It was 2:00 AM when we arrived at St. Pancras station. 2:00 AM London time is 4:00 AM Tel Aviv time, and we were certainly still on Tel Aviv time. In a way, we were still in Tel Aviv altogether, or perhaps somewhere in between the two – in the cold sky over Bulgaria or Slovakia. The soul is said to be chasing the body when it is taken away by a jet plane. It only catches up with it several days later.

We stepped into a cab and were surprised by how roomy it was, as well as by the fact that it was driven by a lady, an uncommon sight around our own neighborhood. The air outside the cab was chilly and smelled of large trees and fried food, inside was a unique, inimitable, London cab smell. We were in an environment entirely foreign to us yet felt instantly very much at home. For an Ashkenazi Israeli, Europe will always be a home of sorts. The soul of our nation apparently hasn’t yet caught up with Zionism. It is still on its way from the grassy knolls of our grandparents’ homelands, baffled to behold us flying the other direction in Easy Jet planes.

Our longing for Europe’s mix of the familiar and the exotic grows, the more hopeless Israel’s situation becomes. The rise of fascism, the growing disregard for human rights, the gradual disappearance of our freedom of speech, all of these cause concerned young Israelis, whether Ashkenazi or otherwise, to reconsider their future on the soil of the Holy Land and look west.

Israel is losing its educated, concerned young generation to other countries, ironically: mostly to Germany. The new emigrants (let’s call them “newgoers”) are different from emigrants of decades past, termed “Descenders” in Zionist lingo, which views Israel as elevated above the rest of the world. While the descenders of the ’70s and ’80s were motivated for the most part by economic factors, the newgoers are often driven by a dread of Israeli politics and a sense that they no longer belong in Israel. It is a sense that our government gladly reinforces, mainly via supporting legislation that delegitimizes dissent.

By deliberately alienating this public, Netanyahu’s government is causing what I term a “heart-drain.” Israelis who hold a point of view that isn’t entirely tribal, who empathize with those living under the occupation or others wronged by state-sanctioned prejudice and intolerance, Israelis who take an interest in opening difficult historical questions for discussion, are encouraged to leave. If I had a penny for every time I was told to “just pack up and go,” I could buy my own flat in Pimlico.

The cab brought us the the home of the first exile, a friend who is completing his MA in London. His program is to conclude at the end of the year, but he told us he intends to stay out of Israel for another half a dozen years at least. Currently he is staying in a stately college campus in central London. The campus is made up of a single structure which encloses a serene courtyard. Its grand dining room is vaulted by a high, arched ceiling, beneath which a full English breakfast is served to students for the price of an Israeli popsicle. Its bulletin boards advertise an upcoming production of Macbeth, Its windows overlook a stately park, complete with enormous oaks and well tended paths. All in all the place looks like Epcot Center’s Hogwarts pavilion, and I mean that in a good way.

How, I thought, could I console myself for not living this guy’s life? Not only does he reside in such a graceful, calm environment, but he remains an activist by writing, informing, educating and organizing. It is likely that from from his London location, this man is making more of a difference than I do back home, while building a future for himself, somewhere that has an actual future.

The only answer I could find to my question is London itself. I deeply dislike it. It’s too big and too impersonal for my taste. Would I really want to live in a place like that? Nah, I much prefer home, with its abundance of light and excellent salads.

Then, however, came Amsterdam. There we stayed with two friends who are also on a study program, but their neighborhood is filled with Israelis already living and working in the Netherlands “for real.” I love Amsterdam and wouldn’t at all mind living there, despite the fact they never serve you tap water at restaurants and get mad when you ask for it.

I noticed that our Amsterdamer friends light candles on Friday night, something very few young Tel Avivians would do. Life among the gentiles seems to have strengthened their bond with Judaism, recovering some of the harm done to it by the unhealthy politics of the Israeli theocracy. I also noticed that their Israeli neighbors kept popping over for coffee without calling in advance. This sense of community reminded me of Israel in its more socialist incarnation. Prior to the extreme commercialization and Americanization that our society began to experience in the ’90s, such things were commonplace.

Life in the Dutch diaspora seemed so charming and attractive, that I soon began to seek flaws in it. There was no other way to feel at peace with the return ticket folded into my passport. I became critical of our hosts for not hanging out with locals, but then learned that their community is in fact diverse and international, and not at all confined to Hebrew speakers. I reminded myself that Dutch cuisine was disagreeably focused on deep-frying, but after several meals cooked at home, several others consumed at great Indonesian restaurants, and a couple of nice cones of fries, was forced to forsake this thought.

Moreover: Buying ingredients for three rounds of homemade pizzas at the “Albert Heijn” Supermarket, complete with prosciutto and artichokes for toppings and a bottle of Italian wine, cost what the wine alone would have cost back home. No demonstrations were held in Holland last Saturday night, when international “occupy” day brought thousands to the streets of Tel Aviv and to a score other cities around the globe. Holland maintains enough of a just economic system, that no anguish needs be expressed. Even the slums on Amsterdam’s outskirts looked good, and trust me, we went far afield in search of some familiar decrepitude.

We came back to heated arguments full of blame and inacceptence (within 24 hours of landing, someone already called me an “anti-Semite”), to heat and humidity, to MK Michael Ben-Ari’s greeting to the Palestinians on Nakba Day, wishing upon them “Many more Nakbas,” to tales of police brutality on Saturday’s demonstration, to an activist friend – a Hebrew poet deeply invested in local struggles – who met me on Tel Aviv’s promenade and told me: “I’ve been to Berlin, man, I couldn’t believe it, and it turns out I can work from there. I’m going to make it happen. I get a feeling that our last protest action was our swan song. We’re headed for a change.”

Extremism, police brutality and dreams of faraway lands are common the world over, but not everywhere is there an occupation and not everywhere is democracy crumbling. Not every nation state was born as a dream which turned into a nightmare. Though not everyone sees this, this place is a nightmare, where countless individuals are imprisoned without trial, where children are abducted by armed soldiers in the dead of night, where enormous concrete walls engulf villages and towns to maintain fear and humiliation, where multitudes bow to propaganda as if taken over by body snatchers, repeat racist slogans and blindly support violence.

A better life awaits us out on another continent, one where many of us have more tangible roots there than on our native Canaanite soil. A growing number of “deviant Israelis” (myself not included) hold European passports and almost all of us possess linguistic skills that allow swift integration. We may make good newgoers some day.

Yes, but our leaving would hand Netanyahu and his chums such a victory, and besides, we’ll probably always remain on Israel time. Our people were once nomadic, but my bet is that we’ve lost the touch. Our attempt at domestication has left us like like the crow in the old fable, who tried to sing like a nightingale and failed, then no longer remembered how to caw like a crow. An eternal jetlag awaits us if we leave, as well as an undying longing for that land of bright light.

The sun is setting over Ashdod, where Ruthie and I came to relax following the hospital experience. There is nothing wrong with Ashkelon, but Ashdod, a fifteen minute drive up the super-urbanized coast, somehow turned into our romantic getaway over the past few months. We even came here for our Valentine’s Day date.

If you wonder about this strange attraction to a modern mammoth of a port city, ask our taste buds. Ashdod is Israel’s answer to Palestinian Nablus: a culinary paradise of a town, and while Nablus is about local tradition, Ashdod is about foreign ones, brought here by Jewish immigrants from their native lands.

An exception is Israel’s best Chinese restaurant, Chon Lee. A Chinese Jewish diaspora does exist, with centers in Harbin and Shanghai, but the owner at Chon Lee happens to be from Taiwan. In any case, his children all served in the IDF, so he’s as good as Jewish by the local book.

The only way to improve on a dinner at Chon Lee is by grabbing a pint at “Nash Miesto” (“Our Bar”), the best Russian bar in Israel. It was here that I ended the full day I devoted to Ashdod on the September Journey, as well as the day I dedicated to the Russian community on the Christmas journey.

Ilya is in the house and so is his wife, whose name I never catch, and they are both surprised at the size of my beard. This is what a man looks like near the end of a long journey. I am truly near the end now. In fact, I am determined to conclude the journey tonight, despite the concussion and having lain on a hospital bed only this morning. It’s around 10:00 p.m. right now, and for the moment there’s still time to relax in Nash Miesto. Ilya brings out a guitar and I take my best shot at singing “Exhausted Sum.”

Before leaving Ashdod I take a photo of another culinary palace. The Mamounia building was designed to host Moroccan weddings and henna parties, but is also home to a wonderful Indian restaurant named Namaste. Ok, that’s enough food and drink for now. Time to take the sherut (minibus) north, minding the head this time.

Everyone on the sherut but us has roots in the Ethiopian Jewish community. At least one fellow is clearly out to paint Tel Aviv red.

Ruthie continues to the city, while I get off at an interchange near the town of Yavne. No need to rush now that I am so close to my goal. The highways are grand here. The hum of the metropolis is heard. I am at a point on its external ring of suburbs.

Yavne itself is alight with Independence Day decorations.

Independence Day is over – what now? Can we really hold on to all this pride and joy on regular days? Spending an evening in Ashdod with a fork in hand helps me feel good about this place, but while the Szechuan duck gets digested quickly, other things I have seen, felt and learned over the past three weeks do not.

This was a journey full of tall fences, some invisible, like the one that kept Umm Jihad away from her home for 30 years. It was a journey full of watchful eyes, some seeing all, like the balloon flying over Gaza. It was a journey full of weapons, some simply strewn about, like the landmine apparatus that Rami found on the beach near Shfayim.

The Hebrew University’s first president, Rabbi J. L. Magnes, left Israel in 1948. From my reading of Magnes, he foresaw that the Jewish state could only exist in a state of perpetual violence, and felt that in such a case, he could no longer take part in the Zionist endeavor. History seems to support his prediction, though his personal conclusion remains his own. I am tempted to adopt it about twice a day, I even tried to emigrate in my 20s, first by traveling Europe as a musician for five years, then by settling in the United States for three. It was to no avail.

I may eventually acquire another citizenship, but I have no other identity. Magnes was an American. He had somewhere to go. I am stuck here with the landmine apparatus, and I carry it with me to Boston and to Helsinki. My only choice may be to learn to stop worrying and just love the bomb.

The teenagers that hang around Yavne’s central square at night certainly seem relaxed in their whereabouts.

Curious about the camera, they come over to pose and poke fun, then strike a real conversation and I am impressed. They are intelligent, kind and eloquent. Some of them take special art classes in highschool, others study “advanced physiology” as a first step to becoming physical education teachers. If this is our future generation, “what’s next” should not be such a worrying question. I leave them with my card, so they can check for their photos online, and tread on more calmly.

Hold on. Someone us running to reach me. It’s a redheaded tenth-grader named Ephraim. He noticed something on the card. His finger points to the website’s description. “Independent reporting and commentary from Israel and the Palestinian Territories.”

“What’s that?” he asks. “Palestinian?”

“Well, there’s a bunch of us bloggers who share this site,” I explain. “Some of us are Israelis, others are Palestinian, and we write about things that happen here and in the territories.”

“So it’s a leftist site, right?”

“You could say so, in the sense that it concerns itself with the equality of all human beings.”

“Delete my photos.”

Other kids have joined by now. They are angry. They are yelling. “A good Arab is a dead Arab!” exclaims a boy named Li’av, who so far had been the group’s cheerful clown. The others voice their agreement loudly.

I may be a leftist, but I’m still a grown up, and eventually I manage to hush them. “Look you guys,” I say, “I am a bit saddened by what I see here. I was very impressed by all of you, and here you come and say insensitive and even racist things. Please tell me this isn’t true, that you are exaggerating your reactions to provoke me, and that you know all human beings deserve to be treated with respect.” I am paraphrasing David from Netivot, who grew up among Moroccans and worked with Gazans. Do his children and grandchildren also praise the added value of dead Arabs?

“But they are terrorists! They blow themselves up to kill us!” Li’av insists.

He is being sincere. These kids speak out of fear, a fear that has been sparked in them and is fueled each day: by the education system, run by right-wing extremist Minister Gideon Saar, by their prime minister in his television appearances, likely by their parents and certainly by their peers. Who would dare to voice a different opinion before so many like-minded classmates?

Ephraim is pale. He is truly terrified that his face might appear in a “leftist” site. I respect his feelings and delete before his eyes each photo in which he appears. Li’av then makes the same demand, and then do the others, to the point that I am left only with one photo of kids who sat on further benches. The youths of Yavne forced me to delete about twice as many photos as did the muhabarat of Egypt.

I have to get out of here and go somewhere that is kind to my spirit. A taxi takes me to the nearby city of Rehovot, and drops me off at 13 Rojansky Street. Where my grandparents, now passed away, had lived for decades.

