A brief and delightful encounter with Israel’s airport security

Just because I’m back in Europe now it doesn’t mean I can stop ranting about the Israelis.

Obviously the Israelis got the impression I’m not keen on them, so I was given a traditional Israeli farewell at Tel Aviv airport. I should start by saying I was a tiny bit nervous as I was carrying some documents and the driving license of a Palestinian (found a Palestinian in Lithuania on couch surfing, ended up getting chatting and he asked me to meet his brother and ferry some stuff over for him, and I quite fancy myself as a spy), and I had been fed all the horror stories by expats of strip searching and hassle. And it was 6am and I was too cheap to pay for another night in the hostel.

Suffice it to say I was not in the best of moods after queueing to get to check in, being hassled about my Lebanese stamp, then queueing to have my bag searched for an hour, being told I wasn’t allowed to sit on the floor in said queue, asking for a chair (well there was a woman in an airport issue wheelchair behind me and I don’t think anything is unreasonable at 6am) and being informed that I may neither sit on the floor nor have a chair. Snarling about human rights and nervously eyeing the clock as I had yet to be given the privilege of checking in for a flight that left in under an hour, I made some noises about my flight leaving soon and was eventually invited to be searched by a gaggle of chatting girls whose job it was, apparently, to stand and gossip about everyone in the queue while they waited, in various stages of fury, to have their things ransacked. My dislike of the Israelis isn’t always so irrational, is it. I’d expect it in Uzbekistan (holidayed there last year and had some delightful experiences in Tashkent airport, but at least they just wanted money) and watched politely as a delightful woman attempted to break apart a brass coffee pot, sift through 250g of sumac, and punch a hole in a sealed bag of rose tea before uncovering a bag full of underwear that she had the nerve to pull a face at before leaving it aside. Incidentally if you are going to take a bomb with you on your way out of Israel I can now recommend a good place to put it.

In the process of rummaging through my belongings looking for the bomb they apparently expected to find, I was rumbled as they came across my language certificate from Beirut. From nowhere three men in suits appeared and I was admonished for telling fibs as well as asked why on earth I would want to learn Arabic. I told them it was for my degree, and when they asked what that was I was so cross and tired I nearly said international jihad studies, but thought better of it. Evidently they considered anthropology to be something of the same ilk, and I was, at this point, separated from my worldly belongings and passport, hauled off by what I can only describe as the gibbering teenaged gun toting idiot that I prophesied would perform this ritual humiliation, but didn’t even have the energy to be smug about it.

In the waiting room for the strip searched I had a nice chat in Arabic with an old Palestinian woman off to Germany to visit her son. We roller our eyes at the Israelis and she said that at least the rooms in the airport were cleaner than they used to be, and then I was hauled off to be inspected. I briefly considered, at this point, playing the Israeli last name card (my now absent father kindly donated to me his Jewish surname, of whom there are a few family members somewhere in Israel) as a sort of get out of jail free card, but decided, as always, that personally I had more dignity standing in the nude in front of them than pretending I was one of them, and if the old Palestinian lady could do it with dignity then so could I. How bullish I am.

Needless to say being strip searched by an Israeli teenager at 7am is an unpleasant experience, especially when she is giggling and apologetic and I am trying to hand politely rather than fling, monkey-style, my clothes to her. Apparently the double crime of learning Arabic and having been to Lebanon warranted more than a strip search, however, and after x-raying my bra and sandals (for those really small, trendy, woman-friendly bombs we all carry), and i was instructed to take down my hair for further inspection. This was final humiliation, both in terms of standing nude in a room full of people you hate, and in having to reveal that my hair could not actually be taken down, as after two months of neglect and travel it had actually formed a sort of permanent dreadlock on the back of my head that may or may not have been growing small plants and animals. Still, I managed to turn that into a personal win, and invited the shiny haired child soldier to inspect this mess as she saw fit, which she did by applying a second pair of plastic gloves and a grimace. Serves her right.

