276 · Carmela Saranga and Rachel Sharaby
in the dog’s eyes, is an upside-down world. It turns from a holy city into
a fatalistic, crazy, and demonic city in which literature determines history
and life has deviated from its normal course.
Yehoshua’s attitude toward Jerusalem is expressed in interviews. As
he sees his birthplace, Jerusalem is a meaningful symbol and metaphor.
In his opinion, a “dimension of fear” exists in Jerusalem, and it “appears
in all of my works.... This is a strong source that supplies me with en-
ergy. When I touch Jerusalem I immediately know where I am. I accept its
symbolism. I receive such a concentrated dose of its energy, its mysticism,
and all in a dose that I need.... But if I were still living there it would
have crushed me.” Jerusalem can, in his opinion, be maintained as a con-
cept in the Jewish imagination, in the Diaspora, without also referring to
it physically.^22
In Yehoshua’s opinion, the unification of Jerusalem did not benefit the
Land of Israel, and the Land of Israel of Jerusalem today is mainly the
“Palestinian territories.” With the unification of the city he felt that “we
are getting mixed up in something that is connected to very deep myths
related to different peoples and different religions.”^23 Therefore, “It was
time to depart the magic of Jerusalem and set out” (The Liberated Bride,
50).
The Lost Paradise
Eliade claims that by nostalgia for Paradise we want always to be in the
heart of the world of reality. This is a yearning for lofty forms, for sacred
space. In his opinion, each person has a wish for Paradise, which is actu-
ally a yearning for eternity. This yearning proves that man believes that
such a Paradise can be achieved here, on earth, and in this time.^24 In
describing such a Paradise, Yehoshua creates a grotesque experience and
proves that every Paradise also has a lower compartment.
The peak of this experience of describing Jerusalem is reached by Ye-
hoshua in The Liberated Bride. In this work Yehoshua describes the figure
of a scholar of Middle Eastern culture investigating the reason for his
son’s divorce from his daughter-in-law, whose family runs a guest house
in Jerusalem. The scholar’s wanderings across the spaces of the Galilee,
Haifa, the West Bank, Lod (Ben-Gurion) airport, and Jerusalem illustrate
his search for the lost Paradise. His wanderings are, to a large extent,
wanderings into a parallel, demonic world. The scholar reaches the guest