When my late mother-in-law would travel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in the 1920’s, she would set out with her family in the late afternoon, after the hot sun had begun to descend, so the horses would not get tired.  hear.  By the evening they would reach the inn at Shaar Ha’Gai, Bab El Wad, and sleep there.  Early in the morning they would begin the ascent to Jerusalem, where her grandparents lived (On Yaffo Road, in the building with the lions where the police station is now).   Last year we drove there (30 minutes from Tel Aviv) and found that the inn was undergoing renovations.  I didn’t think about the song, “Bab El Wad,” from the War of Independence and the battle for Jerusalem.  Bab El Wad was the gate to the city.

באב אל וואד,
לנצח זכור נא את שמותינו,
שיירות פרצו בדרך אל העיר.
בצידי הדרך מוטלים מתינו.

  שלד הברזל שותק כמוי רעי

Bab al Wad
remember our names forever
convoys broke through on the way to the city

Our dead lie on the roadsides
The iron skeleton is as silent as my mates.

Today the building has been commemorated as a national  memorial.  I forgot to mention that the poem “Bad El Wad” was written by Haim Guri, the poet of the Palmach generation.  I wonder what he would have thought of the opening ceremony – he would probably have loved the fact that history was being foregrounded but hated the fact that the right had co-opted history.