Jerusalem

So Jerusalem, we went. The things that this city has meant are innumerable and mind-boggling. I took a five day weekend and trekked across endless unpaved desert to reach this place for about two and a half days.

Twenty four hours after departing, we arrived. After four bus rides and a five hour layover in an Israeli beach town which seemed surprisingly similar to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but with Hebrew, conversations with various Jewish young people from the 13 year old Canadian and British girls going to the mall to the helpful college graduates to the "free-spirit" on the path to self-discovery through meeting people infinitely shallower than him at bars, we arrived at the Jaffa gate to the old walled city of Jerusalem.

In the slightly hazy, rainy early evening we found our way to our hostels. C and I were staying on top of a fruit market at the "Palm Hostel." This place involved no keys, no towels, and no clean sheets, but free tea with mint and endless rotations of cool dormmates. C developed a fancy for an Australian reading an anthology of American literature ("The Scawlet Letta kinna drags awn a bit.") while I myself fell for the German with partially bleached dreadlocks from the moment he woke up and hit his head on the bunk above him. C and I made a pact that if either of us ended up like the thirty-year-old married couple staying in the hostel dorms, there needed to be an intervention.

So Good Friday in Jerusalem dawned on us intrepid travelers and we decided to start out with some shopping in case the Sabbath cramped our style. After that was handled we headed out to the Mt of Olives, stupid "City of David" look out platform, Garden of Gethsemane (where an African man was briskly making his way through with a cane and staff, making xs over everything while pushing pilgrims out of the way and saying, "he's still alive, he's not dead"), and the church where Jesus wept, overlooking the city.

We still had daylight and the excitement of Good Friday left and the three of us decided to do the stations of the cross in order. Cool. These stations culminate in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. On the roof the Ethiopian Orthodox are out in full force celebrating good Friday. We waited in a line wrapping around the shrine around the place where Jesus was supposedly crucified. I almost was trampled and fainted. Voices around us were unrecognizable languages with one Egyptian arabic voice and one clear English voice in the mob stating, "God damn it, I just want to see the place where Jesus died!" We finally made it to the entrance where an Orthodox black-robed priest grabbed my arm, shoved me through a doorway, another priest shoved me to my knees shouting "kiss and go! kiss and go! quickly!!" I hurried to obey, another priest pulled me from the ground and shoved me out the door muttering to the priest in front of me in line something about faith being pain. While this is probably one of my best and most hilarious Easter memories of my life, I can only imagine what might have been the effect on someone who was expecting a somber religious experience, someone who had paid their life savings to kiss that ground and pray at that site.

The next day C and I headed out of the old city, which I'd never done before. We made our way to Independence Park to lay in the sun without being heckled for the whole morning. On our way we passed "George W. Bush plaza" dedicated in his honor for his friendship towards Israel, last year. Wow. We walked around until we were lost in a very conservative Jewish neighborhood. Signs were on every shop and corner saying, "PLEASE DO NOT WEAR IMMODEST CLOTHING" and explaining in smaller print how not covering your arms, etc. was harmful for their way of life. While we're contemplating directions two nice middle aged Orthodox men ask if they can help us, one in Hebrew and then one in English. About fifteen minutes later they show up beside us again, saying they thought we might need a baby sitter to get back safely to the Old City, we deny it. Then English speaking 40ish year old Orthodox Jewish man in conservative neighborhood proceeds to ask if we can meet him sometime next week... I proceed to ask C if he was hitting on us as my hitting on radar has been totally shot by being in Egypt, she confirms it. Wow.

We make it back home and then meet my other friend and head out on the town. I splurge for a New York like piece of pizza on the point of starvation and we walk around the main entertainment street. Its mini America, complete with college-age kids singing Christian praise music, a group of performance street fighters, a woman setting up her own karaoke, and fro-yo. I like it. We watch the middle school kids, some little boys with cool hair locks framing their face, the families, and the couples go by. It still weirds me out every time I hear Hebrew because English seems to be the only language that would make sense in this context. I understand this context completely I feel, but then the language not at all, its jarring, and its frustrating to be somewhere where I understand nothing that is said and can say nothing, I forgot that. It seems like Hebrew is even more prevalent, and English less prevalent, than two years ago.

We wake up Easter morning at 5:30 with intentions of making the 6:30 Latin mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Unfortunately, because the "Armenians have something" (something meaning a chanting parade through the church), the mass was cancelled. No prob, we head up to the roof to listen to some birds and see the sun rise further over the dome. Communion is just not happening in a church for us so we purchase some supermarket "grape drink" and take it on down to the basement of the Austrian Hospice, take some of the breakfast buffet bread. Julianna breaks it and distributes, "this is my body broken for you," we drink from the grape drink bottle, "this is my blood poured out for you." Best communion ever.

Off to the bus. This time we think we've got it down, we know what we're doing, then get slammed with a surprise 94.5 sheckel border crossing tax. I have 1.5 sheckels at this point. Luckily between J and C they can get me out of the country. We angrily mutter about this ridiculousness until the IDF border patrol woman raises the gate and we step into Egypt, greeted by an old wrinkly man drinking tea and saying, "welcome to Egypt." O we missed it! However, after waiting an hour I get through passport control and C and J are cut in line by some rich diplomat, at which time I try to chat up the border patrol to get my girls through. It didn't really work. We finally get on the bus, perfect timing, we're cool so we take the back seat, and get slammed by another 35 pounds border tax, which somehow only two of us had to pay, which we also had barely enough for between the three of us. About half way through the ride we are awakened by the smell and feel of burning sand in our lungs. I wrap my new Kufaya around my face to block out the sandstorm that has somehow ended up occurring inside the bus.

O Egypt.

Since I've come back I have talked to several Egyptians about Jerusalem, this holy city for everyone. Reactions have gone from, "you are so lucky you could go" to "I want to drop a nuclear bomb on that whole country because I'm a psychopathic person" to "we need dialogue between cultures, we don't know each other. Jewish women dress like Muslim women?"

I still can't quite grasp the concept of Israel. This country seems like it should be a theme park. How can there be a state really based on a religion like this? So late? How long can this last? There's this constant tension bearing down, like a tangible hard plastic bubble. When will it finally crack? In what way? What will be lost when it does crack? Is there any other way?