209. Tee-shirts

Moving as fast as I do, (which is a LOT slower than most travelers) I can just about figure out who the local good guys and the bad guys are but then I move along a few miles and have to get started on a new set of guys.


My Che Guevara tee shirt that I told you about for example.


If you are a traveler, maybe it’s a good idea not to have anybody’s picture on your shirt ‘cause, sure enough, the next time you take off your jacket, somebody’s gonna be insulted! My smiling Mickey Mouse tee shirt usually causes me no trouble, but I am not even so darn sure about wearing that anymore.

...

208. Propaganda

.

On the drive back to the teacher’s apartment in Tripoli, Adam scares me with some anti-Israeli propaganda stories.


I remember that these horror stories are the same “cutting off the women’s breasts so they can’t feed their babies” stories the “Allies” used to tell about the German Gestapo “Huns” during the Second World War. Still, propaganda stories like these always seem freshly malicious and can be repeated and believed about any enemy you wish to slander—and, unfortunately, the original accounts probably have more truth in them then I would like to believe! But horror stories like these are guaranteed to catch your attention.


The propaganda slide show at the Hadasa Hospital in Jerusalem was not so crude as these stories but was just as convincing about the bestiality of the Arab enemy as these tales are of the Zionist enemy.


Sometimes all it takes to change heroes into enemies is to cross a border. All you have to do is reverse the roles of the good guys and the bad guys from the neighboring country!


But sometimes in this part of the world all it takes to effect the change of friend to enemy is to cross a street! In fact maniacs thirsting for your blood can surround you without your even leaving your home! 

Paranoia time and who is safe and no wonder these people seem crazy!

...

207. Luxury

How very pleasant it is for me to awaken between perfumed sheets in a spacious, spotless, well appointed bedroom. So much nicer than in a cheap, soiled pension! But then, if I didn’t have that experience, I wouldn’t know the difference! So is this the dawning of discrimination?


I expected to sleep last night under a tree by the roadside and instead I slept like a prince and, since it was cold and rainy last night, I would say: “Fortune is smiling”.


Eve summons me to a tasty and nourishing breakfast! Adam has already taken his breakfast— served to him in bed by his lovely wife. This is the way the males of his class and in this part of the world expect to be treated. Not too bad for the men! The women are supposed to stay out of sight and direct or perform the domestic chores.


Eve reminds me of a pretty French doll that cooks—their reality, my interpretation.

...

206. Taste of Riches

Back in Beirut: I thought I had seen the last of this city, but this time things are a little different. 

Adam’s house is modern in every way. It is built on a mountainside with a splendid view of the twinkling lights of the city.


Adam and Eve treat me like visiting royalty. Eve prepares a scrumptious meal of meat and eggplant seasoned with cloves, sweetened rice, salad and tea—after the meal I enjoy (REALLY enjoy!) a hot tub-bath with heaps of fluffy towels for drying; then silk (honestly!) pajamas robe and slippers. Oh, my! It has been a while since I was pampered like this—in fact, I have NEVER been pampered like this! Then I remember that the most elegant of elegant princes, Haraun al Rashid, was an Arab!!


When I am ready to join my hosts, Adam reads me some of his writing. It is rather flowery poetry in the traditional Arab style and its subject is mainly the “suffering of life”, but I honestly don’t see much evidence of suffering in this life-style! But if you think you’re suffering, you’re suffering.

...

205. Guru

"Would you like to meet my guru?" he asks.

Guru? Well, I've never met a real, live guru before and I am following every adventurous lead that appears on this trip so I say: "Sure"

We drive on to Tripoli, park in front of a new apartment building, take an elevator to the third floor and I meet my first ever Guru.


This guru is a Moslem wearing a tan robe and a gray wool fez. He has very dramatic, piercing, black eyes accented by kohl-darkened lashes and a neatly trimmed black beard and moustache; he has a thick, muscular body and an imposing bearing. I would guess he is about 40 years old—fairly venerable for these rather short-lived middle-easterners.


The guru is presiding over a small group of men that sit motionless around a round glass-topped table. They hang on his every word and occasionally ask questions which he thoughtfully answers. They are all very serious.


Being totally ignorant of the language they are speaking, Arabic, I don’t understand a word the guru says, but I am very impressed by his dignity and the respect given him by his listeners. After an hour or so the guru pauses in his lecture and asks me, through Adam who acts as interpreter, if I wish to know more about the “Moslem Way”. I know almost nothing about their beliefs and this seems to be a good time to learn, so I say, “I would very much like to learn more about your Way.” He forthwith accepts me as a student and the eight or ten men in the room warmly welcome me as a fellow student in French, broken English and Arabic.


After a short discussion in Arabic between Adam and the guru, Adam tells me that I will stay in a guest room in the guru’s apartment and he says that the proper way to address the guru is “Sheikh” which is Arabic for “respected teacher”.


I ask about the fee for my instruction and I am informed that there will be no fee “…and if you wish to stay a hundred years it would be all right.” But for this first night I will return to Beirut with Adam to be his houseguest.

...

