My Visit to the Wall

A tanned woman wearing dark sunglasses pushed into the men's line for the metal detector. The ultra-Orthodox Jew in front of me gasped.

"What kind of whore walks through a man's metal detector?" he asked the sky in a loud voice.

The woman ignored him.

"We might as well take off our pants," the man continued. "This is a holy place and she's desecrating the sanctity. And budging too. Why does this always happen to us?"

The woman looked up at the sky.

"What a heavy day," she said. "I'm bleeding like a stuck pig. My tampon's sure getting a workout. Why does this always happen to us?"

She set her keys and coins in a plastic basket and walked through the metal detector without setting it off. She stuffed the metal back in her pockets and walked off.

"Stop her," the ultra-Orthodox man said to the soldier manning the metal detector. "She's getting away. She can't go in there. She's ritually unclean."

"Does she have any metal?" the soldier asked him.

"She's menstruating," the ultra-Orthodox man said.

"I'm just here to detect metal," the soldier said.

The ultra-Orthodox man grumbled that he intended to write a sharply-worded letter. He put his keys in the basket, walked through the metal detector without setting it off, took back his keys, and walked off.

I emptied the metal from my pockets into the basket. There were almost a hundred little coins. I had played the bongo drum on Ben Yehuda Street and people had thrown money. I walked through the metal detector and it beeped at me, so I went back, took off my belt,
set it next to the basket of coins, and walked through the metal detector. It beeped at me again.

The soldier approached with a black metal-detecting baton. He looked embarrassed for me. I had failed. I couldn't locate all the metal by myself.

"I have a metal plate in my head," I said.

He waved the baton up and down my body, looking for weapons, then waved it around my head several times.

He frowned. "You don't have a metal plate in your head," he said.

"No, I don't," I admitted.

"Why did you say you do if you don't?"

I shrugged. "I didn't think you'd find out."

"I have a metal-detecting baton," he pointed out.

"Do I still get to go in?" I asked.

He waved me on with his baton. I stuffed my coins into my pockets and walked out into the Western Wall plaza. I hadn't been there in years but it still looked the same. In the main plaza, men and women mingled, but up against the wall, it was divided into men's and women's sections. The men's section took up most of the wall. Women had a tiny section on the far
right part of it. On the far left side, the men's section continued into a cave. Thousands of years had buried that part of the wall and a cave had been dug up against it.

A short, round man with dirty whiskers and a yellowed shirt held his hand out to me.

"Money for poor families," he said.

"I'm sorry. I don't have any."

"I can hear you jingling."

He heard my bongo drum profits.

"Those are my keys," I said.

"You have a lot of keys," he said suspiciously.

"I'm a night watchman," I lied. In the movies, night watchmen have lots of keys. They're also Irish.

"Where are you a night watchman?" he asked.

"The circus," I said. It was the first place that came to mind.

"And if I call there, they'll confirm your story?"

"I don't have to prove anything to you."

I walked away, but slowly and carefully so I wouldn't jingle.

At the entrance to the men's section was a metal bin filled with thin white pieces of cardboard, folded and stapled, for men who had nothing to cover their heads with. I had forgotten to bring my kippah, so I took one, put it on my head, and started to walk down to the wall.

A big imposing man stepped in front of me, dressed all in black and with a thick black beard. He reminded me of a grizzly bear. He had an arm tefillin in one hand, a head tefillin in the other, and was obviously one of the Chabad guys, whose mission in life seemed to be coming up to Jews on the street and trying to get them to wrap leather straps around their arms and foreheads.

"Are you okay?" he asked me, looking concerned.

"I'm fine."

"Do you have to go to the bathroom?"

"No."

"Then why are you walking like that?"

"I'm trying not to jingle."

He looked puzzled.

"I play the bongo drum," I explained.

"Did you put on tefillin today?" he asked.

"Yes," I lied.

"Are you lying?" he asked.

"No," I lied.

He glanced suspiciously at my cardboard kippah.

"A person who puts on tefillin generally has his own kippah," he said. "And doesn't play bongos."

"Maybe I don't want to put it on," I said.

"The Torah says Jews have to put on tefillin," he said. "You're Jewish, right?"

"No," I lied.

"Are you lying?" he asked. "You don't have to lie. I'm not the Gestapo."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

I walked around him and jingled up to the wall. I found a spot right up against it. To my left, a Chasidic man in a long black coat prayed fervently, rocking back and forth with his eyes shut. I was afraid he might smack his head into the wall.

"Easy does it," I said to him.

He kept rocking back and forth, possibly too deep in prayer to realize I was there.

To my right, a tall, pale man was crying with his head pressed against the wall.

"Are you okay?" I asked him.

He turned his head and looked at me like I was crazy.

"I'm fine."

"You're crying."

"I know."

"Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps."

"Leave me alone." He closed his eyes and pressed his face up against the wall.

