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.

...