How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
~ W. B. Yeats
I've come to realise that I have a different, perhaps more generous, method for using the Goodreads five star rating with memoirs vs. fiction – to get four or more stars, I think a memoir should have nice sentences, either tell a totally unique tale or reveal something universal to all humanity, and ideally, give me something philosophically interesting to ponder on. So, while Alison Wearing's Moments of Glad Grace does have a lack of action (as other reviewers have noted), and while her Progressive self-loathing rants were a little over the top for me (if only she wasn't born white when white people are the worst), I did find this to be both a touching portrait of a daughter's evolving relationship with her aging dad and an interesting meditation on just whose stories have been preserved in written records (spoiler: rich white people). This is definitely a four star read: maybe not because I “loved it”, but I think Wearing is an excellent writer who accomplished what she intended with this book.
The more I look into all of this, the less I wish to find any part of myself here at all.
As her father – an avid genealogist and sufferer of a slow-progressing Parkinson's – was approaching eighty, he asked Alison if she would accompany him as a research assistant on a trip to Dublin in order to track down the answers to his ultimate family mystery: Just why did so many of his Irish ancestors immigrate to Canada in the decades before the Potato Famine? Alison was delighted to be offered this time with her dad (he was the subject of her first memoir, Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter), but as their stay in Ireland saw day after day spent reading through giant books of records, written in spidery and faded fountain pen script, Alison began to sour on the project, and especially because of what she learned in the process: Apparently, Alison knew very little of Irish history before, so as she learned about England's history of confiscating Irish land to give to English settlers (which turned the Irish people into tenant farmers in their own country), she realised that if she did find a deed in one of these record books with one of her ancestor's names on it, she would need to make peace with being descended from one of these evil English colonisers. And as she learned that Irish army officers were offered land tracts in Canada in exchange for their pensions, she realised that if she found evidence of one of her ancestors accepting this offer, she would need to make peace with being descended from one of these evil Irish displacers of Canada's First Nations. (Alison was even surprised to learn that the wreck of some of the Spanish Armada's ships on Ireland's western shores might explain hers and her father's dark and curly hair, but fortunately, this information delighted her.)
The war between father and daughter's worldviews on history, and how to intersect with those from the past, was very interesting to me. Alison knew she couldn't learn anything intimate about her ancestors in records of deeds and births; she would have preferred to spend some time in their home villages, breathing their same air and walking their worn lanes. On the other hand, as a retired poli-sci professor (and despite being a gay man with Progressive-leaning politics himself), her father could only be satisfied with firm data and was proud to claim his ancestors whoever they might be, saying, “Well, like it or not, reliable history is an assemblage of facts, not poetic stories.” To which Alison replies, “The only people who believe in history are those who are well represented by it...Women, indigenous people, the colonized – ask them about the power of omission and whether facts can just as easily be used to tell a false story as a truthful one.” And she's not wrong about that.
There is much rumination thereafter on the nature of truth and those transcendent experiences we can engage in in order to feel its presence. Alison's father finds this genealogical research to be thusly transcendent, his partner experiences it through opera, and Alison's own partner, Jay, reaches it through birding (of the obsessive nature, involving middle-of-the-night alerts to drive five hours in order to see a familiar bird in an unusual setting). Describing a night in which Jay tried to point out faint birdsong in the distance as they fell asleep, Alison recounts:
Our son moaned and turned in his sleep, tucked a foot under the small of my back. I lay for a while, listening to Jay descend into sleep, listening to the night quilt of cicadas, the faint descant of coyotes yipping in the distance. And then I heard them. Pinpricks of light in the darkness. Wisps of song falling from the night sky. A matrix of astral passage, of miraculous flight. An ancestral map spun into wings. A casual, unassuming portal into infinity.
Pretty sentences like that added quite a bit to a book where, admittedly, not a whole lot happens. Alison and her father spend their days reading the records, do a little bit of touristing in the evenings, and when their time is just about over, Alison suddenly realises just how old and frail her father is becoming; deciding at that point to stop arguing with him over the value of his project.
We will never do anything like this again. I may never have the privilege of spending so much carefree time with my dad as I have just now, scurrying around Dublin, father and daughter on a lark. And it is so obvious, yet just as easily forgotten, that this time we have – with our parents, our children, the people we love – is so very finite, so very fleeting, so very, very small.
I think that Wearing is a talented writer (I did especially like her faithful rendering of the enchanting Irish brogue she encountered), and beyond the nice sentences, the bits about truth and transcendence and just whose stories the genealogical record preserves were all interesting to think about. Four stars all day long.
...the fact that Abby saved Mommy's life in that duck pond, the fact that if she hadn't gotten Mommy out of the pond, or if their mom hadn't massaged Mommy's arm every day for six months when she was a baby, Mommy might not have survived and gotten married and I might never have been born, and then my poor kids wouldn't ever have existed and Leo would have had to shack up with somebody else, and I would never have known my mom, the fact that there might even have been a slight pie deficit in the Tuscarawas area, but probably not a noticeable one, Otis, owlets, boarlets, ducks, Newburyport, cinnamon mixture, spoon, brush, vanilla...
Oh dear. Two weeks spent labouring over Ducks, Newburyport – the last of the 2019 Man Booker nominees to come into my possession – and upon completion, I can only say it really wasn't worth so much of my time. Perhaps other readers went in knowing that this nearly 1000 page book consists primarily of one sentence (meaning that, without benefit of paragraphs or chapter breaks, these were nearly one thousand full, dense pages of smallish text), but I hadn't known that, and as hour after hour of reading time went by without making any appreciable headway, I just felt bogged down and sleepy. I get that author Lucy Ellmann was riffing experimental here (and I appreciate that she went Joycean stream-of-consciousness without getting as impenetrable as Finnegan's Wake or some such), but I kept waiting for a payoff that never came. For a book that seems determined to completely capture our moment in time, I learned nothing new about the specifics of our time or humanity in general; this is all very basic, surface material. On the other hand, I think this would be a fascinating book to hand to someone fifty years from now and say, “Read this. 2019 was just like that.” And, of course, there's value in that; just not for me in the here and now.
