Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Tel Aviv

Soo...

We checked into the Alexander Suites at the beach. When we got there we unpacked and went for a walk on the beach. Right where the path from our hotel meets the beach there are these chairs on the sand. With waiters. It's about 4pm, lots of people have beers.

We didn't get much further down the beach for a little while.


Some Russians behind us are sharing a joint with the waitress and there are some other Russians to our right dumping vodka into their water glasses and drinking beer. Its still pretty bright and warm and there are people walking around and hanging out just wearing swimwear. Lots of skin. In Amman, they have rules that you can't be naked in the locker room. Sitting out on the beach, it felt like a light was releasing a part of my soul that had lay in shadow. They had Shakshuka.

I don't know if that's how you spell it. Poached eggs mashed together in some kind of red chili wine sauce. Spicy and eggy. Like I like it.

We walked up and down the promenade, very wide, crowded with cool shops and restaurants. Lots of fathers with kids. After a long walk, we grabbed some dinner by some little fishing harbor. Ordered too much food.



Then we walk down the boardwalk to speedos. The boardwalk is ripply, like gentle waves with 5 foot crests in parts. Very cool. The boardwalk is more like a massive deck, really. The boardwalk is vast.



Then we turn in.




Eating breakfast at the buffet, I hear some conversation:

Lady:
"He provided for his family by using his hands and his power."

other Lady:
"He was a laborer"

L:
"He was a survivor"

I'm sitting down at the table and Ann giggling a little:

R
-"You heard that?"
A
-"He was a suh vy vah!!"

And the visuals on the beach were killer.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Cyprus not to be

Ann's been jonesing for some ocean and liberal values for about five months, and set up a jaunt to Cyprus for a few days. She had an extra day off because of Jordanian Independence day, and we were going to celebrate by getting independent of Jordan. Got the e-tickets off Cyprus air and we were ready to go.

At 5 am we go to meet or driver in front of Shaer Apartments, our erstwhile home, but he's not there. Ann gives a call to the driver service and the guy there, Rajid, says that the driver was told to come back at 6am.

Ann-"by who?"
Rajid-"By an American at Shaer Apartments. Your friend told the driver that he was early ad didn't need him until 6."

A-"What? My friend? He's not my friend! You should have given the driver my name!"
R-"But your friend sent the driver away..."

A-"Look, I don't even know who you are talking about. Where is our driver? We need to go now so get him here."
R-"But your friend-"
A-"Send the driver NOW!"
R-"ok"

So we get out of there around 5:30am, and the driver is going fast. We get to the airport in time and get to the desk before 6. Hand the e-ticket, the guy prints our boarding passes and then says there are no tickets. We have reservatios, but no tickets.

There is one guy working behind the counter and two guys in uniform in two other counters, possibly working. One of the slacker guys, whose name is Hussein, is apparently senior, and our no-ticket problem gets bumped to him. Now you'd think that this guys function as a manager type might be to offer additional customer support. It becomes apparent very quickly, that his role is exactly the opposite. To remove any support at all and try to extort money from us.

He repeatedly says there is no ticket and manages to deftly straddle the line between arrogance and ignorance as we repeatedly remind him that money was taken from our account, that this is fraud. His refrain is "we cannot pay for your ticket." Often delivering it with a laugh as if it was the most absurd thing in the world.





We checked online and couldn't get a receipt but could see the funds had been taken. It was too early to reach Cyprus air and we asked Hussein if we cold see the manager of Cyprus air, he stretched up to his full bureaucratic weasel height of 5'4" in inch riser heels and said "I am the manager." Around 6:30 (the flight leaves at 7) we figure we'll be able to recoup the cash somehow and bow to Hussein's demands to buy another ticket.

H-"If you don't want to go to Cyprus, why are you here."
Us-"Of course we want to go to Cyprus,but we don't want to pay twice."
H-"If you don't pay, how can you go?"
U-"But we did pay. We don't want to pay again"
H-"Ah. Then you do not want to go?"
U-What? Yes we want to go, but we don't want to pay twice."
H-"So you don't want to go to Cyprus then. OK."