204. The Puzzle

I am about two kilometers out of town when a car stops for me and, for a change, I accept the ride. I am not hitchhiking—just strolling along.

Inside the car are Adam, a Lebanese flight engineer and Eve, his French wife (my names for them). They treat me to a cheeseburger (no kidding!) in the beach town of Byblos while we discuss Life (in English).

Back in the car, Adam says he has a hobby. He likes to make little twisted wire puzzles. You know the kind-- where two pieces of heavy wire are entwined in such a way that they can be untangled if you know how to do it. Would I like to try to take his latest model apart?

Why not? But I know from experience as a kid, I'm usually not very good at this kind of puzzle

He hands the tangled wires to me over his shoulder as he drives.

I glance at the puzzle and immediately see how to work it—and slide the pieces apart.

"Tell me when you finish." he says.

I tap his shoulder and hand him back the two separate pieces of the puzzle and he almost runs off the highway!

"How did you do that?" he asks, "It's the most difficult puzzle I have ever designed. It would take an expert at least twenty minutes to solve it!"

I tell him that I'm usually very dumb about working that kind of puzzle, but in this case I could see how to do it immediately.

Like I said, it's THAT kind of a day.

...

203, A Good Day

Backpacking north out of Beirut, I stop at a fruit stand on the outskirts of the city. The vendor picks out his best apple and gives it to me! He won’t accept payment!! 

I walk on feeling good.

A ragged woman in Palestinian costume, carrying a baby, asks me for alms. I refuse and then realize I have missed my chance to repay the apple kindness! Luckily, another woman carrying a baby soon appears and asks for money. I give her what I can and continue to walk feeling better and better. 

I pass a vegetable market and see some carrots. They look delicious. I think how good one would taste but want to save every penny I have. A few minutes later, there is a big fresh carrot for me lying beside the highway! 

It’s THAT kind of a day!

...

202 The Medecine-bag

The Medicine-bag

The traveler fills his medicine-bag with
Objects magical and carries it close:

The photograph of the good time/mind/place;
The seed, which is a girl and a beach;
The pebble that preserves him from
Pickpockets, terrorists, border guards;
Murderers and bummers.
The patch from the beloved blue jeans,
Which finally disintegrated
In a nameless mountain town…


These things, laid out in solitude
In strange hotel rooms,
Glow with life, health and peace.
After contemplating them,
The traveler goes forth with spirit renewed.

...

201 Beirut, Lebanon

Beirut, Lebanon

 I sleep at the Beirut YMCA. There is a letter for me at the American Express Office from my good parents. They have managed to keep track of me in spite of the weird mail service and my bizarre itinerary. It has been five months since I heard from anyone.


To avoid feeling alone and lonely, I concentrate on repairing my traveling gear. I wash and repair my clothes and fix a broken zipper on my backpack. I cook some nourishing food in the little common kitchen of the YMCA, finish reading “The White Nile”, watch some karate classes and think of what to do next. I decide to walk up the Mediterranean coast to Turkey, save the bus fare and maybe go on to Europe.


I have been thinking about some words I wrote once as a slogan for a naive “people’s movement” in Hawaii: “The Land Belongs to the People”!


How simple, trendy and stupid!


Now I see that people almost everywhere on this planet lay claim to every square inch of land they can reasonably expect to defend. They guard their land, their “nests” and whatever objects and animals they can collect with their lives. This behavior seems universal and instinctive: “human nature”.


The individual’s position in society seems relative to the amount of space he or she controls. The “control” may be velvet or iron, legal or outlaw—it exists and no vacuum of control is tolerated. 

Weak control is usurped by strong, which, weakening with time, is overcome by stronger. 

Ruins are built upon ruins while humans enjoy temporary satisfaction in the preposterous notion that they control their bit of the earth and their own destiny.


No, now I think the land does NOT belong to the people, or to the rulers of the people. The land “belongs” to itself. The earth exists momentarily. 

The life forms of the living earth co-exist, in or out of balance, as life continues to transform into life forever. 

(And forever is a very long time,) 

...

200. Alone Again

Darkness falls softly. 

The mountains are lavender and the moon looks like a white hole in the sky. You can look through into another world. 

We slowly descend the trail.


In the hostel dining room there is ice cream with a German couple and a friendly dog. While we eat,
more shots from the Dead Sea direction. No one pays attention.


Breakfast: one boiled egg and yogurt. We hike to the three pools of “David’s Spring”. The lowest pool is useful for shampooing the hair, the middle pool makes a nice bathtub and the top pool is busily building itself a mineral-streaked cavern. There are no other humans to enjoy the cool waterfall drops raining on the fern at the mouth of the cave.


The afternoon bus goes back to Jerusalem. In the Jerusalem hostel we have sweet tea and gasoline-flavored bandy. I draw a portrait sketch of Sunny with her fuzzy red hair down. Tomorrow she is going Tel Aviv to find a kibbutz for the winter and I am going to recross the Jordan and on—earthprobing.


As I leave in the morning, Sunny says: “It’s hard to know what to do.”


I think about these words as I wait alone at the Jordan border with the crowds of poor Palestinians, as I ride alone to Amman and as the moon, always alone,  rises over the highway across the desert of Syria.

