’m sorry…like animals.”  Other people, really Other people, always smell, right?  I imagined getting out of a taxi in Baltimore and having the black driver say to his next (black) customer, “Whew! Those white guys, they, like, smell. Know what I mean?”

Today, I waved down an Israeli cab on Mt. Scopus, just outside the Hebrew University, where I’d returned a book to the library, and asked him to take me to Salah ed Din, the main shopping street in East Jerusalem.  He said he didn’t know how to get there.  I told him of course he knew how to get there, he just didn’t like driving there. He said nothing but headed downhill towards Arab Jerusalem, past a bus stop where another young Israeli soldier wearing a crocheted kippa was looking for a cab ride.  My driver slowed down for him, then, realizing he already had a passenger–me–swore.  He was wishing he hadn’t picked me up for this short ride to an unpleasant part of town: the soldier would have been a better bet in every respect–he was probably going a distance–out to someplace like Pisgat Ze’ev.  The cab picked up speed and headed up towards the Mount of Olives.  Hey, I said, you’re taking me the long way around.  The cabby grumbled, made a u-turn and headed down into the Arab neighborhood that would lead him, eventually, up to the Old City and the beginning of Salah ed Din.  Traffic was heavy and blocked, momentarily, in the lane coming towards us, by a Land Rover whose powerfully built, shaven-headed driver had just jumped out of the car to rush at a bicyclist who had apparently in some way interfered with his progress.  He grabbed the youth by his shirt and was shaking him and chewing him out.  “What’s going on?” I asked, “is that guy–meaning the driver–Israeli?” “What makes you think he’s Israeli?” said my driver. “He’s Palestinian.”  I shut up, unconvinced.  We continued up towards the Old City at a creeping pace.  The driver took out his i-Phone and punched in a number.  A woman’s voice came on, heavy with pathos.  The driver asked some solicitous questions in a dead voice.  I couldn’t understand the Hebrew being exchanged, but I recognized the deep tonal structure of the conversation: my driver was on the receiving end of a totally recognizable Jewish guilt trip.  He hung up.  I grinned.  “I bet that was your mother,” I said.  He agreed, unsmiling.  We inched forward in traffic.  A sour guy with troubles of his own, he had no more to say.  When we got to the base of Salah ed Din I paid him the slightly outrageous sum he’d demanded and told him, as I was getting out, to tell his mother that he’d picked up an American Jew who had ruined his day. It was a shitty thing to say.  Things get to you, here.