Howdy-
Well, I’m one and a half days and a cold shower into my Middle Eastern experience. It’s strange coming to a foreign country for the second time. It’s like your first Christmas without believing in Santa Clause; you still love it, but a large part of the mystery and excitement is gone.
When I came to Egypt for the first time everything was fresh. During my ride from the airport to the AUC dorms I struggled to have an embarrassingly basic conversation with the taxi driver about my family, I paid about two or three times more than I should have, and once he dropped me off I somehow felt like one of the first foreigners to arrive in Egypt. It would take about five months for Egypt to become a familiar place.
Stepping off the plane in Tel Aviv I may as well have been disembarking in any-town-USA. The airport is modern and aside from signs printed in English, Hebrew and Arabic it looks like any airport you’d find in the US. I’d imagined that the search and subsequent interrogation I’d undergo at customs would make me feel like I was entering another country. Instead it consisted of two questions: Why have you come to Israel? Tourism. Have you ever been here before? Yes. I waited for her to accuse me of lying, and pull me into a back room for questioning and everything but a cavity search. Instead she stamped my passport, gave me a three-month visa, and told me to have a nice trip.
I paid a fair price to take a service taxi from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. My service taxi got stuck in traffic en route to Jerusalem because of a car accident on the freeway. The driver dropped me off at the central bus station in Jerusalem. That’s the same bus station where about a year ago several rent-a-cops tried to shake me down when I wanted to ride a bus to the beach in Tel Aviv. Apparently they felt a towel, sunscreen, a valid Israeli visa and Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian stamps in my passport were enough to link me to terrorism.
I was supposed to meet Dave in front of the Old City at the Jaffa Gate. I was a bit early and I thought I’d walk the mile or so down Jaffa Street to the Jaffa Gate. On my last trip to Israel/Palestine I’d only spent about three or four days in Jerusalem, but it felt like I’d spent much more time there. After having been in the Middle East for a year, walking down Jaffa Street felt like I’d returned to America. I remember buying a bagel at the Holy Bagel store and the counter girl telling me that she wished she could travel to Egypt, but her parents thought it was too dangerous. Perhaps it was for the best, I told her, because in Egypt there weren’t any bagels. This was the first bagel I’d had in nearly a year. I ate the bagel walking down Jaffa Street, chewing and smiling. This is Israel, I thought, I can buy bagels and everyone is afraid of Arabs. Now Jaffa Street just seems like a familiar street. It’s a place that I recognize and vaguely know.
When I met up with Dave we tried briefly to make it back to Bethlehem so I could drop off my stuff, but I met Dave right around Iftar when none of the buses were running. It’s still Ramadan and Iftar is the breaking of the fast when everyone gets together to eat, which is followed by prayer at the Mosque. So, Arab sections of the city shut down around Iftar. One of Dave’s friends from work who lives in Jerusalem invited us to stay at her place for the night so we wouldn’t have to trek back to Bethlehem. So, I dropped my stuff off and we went out to dinner in West Jerusalem (the Israeli side). It was fun, but expensive, my dinner was about $10 and that’s a fairly average price for food in a sit down restaurant in West Jerusalem. East Jerusalem isn’t all that much cheaper. We met some of Dave’s other friends and went to a bar. I chatted some, but mostly tried to stay awake. I hadn’t slept on the plane and I’d spent a large part of my time in Israel/Palestine lugging around all of my bags.
Now, I’m back in Bethlehem, back in the West Bank. I’m glad to be out of West Jerusalem. As like to say, if I wanted to get ripped off by a bunch of Jews I would have saved money on airfare and just stayed in New York.
Towns in the West Bank seem relatively homogenous. It’s kind of like Los Angeles in that there’s no real downtown, just a whole lot of sprawling suburbs. Most buildings are about three stories, made out of the same beige limestone. Each town generally has a small, open-air market. And the city shuts down around seven or eight in the evening. It’s a quiet, slow-paced life here.
Speaking Arabic again has proven a bit dehabilitating. My Arabic is coming back bit by bit, but it’s still a far cry from what it once was. Twice I’ve started speaking Arabic to someone and they responded that they didn’t speak English. I’ve been able to have a few decent conversations, but the Arabic section of my brain has been slow to wake up. Yesterday Dave and I went to Hebron. He hadn’t visited it yet, but I’d managed a quick visit during my last trip to Palestine. On my first visit I’d had to wait about an hour before I could enter Abraham’s Mosque (Hebron is supposedly where Abraham and all of his family is buried). So I spent the time having a conversation with a shop keeper just outside the Mosque. We really had a nice chat, so I wanted to say hello to him again. Amazingly he remembered me, but chatting with him was a bit disheartening. The first time we’d talked, I can’t remember not being able say something and I don’t ever remember him speaking English to me. This time around Arabic words came to me in a soup. And a few times I couldn’t understand something so he’d repeat the question in English. I’m sure it will all come back to me, but it’s a bit depressing at this phase in the game.
Anyway, I should probably get going here. I’ve got to run some errands and finishing getting settled. Right now Dave’s work is putting him up in a fairly decent hotel in Bethlehem, so I’m staying with him at the hotel, which is actually quite nice, about the same quality as a Motel 6 in America, minus hot water. On the 25th we’ll move to an apartment.
It's still the weekend, so I haven't been able to talk to any of the people that I might be working for, but I'll talk to them tomorrow and figure out all that stuff. I'm feeling a little terrified about what I'll actually "do" here. I think that Dave over-estimated his ability to land me a job here, but I also think that may be something of a mixed blessing. I'm working on a piece about Hebron right now and if I can sell I think I might try making a living going freelance. I think this is something I just have to jump into and rather than providing comfort, a day job might just provide excuses. But it we'll see what happens.