...

199. Ain-Gedi Frog

Ain-Gedi Frog

In the morning we hitchhike a ride in a passing pick-up truck to Ain-Gedi, another kibbutz-hostel nearby.


After we install ourselves at the Ain-Gedi Hostel, we hike four miles up a dry gulch between mashed-off stone plateaus, across the remains of ancient irrigation canals into a deep, water-polished gorge when we suddenly hear shouts of laughter. Hidden by overhanging cliffs, a white cascade of pure water bursts from the tan rock and plunges into an emerald green pool. A frolicking gang of Israeli teenagers is just leaving as we arrive.


The pool is perhaps twenty by twenty feet long and wide and twelve feet deep under the fall. We have been left alone, so off go the clothes and into the refreshing, cool water we leap.


A little frog looks at me from a stone at the water’s edge and several fresh-water crabs lurk in the moss. Where did these creatures and the moss come from? Up this canyon from the Dead Sea ages ago before it died?

...

198. World War Three

World War III

Later, back at the hostel, we hear gunshots from the direction of the Dead Sea. “That could be the start of World War Three” I quip. “That’s not very funny.” one of the kibbutzim replies and I very clearly see, for the first time, how very unfunny my remark was.


You know, I believe these bred-to-violence humans in this little patch of wasteland would fight each other with sticks and stones if only the weapons-producing nations of the world would stop the endless supply. 

Of course, money buys the weapons, so money is at the root of the problem again, as usual.


Still, doesn’t it seem a shame to draw the whole world into what is basically an ancient feud about some forgotten insult between rival desert tribesmen? 

(The black and white cat wants another fish from the ice-cream freezer.)

...

197.Kibbutz Life

Kibbutz Life

Back at the hostel, two more busloads of Israeli young people in a very happy and festive mood have arrived. Sunny and I share a room with five of the kibbutzim and we ask them to tell us about their lifestyle.


Two young American kibbutzim say their kibbutzes are very large with 1500 adult workers and about 400 children being cared for in the kibbutz nurseries. Young women are encouraged to have lots of babies, (the girls call the kibbutz “a baby factory”). The natural mothers only care for their babies for a few weeks; as I understand, then go back to work while their offspring are raised in the nurseries where they are indoctrinated into life as an Israeli.


This is the only country I have visited that encourages women to have more babies and early child care is free as a matter of national security.


Each kibbutz has “members”, “guests” (not members but valued workers who are given better living quarters and refrigerators) and “part-time workers” like these Americans, who live in dormitories.


There is no “unemployment problem” in Israel. There is more than enough work for everyone.


But life in a kibbutz seems highly organized and restrictive. It doesn’t appeal at all to me—even for a short time, but Sunny wants to spend the winter in one for the experience.


Sunny and I take a midnight leisurely walk toward the Dead Sea shore but are intercepted by a searchlight-equipped tank filled with Israeli soldiers. The shore of the Dead Sea is off-limits to strollers at night.


A few lights are visible across the lake from Jordan.

196. Masada

Masada

Another bus takes us along the shoreline-- stopping to pick up several blond backpackers.


Everybody aboard the bus speaks English.


The bus goes up a dry brown hill to the Masada Youth Hostel where we leave our backpacks.


We want to visit the archaeological site of Masada, an old mesa-top fortress high above the hostel, so we hike to the top of the cliff on “Snake Path” to save the ticket price of the aerial tramway.


It’s an extremely hot hike. We envy the cool tourists as they pass overhead with a science-fiction whir in their elegant cable cars.


We are met at the summit by the usual machine-gun toting security guards, except these are uniformed girls. I have noticed that many of the army personnel here are women and I don’t know whether to salute or flirt. One thing for sure, these soldiers and weapons everywhere mean things are not good in this miserable desert.

The ancient fortress of Masada is now a very eroded heap of adobe ruins. The Romans knew a good military site when they found one though and they newly rebuilt most of the present ruins for their outpost. The mosaic floor of the Roman bathhouse has been nicely restored and there are traces of one of the oldest synagogues in the world and of a Christian church supposedly “built by monks in five A.D.”

An excellent and romantic view from the cliff-top is the interesting geological formation: “The Tongue of the Dead Sea”. 

Black birds sail far below us as the sun sets.

...

195. Breakfast and Dead Sea

Breakfast and Dead Sea

Early morning.


Turn left into the first alley inside the Damascus Gate and you will find a little bakery. 

A dried-up baker stands in a pit shoveling dough pancakes into a glowing oven. The pancakes puff up into lovely brown rolls. Little girls in stripped pinafores come and go buying bread for their families’ breakfast for a coin. A patriarch in soiled robes discusses something with a tiny black-haired girl.


Sunny and I buy breakfast in the bakery: three eggs broken into a pastry shell, salted, peppered and baked. While I am eating, a little boy, perhaps four years old, wearing a natty tweed jacket, walks up, puts his chin on my knee and gazes into my eyes with the bright fluid eyes of the very young. I wonder why I so fascinate him.


We catch a bus to the Dead Sea.


Another disappointment.