The road that began in Europe, then led through the barracks of Atlit and the tents of Beit Yosef, came here to a comfortable end. When my own family moved frequently over my teenage years, my grandparents’ second floor apartment in this standard block remained stable. It was home in a different sense then were our various abodes, a home where “Shalom Aleichem” was sung every Friday night, where tradition, indeed Judaism, was alive as poetry, as food, as family and as values.

My grandparents were humanists as much as they were Jewish. Ben-Ami means “son of my people” – of the Jewish people, but also of the family of humanity.  It occurs to me that tonight is a Friday night. I came back here on the Sabbath to gather hope, to forget both Minister Saar, who I know is wrong, and Rabbi Magnes, whom I hope was wrong. If my grandfather, the pacifist that he was, did not follow Magnes, if he chose to stay here even after the war of ’67, and witness the occupation, which caused him great grief, if he believed that it was possible to change this place without giving up on the old dream, then Magnes may indeed have been wrong. Dear God, please tell me he was wrong.

I look behind me and see two trees. I used to play around them with Yaron when we were kids, pretending to be Asterix and Obelix. One of the trees has felled, the other has aged by 30 years. Even a big tree, an old tree, looks different after 30 years.

Israel was nearly felled in 1948, when the Middle East made a joint effort to eradicate it. Again it was nearly felled in 1973. It survived and it aged – ungracefully. Now it is giving up its democracy in order to keep the fences where it wants them to be and maintain its questionable ethnocratic nature. What will it look like 30 years from now? What will it look like in five?

Perhaps it is time for another drink, one that would comfort. I step into one of Rehovot’s few bars, called “The Drinking Fountain,” and am stunned by the amount of activity inside. This place is hot.

The good ambiance and pint of Paulaner Salvator both get me in the mood for hitting the proper city, but before I do, I must make a small tribute. Rehovot is the hometown of a dear friend of mine whom I have lost, not to death, but to hurt. This friend loves Bauhaus architecture and dirty things. I dedicate to her this photo of a Bauhaus building on Herzl street, made dirty by unregulated signage.

At 1:00 a.m. I step into a sherut to the real Bauhaus city, and land in Tel Aviv’s terrible central bus terminal.

It’s a terrible place indeed, and not only architecturally. Nearby is the park where Kyubran used to rough it. Just as he told it, it is still carpeted with sleeping asylum seekers. They are not only at risk of catching pneumonia. Two nights ago, in a coordinated attack, arsonists threw molotov cocktails into three houses where asylum seekers live and a kindergarten serving the community. No one was hurt but the buildings were damaged and a sinister statement was made.

The Israeli media ignored the events for the most part. Unfortunately, I happen to write for a website of scary leftists. So I got wind of it.

The park is encircled by a ring of prostitution. Kidnapped Moldovan girls offer their bodies by the old, defunct bus terminal, while Israeli transvestites walk Hagdud Haivri Street.

Damn, the city is bringing me down again, and only just after the Drinking Fountain finally spunked up my night a bit. What’s next? How will I regain my trust in my own city? It isn’t an easy task. Some streets are eerily silent at this hour,

while others are aflame with mindless, escapist partying, which by now I find harder to relate to. There was some joy about stepping into the little suburban bar, which the proper city could never recreate.

But this city is more than one city. I continue west to Jaffa, only fifteen minutes by foot from here. This is a wonderful town to hit at night, so long as one manages to avoid the Nakba blues. Everywhere are the imposing remains of what once was an important center of Arab life, and now is a neglected quarter of greater Tel Aviv.

So far, I managed to avoid this blues fairly well. I haven’t even mentioned the Palestinian disaster when describing Independence Day, which is also commemorated as Nakba day. (Though officially Nakba day is on May 15th, while Independence Day adheres to the Jewish calender.) Since then, however, I got news of some disagreeable related events that took place in this city on that occasion.

It appears that the police blockaded the offices of “Zochrot”, an Israeli historical society devoted to educating the public about the Nakba. Zochrot’s activists intended to quietly present a photo exhibition on the sidelines of Tel Aviv’s Independence Day celebration on Rabin square. The cops kept them indoors for four hours, the duration of the celebration, in order to prevent “public disturbance.”

As of last year, commemoration of the Nakba in Israel has been highly impeded. What’s next? My spirit sinks again, then rises high, when I bump into two dear friends next to Abulafia’s famous bakery.

It’s Ami Yares, Jaffa’s main blues and folk man, and Noa Yachot, +972′s trusty editor. Like Mairav, who drove me into the Arava, so did Noa edit many of these posts and was a true partner on this journey. Here’s what coming back to town is all about.

Noa and Ami have friends with them: a cute gay couple  somehow here from Ramallah. It’s already 3:30 or so, and the four have just emerged from the AnnaLouLou, Jaffa’s finest bar. Now is my turn to head there.

The AnnaLouLou is still popping when I enter.

The mainly Arabic playlist is picked and played by Mohammed Jabali (known to all simply as Jabali) and Eyal Bizawe. The former is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, the latter a Jewish Israeli, but this is no Hasbara idyll. These two are both activists. They know that there is a government here that is working hard to keep teenagers scared and hateful, that this government fans flames of racism which are then thrown through windows into kindergartens, that this government tries to keep dark memories silent, and that people fall for its treachery and support it. They also know that Hamas is awful and the PA is corrupt, that international interests have been ravaging this place from the days of colonialism to the Cold War and on to the present. They know that economic lies intermingle with political and military ones, both here and across the lines, that there are too many fences, too many weapons, too many watching eyes and too little music. This is why they play music. This is why they make movies. This is why they educate.

Alright. I am inspired. I can go to bed now. Outside the muezzins call for the prayer of dawn, but it is still dark as I follow the beach towards Tel Aviv’s lights.

It is still dark when I reach Allenby Street. and the city-bike station from which I departed on this entire journey.

But what comes next, as always, is dawn, rising cobalt blue over our street and the apartment in which Ruthie sleeps,

and growing stronger and stronger, until its soft light enters through the curtains and I can clearly see that I am home.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip, completed!

View Larger Map

Ewan and I build a fire outside Kmehin, both to warm ourselves and to impress a very special newcomer. Ruthie is here. She took the train to Beer Sheva, then caught a bus to the border and made it on time to enjoy the fireworks.

After both fireworks and fire die down, the big sphere of flames rises again over the desert and allows us to take a good look at our whereabouts. We are in one rare corner of the Negev that is sandy, and Kmehin is prettily nestled in pink dunes.

West of here, across the border, the terrain is sandier still, so sandy that the man-made, straight line distinguishing Israel from Egypt can be seen from space, as seen here on the lower left-hand side (image: Wikimedia Commons/TheCuriousGnome).

Close to the coast, it is agricultural land in Israel and dense urbanity in the Gaza Strip that contrast with the sparsely populated Sinai, but further south, desert meets desert and the border should have been invisible. The effect is caused here by goats and tanks. In the Sinai, livestock eats most of the vegetation, while in Israel, where the land is used as firing ranges by the IDF, Bedouins are banned from grazing their herds in the expanses. Thus, the Israeli dunes remain dotted with low brush, which dyes them a darker brown.

The driver who takes the three of us through the sagebrush would love to see the dunes used differently. “They could have had a wonderful nature reserve here,” he says, “It could be a joy to all, if only we changed our perspective a little bit. This area is completely contaminated with military. You need to live here in order to really see that, we can’t move freely in any direction: here there’s a fence, there a firing range…”

His name is Yinon and he lives in Kibbutz Kissufim, where he also grew up. Kissufim is located very close to the fence with which Israel surrounded the Gaza Strip. Yinon is thus one of the Israelis most threatened by Hamas bombings, but he feels that the widespread concern for his safety is unjustified. “They blow it out of proportion,” he says, “This is a beautiful, magical region, but Israel keeps it in political complications. So yeah, every so often we get fireworks, it’s not a big deal.”

Israel blames Hamas for ceaseless aggression, to which it responds with aggression of its own. Yinon is suspicious of this cause and effect axiom. “The IDF has such sensitive equipment around here that it can detect a rabbit crossing a field at night. I know this for a fact. They are in the know about everything that’s happening inside the Strip, but they let the occasional missile fly, so they can then run weeping to the Americans to get more money.”

“People who live here know this,” he adds, “We see the trucks that go into the Strip. Some of them carry pipes, the same pipes that are used to make Qassam rockets. “So Israel won’t let building materials in, claiming that they can be used for bomb construction, but it does let in those pipes. Does that make sense? Yes, awkward sense. Keep the south traumatized and weak, keep the cameras on the smoke coming from our fields, and you can easily fend off any criticism.

Yinon came back to the region after living a few years in Spain, where he practiced osteopathy. “You go out to the world and you see things differently,” he says. “The Palestinian guy who lives behind the fence is not focused on killing me all the time. He needs work and he needs peace and normalcy. If we started working on actually bettering this region, we could all benefit from what it has to offer. This is the Holy Land, we could get millions of tourists here and prosper together. I can’t see why this isn’t happening.”

“Some industries may be more powerful than the tourism industry,” I suggest.

We pass by Kibbutz Nir Oz, where Yinon drives out of his way especially to show us the remains of an ancient synagogue. Roadworks near the kibbutz expose a beautiful mosaic floor, which dates back to the 5th century AD and features both a menorah and a peacock.

Around us, the desert is already giving way to green fields separated by rows of cypresses and eucalyptus, and even to beds of wildflowers. I take a photo of this special man, who breaks many a stereotype, against our new surroundings.

Ewan enjoys the mosaic floor, but I know that he will go crazy over the place where Yinon drops us off. Right over the intersection rises one of this country’s many “tellim”: man-made hills that once helped fortify small ancient settlements and later became the acropolises of larger towns. As soon as we begin climbing it, Ruthie makes a discovery,

She needn’t strain her eyes, though, because most pebbles on the top of the hill are in fact pieces of shattered pots. Tel-Jamma was first settled nearly 6,000 years ago, and abandoned in the 2nd century BC. I can only assume that it was the center of a bottling industry, to which desert nomads delivered ointments and spices, soon to be shipped abroad. If Wadi Bsor, which snakes at the foot of the hill, once served as a river flowing year-round, this may have even been a port.

From the hill we get a good view of the broken pot of a country in which we live. To the west, across a well-guarded fence, is the village of Mughazi in the Gaza Strip.

Above us, high over the tips of enormous antennas, a balloon lifts sensitive cameras to monitor the Gaza Strip 24 hours a day. Say cheese, Gazans.

We are in such a strange place, a quiet, fertile countryside, sandwiched between empty desert sands and the world’s most densely populated geopolitical entity. A walking distance from here, the 1.7 million people of the Gaza Strip live under fundamentalist Hamas rule and are confined by Israel to an extremely narrow territory. We can only hope that they somehow manage to enjoy this lovely spring day as much as we do.

The Strip itself is closed before us, and the fence is as decisive as that separating Israel from Lebanon, a sovereign country. So we give up on Gaza and continue north.

Surprisngly, even three travelers get lifts very easily in the Israeli countryside. The next one takes us to the town of Netivot, which to the naked eye looks like any Israeli “development town,” but is in fact a special place, a holy place.

Jewish immigrants from Morocco were more or less tossed here in the 50s by the Ashkenazi hegemony. This way, they were kept out of the cities, and also populated the frontier next to what was then the Egyptian border and the city full of refugees across it.

Soon a spiritual leader known as the Baba Sali came from Morocco to dwell in Netivot, and the town became known for the cult of adoration centered around him. We thought of keeping the holy man’s mausoleum for last and grabbing something to eat first, but all restaurants are shut for Independence Day. Only the DVD library is open and its owner tells us to head to the Baba Sali’s gravesite. “You’ll get a lot to eat there, for free,” they promise.

So we head down towards unusual white buildings on the towns outskirts. Ewan, who traveled in Morocco, recognizes elements of Agadir’s architecture.

The entire area smells strongly of roasted meat, and soon we get to taste some. A family is celebrating the holiday with a barbecue on a wide, paved patio overlooking the grave-site and the installation for burning candles, seen in this post’s opening photo. A hearty, full-bodied gentleman named Yehuda invites us to the table within two seconds of noticing us, on the condition that Ewan and I cover our heads and show the holy site respect. “The man who is buried here is one of the pillars of this world.” explains Yehuda. “Have some grilled sheep liver.”

The parking lot below is full of other families and more smoke. Soon we learn that the patio is the mausoleum’s pulpit, and is reserved for aristocracy. Feasting with us today is the Baba Sali’s own great-gandson, Abba Abuhatzeira. Here he is on the left.

The Baba Sali himself was vegetarian, so devouring so much meat next to his final resting place seems like an assault on his legacy, but our hosts certainly take him and the old country seriously. They preserve so much of Morocco, from the hospitality to the Arabic they speak among them, to the songs of Sami Al-Maghribi playing on the boombox, that Ewan is baffled. I explain to him that while the Zionist ethos does not permit the concept of “Arab Jews,” it would be difficult to define these people otherwise. They are Arab and Jewish and Moroccan and Israeli and they are wonderful.

