She stopped at a crossroad to pick up the friend she had invited, a smiling and nice girl with the name Osem who told us with sleepy but happy eyes about her full day and about the lesson she should teach the next day at the university and about the time she could not find to prepare the papers, but neither Eti nor I asked her why then she was there together with us, she would have accompanied us without complaining and often Eti would talk to her about her job, her life, her hopes, her encounters, her pursuit of answers in religion and her voids while swimming in that sea so full to which she wished to come back and which she wished to maintan as a shield to open for her again the window on the world she felt to be alien to, but she could not talk directly to me and I listened to her while she repeated for the second time to her friend the words she had already said to her.

Three times we crossed walking the Armenian quarter to look for the road to the Wailing Wall, ten times an exhausted Osem smiled toward us and encouraged us to go on while she picked our words in the small roads of bricks of coloured stone, among people of every colour and she addressed them exactly toward the one where they had to arrive. Through her we spoke about perfumes and worlds and I looked for the wake of Eti, every time she appeared to depart away, until I understood and stopped to speak to her and I told to Osem, the silence which approached us, words darting as luminous goblins in the night in the small roads of the ancient city of Jerusalem, at first they ran in front of us, then they stopped to wait for us mockingly to escape, when it appeared that we were almost on the way to catch them with our senses.

Under the arc which we both came to see, so wide, in clear stone, among buildings so narrow in clear stone too, which gave not the way to escape to our gaze, a awry opened toward the valley and the illuminated hills, the quarters in light, flashes, as flowers in the dark contour of the desert of Judaea and she said :"Under this arc one day I will marry" and I told her that the same arc I came to see again and that her also I came to see again, her and mine words as raised from the stones of the pavement bending in two halfarcs which united as emotions in search of a common language in the light of that night in the center of the city on the hill of Jerusalem. But it was not the time of that yellow sheet of paper, time in a place without time is playful, different and shy.

The space of the Kotel opened, the Wailing Wall, what remained of the Temple, on the holiest esplanade of those places, where there was often who prayed that Heaven gave peace and sometimes who prayed that Heaven swallowed the Heaven of the others. We parted, it was time for Mincha', the prayer of the evening, tradition drove me to the part reserved to the man, Eti and Osem entered the part dedicated to woman. The Wall was high and large, the colour of his bricks of stone was clear as the light of the lamps and I wrote two words in a sheet of paper and I put it near thousands of others in a whisper of the stone, two words only, the deepest of my wishes, a miraculous mistery known by me only and by whom would read.

The man had a long white beard and approached limping from a leg, the dark wear and hat with the ritual plaits descending from the hair and he put a hand on my head and said sentences as he were the father covering the head of the son in blessing on Shabbat after the prayer, I gave him what was enough and after he disappeared I ran behind him, among the bricks of the pavement and those of the buildings, again toward the Wall from which I parted and to whom I came back but I found him again in a young man, he had the long black beard and he approached limping from a leg, the dark wear and hat with the ritual plaits descending from the hair and I put in his hands the yellow sheet of paper, beacuse I suddendly forgot the meaning of the words and panic seized me, I wanted to give it back to Eti and I was afraid to lose what I wanted to remember.

He translated for me and I wrote on another sheet of paper those words, in another language and finally I breathed relieved, the two girls and I met again to climb the stairs of the explanade toward the center of the city, a huge castle, with walls and towers of coloured stone, and Osem apeared to have climbed a mountain and Eti and I noticed for the first time her hand wounded and bandaged, but her smile did not fade, lost and absorbed in her sweet role.

...to be continued...