Scene 4

Jerusalem was the centre and the centre in the centre was the Dome of the Rock – a golden cuppola over a piece of rock, from which the Muslims were convinced that their prophet had ascended to join Allah in heaven. According to the Talmud, the rock was both the core and the foundation stone of the world – after all, hadn't God taken a piece of earth from it to create Adam? And belief had it that Adam, Abel, Cain and also Noah had performed sacrifices here. Moreover, the Jews believed that it was here on this chunk of stone that Abraham had been an angel-hair away from sacrificing his son Isaac in obedience of God's command. King Solomon had had the First Temple built at this spot and after its destruction, the Second. Only on returning from exile (long after Jerusalem had been razed to the ground in the year 70), the Jews had avoided the Rock and its surroundings – out of fear of to accidentally trample on the Holy of Holies. Instead, they began to pray at a retaining wall of the temple precinct, which is now known as the Wailing Wall and forms the centre of their everyday religious life. Meanwhile, the cuppola of the Dome of the Rock, thanks to the gold of Jordan's King Husain, has since 1993, looked like a gigantic, gleaming basketball in the middle of Jerusalem. Perhaps God was a basketball fan and the whole story of the world was nothing more than a fling in the direction of the basket. Only the question arises, at which moment during the ball-flight does one find oneself in the present and whether, as a secret agent, one has the right to play with such a globe too – for instance, in a prison-court in Cartagena.

What appealed more to Maille was the Muslim idea that the Rock had also wished to go along with Mohammed to be with Allah in heaven and had started to rise into the air with the prophet, but the prophet had pushed it back into the earth with his foot. A stone that can become erect like a nipple, that also fits well into a centre of the world, that swells like a bosom out of the cosmic soup.

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