This celebrated “sea” is a small, narrow lake easily crossed by a weak swimmer. 

We try swimming too but, surprise, the water is so super saturated with salt that we just bounce off. It's like trying to dive into rubber—and the salty brine really stings the eyes!

...

194. The White Nile

The White Nile

Sunday. 

Church bells. 

It is the Christian’s Sabbath in the Holy City of Peace. 

We hike to King David’s Tomb. I pay the twenty-five cent fee, borrow a paper cap and am allowed inside to watch the other American tourists watching me.


Next door to David’s Tomb is “The Upper Room” where the Holy Ghost inspired some of Jesus’ students after His untimely departure. The Ghost is still at it up there; a circle of Christians are moaning and swaying with one finger pointing in the air. They chant: “Save me, sweet Jesus!” in English.


On the ground floor of the same building, some men, apparently Jews, are arguing (also in English) and pounding their fists on a big table.


Around the corner is a church built “on the spot where Mary went to sleep”, as they say, and down a nicely landscaped hillside is the “House of Quality” where contemporary craftsmen display their wares. We go down, of course, and I see a gold-and-crystal ring I covet and a small patient fellow blowing glass goblets.


Sunny loans me a book that I read all night in my room: “The White Nile”; it puts my own little adventure into proper perspective.

...

193. Sightseeing Jerusalem

Sightseeing Jerusalem

In the evening, Sunny fixes dinner for two in her room—cream cheese, raw eggs, apples and bananas sweetened with some sugar. Good, simple home cooking!


Saturday. This is the Jewish Sabbath. Sunny and I walk through Mea Shearim, a subdivision of the New City, where the residents wear Orthodox garb: the men in black robes, white shawls and large fur doughnut hats. No automobiles are allowed in Mea Shearim during the hours of the Sabbath. An old gentleman standing at the barricade that keeps cars out shouts: “Sabbath!” at the passing infidel motorists.


We stroll through other neighborhoods in the New City. This part of Jerusalem looks a lot like a Midwestern American town. We continue through the old city and out into the desert—a long, hot walk to the Garden of Gethsemane.


I am expecting an Agony to strike in the Garden and sure enough, a sparrow is dying in front of the Russian Orthodox Church that is built on the traditional spot where Jesus prayed for the cup to pass without being drained to the last drop


We want to enter the church and a female attendant hands Sunny a shapeless smock to wear, which will cover her exposed knees. (She is wearing practical and not sexy shorts in this horrible heat.) Sunny conforms to the rule though it makes her fume: “Typical male chauvinist sexist tradition!”

...

192. Collection

192.

Back out in the darkened church I collect myself.

Sunny has wandered off, talking to a handsome tourist. More monks sweep by in single file, their leader swinging a smoking censor of incense. Their chanting, sliding up and down the scale, is as good as Maha Vishnu. 

"Aum…Aum…Aum…"

I follow them up some stairs to the place of crucifixion with my mind completely out of gear. I let the music carry me along. 

Old monks. This singing is their Zen thing.

In another part of this huge church an organ is playing and other voices are singing.

Soon the old monks leave and a boy’s choir marches in. Their leader, a big monk in black beard and pointy hat is a character straight from the movie about the Spanish Inquisition, “The Devils”. Bringing up the rear of the boy’s act is a six-foot six, two hundred fifty pound monk. None of the kids gets out of line and everybody sings loud!

...

191. Stations of the Cross

191.

Stations of the Cross

At a very old church, we join the daily guided tour of the “real” Stations of the Cross”.

It is a fantasy parade: men wearing the black monk’s robes of the middle ages mingle with perhaps two hundred tourists. A medieval monk, wearing up-to-date eye glasses, reads what I suppose are the approved words in Latin through a bull-horn loud speaker while a sound engineer captures the rite with his complicated equipment.

You can’t believe the range of cameras being snapped!

Now some of the black robes are chanting as through the narrow streets we pour. Shopkeepers leer from their open doorways at the liberated young tourist girls wearing skimpy tops and skin-tight jeans. We pause at plaques set into walls marking each of the twelve certified locations where the God-man did His thing.

It’s a Fellini film! Not very many of the faces in the mob are wholesome to look at; old people visiting Spiritual Las Vegas, kids along for the ride—and me? Well, I’m here too aren’t I?

The last four “stations” are in the same building—a big Crusader’s church. The “sepulcher” is thirty feet from ground zero, “Golgotha”, where they did Him in. This preposterous layout for a medieval Disneyland is the final assault on credibility.

But the black robe’s chanting is beautiful and in the soft gloom, the glitter of silver, marble and camera lenses reaches for a psychedelic high.

Here’s the marble box representing “the tomb”. Taking my turn, I crawl through a short tunnel and emerge into a sudden blaze of precious metal by candlelight. Here it is! In the center of the tiny room guarded by a holy bouncer in black: The Money Box! What did I think it would be? What sort of revelation did I expect? Money. That’s what it’s all about. So I drop in a handful of coins. 

Wouldn’t you?

...

190. The Real Thing

190.

The Real Thing

In an ancient vaulted room in the old city we eat a meal of homos and bread.

