Glory Ho

Without warning, we had walked through our own front door.

In Tel Aviv especially, there were leashes on dogs, work out clothes on women, and bikes with clip-attached pedals. Service was suddenly worthy of a 20% tip. People were in a hurry. Shiny hard foliage and bougainvilleas wrapped streets of stucco structure like display window gifts. Not a blonde in sight. People of all sizes. It was like a city full of New Yorkers had been dropped in Los Angeles.

Except it was a very secure LA. In Lebanon, the tanks and soldiers were outside banks, embassies and ministries. In Israel, plain-clothed guards sat on stools outside grocery stores, bus stations and restaurants, any place where groups of Jews gathered. Girls with hot pants and pistols was a regular sight. Amidst all of that, off-duty soldiers were everywhere in their olive uniforms punctuated by ponytails, mobile phone bling and Ipods with machine guns slung ever-so-casually across their chest.

For the first time in many months, we blended in. No, the Israelis didn’t take much interest in what looked like just another couple of American-born Jewish people checking out the homeland. In fact, almost everyone assumed we knew Hebrew, one of the few symbols keeping Israel from Americanization.

It was definitely a taste of home. But.

While internet, sushi bars and hot water was plentiful, they were outrageously expensive. Damn the dollar. Although a bus system was in place, with fewer riders, it wasn’t forced to run buses every hour. Roads were well-maintained, but the signs were designed for drivers, not walkers. Perhaps most startling was the accommodation. The place we stayed was well organized with responsible staff. We’d come from hostels where we helped cook and now we needed a pre-paid ticket just to get dinner.

I couldn’t believe it. I had always been a person who was fond of rules and certainty. I liked guarantees. But after five months in the Middle East, I was no longer concerned with what I didn’t get or what I paid for or why she got the better room. Because I now trusted the universe to deliver, I actually preferred bendable rules and a bit of chaos. It just makes so much more sense. Especially when the world wasn’t black and white to begin with.

In Israel, for the first time in a long time, I was hesitant to ask for help. We’d gone from endless invitations to a straight-faced hotel clerks and it was a jolt. How could two cultures living side by side be so different? But Jewish people hailed mainly from Eastern Europe and New York, two places I’d lived and survived. I shouldn’t have been surprised when the Jews failed to extend their arms for a hug.

While Arabs would sit hospitably without conversation with you for hours, smiling shyly and providing tray after tray of tea while you winced at the opportunity cost, Israelis were high on intellectual conversations, private space and polite etiquette. Like us, they placed a high value on time.

Like us. Hmmm. I t wasn’t long before I saw that I’d been slapped in the face by my own culture, more or less. While regional differences made me a friendlier person, I was much more like the Israelis than the Arabs.

But that will have to wait to be resolved. Because the moment we set foot back into Jordan, I was comforted by the confusion. Even as we sat on a bus for an hour waiting for it to fill, as we went through checkpoints which outraged a man in a long robe, as we listened to him rant to the sky in Arabic for at least twenty minutes, as we drove through the desert shacks and eventually stayed at that same bus driver’s fifteen-member family home because the hotel was too expensive and we’d missed the bus to Petra, I really didn’t mind.

Back in Antakya with the girls, they treated us to a different restaurant each night, planning or outings as if they’d known us for years. Even when we were ready for bed, they insisted: more tea, more fatoush, more kunefe.  

I never caught the name of this particular place, but I’ll never forget it.

The air seemed finite, like the space inside a paper sack. There were endless rooms. Each wall was a giant quilt from Anthropologie, murals outlined with frayed edges wandered freely. Fake antiques and hanging hollow gourds tried very hard. Curtains and beads swung above a mud-room’s amount of leopard slippers. In every space, wood stoves grew up through the ceiling. Half-tended herb gardens lived in makeshift containers and macramé cooed from around fierce yucca plants while fat and flowered women wandered without obvious purpose. The ceiling was burlap. The floor a notch above dirt. Between, ropes and bamboo had been forced together to form a very odd couple. Buddhist and Roman statues posed with uncertainty as if they’d missed their stop at the museum. Men with apathetic expressions rolled dough for traditional Turkish dessert behind glass. Hookah pipes snaked round red and royal-blue trees of tar. This restaurant couldn’t decide if it wanted to live in Egypt or within the confines of a 1960s commune. Like any obedient customer, I mimicked what I saw. Utter disorientation.

