Laura worked in an inner city café come short order counter. She worked for minimum wage plus tips; she was twenty three years old. Laura’s parents married late in life, she was their only child. Her parents loved the very air she breathed. Laura loved them in return with an unstinting heart. During her teenage years on up to about a year ago, Laura had a steady succession of safe dates. Nothing clicked but then Laura wasn’t looking for love or even steady companionship. The boys didn’t know that, and in her own special way she was wise enough not to mention the fact. Conversely she never kept secret the one thing she wanted to do in life, the single ambition that filled her head since she was a small child. She had no idea where the yearning came from or why, only that it fuelled her life, and since the first day she started work at the café she had been saving up so that one day, when she had enough put by, she could turn her dream into reality. She knew it would take a long time. You just don’t get to save much on minimum wage plus tips. Oddly she didn’t mind and was simply content to wait. She could have gotten a better paying job but to the amazement of everyone who knew her, she liked her work. She genuinely liked working at the café and interacting with people; “and besides,” she said, “my workmates are a great bunch, so why would I want to leave to work someplace else just to earn more money. I like my job I just don’t see money being all that important.”
“Well,” her father said to her mother in a kindly, though somewhat baffled tone, “you can’t argue with that now can you.” No point really, besides they were content to know Laura was content. And there is no greater joy or expectation than knowing your only daughter is content and happy to get up in the morning. “She’ll get there one day,” they said to each other “she’s been set on it since she was a child.”
The why or wherefore of Laura’s dream wasn’t an issue, it never had been and never would be. She wanted to go and one day when she had enough money she would.
Laura wanted to go to Jerusalem.
Why, she had no idea (and never fussed herself pondering the imponderable) only that one day she would go there. Later when she started work and became eligible for vacation time, at her own expense of course, she built her dream around a full three week vacation in Jerusalem. She never told anyone, not even her parents, after all she didn’t want people to think she was going funny in the head, but in her heart and deep down in the secret wellspring of her soul she accepted and believed fervently that in Jerusalem something waited patiently for her. What it might be, a something or a someone, she didn’t know. Her dream never revealed that. About as close as she could come was more like a sort of deep inner sense or feel if you like, that the mystery awaiting her in Jerusalem was benign and endlessly benevolent and that, she concluded whilst yet a child, was enough for her to know. And with her conclusion came deep inner peace, it suffused her it never left her and she lived radiant in its glow.
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One day Laura go’in to Jerusalem
One day she gonna find the Lord
Laura go’in to Jerusalem
Laura go’in to talk with the Lord.
Her workmates at the café liked her. Because they liked her they shrugged off her fixation with Jerusalem. “That’s just Laura,” they said, “she’s a lovely girl and she’s got a way about her of handling the odd troublesome customer you wouldn’t believe,” and left it at that. Their tips were mostly non existent, but most customers always left Laura something. All the tips went into a large glass jar. The money was divided equally amongst the staff at the end of the week. Because the tips were shared Laura never got much even though a good eighty five percent of the tips were left for her. Laura didn’t mind in the least. In fact she was pleased she could contribute so much and, she genuinely liked to share her good fortune with others. “Laura,” her father once remarked, “is a rare girl, a rare girl indeed, the world could do with more like her, we need to look after the Laura’s in this world.” His wife wasn’t exactly sure she understood what he was getting at but she loved the wee dear man and agreed heartily.
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And then one day Laura stood in the café’s central isle, customers looking on, and stated in a trembly, triumphant voice, “I’ve saved enough, I’m goi’in to Jerusalem.” Customers beamed, her workmates jumped up and down, hugged and kissed her and clapped, all at once.
