Pandora's Box
27 January 2010
Time planning haiku
Rushing out the door
However, arrived early
What shall i do now?
Management haiku
Quality control
Excessively monitored
We think about cash
Israel Part 2: Jerusalem before night
8 January 2007
There were a few problems getting back to the hostel.
Patrick and I parted ways, opting to explore the city in aloneness for awhile.
'That's fine,' we said, 'see you back there soon.'
The exit from the Wall lead straight into the heart of the Arab quarter. Feeling overexposed in my white singlet, I purchased a modest green headscarf from an Arab stall and pulled it around my shoulders. Not perfect, but it’s a little more respectable.
It was very hot. The middle of the day burnt cinders into my skin and I began to appreciate the Muslim traditional dress, with its many-folded swathes of cloth.
'Am I really so offensive?' I wondered, as I noticed the looks on their faces.
I imagined them chastising me:
'Look at her white, breezy skirt, and her bare legs and sandles. Look at that long dark hair, uncovered! And not even accompanied by a man, tsk.'
I tried to look innocent, doefully returning gazes.
I watched the people and tried to make little paths of understanding. Boys played on the street, or ran errands for their families. Men shouted and worked, smoking and waiting. Women passed through from one place to the next, and girls were a rare sight, but I saw a few with their mothers. The men looked out, the women looked down, the sky was high, and I was lost.
I looked at my map. I turned it around. I searched for signs, landmarks, Patrick. No luck. Every bazaar looked the same, and every narrow street blended into the other, with vendors hawking everything from pearls to children’s underwear. I was definitely lost. I must have missed that right turn. I retraced my steps.
'You lost, you lost?' shouted a 10-year-old boy, running up to me and kicking along a soccer ball. 'Where you from?'
'Australia,' I said.
'Oh, you lost? I take you back.'
'No, that's OK,' I said, 'but could you tell me the way to Jaffa Road?'
He kicked the ball up some stairs and I follow him as he chased after it.
'This way, this way,' and he ran ahead and shouted at some friends, who trailed us at a respectful distance.
I caught up with him.
'You don't need to take me,' I kept insisting, and finally he relayed the directions.
So on his information I passed the shops with the Indian cloths. I passed the stalls with the coloured hookahs. This looked familiar. I took a left, a long right … and I was lost again.
Overheated desperation filled me.
'How will I find my way back?' I wondered. 'I can't do this any more. This map is useless,' and I scornfully put away the sparsely detailed tourist map. 'It's criminal to make misleading maps, taking advantage of the ill-informed...'
I turned to the first soccer ball-kicking kid on the street.
'Hello, do you know the way to Jaffa Road?'
* * *
I must have been gone for hours, but Patrick arrived back even later than me. He'd been taking photos, and he showed me some.
'And I got you a present,' he said, shyly pulling out a gift.
'Oh, thank you,' I replied, looking down at it.
'The man said he carved it himself.'
I smiled.
We rested, then headed to the Jewish quarter for falafel.
'This falafel is very good,' I said, and Patrick agreed.
'This Israeli beer is good too,' he said, and I nodded.
It was cleaner in this part of town, and there were fewer people around.
The men walked with a heavy reverence, and God seemed to take a toll on their shoulders.
'What are we going to do tomorrow?' asked Patrick in between mouthfuls. 'Do you still want to go the Dead Sea? We can float. It'll be fun.'
‘What makes you float in the Dead Sea?’
‘The minerals. It’s mainly the salt. You can’t sink, you’ll see.’
'OK, let's float in the Dead Sea,' and it was agreed.
‘I feel like a lot of people are thinking about this place,' I said quietly. 'Right now, millions of people are thinking about Jerusalem.'
'I suppose so,' Patrick replied.
‘I suppose that’s why this place is so important,’ I said.
We paused. ‘It doesn’t feel like there’s a war going on now, does it,’ I continued.
