Jerusalem, October 6 - A longtime tenant in this historic neighborhood in the center of the city reported feeling ill this afternoon when he exited his apartment and found his olfactory system and lungs under assault by clean air.

Asi Avrahami, 50, told PreOccupied Territory that his body suffered a severe shock from the weed-free atmosphere.

“It should be illegal, that kind of horrible air quality,” he argued. “My head is still reeling, hours later.”

Neighbors on Shirizli Street said the disturbance lasted less than an hour, which was still long enough to empty several front yards and send at least one man back indoors to wait it out with a towel over his face.

Avrahami, who has lived in Nachlaot for twenty-two years, said the ordinary smell of the alley had been a reliable feature of the property, like the uneven stairs and the neighbor who plays his radio too loud on Friday afternoons. He described Tuesday’s air as “aggressive in its emptiness.”

“You open the door and you expect the usual greeting,” he said. “Instead it was just oxygen. No character. My sinuses did not know what to do.”

A woman on the parallel alley Einayim LaMishpat St., Shira Ben-David, noticed the change while hanging laundry. She immediately checked whether someone had called emergency services. No one had. “In this neighborhood, if the air goes quiet, you assume a tragedy,” she said. “Or a vacation. Same effect.”

Local shopkeepers treated the episode as a civic failure. At a corner boutique, customers walked in asking whether the street had been washed. The owner, Lior, said he had not washed anything. “They looked betrayed,” he said. “One woman bought gum just to have a smell in her mouth.”

City officials declined to open an investigation. A municipal spokesman said Jerusalem’s complaint system records odors that are present, not odors that fail to appear. “If residents wish to report the lack of a smell, they are free to try,” he said. “We do not currently have a form for that.” He noted that several callers had tried to register the “hazard” with the Department of Sanitation, arguing with municipality personnel that the olfactory experience warrants at least the same level of alarm and urgent response as an animal carcass.

Avrahami said he sat with his window open until the familiar note returned, which it did close to sunset, drifting down from an upstairs window with no ceremony. He called the restoration “the first decent thing the afternoon had done.”

By evening, residents said the block had recovered its usual atmosphere. A resident of the adjacent Ohel Moshe section expressed gratitude that this time, unlike a similar incident in 2017, the aroma of marijuana returned with enough swiftness and pungency to prevent the neighborhood’s other characteristic scent, cat urine, from overwhelming everyone.

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