In our brown room with old photographs and rugpiles, we were served Kunefe, a popular dessert in Southeast Turkey. Kunefe was essentially baked cheese, splashed with honey and covered with a thin toasted crust and a toss of pistachios. It was both heavenly and heavy. A languid women served tea on on a wood tray, each glass bottom already glistening with piles of sugar, the granules dreaming of the cavities they would soon create in my mouth.

But nothing could make up for the Fish.

Against one wall above the couch, a backlit fish tank hummed with purpose, as if only following the rules. Doing its job. Plugged into the wall. Inside, a goldfish shone bright in the corner of the tank, orange with the unnatural hue of Sunkist soda, twirling, flipping and sliding along the glass with the water’s current.

Except the goldfish was dead.

Who knows when the submission had come. When the food had been forgotten. Why the fish had not been flushed.

But worse than the discomfiting loss of life was the fish’s fate. To be a puppet to the kinetics of the tank’s current. To flip and flop without will or control as artificial life sent its body in circles. This too closely resembled the life of people who’d given up on dreams. . .on change. . . on going their own way. Because at a glance, the fish looked alive. But in reality, its fishy little soul was long gone.

So I sat there having a hard time not looking at it. . .hoping I would suddently realize it was actually alive, fidgeting at the icky energy of a place trying too hard to be trendy and failing with the most simple of Feng Shui principles.

And as much as I enjoy sushi, I am amazed that I still think of that dead fish with sympathy and sadness.

Due to some botch in planning, and despite enough churches to lift entire town at least a few kilometers closer to heaven, there was no Catholic mass in English on Easter Sunday in Jerusalem.

So we went to sunrise service at the Garden Tomb, the spot where Protestants believe Jesus is buried.

I’d slept just a few hours the night before. Female dorm life had become an oddly comfortable slumber party in the past week but sleeping wasn’t one of the benefits. The wild-eyed Norwegian girls, Eda and Maria, were on the rooftop with wine until four. Natalie, a tough English chic with feathers and patent leather to spare, fell into bed slightly before. Ingor the, retired Dane who loved America and had once been married to a Coloradoan, had slipped in near midnight after five hours of prayer. Katya, the mysterious Moldovan, who lived at the hostel in exchange for her maid service and got free food from the Jewish soup kitchen every day, had been gone for hours. Finally, South African Andrea whose tall frame and layers of wrap-around skirts flowed with peace and love no matter her mood, had been asleep for hours. A wiry and easily frightened black cat which favored the end of my bed skittered in and out of the five-foot windows. I could hear the drunk howls of Purim, today’s Jewish, Halloween-like holiday which celebrates the deliverance Persian Empire Jews from Haman’s plot, by the heroine Esther.

But at 5:45, we slipped across the stones and between the nuns, early marketeers, Hasidic Jews and closed iron doors of an empty souk. The line was long, the crowd was loud and I was nervous.

Over the past week, I had spat out Jerusalem’s koolaid again and again. I was parched for a drink of spirituality. But I was determined to keep my expectations low today. I knew that even the chance for reflective meditation would be low. Not with this crowd. Not with these cameras. Not in this town. Easter Sunday in Jerusalem would make a good story. Period. This is seriously what went through my mind on what has turned out to be one of the most important days of my life.

Michael, on the other hand, was near giddy. His lavender and khaki linen, tanned skin and smile relieved me. Going to church without stained glass to color our view of the sky was a novelty and I guess he knew. Yes, he just knew.

The Garden Tomb was just that, a bountiful garden of stone benches, bright peonies, private space and historic significance. This is a little closer to where God lives, I thought, as we stepped inside. Without mosaics, steeples or frescoes to clutter the view. Without pouty priests and scolding devoutees to kill the buzz. Without politics and power laying claim to their share of the Old City’s square footage..

I’d been to a variety of services over the years. I knew there would be no Eucharist. I knew there would be more song and prayer, less Liturgy. But I was still unprepared for the celebration that followed.

The clapping. The singing. The rejoicing. The literal hallelujah and the claim of happy day. The kind faces of the crowd. The various orators voices, unrehearsed and happy, were like my mother’s voice on the end of the line. Faceless, but undoubtedly smiling. The live earth—bougainvilleas and birds—shared their oxygen like picnickers passing out watermelon slices in a park.

I was happy instantly.

In fact, my initial reaction was laughter. This was not church! This was too happy. Too uninhibited. Too much fun. Too fulfilling. Too spiritually accessible. I felt nourished. I actually cried.

