Israel: Part Two

"You have to give them attitude, if you want their respect," my mom tells me.  So, when I'm in Israel, I'm insulting Israelis left and right.  First you have to break them, then smile sweetly, and then break them again.  And I don't make that many friends, but I command respect and get a black eye.

In Jerusalem, I reunite with long-lost cousins, Shalva and Simon and Michael and Jeremy and Batya (who likes Twilight, and loves Edward and Abercrombie and Fitch).  It's all a mind-twirl.  And late nights in Jerusalem, with soccer being projected onto white screens, and purple swirls of hookah smoke.  In Israel, you can drink in the streets, so you purchase the big bottles of Goldstar and sit on a high cement ledge, and let your legs dangle like a schoolgirl.  And there's the skateboarder who I keep seeing, who's always red-eyed and dazed, and he keeps falling off his board and scuffing his knees.

And after Jerusalem, there's Motti, who shows me around Tel Aviv, the nooks and crannies of this urban sprawl, with lots of Ping Pong on the beach and speedos and techno.  Motti shows me the ins and outs, the ropes.  This small kitchenette, misplaced between fruit vendors and a guy who sells Levi's knock-offs, is packed.  Minced meats with cilantro and garlic sizzling on the fry, as pasta's tossed.  This is the street food in Tel Aviv, hummus whipped like butter and doused in syrupy olive oil.  It's this thick smell of sweat and fry... and yes, malt beverages.  The next day, Motti takes me to Jaffa, where I pause for the next few days. 

When we first get to Jaffa, it's hot, but the Mediterranean Sea is turquoise and cool.  "I'm going to take you for the best food," Motti says and he parks on a steep hill.  Outside is dingy and inside is dingier with white walls and long picnic tables and, mostly, Arabic men speaking loud and soaking warmed pita into bowls of garbanzo and strange bean and oil, ornamented with chili flakes.  Is it Egyptian?  I think that's what he tells me.  And it's thick and sour and warm and, for the rest of the day, I'm stuffed.

Jaffa is brown ruins and blue sea and one tall clock tower.  And every so often, throughout the day, one mosque starts to sing through the megaphone speakers and another mosque, two blocks away, competes... and then a third... and a fourth.  And it's rivaling mosques with booming speakers and the city rattles.  And where do these mosques get their sound equipment?  Best Buy? 

I stay in a Moorish-type youth hostel, in my private room with private bath (how decadent).  It's yellow and green, looking down through a cathedral-type window, onto the broken down street.  It's beautiful; black-cobble stone charm, rough and tough, with flea market hustlers and strings of dirty rainbow-colored light-bulbs, twisting around the lamp-posts.  There's a skyline of the Tel Aviv metropolis.  It comforts me in some sick way.  There are the ruins of this ancient sea-port town, peeling pink buildings, Israelis arguing, and hostelers bonding (random, jigsaw people with no coordination and jagged edges), and the skyline.  On the roof of this hostel, it's very Moroccan and red and yellow and blue; there are mattresses to lie and chairs to sit... and a communal kitchen and constant music.  Sitting on the roof-top, on the edge, looking down at the twinkling lights of late-night dives.  The mosques are singing, cars are honking, a radio is humming, a plane is roaring, and a bell is chiming.  The end.

Israel: Part One

A Jerusalem Sketch

Israel's hot.  It's brown and messy with unpolished silver, hot tea sipped in glass cups... that kind of thing.

Israel's a big flirt.  Paris flirts too, but Paris is sluttier.

Israel's mystical and grungy.  It's four cardboard walls stapled together and somehow it stands straight up.

Israeli soldiers, in their muddy green outfits, red berets, pants tucked into their shoe-shined boots, and a rifle criss-crosses their chest.  And through all my traveling, never have I met people more devoted to their country.

It's mismatched, biblical ruins on the street-sides and shawarma.  It's quartered and sectioned-off and there's no real explanation to this controversial parcel of land, the approximate size of New Jersey.

It's Israel... and it is said that my father's father stood on a corner, in his Eastern European shtetl of Antepol, Poland, and, way before 1947 and the Six Day War, he spoke passionately about returning to the homeland.  And in these shtetles, Hebrew was the language you studied, but Yiddish was the language you spoke, but he defied that, on a soapbox, in the middle of the square, speaking in Hebrew, telling the people to go to Israel.  And that's what Hilda says.  Hilda said, "he had a million dollar brain with a ten cent screw."  He spoke in Hebrew, a little before Hertzl, and he never went.