You know steam is coming out of Ann's ears and bodily harm to Hussein is eminent at this point. I figure that since we bought the ticket with a credit card, we'll just throw the fraud word around and get our money back somehow. I don't think the word "Fraud" is in Hussein's vocabulary, or perhaps his definition of it is as a synonym for "profit." So we decide to buy another ticket. He charges us 100 euros more per ticket and starts printing up the boarding passes. I'm thinking we should just snatch them and bolt, but there are too many ways that could end badly. He asks for 440 dinars and I hand him the credit card.

He looks at the card and says
"what? Cash only"

"Huh? you're kidding. We don't have that much cash"

"go to cash machine"

"We can't take that much out at once."

"Ah. then you do not want to go to Cyprus."

He rips the boarding passes up. I take a picture of this bastard with my cell phone, and then I ask to see his ID badge. He flashes it so quickly I couldn't even tell what color it was, much less get a snap of it. I ask hi to show me his badge again, but he's tucked it into his coat. I keep yelling "Show me your badge!" but he is now stuffing all sorts of paperwork into a vinyl bag and casting about with shifty eyes and pretending we are not there. Then he grabs his vinyl bag and sprints to the end of the conveyor belt that the luggage rides on. One final glance back, like a weasel expecting pursuit, and he bends down and crawls through the hanging flap doors that the luggage goes through. He is gone. It is 6:45am. No flights to Cyprus available from any airline, no flights to anywhere we want to go.

We We met this guy Sebastion, who was trying to get home from France after spending 10 years in Japan. He had the same vapor-ticket problem we had. As we are leaving the airport, they make us put all our luggage through the x Ray machines and make us walk through the metal detector. But it doesn't go backwards, so we have to go outside the airport, walk thru the metal detector with our luggage, put the luggage on the conveyor belt, walk back thru the metal detector back into the airport to get our luggage, and back out again. This would have been funny, because the whole barrier was within 100 feet of the ticket desk.


We get in a cab and head back to Shaer apartments. I still can't raise cyprus air on the phone. Everything is closed in Amman. Back at the apartment, we decide to go to Israel and hang out in Tel Aviv. Because Amman is becoming ever more oppressive now that we feel trapped here.

So we call Rajid and he comes in person to pick us up at 9:30am and takes us to the King Hussein bridge. This is the closest border crossing, but they have no VISA issuing facilities for Jordan. Should not be a factor, because Ann has a residency until June and I have a VISA good until June as well.

After and hour car ride to the border, we grab or bags and head into the Jordanian customs to pay our exit tax. Here is where the spirit of the weasel again raises his eager pinpoint eyes, greasy whiskers eagerly twitching. The immigration guy says tat Ann does not have a valid VISA, so she cannot go without paying for the additional days she has been in Jordan without it. Ann repeatedly points ot that she has a 6 month residency stamp, so as a resident, she doesn't need a VISA. That's the whole point of residency status. Weasel agrees that she has a resident stamp but says that only allows her to stay in Jordan, and she can't leave without also having an up to date VISA. And she can't pay for the additional days she has been in Jordan at this border because they can't issue VISAs. We must go to the SHEIK Hussein bridge, 2 hours to the north, to take care of this. We call Rajid, and he turns around and picks us up. Ann is inconsolable and it feels like we are stuck in hell. No Exit. It is 11:30 am.

It is in the car heading north that as Rajid starts to make light of the situation, saying "Jordan wants you to stay here Miss Ann." "You are going to wander here like moses for 40 years.." Jokey stuff along these lines, and I'm kind of waving at him from the back seat, doing the throat cut gesture, laughing too loud to drown out what sounds like a litany of Ann's fears at the moment and Ann starts sobbing, her head in her hands beside me. "Sorry" says Rajid. I put my arm around Ann and try to hold her in the car, excruciatingly aware that this type of display is Haram (forbidden) in public, and this just compounds my frustration, but that's just in the background, really, because you can't not reach out to a loved one in despair. She gets it under control after a while, and I wisely decide not to do a quick in car video interview asking how her day is going so far.



