Sol gestures, educating us about the stone below the blotchy gold dome.
"It is at the heart of Jerusalem and at the heart of the Arab-Israeli controversy. Here Adam and Eve is created from dust."
I reach down and fmger the red brown dirt at our feet, and I'm glad Adam and Eve didn't have the blue-white wormy complexions of Renaissance oil paintings after all.
"And when God throws Adam and Eve out of Eden, they land here. They are coming here to weep over their loss sometimes. Here Cain is killing Abel, and to this rock Abraham takes Isaac. Of course, Muslims believe Abraham don't take Isaac but Ishmael, the ancestor of Mohammad,to the sacrifice. But whichever-" He shrugs. "Both is saved in the nick of time."
He flails his arm toward the dome and barrels on. "This is where the tablets of Moses is brought, where God appears to King David, and where Solomon builds the First Temple in 950 B.C. E. And it is from that rock Mohammad is riding to Heaven on his winged horse. No Jew in all the world is giving permission to barter away that sacred rock. No Arab will let it go."
As we sit in docile silence facing the dome and dutifully listening, a man in a soiled white shirt and broken wing-tip shoes sidles up and murmurs something. Sol answers in the same language. I recognize a couple of words my Saudi students often used in their pre-class banter.
Sol turns to us to explain. "He is Arab. He wants me to tell you that Muslims and Jews is the same Semite stock and that Israel and Palestine is the same land. He is saying that the Temple Mount, which the Muslims callHaram aI-Sharif, the Noble Enclosure, also belongs, in truth, to thePalestinians."
The man nods and beams. He and Sol speak for another minute, andthen he shakes hands with Sol before he walks off.
"Weren't you speaking Arabic?"
Sol shrugs. "I speak many languages."
"But doesn't having a common language give you a chance to agree on the rock?"
"You foreigners." He scowls at me. "You think there is a solution. Your Sadat, Your Disraeli, your Jimmy Carter and Clinton-they think it can be solved."
Everything has a solution."
He gestures toward the achingly brilliant Dome of the Rock. "To this there is no solution."
