Wishes

"Sometimes god greatest gift is unanswered prayers…" (Garth Brooks)

“I wish things could be easier,” I said one day to my friend Naomi. We were sitting next to a small round table in the university coffee shop, sipping coffee and digging into huge slices of apple pie.

“Who does not,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders, concentrating on especially big piece on her plate.

I like Naomi’s matter of fact attitude towards things. She always seems unnerved by the challenges life throws at her. Always calm and collected, she is using reason as her first line of defense, not emotions like I tend to do.

“Don’t you ever get upset or frustrated?” I tried again. “Look around you, there is so much injustice and chaos, so many bad things and sad things and a sea of stupidity.”

Naomi just smiled at me with a mouth full of pie and waved with her hand towards the big glass windows.

“What?” I turned at that direction but all I could see were the trees outside and far away the skyline of Jerusalem. “What are you looking at?” I turned back at her. “I don’t see anything.”

The small cafeteria, on the first floor of the library building in the Mt, Scopus campus in Jerusalem has been one of my favorite places for a long time. Every time I go to Jerusalem I try to find some reason to visit the book store on the second floor and treat myself to a leisurely cup of coffee preferably with a good friend. Naomi has been my friend since fifth grade. Looking at her sitting across from me reminded me of so many things. School, girl scouts, my years in the army, old friends and long lost friendships. It is almost a miracle, I thought, that we remained friends after so many years.

 I looked at her and tried again. “Remember the days we used to walk home together after school and talk about life?” she nodded her head and her eyes looked straight through me. “Life, the future and making decisions,” she chuckled. “We were so young and so sure we can make a difference, little did we know,” she smiled at me going back in her mind to that time in the past.

“Remember what we used to wish for?” I kept probing.

“That we can have a cup of coffee on Mt. Scopus looking through the windows at the outline of Jerusalem?” she said jokingly but her eyes were serious.

I looked at the window again. The sun was low on the horizon and its rays caught the the rock's golden dome and made it look like pure gold. Behind it I could make out parts of the wall surrounding the city, and further away already getting hazy in the dusk, the tall modern buildings of the new city.

“Remember how we used to stand on the balcony of the old Notre Dame Monastery looking at the walls surrounding the old town, wondering if we will ever get to see the inside, and the Wailing Wall?”

“I remember the first time I made it to Mt. Scopus and saw the town from the other side that was different,” Naomi laughed but there was a hint of sadness in her voice. 

“So, just like the stories, we got what we wished for…but” I was not sure where I was going with this thought.

“We were always told that seeing things from a different angel is good for a more balanced perspective,” Naomi continued as if she did not hear me and was talking to herself. “It did not work in this case; it did not create better understanding.”

I thought of the many years of living in a divided town. A town with a wall running in its midst separating us from almost all the sacred places. I thought about the other years when the wall was not there anymore. Walls create a physical divide but people do the rest.

I touched my cup, it was cold. The remains of the pie on my plate looked colorless and bland. Somehow the day had lost its color as if a big cloud covered the sun and made everything look bleak.

“Lets’ go,” I said to Naomi who was still gazing at the windows and seemed deep in thought.

“Do you ever think,” she said as if continuing my sentence “how things could have turned out if this wish would not have been granted?”