This “real” room reminds me of the fake “historic” dining rooms so popular in California. 

Both set the proper mood and I suspect that both are real enough in their own way. In other words, I suspect that this “ancient” room has been remodeled to provide the proper antique mood for dining in Jerusalem. 

Clever merchandising, not historic veracity is the key to obtaining the touristic dollar!

...

189. Sunny and Chagall

189.

Sunny and Chagall

When I return to my room in the afternoon I find a note from Sunny slipped under the door. She has also “crossed over the Jordan” and taken a room down the hall. We soon get together and swap traveler’s yarns. She has crossed the Atlantic in a thirty-foot sailboat and bicycled all over Europe. I have done what I have done.


Next day we visit the Hadasa Hospital together to see Chagall’s famous stained glass windows.


Before viewing the windows, all of us tourists (and there are about a hundred of us) sit for a slide show depicting the history of the hospital. This entertainment is pure propaganda, of course, and we are expected to choose the right side in mortal combat. After the slide show, we all know who we are and who our enemy is. But I can only remember the cartoon character, Pogo, who stated the case even more succinctly, I think, when he said: “We have met the enemy and they are us!”


Chagall’s “painting with light” is inspiring.

...

188. Arrested as Terrorist

188.

Arrested as Terrorist.

 

Another mosque is nearby, but I don’t pass the entrance examination.

I cracked the crystal of my wristwatch and have wrapped it with tape to keep dust out. It is in my handbag.

When the suspicious guard finds it and points it out to me I see that it does look peculiar. He marches me over to a police station where the officer in charge orders me to unwrap it. When I do and expose the damaged wristwatch he apologizes for the inconvenience but it did look suspicious as I now see and they have been blasted enough around here to make the coolest head edgy.

Before I leave the police station I ask the young officer if I look like an Arab terrorist and he says that of course I do. I am youngish with the light brown hair, blue eyes and very pale skin typical of Northern European ancestry. Me, an Arab terrorist?

I walk through the olive trees to the Israel Museum. Here for the first time in my life I see original paintings by Paul Klee. Even though I have only seen his work in reproduction before, his whimsical and gentle trip has made him one of my all time favorite artists when I was back in school.

There are other curious things exhibited in the museum: a collection of masterfully done photographs, some ancient Chinese paintings and some fragments of the famous “Dead Sea Scrolls”—the old fathers trying to communicate with their great, great, ever-so-great grandselves.

(And, dear Folk of the Future, when you discover this writing stuffed into a pickle-jar in a cave in California, I hope it will bring you a smile and not more argument and dissension. I would prefer to leave you with a cheerful legacy than another complicated philosophy or a “sacred” rock to fight over!)

...

187. Dome of the Rock

 Dome of the Rock

I am walking down the “real” Via Dolorosa thinking things over when a shabbily dressed man stops me and begs me to visit a blood bank around the corner and donate blood for his sick wife. I usually donate blood once or twice a year anyway so I agree and walk around the corner with him. I am a little surprised to find a blood bank there! The nurse in the office drains some of my blood and then insists on paying me eight dollars.


During my stay in “The City of Peace” I pass by this way several times and notice the same shabby man making his "sick wife" plea to all passing tourists. I guess that he probably gets a percentage on all the blood they donate and the Israeli medical establishment gets a continual supply of fresh tourist blood for emergencies.


I go to the Dome of the Rock, pay my admission fee, have my bag searched for bombs and spend a couple of hours soaking up the vibes. In the middle of this temple, behind a see-through and reachy-feel-through wall, is the big rock, which is sacred to Jews, Christians and Moslems, so there is plenty to quarrel about!


While I am there, several American tour groups are escorted through the building. These American tourists, with their world-famous arrogance and noise push right up against the wall and reach through for a grope. After giving the rock a feel, one plump tourist exclaims: “Why it’s JUST a ROCK!”


Right O, my heavy-set friend, and there are plenty of THEM back home, aren’t there?

...

186. Uncle Mustache's

Uncle Mustache's

And here it is—Uncle Mustache's .


Uncle Mustache is a short man with a belly that is said to be the 8th Wonder of the World. 

When we meet he gives me a free cup of coffee then, while I eat a fine cheese omelet, he brings me three notebooks he keeps on hand for his customers to look at and to write in. 

These “slam books” are filled with several years worth of poems, stupid remarks, traveler’s wisdom and even some cartoons and sketches. Next he shows me a traveler’s “guide to Israel” book where his restaurant is listed under “Starvation Budget”. The book calls him a saint for his kindness to hippies and backpackers.


When he has time to talk a bit I ask him about his customers and he says that his youthful customers have changed over the years. “Before, some of the young people were curious about the spiritual life in this city, but the young people now are interested only in sex and drugs.” 

He calls himself not religious but “a realist”.


I like him and think just about anyone would.

...

185. Che in Jerusalem

185. 

Che in Jerusalem

I have heard from a number of backpackers that the best/cheapest place to eat in Jerusalem is “Uncle Moustache’s Café” just inside the Herod Gate.