...the fact that I just realized that when this monologue in my head finally stops, I'll be dead, or at least totally unconscious, like a vegetable or something, the fact that there are seven and a half billion people in the world, so there must be seven and a half billion of these interior monologues going on, apart from all the unconscious people, the fact that that's seven and a half billion people worrying about their kids, or their moms, or both, as well as taxes and window sills and medical bills, shut-in, shutout, dugout, bullpen, the fact that that's not counting the multiple-personality people who must have several internal monologues going on at once, several each, mamologs, Mommalabomala, Bubbela, blogs, vlogs, log cabins, Phoebe's Christmas logs, the fact that animals must have some kind of monologue going on in their heads, even if it's more visual than verbal maybe...
So, we readers are privy to the interior monologue of an unnamed Ohio-based housewife and mother of four; an awkward and anxiety-ridden worrier who, despite repeatedly protesting that she has the worst memory in the world, constantly circles between the present and the past, citing shocking headlines, repeating the things her kids and husband say to her, and revisiting her challenging childhood. Having discovered herself to be too shy and awkward to remain a college history lecturer as she had trained for, and after finding their family devastated by medical bills after her recent cancer treatments, the woman is now a home baker – forever rolling out dough for the tartes tartin she makes for local restaurants, constantly worrying that she's not paying enough attention to her children, anxious that delivering pies means that she will need to talk to people. It's a tough head to be inside. And as she's not originally from Ohio, the woman is shocked by the pro-Trump, pro-gun, racist, redneck neighbours that surround her. It's mentioned that her husband had been a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016 (neither she or her husband are fans of the Clintons), so it felt like a pointed character choice to have the woman constantly worry about medical insurance and college tuition, to have her pro-gun control, anti-fluoridation, anti-factory farming, insisting on free range and organic everything when her family has literally no money to spare. And while I recognise the reality of all of these beliefs existing in real people, when I read that Ellmann left America for the UK at age thirteen, I had to admit that that makes the most sense: this character seems like a cartoonish stereotype because she has effectively been created by an outsider attempting commentary on Trump's America. Everything is true, I guess, but undermined by a feeling of extremism.
Another review notes that Ellmann uses the phrase “the fact that” over nineteen thousand times, adding over fifty-eight thousand words to the count in this book (which Paul correctly adds is the total word count of some entire novels), so, in addition to this phrase that I had found brain-drainingly annoying at the time, Ellmann also bloats this novel with countless recollected dreams, repetitions and circling back, old movie plots, and free word associations. It just all felt too long and self-indulgent, and while not much actually happens (until all of a sudden something does), I get how the whole exhausting thing gives insight into an ill mind (she may think she's just shy, but his lady has problems).
Interspersed throughout the single-sentence narrative are brief interludes following a mountain lion as she breeds, births some cubs, and then loses them. It was always a relief to get these breaks from the main text, but what I at first found interesting eventually felt like more opportunities for self-indulgence on the author's part:
All mountain lions are one. You are just one example of a lion. Mountain-lionhood is strong and immense, and goes beyond the individual. Each lion is part of a continuum, and privy to everything good and bad that happens to other mountain lions. You tough things out on your own, but you're linked to the pleasures, pains, and drama, the leap and recoil and lonely deaths of others. All living things are.
Overall, I didn't really enjoy the experience of reading Ducks, Newburyport but I do think it could survive as an enduring artefact of our times. So I guess that's worth reading?
Eventually won by The Testaments and Girl, Woman, Other in a tie, my favourites on the list were Lanny, Night Boat to Tangier, and An Orchestra of Minorities. I fear the Man Booker has become too political for me - favouring identity politics over excellent storytelling - and I don't know how much longer I'll think it a badge of honour to keep reading the longlists.
Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides.
94
From the Greek, apeiron: to be boundless, to be endless. Alongside the Indo-European root of per: to try, to risk.
93
As a whole, an apeirogon approaches the shape of a circle, but a magnified view of a small piece appears to be a straight line. One can finally arrive at any point within the whole. Anywhere is reachable. Anything is possible. At the same time, the entirety of the shape is complicit.
Sometimes it feels like forces outside of myself conspire to put the right book into my hand at the right time: Recently returned from a trip to Israel – where my long-held empathy towards the Jewish people and belief in the absolute necessity for them to have been granted a homeland in the wake of the Holocaust were reaffirmed – and I found myself in possession of an ARC of Colum McCann's latest, Apeirogon, and what a surprise it was to me to see that it is based on the real-life friendship of an Israeli and a Palestinian man. Thinking that I already knew something of the conflict between their peoples, I nonetheless find myself having been changed by the reading of this book. Eye-opening, powerful, literary, heartbreaking: I challenge anyone to not be moved; to be fundamentally changed. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
One Thousand and One Nights: a ruse for life in the face of death.
To begin with this book's format: I don't know if you can really call this a “novel”; I'd say literary nonfiction. The narrative concerns the aforementioned friends – Bassam and Rami – and slowly reveals their stories, interspersed with facts and plenty of seemingly unrelated information (there is much on migratory birds, which is further spooled out to include everything from François Mitterand eating ortolan [songbirds drowned in brandy] as his last meal, to the latest craze for diamond-encrusted falcon hoods among Arabian Princes). The book is divided into 1001 parts (chapters count up from 1-499, the middle – between a pair of blacked-out pages – contains the transcribed speeches that Bassam and Rami deliver around the world, each numbered as 500, and then the chapters count down again to 1). So too is One Thousand and One Nights referenced more than once (from Sir Richard Burton originally translating it into English as he impersonated an Arab in the Middle East, to the story of Wael Zuaiter – a poet who was assassinated by Mossad in retribution for the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and whose copy of One Thousand and One Nights trapped one of the thirteen bullets fired at his body), and much like the apeirogon itself, these countless facets serve to demonstrate both unrecognised interconnectedness and the complexity that overwhelms the human mind. However, while I was interested in everything that McCann included, and while I appreciated his efforts to bring his keen writing skills to such a worthy story, I think that the story itself is too important to risk turning away the widest readership possible with highfalutin' literary flourishes (but I hope to be wrong about that; I do hope this book finds its audience).