I said: “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Michael responded: “You mean what’s right with you.”

It took me a few days to reconcile the paradox. The Protestants were singing about a divine Jesus, a Jerusalem Jesus, one I don’t believe in. They were celebrating his rising from the dead and his “wash(ing) their sins away”. Ideas which I don’t hold dear. So why was I suddenly comfortable? Because within their transmission was energy, kindness, acceptance and optimism. Ideas that guy Jesus and I  hold dear.

Check out Michael’s video for the live story. . .

We’re not the guided tour type. Museums are not our thing. Quite frankly, they are for people who prefer to be led and handheld as they walk through an unfamiliar neighborhood. Which is fine. For everyone else.

But in Jerusalem, there was just too much relevant history to avoid the whole cross-bearing, guilt-smothered enchilada. I mean, there are places here like Nazareth. Gallilee. Bethlehem. Judea. Jericho. We wanted information, explanations, theories, anecdotes and answers.

My first attempt to fling myself off the nearest religious rooftop came after we spent an hour and a half worth of walking and busing to reach the beginning of our tour, when we were actually STAYING in the heart of the Old City, the subject of our tour.

My second came when I realized the size of our tour: Fifty people.

Number three came when the information being offered was nothing more than I’d already read in my nifty Lonely Planet Guide.

But the final blow arrived when we were led into a tourist shop, handed out baskets and assured of the handmade status of each carved cross and turquoise bracelet.

As the tour continued, I foolishly attempted to soothe myself by connecting to the others in this predicament. Surely they were also disappointed in this $42 complete waste of time and money. Surely they wanted to commiserate with me. Surely they would accompany me to the tourist office to complain. Yet it was clear from their very zombie-like stares and video-cam screens that the tour had met their expectations.

The only thing worse than disappointment is finding no one who can relate to your complaint.

And no, there is no dirt-deep lesson about this story except do not take guided tours.

See my in misery here:

Maybe I should buy a longer skirt.

Yes, maybe you should.

I mean, the men are either “tsk”-ing or ogling. The women are looking at me like I’m a two-bit whore! My skirt is not that short!

Yes, it is.

But it’s not my fault. I didn’t know.

Yes, you did.

It’s been cold. I’ve always been covered up anyway. I felt so comfortable in Iraq and Jordan and Syria. I really did. Especially in daylight. With Michael!

Yes, but this is the West Bank.

We were in Ramallah. Michael was walking behind me, as is our custom in Arab countries. This allows him to keep an eye on me and ward off any potential stares.

We just wanted to see Ramallah. We wanted to taste the tension of the West Bank. Detect the nuance between West Bank Palestinians and Lebanese Palestinian Refugees. To observe the other faction in a confusing fight for different ends.

And it didn’t take long. On the surface it was just another Arab country like Syria or Jordan with nutty traffic, cheap Western clothing, a lot of headscarves and shacks of shwarma. But when comparing it to the refugee camp of Beirut, the differences stared us down. The Palestinian camp in Lebanon was much more third world. We’d felt out of place but at ease. Here, the Palestinian’s apathetic stares and hidden hospitality demonstrated that we just another (potentially Jewish or at least Jewish-American) couple who’d gone slumming for the day.

In all the other Arab countries, our American-ness had never been troublesome. Sure, it earned us lectures and opinions, but these were always served with a cup of bottomless tea. We’d learned again and again that people saw us as individuals. Not as a representation of our government. In addition, while my hair flowed freely and my skin was quite fair, I had not once felt threatened by a Muslim man, even when walking alone.

But Israel, a tourist destination, a Westernized bastion of order, schedules and sit down toilets, was different. And in fact, Ramallah was the last in a series of harmless, but disturbing incidents which had happened during our Holy Week in Jerusalem.

There was the taxi driver who offered us a free ride to the museum. When I’d brushed him away saying to Michael “Nah, I don’t feel like it. He’ll just guilt us into paying him.”, he literally went into a rage, driving along side us and screaming about what a good person he is and how dare we not trust him.