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Laura go’in to Jerusalem
Laura go’in to stand on the Rock
Lead break
Flyin’ “American Airways”
She go’nna stand on the Rock
The mystery resided within her but Laura didn’t know that. Oddly, or not so odd, those in whom the mystery resides are comfortable with its presence but rarely recognize or otherwise acknowledge its presence whilst yet, by their actions openly affirm the very spirituality of life itself. To live the best we can to help others as we go along is the very core of what we are, the very ensoulment of us all unto the least in the café earning minimal wage and tips. The vanity and the arrogance of those who disdain, display the smallness of the immature spirit within and gives some idea of the long road they have yet to travel. Laura go’in to Jerusalem, Laura go’in to stand on the Rock.
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Laura was twenty three years old, small and slim but curvy in all the right places. Her hair was a gift falling down to her shoulders, wavy chestnut hair that gleamed and glimmered with a deep natural shine. Her eyes were the grey of a seagull’s wing, feathered in light. She had small, even, white teeth behind full generous lips. A slim boned girl, with a face that was striking rather than pretty or beautiful, attractive you might say, open and smiling, the kind of face that haunts the mind. The kind that keeps drawing customers back though not a one of them understood why, other than to sense that in some strange way the presence of Laura enriched their life and when they paid their tab and left, they were the better for it and their day turned out to be not so bad.
Laura travelled to Jerusalem to realise her lifelong dream on a self funded three week vacation. Her mum and dad missed her. Custom fell off at the café along with a lamentable drop in tips.
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Jerusalem
Laura didn’t skimp. The lady at the travel agency said “the King David Hotel was one of the best in Jerusalem, a bit pricey for you girl,” she added with a knowing look. Laura simply beamed and said “I’ll take a room there,” adding impishly, “a room with a view if you don’t mind.”
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The room was large and airy with a view overlooking the old city walls to the smoky blue Judean hills beyond. The cobalt sky gleaming like polished Venetian glass, a slow, warm wind redolent with the scent of pine and dust and the faint aromatic smell of frying garlic, cooking spices and olives, alien yet strangely familiar to her senses.
She visited Tel Megiddo (Armageddon), hiking up the dusty path in the searing sunlight. Reaching the top of the mount, cheeks flushed, she caught her breath as she gazed over the heat filled Jezreel Valley, an old valley, a place of ancient battles of blood and fire and the sound of sun mad prophets crying in the wind. They all came here, she thought, the Canaanites, the Israelites, Assyrians, Philistines, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Napoleon, the Ottomans and more and maybe one day according to ancient prophecy it will end here. She did not question why such thoughts came unbidden, other than to think, it’s the land, it's Jerusalem.
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Jerusalem is pretty much a city on a hill. A gold and white and ochre city, a city of somber browns, the hills beyond shimmering in the heat beneath a deep blue, Judean sky; a city of life and frequent violent death from suicide bombers, a city under siege. A colourful, noisy city of strong, proud people, descendants of the few who somehow survived the ineffable evil loosed upon them by a crazy little Austrian with a funny moustache.
Laura loved Jerusalem. In Jerusalem there was something waiting to greet her, a mystery, a secret that would reveal itself in its own good time. Laura waited too, not with any sense of worry, not with any idea of looking for the secret, she simply waited and whilst she waited she explored the city and its nearby environs. She laughed and smiled and thoroughly enjoyed her holiday in the city where the man Jesus once walked and his brother James the Just continued his ministry for more than thirty years until he too was murdered and Titus the son of the Roman emperor Vespasian destroyed the temple and enslaved the people, selling them to slave merchants in the furthest reaches of empire and beyond.
She loved it all, every stone, every dusty breath and every unbidden memory.
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Leon Shuri, the concierge at the King David Hotel, the only son of Polish Jews who survived the holocaust to reach Israel back around 1948. Within ten years of Leon’s birth both his parents died. Survivors of the Treblinka death camp, an extermination centre, their poor bodies ravaged beyond any hope of repair, broken in mind and spirit Leon’s parents kissed and hugged him and handed him over to friends in Tel Aviv. Returning to their flat they kissed each other tenderly, committed their souls to God and lay down on their bed arms clasped around each other, whispered Shalom Aleichem (peace be with you) and died in the warmth of their love.