If you divide death by life you will find a circle.
And so to their stories: Rami Elhanan, like all Israelis, had served his obligatory military term as a youth – he served during a time of war and killed impassionately, reflexively – and then wanted to just live a normal life; working at graphic design, enjoying his quiet home with his wife and four children. But in 1997, Rami's 13-year-old daughter Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber as she walked down a Jerusalem street with her friends, and Rami's first response was one of hatred and a thirst for revenge. This ate at him for a year, until a rabbi invited Rami to the Parent's Circle – a support group for both Israeli and Palestinian parents who had lost children – and while Rami only went reluctantly, when he first saw a Palestinian woman clutching a photograph of her own dead daughter, he realised that it was the first time in his life he had thought of an individual Palestinian person as a fellow human being. His hatred and vengeance disappeared and he eventually sought out another organization, Combatants for Peace, where he would meet Bassam Aramin; a Palestinian man who would teach Rami what life is like in Occupied Palestine. An excerpt from the speech that Rami now travels the world to deliver to wide-ranging audiences:
We must end the Occupation and then sit down to figure it out. One state, two states, it doesn't matter at this stage – just end the Occupation, and then begin the process of rebuilding the possibility of dignity for all of us. It's as clear to me as the noonday sun. There are times, sure, when I would like to be wrong. It would be so much easier. If I found another path I would have taken it – I don't know, revenge, cynicism, hatred, murder. But I am a Jew. I have great love for my culture and my people and I know that ruling and oppressing and occupying is not Jewish. Being Jewish means that you respect justice and fairness. No people can rule another people and obtain security and peace for themselves. The Occupation is neither just nor sustainable. And being against the Occupation is, in no way, a form of anti-Semitism.
Bassam grew up in an area of the West Bank controlled by Israeli security forces – subject to house raids, humiliating checkpoints, and patrolling armed soldiers. Bassam and his friends liked to hoist the (outlawed) Palestinian flag at their school, and when soldiers would come to take it down, throw rocks and run away. As a teenager, Bassam and his friends found some grenades, and when then threw those (defective) explosives at a convoy, the seventeen-year-old found himself labelled a terrorist and sentenced to prison for seven years. In prison, Bassam became at first more radical, but while watching a documentary on the Holocaust (which he had been taught had never happened), Bassam found himself thinking of the Jewish people as fellow human beings for the first time in his life. Upon release he cofounded Combatants for Peace, and two years after meeting Rami for the first time, Bassam also became a member of an organisation no one wants to join – the Parents Circle – when his own ten-year-old daughter, Abir, was shot in the back of the skull with a rubber bullet, fired by a jumpy eighteen-year-old Israeli soldier from the back of an armoured jeep, as Abir bought candy bracelets for herself and her sister. Joined forever in grief, the two fathers now meet several times a week and the following is an excerpt from the speech Bassam delivers alongside “his brother” Rami:
We started Combatants for Peace. There, at the Everest Hotel, up the road, near the settlement, by the Wall, two minutes away. Rumi, the poet, the Sufi, said something that I will never forget: Beyond right and wrong there is a field. I'll meet you there. We were right and we were wrong and we met in the field. We realized that we wanted to kill each other to achieve the same thing, peace and security. Imagine that, what an irony, it's crazy. We sat in the Everest Hotel and talked about ending the Occupation. Even that word occupation makes most Israelis tremble. Of course, each one had a different point of view – they are the occupiers and we are the ones under occupation, so it looks different to them. But in the end we were all dying, we were killing each other, over and over. We needed to know each other instead. This is the center of gravity, this is where it all comes down. There will be security for everyone when we have justice for everyone. As I have always said, it's a disaster to discover the humanity of your enemy, his nobility, because then he is not your enemy anymore, he just can't be.
In a very useful device, McCann narrates – intermittently, over the course of the entire book – the experiences of Rami and Bassam driving back to their respective homes after one of their meetings in the West Bank. Rami, as an Israeli, isn't really supposed to be here, but he is able to race his motorbike along the highway towards Jerusalem without issue, knowing there isn't much at stake if he does get caught. On the other hand, Bassam is required to pass through at least one checkpoint on his way home, and he knows that he is subject to questioning, detention, or arrest every time he leaves or returns to Jericho. There are stories about the IDF blowing up the cave (a very comfortable and suitable home) where his family resided outside Hebron when he was a child, Bassam's wife and terrified children being subjected to a humiliating strip search in front of each other, people being forced to stand under the desert sun for hours while the Israeli border guard lounges on a beach chair and cracks open soda for himself from a nearby cooler. From Bassam's speech:
The Occupation exists in every aspect of your life, an exhaustion and a bitterness that nobody outside it really understands. It deprives you of tomorrow. It stops you from going to the market, to the hospital, to the beach, to the sea. You can't walk, you can't drive, you can't pick an olive from your own tree which is on the other side of the barbed wire. You can't even look up in the sky. They have their planes up there. They own the air above and the ground below. You need a permit to sow your land. Your door is kicked in, your house is taken over, they put their feet on your chairs. Your seven-year-old is picked up and interrogated. You can't imagine it. Seven years old. Be a father for a minute and think of your seven-year-old being picked up in front of your eyes. Blind-folded. Zip ties put on his wrists. Taken to Military Court in Ofer. Most Israelis don't even know this happens. They're not allowed to see. Their newspapers, their televisions, they don't tell them these things. They can't travel in the West Bank. They have no idea how we are living. But it happens every day. Every single day.