A half past 7 (my flight left at 8) I was deemed fit to be allowed back out of my special room and had my clothes and shoes returned to me. I was even reunited with my suitcase, though it had been turned upside down, and my iPad had clearly been tampered with (I distinctly remember being asked, on the Israelis having located the iPad, if anyone else had used it while I had been travelling. Did they want the Palestinian fingerprints?) and was told I was going to be allowed to take the flight that I had paid for. How nice. I was then frogmarched through the airport directly to the gate, pausing only to be hassled by the border police about my Israeli stamp on a separate piece of paper, and then, essentially, booted onto the plane by my escort, to whom I was in no state to do anything other than swear at under my breath, and in the company of only airbaltic staff, give the middle finger to before I hopped on the plane and away to freedom, after being told off for holding everyone up. I was, of course, seated next to two Riga bound orthodox Jews, who I was rather nasty to when they asked me why I was late. But like I said, I don’t like Israel.

There is a happy ending to this story though: despite going trough every single item I had with me, my hair and my clothes, they didn’t find either the Palestinian driver’s license or his other paperwork, and I was happily able to reunite him with them earlier today.

Yalla bye, Middle East

So here I am, waiting for the right time to start the journey home. I have been informed that turning up too early at Tel Aviv airport arouses suspicion, yet turning up too late won’t give them time to frisk and strip search me (a personal first), so I lurk in the lobby of the particularly unpleasant hostel after what I can only reluctantly describe as a relatively pleasant last day in the Middle East.

We started with an enormous breakfast at a bizarre 24 hour breakfast speciality place who’s goal seemed to be death by cholesterol, but not in an unpleasant way. Following this we headed to Jaffa, a small town a few kilometres from central Tel Aviv which is home to the local Arab populatio (though there was little evidence of this) and a flea market, the kind of place hipsters go to buy vintage (read battered) leather bags, which are very in vogue if you like to look like a scruff. I, of course, do not, and procured my trendy leather bag from a specialist retailer in Jerusalem old town, and it’s made of camel leather, so there. Unfortunately the hawkers at the flea market (which is huge and impressive if you like vast amounts of second hand crap) were Israeli, so irritating Tina and sticking to my guns, I refused to buy anything and passed the afternoon happily slurping a frappe on a sofa in a rather pleasant hipster cafe overlooking the rapidly closing flea market stall owners chucking rubbish anywhere but a bin like it was going out of style, and reading the news, where naturally I was delighted to learn that my current hosting nation was bombing the shit out of Gaza again because they don’t like being occupied. Naturally in Tel Aviv there was absolutely no way of telling that anything was going on, but that’s because it’s a city built on people tying to look the other way.

After Tina returned with her wears (Levis vintage shorts and Israeli made leather bags) we decided we couldn’t leave without going to the beach at least once, so hopped back on the bus and walked the 100 metres from the hostel on a main road to the giant and beautiful coast, complete with picturesque beautiful young Israelis jumping for joy and skipping merrily along the sand. Naturally it was rather wonderful, making me even more sullenly resentful. Benny Morris complained recently that the problem with Israel today is that no one cares about anything any more because life in Israel is good, and in Tel Aviv you can really see it. Even if the protesters are out in their tents, they’re having a good time, they’re sitting on sofas in the park like hippies and they know eventually the government will listen because they’ve got 90% approval ratings. In Tel Aviv the sun shines, the overly religious don’t get in your face, the beer is good and free-flowing and everyone is beautiful. No one even stole our handbags while we went in the sea, the fuckers.

We went back to the cooler (and I mean that in terms of trendiness and temperature – the constant moustache sweat I thought I left in Beirut has returned home to me in Tel Aviv) Jaffa by evening, and ended up in a rather expensive yet quirky restaurant for dinner eating the bizarre mix of food that Israel provides you with, moutabbal and pumpkin dumplings with a side of Greek salad and focaccia. And it was all delicious as well. Bastards. then we returned to the hipster cafe just in time for a slightly cringe-worthy concert by two saps with acoustic guitars doing endless whiney Coldplay covers to the delight of several teenage girls swooning at their feet, before indulging our inner cynics and stalking off.

As I said, if Tel Aviv wasn’t full of Israelis I’d really like it. It’s like Brick Lane meets Portobello Road meets ugly crumbling concrete architecture, populated by beautiful people with perfect hair who look like they live on the beach. Luckily for my inner grump, they’re Israelis, and therefore wrong about everything and morally condemned.