The sheep liver is soon followed by delicious grilled chicken breasts, then by lamb ribs, then by proper steaks. Yehuda pours us wine, then beer, then Black Label Johnny Walker. Ruthie is sitting at the very edge of a table reserved for women, just close enough to the men’s table to join our conversation with a man David.

David was born in Morocco and moved to Israel at the age of 14. He fought in the war of ’67 and helped conquer the Golan Heights. Later in life, he entered the fruit and vegetable trade and did much of his business in Gaza.

Once more I am amazed. Here is another Israeli, one with very different background than that of Yinon, who also spends much of his time in bomb shelters, and yet expresses neither fear nor antagonism when speaking of his neighbors to the west. “We respected them and they respected us. That’s how it always was. I still believe that every person on this earth deserves respect, be they Jewish, Christian or Muslim.”

I’m glad to pack these words with me when the time comes to leave. We bid farewell to everybody and descend briefly to visit the mausoleum itself, use the bathrooms and take a photo of the candlesticks in the gift shop. Adorned with a likeness of Jerusalem and a portrait of the Baba Sali, and designed to resemble the hands of a mother blessing shabbat candles, they simply have to be my favorite objects in the entire country.

David volunteers to drive us just out of town, where we may board a sherut minivan headed for the next town, Sderot. Thanks to all the whisky, wine and beer in my head, I miscalculate the dimensions of the sherut’s doorway, and while trying to lift myself and the heavy backpack through it, headbutt its steel frame with all my might. I don’t pass out, but remain in serious misery all the way to Sderot.

Ewan continues north to Tel Aviv. He had a good time, but two days are about as much as one should spend in a country’s least visited and most desolate regions, before heading for its “must sees.” Ruthie and I disembark at Sderot’s gates, then advance on foot into the town. We are forced to stop frequently, since I am nauseous and weak.

While Hamas missiles easily reach as far as Be’er Sheva, Sderot is the town most recognized as the Israeli target. Even its bus stops are fortified.

I have been here in times of heavy bombardments, and sang to the poor kids stuck in the bomb shelters. I knew then as I do now that Sderot’s plight is miniscule compared to that of nearby Gaza. In half a decade, 13 Israelis died of rocket attacks in this area, compared to 1,417 Gazans killed by the IDF in less than one month, during “Operation Cast Lead.” When researching this detail, I notice that that Gazan casualties are not mentioned in the Hebrew Wikipedia page describing those events. Under “casualties” appears the number three, referring to three Israeli soldiers who were killed by friendly fire.

If we only look at ourselves, as we are taught to, then our situation does appear terrible. However, all we need to do is look at ourselves closely, and we soon we find that we are being exploited. Here is what the inside of a bomb shelter at Sderot looks like:

It is full of human feces and trash, as are all of the ones I enter. (This one was the cleanest. Others were unphotographable.) This is not how people treat facilities that they feel truly protect their lives. I tend to side with Yinon. Sderot is more of a propaganda tool than a disaster zone. It is far more the victim of Israeli policies than of Hamas.

Is the Netanyahu-supporting God of Israel punishing me for such views? I am not well. The headbutt. It did something bad to my head. Ruthie and I continue to the coastal city of Ashkelon and get a very basic hotel for the night. Its what we can afford, but maybe we should have splurged. The soap in the bathroom is unwrapped and there’s a dirty towel in one of the drawers. The teen-aged Russian receptionist is playing cards with a friend on the lobby couch, next to an electric organ on which no one has played since the 80s or so.

I wake up in severe pain, my skull is exploding. Ruthie takes me to the hospital in a cab, where the doctors fear the blow caused me cerebral bleeding and rush me to do a head scan.

.

Here is my brain on Ashkelon. In fact, here is my brain also on Virginia. The entire wing of the hospital in which I lay was donated by the right-leaning IFCJ (International Fellowship of Christians and Jews). This organization uses the same fiery “Israel is under constant attack” talk to fund-raise among evangelical Americans, then supports regions such as this, where the government invests only minimally.

They say that most accidents happen at home. They’re right, and still it amazes me that after climbing a fence to escape the closed military zone on the Lebanese border, leaving Jenin under a loaded gun and being held in the basement by the secret police in Egypt, it is a stupid sherut minibus that actually causes me physical damage.

Anyway, it isn’t such great damage, and the scan shows no bleeding. I am only suffering from a concussion that is intensified whenever I lay down. The doctor perscribes pain killers and warns me not to look at television screens or a computer monitor for the next day. Cute Ruthie, whom the angels chose to send to me one day before I needed loving company, treats me to a healthy Central Asian “lagman” soup, made by Uzbeki Jews in Ashkelon’s old center (which before 1948 constituted the town of Majdal),

and buys me a cigar as a treat. I write a new post by hand, as the ancients of Tel-Jamma wrote in their day, as the Baba Sali wrote when he was still alive, as everyone around here will someday write, using a quail feather and ink made of cooked snails, if we keep letting the bastards run the show.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip thus far!

View Larger Map

Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. All writing on this site is done voluntarily, so if any of you would like to pitch in directly for my travel expenses, please click here or on the “donate” button at the top of this page to do so. Donors who contribute more than $25 will receive free the first part of the three-part ebook (compatible with iPad) that will be released this summer. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This project would be impossible if not for you.

For more of The Round Trip

Relive the first two journeys:
The September Journey
The Christmas Journey

Tonight at sundown, the Day of Remembrance for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism will begin. I picked a fitting city in which to pass this evening. Eilat is the one Israeli town that never knew war. In 1948, Palmach units arrived at this stretch of coastline and found it vacant. The forces of the Arab legion withdrew of their own accord, and the minute hamlet of Umm Rashrash was abandoned. The combatants produced a flag using a bed sheet and a small ink jar and got young Israel an opening to the Red Sea. Terrorism did find its way here in later decades, and the occasional missile shot from within the Sinai falls here, but such incidents are rare. I am about to receive Memorial Day in a city of peace.

Before the radio begins to play nothing but sad Hebrew songs for 24 hours, I must go and seek out the community that is currently Eilat’s most talked-about. Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers, who made their way here overland from their troubled countries, are to be seen everywhere, but it takes a stroll uphill to Los Angeles Street to arrive in the midst of their small quarter, or “pletzl,” as the Yiddish term goes.

In the small internet cafe and DVD library pictured above, nobody is thrilled to share his or her story. “What good would it do?” is the question they keep asking, “How could it possibly help?” I try to explain that I’m not necessarily here in order to help, but that passing on voices from the community certainly would not hurt. For the most part, the asylum seekers are badly received in Israel, especially by our right-wing politicians. The Knesset recently passed a law that literally outlaws being a refugee. Asylum seekers are to be automatically imprisoned for a minimum of three years without trial. The biggest penitentiary on earth is soon to be built in the desert for this purpose.

The common propaganda line on the asylum seekers is that they are actually work migrants in disguise. Since I will be paying generously with my tax sheqels for their incarceration, I feel that I have the right to check for myself and find out whether this is true. Eventually someone offers his help. His name is Kyubran, and he’s a 21-year-old Eritrean who has already been in Israel for three years.

“I first left Eritrea and went to Ethiopia,” he tells. “They were shooting at me at the border, but I survived. I spent six months in Ethiopia, where they gave us housing and food, everything. We didn’t need to work or anything, but I didn’t want to get stuck there, so I moved on to Sudan.”

Kyubran spent four more months in Sudan, where, he says, the authorities were equally hospitable. Then he paid the equivalent of $5,000 to an Egyptian Bedouin who smuggles refugees into Israel. “There were 25 of us in one Toyota van. We traveled for six days through the desert with no food and no water. Crossing the border was easy, but that was very hard. Since then, I have been moving around, from Be’er Sheva to Tel Aviv, then down here. Here is not Africa, there is no support. We are being treated like donkeys here. I’m lucky because when I slept in a park in Tel Aviv, somebody came over and offered me a job in Eilat, but when I go up to visit Tel Aviv, I see the park still blanketed with people who have no other place to go, and it breaks my heart.”

Why did Kyubran leave Eritrea in the first place? “There is no order there,” he says, “no future.” To most, that would indeed put him in the work migrant niche, but I think anyone willing to endure six days without food or drink to reach a place has won the right to stay there and grow there. My grandfather arrived here on an overcrowded ship and came on shore starved and dehydrated. The lack of order in Europe at the time later intensified into the history we all know.

Suffering doesn’t end at the shores of the Holy Land. After sunset, the people of Eilat convene by city hall, where an announcer reads the names of 84 Eilatis who died in Israel’s various wars or in terrorist attacks.

The following morning, I travel north along the Egyptian border, where a fence is currently being erected mainly to keep the likes of Kyubran away.

My grandparents arrived in this country to escape ghettos and death. Since then, it has turned into a huge fenced ghetto, where death is omnipresent. At precisely 11:00, the bus pulls over by the side of the road. All passengers, mainly soldiers serving in desert bases, disembark along with the driver and stand in silence for two minutes. The siren that sounds throughout the land is inaudible in such a remote location, but we listen to it on the bus’s radio.

I do my best to explain this oddity, and others, to a fellow passenger: Ewan from Texas, who also shared my dorm at the hostel last night. Ewan is rather impressed. “Back home on Memorial Day we all go down and party at the lake. You guys have a sense of communal memory that we may have had back in the 50s, but that we’ve lost.”

I argue that this communal memory has its faults. The emotions that emerge in Israelis’ hearts on Memorial Day are a valuable tool in the hands of nationalist and militarist demagogues. The similarity between the ceremonialism of this day and Holocaust Memorial Day, held a week previously, instill in the Israeli psyche a sense of perpetual victimhood, and the narrative hat presents Zionism as the answer to the Holocaust is reinforced. Memorial day is to end tonight with the opening of the Independence Day festivities. We go from Birkenau to statehood in a week, via our military graveyards, and from tears to joy in a matter of seconds.

Still, Ewan has a point, and had it not been for the bloody occupation, and how much I know about it, I could probably let go and be far more engaged.

He himself resides now in Cairo, where he studies archaeology, and has recently taken an interest in the history of the Nabateans, this region’s ancient nomads. I tell him that my course today should take me close to the ruins of the Nabatean trading posts and invite him to join. Ewan accepts gladly.

Before getting to those ruins, the closure of the road running along the border forces us inland, where we pass the lunar expanses of the Ramon crater, a geologist’s fantasy.

An hour north of here, we leave the bus and hitch west again, towards the border. Before reaching it, we turn to a tiny road that leads to Shivta’s ruins. A local bus picks us up here and takes as as far as a base of the Armored Corps. From the base we should be able to see Shivta, but we don’t. The desert past the rows of tanks barrels is empty, vast, and silent. This one Nabatean city may be too far to reach.

Then a car stops for us and takes us there. Ami and his wife Dina run a small B&B by the ruins. Theirs is likely the only car to head down this road today. We’re in luck.

It’s great luck, because Shivta is well worth our time. Many old ruins in this country are marketed as the remains of ancient cities, partially because they are identified with sights mentioned in the bible, and biblical literature does not use the world “village.” But Shivta is a right city, miraculously preserved by the desert. Its many streets are clearly defined, and the remains of three imposing Byzantine churches tower above them. It takes Ewan all of 30 seconds to make a first find: a piece of earthenware.

He later makes a discovery of a different sort: It is an inscription left here by Palmach combatants in 1948, mentioning that they were trained next to the Sea of Galilee.

Satisfied with our research expedition, we are now ready to head back out, and so we offer Dina and Ami to pay them for a ride to the road, or at least as far as the tank base. They are unwilling. “Maybe you’ll catch a lift with someone,” Dina says.

“With whom?” I wonder out loud, “Your house is the only one found down this way. It’s a cul de sac surrounded by a firing range, and your car is the only one parked here.”

She shrugs. She doesn’t feel like helping us, and we are forced to walk the long walk back to the base in the heat of day. Would a Bedouin have acted that way? Not from my experience near Raba. Many Israelis would have helped, and yet I am brought down by the symbolism of this event. My people used to be nomadic, like the Bedouin, like Nabateans, but we longed for a home, and now here we are, too cozy to help those who sleep in our parks or wander through our deserts.

Finally we reach the base

and then return to the main road and continue west, where more attractions await. Here is the boulevard of columns, each bearing the word peace in one of hundreds of different languages and alphabets. It is the work of Israeli artist Dani Karavan, which I glimpsed on the September Journey.

Here, seen from the same spot, is the “small” imprisonment facility, known as Ketziot, where many asylum seekers are held as the bigger one comes into being.

Eleven more kilometers down a slender lonesome road, which follows the border, we reach Ezuz, Israel’s most remote community. It’s sustained by visits from Israelis who appreciate remoteness.

