Day Trip Gone Astray: Part One

The day started off so positively. Last week a rocket fired from Gaza hit a mall in Askelon, killing a person and injuring a hundred others. I looked on a map and was surprised to see that Askelon is only a one hour train ride from Tel Aviv, so I thought that would make an interesting day trip. I got to the station early and found hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, which I took to mean that on the Sabbath they come home to be with their families and on Sunday go back to “work.” Sitting in my little area of the train were 7 teenage soldiers all except one with Uzi’s. They looked in their very early 20’s and one was a very cute woman soldier. I asked why everyone had a gun, except the one guy and they told me they were all on the same “team” and the odd man out couldn’t be trusted with a weapon. They all thought this was very funny, except the guy without a gun. One guy started taking pictures of the woman with his cell phone and she tried to grab it away from him and then everyone started horsing around, Uzi’s bouncing all over the place. She finally got the phone but then he grabbed her magazine of bullets and then she threw the phone back at him and he threw the magazine back at her and “pop” bullets flew out all over the floor. Although nothing went off, this was apparently a bad thing to happen and everyone scrambled around all over the floor trying to pick up the stray bullets. They spent a lot of time counting and one was temporarily missing until it was found in a seat cushion. The guy who “can’t be trusted with a gun” seemed to feel vindicated with an attitude like, “and I’m supposed to be the irresponsible one here.” Finally their stop came and I swear at least 500 soldiers got off the train in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. After they left, I quickly looked around for a misplaced bullet which I could keep for a souvenir, but no such luck.

An hour passed and I couldn’t seem to locate any of the stations on my map leading to Askelon. Then another half hour passed and I starting getting worried because we were very late and hadn’t made any unscheduled stops, when suddenly we pulled into the station, JERUSALEM! Damn, wrong train! To give you an idea as to how stupid a mistake this was, it would be the equivalent of leaving San Francisco for a nice vacation in Eugene, Oregon and ending up in Los Angeles. I mean, these two cities are on completely different ends of the country. It occurred to me that this is probably a good reason not to elect McCain, at his age he'll never figure out what train/plane to take to any of those summits. But anyway, when God gives you lemons, make lemonade.

So I walked out of the train station and discovered that it was one of the places (like Dulles Airport) where if you build it in the middle of nowhere, eventually people will chose to live near it, but not today. In front of me was a huge soccer stadium called “Teddy” and about a quarter of a mile down the road I could kind of made out the sign that said Jerusalem Mall. So I went to the Mall. The Mall was quite upscale, I would say at the level of the ones in Marin County, lots and lots of fancy boutique stores, a couple of supersized box stores and of course lots of food.

(Here is a picture from a huge bakery)

Prices were all pretty high and it was crowded and except for the Hebrew words, I would have thought I was in any nice American mall. But I didn’t stay long and jumped on a #6 bus which I was told was going to the Central Bus Station.

This trip was the sole adventure of my morning; I stayed on this one bus for an hour and half. First it went through large areas of emptiness, then it went straight down Jaffe Street, the most crowded, even teeming, in Jerusalem, then it wrapped around the Old City walls (built by Salidin in the 13^th century) and then kept going higher and farther out. At some point all the Uzi carrying soldiers got off which I considered a bad sign, but they were replaced with lots of Hassidic people (affectionate called “penguins” by secular Jews) which I considered a good sign, then the street names changed from Weisman and Rothchild to Sultan Shalidin, which I considered a bad sign. Pretty soon there was nobody on the bus but me and driver. He asked me where I was going and I said, “I’m going wherever you’re going,” which he thought funny. The houses all began to look alike as did the town (actually “settlement”) It reminded me of a Sim City game where you make a copy of a standard house and then just rubber stamp them over and over again. There were lots of little kids around, but no yards, just boxes made of ticky-tacky and they all looked just the same.

I was starting to get a little worried and then a thought struck me. At some point we are going to run into THE WALL.

(The Wall snaked for miles in all directions)

It almost felt like a scene from the Truman Story, the neighborhood was completely antiseptic, and I don’t remember any trees or trash. I kept thinking, “isn’t Jerusalem an enclave; aren’t we surrounded by Palestinians.” Just at that moment, the bus turned into a cul de sac and sure enough there was the Wall. I couldn’t believe it, it was like coming to the end of the known universe. I took a couple of pictures; to my back was the neat little Israeli box houses and to my front was a mass of Palestinian buildings many looking in disrepair, without windows or landscape and of course separated by the Wall.

Photos of Israeli tract home on left and Palestinian buildings on the right.

The bus driver invited me for coffee into the employee’s rest area and we got to chat. He’s been driving a bus for 30 years, most of it on exactly the #6’s run which goes all the way from the southwest corner of Jerusalem to the northeast corner in just under 2 hours. I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like to have irritating passengers and car drivers going at you for 2 hour per run for 30 years, but I kept thinking there isn’t enough Zantac in the world to make that tolerable. Then we got into a great argument about which city had the most beautiful Israeli women, I, of course, claimed Tel Aviv, not having been anywhere else, he claimed Haifa. I tried to make my point in broken Hebrew, he in broken English, but we both settled on universally understood male hand gestures to emphasize our arguments. I told him I was too old to be having a discussion like this and he laughed saying one is never too old for such an argument. We shared a moment, but I think you had to be there to appreciate it. I got back on the bus at about 12:00 and it had just been 3 hours since I left Tel Aviv and I felt I had gone through the entire spectrum of the human experience from the Jerusalem Mall to a decrepit neighborhood in the Occupied Territories. Next stop the Hebrew University. (to be continued)