And with that I leave my travels to go home. As the rockets fall on Gaza and the beautiful people hit the bars, I shall be being strip searched and prodded by, most likely, an undereducated and most likely racist (this is based on my research – my conversation last night about the treatment of the Palestinians by the border guards with my Israeli informant brought forth his justification: they put the small town racists on border patrol, it’s not their fault they don’t know anything. It didn’t occur to him that perhaps this was a deliberate move) teenage girl who has the power to pop me in a cell for a few hours if I put a toe out of line. How lovely.

Goodnight, Middle East. I will be back.

A last attempt to like Israel.

Don’t accuse me of not trying. Today, I really, really tried to like Israel. I met locals. I went to the tent city. I engaged with them, and I have a personal rule about not engaging.

In my defence, Israel started it.

We left the usual way from Ramallah, on the bus to Jerusalem, where, as foreigners, you are normally allowed to stay on the bus and waggle your passport at the border guards. Not today. It seemed the Israelis wanted a good look at us, so we were removed from the bus and forced through the cattle gates like everyone else. I don’t know what the official term for these contraptions is, apart from something like the Humiliator 2000, but it resembles an 8 foot high rotating door-cum-prison cell, electronically controlled from elsewhere, that bleep and jar at the controller’s whim. Navigating them alone is frightening enough, but navigating them with a suitcase and a large bag is both humiliating and hard. After 2 of these and a bag X-ray, I was in no mood to wave my passport at what I can only describe as a man who appeared to have been poured into his army uniform and the wheely chair he so lazily reclined on, picking his nose while hassling Palestinians. His female guard friend deigned to give me a lazy thumbs up, before rapping on the window and addressing the Palestinian in the queue behind me as ‘Palestin, Palestin.’ This process took an hour.

After two more cattle gates, we were ejected into a shadeless car park to wait for a bus, which took some time since it coincided with midday prayers, and, in foul moods, eventually managed to negotiate our way back onto a bus to Jerusalem. From there we were relieved of some 40 shekels (£8) by a taxi driver to go to an incredibly unpleasant bus station that resembled what I can only describe as a mixture of my recollections of Prague train station cerca 2007, Riga bus station cerca 1999, and the Palasades centre in Birmingham, probably cerca now, but with metal detectors and bag X-ray checks manned by the usual dumbo 18 year old puppets.

So far so whiney. I will give the Israelis some credit for their more reasonably priced and promptly timetabled bus transport, but not for making me sit next to an orthodox Jew who insisted on shuffling and Torah-mumbling for the duration of the journey. That’s fine though, I’d hate that in any country, I won’t take it out on the Israelis.

After arriving in Tel Aviv and having my bags reluctantly prodded by another child soldier (he deigned to unzip my suitcase as far as finding a slightly grubby towel on the top and deciding that there wasn’t a bomb underneath it), we arrived in the city centre and I was, again, given a tour by local expert (read three time visitor) Tina. Needless to say it appears to be another haven of pretending-we-aren’t-in-the-Middle-East. It may as well be a poor seaside town in Italy or somewhere. It’s dirty and ugly and full of beggars and African immigrants but yet simultaneously full of hipsters with their demand for off high street brands and vintage shops and shabby-chic bars, like Brick Lane in London but racist. I couldn’t switch off the grumpiness and resentment that I already felt but the Ramallah checkpoint had increased, and it was when we sat down for dinner and I couldn’t even bring myself to order the cheaper Israeli beer over the more expensive imported stuff that I decided to make more of an effort and text a couch surfer who had offered to show us the tent city and wanted to know about Ramallah.

Post-encounter I can report back that I am now done being fair. The couch surfer in question walked me through tent city, stopping to introduce me to people and chat, all very enjoyable until they took the time to inform me that their protest had nothing to do with Palestine. All well and good if they thought I was a journalist, but I made it very clear I was a student and they were still adamant. If they are going to sit there and protest the Israeli government budget priorities and call for less defence spending, fine, but then at some point they have to acknowledge where the defence budget is being focused, and against whom. But like I said, I’m not engaging anymore.
After this the couch surfer and i walked a long way while he lectured me on why a two state solution will never work, how he’s not racist even though the Arabs bombed his village from Gaza, that yes the wall is terrible but has to be there to stop the suicide bombers, and that no Palestinian wants peace. I was allowed to interject at various moments with my view, but was ultimately written off as a foreigner who didn’t understand. It was, as always, good holiday anthropology and very educational, but ultimately as frustrating as ever. Oh, until we ended at a blood donor centre and I was invited to donate my blood to the Israelis. On declining to take part in this happy activity (I can’t give blood for medical reasons anyway), I was essentially snubbed and left to make my own way home.

