Two weeks ago, when I was followed home after working, was not the first time someone followed me through the tangled streets of Jerusalem. Sadly, I’m sure it won’t be the last.
I walked back from a catering event, beer in hand (the manager is a friend of mine, and generally snags me drinks at the weddings we work together), on the phone with a girlfriend.
I walk past a garden, next to a small neighborhood bar. I notice a Charedi (Ultra-Orthodox) man, holding two beer bottles in his left hand, one green and one brown, stop and watch me as I pass. I see him take in my exposed knees, the beer bottle in my hand, and what he thought was my lack of awareness due to my phone conversation.
I stop laughing. My voice gets low, as low as it can, as I say to my friend, “I think I’m being followed. I’m on Shilo street, next the market.”
I go to stand under a street lamp, my back against the wall, relieved by the presence of several tourists and another young woman in the immediate area. I’m talking loudly again, making my existence known to everyone, hoping he’ll see the other people as well and give up. I watch him as he passes me, head down. I see him turn down a side street. I breathe a sigh of relief.
I continue on, glancing to my left as I pass his turn, making sure he can’t see me walking past, all the while narrating everything to my friend, hoping that all I’m saying is unnecessary, that it’s in my head, that I’ve shaken him.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I see only his back heading away. I read the end of the street, it’s 3 flickering streetlights are the most safety I’ll get for a few blocks. I tell her I’m turning around, just to make sure he’s gone. He isn’t. He’s back behind me, his pace still steady, but faster.
I’m trying to keep calm, I say to my friend- “I’m glad I’m in a neighborhood I recognize. I’ll shake him the alleys, twist and turn around.” I walk faster, turning right and then left and then right again, thanking my love of wandering through the neighborhood during daylight hours.
I’m trotting now, a fast and efficient shuffle, the adrenaline erasing the pain of my weak ankle and still-healing knee. I bless my ankle brace, my practical shoes, and break into a run, still narrating on the phone, still trying to shake him. I make a final turn, hoping please please please let the construction be finished, let the street be open, please please please I’ll go to my friends’ house, they’re a bunch of guys, I’m yelling in the phone now, my bag slams against the metal sheeting around my recently re-opened escape path. I don’t have to turn around anymore, behind my hyperventilation, behind the smack of my sneakers on the cobblestone road, I can hear him behind me, hear him catching up.
I reach my friends’ building, run up the one flight of stairs to their floor. I pound on the door, screaming, Open up! Open up! My phone has gone dead, there’s no service in their stupid stairwell.
“Who is it?” comes a voice from behind the door.
“It’s Deb,” I scream, “It’s Deb, please let me in, just open the door!”
“Who?!”
I can’t blame him for not opening the door at 11pm for someone pounding and screaming.
“Deb!!”
Apparently my hysterics makes my voice less clear, I keep pounding, he finally opens after 3 or 4 more exchanges of “who?” what?”
I fall into the apartment, relief that he finally opened.
“What, what’s going on?”
“This guy… following me… running when I sped up…” I manage.
“Who, that guy?” He points to a figure walking up the stairs.
I freeze.
It’s another roommate.
Now I cry, I haven’t been followed up the stairs, at least.
“Oh yeah,” he says after I explain why the sight of him made me freeze and then cry, “That guy was hanging outside the apartment when I walked up, pretending to be on his phone.”
They gather another roommate, we walk outside to look for him, to make sure he knows following women around is unacceptable. He’s gone. We search a few more side streets nearby, nothing.
I’m shaking still, crying, shaking for a half hour until I can finally stop, and I get walked home.
Two weeks ago, when I was followed home after working, was not the first time someone followed me through the tangled streets of Jerusalem. It’s not the first time I’ve gone into what I call “defense mode,” where I do everything not to walk alone at night, and never leave the house without my pepper spray and brass knuckles, where my friends know where I am if I leave the house after dark.
Two weeks since, my anxiety levels have been higher than they have been in years, two weeks since I can’t lay next to my partner at night without a tshirt and underwear, brutal in the Jerusalem summer. Two weeks of every man on the street a potential threat, two weeks of tossing and turning in my sleep, two weeks of awful dreams, two weeks of nonstop triggers and flashbacks, of thinking of nothing but street harassment and rape and dead women in alleys.
Maybe this time the aftershock will only last a month. Maybe only two. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll hit my head on the cobbles and forget the whole thing.
It’s not the first time I’ve been followed home, and I know it won’t be the last.
deborah kadishelby, 26, is originally from Illinois and currently resides in Jerusalem where she works with youth-at-risk and regularly gets into screaming matches with guys who comment on her ass.