I come from seven or eight generations of Rabbis, this lineage of clergymen... it's the family business.  And then my father, with five daughters and no sons... no Rabbis to continue the familial tradition.  I go to Israel with Birthright, at first, one week and a half, and then travel this country for about a month after wards, maybe a little less.

And there's Jerusalem.  It's the biblical city with white buildings that look like chalk, dotting brown mountainsides, and old patchwork stones.  Clotheslines zig-zag in the distance.  And Old Jerusalem, the tour-guides with their red flags and the tourists with fanny packs and orthotic sandals, is over-crowded. Sight-seers and religious zealots jam-packed into this small city.  It's extremism to the max with black burkas and white tzit tzit.  Of course, it's overwhelming and it gives you a panic attack to stand in the center; your clothes cling to you, drenched in sweat, as swarms of people swish past.

The Kotel, this Western Wall, King Solomon's temple, the ideal Masonic form, with pigeons cooped inside gaps in the wall, looking down and cooing.  Folded paper crammed between the slabs, and green moss spilling over.  It's still chaos because there's singing and praying and people walking backwards.  Squat women with long black skirts touch it, their head turned down, bawling.  It's the people, rocking back and forth.  It's the plastic white lawn chairs and it's the pigeons.  First, you wait in line and people cut in front of you, but you wisen up and elbow your way up to the front.  You face the slabs of weathered stone and you're so close you can kiss it.  You look up at this wall and marvel, "This was in the Bible."  (I never read the Bible; I studied it, but that's it.)  And when I'm at this wall, which I studied for countless years in grade school (with pop quizzes and finals), all the sounds hush and I squeeze my folded paper into a crease between two stones.  There's this buzz, like a television set to mute, and this static.  This is my moment with the wall, white pigeons staring down.  When I'm done, I walk backwards because that's what they tell me to do.  "Never," they say, "have your back turned to the wall."

And there's the shuk, the public market, with dates and fruit and nuts, haggling, no plastic bags, and no standard health practices.  The orthodox and the secular, scrambling for last-minute deals, before the Shabbos.

And there's the Dead Sea, it burns your scabs as you float.  Sulphur baths that smell like rotten eggs.  You pay for entry and then you take a shuttle, but I walk because the shuttle just left... and there are signs, water-marks where the sea used to be, and I walk past "1999" and "2000" and then, as it gets closer to the stinging water, "2009" and "2010."  It's too much salt for life to exist...the lowest elevation on this planet.  It's a good 15 minute walk.  And soon, this narrow strip of water will dry up.  You finally reach the water, and people float by you.  And just across the way, not so far-off, there's Jordan.

So, it starts with birthright, traveling alongside forty-or-so Jewish young adults, still gangly and still baby-faced.  It's ten days, going from one place to the next, sitting in an air-conditioned bus, as this massive vehicle snakes around narrow cliffs.  It's hyper-accelerated and it's like speed-dating.  There's no time to sleep or really connect or process.  This is the Wailing Wall and this is the Dead Sea and this is King David's toilet.  And it's a ten day blur of name games and icebreakers.  There's the girl who, every two days, is with a different fellow, and she leaves a messy trail of boys in her wake.  And there are two religious kids and there are cliques.

With no time to waste, ten days later, after beckoning my fellow birthrighters farewell at the airport, I'm hopping trains to Haifa with Tzlil, the armed guard.  It's Goldstars at the pub and the next morning, just before she drops me off at the bus station (where, for the first time in ten days, I'm all alone and my bus is late), I meet her grandma.  She's a holocaust survivor from Hungary and she can't speak English and I can't speak Hebrew, but I like her.  She feeds me fiber cereal.

Why I Hate Betsy Ross

Last minute, Birthright has an open space.  Somehow, I have to get to Philadelphia in four days.  I buy my ticket and Philadelphia is the scariest pace I've ever been.  After my 5AM plane arrival, I shuttle to downtown.  The air's thick and curdled.  There's no wind- nothing; it's still and flat and hot as hell.  I manage to be there for, maybe, half a day, and, in that time, I sleep on a bench, get the stink eye from Betsy Ross (that "patriotic" cow), and become a charity case for a Chasidic family, living in the outskirts of this terrible city.  Shlomo picks me up in his silver minivan and he drives me to his air-conditioned home.  They offer me cold pasta and orange juice and water and bed and shower and I'm ever so grateful.  And thank you.  Thank you.  And their five children and mother and father and in-law and so on and so on.  It's bazaar, but this is Philadelphia.  They drop me off at the train-stop, and I shuttle to the station.  And on that train, I sit next to this Jordanian Jew with frazzled ringlets springing down his back, who happens to be on Birthright also (and for the next ten days, we end up being seat-partners on the bus).