So, as they say in Arabic, hallas, I’m done. I shall spend tomorrow on the beach (in an experiment called ways to boycott Israel while you’re in Israel – the beaches are free) and the night in the airport. And, inshallah, not return for some time. Next up, Lithuania, historical eastern European land of anti-semitic Catholics. I almost long for London and its delightfully secular ways.

Watching Russians in speedos cover themselves in shit and other fun things to do in occopied Palestine

Today we finally managed to get off our backsides, get up the viciously steep hill outside our flat in Ramallah and get ourselves all the way back to where it all started; the dead sea, very close to the King Hussein bridge border with Jordan and into the desert.
Despite being predominantly in Palestine, the dead sea coast is part of the confusing area that the Israelis like to stick their flags up on and declare theirs, but I say let them have it. We took a shared taxi to the Palestinian town of Jericho on a scenic yet lengthly ride through endless desert, gawping at the odd collection of roadside camels and the mirages of water in the heat. Emerging at last in Jericho town centre, the desert heat was so strong that for a moment I was sure my upper lip hairs were going to ignite (I’m sure I heard crackling) until we dived into a taxi who promised, for a hefty fee, to take us to the dead sea. The coast is made up of resorts run by the Israelis, seemingly almost exclusively for Russians, who arrive in giant packs on tour buses, complete with stickers on them lest they get lost in the desert and need to be able to inform the local Arabs of which ripoff Russian speaking frizzy haired sheep herder has them in their charge. After forking out another weighty sum to enter the resort and bypassing the Russians hastily packing themselves into their tiny spandex swimwear, we collapsed on the sun loungers in the heat and began the process of observing how one might approach the saltiest sea in the world.
A series of signs warned us from entering by walking, swimming, drinking the water, putting it in our eyes and thinking for ourselves. Apparently the best way to get into such salty water is to climb down a ladder from a jetty, which seems rather counter productive since, if entering from a height, one would be immediately and involuntarily rendered into a horizontal position and likely break one of the aforementioned rules about getting it in one’s face. Luckily, the Russians were merrily waddling in, sliding in the mud and plucking at their swimwear for all the world to see, so eventually we joined them, and very entertaining it was. After sliding out to knee depth water you have no choice but to give in and attempt to go from vertical to horizontal position without getting your face wet. Naturally I did not quite manage this the first time and I can report back that the dead sea does not provide a tasty mor refreshing drink.
Still, after a good ten minutes of floating about and trying not to scratch ourselves, we got a little bored and decided to attempt the other popular dead sea pastime; covering yourself with the thick, slimy mud found at the bottom. Essentially this is a process of blacking up, in the middle of the desert in the Middle East, semi-nude, in the company of Russians. It was probably one of the strangest things I’ve ever done, and vaguely embarrassing. Needless to say we didn’t take any pictures of this process, as my pasty, sandy body covered in shit is not something that needs documenting, but rest assured I took plenty of the Russians, gleefully posing for each other as if it was some sort of bizarre dress-up as a local ritual.

My favourite part of the day was the return back to Ramallah from Jericho, despite the fact we had to fork out an even bigger sum to rent an entire shared taxi as it was Iftar time and no one was going anywhere, but the driver and another passenger broke the fast just after sundown while we were driving back through the desert, briefly terrifying me by letting go of the wheel as they had their first drink, and then sharing some sort of Ramadan-special date juice with us. It was immensely satisfying to poliely sip the date juice (it’s an acquired taste, and I have yet to acquire it) and watch the sun go down over the mountains, knowing that back on the coast the Russians were being herded like cattle back onto their buses to go back to Jerusalem and eat some sort of schnitzel and mayonnaise combination before likely descending to their hotel bar to pour vodka down their throats and be told about their special trip tomorrow to go and see where Jesus may have once sneezed. I imagine both groups are equally fascinating in anthropological terms, but I still prefer the Arabs.