Well, I’m one and a half days and a cold shower into my Middle Eastern experience. It’s strange coming to a foreign country for the second time. It’s like your first Christmas without believing in Santa Clause; you still love it, but a large part of the mystery and excitement is gone.
When I came to Egypt for the first time everything was fresh. During my ride from the airport to the AUC dorms I struggled to have an embarrassingly basic conversation with the taxi driver about my family, I paid about two or three times more than I should have, and once he dropped me off I somehow felt like one of the first foreigners to arrive in Egypt. It would take about five months for Egypt to become a familiar place.
Stepping off the plane in Tel Aviv I may as well have been disembarking in any-town-USA. The airport is modern and aside from signs printed in English, Hebrew and Arabic it looks like any airport you’d find in the US. I’d imagined that the search and subsequent interrogation I’d undergo at customs would make me feel like I was entering another country. Instead it consisted of two questions: Why have you come to Israel? Tourism. Have you ever been here before? Yes. I waited for her to accuse me of lying, and pull me into a back room for questioning and everything but a cavity search. Instead she stamped my passport, gave me a three-month visa, and told me to have a nice trip.
I paid a fair price to take a service taxi from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. My service taxi got stuck in traffic en route to Jerusalem because of a car accident on the freeway. The driver dropped me off at the central bus station in Jerusalem. That’s the same bus station where about a year ago several rent-a-cops tried to shake me down when I wanted to ride a bus to the beach in Tel Aviv. Apparently they felt a towel, sunscreen, a valid Israeli visa and Iraqi, Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian stamps in my passport were enough to link me to terrorism.
I was supposed to meet Dave in front of the Old City at the Jaffa Gate. I was a bit early and I thought I’d walk the mile or so down Jaffa Street to the Jaffa Gate. On my last trip to Israel/Palestine I’d only spent about three or four days in Jerusalem, but it felt like I’d spent much more time there. After having been in the Middle East for a year, walking down Jaffa Street felt like I’d returned to America. I remember buying a bagel at the Holy Bagel store and the counter girl telling me that she wished she could travel to Egypt, but her parents thought it was too dangerous. Perhaps it was for the best, I told her, because in Egypt there weren’t any bagels. This was the first bagel I’d had in nearly a year. I ate the bagel walking down Jaffa Street, chewing and smiling. This is Israel, I thought, I can buy bagels and everyone is afraid of Arabs. Now Jaffa Street just seems like a familiar street. It’s a place that I recognize and vaguely know.
When I met up with Dave we tried briefly to make it back to Bethlehem so I could drop off my stuff, but I met Dave right around Iftar when none of the buses were running. It’s still Ramadan and Iftar is the breaking of the fast when everyone gets together to eat, which is followed by prayer at the Mosque. So, Arab sections of the city shut down around Iftar. One of Dave’s friends from work who lives in Jerusalem invited us to stay at her place for the night so we wouldn’t have to trek back to Bethlehem. So, I dropped my stuff off and we went out to dinner in West Jerusalem (the Israeli side). It was fun, but expensive, my dinner was about $10 and that’s a fairly average price for food in a sit down restaurant in West Jerusalem. East Jerusalem isn’t all that much cheaper. We met some of Dave’s other friends and went to a bar. I chatted some, but mostly tried to stay awake. I hadn’t slept on the plane and I’d spent a large part of my time in Israel/Palestine lugging around all of my bags.
Now, I’m back in Bethlehem, back in the West Bank. I’m glad to be out of West Jerusalem. As like to say, if I wanted to get ripped off by a bunch of Jews I would have saved money on airfare and just stayed in New York.
Towns in the West Bank seem relatively homogenous. It’s kind of like Los Angeles in that there’s no real downtown, just a whole lot of sprawling suburbs. Most buildings are about three stories, made out of the same beige limestone. Each town generally has a small, open-air market. And the city shuts down around seven or eight in the evening. It’s a quiet, slow-paced life here.
Speaking Arabic again has proven a bit dehabilitating. My Arabic is coming back bit by bit, but it’s still a far cry from what it once was. Twice I’ve started speaking Arabic to someone and they responded that they didn’t speak English. I’ve been able to have a few decent conversations, but the Arabic section of my brain has been slow to wake up. Yesterday Dave and I went to Hebron. He hadn’t visited it yet, but I’d managed a quick visit during my last trip to Palestine. On my first visit I’d had to wait about an hour before I could enter Abraham’s Mosque (Hebron is supposedly where Abraham and all of his family is buried). So I spent the time having a conversation with a shop keeper just outside the Mosque. We really had a nice chat, so I wanted to say hello to him again. Amazingly he remembered me, but chatting with him was a bit disheartening. The first time we’d talked, I can’t remember not being able say something and I don’t ever remember him speaking English to me. This time around Arabic words came to me in a soup. And a few times I couldn’t understand something so he’d repeat the question in English. I’m sure it will all come back to me, but it’s a bit depressing at this phase in the game.
Anyway, I should probably get going here. I’ve got to run some errands and finishing getting settled. Right now Dave’s work is putting him up in a fairly decent hotel in Bethlehem, so I’m staying with him at the hotel, which is actually quite nice, about the same quality as a Motel 6 in America, minus hot water. On the 25th we’ll move to an apartment.
It's still the weekend, so I haven't been able to talk to any of the people that I might be working for, but I'll talk to them tomorrow and figure out all that stuff. I'm feeling a little terrified about what I'll actually "do" here. I think that Dave over-estimated his ability to land me a job here, but I also think that may be something of a mixed blessing. I'm working on a piece about Hebron right now and if I can sell I think I might try making a living going freelance. I think this is something I just have to jump into and rather than providing comfort, a day job might just provide excuses. But it we'll see what happens.
posted by Tom | 8:01 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home