al-Quds, al-Quds.

Alright, its late, and tomorrow morning I head early to Ramallah, where I will be for one quiet, curfewed night. But I promised I would write a little about one day in Jerusalem, and I feel as though if I don't say something now it will all just slip away.

This is one amazing, beautiful, incrediblecity, perhaps my favourite I have ever visited, and it feels so wonderful to be back here again. But it going to be impossible for me to let you know how it's been even for the last 24 hours and how it makes me feel, and all of that, especially in the short time I plan to spend sitting here in this internet cafe.

I'm in the old city, in the Muslim quarter near the Damascus Gate. Its half past midnight and the little narrow laneways are almost completely empty of people, my footsteps echoing against the darkened stone walls as i ran here. And now, here in this netcafe there is the babble of arabic and a whole choir of giggles as Palestinian men play against each other in shooting games.

So, the city. I walk from the Damascus gate, thick with Arabs selling shoes, selling vegetables, selling cotton candy, selling everything, and i walk down through the old city. The sun leaks through the narrow archways, scatters across the cobblestones. I follow thickets of pilgrims, themselves following guides with raised umbrellas, through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I watch them pose for photos with their hands touching the site of the cross, I watch them cry before Jesus' tomb. I hike up the Mount of Olives, overlooking everything, the panorama vast and awesome. I visit the grotto of the virgin Mary, silent and personless and crowded with lanterns. I light a candle above her tomb, look in at the letters people have slipped through the plexiglass onto the rock. I watch as a gang of police make a Arab kid move his entire shoe stall one metre across so they can bring their car that way, then once he does it, they drive away, in the direction they came, anyway. I am breathless again, at the glittering gold of the Dome on the Rock and the spires of the Russian Orthodox church. I eat hummus and felafel outside of the Chapel and Mosque of the Accension, where Christians and Muslims both celebrate Jesus' journey to Heaven. I walk and walk and sit and watch and then walk some more.

This city is all that which is the most amazing and most beautiful in human beings, while at the same time it is that which is most terrible, most sad. And being here, I never know whether to sing loud, with total joy, or just sit somewhere dark and cry, cry for the city and its people and for people, generally.

Either way, it makes you feel completely alive.

After Ramallah tomorrow I will be in either Nablus or Hebron.

My friends, goodnight.