When leaving the museum, we were quoted too high for a ride back to the Old City and Michael asked about the meter. The driver agreed and estimated the cost. For us, it was still too high, so we said no thanks and walked away. But the driver wouldn’t leave us alone. Eventually, he called Michael a son of a bitch. Then there were the teenagers in a quiet, narrow section of the Christian Quarter. After ignoring their harassing calls, we politely said “goodbye” in Arabic and received a “Fuck You All” in return.On a few occasions we encountered children whose English “Hello” was immediately followed by a phrase like “Give me a dollar”. Finally, every girl in my hostel dorm had a story about mild verbal (and sometimes physical) harassment from the disrespectful males in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

It was all about contrast. You might say: Rude people can be found all over the earth. Harassment of a single female is nothing new. But in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Northern Iraq and Jordan, it was mild or non-existent. Here, not so.

We had surmised earlier in the week that this was how tourists ruined a town. When kids know that people have money, they begin to beg. When shopkeepers know another tourist is around the bend, smiles don’t come with a transaction. When you’re a dime a dozen, people don’t care where you’re from.

But we knew, too, that we were seeing this country’s conflict in color. Just to be sure we fully understood, our journey from Ramallah back to Jerusalem would put us in the very humiliating shoes the Palestinians had been wearing for years.

When the bus arrived at the “border” between the West Bank and Israel, everyone filed off the bus and into a bus-terminal-like shelter with their passport in hand. People hurried. We followed suit. Soon, there was a row of entrances (or were they exits?) divided by concrete walls. Each had a tall cage turnstile and a red and green light above it. Through the other side, I could see a conveyer belt and an overhead airport style metal detector. But I didn’t see a person.

Each entrance had its own restless crowd. Like grocery check outs, there was lane switching and strategy. Some entrances seemed to have longer green lights than others. Some people got caught between grates. I felt a definite sense of panic that I can’t really explain. I just wanted out of there. I didn’t like the desperation, the cell-phone conversations, the looking around. Was something different about today? If so many Palestinians were crossing into Jerusalem, then this must be a routine procedure. And if it’s a routine procedure, the Palestinians must be familiar with it. And if that was true, why wasn’t everyone just waiting their turn? Why the panic?

I really don’t know. But I knew it when I felt it. 

It’s been so seldom on this trip that we’ve actually FELT the way the newspaper implies we might feel in a given country. Yet there was no danger here. No potential bomb. Just a taste of the tension.

It all started with the Danes–Anders and Frederick. And Eric, too. It was definitely his fault. Somehow, in this land of criss-crossed (get it??) confusion, they’d both bumped into Tony, a gay, eccentric, Christian Palestinian hairdresser who loved to host foreigners.

So the day after late-night Guinness glasses to celebrate St. Pats (see here)

. . .we went with them to Bethlehem, which by the way, means House of Bread. Just a little bit of trivia.

We saw the Epcot Center-like market with its mandatory castles-and-cream stone, the posh University made possible by the United States, the grotto which supported some ridiculous story about Mary, a drop of milk and a miracle, and of course, the Church of the Nativity, with its almost rustic-looking barn-like rafters, endless hanging lanterns (not so unlike Lamps Plus) the five chapels (accommodating every Christian faith) and the now remarkably straw-free spot where baby Jesus was born. As we took our turn at viewing, a group of Koreans sang Silent Night in a circle. This was nice. And right then, if you squeezed your eyes and concentrated, listening to a psychopathic choir sing We Three Kinds, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem and Away in a Manger simultaneously in your head. . then maybe you could feel the novelty of it all—as if you were pressing your finger directly upon the navel of Christianity.

But the day got infinitely more interesting when we spent time with Tony. There were teddy bears, color cut outs of Mozart and Elvis, hair dryers and silk flowers. See it live here:

To remain in awe in Jerusalem, you must not only BELIEVE COMPLETELY but truly abandon all reason and logic so as to accept that some council at the ministry of tourism and religion in Israel knows the exact spot of baby Jesus’ birth.

While Rome shines with a self-aggrandizing decadence that refuses to be bothered by what you do or don’t believe, Jerusalem doesn’t feel the need to dress up, because its authenticity is more than enough. The church architecture is not especially awe-inspiring. The Sea of Gallilee is no longer (perhaps never was) a mysterious sea of baptismal waters. The Church of the Nativity is a simple hall of contemporary lanterns and almost atmospheric barn rafters. The Old City is a fantasyland for so many who can certainly get a Jesus keychain or Indian textile bag in their hometown, but feel so much cooler buying it in Jerusalem.

On Good Friday, following the schedule of our handy Holy Week Guide, we marched over to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the three-hour celebration–three hours where once inside, NO ONE would be allowed to exit the church.