At the Sheik Hussein border, it is very easy to get through. It's 12:30pm. The only snag was that they didn't understand why we had paid for exit tax stamps at the Appleby border crossing, so we had to go meet with the border big man in his office and explain that we bought the exit stamps but ten were refused exit. He smiles and they all say welcome, and everyting is OK. While we are waiting in line, a mouse goes scurrying through the passport control area, and some of the officals chase him, but he gets away. An smiles at this and says to them "He's going to Israel." The guy smiles back , after translating this to his buddies who start laughing, and says "It is OK, he paid his exit tax."

Finally we make it to Israel. A very easy crossing. I can't help but notice that there is nothing wrong with Ann's credentials and she doesn't have to pay additional VISA fees because, of course, she has a RESIDENCY stamp. Weasel two has earned a special place in the pantheon of petty customs tyrants.

You come into Israel, and everyone there is 19 and female, except for some guards, and they are just total slackers, flat of affect with us while joking and texting among themselves. It strikes me that this type of job is the equivelant of working at McDonalds for teenagers in a america. Its a McJob, except that its part of mandated military 1 year service for Israeli nationals.

Anyway, we get a taxi and for $100 we are conveyed to Tel Aviv. We arrive at 3:30PM. Five minutes on the beach and you feel all these repressed emotions slip away, and immediately feel more alive. It was a long day, but totally worth it.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

surf jet

me learning to walk on water

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Egypt







Egypt. Cairo. Colorful Bedouin tents in the sand next to monolithic
ruins and a wide lazy river? Not even close. More like New York City
with exponentially crazier drivers and more stuff open after 2am. And
more horns.




Our cab driver picked us up at the airport and drove us to the hotel,
Om Kholthoom, explaining that half the drivers in Cairo were crazy.
Then he demonstrated which half he belonged to, straddling the white line
on a narrowing exit ramp at forty until the less crazy drivers on
either side dropped back. He called the car horns "the music of Cairo."
And it goes on 24/7.

I guess there are 20 million people in Cairo during the work week. And
almost everything stays open all night. I mean stuff like candle
shops and autoparts stores were still open at 2am as we made our way back
from dinner. I suppose this comes from a desert culture that sought
shade and rest during the heat of the day, toiling thru the night.



We started in Cairo, because Ann was working there, and I worked at a
cafe overlooking the Nile on Zamalek Island. I heard there were a lot
of ExPats on the Island. The city has this sand colored dust that coats
everything that doesn't move. Like the hotel room windows. It seems
like taxi drivers are trying to rip you off and at first we felt preyed
upon to some extent. But then I walked Ann to her office and she got
cash at a cash machine on the way. On my way back this guy is yelling
"sir! SIR!" from across the street. I walk over there, figuring he's
mistaken me for someone else (that happens a lot). He says "you cart
visa you leave it" I'm trying to figure out what scam he is trying out
on me as I make sure I have my passport and wallet. He goes "cart!
CARD!" He's pointing at the cash machine. "Inside!" He says. I go
inside and there is a guard in there with Ann's debit card, which she left
in the machine. All of the sudden Cairo seems less predatory. Of
course I have to cough up a tip for the guard and the guy on the
sidewalk. There is no question of a tip in situations like this. It's
just a question of how much.

Four days in Cairo, the pyramids visible from the top of our hotel, and
we left the island once to go on a dinner cruise.





Pretty cool cruise
on the Nile with a killer Egyptian buffet, belly dancer and a male
dancer that was spinnning for 20 minutes with these big hoops skirt thing.





Ahmed, who took us out, said the belly dancer was a turkish wedding
tradition to made sure the groom was fully aroused before bedding his new
wife for the first time.


