Free Requiem by Graham Joyce

made him explode?'
    They
stopped at David's Tower and leaned on the wall, looking in across the Armenian
quarter. Sharon lit a small, wrinkled cigarette, and Tom identified the odour
of hashish. 'You can't explain it in the way you want. It's part of the intifada , the Palestinian uprising. They see
it as an ongoing struggle to rid the land of the Jews. We see it as a holding
operation; we're staying. That's it. The thing flares up from time to time in
incidents like this.’
    'But why
shout about God before doing such a thing? It doesn't make sense to me.'
    'No,
not to you. But to these Palestinians - and to some of the ultra-Orthodox Jews
here - religion and politics are indivisible. Exactly as it would have been
when this city was founded, or in Jesus' time.'
    'How
long will it go on?'
    'Forever is my guess.'
    Walking
the wall was Sharon's idea. From there, she'd told Tom, he could get a better
picture of the layout of the city. He was glad of her company. The armed
soldiers flicked glances of loneliness and longing at her, and she took away
from him the whiff of the naive tourist. He felt less of a target when he was
with Sharon, and her strength and confidence temporarily insulated him from the
city's phantoms. Now he'd had a taste of the political violence emanating from
the city. He didn't know which scared him most. He was waiting to confide, to
tell her what was happening to him. He was afraid that if he started talking
now, it would snag or knot or, worse, his head would unspool entirely and he wouldn't be able to put it back together.
    She bit on
the smoke from her reefer. 'What do you think of it from up here?'
    'It’s still beautiful.'
    She
pointed out the ethnic divisions. 'Four quarters. Each contributing twenty-five
per cent of stupidity and bull-shit. See the Jews at their Wailing Wall? Half
of them don't even know what it is. They think it was the wall of Solomon's
temple. Have you seen them stuffing written prayers in between the cracks? They
think God is a spider? It wasn't the temple wall - it was the foundation of the
retaining wall of the platform on which the Herodian wall was built. Herod's, not Solomon's.'
    She ground
the butt of her cigarette into the stone. 'Imagine spending your afternoons
whispering to the wrong stones.
    'Then there's your mob.
Marginally more stupid. All of this because some Byzantine emperor's mother was
disappointed to find nothing here when she made the very first pilgrimage. So
what have we got? The Way of Sorrows built on an imaginary path. Great chapels
built over guesses. Churches stretched over vague holes in the ground. Have you
seen the shrine of the Virgin's milk? That's the best. The Virgin spilled her
mother's milk here. Please give three shekels - that's the best. They don't know where Jesus was crucified. They don't know where he walked. They
don't know where he was buried. It's all arbitrary. It's all a lie. A
theme park. A fucking Byzantine Disneyworld for dimwit pilgrims.' She pointed
across to the left. 'Have you been through the Armenian quarter?'
    'Yes.'
    'That's the
saddest. Singing Armenian songs and teaching their children dances to hang on
to a pocket of the past. A patch of Armenia preserved in amber. Then there are
the Muslims, with their Dome, where Mohammed ascended into heaven and their
random stabbings because God is Great. Aw, what's the use?'
    She'd
burned out her exasperation before dealing effectively with the Muslims.
Leaning her elbows against the wall, she squinted across the rooftops. 'It's a
hologram. Sometimes I despise this city.'
    'I know all
that,' Tom said, 'and yet it's still astonishingly beautiful.'
    'That's the
strangest thing about it. You're absolutely right. Are we going to talk about
Katie?'
    From his
pocket he took a piece of paper on which he'd written three words. He gave it
to her.
    ' De profundis clamavi ,' she
read. 'What does it mean?'
    I was hoping you could tell me.'
    'Is it Latin?'
    'Yes.
I feel I should know it. It