I am walking out of my pension wearing the Che Guevara tee shirt I bought from a street vendor in Alexandria because it was dirt cheap and I thought it was funny to see the Cuban revolutionary’s face on an Egyptian Tee-shirt, when the hotel clerk stops me. He warns me that Che is not popular here and I might get into trouble if I wear the shirt. I am not interested at all in making some political statement with a Tee-shirt so I go back to my room, take it off, tear it up and throw it in the trash!

(I don't know why they don't like Che, but...)


Then, more correctly clad, I venture out to find Uncle Mustache's. 

...

184. Baffled at the Wailing Wall

184.

Here’s the “Wailing Wall”, the foundation stones of the “Temple of Solomon”, a tall heap of gray stone block masonry rising out of a paved plaza and surrounded by what are perhaps old apartments also of gray stone. The whole place is gray.

Security for entering the plaza is rigorous. Handbags are searched at baffle gates to foil saboteurs. Machine gun nests on rooftops overlook the area. It is not too welcoming or congenial a place to be to tell the truth.

In the plaza, a wire fence segregates men and women, but both sexes behave in the same way; pressing their bodies or heads against the stones of the wall, some of the visitors just mutter, some moan and some really wail! A tour group, all standing together, sings a song.

I put on a black paper “loaner” cap and join the men at the wall, but I really don’t know what to do. Should I mutter, moan, wail or sing? Do I get spiritual merit from just being here? Does this count? Well, if you have been with me this far, what do YOU think, dear reader?

...

183. Into the Holy City

183. 

Into the Holy City:

Before I leave the customs house, other officers invite me to sign up to work in a kibbutz for the winter. They say kibbutz work is not difficult and there may be a free private room, maybe even with a private bath and refrigerator for a guest worker with a university degree, like me. I don’t even have to be Jewish and it is nice and warm in Israel in the winter. They make it sound more like a fun “vacation” than a job, but I DO love my freedom, so: no thanks!

A half-hour by taxi and I see the white walls and golden dome of the Holy City.

Sunny told me she knew of a cheap hotel near the Damascus Gate. I find it. They have a room!

I walk thru the Damascus Gate into the Old City. The streets are like tunnels with small shops on all sides. The vendors do not hassle me at all. There are no beggars and I hear a lot of English being spoken.

In fact, there are LOTS of Americans here, many in tour groups wearing distinctive caps or badges.

I buy some delicious black raisins, some raw peanuts and drink a cool glass of freshly squeezed carrot juice. 

Here is a shop with something I really need—American made “Levi’s”! I try them on behind a curtain, pay for them and wear them out of the shop and throw away the crude imitations I bought in Egypt.

...

182. Jordan Israel Border

182.

Jordan/ Israel Border: 

Here, the armies of the world’s most famous mortal enemies, the Arabs and the Jews, face off across an old two-lane highway bridge over a trickling irrigation ditch.

Good Lord! This dinky structure is the historic and renowned Allenby Bridge and this slimy irrigation ditch is the celebrated River Jordan!

This IS a VAST disappointment; but only the first in a long line of disappointments in this accursed “holy” land of myth and legend.

Nothing moves. The heat is intense.

On both sides of the “river” Boredom seems to rule the sandbagged machine gun nests and camouflaged tanks pointing their cannons at each other.

I cross over Jordan as the song says and...

Officers in the Israeli customs building make a most thorough check of all my belongings. Every container is opened, smelled and tasted. All my paper articles are taken away for careful scrutiny.

Thank goodness I had the sense to toss out the Palestinian’s letters—even if they were innocent personal notes, whatever they said might have thrown me into prison here!

But I am clean. My passport is stamped and I am permitted to sojourn for a while in the Promised Land. 

...

181. Undelivered Letters

181.

Next day, wishing all my new tourist friends and the Palestinians farewell, I climb aboard the bus to Israel. 

As I board, some of the Palestinians hand me a few letters for their friends and families in Israel and ask me to deliver them when I arrive since no mail is permitted between the countries, but as the bus crosses the few miles of desert to the border I reflect that these letters, written in Arabic which I do not understand, could cause me more than a heap of trouble so I tear them up and toss the fragments out of the bus window.

...

180 Sunny

180.

Sunny

I climb a big pink rock for a better view and meet a young American woman who has just climbed the other side of the same rock for the view. She is the only other tourist in the ruins.

We walk together the rest of the afternoon and share stories. She is so bright I call her “Sunny”.

She has traveled in Africa for the last six months and has come to Petra from the Red Sea, which is closer to the south than Damascus is to the north. Like me, she is heading for Israel and plans to spend the winter there working on a kibbutz. She has a master’s degree in economics but has been turned off by the Viet Nam war and by the scene in the States and, like me; she is hoping to learn more about life from traveling around. She is a quiet, good head.

Together we hike to find another touristic site, “The Monastery”, but can’t. It is probably not in this small group of canyon ruins. We do find an interesting black pillar, some crushed plates of sandstone and two Bedouin girls, perhaps thirteen years old, who have made a small campfire among the stones. They offer us “Bedouin smoke” and some tea. The smoke is pretty raw and makes me cough which makes the girls giggle, but the herb tea is tasty. These shepherd girls are dressed in black with red trim and sequins and tend a few sheep wandering through the ruins. There are old looking, worn petroglyphs covering the stone where we sit.

