I know, I know, I’ve lost my audience for not feeding this bloggy content monster. Also, sorry for no photos, maybe later. Since joining the Istanbul/Ankara Exchange, it has been non stop movement. I am with an eclectic group of students and academics in international relations coming from Russia, Mexico City, Pakistan, Italy, Australia, Lebanon, US, Switzerland and Turkey. I am the slacker of the group, the artist who lacks their field’s foundation. Regardless, it is interesting, fun and exhausting.
I was the only foreigner on an all day bus from Istanbul to Ankara. It was a luxury coach, and the bus personnel spoke enough English that I successfully made my transfers. Eventually my seatmate Burcu joined me. She’s part of the Exchange, from Anatolian Istanbul and is a PhD student in Gainesville, FL. I was happy for the company. We stopped on the road for lunch and she introduced me to Ayran -- a liquid yogurt drink that I now have at most meals. It perfectly balances the Turkish flavors, especially when they spicily scald my tongue.(Our Palestinian hosts also served us a thicker version of it). By the end of the trip I was trying to convince her skip a few days of school and to divert her parent’s upcoming itinerary in the US to include San Francisco. She invited me to stay with her family for a few nights, so I left our group hotel and commuted with her to Üsküdar - an area of the city on the Asian side.. Her family lives in a peaceful, lovely large garden apartment, yet stepping out the front gate plunges you into energetic big city living. It took us an hour to reach Taksim Square, by group taxi and ferry. The city is choked, but not gasping. Traffic is thick but moves viscously, and spending ½ of the commute crossing the gorgeous Bosphorus was divine. I loved momentarily stepping into the rhythm of the locals and I made headway in my quest to get Burcu and her family to our home this fall, I’m hoping…
The last few days have brought short vigorous thundershowers. I was shopping on crowded Istiklal Street -- a pedestrian mall with a charming streetcar running down the middle -- when it began to pour, and purchased a “saran wrap” umbrella for 5 Turkish lira (about $3.25) It had a crooked handle, opened automatically and formed a transparent purple dome around me. The street was full of pastel plastic bubbles bobbing and floating in the rainy night. Turkey has a vibrant consumer economy, and many of the cobble stoned streets restrict vehicles, so evenings after work everyone is out, shopping, dining, being seen…The promenading throng is as thick as Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue at noon.
Istanbul is more magical than I remember.. I would vote it more beautiful than San Francisco -- and it certainly has better summer weather.
30 July 2010
18 July 2010
Memory Soup
I remember a story about porters on an African safari who balked and refused to continue after a few days of frenetic transport at their European client’s bidding. They said their souls had to catch up with their bodies. I can relate.
I’m in Istanbul, eating breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Bosphorus, and staring straight at the Blue Mosque up the hill. A few clouds cutting the sun (so I can see the screen), tone the breeze from hot to balmy. It is heaven. I’m at the Sari Konak Oteli.in Sultanahmet. We stayed here for 9 days in 2004. It was delightful then, and has since added a new wing and spiffed itself into a lovely boutique hotel.. Seagulls’ raucous shrieking chatter dominates conversations on the gentrified rooftops of old Stambol, except when freight ships plodding up the strait bellow a bass blast of the horn. If I’m still up here at about 9:30, the discourse will be added to by the adhan from the Blue Mosque. At the 5 daily prayer times, competing (or orchestrated?) adhans reverberate off the water and hills of the city, as if in call and response to each other. I have not heard such a symphony in other Muslim cities. Istanbul seems more polished than six years ago, probably a combination of Turkey’s strong economy, the sparkling weather, and the contrast with where I’ve been. I will enjoy both the new metro and new contemporary art museum today. I could live in Istanbul.
The visit to Israel is hard to write about, partly because I was traveling with Jim and didn’t have solitude and space, but also because it is a tense and conflicted place. Visiting Bethlehem and the West Bank was the most moving part of the trip, but I haven’t sorted out how to write about it yet. From Akko, we took the 1 ½ hour train along the sea to Tel Aviv. We stayed in Art + Hotel on Ben Yehuda at Bograshov in Center City. I’d found it on Trip Advisor..a small, wonderfully located hotel, that celebrates about 8 young artists of Tel Aviv. Each floor features one of them, from the hallways to works inside the room. The place is very hip and minimalist. Text on the wall in the room says “sweet dreams”, “looking good” is etched into the bathroom mirror. The rooms are small, but very functional and attractive. A sumptuous breakfast and day’s end happy hour are laid out on the community table in the Library, whose shelves are loaded with art books. It is an amusing place to stay, organized around engaging with each other -- a great lodging concept.