‘No,’ said Patrick evenly. ‘And I think it's interesting that even though it's such an important place, you don't get the sense that Jerusalem has sold out. It doesn’t feel touristy,’ and we nodded and clucked, pacing down the worn and slippery stone steps, past closed shutters and sleepy vendors, into the night.
Next, Israel Part 3: Jerusalem Evening
Israel part 1: Jerusalem
23 August 2006
On the plane to Tel Aviv I read the newspaper and discovered that 95% of Israelis supported the new war, according to a recent poll. Could that really be true? It seemed like a lot of people. It was Sunday 23rd of July, and the first rocket had been fired 11 days earlier. And as usual for Israeli-Arab wars, there were already far more Arab casualties than Israeli ones, and most of them were civilians.
'What are you doing, going into a war zone?' people asked me.
'I don't know, I just need to go,' I replied.
'Well be safe. Don't go to the north. Don't get blown up, ok?' they pressed.
'Ok,' I replied. 'I promise.'
What kind of country was this? Or rather, what kind of place and people breeds a mentality that supports the killing of innocents? What was 'Israel', and how could I come to understand how 'Israel' could go to war, and in such a way? Already suspicious of the idea of 'nations' as discrete bodies, I suspected that there was more to it than Israel the 'nation' could account for.
We arrived early in the morning, completely unfresh from the overnight flight. Groggy, excited and vague, we picked up our rental car and drove to the Old City, Jerusalem. Our hostel was in a 700-year-old sandstone building, that made me think immediately of harems and dirty secrets. Possibly my imagination running wild, possibly not. Well it was really old, and the very least it was cool, comfortable, and quiet.
We unpacked and searched for breakfast.
The first thing I sensed as I stepped onto the street was that this was a special, peaceful place. The streets are narrow, and there's no room for cars. In the Arab quarter there are multicoloured stalls in every nook and every little cranny, and people complete the width of the worn pavements.
The air was fresh, cool and dry. Everywhere the colours reflect the light yellow sandstone that steps up toward the Sydney-blue sky and then heads off toward the sun. Underneath the babble there is quiet, reverence, and tension.
We stumbled upon the entrance to Western Wall after breakfast, and made our way into the enclosed space around the wall. Also known as the Wailing Wall, this is the last remnant from the 2nd Jewish Temple which stood between 515 BCE and 70 CE. Destroyed by the Romans, this is one of the most sacred sites for Jewish people.
The custom is to write a prayer on a little piece of paper, fold it up, and place it in the wall.
'Let's do that,' we said.
So I wrote a prayer, found a chair amongst the crowd of women at the wall, prayed, and placed my note to God inbetween the stones.
Being non-Jewish and not of any organised religion, standing at a holy wall is an odd experience. It's hard not to notice that it's just a wall. And, being a wall that's guarded by soldiers with machine guns and women who insist that you conform to a strict dress code, it's also clear that this is a protected political and social site, as well as a protected religious one.
But I prayed, I mused. I thought about how the wall is separated into women's and men's sections, and how the men's part was larger even though there were less of them praying. I thought about how it was getting really hot under the borrowed nylon shawl that the officer women gave me. I considered reading the bible more.
And I was about to leave I felt a jolt on the back of my chair. The women's section was crowded, and to get to touch the stones one needed to elbow and insist one's way forward. I turned around to find an elderly woman in a wheelchair behind me, throwing her arms in the air. She was about eighty years old, and she was accompanied by someone who looked like her daughter. Together they were shouting and pushing to get through.
'Stand aside!' I thought, and moved chairs and bags to let them by.
As they reached the stones the mother moaned, crying as she touched the wall, wailing a soul's grief.
One got the sense that this was the fulfillment of a long-dreamed of pilgrimage, and the release was palpable.
'I wonder how long she has waited and dreamed about coming here?' I thought as I listened to her. 'I wonder if she can be at peace now.'
It became clear then that sacredness is personal. Objects, when we assign meaning to them, take on life in a very real and powerful way. This wall was sacred to her, and it was an active part of her soul-life. The wall meant things could heal and be forgiven, that she was special, that her life had meaning. It meant, for her, that God existed. And as she wailed the whole of Jerusalem echoed her, saying 'God exists, we are here to remember.'