Sunny and I search our pockets for something to give our hostesses. Sunny finds an orange and a boiled egg and I give them some salted pumpkin seeds and a bar of soap. They seem delighted.

As the sun sets, we walk back to The Treasury and find the guide with the horses waiting for us as he said he would. Sunny was going to stay at the guest house but instead decides to come with us to Amman since she planned to go there tomorrow anyway if transport was available.

There is a room for Sunny at our hotel so we all eat yogurt and fruit and spend a pleasant evening talking. I have all the necessary documents and a bus ticket so I plan to leave for Jerusalem in the morning.

...

179. Petra

179. Petra

Jauntily we go riding rented horses down into the narrow, twisting dry gorge that conceals and contains the hidden city. Rounding a bend, we are suddenly confronted with a classic-style building facade, perhaps seventy feet high, carved into the sandstone cliff. This unexpected work of art is called “The Treasury”.

Other huge, elegant building facades adorn the ramparts of the deep and narrow chasm. All are carved directly into the native sandstone, which is streaked with pleasing colors: rose red, pale blue, yellow, beige and white. This hidden city looks like it is sculpted of soft Neapolitan ice cream!

What a lot of time and effort were expended here in this desolation!

We thought we had rented the horses for the day, but the guide that comes with the horses wants to take them back to the guesthouse to rent to other tourists if any appear. I argue and raise hell, but of course he takes the horses explaining that he will return with them for us in the afternoon, and walking around the ghost city soon cools my temper. Horses are certainly not necessary to enjoy this compact “city”. 

...

178. Stoned Snake

178.

Next morning, Sandy, Rob and I decide to rent a taxi together and go visit the ruins of another nearby abandoned Roman “city”, Petra.

Here we go in the air-conditioned comfort of an old black Mercedes taxi. A crack in the windshield is winking at me.

Out on the desert our driver suddenly slams on the brakes and we come to a screeching halt. He leaps from the car, grabs a rock and beats a six-foot black snake to death. This is not a dangerous reptile but the driver says he doesn’t like snakes.

...

177. Balmless Giliad

177.

Our fellow hotel resident then drives us to see another much larger Palestinian camp near Jarach.

He says one hundred thousand people live in this camp in one-room concrete-block shelters; ten families, he says, share a single bathroom.

The camp is a miserable sight indeed and the information, unfortunately, may be at least partly true, but because of the holiday, the refugees are dressed in their best folkloric costumes and seem quite happy.

This camp is located in the dry hills of Gilead. There is a lot of frustration and anger but no balm here!

Every evening a group of middle-aged men gather in the shabby lobby of our cheap hotel to watch TV. The shows they watch are always Egyptian or American and are always about the usual glamorous young actors and actresses chasing and shooting as they always are on the tube.

The men sit, sweat and drink beer.

Alone in my room, I sketch my friendly backpack, which is smiling at me.

~:~

176. Amman, Jordan

176.

Amman, Jordan:

Six young Palestinian men meet me on the street my first night in town and invite me to share a good chicken dinner with them at one of the nice restaurants.

After dinner we adjourn to a teashop for conversation. They all speak excellent English. The stories they tell me are more than interesting. One thing is perfectly clear. They want to return to the land that they consider theirs but which is now the State of Israel.

Next morning, when I visit the ruins of Amman’s old Roman theater, I meet a pair of congenial young Canadians, Sandy and Rob, who are making their way, very slowly, to Australia. They are staying at a cheap hotel and I move my things into the same hotel.

Since today is the final day of the Moslem holy month of Ramadan, the hotel owner invites us all to join him and his family for an after-sunset dinner of mutton, rice and a powerful alcoholic beverage called “arrack”. Of course, drinking alcoholic beverages is forbidden to Moslems, but not all Moslems obey this law.

Later the same evening a Palestinian guest in the hotel takes Sandy, Rob and me for a drive around the city. We visit the university and then a large permanent settlement of Palestinians. He completes his free city tour at a disco on the edge of town where we dance to American rock and roll. When the DJ plays some traditional Jordanian music, a local girl does a belly dance that knocks me out!

The next day, after much talk, joking and even some chess, the Palestinian drives us over to the ancient Roman town of Jarach.

On the stage of the ruined theater, we perform an imaginary scene from my unwritten drama: “The Map of Edge City”.

...

175. Playboy

175.

The highway to Amman reminds me old Route 66 in Arizona except for the co-ed gangs of workers repairing the road by hand. The girls wear long skirts of bright red, purple and green satin and laugh as they pass baskets of pebbles to each other. The hard work in the hot sun hasn’t broken their high spirits!

At the border the Jordan customs policeman spots a copy of Playboy magazine I picked up somewhere in my stuff. “Why do you carry this?” he asks. I really don’t know why I carry the stupid rag, but improvise: “Because I like beautiful things.”

He feels this kind of literature will corrupt his countryman's morals, so he confiscates it and tucks it under his ammunition belt for safekeeping.