Naturally, if Israelis don't know it's like this, I certainly didn't know; I didn't see this, I wasn't told about it. Rami and Bassam's stories are so heart-breaking: of course it's the abuse of power by Israeli soldiers, just like Rami had been, that led a Palestinian suicide-bomber to make the ultimate protest; and of course, it's because of youth like Bassam had once been – throwing rocks and then grenades at Israeli soldiers – that made an eighteen-year-old jumpy enough to fire towards schoolchildren. It's a self-perpetuating cycle, but one that Rami and Bassam both think can be stopped: just end the Occupation (such a loaded word) and work out the details later; one-state, two-state, right-of-return, settlements, nothing matters until after children stop being killed. Hard to argue with that.
Again, I don't know if this adds up to a novel, but Colm McCann has crafted something really special and essential here. I do hope it's widely read; that things change for Israel and Palestine.
I've listed the titles in the order of my own enjoyment, and although my favourite from the longlist (Apeirogon by Colum McCann) didn't make the cut, I am not unhappy that Shuggie Bain won. This is the first time in years that I didn't try to read the longlist and I'm glad I didn't bother; what an uninspiring collection overall.
Moving forward using all my breath Making love to you was never second best I saw the world crashing all around your face Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace
I'll stop the world and melt with you You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time There's nothing you and I won't do I'll stop the world and melt with you
(You should know better) Dream of better lives the kind which never hates (You should see why) Trapped in the state of imaginary grace (You should know better) I made a pilgrimage to save this humans race (You should see why) Never comprehending the race has long gone bye
(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world) You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time (Let's stop the world) There's nothing you and I won't do (Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you
The future's open wide
The future's open wide
(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world) I've seen some changes but it's getting better all the time (Let's stop the world) There's nothing you and I won't do (Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you
I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world) You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time (Let's stop the world) There's nothing you and I won't do (Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you
(Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you (Let's stop the world) I'll stop the world and melt with you
This song seems pretty random for what I want to write about this week, but it came on during boot camp the other day and it slammed me with nostalgia, and even though Dave and I met something like five years after this song's release, it still made me think of way back then - a time when it almost seemed normal to consider who you'd want to be with if when the bomb dropped - and after having such a wonderful time on our recent trip, I can only say that if we gotta melt, it's gonna be together. As for the the trip:
For a while now, Dave kept asking me when we were going to go on another big adventure (like our trip to Peru a couple years ago), but his work always seemed to get in the way until November when he said, "Let's just go for it." So, I started looking and the two favourite options I came up with were a trip to Cambodia and Thailand (that included many temples, and of especial interest to me, Angkor Wat, and also relaxing time on a Thai beach) and a tour of Israel and Jordan. Everything in that second trip appealed to me (the history, the monuments, the experiences) and I knew that it would appeal to Dave, too, in a way that surprised people when they later learned of our plans: Last summer, while camping around the Cabot Trail with the kids, we were playing the game Table Talk (more conversation starters than an actual game) and one question was something like, "If you could go on a spiritual quest anywhere in the world, where would it be?" Mallory answered Salem, Mass (to learn about real witchcraft), Kennedy answered Ireland (to get in touch with the beliefs of her Irish ancestors), I said the Mi'kmaq reserve where my indigenous great-grandmother came from (to learn of her beliefs and thereby unerase her), and Dave said Israel; agnostic though he may be, he has always thought that going there would be a spiritual experience. When I presented the two options to him - both of which would have made me happy - he said he would lean towards Israel and Jordan and I gladly booked it. It was amazing how, over the next couple of months, people overwhelmingly reacted as though Israel is the most bizarre vacation spot we could have picked, and not just for security reasons. But now having been there, I can only report that it far exceeded both of our expectations: every step taken on Israeli soil feels like following in the path of history and we were often overwhelmed by the feeling of connecting to the past; to the root of western civilisation as formed not only by religious leaders (like Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed) but also by the warriors (Alexander the Great, the Caesars, the Knights Templar), all of whom walked those same paths. Like an interactive museum, walking through Israel made me feel like I was participating in history, not just viewing it. So, to the details:
We flew into Tel Aviv and were transported to Jerusalem's Mount Zion Hotel. When we entered the lobby, the manager beckoned us to a wall of windows at the rear and pointed out that we were looking at the walled city of Old Jerusalem, noting in particular Mount Zion and the Tower of David, and on the hill overlooking the far side of the city, the Mount of Olives and the Chapel of the Ascension. He told us that both were only a short taxi ride away, but being restless from a ten-and-a-half hour flight, we put our bags away and started walking (Fitbit would later record this as a four hour walk). We went into the old city and walked its twisting cobblestone streets (and with many others walking those streets, we had no notion of any safety concerns), and because the manager had pointed it out, I wanted to walk up to the Mount of Olives, too. This was quite a steep and twisty climb, and as we walked, taxis kept coming alongside us, honking their horns, and offering to take us the rest of the way up "for a dollar, one dollar". Dave and I declined. We eventually found the Chapel of the Ascension (from where Jesus ascended into heaven), we passed the Garden of Gethsemane (from where Jesus was arrested), the Church of Saint Peter in Gallicantu (built on the spot where Peter denied knowing Jesus three times), and through some wooden perimeter screens, we could look down onto the ongoing excavations of the City of David. We stopped to look at the cemetery along the slopes of the Mount of Olives, walked through the Kidron Valley, and checked out the ancient tombs there. I note all of this because nothing we walked to on this first day was included in the tours that followed and we felt lucky to have seen it all up close.
