Tourists by Yehuda Amichai

Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.

Once I sat on the steps by agate at David's Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, "You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

Allenby with Jacob

They’re the best mobile aid provider in the region, have mostly palestinian programmers, but was co-founded founded by this canadian HBS graduate. We’ve talked briefly before, but we had a several hour conversation on the complicated nature of work in this area. After arriving at Damascus Gate he left us to return to Ramallah, and we met Jared at Al-Ayed chicken restaurant.

Since it’s Jeff’s first time here, we spent the afternoon trekking around the old city. Did the standard holy sites tour: Church of the Speulchre, Western Wall, Dome of the Rock. Couldn’t actually get up to the mount because it was Friday, but did see some exuberant dancing at the Kotel plaza for the second night of Hannukkah. Then walked along the eastern edge of the wall, overlooking Silwan, a Palestinian village under threat of destruction, and the Valley of Jehosphat, where the dead shall rise when Gog and Magog battle and the Lord returns in glory. Or at least that’s what wikipedia tells me.

Dome of the Rock

Jerusalem with Jared

Ladder of the Status Quo

Pillar of Absalom and Cave of Jehosephat

Silwan

Nose picking at the Church of St Mary Magdalene

Jeff bought some “computers”, which are really knock-off nintendo boards from china, on the street for $20. The first immediately broke upon plugging in to the TV, but I think we can fix it when we get back to the lab. The intention is to develop educational software for this platform, perhaps using the Contiki OS, but I think he just wants to play Duck Hunt.

Unique Educational Computer

Camels!

Hipster shades

Practicing her Arabic

Us and the Dome

Hannah above the Wall

Met Nitin and the Voices Beyond Walls crew for drinks, so Hannah could meet them. Then we met Hannah’s friends Carrie and Brian for waffles and a walk through the German Colony. She’ll hang out with them on Shabbat, and Jared and I will go on an adventure. More on that later.

Ein Kerem Panorama

Then we did a total turn around, and went to the “artists colony” at Ein Kerem. The tranquility of the lush valley hides an ugly past. It was an arab village that was “abandoned” in 1948, or so a resident said, making sure to point out that there wasn’t a massacre here as there was at Deir Yassin only a few miles north. But whether or not there was physical violence, people did not leave these beautiful houses without reason. The very reason the town has so much charm, and is now becoming trendy, is due to the vanished occupants. Those same families now live in places like Shufat, so far from their old homes.

Temple Mount

Herodian column

After that jarring experience, we decided to go for the full Zionist kick at the Western Wall tunnels. She had another friend who met us there, and we were wowed by the multimedia-archaeological spectacle. The tour guide expounded on the glory of King Herod’s engineering feat: leveling the top of Mt Moriah, the center of creation and the spot where Abraham prepared his son for sacrifice, and building upon it a glorious temple. The tunnel follows the western retaining wall of the temple mount, which is far longer than the small “wailing” section reveals. There are some massive stones down there, bigger than those used in the pyramids. Although, it was built 2000 years after Giza with Roman techniques, so let’s not get too excited.

Damascus Gate

Qalandia backup

I bid my new friend adieu as she went to the airport, and I headed back to Ramallah. There was a long wait at the checkpoint while the rush hour traffic cleared. There’s no actual check going out of Israel proper into the West Bank, but there was a backup nonetheless. Went out for drinks with other internationals, and discussed the relative dependence of Palestine on NGO funding over many rounds of Taybeh beer. The taste of the revolution, indeed.

What really disturbed me about the tour was that the same set of restrictions and discriminatory are placed on the Bedouin as the Palestinians, even though the Bedouin are full citizens of Israel. Because this issue has none of the international legal complexity as that with the West Bank, the only reason for these policies that holds together is simple racism. And in a country that prides itself on being the only democracy in the Middle East, that is simply unacceptable.

Bedouin Boy on Donkey

Old Bedouin Man

Snack shack

I went all the way from Amman to the Israeli border this morning, my taxi driver going like a maniac (even more so than normal), only to find out that the border is closed at 11 on Shabbat. I did think of this and looked it up in my book beforehand, but the information was old and things seem to change unexpectedly in this part of the world. So, the border was closed, and there is apparently nowhere to stay in the vicinity. Back in another taxi, paying the exorbitant fee again, and back to Amman. I go back to the same hotel, which was quite serviceable last night, but they are full. They offer me a tent on the roof, which has the advantage of being both cheap and airy. I slept with the window open last night, so it shouldn’t be a significant difference. Anyways, I’ll get to Jared tomorrow, and have another good story about borders and bureaucracy to tell. Now I need to figure out what to do for a day; I’m sort of ruined and mosqued out. Maybe there’s a theater in town showing The Dark Knight…

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The Bosporus

I ran into Rich and Scott in the airport, and chatted with them on the plane. They didn’t make it all the way up Kilimanjaro, as Rich got pulmonary edema and heard his lungs crack when they began to fill with liquid. So they went back down and went on a safari instead. He seemed alright a few days later, but was still shaken from his brief visit to a Tanzanian hospital. In the air, we flew almost directly over Istanbul That visit will have to wait for another trip.

On landing at JFK, I got a bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and then the Greyhound to Boston. This was almost more arduous than the flight itself. Why New York, with their comprehensive subway system, doesn’t have a decent transit link between their airports and the downtown is beyond me. Yes, there is the AirTrain, but it doesn’t go anywhere near where I needed to get.

I staggered out of the T and stumbled home, where I greeted Mike with my shaggy beard and personal aroma. He welcomed me with open arms, a sign of our true love. Now just to recover from my jetlag, exhaustion and shilshul, before I start work on Monday. It was an incredible trip, and a fitting break between my old life and my new. Next year in Ulaan Bataar!