But this place was not always so remote. It was a popular oasis station on the perfume road from ancient times until the closing of the border to Bedouin caravans in the previous century. West of Ezuz, virtually in the shadow of towers overlooking the not-yet-fenced border, petroglyphs cover the rocks, to Ewan’s great delight.

The ancients drew animals common to the barren land in their day, from lizards to ibex. One modern artist added a representation of today’s desert fauna.

We can touch on the past, but it makes no sense to live in it. Ewan and I thus follow the border back to the tiny moshav of Kmehin, where the residents of this small cluster of desert communities gather to celebrate Independence Day. There’s is a really cute bash, complete with animal costumes, which we find strewn around in the local community center,

and with Israeli flag baseball bats. These replace the annoying plastic hammers, with which Israelis mischievously bang each other on the head on this holiday for the sake of cheerful amusement. The hammers’ handles were made of hard plastic, which actually hurt upon contact with one’s scalp. I much prefer the bats.

Then come the fireworks. And I love them, regardless of my critical spirit. When a day in the wasteland ends like this, April doesn’t seem quite as cruel, fences, inhospitable desert dwellers, and imprisonment camps notwithstanding. I can’t help but love it here and look forward to the few more days of rambling still ahead.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip thus far!

View Larger Map

Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. All writing on this site is done voluntarily, so if any of you would like to pitch in directly for my travel expenses, please click here or on the “donate” button at the top of this page to do so. Donors who contribute more than $25 will receive free the first part of the three-part ebook (compatible with iPad) that will be released this summer. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This project would be impossible if not for you.

For more of The Round Trip

Relive the first two journeys:
The September Journey
The Christmas Journey

The government issued a severe travel warning, urging Israelis to stay out of the Sinai Peninsula. I’ve bumped into those occasionally in newspapers and on the radio over the past few days, yet am still planning to venture in briefly. It’s not that I doubt the sincerety of the warning: while much Israeli fear-mongering is unfounded propaganda, Sinai terror alerts are sometimes followed by a fair bit of blood. I simply owe my readers and myself a true taste of the Egyptian border.

This will be a difficult border to follow. The road running along it within Israel, Route 10, is commonly closed to civilian traffic. Since the disengagement from Gaza, no border crossing with Egypt serves Israeli civilians besides the one at Taba, just south of Eilat. For a glimpse of our largest and most fabled neighbor, I arrive in the morning at the first of two hotels that Aboud the boat owner had pointed out to me yesterday.

Directly across from it floats an Israeli Navy boat.

Then, a mere two-minute walk southward, a new land appears before the traveler: mighty Egypt, the singing heart of the Middle East, land of the Pharaohs, of Tahrir, and of kushari, that awful mix of lentils, rice and macaroni which may well be the most sorry excuse for food known to mankind.

Photos of Mubarak no longer grace the entry terminal, and have not yet been replaced by photos of anyone else. The jury is still out.

My passage is smooth, since the queues are short. Taba, on the other side, is a vacant boulevard running between three shiny white hotels and overlooked by the communication towers of police stations. It may very well be the eeriest place known to mankind, at least today. A group of Romanian pilgrims heading for St. Catherine’s monestary piles into a tour bus and vanishes. I now share this entire lunar Champs Elysee with four local taxi drivers.

They soon learn that I’m not going anywhere, and get annoyed. One of them, named Uda, gets annoyed in fluent Hebrew. He tries to persuade me to travel at least a few kilometers down the coast, to some nice vacation huts, for just 50 Egyptian pounds, which equal about 13 dollars. Back in the day, this amount of money took four of us from the border all the way to Cairo. Could Egypt have changed this much?

It has changed. I am walking down Taba’s boulevard feeling strangely threatened, more so even than when I first came here at the age of 21. That was my first visit as an Israeli to an Arab country, and this one has an air about it of being the last.

Actually, the very first time I was here was 32 years ago, and this was not an Arab country per se. The year was 1980 and Israel was just about to return the peninsula, three times its own size, to Egypt in accordance with the Camp David Accords. My family rolled south to bid farewell to this love story of desert and sea. I was five years old and yet still remember a lot to this day: wind in the palm trees at Sharm Al-Sheikh, our tent on a forgotten beach, and here, just south of Taba, the astonishing beauty of rocky Pharaoh’s Island, topped by crusader ramparts.

At the age of five I hadn’t yet heard of the crusaders. All I knew was that there was a thundering silence along these shores. Later, coming here as an adult, I felt magic and thrill, and now both are overshadowed by doubt, even fear.

I stop by Taba’s eeriest structure: a damaged bronze bas-relief featuring a representation of Pharaoh’s Island, some people in neckties and a list of names. To find out what this means, I must ask the guard at the nearby Mövenpick resort hotel, the only man visible in this hellish paradise of grass and rock, now that Uda found a passenger and moved on.

The guard explains that the monument celebrates Egypt’s success in returning Taba to its hands in 1988. This small stretch of coast remained disputed territory for another decade or so following the peace accord. Where the Mövenpick now stands, an Israeli named Rafi Nelson ran a vacation village, where Bohemian Tel Avivians famously lazed. Then an international committee ruled that Nelson must take his long beard and staple straw hat back north. The names on the monument are of the Egyptian negotiators responsible for that achievement.

Israelis kept coming to Taba, drawn by attractive prices and the presence of a casino, which often reversed the effect of the attractive prices. Then, in 2005, terrorists set off a bomb at the Taba Hilton, killing 34 guests and employees.

“Snap snap and leave,” advised the English warden at my Eilat hostel. This is sound advice, and I have already taken fine photos but haven’t yet eaten a thing since the morning. I ask the guard whether I may step into the Mövenpick to have a cup of coffee. He agrees and keeps my passport as collatoral.

From within, the Mövenpick looks like the dream of someone who fell asleep with a golf magazine on his lap. I must take at least one more photo of the insanely lush grounds, stretching to the sea outside the lobby’s wide windows, but the angle is awkward. I step into a corridor and ask a maid for permission to shoot from a room’s balcony.

Here’s what I capture:

And since the room in question is near the resort’s walls, here’s what I capture looking in the other direction.

“May I go up to the roof?” I ask.

The maid passes the question on, and the answer is no, so I take one more shot, in the direction of the Chinese restaurant.

And another of the beer tap at the bar, where I chat with the bartender about football. He is a fan of Al-Ahaly, the team that was recently involved in a disastrous riot which met with police brutality. The event claimed 74 lives.

“Mubarak supporters did that, to give the revolution a bad name,” he explains. “Mubarak should be killed,” he says, and slits his throat with an index finger.

That’s enough of this place. I wish Egypt all the goodness in the world. I love it. No other country ever treated me with the kindness and hospitality I have encountered here in the past, but something fails to click today. I head out, pick up my passport and return to the street. I even get to capture the following pastoral image before the guard calls me to return.

He wants to photocopy of my passport. I hand it over. He invites me to sit in his booth. I accept. He talks a lot on his walky talky. I wait patiently. He introduces me to a gentleman from the Tourism Police, I shake his hand. The policeman asks me to accompany him to the lobby then instructs me to wait. I figure that I have been detained.

If you ever get to be detained anywhere, I recommend the lobby of the Taba Mövenpick. Not only for the air conditioning and ambient music, but for the company of Brim, who runs the local gift shop. Since no one forces me to remain seated, I walk over to the shop and find one of those rare people who make you relax even at a moment so troubling. “Brim is short for Bremier,” he expalins, “Bremier – like first, because I’m first to reach all the girls.”

To get my mind off of my current situation, I ask Brim about Egypt’s current situation. “We are sticking to our revolution,” he says. “For 60 years we lived under military rule. We won’t have more of that.”

“But right now you are literally under military rule. I mean – the army’s in power.”

“The army is only keeping us secure, so that Hamas or, I don’t know, Hezbollah, or the Americans, or you guys won’t come in and take advantage of our transition phase.”

This may be the issue. An hour passes and I am still in the lobby, without my passport. Then a member of hotel security arrives. He accompanies me outside the building, then around it, across an empty parking lot, into a grimy corridor and through the doors of an office, where three unhappy men without uniforms sit and stare at me through cigarette smoke.

As soon as I see this office, I know that getting out of here will not be easy. I nod politely, take a seat as directed and quickly, before my phone is taken away, text Ruthie the name of the Eilat hostel where I left my belongings.

Behind a desk heavy with small flags, medals and law enforcement paraphernalia sits a man whose office this clearly is. He goes through my photos. They do not please him. Here’s a navy boat. Here are police antennas. “What business do you have here?” he asks.

I choose not to describe the Round Trip, for fear that any talk of unauthorized reporting with a focus on borders will seal my fate. Instead I describe myself as a happy-go-lucky tourist and amateur photographer who stopped here for a coffee on his way to Pharaoh’s island. He is not convinced. “You are Israeli, but you speak Arabic. You take pictures of our police stations, and you are trying to sell me stories.”

I change my mind and bring up +972. Another man in the room, a scribe, writes down the URL. I suggest to the man behind the desk that he go online and check it out. He shows no interest. “There is something wrong about you,” he says. “You are going from here to the kalaboush.”

The word kalaboush is used also in Hebrew. It means prison.

My dear readers, those of you who have accompanied me thus far know well that this is not the first time I have been in trouble on my travels, that I have been detained by now and interrogated both in my own language and in Arabic. I have been worried and upset in all those situations, but never terrified.

This time I am. Israelis have spent years in Egyptian prisons for charges of espionage that proved to be bogus. The most recent such prisoner could only be freed in a prisoner swap. This man wants to send me to an Egyptian prison, where I’ll be lucky to get kushari, a prison in an Arab country still unstable following a revolution, where the Muslim Brotherhood could come into power any day. He now mentions some film named “Among Cousins,” which appears to concern Israeli spies in Egypt and their fate. “You haven’t seen “Among Cousins?” he asks and laughs as I shake my head.

The third man present in the room now begins to ask me questions, political questions, such as, “How do Israelis feel about Egypt’s recent refusal to sell Israel gas?”

I give some answer or another. I am disorientated, nauseous. I need to work every bit of brain I have to try and convince these gentlemen that I am perfectly innocent. The third man listens to my answer intently. Then he takes my camera and begins to delete questionable photos. Mr. Kalaboush shouts at him in Egyptian Arabic which I can’t fully understand. I am not sure whether he wants him to delete them all or to preserve them as evidence.

They argue, but the third man is relaxed and appears to ultimately have higher authority. He also appears to have experienced a change in attitude following one of the answers I gave, specifically the one about the gas, for some reason, and now contemplates letting me go.

After awhile, my passport returns to the room. It’s been copied three time, and each copy is clipped to a report of the interrogation. Those are handed out to all those present except myself, and then, to my amazement, I receive the original. Mr. Kalaboush is deeply displeased, but the third man has made a decision. He hands me back my camera with many, but not all of the photos deleted.

Before I manage to grab it. Mr. Kalaboush leans over the desk, takes it and removes the battery. He now hands me camera and battery separately and tells me that I may only reunite them five kilometers south of Taba. I am banned from taking photos north of Pharaoh’s Island ever again.

This, then, is the next one I take.

Behind me is the wild desert, free of lawns.

While below, in the water, the coral reefs are visible.

This may well be the greatest beauty known to mankind. I am so thrilled to be free and so taken by the sense of home upon crossing successfully back into Israel, that I photograph the friendly shawarma vendors at the Red Sea Mall food court,

and the girl at the adjacent ice cream parlor, who hands me a sweet treat.

This is the first and only post in this series which has no deliberate theme, nor is it centered around some idea or a message. It’s entirely up to you, my readers, to make up what you will of my day. Is the story random, or is it meaningful? Am I simply an idiot, or have I finally, today, been brought in touch with the realities of the region? After all, any individual of Arab background taking photos around Tel Aviv’s Hilton would be subject to the same treatment or worse.

One thing of which I am confident, is that you, my readers, had more than a bit to do with my mysterious release. Not only have many of you donated to this trip’s expenses, but over the past few weeks, you have also kept me feeling in good company by commenting, debating and sending words of encouragement, and all of you have infused my spirit with confidence. All of you, even those who disagree with the views presented here, have sent good energies my way. These good energies worked. I thank you deeply and urge you to visit Egypt without fear. Just don’t ask to go shoot from the roof.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip thus far!

View Larger Map

Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. All writing on this site is done voluntarily, so if any of you would like to pitch in directly for my travel expenses, please click here or on the “donate” button at the top of this page to do so. Donors who contribute more than $25 will receive free the first part of the three-part ebook (compatible with iPad) that will be released this summer. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This project would be impossible if not for you.

For more of The Round Trip

Relive the first two journeys:
The September Journey
The Christmas Journey

The first thing I notice in Jordan is a picture. It is hanging over my hotel bed: a representation of Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem in its “before” state (for its “after” state, see the end of part 13).