Aside from the cruise, we went out one other time, but were mostly
working. We made up for that over the next four days.

Feb 15th, 7:00pm. Drive from our hotel to Cairo airport, boarding a
flight to Aswan.
Feb 15th, 11:30pm. Check into the Cleopatra Hotel in Aswan.
Feb 16th, 3:00am. Check out of Cleopatra Hotel, get into a van.
Feb 16th, 3:30am. 35 people in the van. We are driving to Abu Semple,
something
Ann was told that we must see and we did. 4 hour drive, desert
dawn.







Feb 16th, 10:00pm 4 hours back to Aswan.
Feb 16th, 2:00pm Falafels
Feb 16th, 2:15pm The granite quarry. THis is where the unfinished
obelisk is.
Feb 16th, 3:30pm The Aswan High Damn. 16 times the material it took
to build the great pyramid.
Feb 16th, 4:00pm Get on a speed boat head upriver on the Nile.
Feb 16th, 4:30pm The Temple at Philae. Isis gathered Osiris' body
parts (minus one) and buried them here.
Feb 16th, 5:30pm Get on a Train to Luxor.
Feb 16th, 10:30pm Arrive Luxor (Arabic word, plural of "palace").
Check out the Sunset Hotel. Too shabby.
Feb 16th, 11:30pm Check in to the Pinata hotel.
Feb 17th, 06:00am Hop in a car. Head to the valley of Kings.
Feb 17th, 07:00am Valley of Kings. Hot. Hotter inside the tombs.
Mind blowing.
Feb 17th, 09:00am Hop in a car. Head to the Hapshupset's Temple.
Feb 17th, 09:30am HapShupset the only female pharoah to build a temple
to herself.
Feb 17th, 11:00am Hop in a car. Head to the valley of Queens.
Feb 17th, 11:30am Valley of Queens.
Feb 17th, 12:15am Hop in a car. Head back to Luxor.
Feb 17th, 12:45am Stop to view TutMoseII statues, called Memnon?
Before rennovation began on these giant statues,
the wind made it sound like they were weeping.
Feb 17th, 1:00pm Hop in a car. Onward to Luxor.
Feb 17th, 1:30pm Falafels.
Feb 17th, 1:45pm Karnac. 27 temples inside this 140 square kilometer
complex. Place is friggin huge.
Previously blown mind is re-blown.
Feb 17th, 3:30pm Decide to skip the Temple at Luxor and hit the roof
top pool. Did I mention it was hot?
Feb 17th, 4:00pm Sunning by pool. Beer involved.
Feb 17th, 6:00pm Pool is cold.
Feb 17th, 8:00pm Dinner. Chinese.
Feb 17th, 11:00pm Crashed.

Feb 18th, 6:00am Check out. Get in car to airport.
Feb 18th, 8:00am Fly to Cairo.
Feb 18th, 10:00am Arrive Cairo.
Feb 18th, 11:00am Driver takes us to the Zaccara. First pyramid,
temple of Zuul.
Feb 18th, 12:00pm Hungry, cold. Driver wants to take us to a carpet
making school.
This is where they teach children the trade of making carpets. We
pass, demanding food.
Feb 18th, 12:30pm Cheops. Food. Coffee. Good.
Feb 18th, 1:30pm The Great Pyramid.
Feb 18th, 2:30pm The Sphynx.
Feb 18th, 3:00pm Back to Cairo.
Feb 18th, 4:00pm Dinner at Chiles (the chain).
Feb 18th, 5:00pm The big market at cairo. Been around for 10000
years?
Feb 18th, 6:00pm Airport.
Feb 18th, 7:00pm Fly back to Jordan.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

petra

We decided to head to Petra. It's about a 1 hour drive. Built by Nabatteans former nomads who roamed the Arabian Peninsula. The treasury:





Made famous by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, may not actually hold the holy grail like Indy showed us. It's called the treasury because there was a rumour rhat the urn at the top held some pharoahs gold:





