Andrew Calis

Recently reading through the cookbook Jerusalem, I was struck by an observation made by its co-authors, an Israeli chef and a Palestinian chef, in their introduction. Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi write that food “seems to be the only unifying force” in Jerusalem, a city claimed as the capital of both Israel and Palestine.

They are not my enemy,
I remind myself,
though they are
tearing up the public hill just past my fence
with loud tools and
hacking with Weedwackers the wild violets
and new lavender spread
across the hill in bird patterns.
We had watched them grow.