I find that traveling warps and conflates time and memory. Tel Aviv was hot, but we walked a lot. In a city of unique neighborhoods…a huge curving corniche of Mediterranean beach is just another one or six. Neve Tsedek reminded us of Miraflores in Lima, various parts of the center city reminded us of Prenzlr'berg in Berlin, Greenwich Village in New York, and a Bauhaus vs Art Deco South Beach… Jaffa was charming, and we caught its Saturday flea market -- which is impressive and popular with locals, but full of other peoples’ junk. I'd love to have access to it as a source of found materials for projects. Jaffa is an active artist community, and its public infrastructure -- plazas, sidewalks, etc. are beautifully done. It didn’t have the ancient, everyday charm of old Akko -- too reconstructed, with many visitors and their busses, but it didn’t feel like a tourist trap. It's port was colorfully picturesque -- no luxury craft a la Larry Ellison, just old fishing and working boats. I had some robust conversations with artists manning their coop shops in the limestone structures climbing the hills from the water.
I had a 6:15am flight from Ben Gurion airport, so saw evidence of Tel Aviv’s 24/7 character when I walked outside at 3:15am. I couldn’t believe how full the streets were! It was Friday night Shabbat, and at 7pm, we’d roamed the area for a restaurant open for dinner-- about ¾ of all establishments were closed. People were drifting home from the beach, the city was shutting down. Jerusalem had been tomb-like on the Friday night we arrived (although we weren’t out at 3am), and I assumed Tel Aviv would be the same. Who would have considered planning for a sobriety check and traffic jam on an airport run in the middle of the night?
I was delighted by the non-amplified nature of the beach. Walking by 70 yards away, one could hear the slaps of paddle tennis from the water’s edge. I appreciated, too, the plastic recycle cages - wire cubes the size of a minivan for the chucking of empty bottles. On the surface, Tel Aviv has a fun young, lively, vibe, but I was disappointed by the brusque rudeness of the locals. We took a short city bus ride to Jaffa, and the middle aged man behind us just pushed ahead of us to get off. I reminded me of the old ladies in Manhattan -- I learned early to be wary of their elbows entering and leaving public transport and grocery stores. I did not find the soul of Jerusalem or the West Bank in Tel Aviv. Bicycles and electric scooters compete for sidewalk space -- strolling is not peaceful. Jim called it a narcissistic place - I saw it as a glorified shopping mall, mirroring the consumerist, self-absorbed ills of our US culture.
I was underwhelmed with the Tel Aviv Contemporary Art Museum. Visiting the art galleries in center city was enjoyable, although there was a lot of poor art -- we all make a lot of it in search of the good stuff, and some of my favorite pieces were from an exhibition of young New York artists. Tel Aviv and I didn't get under each other's skin. I would need to dig deeper to feel I knew it.
I’m in Istanbul, eating breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Bosphorus, and staring straight at the Blue Mosque up the hill. A few clouds cutting the sun (so I can see the screen), tone the breeze from hot to balmy. It is heaven. I’m at the Sari Konak Oteli.in Sultanahmet. We stayed here for 9 days in 2004. It was delightful then, and has since added a new wing and spiffed itself into a lovely boutique hotel.. Seagulls’ raucous shrieking chatter dominates conversations on the gentrified rooftops of old Stambol, except when freight ships plodding up the strait bellow a bass blast of the horn. If I’m still up here at about 9:30, the discourse will be added to by the adhan from the Blue Mosque. At the 5 daily prayer times, competing (or orchestrated?) adhans reverberate off the water and hills of the city, as if in call and response to each other. I have not heard such a symphony in other Muslim cities. Istanbul seems more polished than six years ago, probably a combination of Turkey’s strong economy, the sparkling weather, and the contrast with where I’ve been. I will enjoy both the new metro and new contemporary art museum today. I could live in Istanbul.
The visit to Israel is hard to write about, partly because I was traveling with Jim and didn’t have solitude and space, but also because it is a tense and conflicted place. Visiting Bethlehem and the West Bank was the most moving part of the trip, but I haven’t sorted out how to write about it yet. From Akko, we took the 1 ½ hour train along the sea to Tel Aviv. We stayed in Art + Hotel on Ben Yehuda at Bograshov in Center City. I’d found it on Trip Advisor..a small, wonderfully located hotel, that celebrates about 8 young artists of Tel Aviv. Each floor features one of them, from the hallways to works inside the room. The place is very hip and minimalist. Text on the wall in the room says “sweet dreams”, “looking good” is etched into the bathroom mirror. The rooms are small, but very functional and attractive. A sumptuous breakfast and day’s end happy hour are laid out on the community table in the Library, whose shelves are loaded with art books. It is an amusing place to stay, organized around engaging with each other -- a great lodging concept.