Posed picture from atop the Mount of Olives, Old Jerusalem just visible in the haze behind me
That night we met our tour manager and the rest of our group, and other than a couple in their twenties (who likely felt really out of place), Dave and I were the youngest in the group, and the only Canadians among the American crowd. And although we were kind of apprehensive about how religious or political a tour group in Israel might be, no one ever talked politics (amazingly, Trump's name was never mentioned) and this was not a particularly religious group either; it would seem that, like me and Dave, everyone on this trip came to learn about Israel's (and later, Jordan's) history and culture. Amazing.
At the first group meeting, we were told to go around the circle, introduce ourselves, tell how many Gate 1 trips we had been on and say which one had been our favourite. As the other folks introduced themselves, it blew our minds that most of them had been on many many of these tours (some couples had been on thirty-some tours with Gate 1 alone!), and as we got to know these people, it came out that in retirement, most of them go on three or four of these big trips a year (two of the couples had met on a Gate 1 tour and now plan trips together). At dinner later, they sat there comparing their experiences in Egypt and China and on African safaris; they discussed food and weather and the relative friendliness of world cultures; they ticked off countries and experiences as though they were collecting bubblegum cards and I was sitting there wondering if I envied or somehow pitied them - could they really be having authentic or meaningful experiences, piling them up, one after the other like this? Yet, as I got to know these people, I realised that they were all curious, broad-minded, and open to awe. I also learned that these are not, for the most part, overly wealthy people - this is simply how they choose to spend their time and money, and as many of them were fifteen or twenty years older than me and Dave, I can only hope they we have the energy and resources to keep exploring the world at that age, too. Overall, just a lovely group of people to spend a couple of weeks with.
And I should also make note of our tour guide, Mati, right away: Exceptionally knowledgeable and charismatic, his manner was a perfect blend of trained soldier (as he explained, all Israelis must serve in the military at eighteen - three years for males, two for females - and then serve one month per year in the reserves until age forty-five; Mati has three more years to go) and scholar (he is completing his PhD on Holocaust Studies, which he later expanded as "looking for the poetics in the testimony of genocide survivors"). Thoroughly cosmopolitan and just a little aloof, I believed every word Mati told us, and most especially because of the balance he brought to explaining the history of Israel; always stressing that every fact has two narratives, stressing that while he was speaking as an Israeli Jew, the area Palestinians and other non-Jews had their own, valid, perspectives on everything. We couldn't have asked for a better guide.
The first day of the actual tour began in the Old City of Jerusalem, with Mati explaining the broad eras of occupation: the Canaanites; the Israelites; the Romans; the Ottomans; up to modern day. I was totally taken with sequential constructions like the following that demonstrated this layered history: the bottom building is the Tomb of David (from the time of the Israelites), the middle is the Room of the Last Supper (from the Roman era), and there is a minaret on top, from the days of the Ottoman Empire, when the whole was used as a mosque:
And while I will assert that Dave did find this trip to be very spiritual, Dave is still Dave, and this is him in the Room of the Last Supper:
(When I sent that picture to Kennedy, she asked me if they had bread on site or if her Dad had actually preplanned the picture by taking a roll from the breakfast buffet. Of course it's from the buffet. And since he "doesn't do carbs", Kennedy also wanted to know if he fed it to the birds afterwards. She knows him so well.)
We entered the Church of the Dormition (where Mary went to sleep and ascended bodily into heaven), climbed Mount Scopus to view a panorama of the city, and travelled through a warren of souks to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - here, you climb up some stairs and can wait in line to touch the ground on which Jesus was crucified, descend to ground level and touch the rock where Jesus' body was laid out for anointing, and wait in line to descend to the tomb where Jesus was put to rest; all built into a hill (Golgotha) and contained within one church. Mati explained that these sites were determined by Emperor Constantine's mother, Helen, in the 300's, so while they may not be the exact right spots, they are traditionally held to be so and I found myself to be more humbled by the demonstrations of faith of those around me than in awe of the sites themselves. Whether in the path of Jesus or the path of Pilgrims, I couldn't help but feel myself a part of something large and shared; I had to wonder what my great-grandmothers - Christian women I never knew - would have made of the life that led me to these sites of holy pilgrimage. As we were returning through the souk to find lunch, Mati explained that sometimes people on his tours want to travel the entire Via Dolorosa (the sites pictured in the Stations of the Cross), but since most of the way is in the Muslim Quarter (a poor and overcrowded section of the city), he doesn't recommend it as safe for tourists. (And that made me wonder at why Dave and I thought, just the day before, that there was no reason not to wander around on our own.) Our lunch (really only photographed for the exotic [to me] Diet Coke can):
Dinner that night was a group event at a local restaurant and it was the first of several disappointing meals. I mean, the food itself was good, but in Israel, they kept serving us "family style", and as Dave and I don't eat everything, we often didn't get enough at all. I teased Dave above, but neither of us "does carbs", so we passed on the rice and the pasta, had our meager share of the one bowl of salad, didn't take the meatballs, and when three chicken thighs were served to our table of six people (!), we had to satisfy ourselves with half a thigh each. On the other hand, we had nice conversation with the others at our table (again, much recounting of trips - including one couple's twenty-seven day tour to Antarctica and back on a working tall ship - and that was all fascinating) so it's hard to complain about anything.
The next day was amazing: We returned to Old Jerusalem and took a tour of the Western Wall and the tunnels that lead to what is known as the women's section (and this is where Mati advised us to tuck any written prayers or thoughts into the cracks of the wall, and so we did), and then brought us to the south side of what was the temple complex, explaining that since this had been the only public entrance to the Temple during Jesus' life, and since the steps we could see today are from that period, this is one of the only areas where you can say for sure, "Jesus walked here." And Dave found that particularly mind-boggling. When several people then asked if it would be possible to go up to the Temple Mount and see the Dome of the Rock up close in our free time, Mati (looking concerned but open to the wants of the group) said that although it's not a part of the tour, and despite it being an uncomfortable place for Jewish people to find themselves, he agreed to take us up there.