I reached into my pocket and took out a small slip of paper that I had written something on earlier. I stuffed it into a crack between the giant stones that was filled with countless other bits of paper. People put their most intimate prayers into the wall. God's suggestion box.

One superstition is that if you tell anyone what you asked for, it won't come true. So no one had ever told me what they asked for. If I took someone else's paper out of the wall and took a quick peek, maybe nobody would notice. I looked both ways like I was getting ready to cross the street. The Chasidic Jew was still frantically praying and Crybaby was still crying. I looked up. Maybe a Muslim was peering over the side of the Temple Mount. I wouldn't want him to catch me looking at someone else's paper. There was no Muslim, but a pigeon perched on one of the higher stones. Pigeons: the international symbol for peace, sort of. This was an answer to my prayer, I realized as I stared up at the pigeon. It was a sign.

Then the bird shit on my face.

The Chasidic Jew tried to keep pretending he didn't notice me, but a couple laughs slipped out of him.

I needed something to clean off my face with. I didn't want to use my shirt. It was a nice shirt.

I tapped Crybaby on the shoulder.

"Do you have a tissue?"

"Are you making fun of me?"

"No. A bird used my face for a toilet."

"Well maybe if you were nicer to people that wouldn't happen."

There was no time to argue. The bird droppings were about to drip over my upper lip and into my mouth. I reached into the wall and pulled out a crumpled-up piece of paper.

"Are you crazy?" Crybaby screamed. "This is a holy place! What are you, some kind of degenerate?"

"I was straightening it. It was about to fall out."

"How would you feel if someone read your prayer?"

"I wouldn't care. I'm not ashamed of it. I asked for peace."

Now I had said it out loud and it wouldn't come true. Crybaby gave me a dirty look like I had just started the third intifada.

"Put it back," he said.

"Don't tell me what to do," I said.

He grabbed for the paper in my hand. I pulled it away and ran into the cave. Over my shoulder, I saw him running after me. I wiped away the bird droppings with my forearm while blurring past wooden bookshelves stuffed with prayer books and ultra-Religious Jews praying.

"There's no way out!" Crybaby screamed after me, cackling. "It's a dead end!"

I was being chased for it, so I figured I might as well see what the paper said. While running, I uncrumpled the paper and read from it. It said, "I want a new towel."

And I thought I had problems. You know you've fallen on hard times when you have to ask God for a new towel.

The cave wasn't exactly a dead end. There was one thing Crybaby hadn't counted on. I hopped over a red velvet rope and ran up the stairs to the women's balcony. One woman screamed. Another fainted. I looked back down the stairs and saw Crybaby shaking
his fist at me, unable to pass the velvet rope.

"This is a holy place!" he screamed. "Come down! I just wanna talk to you!"

"Fat chance," I said and walked to the door marked exit.

I saw Crybaby start running back the direction we came in.

The exit from the women's balcony led straight to the main plaza. Crybaby couldn't catch me. He had to run straight along the wall to get out of the cave and then he had to come out of the men's section. I walked toward the exit from the Western Wall plaza. The exit was right next to the entrance with the metal detectors.

"Hold it right there, Mr. Jingles," a nasally voice barked at me. It was the man who asked me for money earlier.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Put that back," he said, pointing to the cardboard kippah on my head. "That's property of the Western Wall."

I didn't have time to put it back in the bin. At any moment, Crybaby would come swooping out of the cave.

"Can you do it for me?" I asked.

"What's the matter?" he asked sarcastically. "Too tired from being up all night at your job as a night watchman?"

"I'll give you a few shekels," I offered.

"I know why you jingle," he said. "You went swimming in a wishing well and took all the coins."

I had no time for this. I rushed to the bin with the kippahs, making jingling noises as I ran.

"Mr. Jingles swimming in a wishing well," he sang after me.

I hoped Crybaby had realized how silly he was being and cooled off, but then I saw him tear out of the cave in a fury. He spotted me and charged. He was going to catch me. I should have just left with the cardboard kippah and taken my chances with the law.

Suddenly, the Chabad guy cut off Crybaby, brandishing a set of tefillin like they were numchucks. I tossed the cardboard kippah back in the bin and saw Crybaby explaining to the Chabad guy that yes, he had already put on tefillin today. He said something else, pointed towards me, and the Chabad guy turned to look. The both started sprinting towards me. I ran towards the exit next to the metal detectors. Once I got out, I could lose them in the Muslim quarter. They wouldn't follow me there.

I passed the man who was still singing, "Mr. Jingles swimming in a wishing well."

When I came to the exit, I looked back over my shoulder and saw that three men were now chasing me: Crybaby, the Chabad guy, and the one who called me Mr. Jingles.

"Stop him!" they cried to the soldier that I sped past.

"He stole a prayer from the wall!"

"He stole money from a wishing well!"

"He didn't put on tefillin!"

"Does he have any metal?" the soldier asked.