But it's really a temple. There was some mention of great hordes of gold near the dead sea, in the dead sea scrolls which were found not far from petra, but no one has ever found it. In Petra, our guide told us he had lived in a cave growing up and I wondered why all the places where people lived looked like, crummy, like this:





(That's Monica our friend and neighbor in this picture). See how the house looks like a cave. But all the places where people didn't live, the temples and the tombs, looked really nice. There may have been a nice palace somewhere, but I dind't see it. The other interesting thing about the Nabbateans is the representations of theuir Gods are totally abstract. Here is the most ornate and detailed figures of their two Gods:





(Ann on the right) See, the God on the left is Dushara, and the one on the right is al-Uzza. No, there isn't anything else to them, just rectangular blocks. Suddenly that episode of SpongeBob square pants makes sense.

We decided to ride donkeys up to the monastery, 900 stairs, and that was interesting. Donkeys on uneven steep stairs with a sharp drop off to the right. It was OK until my donkey started wheezing and stumbling.

The cab drivers in Amman sometimes point to someone driving crazy (you can randomly point in any direction and usually be pointing at a crazy driver) and call them a donkey. I never quite got it until this donkey ride. The stairs are maybe 5 feet wide and there is a wall on one side and a cliff on the other and my friggin donkey is trying to pass Ann's donkey, or just repeated ram into it until he became too tired to do so. THis is kind of how we drive in Amman. No stop lights, you just kind of shove your car into a space too small for it in moving traffic and everyone has to adjust, or you get a dinger.

We made it to the monastery, which was a temple, not a monastery, and met someone from Seattle up there.




Next, we went to Egypt.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Snow in Amman

While I was working last night the wind was howling outside. There are a couple of tall thin cypress trees about 20 feet from our back deck that kept snapping against the railing. I had threaded the internet cable through the sliding glass door and so I was getting a steady breeze in my work space in the living room.

We woke up this morning to about a foot of snow. It was pretty much little slushy balls almost exactly like raw material for slushies. Or for Farheed the snowman:






There are a couple of snow plows in this city of 2 million, but most of the people seem to call it a day off.

Going back a month, to new years, we got to go into the Intercontinental hotel because of Ann's coworker Fires. Its hard to get into these parties because they need to do a security check on everyone who gets in. But Fires was a former bartender there, so we managed to get fast-tracked:



Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Today: by Ann

Hope your holidays were Merry .Here's to a 2008 filled with Peace and Happiness to all of you.

Reed and I spent our Christmas holidays in the Occupied Territories (Jerusalem and West Bank) and in Tel Aviv (Israel). We were in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve and stood in the very spot where Jesus was born (true story).









At sunset we gazed over Shepherds Fields and tried to imagine what the voices of those angels who were heard on high sounded like as they announced the birth of the baby Jesus but it was really hard because the Israeli construction crews were hammering away.






Busy little elves building illegal settlements. What would Jesus say about the flagrant violation of UN Resolution 242? (WWJSAFVUN242?).

Not sure who promised this:





Thank God George Bush showed up to make peace in the Middle East. He's only been in office for 7 years.

My job is pretty amazing. Today I chatted with a former aviation engineer who had visited Seattle in the late 70's. His host from Boeing took him Sockeye fishing in the Sound and their dinghy deflated and they had to be rescued. It felt surreal to be having this conversation with a refugee en route to resettlement in Utah.
Words like Mosul and Anbar have taken on new meaning as there are faces and stories to go with the names of these places. I have met engineers, doctors, lawyers, librarians, cartographers and artists. The stories are sad and heartbreaking but as always there is a whole lotta hope in the room that the US will offer a new start in life. I try to feel hopeful too- that people will be kind to them and recognize what they have been thorough and not call them terrorists and beat them up at the 7-11. And that all the lost husbands, wives, parents, children, neighbors, and limbs are not in vain but of course we all know that nothing will ever be worth it.

