A disheveled old Jew–or is it an Assyrian?–passes another man on the crosswalk at Devon and California, then turns abruptly to face him, eyes blazing, speaking aloud like a street person, but in good, clear, American English:
Here at the Semite crossroads of Chicago, Jews in skullcaps are rubbing shoulders with Assyrians, Palestinians, Greeks, the whole Mediterranean mishegas. In a newspaper box, the New York Times headline declares, “U.S. and Iraq Prepare for War,” while inside the paper a science feature, no doubt destined for low readership this Tuesday, says the universe may not have started with a bang after all.
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The mosque is in a basement apartment just off Devon. Through most of the summer a person strolling past it on a warm Friday evening could glance down through the windows and see prayer rugs, men in skull caps, and sometimes men at prayer. But sometime during “the buildup,” after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, newspapers are taped over the inside of the windows. As the crisis ripens, the newspapers get yellower and dryer by the day, while in the alley behind the building, the hand-painted Arabic sign nailed to the phone pole, with the arrow directing the faithful to a rear door, becomes bleached and faded and is finally removed.
This is Bernie Stone’s ward. In l987 he proposed the city hang six miles of rope around part of it that includes this stretch of Devon, in order to create an “eruv”–a circumscribed space which is considered by some Orthodox Jews to have certain attributes of a home. Thus on the Sabbath it becomes permissible to do things within the eruv–like push a baby carriage, carry books, or a pot of soup–which otherwise would be prohibited except in the home.
The second evening of the war, at the kosher hot dog restaurant near Devon and California, the tv is on, suspended over the line of tables. The woman behind the counter is saying she is sorry, but milk is not served here, when someone watching the tv says, “They’re bombing Israel.” The place falls silent. No one knows if it is one missile or a barrage, explosives or poison gas.
At the bar, the scene through the diamond-shaped front door window does not look promising: two patrons sit with half a dozen empty stools between them. The bartender has her back to them both, and neither tv is on.
Why, I wonder, is a guy who needs phone change standing in the cold with a phone to his ear? It’s a question I can’t answer, but I decide to give him a quarter anyway.
