I'm going home tomorrow. Sitting here, in the beautiful garden at the institute, I can feel keenly all the things that I'm going to miss: the sights and smells of Jerusalem, good friendships, kubbeh soup and real hummus, great libraries and the time to enjoy them, and the feeling of being at the center of things. I think I'll even miss the sound of the muezzin at 5am, which always marked for me a night lost to insomnia. But there's a life waiting for me in Chicago and I'm eager to get back to it.
I just got a fellowship at the University for another year of dissertation research. And I'll be teaching in the fall term. So I'm going to step back into a whirlwind of writing and course preparation. But I'm also going to be in a city filled with good music and good food, whose diversity is a source of joy and not just unease.
So unlike last year, when I was leaving to join dad for a summer of biking, I don't feel unready to go. Instead, I can feel this space inside me that Jerusalem has shaped and I know that it is soon to be filled with longing. So it's appropriate, I guess, that I'm thinking a lot about Psalm 137, that wonderful and horrible, untranslatable poem of Jerusalem lost:
If I should forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget...
may my tongue stick in my mouth if I should not recall,
If I should not place Jerusalem at the summit of my joy.
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