Friday, August 10th;
If you should ever travel to Jerusalem, it's probably best that you avoid telling the Arab traders who throng the narrow, fabled and historic streets of the old city that you know me. You may not yet be aware of the fact but I have acquired a fearsome reputation in those parts as a very tough haggler and several traders there are still recovering from the skills, strength of purpose and sheer audacity I displayed in our one-sided negotiations. Despite this however, I remain on good terms with them and several have told me, warmly and repeatedly, how much they like me and for this reason would make me offers that would not be made available to others. There are at least two young men who, as a result of my hard-won purchases, I am now helping to put through college.
Nevertheless - as I wrote earlier, it is probably a good idea to avoid making mention of me - just in case.
Btw - if anyone wants to buy some olive wood madonnas and authentic hand-forged mamluk swords - I still have a few (dozen) more than I need.
But Jerusalem - what a place! There is so much to say - and others are no doubt better placed to describe its incredible mix of culture, religion, ethnicity together with its multi-layered history of empire, politics, warfare and trade.
All I can say is that I have had few experiences such as that afforded by the view of the roofscape, flat and pitched, minareted, towered and domed (including the golden, sun-half-risen, dome of the rock) from the terrace of our convent hotel on the Via Dolorosa.
Or perhaps that should be the, alleged, Via Dolorosa.
Archaeology and historical research are continuously revising, qualifying and questioning the certainties that are the well-spring of tourism and commerce. But, in the end, perhaps it doesn't matter all that much - this is a city where people want and need to believe. People of faith are borrowing something from each other and in alliance against those who harbour religious doubt - but they are also engaged in an ancient struggle to hold what they have; Jew, Moslem, Christian, (Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic) etc etc and perhaps make gains at the expense of others.
It was hard to walk the city streets with their polished stone flags and steps in the severe midday heat. I discovered what may be a new side effect of my cocktail of medication - swollen feet. As I type I am suffering in a manner that causes me to kick off my lightly-tied shoes.
Thursday, August 23rd;
And there the contemporaneous despatch from Israel ended........
Events overtook us; a non-stop carousel of travel, food, visits, excursions and times for recovery. What a successful trip! Now we are returned to the UK for more than a week and Israel, the true experience of Israel, fresh and unalloyed - is disappearing through the rear-view mirror of memory. Friends and family have pounced - demanding tales and recounting of moments - and we have been ready to satisfy them. Inevitably, these memories are repeated, supplemented, polished, abbreviated until they are ready for slotting into the filing cabinet of recall, labelled; 'interesting lifetime events; 2012'.
So, you'll have to phone and spend half an hour coaxing one of us in to repeating the stories - or, visit and watch the photos each with its own accompanying oral text.
Only fragments of the unvarnished truth remain - such as that entitled; 'the street traders of Jerusalem meet their match'................
Thursday 23 August 2012
Tuesday 7 August 2012
Shalom
It's Sunday, 5th August, 9.45 pm local time in Tel Aviv. The intense light of the day has given way to the unremitting night. This is a live streaming blog. I'm on the roof of a nine-storey apartment block looking out to the west/West across the city skyline with its array of skyscraper-high, brightly-coloured neon and towered slabs of domestic lights piled one upon the other. The incessant drone of traffic is occasionally sliced by the blare of car horns or the wail of a siren. Tonight, the air temperature is a comfortable t-shirt warm and continuously refreshed by a fair and welcome breeze.
The sudden thrum and whup-whup-whup of a helicopter reminds me that there's a demo taking place in downtown Tel Aviv this evening; a protest against Israel's new austerity measures. I was going to go but fatigue following an afternoon at the beach with Oren and Ella, coupled with inertia, got the better of me.
This has been one helluva holiday to date - and we are only a few days into it. We've had some mini-adventures; such as that at Ben Gurion International Airport when we finally emerged, wearily, with our reclaimed baggage into the glazed and marbled arrivals hall to discover that, although we had fulfilled our part of the bargain in getting to this point - there was no-one there to meet us.
Admittedly it was 1.30 a.m. and we were an hour late but it took a tentative phone call to remedy the situation. We left the sanctuary of the air-conditioned building to enter the open oven-door heat of the night when Claire and Amichai had been dragged mortified and half awake in turn, from their beds.