I find that traveling warps and conflates time and memory. Tel Aviv was hot, but we walked a lot. In a city of unique neighborhoods…a huge curving corniche of Mediterranean beach is just another one or six. Neve Tsedek reminded us of Miraflores in Lima, various parts of the center city reminded us of Prenzlr'berg in Berlin, Greenwich Village in New York, and a Bauhaus vs Art Deco South Beach… Jaffa was charming, and we caught its Saturday flea market -- which is impressive and popular with locals, but full of other peoples’ junk. I'd love to have access to it as a source of found materials for projects. Jaffa is an active artist community, and its public infrastructure -- plazas, sidewalks, etc. are beautifully done. It didn’t have the ancient, everyday charm of old Akko -- too reconstructed, with many visitors and their busses, but it didn’t feel like a tourist trap. It's port was colorfully picturesque -- no luxury craft a la Larry Ellison, just old fishing and working boats. I had some robust conversations with artists manning their coop shops in the limestone structures climbing the hills from the water.
I had a 6:15am flight from Ben Gurion airport, so saw evidence of Tel Aviv’s 24/7 character when I walked outside at 3:15am. I couldn’t believe how full the streets were! It was Friday night Shabbat, and at 7pm, we’d roamed the area for a restaurant open for dinner-- about ¾ of all establishments were closed. People were drifting home from the beach, the city was shutting down. Jerusalem had been tomb-like on the Friday night we arrived (although we weren’t out at 3am), and I assumed Tel Aviv would be the same. Who would have considered planning for a sobriety check and traffic jam on an airport run in the middle of the night?
I was delighted by the non-amplified nature of the beach. Walking by 70 yards away, one could hear the slaps of paddle tennis from the water’s edge. I appreciated, too, the plastic recycle cages - wire cubes the size of a minivan for the chucking of empty bottles. On the surface, Tel Aviv has a fun young, lively, vibe, but I was disappointed by the brusque rudeness of the locals. We took a short city bus ride to Jaffa, and the middle aged man behind us just pushed ahead of us to get off. I reminded me of the old ladies in Manhattan -- I learned early to be wary of their elbows entering and leaving public transport and grocery stores. I did not find the soul of Jerusalem or the West Bank in Tel Aviv. Bicycles and electric scooters compete for sidewalk space -- strolling is not peaceful. Jim called it a narcissistic place - I saw it as a glorified shopping mall, mirroring the consumerist, self-absorbed ills of our US culture.
I was underwhelmed with the Tel Aviv Contemporary Art Museum. Visiting the art galleries in center city was enjoyable, although there was a lot of poor art -- we all make a lot of it in search of the good stuff, and some of my favorite pieces were from an exhibition of young New York artists. Tel Aviv and I didn't get under each other's skin. I would need to dig deeper to feel I knew it.
13 July 2010
Arabian Nights
Jim is collecting spices to bring home. Marina (our Bethlehem hostess) gave Jim some Palestinian spice blends for meat and chicken. Today we picked up some saffron, za’taar and sumac from the Turkish souq in old Akko.
We are staying at the Akkotel B&B, an exquisitely gracious small family hotel in a former Ottoman police station that has been lovingly restored with lavish attention to detail and using top quality materials. Old Akko is picturesque, looking a lot like a movie set in Casablanca. Rick and Ilsa would feel right at home on these romantic streets - especially at sunset on the sea.
While we are in northern Israel, not near the Palestinian areas, the city appears quite Muslim, many women are covered -- in the contemporary way of using the hijab as a colorful fashion accessory, and mosques prominently define the skyline. Akko is also home to dark African-descended Israeli Arabs who were made citizens in 1948.
Tourists are prevalent during the day, but crawl onto huge white whales of buses and pull out of town in the afternoon. Old Akko is a contemporary working city, not a tourist museum, although it is a UNESCO Heritage site, and restoration and archeological work continues. It is very Arabic in feel, and its inhabitants live closely together in tight, twisting alleyways created by the stonework labyrinth of buildings behind the city walls. After dark, when it cools down, the jumbled and narrow stone streets worn smooth become outdoor living rooms and playgrounds. Everyone’s door is open, toddlers to teenagers are playing on the cobblestones. We felt intrusive as we walked along, like strangers inappropriately venturing into private inner sanctums. I kept my camera in my bag, but would have loved to capture the rich exotic details of domestic life for future paintings. Out on the sea quay, 8-10 year-olds climb the huge stones of the fortress walls, and parents supervise their wading offspring in the Mediterranean. Acre (Akko) was a Crusader fortress in the 12th century. Its city walls are so thick (6 feet or more) that Napoleon couldn’t conquer it.