Being lazy in Palestine

So two days later and I’ve recovered to the extent that I have essentially made Ramallah my second home. Through Tina (who has a friend here and has been before), we have managed to find a room in an apartment populated by various local and expat NGO workers who provide us with various forms of entertainment, not just limited to providing us with beer, a balcony with an amazing view across the hills, and much needed home cooked food, but also a series of inter-tangled affairs and conflicts amongst themselves. Thursday night is party night in Ramallah, which is relatively liberal in terms of respect for Ramadan (in Palestine they even move the clocks forward specially for Ramadan to make the fasting day shorter) and we were introduced to the gang and taken to a bar where we drank pints of carlsberg and listened to live jazz while watching a very camp Palestinian dance on a table and a bickering couple have a spat. The highlight of my evening, however was finally getting to talk politics in he Middle East, something the young Beirutis I befriended never wanted to do. Of course, the politics here are far more in your face than they ever were in Lebanon, and naturally very biased, but developments from this allowed me to pester a very patient Kuwait born Palestinian man all night with feigned anthropological research that was essentially my own nosiness. And what I learnt as that the Palestinians are as liberal as the Lebanese, but very much related to their own unique political circumstances. Where the Lebanese like to separate themselves into their class based religious groups, the Palestinians are, of course, very much united behind the one cause and not so hierarchical. It seems quite common here to live alone or without your parents, practically unheard of in Beirut, but men are still expected to marry and behave themselves. Paradoxical no? Given the smallness of the town and the relatively large expat population here, Ramallah seems like an emotionally fraught place to live.
But what I like best about it is that it’s actually a very pleasant place to be. Everyone wants to talk and there’s a greater culture of ‘ayb’ (Arabic for shame) about performing one’s indiscretions in public than I found in Lebanon – mainly that the men don’t touch you or immediately see you as a loose-moraled, Western “easy-going” (as it was rather charmingly mistranslated to me from the Arabic term) type of woman. The weather is better (not as humid or hot as Beirut with a cool breeze at night) and the food more interesting, with plenty of expat friendly foreign places. Tina and I have found ourselves unable to do anything but move from cafe to cafe by day, fiddling in the Internet and reading, talking about doing something more interesting the next day but inevitably returning to our old haunts, observing the other tourists in town both in person and on couch surfing, chatting with the Palestinians and eating too much. It feels far more like a holiday than anywhere else. Tomorrow we are going to attempt to go to Nablus, where I am told I can buy even more tacky Jesus merchandise, but until then it’s back to the exhaustingly pleasant circles of complaining about the Israelis, drinking beer and having my Lebanese accent mocked.

Joining in with the fun at home…

All well and good in Ramallah but everything is kicking off at home and this seems to sum it up nicely…

Escape to Ramallah

Let’s just say that perhaps at the moment Israel and I don’t get on.

Determined to recover from our Ramadan and Jewish forced hibernation, Tina and I hit Jerusalem new town by storm last night in the attempt to both drink and through this gather the courage to talk to people, not having the immediate white girl label that gets you chitchat instantly in Beirut. We started off sitting outside in hastily fashioned shawls in the cold August breeze, chatting wearily to the aged owner of a street of bars in the new city, with American waitresses in hot pants bringing us whiskey shots to “chase” our beers with, and the owner sending out for more and more. Relatively unpleasant but not offensive, though perhaps the owner was a little too friendly and demanded we call him the next morning for breakfast and later entertainment in Tel Aviv. Given that he was about 45 and kept making jokes about it being unfortunate that we were staying in a dorm, this seemed unlikely, but at least we were reassured that we weren’t completely invisible to the Israelis.
Guess again. We moved to another bar, one of those alternative places where young people stand around pretending to like jazz because they’ve heard it’s cool, were served warm pints of English beer, and moved from sofa to sofa until we had, it seemed, forced everyone else outside into the windy street rather than share a room with us. Undeterred and drunk, we threw our dignity to the cold evening breeze and threw ourselves on the crowd, eventually managing to eke a conversation out of a particularly unfriendly German who immediately clung to his girlfriend and a more chatty Israeli jazz musician from Haifa, who was learning Arabic and seemed relatively forward thinking. We progressed on to a Canadian born architect who longed for Beirut, and passed the evening fairly pleasantly complaining about how violent the Brits can be, however ironic that is when you’re standing in a crowd of people universally trained to kill. Hey ho.

We toddled on to another bar, but decided we were too drunk and to experiment with late night Israeli snacking and then go to bed. The evening took a more interesting (and perhaps unfortunate) turn when we were waylaid by two young Israelis wanting a chat, who seemed very funny and charming, and offered to take us to their kibbutz on the edge of Jerusalem. It is a statement of my willingness to be nice to these people and my newfound friendliness that I threw caution to the wind and convinced Tina it would be educational if not fun. Educational it was.

