The game

It was an early evening in May. The evening light wrapped Jerusalem in a golden veil. We were heading towards the apartment of Abir and Lihi. They don’t live far away from Israeli president Shimon Peres’ house. So you might consider their neighbourhood posh. But there is no posh neighbourhood in Jerusalem as far as I know. Soon after we had arrived we started to play Tekken. For those not familiar with Tekken, it’s a street fighter game where you hit each other until one goes K.O. So there we were, five people fighting each other in Jerusalem, laughing, drinking, smoking. If you are lucky, life is the same without the K.O. You play games, you go into competition. You win, you lose. That’s why the classical game theory got something wrong with looking for equilibriums in games (and Frank Schirrmacher got something wrong in his book Ego with over interpreting the impact of game theory on our lives). Games are seldom about equilibriums. As soon as you hit one you want to move on. The next day we went to Ramallah. We took a small bus from Damascus gate, passed the notorious check point Qalandiya and headed to the city center. We walked around. Ate hummus. Drank sweet tea. Listened to the prayers of the muezzin. The game of seeing things with your own eyes. Move on.