There is a quality of life here that embraces the family, with neighbors engaging closely with each other. I noticed a similar cultural character in Egypt last year…there is something about these Arab cities that is so deeply civilized. First off, the cities are very young -- and while the young people all have cell phones, and young drivers love loud music, at the same time they are very family oriented…which seems to tone down the excesses of continuous entertainment and sensory stimulation, of individual exhibitionism, of public consumption of substances, of general noise…that pervades the public areas of American cities -- from beach towns to ball parks.
Regarding cacophony, Jim and I have been noise magnets on this trip. If you want to know where in the world there will be construction, just join us -- at EVERY stop there has been roadwork outside our window -- and they start early -- like 6am. In this beautiful Akkohotel, the road was quiet yesterday when we arrived. This morning a bulldozer began ripping up the cobblestones. The newly laid street of pavers seems nearly finished at 5:30 pm, so the next person in our room will have a quiet stay.
We are staying at the Akkotel B&B, an exquisitely gracious small family hotel in a former Ottoman police station that has been lovingly restored with lavish attention to detail and using top quality materials. Old Akko is picturesque, looking a lot like a movie set in Casablanca. Rick and Ilsa would feel right at home on these romantic streets - especially at sunset on the sea.
While we are in northern Israel, not near the Palestinian areas, the city appears quite Muslim, many women are covered -- in the contemporary way of using the hijab as a colorful fashion accessory, and mosques prominently define the skyline. Akko is also home to dark African-descended Israeli Arabs who were made citizens in 1948.
Tourists are prevalent during the day, but crawl onto huge white whales of buses and pull out of town in the afternoon. Old Akko is a contemporary working city, not a tourist museum, although it is a UNESCO Heritage site, and restoration and archeological work continues. It is very Arabic in feel, and its inhabitants live closely together in tight, twisting alleyways created by the stonework labyrinth of buildings behind the city walls. After dark, when it cools down, the jumbled and narrow stone streets worn smooth become outdoor living rooms and playgrounds. Everyone’s door is open, toddlers to teenagers are playing on the cobblestones. We felt intrusive as we walked along, like strangers inappropriately venturing into private inner sanctums. I kept my camera in my bag, but would have loved to capture the rich exotic details of domestic life for future paintings. Out on the sea quay, 8-10 year-olds climb the huge stones of the fortress walls, and parents supervise their wading offspring in the Mediterranean. Acre (Akko) was a Crusader fortress in the 12th century. Its city walls are so thick (6 feet or more) that Napoleon couldn’t conquer it.
There is a quality of life here that embraces the family, with neighbors engaging closely with each other. I noticed a similar cultural character in Egypt last year…there is something about these Arab cities that is so deeply civilized. First off, the cities are very young -- and while the young people all have cell phones, and young drivers love loud music, at the same time they are very family oriented…which seems to tone down the excesses of continuous entertainment and sensory stimulation, of individual exhibitionism, of public consumption of substances, of general noise…that pervades the public areas of American cities -- from beach towns to ball parks.
Regarding cacophony, Jim and I have been noise magnets on this trip. If you want to know where in the world there will be construction, just join us -- at EVERY stop there has been roadwork outside our window -- and they start early -- like 6am. In this beautiful Akkohotel, the road was quiet yesterday when we arrived. This morning a bulldozer began ripping up the cobblestones. The newly laid street of pavers seems nearly finished at 5:30 pm, so the next person in our room will have a quiet stay.
10 July 2010
Holy Trifecta and a Homestay
A touristic trifecta of holy sites: While Jim and I participate in a specific spiritual community, we embrace and respect the spiritual traditions of all. Typically, victorious religions choose the holy spots of those they vanquish, so Jerusalem’s 3 big ones are in close proximity. Visiting them, we noticed that a palpable and vulnerable humility emanates from a group of people when they acknowledge the power of, and seek communion with, that which is larger than themselves.