We were indeed given a tour of the kibbutz where one of the Israeli boys lived and had grown up, and very nice it was, if a little bizarre. Apparently it had a zoo and regular flamenco nights, but we were too late to see either of these. After the tour we were whisked off to the posh hotel run by the kibbutz, which involved fielding a rather high electric gate and climbing up to the 5th floor of the hotel to be shown the murky view of well, nothing, but apparently Bethlehem was out there. From there we got to chatting, and despite having just come back from three months in South America and speaking some Arabic, the more talkative of the boys was very dismissive of our travels in the Middle East and proceeded to inform us that the Arabs were taught in school to kill people. Being drunk, and at this point, bored enough to engage with him on this subject, we entered into a lengthly and largely one sided argument about the apparently inbred terrorist tendencies of the Arabs, until I managed to unleash three days of tiredness, anti-Israeli rage and sheer frustration on our hosts, and accused him of supporting apartheid and being disgusting. We were, of course, promptly ejected from the kibbutz and informed to wait outside for a taxi.

Having ruined Tina’s evening and the chance to talk to locals, I was shamed into a furious silence, and only able to cheer myself up by complaining to the Arab taxi driver on the way home. I was still in a foul mood the next morning, unable to even enjoy a particularly glutinous and delicious hangover breakfast at a rather nice French cafe, shopping, or extra stops for Israel’s very good coffee. The final straw came when, inspecting overpriced lady tat in an overpriced lady tat shop, I wasn’t even able to buy a build it yourself cardboard penguin kit (and very reasonably priced it was too), for my anti-Israeli rage, when I normally would have snapped up the entire stock, and we decided the best thing to do would be to head to Ramallah.

One dreary border crossing later, the promise of our own hotel room (having spent the past few nights in a dorm forced to chitchat to bizarre American tourists who asked if we had trouble crossing the Israeli-Lebanese border – we certainly did, the possibility of crossing it is at best fictional – and who insisted on getting up and rustling things at 6am), friendlier Arabs, and cheaper food had me in a far better mood. Particularly enhanced by a stroll around the city centre and the discovery that the Ramallahans paid little heed to Ramadan in comparison to Jordan, and that the constant face-legs-chest flickering glances of men in the street were a small price to pay for happiness.

It seems that I shall now have to banish myself to the West Bank fairly permanently until it’s time to leave via Tel Aviv or I shall get myself in more trouble. I wish I could compartmentalise my problems with Israelis and their racism as I can with the Lebanese, but I find it far too offensive. Anyway, the beer is cheaper in Ramallah.

Jewish, Arab and Christian tat all in one day – Travels in Israel and Palestine

How odd it is to be hopping across the Israeli-Palestinian border and be safer than at home in London.

In order to cheer ourselves up today we decided to embark on a humanitarian tat buying tour.
Leaving Jerusalem for Hebron in south Palestine early in the morning, the we managed to somehow illegally enter the west bank. Or at least get in without passing any checkpoints or security. It was bizarre.
Hebron is lovely though, it has a marvellous old souk full of Arabic and Bedouin tat and friendly people, happy to show us their houses and haggle over pleasingly ethnic looking, Palestinian made stuff. A little tricky in the Ramadan conditions, but not too hot. Then we follow the crowds through a lovely Israeli barrier towards the mosque/temple, which, I am led to believe, is split down the middle with bulletproof glass, but we weren’t allowed in today. On the Jewish side of the city we reclined in the grass outside the synagogue and observed the Jews as they went about their business, which was largely pretending we were invisible, and marvelled at a bizarre looking cult of ladies dressed all in white and looking very peaceful and odd. Admittedly it was nice to escape from Ramadan for an hour to drink and smoke, but we were too uncomfortable to stay long, and the invisibility we felt on the Israeli side was too strange.
Since it was fasting day for both religions, and we were hungry, the most logical thing to do seemed to be to go to Bethlehem for lunch and Jesus tat, which required crossing back through the barrier and back through Muslim Hebron, stopping to chat to kids in Arabic and find a bus.
An hour or so later, despite the distance of about 20 kilometres (the bus driver seemed determined to drive at a pace I can only describe as ‘walking’), we arrived in Bethlehem. It was rather nice really, very peaceful, and provided us with excellent Arabic food, outdoors, next to a mosque, which was a real treat. The old town is very small and sleepy, as you might imagine, and we were left alone apart from a few nuns and the odd Jesus tour. I would be ashamed to say, if i hadn’t already declared my disdain for old things, that we spent incredibly little time observing the history and most of the time pawing through the incredible range of Jesus merchandise, which included wooden models in every size and shape, Jesus key rings, jewelry, and nativity scenes, sachets of holy earth, holy water and mehr, gift sets of various holy substances (I bought three – you really can’t get a better Christmas present than one of those), and, well, stuff that said or depicted Jesus. He’s really very merchandise friendly. We also managed to buy two novelty ashtrays that say shalom on them, but that was because we were in a silly mood.
After duly filing through the church where Jesus was born near and observing the manger, we retired for coffee and then approached my first border experience. Like one might expect, it was miserable, and although the Israeli guards were friendly to us I couldn’t seem to stop myself from being surly. I can’t say I feel any better about being in Israel, but I feel a lot happier now I’ve seen and talked to the Arabs who seem quite happy to go about their normal lives as best they can.
Tomorrow we move to Ramallah, more updates to follow.