So, that's all I have to say about Philadelphia.  It's a hell-hole, but I appreciate Shlomo and his family.  And yes, I understand the historical relevance of this god-forsaken city.  Yeah, Betsy Ross, I'm including you.  You did a beautiful job with the American flag.  You're stellar.  Good for you.  And although you gave me the coldest, dead-on glare, I'll give you credit for being able to operate a sewing machine.  Or was it hand-stitched?  Regardless, there's needle and thread.  Good going Betsy. 

Anyways, it's from Philadelphia, that I embark to Israel.  It's ten days with forty coming-of-age strangers (and two Rabbis)... and after that, it's three months of something else.  But, it's the beginning that explains everything.  From the beginning, comes the middle, and then the end.  So, this is my beginning.  This is my account of what happened after I encountered that hand-stitching Betsy and Benjamin too, who happens to be a pretty nice guy.  It's my three months abroad, with my squeaking New Balance nine-nine-threes (and why do they always squeak, like I was just walking through the rain...it must be the inserts) and my buckled gray backpack. 

And it begins in Philadelphia.  But, in Israel, it gets a little better.

ATTN: MALAYSIANS

I didn't know it when I did it, but now it's bothering me to high heaven.  It's Durbervilles, not Dubervilles.  There's an 'R' missing.  And I'm trying to play it off like it doesn't matter, like it was all planned.  It's too late to change it.

And wait a second, does anybody else get lots of traffic from Malaysia?  Because, almost every day, I get Malaysians accessing my blog.  And it's usually from sites like badloancredit.com or jenniferanistonpencuro.nicepro.net, where Malaysians get re-directed to my blog.  If you're Malaysian and reading this, please help me understand this weird phenomena.  How did my blog tap into your country's radar?  I'm not complaining in the least.  And, in fact, this whole experience has compelled me to one day travel to your great country.  But, why?  Why Dubervilles, which is a complete failure of a Thomas Hardy reference.  And I'm going to keep it Dubervilles because it's too late and maybe it means something.  But, why Malaysia?

Sounds like a one-night stand

Jean Marc is so darn beautiful.  It's his molasses lashes that curl up into his pale lids.  And his pink lips pout, "I watched my father die for six months."  God, he's grim.  And he blinks twice.  I keep calling him Jean Paul.
He sits next to me on the wood bench, splinters stapling into our thighs, and he tells me that he watched his father die for six months.  Nice to meet you too.  We get along swell and we walk around the grounds of a monastery and a gust of hot halitosis wind (it smells like bathroom here) blows off my straw hat, down into the running stream.  And he dives in after it.  No he doesn't, I'm lying.  He just watches it float away and he blinks.  He's so beautiful.  Isn't it weird that he loses his hat too?  But that happens later.
When does it happen?  I think it's when he's complimenting my teeth.  His face is too close to mine, I can feel his exhale on the ridge of my nose and I can smell his flesh.  He's looking down at my teeth, my gleaming kernels, my pearly whites, telling me that I have the most beautiful teeth he's ever seen, east of the Andes.  It's that moment, him looking down, admiring my teeth, when I kiss him.  After wards, he realizes he lost his hat.  "Isn't that weird?" he asks. 
We know each other for six hours.  I know all about his father and mother and his estranged brothers.  About India and Nepal and those heroin smugglers in Pakistan, who were the most hospitable people you ever met.  At the end of the sixth hour, we're sitting in the open courtyard, just off of the main Khao San Road, drinking a soda and a Singha, and we've already fought twice (I can't remember about what).  And we kiss goodbye because his bus is leaving and I'm going home.  "I'll miss you," he tells me.  And how can you miss someone you just met?  And there's a black-out on the road, while I'm sitting at the last open restaurant, slurping red curry.

And now, while writing this, thinking about Jean Marc, Chelsea comes in, asking me what I'm doing.  "She's a ball of nerves," she keeps saying, and then she adds, "I see that now."  And I keep thinking about that girl, that ball of nerves, with the red rash on her freckled neck and her collar bone; it looks like a hand print.  When we were at the church with the Gothic chandeliers, Chelsea and I partook in the holy communion.  Grape juice and wafer, kindergarten snacks.  But, it's that girl's rash, which Chelsea calls, "a severe case of eczema."