We had a minor drama visiting the Western Wall. We passed through the security gate just before a visitor left a backpack unattended and they shut the place down. Entering the vast plaza, we were ushered to its edges. From the shaded top of a staircase we watched the bomb squad swiftly determine a lack of threat. Jim had watched The Foot Locker on the flight to Tel Aviv and was disgusted with its lack of authenticity -- so was giving me a play-by-play of the Israeli operation. All clear, we proceeded to our separate sections of the Wall, (2/3 of the length for men who were comfortably spaced and seated along the Wall and 1/3 for women who were stacked, mostly standing, 3-deep). Standing at a speakers podium out in the sizzling and glaring sun, I wrote my two deepest wishes on small scraps of paper which I folded into tiny tablets and stuffed into divots and crevices the Wall. Watching women tentatively walking backwards, I then backed 30 paces out of the sacred area. The government respects the devotions of the pilgrims, so clears the papers crammed into the cracks several times a year and buries them in a Jewish cemetery.
In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher we climbed the steep stone steps of Golgotha, to the ornately Byzantine-style Greek Orthodox chapel of the Calvary, the place of Jesus’ death on the cross. This time I sent those prayers on the wings of wisping smoke from the candles we bought from the attending monk. Those candles have a name, but recovering-Catholic Jim doesn't remember it.
While the building exteriors of the Haram esh Sharif (aka The Temple Mount) are exquisite, I was sad to be excluded, as a non-Muslim, from the masterfully beautiful interiors of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
A homestay: We stayed with a Palestinian family in Bethlehem for 3 nights. Marina and Omer (not their real names) are a couple about our age, with 3 grown sons. Their Arab style stone house is over 100 years old, with walls two feet thick. Though the temperature during the day is in the 90s, inside it is in the low 70s without air conditioning. While we paid for our stay, we felt like invited guests. I kept forgetting that maybe we should get out of their hair so they could live their lives, and instead, hung out like I was there just to visit with them. Marina cooked splendidly for us, and stoked Jim's sweet tooth to a fine fury. We tried to bring a gift representative of California and settled on a box of See's lollipops--wrapped in its 4th of July sleeve, the last of which she is hoarding for her Greek grandchildren's visit to their cousin's baptism later this month. We had a lot in common and great fun swapping life stories at the dinner and breakfast tables.
Living with them was painfully illuminating. They are well educated middle class Christian Arabs, with extended family that lives all over the world, and at least one of their sons has a graduate degree from the US. Their, and all Palestinian’s, lives since the separation wall have become wracked with emotional and economic insecurity.
Marina and Omer are religious, and one of their treasured rituals was to walk the Via Dolorosa (the stations of the cross) in Jerusalem at Christmas. It is so difficult to get a permit from the Israeli government to go to Jerusalem, and so challenging and utterly humiliating to cross the checkpoints that they no longer live the familiar rhythms of their lives. Fundamentally disrupted also, are their work lives.. Tourists are disinclined to visit Bethlehem -- they are told it is dangerous, so arrive in tour buses, descend on the limited tourist shops in Manger Square and then re-board to be sanitarily whisked back to their hotels in Jerusalem. Many shops are shuttered, and Omer no longer has work. He now does day labor when the olive wood factories need extra help. We have walked all over the beautiful, vibrant, yet challenged, city of Bethlehem. It does not feel dangerous, although we did get tagged for $10 for a kilo of fresh cherries. Caveat emptor.
Through the course of our stay, Marina and Omer’s extended family passed through the house. Their eldest son’s baby had the biggest smile I've ever seen on an infant, and he amused and exercised himself by pumping his legs to vigorously rock his portable cradle. Their adult niece guided us through the Nativity Church complex. The next day as we finished the shawerma we had to pantomine to order, she joined us to walk along the Israeli (so-called) security wall. When I was in New York in April, I viewed South African born Marlene Dumas’ exhibition entitled Against the Wall, http://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/206/ which she had painted from news photos. Seeing the actual wall and then looking again at her paintings on the web, it is my guess that if she had visited here, she probably would have painted them differently.
Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, who have earned the right to define an apartheid state, have deemed Israel one. We visited the family whose Bethlehem (central within the West Bank, not along the UN’s legally recognized 1967 borders) lands were illegally confiscated by Israel to build the wall, and which locks in their home on 3 sides. This concrete wall is more than 50 feet high, so the family that lives in that home sees nothing but concrete outside all of their windows. They are backed into a resulting cul de sac and their children’s friends will not visit because they do not trust that the Israeli military will not arrive to harass them. They owned five hectares of land which the wall split in half. An uncle lives on their land on the other side of the wall, and they cannot visit each other without hard-to-come-by permits to get through the checkpoints. They stay because it is their land, and if they leave they will lose it to Israel. This part of the wall was built in 2004. The family still visibly shakes when they recount the terror of its building and what it did to their lives and family.
Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land under the pretense-of-the-moment is like our law of imminent domain run amuck. It would be like San Francisco unilaterally, arbitrarily and illegally deciding to annex Foster City (25 miles to the south), and to surround it with a wall. Just accidentally-on-purpose all land and local municipalities from South San Francisco to Foster City would now be controlled by San Francisco too. Then, because I’m tenacious and refuse to let them have my house, the wall surrounds it and my view has become like an airshaft in Manhattan. Accessing my house now requires driving ten times further to get to the land across the canal, where I then must load my Costco shopping into a dinghy and cross the water to my backyard. This is the new “normal”, assumes no arbitrary (but frequent) random road blocks or closures -- and also assumes I haven’t dropped my identification papers in the water as I off-load my Kirkland bulk paper towels and toilet paper. I'm not joking.
We had a minor drama visiting the Western Wall. We passed through the security gate just before a visitor left a backpack unattended and they shut the place down. Entering the vast plaza, we were ushered to its edges. From the shaded top of a staircase we watched the bomb squad swiftly determine a lack of threat. Jim had watched The Foot Locker on the flight to Tel Aviv and was disgusted with its lack of authenticity -- so was giving me a play-by-play of the Israeli operation. All clear, we proceeded to our separate sections of the Wall, (2/3 of the length for men who were comfortably spaced and seated along the Wall and 1/3 for women who were stacked, mostly standing, 3-deep). Standing at a speakers podium out in the sizzling and glaring sun, I wrote my two deepest wishes on small scraps of paper which I folded into tiny tablets and stuffed into divots and crevices the Wall. Watching women tentatively walking backwards, I then backed 30 paces out of the sacred area. The government respects the devotions of the pilgrims, so clears the papers crammed into the cracks several times a year and buries them in a Jewish cemetery.
In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher we climbed the steep stone steps of Golgotha, to the ornately Byzantine-style Greek Orthodox chapel of the Calvary, the place of Jesus’ death on the cross. This time I sent those prayers on the wings of wisping smoke from the candles we bought from the attending monk. Those candles have a name, but recovering-Catholic Jim doesn't remember it.
While the building exteriors of the Haram esh Sharif (aka The Temple Mount) are exquisite, I was sad to be excluded, as a non-Muslim, from the masterfully beautiful interiors of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
A homestay: We stayed with a Palestinian family in Bethlehem for 3 nights. Marina and Omer (not their real names) are a couple about our age, with 3 grown sons. Their Arab style stone house is over 100 years old, with walls two feet thick. Though the temperature during the day is in the 90s, inside it is in the low 70s without air conditioning. While we paid for our stay, we felt like invited guests. I kept forgetting that maybe we should get out of their hair so they could live their lives, and instead, hung out like I was there just to visit with them. Marina cooked splendidly for us, and stoked Jim's sweet tooth to a fine fury. We tried to bring a gift representative of California and settled on a box of See's lollipops--wrapped in its 4th of July sleeve, the last of which she is hoarding for her Greek grandchildren's visit to their cousin's baptism later this month. We had a lot in common and great fun swapping life stories at the dinner and breakfast tables.
Living with them was painfully illuminating. They are well educated middle class Christian Arabs, with extended family that lives all over the world, and at least one of their sons has a graduate degree from the US. Their, and all Palestinian’s, lives since the separation wall have become wracked with emotional and economic insecurity.
Marina and Omer are religious, and one of their treasured rituals was to walk the Via Dolorosa (the stations of the cross) in Jerusalem at Christmas. It is so difficult to get a permit from the Israeli government to go to Jerusalem, and so challenging and utterly humiliating to cross the checkpoints that they no longer live the familiar rhythms of their lives. Fundamentally disrupted also, are their work lives.. Tourists are disinclined to visit Bethlehem -- they are told it is dangerous, so arrive in tour buses, descend on the limited tourist shops in Manger Square and then re-board to be sanitarily whisked back to their hotels in Jerusalem. Many shops are shuttered, and Omer no longer has work. He now does day labor when the olive wood factories need extra help. We have walked all over the beautiful, vibrant, yet challenged, city of Bethlehem. It does not feel dangerous, although we did get tagged for $10 for a kilo of fresh cherries. Caveat emptor.
Through the course of our stay, Marina and Omer’s extended family passed through the house. Their eldest son’s baby had the biggest smile I've ever seen on an infant, and he amused and exercised himself by pumping his legs to vigorously rock his portable cradle. Their adult niece guided us through the Nativity Church complex. The next day as we finished the shawerma we had to pantomine to order, she joined us to walk along the Israeli (so-called) security wall. When I was in New York in April, I viewed South African born Marlene Dumas’ exhibition entitled Against the Wall, http://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/206/ which she had painted from news photos. Seeing the actual wall and then looking again at her paintings on the web, it is my guess that if she had visited here, she probably would have painted them differently.
Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, who have earned the right to define an apartheid state, have deemed Israel one. We visited the family whose Bethlehem (central within the West Bank, not along the UN’s legally recognized 1967 borders) lands were illegally confiscated by Israel to build the wall, and which locks in their home on 3 sides. This concrete wall is more than 50 feet high, so the family that lives in that home sees nothing but concrete outside all of their windows. They are backed into a resulting cul de sac and their children’s friends will not visit because they do not trust that the Israeli military will not arrive to harass them. They owned five hectares of land which the wall split in half. An uncle lives on their land on the other side of the wall, and they cannot visit each other without hard-to-come-by permits to get through the checkpoints. They stay because it is their land, and if they leave they will lose it to Israel. This part of the wall was built in 2004. The family still visibly shakes when they recount the terror of its building and what it did to their lives and family.
Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land under the pretense-of-the-moment is like our law of imminent domain run amuck. It would be like San Francisco unilaterally, arbitrarily and illegally deciding to annex Foster City (25 miles to the south), and to surround it with a wall. Just accidentally-on-purpose all land and local municipalities from South San Francisco to Foster City would now be controlled by San Francisco too. Then, because I’m tenacious and refuse to let them have my house, the wall surrounds it and my view has become like an airshaft in Manhattan. Accessing my house now requires driving ten times further to get to the land across the canal, where I then must load my Costco shopping into a dinghy and cross the water to my backyard. This is the new “normal”, assumes no arbitrary (but frequent) random road blocks or closures -- and also assumes I haven’t dropped my identification papers in the water as I off-load my Kirkland bulk paper towels and toilet paper. I'm not joking.
05 July 2010
Surreality and Peace Bracelets
On July 4th, we walked into the souq from our B&B in a Christian guest house on the hill in the Armenian Quarter of Old Jerusalem. Our bedroom is in a stone building with 15’ ceilings, and we eat in one of the compound’s leafy courtyards, on Sunday, listening to the musicians practice for the upcoming church service. It is like a private village, sheltered from the dusty construction-ravaged, teeming street outside. Down the hill and around the corner the Middle Ages lingers in the 4 quarters of Old Jerusalem, the gateway, or gauntlet?, to the holy sites of the 3 Abrahamic religions. By now, I’ve been in a bunch of these souqs and other marketplaces around the world…but the combination of the phantasmagoria of colorful things glittering at all levels, the smells of spices, food, incense…the uneven deeply worn stones of the street…the crooked views of steep stone staircases to residential warrens up the hill… I looked at Jim and just said, “I LOVE this.”
And then the chase begins…a street-corner tour guide promotes the home where Mary (Jesus’ mom) lived and died. Jim said, “I already visited that in Turkey” (Mary’s home near Ephesus). “Oh, that’s the Ottoman Turk’s version…” Yup.
We were fighting jet lag and the cool, dusky labyrinth of the Old City ejected us out into the bright reflective limestone heat of summer at the Damascus Gate. We headed over to the New City to the modern cousin of the old souk, the blocks-long market, Makane Yehuda. The spice guy with the two foot high cones of ground coffee that he scrapes off for customers doled seasoned “salad pistachios” into my hand to taste. Yum. It made me wish for a kitchen in our convent.
Today we took a Jerusalem Reality Tour www.jerusalemtours.blogspot.com led by a young Jewish man who grew up not too far from Jerusalem. His grandfather survived the Holocaust by being shipped to Siberia. His family did not make it, and at the end of the war he met his second wife, emigrated to Israel and raised a new family. When we asked their grandson what he saw 20 years out, he posed two possibilities… are the Jews and Palestinians willing to live as equals, or will they live in two uniform societies? He believes the first possibility could be achieved, but he doesn’t see it taking that shape on the ground today.
My affluent, cosseted American bubble of a reality gets shaken up like a snow globe when I travel… especially to places where I notice stark realities of my country’s role in the world. I remember when Jim and I traveled to El Salvador in 2006, how shocked and appalled I was at the local impact of US proxy wars, and how completely surreal it felt to be a witness to that. At the end of that week-long trip I was mute for 3 days. Well, this region bears its fair share of similar scars, and we saw some of them today. And those stories are for another post…
Then in a jarring transition, we ate lunch on the lush patio of the American Colony Hotel, a special and beautiful place in E. Jerusalem. It had a strange vibe though, with the graciousness of the Palestinian wait staff in crude contrast with the unfriendliness of the guests. I’m used to catching people’s eyes and smiling, certainly as I hold the door open to the ladies room. I don’t know who these women were, but they wouldn’t even look at me. And, I doubt my dress gave me away as either an American or someone who wasn’t staying at the hotel. Weird.