(For perspective, the next Friday - the Muslim holy day, when Palestinians are allowed complete access to the Temple Mount - the entire complex had to be closed when a group of Muslim youth began throwing stones down at the Jewish people praying at the Western Wall below them. There was one Jewish couple on our tour and the husband, David, had a very meaningful and spiritual experience praying at the wall. [His wife, Sheri, who is less observant, was less enchanted because of the gender segregation at the wall.] All I could think of, when we heard about the rock throwing youth, was how awful that would have been for David during his once-in-a-lifetime trip; I appreciate the two narratives and the competing claims for ownership of this one stretch of land, but my thoughts were centered on these people who had become our friends by this point. We learned later that a hundred explosive-carrying helium balloons were launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip on that same Friday and it reinforced for me how challenging the quest for peace in the area seems to be.)
After lunch, we went to Bethlehem. As the city is in a Palestinian-controlled (Area A, closed to Israelis) region of the West Bank, Mati couldn't come with us, so we travelled through the guarded and walled perimeter to meet a Palestinian Christian guide. She brought us up Manger Road (featuring Banksy's Walled Off Hoteland the knock-off Squarebucks coffee shop) and to the Church of the Nativity. Once again, this was a site determined by Queen Helen - so I couldn't completely buy into the idea that this is definitely where Jesus was born - but we were brought down into the caves where tradition says it is so (and if nothing else, I marvelled at the idea that this cave, or at any rate, one just like it, was the manger from the Christmas story). After exploring the rest of the complex, our guide, Lourdes, then brought us to a Christian-run gift shop, explaining that Bethlehem used to be overwhelmingly Christian (and that 80% of the city's revenue comes from Christian tourists), but ever since control over (some) West Bank areas were handed over to the Palestinian Authority, most of the Christians have fled; they are now at around 10% of the population and those who are left mostly make crafts for this gift shop, which they would be happy for us to support. (One thing about this trip: there was always a gift shop.) And that underlined for me a feeling of having seen Bethlehem on the brink of something; before it was too late, at any rate.
As our only free evening in Jerusalem, I had prebooked a dinner reservation (based on a coworker's recommendation) for us at Machneyuda for this night and it was amazing. We ordered the chef's tasting menu (and they were happy to accommodate our fussy eating rules) and each dish after delicious dish (eight or ten all in?) was better than the last; the energy and music and open-kitchen-chef-antics made for a spectacular night. Both the concierge before we left the hotel and Mati the next day were shocked that we had been able to get a reservation for Machneyuda, so we felt pretty on trend.
The following day was a tour of Jerusalem's "New City": we went to the Israel Museum (which has an amazing scale model of the walled-city of Old Jerusalem from the days of the Second Temple and also the Shrine of the Book - a gorgeous [and bomb-proof] facility that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls); we walked through the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery (where Mati was able to explain the history of the Zionist movement, led by Theodor Herzl), and ended the morning at Yad Vashem; the Holocaust Memorial. What an incredible and incredibly moving museum this is: the anteroom holds the artifacts found by the Allies in a deserted concentration camp - the Nazis killed and disposed of everyone before fleeing themselves - and the ordinariness of the photos and letters and charms (those items that people held onto throughout their torturous incarceration in order to preserve their humanity) threatened to overwhelm me. And then Dave came over and said, "There's a picture over there of two couples on a beach, wearing bathing suits, and laughing at the camera", and I just started sobbing. Dave's eyes overflowed and I could only choke out, "You can't tell me about the bathing suits." And this was just the anteroom. The museum then starts the story at the beginning: the origins and rise of antisemitism, the ghettos and pogroms and expulsions that the Jews suffered throughout Europe, the specifics behind the rise of Hitler. Room after room hold photos and other artifacts from the Holocaust (there's a cattle car used in the transport to Auschwitz, piles of the actual shoes people were forced to remove, drawings and diaries made by those who wanted to make a record of their experiences) and the whole visit was humbling and nearly overwhelming. (It's a mark of Mati's balanced approach to Israeli history that when he got to the point in his story where the UN created the state of Israel for the Jewish people, he said that the Arabs who were living on the land at that time said, "What happened to you was awful but we had nothing to do with it." And Mati stressed that they weren't wrong.) The day included a trip to some more archaeological sites in Old Jerusalem (The Burnt House and Herodian Mansions; an interesting optional tour, but one we could have skipped) and an evening light show projected onto the Citadel and Tower of David (nice, but not necessary).
The next day was a trip through the desert to the mountaintop fortress of Masada. We took a cablecar up, Mati told us the fascinating (if perhaps apocryphal?) story of how the Siege of Masada ended, and because he told us that when he was younger he had hiked the Snake Path up and down this mountain, Dave and I asked if there would be time for us to shun the cablecar down and take the path instead. Because it was free time, Mati thought that sounded fine, and although it was really hot and sunny and neither of us had water with us (duh), since we were going downhill (is that even really hiking?), we took the path down. The rest of the tour group (for the most part, as I said, quite a bit older than us) were totally impressed by this and we became known as the adventurous ones in the group ("Dave and Krista will do it!")
Is that even hiking?
We ended the day at the Dead Sea, and after checking into the Danielhotel, we put on our bathing suits and hit the water. Since I already shared a picture of me floating and reading, here's Dave:
We were really lucky that the best weather we had was on this day, and overall, the weather consistently worked out for us. As for "floating" in the Dead Sea, it's really weird - it's more like bobbing, without a whole lot of control, and since we had been warned that drinking the supersalinated water can be fatal, it was hard to just relax and see where the body decided to level out (and especially with a book in my hand). I had also read beforehand that the beach and seabottom are uncomfortably rocky (hence the water shoes), but here in Ein Bokek, the beach was sandy and the water is bottomed by grape-sized balls of salt. (We brought back vials of water from the Jordan River, sand from the Judean Desert, and these balls of salt as mementos for people, and the salt was what they found the most fascinating.) We were still happy for the water shoes and would recommend to others. (Our hotel also had a huge swimming pool filled with heated water from the Dead Sea - it had the exact same buoyancy properties - and even though we did go in it, it was filled with a lot of old people and I was kind of grossed out; like bathing in their dirty water.)
