13. On the steps by that same gate, Yehuda Amichai, the great poet of the modern city, once sat with two loaded baskets of fruit and overheard a tourist guide saying: "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there is an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head."

"I said to myself," Amichai writes, "redemption will come only if their guide tells them: 'You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important; but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family.'"