Guest Post: Jerusalem then and now

Maybe you didn't know it but The Chicken has been to the Middle East before, a couple of years before I met him and during a time of youthful idealism and self exploration. Every once in a while he leads me down his memory lane with him but suprisingly not that often. The turn of the decade it seems has been the impetus for some reflection and recalling his time here at the turn of the millennium, ten years ago.



On the evening of December 31, 1999, I joined a crowd of about 200 people at Gethesmane on the Mount of Olives for a New Year's Eve service. About an hour before midnight, each of us was given a long red torch, which we carried in a short procession up the hill to the place that is known as "Abraham's House". As befitted the turning of the millennium, a lot of international media crews were there, asking people questions like "A lot of people would say this is a dangerous place to be right now. So why are you here?". It was a little rainy. I met some American girls working as nurses at Hadassah Mount Scopus. As the final seconds of the millennium ticked away, a cameraman trained his giant video camera on me and the girl I was talking with. "I need a kiss!!!" he said - but that would have felt awkward, and I wasn't going to do something inappropriate just for the sake of giving him good copy. The moment passed, and before long I was back in the quiet streets of the old city, which was absent any signs of the millennial procession except for a small flock of nuns on their way back from midnight mass.

Ten years ago, I had no idea where my life was heading, what I'd be doing in a year, or where I'd be a year from then. I had gone to the Middle East more out of sheer desperation than anything else, because everything I'd done before felt like a miserable failure. It sounds like a cliche, but I thought I'd become an artist here. I needed some time to myself to work out what I really wanted from my life and at the time the last thing I wanted was another lab job. But life has a weird way of working out. A few weeks later, I borrowed a copy of Don Cram's old textbook "Organic Chemistry" from my friend Faisal's apartment in French Hill. I carried that book with me in my backpack through Cyprus, Syria, and Lebanon, and it planted the seeds that would eventually lead me back into the lab. If I went back in time to tell my 26-year old self on the Mount of Olives that I'd do a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, work for 2 years at MIT, publish a total synthesis in Science, and would soon (2001) meet an incredible lady that would later be my wife (whom, I should not forget to add, is responsible for dragging me back here in the first place) he surely would have thought I was talking about someone else - there was no way I would have believed that all those great things would ever happen to me. I certainly never expected that 10 years later that path would take me back to Jerusalem.

Just like 1999, it feels like an end and a beginning here. I have no idea where we'll be or what we'll be doing in a year. But this time, that in itself seems more a cause for excitement than despair. I hope the next decade brings us just as much love and adventure as the past one has. Maybe on Dec 31, 2019 we can come back to Jerusalem to reflect on it.