The world did not want them.
Israel stood alone, surrounded by enemies who did not wish to conquer but to annihilate; different enemies in a different world burning with the same intent as the little Austrian and his devils.
It was too much, the world did not want them, why else would the free world allow such horror to happen all over again. The world did not want them. It was all too much
Shalom Alelchem, peace be with you – at last, they whispered softly, in the warmth of their shared love and died.
Young Leon, wise beyond his years, hadn’t expected either of his loving parents to last as long as they did. He sorrowed and he wept and when his mourning was done he got on with his life. He never left Israel, and later when he helped defeat the combined armies of his people’s enemies, when his part was done he went back to work at his beloved hotel.
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Leon Shuri, a small, rotund, impeccably dressed man. To Leon and others like him the world over, the hotel wasn’t just his world it was his life; and for no good reason he could later recall he took the smiling young lady from across the sea under his protective wing, making it his personal mission in life to ensure she was well looked after in the hotel and to guide and advise the young lady as to the various historical and sacred sites scattered around the city and how best to get there. “Never,” he said somberly, “use public transport, its, how do you say, like Russian roulette.” She looked at him in confusion. He said “sotto voc, those madmen, the suicide bombers, they like to target buses.” She blanched. “Walk,” he said, “or catch a taxi.”
Laura took his advice seriously. There is something about her, Leon thought to himself. He wasn’t sure what it was, after all there was a steady parade of pretty girls in his life. No, it wasn’t that, it was something else, as though she lives in a perpetual state of grace.
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Laura drank espresso and munched on sweet pastries at a sidewalk café in the Ben Yehuda Mall. She walked the Jaffa Road from the northwest corner of Jerusalem to the high, thick walls of the old city. She wandered through the Jewish Quarter and later stood in silence in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and from there she walked the Via Dolorosa along which it is said the man Jesus walked to his death. She strode through the Damascus Gate to stand for a while outside the walls of Jerusalem. She stood in wonder gazing up at the Golden Dome of the Rock shimmering in hot, yellow sunlight high above the walls as though it were molten. She crossed the Valley of Hinnom. And rode in a hired car supplied by Leon to Tiberius and for a while wandered the shore of the Sea of Galilee and wondered why, in a strange but comfortable way, why it all seemed so familiar; As though I have been here before, here and gone and back again. Days slipped into days and soon, she thought, my days here will be over like a wild white swan here and gone, a trace of its beauty lingering in the mind like a sweet warm scent of summer. Beyond the small sea the Golan Heights loomed hazy and mysterious.
Nor did Laura smile when in West Jerusalem she paid a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to six million lost souls, she wandered the Hall of Remembrance and the Hall of Names but she could take no more and staggered out into the harsh burning light eyes brimming with tears, hot coals in her throat and a stone in her heart; and then suddenly she had no more days left.
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Jueusalem standing in the heat of the burning sun; Jerusalem standing drear in the cold winter rain; “All roads lead to Jerusalem,” something whispered in the air, it was here the descendants of Abraham forged three religions that now dominate the world, three sharing the common root of one, and neither one nor the other(s) ever the twain shall meet. Something whispered its regret, something whispered sadness lamenting the splintered whole and something whispered “Laura, Lady of Grace,”
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It was her last evening in Jerusalem. When the sun came up she would board her flight and before the sun rose again she would be home.
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Laura sat on a low, white washed, stone wall not far from her hotel. She thought about Leon, a dear man, she would miss him. The sun, a rose-gold ball of sombre fire hung low in the deepening blue Judean sky. Dusty, apricot light feathered through with pink flooded the street. Laura sat bathed in its glow, the strange light seeming to rise up like an incoming tide, washing over her, lifting her up, senses swaying with the flow. Across the street buildings took on a golden sheen, glass fronted stores seeming to ripple in eye dazzling bursts of amber fire shot through with smoky pinks and smouldering orange like brush strokes on a huge transient canvas. Long shadows began to drift and pool in hidden corners as the sun slid down the sky. Brightness faded, dusk settling in. Laura sat entranced. People passing by seemed to be naturally drawn to her. Turning their heads to smile at the girl bathed in glowing light sitting on the low, white wall. Laura smiled back. And then it was quiet and still as though the moment held its breath.