And were you ever speaking to someone and forgot what you looked like?  I remember being in Tel Aviv (or was it Edinburgh?) and speaking to her on my rented cell phone (that I eventually lost) and she was crying and I was crying.  One sloppy sob fest.  The two of us crying like big old babies.  And she's reassuring me, "I'm okay!  Really, I am."  And she's crying in hiccups.  And I'm crying too because it's so damn sad and I don't remember what I look like.  I can give vague generalizations: brown hair, brown eyes, mouth, nose. etcetera.  But, nothing beyond that. 

Before Winter

Outside is missionary-white stucco and a Virgin Mary statue.  But, inside are vaulted ceilings and widow's peak archways.  It's stone and stunning as mosaic light streams through stained glass windows.  The pastor stands at his podium, and speaks in his West Virginian drawl.  And when he speaks, his voice sounds raspy, like a scratched record.  He's talking about Jesus Christ and the apostles, about missed opportunities and the river's ebb.  And he says that Paul, speaking to a jailer, asks "Where is Timothy?"  And the jailer responds, "You did not hear?"  And Paul did not.  "Timothy has been dead for three months."

And the white-haired pastor, keeps chanting the phrase, "Come before winter," and it's harsh the way he says it.  "Come before winter," he says.

I call him, when I'm in London.  "I'm coming," I tell him on his answering machine.  The next day she calls back.  Faye, in her hoarse whisper, asks, "You did not hear?"  "No," I tell her, "I did not."  For three months, my uncle has been dead.  And my bowling-ball gut drops down two stories, rupturing the polished wood floor.

"Come before winter," and the pastor's words spring back and forth, from one stone-cold wall to the other.  And I'm out of place and I don't belong here.

There's the Christian twins with their white turtlenecks and curly bouffants, gold-chain necklaces and cross pendants, who carry clipboards and smile, and you can't tell one from the other.  Four church members stand, two men and two women.  They carry gold-plated trays, Jesus' flesh and blood.  The holy communion.  And wafer sticks to the roof of my mouth and sweet grape juice slips down the back of my throat.

The Stench of Cologne

Lightning Strikes at the Dom Cathedral

You have your key out and you're so close to making it, but no such luck.  At first, you try to stop it, but as water pours down, out of your jeans and into the carpet, you just give in.  "Okay," you think, "I'll pee."  Nobody's around anyway and you're by yourself, except for the blinking security camera, but it just doesn't matter anymore.  The next morning, you're paranoid and you think the people at the front desk are talking about you.  And for the next two days, you walk around with a plastic bag tied in a double knot, carrying your mildewed jeans, still wet with pee.

I hate Cologne.  The first night, I lose my wallet and I pee my pants; it's one bad thing after another.  There's something about this city that just doesn't mesh well with me.   It's bad chemistry.  There's the Gothic back-drop of the Dom Cathedral and it's dark and disconcerting.  Before beginning my trip, I prep for this.  "On my travels, there will be one day, " I tell myself, "when everything will go wrong and I'll be pushed and tested and defeated."  That day is Cologne.

Outside this broken-down hostel, left, and then straight, there's the Dom Cathedral.  It's too tall and when you look up, with your back bent and your neck cranked, you can't see where it ends.  It's frightening, sticking out like a sore thumb, with Gothic ridges and flying buttresses and tinted windows.  And somebody tells me (or did I read it somewhere?) that it took seven centuries to build this cathedral.  And it's just a number, but if you really think about it, that's 700 years of stone-laying.  There's constant rain and thunder and when you look up at the tower, lightning strikes, and I swear you can hear the off-key chords of an out-of-tune organ.

There's always an accordion playing, the asthmatic aerophone, wheezing in and out.  It's usually my favorite instrument, but in Cologne, it's plain old creepy.  Strange men follow you.  And the street performers watch you, and when you sit on a bench, trying to figure out where you are or what you're doing, they play to you.  "Tip please," and they look at their empty jar with puppy-dog eyes.  "But," you try to explain, "I have no money and I'm all alone."

In the city center, stages are built and tents are pitched for a summer concert series.  The three days that I'm there, it's constant sound and disarray.  There's too many people and too much noise and it's just a hot-bed mess of over-activity.  People, red-eyed and jittery, stand around, slurping free cans of Coca-Cola while music blasts from megawatt speakers.  It's too much.  The streets bend and I get lost down narrow corridors.

Down one street, it's pitch quiet.  A car is flipped over.  Shards of broken glass speck the pavement like glitter.  Police officers and pedestrians stand on the sidewalk, quiet as hell- no sirens, nothing- staring at this upside-down vehicle, this mess of twisted metal, wheels turned up, like a dead dog.  "Something is wrong," they ponder, "but what is it?"  And they scratch their chins.