...

174. Damascus, Syria

174.

Damascus, Syria:

The taxi driver drops me in the heart of the city.

Uniformed soldiers, beige and olive camouflaged trucks and jeeps swarm in the street.

World War Three may have started and it looks like I am right in the middle of it, but the clerk in the bank where I change some money says that I should not be alarmed; this is “business as usual”, he says, in Damascus.

Damascus is too exciting for me though, after the relative calm of Magic Valley, so I stay only one night and depart by bus in the morning to Amman, Jordan.

I have heard that it is possible to enter Israel from Jordan near Amman if you don’t have any visa stamps from Arab countries in your passport so I have been carefully getting my visas stamped on separate sheets that I can remove from my passport.

Obviously, I will come from an Arab country when I cross the border from Jordan, but there will be no Arab stamps in my passport and that is what counts. Absurd isn’t it? Well, I don’t make the rules and I would like to visit some of the usual touristic places in Israel.

...

173. Cat Wants Fish

173.

It’s Sunday. This must be a Christian enclave in Lebanon because village churches, which I have not seen, but must be scattered scattered along the canyon rim, all start ringing their bells. The sounds of the echoing bells blend into a single lovely chord; after the intimidating gunshot’s din, the soothing bell’s hum; Yin and Yang.

I break camp, pack and hike back up the canyon to the trail-head and to the little store. It is still very early but the store is already open. The proprietor offers me a cup of coffee and I watch with him two other old men and a cat as the village awakens.

Three beaming housewives escort a tiny girl dressed in black cap, cape and skirt into the store. One of the old men buys the child a piece of candy and gives her a hug.

I watch the spirits of these old men twinkle from eyes set deep in aging flesh. In a short lifetime this budding child will no doubt also be transformed into tired meat slouched in a rocking chair petting another generation’s child.

The black and white cat wants a fish from the ice-cream freezer.

I catch the little country-style carryall bus back to downtown Beirut where I find one of the taxis that carry passengers to Damascus. When the driver, wearing a yellow polka-dotted shirt, collects a car full of passengers, we depart Beirut and a few hours later drive into Damascus.

172. Hunters

172.

At midnight, rain begins to fall. My cave is not waterproof, so before I get too wet, I light a candle, pack up and hike through the dripping, shadowy trees up the zigzag path to a stone shelter I noticed earlier.

Under the shelter’s dry and cozy dome I spread my blanket and immediately fall asleep.

Very early next morning I am fixing coffee on a little campfire at the shelter when two hunters appear. They seem surprised to find me and I am surprised too because they are the first humans I have seen in the valley. They are soon banging away at birds in the olive trees. Soon five more city dudes in shooting togs arrive and start blasting away at the birds in the trees near the shelter.

I suppose maybe they are not just hunting, but trying to scare me away and they’ve sure got the firepower to do it!

I pack and scurry back down to my cave and the shooting soon stops.

...

171, Coincidences

171.

Magic Valley, Lebanon:

My campsite is still vacant and I spend a couple of days doing nothing much. But when I begin to explore my surroundings some more I discover that not only are there mysterious sealed caves in this valley but some of the house-sized stones have wooden ladders fixed to them so they can be scaled and used as look-outs; I note that the foliage between one big stone and “my” cave has been trimmed so that a clear view into “my” cave is afforded to anyone watching from the stone.

Hmmm.

I begin to think that my perfect “Magic Valley Camp” may be part of some larger design.

How did the Australian know about it anyway and why did his friend the dope farmer offer me a “job” picking up a fancy car for him in Europe—in fact, why did that attractive French girl meet me so conveniently in the Baalbek ruins and the taxi man drop me off at the “church”? And why were the thugs waiting at the village store to drive me the last few miles to the valley?

Man, among these worldly-wise, cynical, radio and telephone connected dopers and dealers, I am truly a “babe in the woods”; all innocent and newly hatched! Full-blown paranoia strikes!

...

170, Paranoid Journey

170.

With great relief, I hurry away from the strange "church".

The empty road passes under some huge overhanging trees and by now there is no light at all from the sky--but I can hear the pavement under my feet as I walk and if I get too near the shoulder of the road, I hear the crunch of gravel so, quickly and fearfully, I navigate the next couple of kilometers by “sonar”.

Finally the friendly electric lights of the tiny village store at the rim of the valley near my campsite appear—and the store is still open! I bought a soda from the store man when I left for Baalbek this morning and he seems happy to see me again. Three big men are with him. One of them invites me to come and rest at his home nearby. No, thanks. The other two, who look like movie gangsters, offer to drive me to the trailhead leading to my camp. They say it is a four-kilometer hike. I am bone-weary from this long day and have been so paranoid and frightened that nothing seems to matter anyway so I get into the back seat of their big, black American car. If they are out to get me, they could easily follow and snatch me off the highway, so what the hell…

We reach the end of the road and I get out of the car. The men wish me a pleasant stay and drive noiselessly away.

Too tired and freaked out to hike down the canyon path to my campsite or to experience any more “adventures”, I roll up in my blanket and crash where they dropped me--beside the road.

...