An old man walked by, suddenly he stopped and turned towards her. He gazed at her for a few heartbeats of time, then he smiled and called out “Shalom” and walked on, only to stop once again and call out softly “Shalom Aleichem, peace be with you lady of grace.”
Laura smiled at him and raised her right hand in a fluttering wave. Night crept in and still she sat. Stars bloomed and glittered in the deep and the black, a thin crescent moon adding a measure of antique silver light. The still warm air scented with rosemary and dust. Laura sat in a quiet bubble devoid of time. The night deepened.
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She sensed a vast benign presence draw near and enfold her. The mystery. The divine, age old secret. The whispering voice in the wind that had drawn her from across the sea; Jerusalem, the purpose of her life reaching out. “I just know I have to go there,” she said when she was a child. She never questioned why, there was no need; an act of faith in herself, devoid of twist and curl. It took awhile on her marginal pay plus tips but she arrived where she wanted to be in the end. A voice blossomed inside her head soft and lyrical and clear as a bell.
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The next day Laura caught her flight home. A few days later she was back working in the café, much to the relief of her workmates, business picked up and the tips began to flow. Pretty soon everything was as it should be, well almost but not quite. There was a subtle change in Laura but no one, not even her mum and dad could say what exactly it was, not that it mattered, everyone agreed Laura was just Laura.
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Laura didn’t actually do anything other than work at the café and go out now and again with her friends. Sometimes she dated sometimes she did not. She thought she might marry one day when the right young man came along and maybe raise a family. As it turned out she did marry. Her only child was a son.
Laura touched people’s lives. She made a difference to everyone she met without actually doing or saying much at all. She never spoke of her last night in Jerusalem. She never referred to the divine presence. She just lived her life and was happy to do so. She had been to Jerusalem. She had sat on a wall bathed in strange light and the divine had made its presence known. It was enough for Laura to know, it would always be enough. About the only thing that sometimes ran riot in her mind was a sort of intuitive knowingness that her son would be born with a healing gift. Not to heal bodies but the mind and soul and spirit, the trinity of one. If so he freely chose to use it, and where choice was concerned she also knew it would be his choice to make and his alone, devoid of influence however well intentioned it might be. Therefore in her wisdom Laura remained silent. After all, the intuitive knowingness of what might be was hers alone and she freely chose to remain silent. Laura was a gift to humankind in their time of turmoil, but she didn’t know that, and if she did she would probably just smile and say nothing at all. “If so he freely chooses to use it” sometimes echoed in her dreaming sleep.
Laura walks in grace. Laura whose very presence makes a difference in the life of everyone she meets. Her mum and dad adore her. Her workmates can’t believe the difference she makes just by being there in the café to the size of their tips.
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When Laura returned from Jerusalem her very presence in the world subtly enhanced and strengthened the fragile oftimes precarious balance between darkness and light, good and evil.
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It will be a gradual wake up kind of thing cognitive and insightful, a sort of dawning awareness world wide. It will take thirty five years for the world to regain its senses.
“If so he freely chooses to use it,” echoes in her sleep.
All roads lead here, something whispered in the wind
Roads of good and evil of peace and war
Roads of love and hate
Roads of faith and remorse, hope and redemption
The road of all our fathers
The road of Abraham
The road of all promise
The hallelujah road westering the sun
The road of all our fathers
“Tel Megiddo – Armageddon,”
Something whispers in the wind.
The bulk of the collection is eight short stories that are set in yesteryear. The compilation is filled out with four entertaining fantasy pieces and three poems.