The next day was about travelling to Galilee, and along the way, we stopped at the ancient synagogue in Beit Alpha (famous for its unusual mosaic floor), the Roman ruins of Beit She'an (these were the first Roman ruins Dave ever saw and he was blown away; we'll need to go to Rome together someday), and we stopped also at Caprice - a spot along the Jordan River where people can rent white robes and be baptised. There were several groups waiting to perform the sacrament, but it was also open to those, like us, who simply wanted to dip a hand or foot in the river or collect some water in a bottle. (Mati did say that there would be time allotted if any from our group wanted to be baptised, but no one was interested.) I will say that I was surprised by how lush and green this area was - I guess I was expecting a narrow stream in the desert - and some complained that the water seemed dirty (but I just thought it was cloudy with organic matter; it's certainly clear water in the vials we filled.) Our last stop was at a diamond factory - because Israel is the world's leader in diamond cutting and polishing? - and when someone complained that we seemed to have spent more time in this factory's store than we did at the Jordan River, Mati explained to us that it's a legal requirement from the Israeli government for tour groups to be brought to specific sites in order to support local industry; he (and Gate 1) had no choice in the matter and he pointed out that this stop was on our itinerary (and since some of our group did purchase some jewellery, I guess it was worthwhile for everyone). We then checked into the Ramot Resort Hotel.
The tour had the following day as a free day (with recommendations to perhaps hire a boat to take you out on the Sea of Galilee), but as I had bought into every optional tour, we had a packed day. We drove to the Mount of Beatitudes (where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, now a church overlooking a banana plantation), and then we travelled to Safed; a kabbalistic artists' colony. We later learned that this is also a mandated stop for tour groups, but Dave and I didn't so much mind the long presentation at an art gallery because we ended up buying a hand-tinted/signed/and numbered Marc Chagall lithograph (donated to this town and gallery during Chagall's life, with all proceeds going back to support the artists):
We then travelled to the Gadot kibbutz for a communal lunch with the kibbutzers (with Mati explaining the history of kibbutzes along the way) and then made our way to the decommissioned bunker at Har Bentalon the Golan Heights. It hadn't occurred to me beforehand that I'd be overlooking a UN refugee camp in Syria during this trip, and the faroff view of that ruined country through barbed wire was, obviously, thought-provoking.
The day ended with a trip to the Olea Essence Olive Oil Factory in Katzrin (where we could both taste delicious varieties of olive oil and test high end skin care products made from that industry's leftover materials), and across the street from there, we went to the Golan Heights Winery (and while both of these stops felt like more "government mandated support of industry visits", Dave and I did buy some wine to enjoy over the next few evenings).
The next day saw us heading for the Mediterranean with our first stop at the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth - and unlike those churches built on the sites chosen hundreds of years after Jesus' death, there appears to be sufficient evidence to support that the cave within this church was the actual home of Mary; that this is the site where the Archangel Gabriel appeared to a young girl and told her she would be the virgin mother of the Son of God. The church itself is of a Brutalist design - all concrete and hard edges - but with the decorative mosaics of Mary from many nations (I did particularly like the humble, unflashy contribution from Canada) and the grotto with Mary's cave in it, this was definitely a highlight of the tour for me. From there to Haifa, where we saw the beautiful Baha'i Gardens:
And then a stop at Caesarea, former home of Herod the Great, where you can see the impressive ruins of Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader structures (Dave particularly liked Herod's swimming pool - a fresh water basin overlooking the salty Mediterranean - and he couldn't help but sing Herod's song from Jesus Christ Superstar). Despite the forecasts warning that we were in for two weeks of solid rain, this was our only afternoon shower, and it wasn't so bad:
We then proceeded to Tel Aviv and checked into the Dan Panorama Hotel. Honestly, the Israeli hotels were all nice but unmemorable, and if I had any complaint, it would be that workers in the Israeli service industry can be kind of rude (some of our fellow travellers had nasty run-ins with hotel staff, but as for me and Dave, we just found an unwillingness to serve on their part.) We checked into the Dan Panorama on a Friday evening - the beginning of shabbat and a time for families to stay in hotels, apparently - and the hotel was teeming with kids; kids playing and laughing unsupervised in the hallways at night; kids sticking their fingers into the food at the breakfast buffet; kids running riot in the lobby. When one of our group asked at the front desk if anything could be done, the clerk shrugged and said, "That's shabbat." (Mati apparently didn't see - didn't notice? - any of this and said he was shocked.) We had our farewell dinner that night, because it was our last night with Mati, and again, it was a "family style" meal that left me and Dave less than happy. The next day was to be a free day in Tel Aviv, but because Mati was still around, he offered to lead an informal tour of the city on his own time, and most of us went along with him. (The forecast promised that it would rain on us all that day, but again, it stayed clear.) We walked with Mati from the Promenade along the seashore, through the former artist - now gentrified for celebrities - area, to the Jaffa Market and the Bauhaus-designed neighbourhoods, and at lunch time, he left us. Through the nine days we had with Mati as our guide, he explained the entire, complicated history (and present) of Israel, and every one of us learned so much from him. Even those who had been on thirty-some tours before said that Mati was the best guide they had ever had. We continued to walk around, but since it was still shabbat, not a lot was open. What was interesting was watching the surfers in the cold water and the fashionable young people strutting along the Promenade on their day off - so many young women in leather pants and faux fur jackets, their guys in athletic gear and expensive sunglasses; everyone showing off and looking kinda the same but quite glamourous nonetheless. Dave and I might have enjoyed going off and exploring at our own (faster) pace, but by now we were all a big group of pals and it felt nearly expected to eat lunch, and then dinner, together. (In Tel Aviv, in particular, the restaurant staff had an unwillingness to serve; don't even try asking for separate bills at the end of a meal.)