The second thing I notice are tall curbs. Jordan has insane curbs and consequently so do many West Bank cities, which were once subject to Jordanian civil engineers. I figure that such curbs impede parking on sidewalks, but they must also force people in wheelchairs to phone-order every meal they eat.

At a small roasted-chicken eatery, I notice the pull tab on my soda can. You tell me that this place has a strong relationship with recent history (say, the 80s) and a less strong connection with environmentalism.

Having also noticed that the sockets here are of the square-toothed British breed, I step into a electric appliances store, asking for a converter. While looking for one, the owner asks me where I am from. This place may resemble Jenin and Ramallah in language and religious affiliation, it may even be inhabited mostly by Palestinians, but I am present here legally and need not pretend. “Israel,” I say.

“Then I don’t have a converter. I have nothing for you.” He leaves the drawers be, straightens up and looks my way impatiently, waiting for me to leave.

This is never a good feeling, but it’s worse now, since I really do need a converter or I’ll lag another day behind on my posting. By now it is past 10:00 p.m., this shop is open by sheer miracle, but will not serve me. What to do?

I recall how, after being arrested in Dura on the September journey, the officer interrogated me on my attitude towards his people’s national aspirations, then praised me for being “min jama’at as-salaam” – belonging to the brotherhood of peace.

I give it a shot: “I belong to the brotherhood of peace.”

“Ah,” he raises his brows. “So you’re not an Israeli?”

“Whatever, not Israeli.”

His demeanor changes sharply. He goes out of his way to find me a converter, apologizes that it is not a heavy duty one, and charges me only a single dinar. He knows full well that I am Israeli, but needed some excuse to give me service regardless. Perhaps my denouncement of my nationality also touched him. I’m a bit embarrassed by it, to be honest, but so be it, Independence Day isn’t for two more days.

In the morning, I head out and explore the promenade. It is flanked by peculiar rotating gates that are of no apparent value, since they spin both ways and are anyway not a part of any fence.

The promenade is peaceful and charming, and lined with glass-bottom boats. These are said to provide tourists with views of the spectacular reefs, though by their looks I expect the view to be a tad murky. At the restaurant where I take breakfast, I meet Aboud, who owns such boats. He has no issue with my being Israeli. “I take Israelis on my boats,” he says. “Once this woman even invited me to move to Israel and work at her t-shirt factory. I don’t see why I would need that. I own three boats and am now getting a lifeguard license.”

Aboud is a sailor free to sail one third of a small puddle. He knows the exact dimentions of Aqaba’s territorial waters and points them out to me through the the restaurant’s window.

“The little boat peeking behind the big ship, that’s a Jordanian police boat, and that’s as far as we can go. It’s a little over seven kilometers from here to the Israeli coast. Jordan gets four, Israel has three, then 500 meters or so are a buffer zone.”

He also points out two hotels on the far shore. The border between Israel and Egypt runs directly between them, then stretches out into the sea to meet the Jordanian border. A bit further south, the Jordanian-Saudi border splashes into the water too.

The tip of the gulf of Aqaba is crisscrossed by borders. These no longer resemble the fence that ended all roads at Lebanon’s rim, nor the walls of the West Bank, nor even the one running along the Arava desert, marked by boundary markers. They are less tangible even than the non-existent border in the Golan. There the boundary markers were removed but the line can still be traced by the course of a road.

The maritime borders are entirely unmarked. Enormous schools of narrow-barred Spanish mackerel zigzag accross them ceaselessly. A lone traveler could probably swim past them, and go unnoticed by the police boat. We are made of the same stuff as octopi and manta rays, which enables us to go literally “under the radar,” but who would attempt such a thing? These borders may be drawn only in our minds, but they are drawn with a sharp pencil.

Later, in the posher part of Aqaba’s shoreline, which is split between grand hotels, I run into a beach volleyball court, and can’t help but snicker at the sight of its net. Here’s another artificial barrier, dividing people into arbitrary camps which then throw things at each other. It is even more obliging than international borders: No player would dream of quitting his side of the court mid-game to enjoy some cross-net tourism.

I did just that, and am now returning over to Israel. I will continue to Eilat, but first take a photo of a more heavy duty volleyball net, running three kilometers north of the water. The watchtowers are Jordanian.

Being Israeli, I rapidly flow through the notorious security checks. At last there is a benefit to my nationality. The first thing I notice in Israel is a picture. It hangs past the passport control booths, and shows King Hussein lighting Prime Minister Rabin’s cigarette.

There is a lot more to notice, however, and by the end of the afternoon I am able to put together a comparison between two resort town promenades, located four kilometers apart, across a line cutting through the water. Both towns being rather tacky, we’ll start with the souvenir stands. Here is Aqaba.

Here is Eilat.

Both promenades are beautified by gardening. In Aqaba, local farmers grow edible herbs along the shoreline.

In Eilat, the grass and bushes are made of plastic, the ultimate evergreen.

.

Aqaba has a great view of Eilat.

Eilat has a great view of Aqaba.

Aqaba has fancy pools.

So does Eilat.

Aqaba’s promenade is dominated by an enormous national symbol: the second tallest flagpole in the world, flying the flag of the Arab Revolt (same as Jordan’s but without the star). The thing is so huge that I could not grasp it in a single shot. Here is the pole, then,

and here’s what’s atop it.

Eilat’s coast sports nothing of this magnitude, but nationalism is never in shortage here, especially not three days before Independence Day. Even the Hilton is decorated with a flag this week: a long, if slender, one.

In Aqaba people have fun in boats.

As they do in Eilat,

But as you will have noticed by now, or knew to begin with, the dress code is rather different in each of the towns. No one actually swims off of Aqaba’s beach except children, and certainly no one sunbathes, except on the grounds of the resort hotels.

Eilat is friendlier with the suntan lotion industry.

Aqaba has ancient ruins rising right over its beach.

Eilat doesn’t, but boasts crazy orientalist hotel architecture, which its twin city does not…

…but which it soon will, when its enormous lagoon project is completed. Aqaba’s lagoon will even feature a little make-believe Arab city full of alleyways and minarets. This isn’t really neccesary, since Aqaba itself is right next door and has plenty of minarets, although not many alleyways.

Finally, at the end of a long photographic exploration, each promenade offers a cool drink, be it Jordanian tamarind juice,

or Israeli lemonade. Lechaim.

How many of these are differences? How many are similarities? To me, each pair of photos reflects both. At the end of the day I find myself sitting on Eilat’s waterfront and having what could have been a typical Jordainian feast of hummous (except that it comes on a big plate and contains meat), Arak (except it is mixed with grapefruit juice rather than just water) and a hooka (except that it is heated by industrial, match-lit charcoals rather than natural ones). Things here are certainly different than they are there, but each volleyball team is also different from the other. These are differences that call for a simple converter that costs a single dinar. No need for the heavy duty sort.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip thus far! 

View Larger Map
Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. All writing on this site is done voluntarily, so if any of you would like to pitch in directly for my travel expenses, please click here or on the “donate” button at the top of this page to do so. Donors who contribute more than $25 will receive free the first part of the three-part ebook (compatible with iPad) that will be released this summer. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This project would be impossible if not for you.

For more of The Round Trip

Relive the first two journeys:
The September Journey
The Christmas Journey

Zoe, Mairav and I are looking for something to eat. We head down to Neot Hakikar, a small moshav on the southernmost tip of the Dead Sea. Google claims that it is home to a restaurant named “Fata Morgana” (a mirage).

“I hope it doesn’t vanish when we reach it,” Mairav says.

The restaurant is real enough, but only feeds large groups and only with advanced reservation. The other culinary establishment in town, a tiny diner named “Pnina’s,”  fails to work our appetite. A sign posted to the window promises corn schnitzels, the Israeli vegetarian’s frozen delight.

Neot Hakikar is no Paris when it comes to food, but, as in the case of Ein Gedi, it is literally a flowering garden in the heart of the desert.

To the south the garden is flanked by stout rocky hills, while to the north and east plantations of date palms stretch to the Jordanian border.

All of this is stunning, but we need food. We head back to the main road and turn to the south. I recall a small roadside rest area near moshav Hatzeva, where busses stop over on their way from Eilat to Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. Halfway there we pass a peculiar structure standing atop a small mesa overlooking the road. Hungry or not, this calls for a stop.

What is this place? In a land in love with signs and plaques, here is a rare exception. It reminds me of old Indian observatories. Mairav and Zoe mention Gaudi.

Gaudi = Barcelona = La boqueria, Cheese and sausages, tapas from the sea, manchego and jamon, xuixos stuffed with creme Catalan, wine and sangria. On, on to the rest stop!

Disappointingly, it only offers two fast-food franchises, both of them equally dull and uninspiring. One is a “Burger Ranch”, the other – an “Aroma” cafe and sandwich shop. For travelers, even starving travelers, food is a means to a cause. We would like to penetrate the surface of this region and sense its spirit. The north of the vast Arava valley cannot possibly be defined by a Burger Ranch. So we head into the Moshav iteslf, to see what it may offer.

The approach road goes by a small village of vacant tepees made of dried palms. We have reached the land of the head shrinkers. Will we end up succumbing to cannibalism?

That, alas, seems likely, because the small supermarket at Hatzeva is closed. We can’t even buy groceries and picnic on the grass in the company of Thai migrant workers, who rest here at the moment. A sign posted on the door reads: “On Tuesday, 24.4, in the plaza in front of the kindergarten, we will be selling hot Falafel. One full portion: NIS 5, a half a protion: NIS 2. Please come prepared with small bills.

Today is Sunday and the oil won’t be boiling for two days. We drive back out of Hatzeva, among the moshav’s greenhouses. The 200 kilometers separating the Dead Sea and the Red Sea are uninhabited but for a handful of moshavim and kibbutzim. These use the thin brine pumped out of local underground reserves for growing a variety of crops that can live on such water, such as peppers, flowers, and cantaloupe.

That’s enough. We give up and head for the rest stop. Hazeva is impenetrable for the moment. Perhaps on some other visit we shall find out what it really tastes like.

Following the wonderful, exquisite meal, the girls bid me farewell and head north to Ein Gedi. I keep heading south with a worry in my heart. If this introverted stretch of desert does not open up and share something of its reality with me, I will end up traveling a distance double the length of the entire Lebanese border and remain clueless as to its secrets. It’s fine for one flight of fancy stone maze to remain a mystery and a vacant palm village to remain mysterious, but this trip is about understanding.

My fear is somewhat dispersed when I get a lift from a man named Tzur. By the neat, businesslike appearance of his car’s interior I can tell him to be an urbanite, but Tzur is strongly involved in what is happening inside the Arava’s greenhouses. He is, you see, a castrator of flies.

“Organic Magnesium is no longer fashionable as pesticide,” he explains. “We have gone past that. In my company we offer farmers packages of combined pest controls, using insects and less harmful chemicals.”

The insects in question include mutated vermin such as neutered flies, which reduce fly population by mating with fertile ones. Over the following, fascinating hour, Tzur tells me exactly how harmful med flies are fixed, without the use of tiny knives and magnifying glasses.

“The idea actually dates back to the 1950s. It was a byproduct of nuclear weapons development. The flies are exposed to gamma rays, that’s all there really is to it. We have a large factory near Beit Shean, where we produce them. First we warm them up, which kills all the females, then we paint the ones that survive: we put them in a tumbler with fluorescent paint, and it sticks to cracks in their backs.”

I hide my slight shudder. “Does that make them more attractive to the fertile females?” I ask.

“No, but it makes them more visible to us. This way we can monitor which flies are ours and how well they do their job. They must do it very well, because no exported produce may contain any med flies. We are committed to world markets.

Agriculture in the Arava is big business and a source of natural pride. It is also, like everything in this country, a tool of national security. After bidding farewell to Tzur, I travel past the colossal greenhouse city of Paran. This moshav was founded at the entrance to a valley which stretches west into the Sinai, and was frequently used by nomadic Bedouins. Israel plugged the valley with a civilian community, in the interest of maintaining control of its borders.

From Paran I get a lift with two lovers, Raul and Ori. Raul is Spanish from the region of Extramadura and I am thrilled to tell him of how I had visited it over the September journey. Israeli Ori had met him in Brazil years ago, and now takes him around the country along with her dog, Ness (miracle), who cozies against my arm.

We make a bathroom stop at a very strange place, but at least it is one whose story I know. The “101st kilometer inn” is located directly across form Petra, in Jordan. Shimon “Cooshi” Rimon, successfully snuck into Jordanian territory in 1960, by driving a stolen UN vehicle. Other Israeli adventure-seekers who attempted reaching the fabled lost city of the Nabateans, often did not fare as well. Many were shot by border patrols on the way over or back.

