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.

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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!

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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.

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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!”

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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!

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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?

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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!

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