Meanwhile we work out at our swanky gym across the street from Starbucks and Bennigans. On TV I watch Oprah, Dr. Phil and Shaq's Big Challenge (the latter being my favorite). Hummers careen through neighborhoods of McMansions that would make Carmela Soprano swoon. There is still the odd empty lot with a few Bedouin families and their grazing sheep but soon they will be gone as the Gulfies build their summer homes in Amman to escape the heat and the mall craze continues. We go to dinner parties with relief workers where conversation topics include the rising land costs in Kurdistan and the best carpet shops in Damascus. Our friends are Palestinians, Circassians, and Assyrians-not to mention Serbian, American, Italian and Romanian. I love the blue, blue sky and the olive trees and the kindness and complexity of the Arab culture. It's a fantastic place to be at a pivotal moment in history .

We are excited for spring (it's snowing today!)







and more days at the Dead Sea wallowing in the mud. In a few weeks I'll go to Cairo for work so we will spend Reed's birthday in Egypt.

Lots of people ask how to help. The resettlement agencies always need help-always. Many Iraqis are very highly educated and skilled... if you would like to help with job or financial assistance I can put people in touch with an agency in any city in the US. And of course the Burundians are still en route-I was interviewed for this article in the Des Moines Register: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008801130331

As always Reed updates the blog and if you click on a photo it will take you to the gallery: http://blog.reedko.com/



So here's to Peace on Earth. Let's hope that it actually materializes this year- Inshallah.
Mucho love, Ann

Friday, January 18, 2008

Bethlehem : The House of Meat

Bethlehem: The House of Meat

Beit Layhm. It means the house of meat. But we just think it means where Jesus was born. From Israel, Jerusalem, to get to Bethlehem, you have to go through a check point. There is a wall. A huge wall, 40ft high in places, made of steel reinforced concrete sections that were maybe made somewhere else to preclude terrorist involvement in the manufacture and dropped into the ground and linked by giant helicopters. It is very grey and ominous, as we approach on Christmas eve, with nary a red or green light. You can see the lights in the watchtowers, but they aren't very festive, being spots to ease the aim of snipers picking off suspected destroyers of peace. Not very festive at all. But still, hope abides, because its quiet and it looks like we can all get along for one more day.

The taxi driver from Jeru drops us off for 20 shekels at the cattle gate and we weave through it gazing at the razor wire. Like sheep making our way to slaughter we wander into the building made of half inch thick rumpled steel. Just like at the border with Jordan, all the checkpoint officers are women. They are so bored. So bored, and still they ask the cursory questions and try to see if your eyes dart when you answer.

And I make the bahahahah sheep sound as we scuttle thru the turnstile. But its pretty grim here, and no one laughs. The grimness doesn't wear off for a while, because we quickly cop to the fact that there is some active oppression going on here.

And the grafitti on the bethlehem side of the wall confirms it.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Temple Mount

We didn't expect so many people in Jerusalem to speak Arabic. 9 of 10 Taxi drivers were Palestinian, 1 was Israeli. It depends where you catch the Taxi. The Arabic taxi drivers said that a lot of Hebrew words sounded like Arabic. That the languages came from the same root. Proto-semitic, I think is the root language.

The rock is under the golden dome behind us:


Jerusalem is a city with a walled city inside that has inside of it the core of three world religions.


And that part is very quiet and hard to get to if you look a certain way or can't answer questions a certain way or betray a certain bent. But still its way too easy to get there. Ariel Sharon got there and 3000 people died.

Inside the Mosque that was built on top of the ruins of the second temple (destroyed 70 AD by the ROmans) that was built on the ruins of the temple of Solomon (destroyed ~500bc by the Babylonians, when the Jews were first exiled from Israel), there lies a rock.

This rock is where Mohammed ascended to heaven for a day and got the stories from the Angels that we call the Q'uran.

This rock is where Abraham checked the mortal descent toward the throat of
his son of a sacred knife. When the Ram appeared. Jews say that son was Isaac, Muslims say it was Ishmael.