I got up to leave, not sure what to make of this. But as I walked away I too felt a release.
'That's it,' I thought, 'that's the end of the old religion.'
'The old religion?' I asked myself, 'What does that mean?'
'Well,' I replied patiently, 'it means that for you, the ancient rituals and beliefs are over.'
'No more,' I concluded, and my self and I made our way to the drinking fountains, and I washed my face with water and dried it out in the sun.
Next, Israel part 2: The Dead Sea ...
Vienna
2 August 2006
To those of you whom i promised a regular web blog – sorry. Or rather, not sorry, but things got a little hectic and writing got lost in the exhaust. So to keep a sense of continuity i'll write backward and forwards. With me?
Right now I'm in Vienna. Before that was Israel and Budapest, with slices of Munich in between. From here i'll be heading home via a short stay in Saigon.
I had pizza for my first Viennese dinner. Not a hugely exciting intro to a travel tale, but we all need to eat yeah?
The pizza was a tuna concoction, touristly overpriced, and the waiters were friendly.
'Where you from?'
'Australia.'
'Ah, Australia! You from kangaroo!'
'Yes, I'm from kangaroo.'
He is enthusiastic.
'Italy, Italy,' he says, thumbing his chest.
I nod, 'Italy.'
When i first arrived in Vienna i thought that there were a lot of banks. It was Sunday, and half the city was closed. 'Look at how many banks there are,' i say.
Turns out that i was mistaken, and that all those supermarkets, chemists and hairdressers are not banks at all, but they somehow appropriate the hard, lonely aesthetic i attribute to financial institutions. Maybe it's an Austrian thing.
During a lapse in pizza-dining etiquette i drop my fork and another waiter rushes to my aid.
'Momento!'
He returns with fresh cutlery and places a paper napkin across my lap. It's hot underneath the Coca Cola awnings. The waiter picks up my knife and fork and starts cutting the half-eaten pizza over my shoulders. What is he doing? He tries to put it into my mouth at which i insist
'No no, i can feed myself,' and take back the fork.
'Oh ok Australia,' and the other waiters hover around me, watching as i eat.
It's summer in this city, and holiday romance thickens the air. It's hot, and couples of all ages fawn over each other, shopping bag in one hand and lover's hand in the other. It's hot, and the goths are on the street in evening shades, and the cafes overflow with bare skin and refreshments.
It's getting dark at Pizza Haus, and i keep writing my journal, sipping the fine Venetian water. A waiter leans over the table with a lighted candle and smiles down at me.
'Romantic,' he says.
'Very romantic,' i reply.
Vienna looks like one of those typically beautiful, old European cities. Finely wrought detail in the architecture. Solid, heavy-set buildings that set the precedent for industrial strength toasters. Tourists. Gold-wrapped chocolate stores. Convenient public transport that confuses me. Ice creams.
I'm finished and move to leave the pizza joint. They've forgotten to charge me, and i offer to pay.
'Ah, goodbye Australia!'
'Goodbye. Danke. Thankyou,' and they give me the change, smiling after me.
In Europe i get the strong sense that I'm not the first one here. It's obvious, i know, but here it's all so confidently plain.
'This is our history, this is our place,' i hear the ghosts of the city whisper. 'We were here. We fought battles. We won. We lost. We shook hands with our brothers, we bought and sold, we made love, we perished.'
But the ghosts left behind their buildings and their language, and they live on in the people. It's impressive to me, a little foreign lady. Alienating too, because i can't quite bring myself to continue their traditions.
'I don't believe you anymore,' I say to the ghosts, 'I want to move on.'
They chuckle at me, and egg me on.
'This is stone!' they say, 'and this is gold! How dare you question us.'
'I dare,' say I, 'and I like Australia. You can have your churches and palaces, your museums and your art. I know somewhere else ...'