From one fast to another

Today has been a series of curiosities and paradoxes in the Middle East. Allow me to begin.

Last night in Amman we got too cross and fed up of Ramadan and it being hot (not even that hot in Amman but the potential for heat was there, it being in the desert and all) and having nothing to do, and my disdain for ruins, so I managed to persuade Tina that we should skip the cultural stuff in Jordan and go straight to Israel. Easy.

Au conraire. After a taxi to King Hussein bridge, another (inexplicable) taxi from the side of the road to the border, much milling around and frustration on the Jordanian side, where we attempted to exit first through the building marked departures, then have a second crack at it in the building marked arrivals, then pay 8JD for the privilege of leaving, then have our passports removed from us, and sit around waiting for a bus that would materialise in ‘half an hour’ when, and only then, our passports would be returned. So far so frustrating. It was also incredibly, hugely hot in the middle of the desert, and, having not had breakfast, we were very grumpy and were only able to entertain ourselves by bitching about a group of particularly fussy Korean ladies with their overly practical travel wear and curious inability to speak in anything other than Korean and a little Arabic with very strong Korean accents, and a busload of Australian Jesus tourists.

Eventually a bus arrived, which we were again charged 8JD for, which was rather cheeky considering there is absolutely no other way of getting to the Israeli side, and our passports were returned to us, rather unhelpfully with the Jordanian exit stamp on a separate piece of paper which was confiscated by a Jordanian.

We were deposited at the Israeli border to be blasted by fans showering mist over us, which would have been nice if we hadn’t been queueing directly in the jets. Our luggage was removed from us to be inspected and we queued and queued, behind the fussy Koreans and the Jesus tourists, neither of whom seemed to have ever queued or indeed travelled before in their lives, with one Australian having lost their bag and another who left their passport on the shuttle bus. Eventually we reached the first passport check and were grilled on why we wanted to come to Israel, who we knew and where we were going. Having passed the first test, we were ushered into the next hurdle by a woman who I can only describe as a more unpleasant Israeli version of Vicky Pollard. Here, we approached a seemingly friendly immigration official asking nicely for our stamps on a separate paper, were given a form to fill out, and tried our luck again. Tina went first and managed to flirt her way through by bonding with the official in Danish, and practically skipped across the border. I approached, tossing my hair and smiling coquettishly, only to be interrogated over how I met Tina (definitely not in Arabic class), where I met her (certainly not in Lebanon), and wether I was going to go to the West Bank (never, especially not when i was crossing the border into the West Bank. What an idea.) Then my last name, which is rather common in Israel, seemed to interest the guard a little too much, and he kept asking if I knew anyone in Israel. But eventually allowed me through, where we queued again, behind more idiots (yes, I’m still grumpy), and were eventually reunited with our luggage and ejected back outside into the desert only to be lumped on a shuttle bus to Jerusalem with the fussy Koreans, who made a fuss.

