My first account is up here [LINK DEAD – REPRODUCED BELOW].
If you want to subscribe to the morgueatlarge email list, just send a blank message to: morgueatlarge-subscribe@topica.com
More to follow. Photos uploaded; links will be available soon.
—
[ORIGINAL EMAIL TEXT]
Thursday April 8
So we’re zooming down the highway to Jerusalem on Holy Thursday. The speedo hovers around 120k, and the sun is coming down, and Cal and I are in the Middle East.
We’ve come with an outfit called Olive Tours, who work with the Alternative Tourism Group. A week-long tour in Israel and Palestine, meeting peace groups, meeting locals, seeing what its like on the ground. It all came together fast, and it nearly didn’t happen, but we’re here. Only a few people know. We don’t want our mothers to worry.
Getting here was a story in itself. In Zurich, after talking my way around the fact that my passport was expiring in 5 months 3 weeks instead of 6 months, we got the full interrogation by a mild-mannered El Al Air clerk. Where were we from? Where did we live? Why were we going to Israel? Had anyone given us a bomb? Any weapons? What about small weapons, just for personal use? We stuck to our story of going for Easter, good Christian pilgrims. Lying makes me uncomfortable and I didn’t enjoy it. Heart was
bumping good. We went into a side room with him and our bags were swabbed by bomb-detecting gear; then we were ushered out while they went through the contents in detail. We were glad we’d ditched the Private Eye we’d been reading on the way over, the one with an article ripping shreds out of Sharon.
But we made it through, and suddenly we were at Tel Aviv airport waiting for a driver to meet us. And now we were on the road.
Joseph, the Arab driver, slowed down, and we saw lights and concrete blocks in the road up ahead. ‘Is this a checkpoint?’ Cal asked. ‘Yes,’ Joseph said. ‘Say you are going to church.’
And suddenly there were soldiers around us. Fatigues and automatic weapons. We were both still running adrenaline-hot, ready for more questions, wondering what would happen if we were turned back. A soldier came up to Joseph’s window and we squeezed hands in the back seat.
Joseph and the soldier talked in Hebrew briefly, then, incredibly, shook hands warmly and waved goodbye. “My friend!” Joseph said as we drove off. “He is Russian! And a Christian!”
Our first checkpoint experience, the lesson being that the unexpected would always be just around the corner. There were many more checkpoints to come in the week ahead, though, and that was the only one that gave anyone cause to smile.
Now we were in the West Bank, in Bethlehem. The Occupied Territories, seized by Israel in 1967 and still held now. Its a hilly town, and I was suddenly reminded of home – I hadn’t seen a landscape so like Wellington’s hills since I left New Zealand. Joseph was, Cal thought, somewhat amused by our gushing comments, “It’s just like home!” We weren’t blind to the irony ourselves.
We arrived at the Three Kings hotel in Beit Sahour, just outside of Bethlehem, and were set up in a room and given a great, filling meal. Along the way we met Samer, the Palestinian ATG guy who was our organiser, and the other half of the tour group, Jean Guy and Sabine from Paris. After dinner,
we joined the Parisians and wandered down to the local Catholic church to see the tail end of the service. As we went we saw Beit Sahour at night. Shops were open late, and teenagers wandered the streets chatting and texting and flirting. Men sitting on their porches greeted us: “Where are you from?” “You are welcome.”
“You are welcome” was a phrase we heard every day, everywhere we went in Palestine. And it was sincere, and we did feel it, we did feel welcome. A feeling precisely opposed to the way we’d felt at Zurich.
“What is your intention? What are you going to do? Why do you want to go to Israel?”
—
morgue
Cal on the plane
NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 2