I remember right now that Jerusalem is an amalgam of sounds, an undecided incursion through the radio dial where you jump from jazz notes to rock chords, from the shouts of a histrionic female announcer to the high notes of a trendy singer, while angry interference constantly scratches the broadcast. There the stations are different, but walking through the Holy City of Israel turned out to be that quick tour through all the offered radio programs, all battling each other to capture your attention and make you stop turning the dial wheel, even though they do so without being aware of fighting that invisible struggle for the rest but audible only on my personal frequency.
A blend of contrasting sounds that, instead of causing noise, compose a unique melody that undoubtedly becomes the soundtrack of Jerusalem and scribbles a precise sketch of the city in the air with its notes. If I close my eyes, without even needing to concentrate, I hear precisely—I don’t know if accurately, but certainly suggestively— the bells of some church in the Christian quarter ringing with finality. They haven’t finished tolling when my sound memory is interrupted by the adhan coming from metallic speakers calling to prayer the Muslims, a solemn litany that quickly envelops all the rooftops of the Old City, spreads across the Esplanade of the Mosques and ends up entangled in the Dome of the Rock.
I hear again a harem of boots treading the street in unison with force, silencing everything in their martial path. But, nevertheless, they do not muffle everything because I still distinguish some shoes echoing with a dull thud as they step, with taciturn haste, the cobblestones of a lost alleyway.
Just crossing the memory of that passage and I suddenly find a sound orgy of shouts that, by means of rudimentary marketing, try to impose themselves on the market bustle so that you buy their mint and not that of the neighboring stall.
A barely imperceptible sob also slips into my ears, crashing head-on against a thousand-year-old wall, the same one that listens stoically to the swaying of bodies reading the Torah. And, if I concentrate, I can still remember even the delicate sound of the fingertips of some hands stroking the sacred stone with a solemn cadence. A silence that is broken, without warning, by the clapping and songs of a proud family celebrating there the Bar Mitzvah ceremony of a young Jewish boy’s coming of age.
I keep turning the dial… An Our Father sung in a language never heard before, the rattling of a cart loaded with bread, the fleeting crackle of matches when lighting a candle inside the Holy Sepulchre, the sometimes heartbreaking sound of the Via Dolorosa, the incessant prayers at David’s Tomb, a violin claiming to be heard behind the wall…
My sound memory, already drunk with sounds from this improvised concert, decides to take the baton to recall a melody that undoubtedly evokes my passage through Jerusalem; the elegant notes of a harp welcoming whoever crosses the Jaffa Gate at that moment…
- Discover more sounds of this city in depth with a complete guided tour of Jerusalem
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