Not one holy step feels familiar.

Not a building or a bush.

Uri is alone — but isn’t that how he’s always been?

Isn’t that how he came into the world and will leave it?

So what should be his great surprise at being in that most natural state that a human being could be in?

Uri walks on looking for a face a word a smell he’ll recognize that will make him feel connected to himself —whoever that is now.

And what was so great about the sights and sounds back there anyhow? he asks himself.

Only that he knew them.

Uri the traveler walks on. Hot desert air starts to be replaced by cool night drafts. A fly hitches a ride on the side of his backpack. “Chutzpah!” Uri shouts the new Hebrew word he’s learned at the fly.

Then he regrets it. “I guess you’re tired too” he says.

The long road is making him kind of silly lightheaded he admits to himself sadly. He’s come to the point of talking to flies. .... The quiet’s gotten to him.

How did shepherds do it?

He wanted so much to be like them the ones he’d read about. But he sorely misses the city.

Soon he’ll be back in the city.

The “city”! Uri laughs to himself. Twenty blocks of streets — hustle and bustle and handeling that’s so unreal it’s like it’s simulated. Like that story of how the Jews in the desert sold linen clothing. A shopping center plunk in the middle of the desert! The “city” is like that. People wearing heels dressed up in the desert.

His thoughts he realizes are veering dangerously between reality and fantasy. Being alone too long can play those kind of tricks on the mind. That’s probably why solitary confinement is one of the worst punishments.

Jerusalem can’t be that far away. Uri puts out two fingers. He’s learned how they do it here — not with the thumb.

A car pulls over.

“Jerusalem?” Uri asks.

The man nods. Uri climbs in leaving the trail of endless sand behind.

In an unassuming backstreet of Geula past the clotheslines of hanging laundry there’s a small sign: Silver Store. Up a few worn uneven steps — and the whole world’s silver. So unbelievable that it’s tucked away behind simple stone streets; it’s like a mirage.

The walls the counters — filled with silver. Silver cups trays candelabras even silver negelwasser stands. Silver Torah crowns challah cutting boards.

A young bochur’s trying to fit two crystal and silver candlesticks into one of the crystal and silver trays. On one tray the candlesticks stand crooked. On another one little end doesn’t fit.

“Will the senorita like it?” he keeps asking his friend another bochur in standard white shirt sitting on a chair.

The scene has gone on for an hour. He can’t find a tray to match the candlesticks. In three hours he’s got a flight back to Mexico to meet the senorita his senora-to-be — and bring her back.

He finally finds a tray that fits — crystal silver and wood. But the wood’s light-colored. “Will the senorita like it?” He studies it from every angle.

A woman notices his distress. “You could dye the wood darker if your senorita doesn’t like it” she suggests in Hebrew. Her accent’s American. Her brother-in-law’s from Reno[YK1]  so she understands a little Spanish.

“Different world” she comments to the other “Anglo” in the store. She’s picked up on her English. “Could you imagine your chassan bringing you your candlesticks and that’s it?”

“We picked them out together” the other woman says like it’s a fact of life. Her accent is Australian.

“Still … there’s something so special …  ” the first woman adds after a little thought. “Look how he’s so worried concerned for his senorita.”

“If it’s so hard to find the candlesticks and the tray imagine how hard it is to find the right kallah.”

“Don’t start dying the wood. Don’t start changing things” the American woman advises. “If you don’t like it don’t buy it.”

“Right” the Australian one agrees. “And if you don’t like a girl — don’t marry her” she adds.

“There’s a Frenchwoman at the counter trying to pay but there’s some problem with her credit card.

They all — the two Mexicans brown as the center of a sunflower the lily-white American; the Australian ruddy as a wild rose; the Frenchwoman in fashionable lavender like some exotic orchid; and even the sabra saleslady — decide that the best thing is to buy the candlesticks and continue to another store to find the right tray.

The Frenchwoman’s credit card goes through. The Mexicans pay. The Australian and American browsers leave.

A few yards away Uri’s ride drops him off at the corner of Yechezkel Street. The street’s filled with people erasing the oppressive quiet from which he has suffered now a thing of the past.

Uri waits at Geula’s four-way traffic crossing. Four corners he thinks. Like a tallis. The lights turn green. An amazing almost surreal sight meets his eyes: A group of people of different complexions and clearly of different nationalities cross opposite him at the same moment a bouquet of Jews.

Uri rubs his eyes.

No it’s not a mirage; it’s a prophecy —

“I will gather them from the four corners of the earth … ”