According to Constantine who made it so 300 years after his death, this church is the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, mourning and burial, and must accommodate the Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Romans, Armenians and Ethiopians in all their individual Catholicism. As a sad result, it’s discombobulated design lacks any flicker of communal spirit. Its as though in exchange for giving everyone in the family their own private room, the living room was sacrificed.

Back and forth around the corners of this confusing chapel cluster, bishops, friars, priests, monks stomped their sticks against the stone in processional after processional. It was all very confusing and very, very serious. We sat on a bench most of that time. I tried to pray, but it didn’t really work. I also tried to freeze frame the beauty of the glittering mosaic of the mourning apostles, but there were just too many people. We watched. Waited to see what would happen next. Gave our seats to teary-eyed old woman who amazed us with their ability to be moved among the chaos.

Because faith is so abstract, so like the wind, it’s much better if we can touch it. Here in Jerusalem, you can. I understand. That’s a big reason why people are here.

But these tourists were disturbing. Hundreds of (mostly Spanish) women with their bibles, Puma tennis shoes, water bottles and determination, were prepared to engage in arguments with monks, to push worshipers out of their way and to beg for admission to the first ritual of remembrance. We wanted nothing to do with it.

No, this was not a place where I felt closer to God.

Even the alluring decor couldn’t help the atmosphere in there ascend toward heaven. In fact, by the time we left in search of $8 bagels, the whole experience had felt a little like a wait in a visa office.

Toward the end, we chatted with an Irish priest and I looked for something, anything, which merited remembering. Some shadow or shaft of light. Someone. What I found was a young nun in a full cornflower blue habit leaning over the second balcony railing. But she was taking a picture.

See for yourself here. . .

At the fourth station of the cross, the point along Via Delarosa (Sorrowful Way) Street, as Jesus carried the cross to his crucifixion, he saw his mother Mary crying for him. I’ve seen the Stations of the Cross my whole life—etched in wood, glowing in stained glass or shaped in wrought iron along the east and west wings of cathedrals in France, England, Spain, Bulgaria, Syria and the U.S. A.

But I never understood them until today.

Two thousand years ago, this narrow medina was full of Jews, Gentiles and Romans; camels and donkeys. Now the stations are commemorated with steel signage in the Muslim Quarter, a chaotic and exotic bit of the Old City with dirt-stained filigree gates, slits of sunlight, disobedient children and jaded storekeepers. But today, the path included armed security guards and police barricades to manage group after group of devout believers on a pilgrimage along this path. And as the Muslims became angrier and angrier for facing roadblocks in their own cul-de-sacs, each pilgrim wanted to walk in Jesus’s footsteps more literally than they had before, chant into the eyes of their bible and create a memory they could clutch between their praying hands forever. In one mixed ménage, we heard the deep, dark praying voices of French-speaking Africans from the Ivory Coast and the echo of the Filipino church hymns as they paused at each station’s miniature chapel. A brown-robed friar guided them through the madness. At the fourth station, beneath the well of a dripping grotto, they sang:

We’re you there when he saw his mother weep?
Were you there when he saw his mother weep?
Ohhh. Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when you saw his mother weep?

I cried almost instantly. I’m not sure if I was moved more by the idea of a mother witnessing the suffering of her son, the devoutness of these kneeling souls, or the truth that I was no longer a believer.

You see, I still reach for the comforting blanket of complete Christianity by an occasional church attendance. I say the Our Father and the Apostle’s Creed like an obedient child. I try and listen to the Liturgy, but often drift off, brushing away the guilt with justifications for personal meditation.

We all want something sacred. And Christianity, as our new friend Erik recently commented, does “sacred” really well. But it’s the personal connection where they need a little work.

Feeling as spiritually flat as I did in Jerusalem was a sign without a signal. I could no longer contrive any drama or stretch toward any symbolism. For years, familiarity had kept me in the pew. But the memorized prayers and instinctive pantomimes were simply keepsakes of my past. Like old love letters, their relevance had slipped away.

I wish I could believe. I really do. It would be so much easier. But recent experiences have led me into the darker caves of my soul where an honest life is the only way out.

As we travel, we don’t often know upon arrival just how long we’ll stay. But somehow, we always know when it’s time to go. Because when energy sources become sparse and you begin recycling the spirits of yesterday to rise toward today, there is nowhere to move but on.

So it goes for my pilgrimage out of Catholicism.