This mishap aside (Claire and myself are still in a struggle to seize the moral low ground of denial) we have been made so welcome by this outpost of family. And this is a sizeable outpost. Yael has allowed us the exclusive use of her 'penthouse flat'. Anat, the youngest at 21 years, first encountered in her brown Israeli Defence Force uniform, is solicitous of our every need. No'omi with her 18 month old baby, Ephrat, has given us a glimpse of life within the community. It was Amichai, he of interrupted sleep and Claire's husband, who first issued the invite to visit Israel. He has two brothers, Shaul and Nadav. It is only the latter we are yet to meet. Their parents, Effi (Efraim) and Rachel are well versed in the fusion and frisson of the nuclear family.
Two days have passed - yesterday we went by train to Akko (Acre) and were made more aware of the multi-layered heritage of the old, largely Arab, city and thereby, the wider Israel.
Today we have been to Yad Vashem or Holocaust Memorial Museum. The location, on one of the hills above Jerusalem, is stunning as is the architecture of these very modern buildings. I loved the attention to detail; the use of trees and shrubs to enhance the open spaces.
That which is inside is shocking and at times, with its multi-media displays, quite overpowering - and ultimately, very moving. Here was a time when life, Jewish life, was cheap but as the text made clear every individual was far from anonymous; each was a world unto him/herself.
From my vantage point this made sense - this blog, small and insignificant as it may be, is one part of 'my world'. Each of us carries a world inside us and I know, as I struggle with my own physical 'debility' to make my way through the hours of exhibits and video and audio, something of this vulnerability, something of this personal crisis, this threat - even as, in all humility, I experience, not humiliation and violence but the warmth, generosity and support of my own, newly-met, Jewish family.
The sudden thrum and whup-whup-whup of a helicopter reminds me that there's a demo taking place in downtown Tel Aviv this evening; a protest against Israel's new austerity measures. I was going to go but fatigue following an afternoon at the beach with Oren and Ella, coupled with inertia, got the better of me.
This has been one helluva holiday to date - and we are only a few days into it. We've had some mini-adventures; such as that at Ben Gurion International Airport when we finally emerged, wearily, with our reclaimed baggage into the glazed and marbled arrivals hall to discover that, although we had fulfilled our part of the bargain in getting to this point - there was no-one there to meet us.
Admittedly it was 1.30 a.m. and we were an hour late but it took a tentative phone call to remedy the situation. We left the sanctuary of the air-conditioned building to enter the open oven-door heat of the night when Claire and Amichai had been dragged mortified and half awake in turn, from their beds.
This mishap aside (Claire and myself are still in a struggle to seize the moral low ground of denial) we have been made so welcome by this outpost of family. And this is a sizeable outpost. Yael has allowed us the exclusive use of her 'penthouse flat'. Anat, the youngest at 21 years, first encountered in her brown Israeli Defence Force uniform, is solicitous of our every need. No'omi with her 18 month old baby, Ephrat, has given us a glimpse of life within the community. It was Amichai, he of interrupted sleep and Claire's husband, who first issued the invite to visit Israel. He has two brothers, Shaul and Nadav. It is only the latter we are yet to meet. Their parents, Effi (Efraim) and Rachel are well versed in the fusion and frisson of the nuclear family.
Two days have passed - yesterday we went by train to Akko (Acre) and were made more aware of the multi-layered heritage of the old, largely Arab, city and thereby, the wider Israel.
Today we have been to Yad Vashem or Holocaust Memorial Museum. The location, on one of the hills above Jerusalem, is stunning as is the architecture of these very modern buildings. I loved the attention to detail; the use of trees and shrubs to enhance the open spaces.
That which is inside is shocking and at times, with its multi-media displays, quite overpowering - and ultimately, very moving. Here was a time when life, Jewish life, was cheap but as the text made clear every individual was far from anonymous; each was a world unto him/herself.
From my vantage point this made sense - this blog, small and insignificant as it may be, is one part of 'my world'. Each of us carries a world inside us and I know, as I struggle with my own physical 'debility' to make my way through the hours of exhibits and video and audio, something of this vulnerability, something of this personal crisis, this threat - even as, in all humility, I experience, not humiliation and violence but the warmth, generosity and support of my own, newly-met, Jewish family.
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