This is the Rock where Jacob dreamt of a ladder where angels went up and down from here to heaven.

Some say this is the rock where creation began.

I always thought that the second temple was utterly destroyed except for the western wail (wailing wall), but I read somewhere that all four walls remain and a number of pillars. They call it the wailing wall, maybe, because the Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple.

Here's us squatting near the east wall:


So we were standing at the entrance to the dome and a guy was sitting on a plastic deck chair there, so we figured he was some kind of guard. There are doors on each side of the dome but we didn't try them because nobody else was, until we got to the western side where we saw people going in, but they were obviously Muslim. I thought the guy was a guard, but it became pretty apparent that that wasn't the case when he went to have a smoke and left his 6 year old son at the door while he meandered over and chatted with the guy sweeping cigarette butts up off the holiest site in the world. We went to talk to him anyway to see if it was OK to go in, about the same time a guy with a Yankees baseball cap was talking to him. He had some English, but I picked up "Blame king Hussein" and "Forbidden" and "welcome". So we decided not to go in, not to risk offending anyone. But we talked to the guy in the Yankee's cap and he kind of moved his toe around in a circle on the ground and pointed, and then indicated the whole whole area saying "You could pose as a muslim and go in, but not a good idea, really. This piece of real estate is the most contested land in the world right now. Right here. War and destruction over the rock of creation. I don't know why that guard was saying 'blame king Hussein'". I tried to interject here that Hussein of Jordan made the Mosque off limits to no Muslims but Yankee hat was on a roll.

So the current King of Jordan, Abdullah is the son of Hussein who is the grandson of King Abdullah, who was assassinated pretty close to where we were standing on the Temple Mount because, they think, some Palestinians thought Abdullah was trying to negotiate peace with Israel. Always dangerous work. Work his grandson eventually completed.

So we left the Temple Mount and made our way to some bakery in the Christian quarter. We'd been hanging out with a couple from Florence who were working in Jordan since 6:30 am, and I knew that none of us had eaten yet, so I figured this would be breakfast. Coffee and pastry for everyone else, but by God breakfast for me. Or brunch, for it was well nigh on noon. Hummous and pita.

So we went back to the Hotel, it was 12/23. On Christmas eve we planned on going to Bethlehem.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Coming into Jerusalem, we hopped a bus heading for the Damascus Gate.








It was December 23rd, apparently a pretty high traffic day in Jerusalem. The last day of the Islamic Eid and the beginning of some thick Christian inflow. We had a booking in the 7 Arches Hotel which they lost, which didn't surprise either one of us at all. The hotel had the ambiance of an institution like, say, the Department of State in D.C. Perched on the top of Mount Olive, where somewhere in the bible it says the Angels go for vacation, it commands a splendid view of Jerusalem. This is totally true.










What they don't tell you is that there are 197 rooms and only 7 enjoy this view. Those seven are all booked. They also don't mention that the comforters on the bed are so worn the frigging cotton is drooling through the liner. Threadbare. Before I get a chance to see what kind of holy book is in the drawer, Ann peels out of the room and back down the hall, the afterimage of her approbation momentarily burned into my retinas.

We check into the Ambassador, there is no holy book in the drawer.

From here it is a 15 minute walk past the American Colony Hotel to the walled part of Jerusalem. Five out of six world religions agree: This is the part where a lot of significant events occurred. Stuff like the 14 stations of the cross.






We walked by most of these stations but surprise! There is some argument about where they are between protestants and Catholics.

Wouldn't it have been cool to go to every station and take a picture of one of us posed there? Wouldn't it have been cool if we even walked to every station and considered for a moment what happened there? Yeah probably. We got to some:

Across from the first station:




Near the second:




I was surprised by how many people spoke Arabic in Jerusalem. In the taxis, for instance, we had 9 Arab taxi drivers the whole time we were there and 1 Israeli taxi driver.