Cooshi survived, and he founded a groovy little “Baghdad Cafe” by the side of the long, hot Arava road. Artist friends contributed sculptures,

and over the years a menagerie of strange creatures was accumulated here, complete with a real two-headed snake, a two headed turtle and a tiger. The tiger died of ripe old age a few years ago, an event which signaled the end of the inn’s luck. Soon a fire came, demolishing a number of the wooden structures and killing many of the two and one-headed creatures.

Cooshi purchased a new two-headed snake since, but could not get his hands on another such turtle. All in all, the 101st Kilometer Inn is a sad place these days, and I’m glad to be back on the road.

Actually, I am thrilled. My lovely new friends are continuing to Eilat and will drop me off at one of the two border crossings through which Israelis may enter the Kingdom of Jordan.

When I was a child, the only way I could enter Jordan was by stealing a UN Jeep. This changed in the 1990s, following the Oslo Accords. King Hussein of Jordan promised Israel that when an agreement was reached between its government and the PLO, he would offer a peace agreement that enables travel and trade. He remained true to his word.

During those days of hope, my father, Oded Ben-Ami, served as media adviser to Yitzhak Rabin, and often traveled in secret to different places where history was made by peacemakers. One late night he left home, unable to tell my mother where he was headed. He called her on the phone just before dawn.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I still can’t tell you,” he said, “but I am looking at Eilat from the east.”

Just east of Eilat, sharing the coast of the same bay, is the Jordanian city of Aqaba. My mother understood that peace with Jordan was nigh and that the Middle East was due to change in earnest. She cried with joy.

That was in 1994. The Middle East stopped changing the following year, when Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish right-wing fanatic in Tel-Aviv. Netanyahu soon took over and the peace process died. Today the Arava border crossing is the quietest spot which I have visited in Israel so far. Quieter even than sandwich-less Hatzeva.

Crossing into Jordan is still possible, but for the most part, only avid hikers and foreign tourists take advantage of that, so no lines await me at the various counters. I pay a transport tax and change some money at the bank counter, then move on to Israeli immigration and on to the Jordanian customs counter where my belongings spark no interest.

Ten minutes into the process, I arrive at Jordanian immigration, which is where things get complicated. My passport is not signed and I am sent to room #3, which turns out to be a police station of the “Tourist Police.”

The officer at the tourist police speaks not a word of English. My Arabic has greatly improved over the past two weeks, but the term he uses over and over isn’t familiar. I finally learn that it means “travel agent.” It appears that a month-old regulation requires all Israelis who enter Jordan to coordinate their visit with a local travel agent, follow that agent to the hotel of his choice, and of course pay a commission.

The officer puts me on the phone with an agent named Ibrahim. While Ibrahim names his price, a man in civilian clothes walks into the station. He grabs the receiver from my one hand and my passport from the other. Spells my name to Ibrahim over the line, and then hangs up and tells me that Ibrahim will be here in five minutes.

I wait for far more than five minutes, watching twilight descend over this very quiet place and taking pictures of King Abdullah’s portrait, out of boredom.

The man in civilian clothes steps out of the station and tells me again that Ibrahim will be here in five minutes, only now he adds “by Arab time,” which I take to mean I may wait here the entire night.

“What is your job?” I ask him.

“I’m Ibrahim’s brother,” he replies.

Finally even he loses his patience and decides to take me to town on his own. He hands me my passport and walks me through immigration, then we’re in Jordan, driving into town to the hotel of Ibrahim’s choice.

Problem number two soon arises. I exchanged only a handful of NIS at the bank, for fear of being stuck with very soft currency upon return into Israel. Ibrahim’s hotel does not accept credit cards, and none of the ATMs in Aqaba accept my card.

“Why don’t I pay you ten dinars now and you’ll free me to go find a hotel that takes credit?” I ask Ibrahim’s brother. Ten dinars are worth about 13 US$, they are what I expected to pay for a cab ride into town. He insists on being paid 20 dinars, but I have no intention of paying that to anyone simply because he has friends at the Tourist Police, so we keep traveling among Aqaba’s ATM’s. This is dragging on and on. My time for enjoying the city is running out “I’m sorry.” I finally say. “I can’t be your prisoner, and I can’t pay you more or I’ll have nothing left to eat. Please take the ten dinars and let me go.”

“I’ll hand you over to the Tourist Police,” he threatens, and it’s no idle threat. Crossing the border of hope, the border of peace, has turned into an Israeli-Jordanian conflict, thanks to pointless regulations which now weigh on both of us. Ibrahim’s now exhausted brother makes phone calls, to try and sort the situation out. So be it. We try to get a hotel to overcharge my card and then pay him. Impossible.

“Let me go!” I beg, “Please!”

“I’m sorry,” he says, you are now under my supervision.”

It takes another full hour before finally he gives up and accepts my offer. Israel had won this little war and now I am fully prepared to make peace now with this world and with this night. The lights of Eilat shine to the west. I am in another country. I have made it to the tip of the Arava, and learned something on the way; it may be a disgusting little something about reducing fly populations, but how can I help but be satisfied? The night smells like hooka smoke, roasted meat and warm sea breeze, the ships out in the water travel from here into the Indian ocean, and for the first time since this journey began I feel that feeling beloved by all travelers: that I am truly far from home.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip thus far!  (zoom out for full map)

View Larger Map

Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. All writing on this site is done voluntarily, so if any of you would like to pitch in directly for my travel expenses, please click here or on the “donate” button at the top of this page to do so. Donors who contribute more than $25 will receive free the first part of the three-part ebook (compatible with iPad) that will be released this summer. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This project would be impossible if not for you.

For more of The Round Trip

Relive the first two journeys:
The September Journey
The Christmas Journey

Tine likes the Dead Sea, conceptually, that is. She likes that it’s called the Dead Sea and that no form of life survives in its waters except for tourists.

We camp out at a place that turns out to be very much alive: a beach near Kibbutz Ein Gedi. The families that come to spend Friday night here provide a good idea of which groups in Israeli society can’t afford hotels: small town Mizrachim (Jews of Arab descent), Russian immigrants, Palestinian-Israelis and Bedouins, the latter being so used to roughing it that an entire family just sleeps out on the murky pavement near the public bathrooms.

Ein Gedi Beach vacation-makers arrive, equipped with sound systems, portable grills and cases of cheap energy drink. We come with nothing but one tent for the two of us, but find a wonderful spot for it next to some flat slab of concrete that makes a lovely patio.

I will not be surprised if some of my readers doubt me by now. Women appear to be more spontaneous than men and end up joining me on the road more often, from Damascus Rose who took in Tel Aviv with me early in September, to Adi who joined me along the Lebanese border earlier on this tour. I love their company but I am forced to disappoint: It’s all platonic. I’m loyal to Ruthie, and my fondness for female company stems less from my macho instincts and more from its opposite. I have a strong feminine side, which I recently discussed in a book. Women are my most natural friends.

Even natural friends like to widen their social horizons, so we walk over to a fun-looking bunch that sits by a campfire and offer up some of the vodka we bought at the Russian deli in Arad. It turns out that someone’s already made that same move on that same group. Alexandra, a Polish backpacker traveling on her own, provided them a bottle of wine in return for the warmth of their burning forklift pallet.

We walked ourselves into a proper party. Soon one of the revelers pulls out the melodica and everyone sings along. These are the moments for which travel was invented. It’s perfect.

I was in fact planning to dedicate this post to pefection, to the beauty of the desert that surrounds us now. The Green Line being gone, this would be a good time to chill, for once forget the politics and respect the beauty of this unique lake of brine and the grand mountains surrounding it.

But when the light comes over that lake, I notice a drama around me to which I must pay mind. It is environmental drama and it appears in the rivers of water used to wash the restrooms, in the trash with which the night wind covered the fence defining the beach’s limits and in the pink lampposts that line the lake shore.

This country is trying for those who seek to relax in primeval landscapes. Tine and I head to the Ein Gedi nature reserve, where desert springs feed streams that dance down the dry rocks in countless waterfalls to the lake below. This would have been the perfect place to cool one’s feet following a long desert walk.

But only if you are a true lover of humanity and don’t mind cooling them to a soundtrack of screaming kids and the grownups who loudly discipline them. The reserve is so overpopulated that we must literally queue on our way up the trails.

I’m trying to keep all the noise out by singing a happy song, an appropriate song, by late Israeli troubadour Meir Ariel. Its beauty gives me the power to push my way through the crowd to the uppermost fall, which is the most spectacular and least crowded of all. It goes something like this:

My love is like a desert land
She does not give herself easily, if at all.
She is no audience for my little shows.

Even though she wants me by now,
She rejects all manners of courtship.
This is when I happen to love her most.

My love is like a desert land
There’s a bright cleanliness about her
And me, I am a little bit dirty.

Even though she wants me by now,
She would not let approach, not yield
This is when I happen to love her most.

She doesn’t like it when I talk, she says that I lie
Even when I’m silent.
That I’m not worthy
Even of her scorns.

She must have not forgotten nor forgiven
Those long, long days.
But she’d surely have quit the scene
Had she not thought
that somewhere inside me
She would find fresh water.

My love is like a desert land,
She stings like the flint, burns like the scorpion,
And pierces the skin like a cold eastern wind.

Even though she wants me by now
She will keep me baking in the sun
Just to see if I would stay,

And this is when I happen to love her the most.

South of the reserve is Kibbutz Ein Gedi. Here man interfered with nature more intensely, not only by crowding and photographing it, but by dwelling in it and using its spring water to grow a small, inhabited forest.

Like many kibbutzim, Ein Gedi was founded by the IDF’s Nachal brigade, whose mission is the creation of agricultural settlements that may also serve military interests when neccesary. In case you wondered earlier how come so many places that I visit along the borders are kibbutzim, here is your answer.

The Nachal’s soldiers came to the oasis in 1953. At that time the city of Arad was not yet dreamed up, nor were the hotels along the lake’s shore to the south. The Green Line stretches here to the north and west, forming a triangular peninsula of Israel, that stretched only several kilometers across. At the time anything across that line was under Jordanian rule and inaccessible to Israelis, which rendered Ein Gedi extremely isolated from the rest of the Jewish state. It would take nearly a day to drive here from Beer Sheva on gravel roads.

It was at that time that a song was written about this place, by a 16-year old boy who came here one summer to volunteer. I can’t help but hum it as Tine and I wander through the botanical garden that flourishes among the kibbutz homes, complete with a real baobab.

Ein Gedi, Ein Gedi, how did you bloom so in the sun.
Ein Gedi, Ein Gedi, how your streams break through the wasteland.
Ein Gedi, Ein Gedi. Here beauty appears at it brightest

And the heart wonders
And is seduced.

There’s been more than a bit of controversy around how Ein Gedi uses the gift of the springs. The botanical garden features primarily desert vegetation, but the kibbutz also bottles the water and sells it in supermarkets. When criticized, kibbutzniks argued that there is little difference between selling the water in plastic bottles as opposed to selling it as grapefruit. It did not seem to have occurred to them that growing water-consuming crops may be equally objectionable, no matter how many Israeli farmers do it.

Israel diverts the water of the Jordan River to farmlands on the coast. Water which would have reached the Dead Sea winds up in watermelons and tropical fruit such as passion fruit. We export our scarce water to Swiss supermarkets in the form of Jaffa oranges. Meanwhile the periphery of the lake shrinks by one meter each year. We are killing the Dead Sea, but it’s smarter than us. Where the water receded, sink holes open up and kill us in return.

These holes are deep pits that cave without warning to bury anything or anyone unlucky enough to have passed by. Directly at the foot of the hill on which Ein Gedi is perched, is a sign warning of them.

Further south are the huge, water guzzling Dead Sea hotels, presenting a Vegas-like skyline against the stark mountains. Here Tine bids me farewell and returns to Jerusalem, while I check into a hotel room to catch up on my writing.

By being here, I too am taking part in the rape of this delicate and magical corner of the earth, but there isn’t much of a choice. I have only gone as far as the surprise tango lesson in my last published post, and must sit now for over eight hours to tell the Story of Umm Jihad’s homecoming and our afternoon at Abraham and Sarah’s.

The following morning I recieve splendid company. Someone who is already a partner on this journey took the opportunity to also be a travel buddy. It is +972′s own Mairav Zonszein, who edited several of my previous posts. She is showing the country to Zoe, an American friend who currently resides in Budapest. My current whereabouts are the opposite of Budapest in every respect, and bringing Zoe here certainly should justify her airfare.

Here are two more traveling ladies, proving that the roads really do belong to the wiser sex. I am forced to check out before they arrive, but grab two extra towels in advance from the hotel counter and help them sneak on to the hotel beach, so Zoe could experience the Dead Sea’s famous buoyancy.

I owe them this hour of easy chairs and parasols, because there’s one more site down the road I wish to visit, and they will provide me with a lift there. First signs of it appear not ten minutes south of the easy chairs, in the form of tiny, decaying houses on the desolate shore.