So, walking back through the souk a shopkeeper sitting on a stool asked us how to spell “clearance”. I wrote that, and some other punchy promotional going-out-of-business sayings for him, for which he made me a pair of earrings. Looking around his shop, I completed the Peace Bracelet! http://beirut2cairo.blogspot.com/2009/07/peace-bracelets-and-grab-bags.html. I may have been taken. It is hard to resist being charmed…once they have you talking to them you’ve lost your objectivity. A jewelry store in the Christian quarter of the souq. He’s turning the place into a restaurant, because people need jewelry only during Christmas and Easter. We told him to display his left-over merchandise in the restaurant, that we’d been in the Armenian Tavern next to our hotel and it was more shop than food. He said he was Armenian too, and knew the guy, and would ask him for pointers. He spoke the Queen’s English, having spent 2 years in Campton. We were his first (accidental) customers in 3 days (?), and his first child is about 3 days away from being born by his Russian wife. Her name will be Tamara, inshallah, -- a very good gambit, no? Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if he owned all 5 shops adjacent to him. Then he sold us 2 charms to complete Ute and my peace bracelets.
Shalom and Salam
And then the chase begins…a street-corner tour guide promotes the home where Mary (Jesus’ mom) lived and died. Jim said, “I already visited that in Turkey” (Mary’s home near Ephesus). “Oh, that’s the Ottoman Turk’s version…” Yup.
We were fighting jet lag and the cool, dusky labyrinth of the Old City ejected us out into the bright reflective limestone heat of summer at the Damascus Gate. We headed over to the New City to the modern cousin of the old souk, the blocks-long market, Makane Yehuda. The spice guy with the two foot high cones of ground coffee that he scrapes off for customers doled seasoned “salad pistachios” into my hand to taste. Yum. It made me wish for a kitchen in our convent.
Today we took a Jerusalem Reality Tour www.jerusalemtours.blogspot.com led by a young Jewish man who grew up not too far from Jerusalem. His grandfather survived the Holocaust by being shipped to Siberia. His family did not make it, and at the end of the war he met his second wife, emigrated to Israel and raised a new family. When we asked their grandson what he saw 20 years out, he posed two possibilities… are the Jews and Palestinians willing to live as equals, or will they live in two uniform societies? He believes the first possibility could be achieved, but he doesn’t see it taking that shape on the ground today.
My affluent, cosseted American bubble of a reality gets shaken up like a snow globe when I travel… especially to places where I notice stark realities of my country’s role in the world. I remember when Jim and I traveled to El Salvador in 2006, how shocked and appalled I was at the local impact of US proxy wars, and how completely surreal it felt to be a witness to that. At the end of that week-long trip I was mute for 3 days. Well, this region bears its fair share of similar scars, and we saw some of them today. And those stories are for another post…
Then in a jarring transition, we ate lunch on the lush patio of the American Colony Hotel, a special and beautiful place in E. Jerusalem. It had a strange vibe though, with the graciousness of the Palestinian wait staff in crude contrast with the unfriendliness of the guests. I’m used to catching people’s eyes and smiling, certainly as I hold the door open to the ladies room. I don’t know who these women were, but they wouldn’t even look at me. And, I doubt my dress gave me away as either an American or someone who wasn’t staying at the hotel. Weird.
So, walking back through the souk a shopkeeper sitting on a stool asked us how to spell “clearance”. I wrote that, and some other punchy promotional going-out-of-business sayings for him, for which he made me a pair of earrings. Looking around his shop, I completed the Peace Bracelet! http://beirut2cairo.blogspot.com/2009/07/peace-bracelets-and-grab-bags.html. I may have been taken. It is hard to resist being charmed…once they have you talking to them you’ve lost your objectivity. A jewelry store in the Christian quarter of the souq. He’s turning the place into a restaurant, because people need jewelry only during Christmas and Easter. We told him to display his left-over merchandise in the restaurant, that we’d been in the Armenian Tavern next to our hotel and it was more shop than food. He said he was Armenian too, and knew the guy, and would ask him for pointers. He spoke the Queen’s English, having spent 2 years in Campton. We were his first (accidental) customers in 3 days (?), and his first child is about 3 days away from being born by his Russian wife. Her name will be Tamara, inshallah, -- a very good gambit, no? Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if he owned all 5 shops adjacent to him. Then he sold us 2 charms to complete Ute and my peace bracelets.
Shalom and Salam
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