My first impressions of jerusalem was that it was rather pleasant, as we sat outside on a big pedestrian street in the new city, eating European food, drinking water and smoking during daylight. New Jerusalem looks to me a lot like central Warsaw, which is, um, perhaps not that surprising. But it was downhill from there. The plan was to go and have a beer somewhere nice by evening, but every single bar and restaurant was closed by sundown. Perplexed, we headed for the old city, which was, perhaps, a mistake.

I was absolutely not ready for it. I’m sure it’s charming really, but the miles of cobbled, narrow, covered streets packed with Jews and Arabs and Christians and giant hordes of the worst kind of slow moving and dopey tourists walking around like sheep put me in a terrible mood, and my inner prejudices about Israelis came roaring at me in my head. It got worse when we wondered into the Muslim quarter and I felt homesick for hearing Arabic and Arabic music, and everyone saying welcome and being friendly, which the Israelis were not.

We ended up at the wailing wall, following the orthodox Jews rushing there with prayer mats and pillows in hand, which explained the absence of open places to sit and eat and drink, as it turned out to be a special wailing wall session for the fast of Tish’A B’Av, which requires fasting from sunset to sunset. We had, quite literally, picked the worst day in the year to escape Ramadan.

Admitting defeat and flopping to the group in the spectators area for the wailing wall, Tina being tutted at for showing her legs and my apparently Jewish looks allowing me to get away with it, we proceeded to sulk ourselves into the worst kind of grump. Eventually we found a particularly awful tourist cafe to sit in and have a horrifically expensive (Palestinian) beer, but it was too late. We sulked our way through the evening, through the old city (where, by this point, I was so grumpy and sick of tourists I accidentally on purpose kicked a French woman in the back of the leg for repeatedly getting in my way, which is something I normally only do during rush hour in Holborn, where it’s allowed because they’re bankers, not people), and back to our hostel. Despite being in a Muslim quarter, the hostel was full of the worst kind of traveller; men in wooden necklaces wearing stripey linen clothes as if through these they believe they can prove how relaxed and cool they are, who proceeded to ignore us and chat about us in Spanish over the top of our heads. We emerged later for a cheer up felafel, but it is too late for Israel today and we shall depart for Hebron tomorrow in an (unconventional) attempt to cheer ourselves up by buying tacky Jesus based crap from Palestinians in the West Bank. Until then it’s back to sulking and resenting religions that stop you having breakfast.

36 hours in Amman

With two days with no sleep, the accumulation of several hangovers, absolutely no tourist tat and a lot of new friends in both Lebanon and Europe, I left Beirut in a zombie like trance on the afternoon flight to Amman. And frankly it’s been downhill since then.

It is, of course, my own fault. Jordan + Ramadan + August temperatures do not a good holiday make, even for an anthropologist like me. At the moment, Amman is the exact opposite of Beirut, and after a full day here I remain quite culture shocked and forlorn. After meeting new travel buddy Danish Tina (classmate from Beirut) in downtown Amman on Saturday night, being informed that I couldn’t drink, eat, or smoke anywhere during daylight, I fell into a grump. Admittedly after a night’s sleep and a morning trip to the (numerous) tourist tat shops I felt better, but still quite overwhelmed. It would have been fine if there was anywhere to sit, we decided, but having exhausted the city centre by mid morning, retiring back to the hotel to have a smoke and nibble on some special Ramadan cakes (which to me resemble scotch pancakes and are about as appetising), given that all restaurants are shut until sundown and cafes completely gone, at least in central Amman, we did not care for Jordan. By afternoon we were so bored that we went to a giant mall on the outskirts of the city for the air conditioning and to see a movie, and it was, crouching on the pavement hidden behind a row of discarded trolleys, Tina fashioning some sort of Arabic style headware from her scarf to have an illicit smoke and water break, that we decided it was time to go. We were too old to be sneaking cigarettes.

Amman is also spectacularly ugly, all big highways and sand coloured high rises as far as the eye could see. Slightly more ambitious Tina confessed that after two days alone in the city she had resorted to paying a small fortune to lie by the pool in the expensive hotels, but even then had got terribly bored and sunburnt. The original plan had been to meet and go to Petra for the culture, but by evening we were so fed up that we have decided to throw culture to the wind, let the craving for Beirut nightlife take over, and attempt the Israeli border by morning. After some more tat shopping of course. In my deprived state I have managed to procure camel soap, a particularly tacky camel mobile, and a Bedouin wall hanging in one sitting and I do not intend to stop now…