These are old laborers’ quarters of the Dead Sea Industries complex. The minerals and phosphates found on the lake’s bottom would have been among Israel’s most precious resources, but they do not belong to Israel anymore.

You see, the government sold every precious flake of bromide this soil has to the Ofer Brothers company, who pay a tiny commission. Up until 1995, they were allowed to enlarge their juggernaut complex without any interference by governmental development committees. This complex, as luck would have it, is located at the site traditionally identified as that of Biblical Sodom.

The entire southern portion of the lake is split up by gravel causeways and even the hotels themselves sit today on the shore of evaporation pool #5. Look back to the picture taken from my hotel room window, and you’ll clearly see the levee enclosing it.

“Have politician friends, will mine. Have an envelope full of cash, will have politician friends.” While traveling along the complex’s fences, I have yet another song playing through my head. It was written by Shalom Chanoch and performed in Arabesque style by mischievous radio personality Dori Ben-Zeev. It is called: “Thieves.”

All day I sit
Thinking only of you
What will be,
Be,
Be,
With you?

Can’t find a place to put my head down
Don’t know what to wear
What will be, be, be of me?
I don’t eat and I don’t drink
Scared of what may lie ahead.
What will be,
Be,
Be,
The end?

Thieves,

Thieves,

Thieves
stole my night
miserable robbers
stole my day.

To my great amazement, Mairav and Zoe themselves don’t find this place half as disturbing as I do. “It’s interesting,” says Zoe, and Mairav even uses “beautiful.” Who knows, in the end I may just be a miserable old conservative. My camera seems to agree with them. And the last drawing Tine left with me, that of an old tree growing through a railing designed to hold a trash can on Ein Gedi’s promenade, is beautiful indeed. I yield.

“Fresh Water” by Meir Ariel.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Ein Gedi” by Eitan Peretz and Dov Aharony. performed by Tove Ben-Zvi and Shmuel Bar-Zakai

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Thieves”, by Shalom Hanoch, performed by Dori Ben-Zeev and “Swing des Gitans”

Click here to view the embedded video.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip thus far!

View Larger Map
Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. All writing on this site is done voluntarily, so if any of you would like to pitch in directly for my travel expenses, please click here or on the “donate” button at the top of this page to do so. Donors who contribute more than $25 will receive free the first part of the three-part ebook (compatible with iPad) that will be released this summer. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This project would be impossible if not for you.

For more of The Round Trip

Relive the first two journeys:
The September Journey
The Christmas Journey

Someone very special is waiting for me this morning outside the train station of Lehavim, north of Be’er Sheva. It is Tine Fetz, the German artist who got into the legal trouble with me on the September Journey, and then illustrated those events that we were not able to photograph.

Tine is back in the country and ready to get in trouble again. She picked quite a day to join me: this is to be the final one along the Green Line, and having spent yesterday on the Israeli side, I now prepare to cross the fence and explore the South Hebron Hills. Those in activist circles know the weight of this geographical designation. I do not. I have never been on a tour here with Breaking the Silence, despite its reputation as being their most disturbing tour, or because of it.

My ignorance will likely benefit us both. It is so much easier to walk through this country unaware of its cruelty, that this is naturally what most people choose to do.

Getting out of Lehavim is tough. We are trying to catch a lift towards the fence, in the midst of the northern Negev’s hot, shade-less plane. We decide to advance on foot to the next intersection. On the way, Tine tells me of the first incident in which she was made to feel uncomfortable as a German. A stranger who spoke to her in Jerusalem the other day simply turned his back on her and walked away when she mentioned her origin. Just as she is telling me this, we pass a sign that reads: “Forest of the German States.” It surprises us so much that we fail to note the absence of an actual forest anywhere near it. Tine immortalizes.

Another surprise arrives by text message. It was sent by my friend and fellow theater critic Sivan. “Is that you walking outside Lehavim?” he asks. It turns out that Sivan just passed us in a car, but it was too full to pick us up: full of activists, in fact, headed for some kind of trouble in the region of Susya.

Tine and I are doing our best to clarify that we are no activists. We are interested in meeting settlers. Real, hardcore, bearded, ideological settlers, not white-bread ones like Ezra. Tine even brought, at my advice, a long black skirt that makes her look like a right “hilltop girl.” Following our lift to the checkpoint, she puts it on.

The car that picks us up has a ribbon hanging from its rearview mirror, holding a copy of the popular “prayer for the traveler.” The ribbon is orange, the color of the struggle against Sharon’s 2005 disengagement plan, which has symbolized support for the settlements ever since. Neither the driver nor his friend is bearded or even sports a kippa, and neither appears very hardcore, but to the best of my knowledge there was nothing orange around Ezra’s house or in his parents’ car. We are now in new waters.

As we advance down the line, other political symbols emerge. The bus stops tell us that Kahane (reactionary and racist former MK Rabbi Meir Kahane) was right.

Posters remind that God promised us this “ENTIRE COUNTRY!”

And signs that point to places, such as this one outside the settlement of Susya, have gone from trilingual to bilingual by popular demand.

Susya (or Suseya, I guess, though Google disagrees) was the destination of Sivan’s party. We give him a call and he tells us that he’s in some archeological site and will soon come and pick us up. Meanwhile Tine creates her first drawing of the day, a Susya skyline.

Sivan arrives with Yoav, of the human rights organization “B’Tselem.” They turn onto a narrow road that bypasses the settlement and continues north, and soon we learn to our amazement that the quiet hills were misleading. The big city of Yatta is in fact walking distance away, but its suburbs fail to reach Susya. Yatta is located in Area A, which makes up some 17 percent of the West Bank. Susya is in Area C, which makes up over 72 percent of the territory, and where Palestinian construction is prohibited by Israel.

Prohibiting construction is one problem, but there is another. As Yoav and Sivan explain, we have entered the land of the uprooted.

The South Hebron Hills are, to this day, home to cave dwellers. These are not Bedouins, but Palestinian peasants who left their villages in the 19th century to dwell within the land itself. Since the 80s, when the settlements first appeared in this region, the luck of the cave dwellers ran out. Settlers have been known to brutalize their property, and the army sealed several caves with concrete. Every effort was made to “sterilize” the land south of Yatta.

Families living in Susya have been particularly unlucky, since the site of their village has been identified as that of an ancient Jewish city and a spectacualr synagogue was excavated within the ruin that served as its mosque. All families were evicted and the site became a tourist attraction.

A similar thing happened in Petra, where people have dwelled in the caves since – well, since Petra was built. The Jordanian government, however, resettled the Bedouins in a town built especially for that purpose. It is not a well-designed town, and the sorrow is still great, but at least it is a town. Here in Susya, the only town built was the settlement. All the the cave dwellers received was a kick in the butt. They became tent dwellers, and their three-decade-old encampment is situated directly across from the archaeological site.

As soon as we arrive, Yoav comes up with an idea. “We just took two of our hosts down to the site, bought them tickets and chaperoned them in,” he says, “but we didn’t take the mother along, because there was no room in the car. Why don’t you guys go with her? Take the car. You can probably deal with the attendant. Just don’t let him catch sight of her before you have the tickets in your hands.”

I’ve only known Yoav for five minutes and am a bit dumbfounded. “Why won’t you come with us?” I ask.

“The attendant’s already seen me, I’m burned. Go on, the place closes at 2:00. So there’s little time, and this is important, guys. She hasn’t been there in 30 years.”

Thirty years? How is that possible? The place isn’t even fenced! I’m fairly sure Yoav is exaggerating, but adventure calls and the sweet woman who takes the back seat is warm and talkative. Her name is Umm Jihad, and she waits patiently in the car while I go pay for tickets. The ticket booth turns out to be closed, so we decide to simply walk in.

Just as the excavated walls begin to rise around us, the attendant (bearded, hardcore) appears and asks us what our business is around here. I respond as would any normal Israeli tourist who accompanies a matron in a traditional, embroidered Palestinian dress and a white Hijab to an ancient Jewish city in the South Hebron Hills. “The ticket counter was closed,” I say.

He ponders this shortly, than says: “Just pay me when you get out.”

As we enter Umm Jihad’s hometown, it quickly becomes apparent that she has not been here in a very long time, and I mean very long. She points out the houses of uncles and cousins, steps into the caves and becomes more and more radiant each time she reemerges.

She stops by the synagogue and tells how Prime Minister Begin arranged for Jews and Muslims to pray there together. What sounds like a peaceful idyll was in fact the beginning of the end for her and her family.

“Where was your house?” I ask her.

“We’re getting there,” she says.

Then we come very near it and suddenly 30 years of her age disappear, and she begins to run through the wild barley. I have never seen a woman her age run like this, and I’m terrified she will fall. She does not fall. She stops and spreads her arms in complete bliss. She has arrived at her old doorstep.

The cave which opens at her feet is empty like the others, and its mouth is overgrown and impassible, but Umm Jihad doesn’t seem bothered. “This is such a happy day for me,” she repeats over and over, “this is a holiday, a holiday.” Then she is ready to go back, and back we go with her, in complete disbelief.

Before returning to the tents, however, I have to stay true to my word and make a stop at the ticket counter, where the attendant, David, hands me a brochure of the site, complete with a map in which Yatta does not appear (a cute, horned Ibex is where it should be).

David cautiously questions me while counting the change. He is not surprised to hear that I am Tel-Avivian, but does seem baffled by my friendly and cheerful demeanor. That should be no mystery. After walking alongside Umm Jihad in her moments of sweet nostalgia, I would have been friendly towards Pol Pot.

“What do you do back in Tel Aviv?” David asks.

“I’m a theater critic.”

He smiles. “This whole world is a theater, and the director is up in the heavens.”

“So they say.”

Back at Umm Jihad’s tent, we are treated to a delicious meal of chicken maklouba, yogurt and freshly baked pita bread. The family eats separately, which leaves us a homogeneous bunch, the lunch crowd of a Tel Avivian cafe that got lost in the hills. Here, from right to left are Yoav, multi-disciplinary activist, filmmaker Dani (who teamed up with Yoav to make a short documentary about Susya, which will be screened at Tel Aviv’s cinematheque this Thursday), human rights lawyer Carmel, and Sivan himself.

These people are fighters and lovers. They are among the best I know, but we did not come all this way to see them. The sabbath is at hand and soon the settlers will be indoors, blessing the candles. Sivan drives us to the road, and we head into Jewish Susya.

The first thing I notice here is an exchange rack, where people bring their old clothes and books for others to pick at for free.

The second thing I notice is a man watering a lovely flowerbed.

Tine and I ask him if he will fill up our bottles with his hose, since the day is hot and we are on a journey.

“We’re all on a journey,” says the talented gardener.

I’m thinking back to David’s theater comment. “How come everyone is so philosophical around here?” I ask.

“This is not philosophy, my friend. It’s the Torah.”

“And is the Torah not philosophy? You know that philosophy means ‘love of wisdom.’ What is the Torah if not love of wisdom?”

“The Torah is not love of wisdom,” he decrees. “The Torah is the word of God, and the word of God stands even if it defies wisdom. If God should say: left is right and right is left, you must accept that.”

His name is Abraham, and not only does he pour us water and invite us to rest on a pink sofa in his yard, he even goes into the house and brings us a taste of what his wife, Sarah, cooked for the sabbath: ktzitzot (fried meat patties) and rice. We’re still stuffed from all the meat and rice at the tent, but Sarah’s food is great and nothing is left on the plates.

There’s a certain magic to being hosted by Abraham and Sarah, just as the angels were in the book of Genesis. We moved from a literal tent to an allegorical one, in which Sarah remains unseen at first, just like her Biblical namesake. She’s busy cleaning for the Sabbath, and I am thinking of a word of good news to give her. Would she be happy that her neighbor had just had an uplifting experience among the ruins? As Jews, the concepts of uprooting and return run in our blood. Perhaps she would.

Eventually Sarah emerges and the two tell us the family’s story. It began in Tel Aviv, where they both were, as Abraham puts it, “secular and leftist.” They first moved to a kibbutz in the region, though south of the line. Then Sarah began working in Susya, and the couple fell in love with the people living there. “At first I also thought – urgh! the settlers!” says Abraham, “I thought that all they do is steal money from the State, that they should return to ‘Israel.’ Then I came to think: Here is one place where no one wants to steal from you, or to cheat you. and I said to myself: I want to be like these people.”

“Does the status of the land bother you at all?” I ask.

“Look,” he says, “This place is just like Tel Aviv or Ramle. The same things that happen here happened there, only at a different time in history. In any case, we must stay focused on the fact God promised this country to us, or else we will be eternally confused.”

Sara now brings out an album and we look at some of Abraham’s older artwork.

Much of it deals with the Holocaust, including an enormous installation once erected at the Herzliya museum, in which the statue of a man seems to escape those of winged beasts. Sarah points out the monsters, but Abraham corrects her: “These aren’t monsters, these are Germans.”

Tine laughs.

