From the Back Cover

“I walked back up to the bus station in the darkening day. The bus headed out into the darkness. When it arrived at the airport I sat for a while outside in the fresh night air, close to where I had sat on the night of my arrival, thinking that there was nothing to prevent me boarding a bus back to the Jaffa Gate, and heading back inside the walls to make another attempt at Old Jerusalem. But that was just a passing idle thought. However unknowingly, by whatever mix of chance and intention, the path followed was the one that was taken. The past is inexorable. My feet made for the departure door. On my way in I was stopped by a young security man who looked doubtfully at me and my bag as he asked me the question which I already knew I would be unable to answer: ‘what was the purpose of your journey?’”

from “Old Jerusalem” by Gerard McCarthy