It’s time to exchange warm goodbyes and leave. As we cross the fence at Yatir, I bid it farewell for this journey. I will continue to read about it in Haggai Matar’s priceless series, published alongside my own.

No time for reading now, though. The road descends into the proper desert, and into a true wilderness where we must find a place to pass the night. We stop at the town of Arad, and buy groceries at a Russian mini-market (I love those).

Then we keep descending, to below sea level. We get a lift from Salem, a Bedouin who speaks fluent German, and from Salti, a Palestinian-Israeli, who tells us his tale of a painful divorce and years in prison.

As the sun sets, Salti pulls over, allowing me to take a photo of Masada. This is an archeological site, like old Susya, and a hilltop fortress, like new Susya, a place once conquered and emptied, like old Susya (I highly doubt the suicide story, due to flaws in the historiography), and where the faithful used to see before them only the word of God as they percieved it, like the faithful of new Susya. Our strange mountains provide no view to the distance. What choice have we but to give up on them and hope that the lowest point on earth somehow will.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip thus far!

View Larger Map
Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. All writing on this site is done voluntarily, so if any of you would like to pitch in directly for my travel expenses, please click here or on the “donate” button at the top of this page to do so. Donors who contribute more than $25 will receive free the first part of the three-part ebook (compatible with iPad) that will be released this summer. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This project would be impossible if not for you.

For more of The Round Trip

Relive the first two journeys:
The September Journey
The Christmas Journey

As the sun sets over Jerusalem, Holocaust Remembrance Day officially begins. It begins with a disaster: The wild wind of that sand storm toppled a stainless steel tower that held a light fixture above Mount Herzl. There, by the tomb of national Zionism’s founder, a televised commemorative ceremony was to be held, but the collapse killed one 20-year-old female officer and left five others wounded, and it is now unclear what will be of the event.

Having touched down on Jerusalem’s southernmost point, I return into the city’s heart and pay a visit to the home of my beloved friend Daniella and her roommate Inna. Ezra joins us here and the four of us hold a small intimate commemorative session, lit by safe candles that the worst wild winds can only extinguish. Each one of us has Ashkenazi Jewish roots and a small story to tell of his or her family’s fate.

The tale of my grandfather’s vanished parents and siblings was mentioned twice already along this journey. To tell it in earnest would take an entire night and it will be a dark night. Suffice it to say that we eventually learned the of fate of one sister, Eva, who was enslaved by the German sewing machine company Singer. Eva was held in Singer’s own concentration camp in Trutnov, today in the Czech Republic. She died of typhus the day the camp was liberated. A monument was erected over the mass grave in which she was thrown, but was desecrated by neo-Nazis just as the story reached her living kin.

My family helped renovate the monument and later brought my grandfather to her grave. We all stood in tears, listening to him speak to her. I later thanked him for speaking in Hebrew, a language we could all understand, even though Eva spoke only Hungarian. “You know what,” he said, “it didn’t occur to me. I’ve been living in Hebrew for sixty years now.”

Ezra is living in Hebrew on a tiny Hebrew island, entirely surrounded by Arabic. He has never even been to the city of Ramallah, walking distance from the settlement, and has always been curious about it. I know a safe way in and out of Ramallah’s Area A, so tonight we go.

The man is more than a bit nervous and more than a bit excited. He pickes a foreign identity: that of a Russian named Misha, and drills me about the city: How big is it? How friendly to strangers? He also mentions the lynching of two IDF soldiers which took place in Ramallah in the year 2000, I remind him that those were uniformed soldiers who are regarded as an immediate enemy, and that the tensions of the onset of the second intifada were considerably higher than they are today. I also mention that two days previously, the IDF killed the child Mohammed al-Dura in Gaza. This is a detail the Israeli public was made to forget: The sick, terrifying event was driven by rare mass hysteria.

“But what if something happens now? What if Israel nukes Gaza while we’re on the road there?”

“Then we’re doomed anyway.”

“And what if they check my car and see that it is registered at a settlement?”

“They won’t check your car. Ramallah is full of yellow license plates. Palestinian Israelis and East Jerusalemites can go in legally.”

Convinced or not, Ezra is determined to go, if only in order to watch Barcelona play Chelsea at the Champions League semifinals. The match is not broadcast in Israel even on cable, on account of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I must agree that watching a proper Barcelona match at this time in the team’s history is worth the risk of being lynched. Ramallah is the answer, and Ezra has only one more question: “What currency is used there?”

He is not the only Israeli not to know this. “Shekels. They live under occupation.”

We drive past the wall in Qalandia, where cars aren’t checked, and soon arrive at Al Manara square. An hour ago we sat around the candles, and Ezra told us of his family’s escape to Uzbekistan during the German conquest of the Ukraine. Now we are in the green glow of a sign that reads “Stars & Bucks Cafe,” where I show him the lion with the wristwatch.

Legend has it that the sculptor doubted the city would pay him on time for the lions it commissioned. He endowed the lion with a symbol of impatience, and declared that he would chisel it away once the money arrived. The watch never got chiseled off.

We watch Barcelona failing to chisel away at Chelsea’s defence and make friends with other costomers at the bar. They don’t know us to be Israelis, and certainly not a present settler and a former settler. (As mentioned in the September Journey, I grew up on French Hill in East Jerusalem.) Still, I find this blurry end-of-the-night image very moving.

It is at that Ramallah bar that my computer fails to turn on. When I arrived at Daniella’s house, I plugged it into the wall and shorted the electicity in the entire house. Now it appears that my charger fell victim to this incident. This depresses me far more than Barcelona’s loss. I will have to waste a half a day in Jerusalem tomorrow, despite not having any margin of error on this journey’s schedule, and buy a new charger for 200 shekels I don’t have.

Dear readers, this is where I appeal to you once more to take part in this journey by contributing to it. My fundraising goal was $1,500. So far, generous readers to whom I’ll always be grateful have donated about one-third that sum, and unexpected costs keep popping up: First the camera died, now the charger. Transportation expenses are higher than I had expected, despite all the hitching and walking and the hot, sparsely populated southern regions still await. I need your help now more than ever in order to complete this project, and I am deeply indebted to all who have helped and will help.

The 200 shekels exchange hands the following morning at a West Jerusalem computer store. Ezra and I stand outside its doors at 10:00, when the traditional Holocaust Remembrance Day siren is heard throughout the country. The siren sounds for two minutes, during which everything comes to a complete halt. Pedestrians stop walking. Patients rise from the dentists’ seats to respect the moment, all conversation falls silent. (including much Arabic conversation: When living in Jaffa I saw how Palestinian-Israelis respect this moment.) Cars stop clear in the middle of the road, the drivers and passengers step out of them and stand in silence. If the sight of this Jerusalem street is unusual, imagine the freeway.

The siren dies and it’s time to go back on the road. I take the train southwest from Jerusalem. The Green Line was charted here along the rails, which remained just within Israel, and here it can truly be said to be green.

The foothills are wonderfully green too. Here is a fertile land of great beauty, surrounding a town somewhat less beautiful: the sprawling working-class Jewish city of Beit Shemesh, missing from this frame for the reader’s sake.

I walk in the hills, two feet of mine on the green grass against one foot of each stork I pass. Then there arrives a barrier which storks would find meaningless, but my two feet are powerless to cross. It is a massive wall of concrete, topped with barbed wire.

No, this is not the separation barrier. That would be found several kilometers to the east. This wall before me happens to enclose a terrifically gentle environment: the French half of the Beit Jamal monastery.

Beit Jammal’s original, historical monastery, is found next door. It is a charming but not very unusual place where Franciscan monks dwell. The adjacent French abbey, however, is truly unique. it belongs to the mysterious order of the Sisters of Bethlehem and of the assumption of the Virgin and of St. Bruno (to be said in a single breath). The nuns, who take a severe oath of silence, dress in purely white hooded robes and look like bleached out, female Obi Wan-Kenobis.

The environment in which they silently tread is an extremely appealing, shaker-simple stone and pine-wood complex. It focuses around a chapel empty of pews, where praying nuns are hidden from one another by wooden dividers. It is a strange church. It is indeed a strange place, the home of an isolated sect that happens to share a thing or two with mainstream Catholicism, but there is some strong, irresistible magic about it and in certain moments of the year, such as Christmas eve, when the nuns fall to the floor with the ecstasy of devotion and the candlelit corridors are flooded with their singing, it is life-altering.

All photography is prohibited inside. I plead with Maritte, one of the sisters, to allow me at least one shot. She cannot allow it, but is open and kind and free to break her silence with strangers, and she readily shares with me her personal history.

Maritte grew up in Marseille, worked as a teacher and reached the age of 31 before donning the white robe. Her parents haven’t gotten used to the idea. Over the three years that she lives in Beit Jamal, they have not once taken the opportunity, provided once annually, to come and stay here. Is she jealous of other nuns whose families do visit? “Not really,” she says, “Since we all are family, I feel as though I have several sets of parents.”

Can I really not take any photos in one of the most fascinating stops on this trip so far? I buy a piece of pottery, hand decorated by the nuns, and shoot it outside the gates, to at least give an idea of their art.

Then it dawns on me that the monastery’s tiny store also offers postcards. The photos are by Hedda Leoner Malal, who took them as part of a series depicting monasteries throughout the country. Having purchased one, I take it outside and duplicate. Beit Jamal deserves these extra thousand words.

Atop the hill to the east is a place that has received several thousand of words in the Hebrew press. Ramat Beit Shemesh, a Haredi suburb of older Beit Shemesh, is said to be home to the most pious Jews on Earth. In several households, the women are made to go out in the street in full burkas, which cover their faces entirely. Upon discovering its existance, the media quickly nicknamed this community “the Taliban cult.”

It takes me fifteen minutes to walk from planet Beit Jamal to planet Ramat Beit Shemesh. On the way I discover a wonderful ancient oil press hidden in the brush, or is it a wine press? I’m no expert.

At first Ramat Beit Shemesh appears to be a perfectly normal city, if a religious one,

but it can’t be a perfectly normal city, because a local deli offers delicious kugel, and kugel is, as a rule, always disgusting.

I ask the deli’s owner where I might find the “fully covered ladies.”

“You mean the extrimists?” he says, “They’re across the wadi on Nehar Hayarden Street. Once the stones start flying your way, you’ll know you’re there.

I advance into the wadi separating the town’s main cluster town from its Taliban quarter. Above me soon rise the apartment blocks of that cryptic locale, looking, again, pretty normal. The pole between them holds a thin wire, which indicates to the faithful how far they may walk on the Sabbath. That would have been a first sign of exoticism, exept that every Jewish or mixed community in Israel is equipped with such wire, including the bubble city of Tel Aviv.

You guessed it. Even from within, this neighborhood looks much like its bigger sister, and all the women I see on the street are bare-faced. This does not mean the “Taliban cult” does not exist. Indeed, the walls of a home cover the face of a woman much more effectively than does fabric.

It does mean, however, that not all worlds that exist in this mad land are visible to the eye or tangible. It took Ezra decades to find his way into Ramallah. It took me all of 35 years to meet the cowboy Bedouins near Raba or the kind rural lesbians of Hanita. How many places do I not have the keys to? How many places do I not even know exist?

Take the region of Lachish, through which I continue south. I did not know it existed, and had no concept of its beauty. Had I not vowed to stick to roads that follow the border, I never would have found this quiet route, which meanders betwixt vineyards and rocky expanses. Here, for the first time, I see the lush struggle with the dry. Soon a victor will be pronounced.

Like the little prince, who met the drunkard, then the banker, then the streetlamp lighter, I get picked up by a moshavnik lady, then a Bedouin boy, then a religious settler. In between I meet a fellow hitchhiker. He is Yokhai, who lives in the region and volunteers at an organization that seeks to protect Israeli farmers from Palestinian cattle thieves. According to Yokhai, the thieves sneak in from the West Bank through a portion of the fence which is badly maintained. So far his organization has captured none.

Just as Yokhai describes to me the experience of patrolling the hills at night, another car stops and I meet Lior and Hila, two dancers from Jerusalem who give tango classes around the country. They take me to Be’er Sheva, to a brand new community center where tonight’s class will be taught, put on the music and warm up. Some 24 hours ago my mind was in Trutnov with Eva, now it is in Buenos Aires with Piazzola. I have traveled 100 kilometers in a straight line since, and circled the world several times.

_______________________________________

The Round Trip thus far!

View Larger Map

Thanks for reading and taking part in the adventure. All writing on this site is done voluntarily, so if any of you would like to pitch in directly for my travel expenses, please click here or on the “donate” button at the top of this page to do so. Donors who contribute more than $25 will receive free the first part the three-part ebook (compatible with iPad) that will be released this summer. I’m deeply grateful to those who already donated. Thank you so much! This project would be impossible if not for you.

For more of The Round Trip

Relive the first two journeys:
The September Journey
The Christmas Journey