On the Promenade
And the next day, we travelled to Jordan. Mati rode with us to the border, which involved having the bus checked over by armed guards, one of whom checked the undercarriage with one of those mirrors on a long handle, before being directed into a neutral zone. Porters took our luggage off the bus and asked for one of us to stay with the bags as they were put through security (Dave went with them) and the rest of us went through airport-style screening. Mati paid everyone's exit tax (which he had collected from us earlier), we went through border control, and were directed to a new Gate 1 bus, soon followed by Dave and our luggage. I hadn't realised that the Israel and Jordan Tour that I bought could be split up in different ways, so we were surprised to see that of the original 25 people on our tour, only 10 of us continued on to Jordan. (The two bestest buddies we made, Deb and Fred - who suggested we should start planning trips together like those other couples - were flown to southern Israel and the Red Sea along with two others in our group, and the rest simply went home at this point.) This new bus driver brought us a little further into Jordan where we were joined by our new tour guide, Omar, and after taking our passports, Omar brought them all into a customs office for us, and then we were on the way to our next hotel, the Dead Sea Marriot & Spa. This was probably the nicest hotel we stayed at in either country, but I was immediately shocked by having to put our luggage and personal bags through airport-type security scanners (and have my own body patted down by a female security guard) before we entered the hotel; and this happened every time we entered any hotel and many of the tourist sites. (I eventually googled security in Jordan and learned that Al-Qaeda executed a coordinated attack against three tourist hotels in Amman in 2005, killing 57 people, and prompting severe security measures throughout the entire country. Fair enough.)
That same day, our first excursion took place - to Bethany Beyond the Jordan, the site where John the Baptist (pretty definitely) baptised Jesus. The Jordanians have made a really lovely and instructive tourist spot here, and although the famed baptism took place along a (now dry) elbow away from the Jordan River itself, we could still walk to the river, where there are stairs down to the water for those who wanted to dip in. Three new people joined us at the new hotel, and two of them went down the mud-slicked wooden steps to the river, but I was more interested in the sight on the other, Israeli, side: There was also an access point on the far riverbank - looking newer and more solid with a sturdy building (no doubt housing a gift shop), concrete steps, and handrails - but because the water was high, access on the Israeli side was closed and people were just standing there, looking reverently at the river. I can only imagine how disappointed some of those people must have been - coming that far but not allowed to reach the water - or what they thought of us on the Jordan side, apparently allowed to do whatever we liked. I was thinking of Mati's lectures about the Israeli Defense Force, and how "a cat couldn't cross the border into Israel without their knowledge", but looking at it right there - literally a stone's throw away - that notion boggled my mind.
Greek Orthodox Church of St John the Baptist
Back at the hotel, we were encouraged to go down to the Dead Sea, but here the shore was rocky and the water had waves - the weather was cool, so we weren't really interested in trying to float again anyway, but if the water really is potentially dangerous to ingest (which Omar didn't warn us about), those waves made me nervous. On this side, however, they did have basins of mineral-rich mud to spread on yourself, so Dave did:
(I actually brought a cup of the mud back to the room and had a mud mask before my shower the next morning. I really did like how soft and firm it made my skin feel after.)
As a tour guide, Omar - who is also working on a PhD - had a very different approach from Mati; one that probably goes a long way to exploring the differences between Israelis and Jordanians. While Mati was a bit aloof and cerebral - always appearing to be carefully choosing his next words and direction - Omar was chummy and less spontaneous; so many bad (but funny) jokes that you know he tells to every group (but keeps as fresh as any practised standup routine). And while Mati's focus was on facts and history, Omar's was on culture and domestic arrangements; he mostly talked about how extended families all live and take meals together and, by necessity, find ways to get along, even passive-aggressively (and I had to wonder if this explains why the service staff in Jordan were consistently friendly and over-the-top offering to help in any way they could; but even if it was an act, it makes a customer feel valued). Omar never mentioned politics at all until asked about the Arab Spring, and his answer was kind of a non-answer: Jordan had some pro-democracy protests, because they're legal, but because the population is highly educated, and because the royal family was smart enough to make concessions, they were never violent. End of discussion. However, Omar was an excellent tour guide: knowledgeable and passionate about his country, he never steered us wrong.
From our first meeting, Omar explained that we were in for some bad weather; that the day scheduled for our visit to Petra - the whole reason most of us were in Jordan - was expected to see rain and even snow. He decided to switch the schedule around and head to Petra the next day - even though that meant we had a long drive and we would start our day there later than usual - it was our best chance at seeing "the Rose Red City" in good weather. Obviously, Omar was the expert on this, so we put ourselves into his hands (and couldn't have asked for a better experience over the next several days).
As we drove the three hours towards Petra early the next morning, Omar gave us the history of the city - from the early Nabataeans who carved its monuments, to the Roman era (and the Nabataeans' role as tax collectors-by-proxy for the Romans from the city's site at the intersection of the Silk and Spice Roads), to the modern days of the Bedouin (who lived in the caves of Petra until the 1980's, when it was designated a World Heritage Site and they were moved to a nearby permanent village) - and this fascinating history had us properly prepared for what we would encounter on site. Omar told us that if we were lucky, we might be able to meet Marguerite van Geldermalsen – a backpacker from New Zealand who met and fell in love with a local Bedouin in the 70's and wrote a book about her life which she sometimes sells from her stall in person in Petra (and we did meet her, I bought her book, and read it and reviewed it, here). Omar further explained that it would take about two-and-a-half hours for him to lead us down through the Siq, guiding us through everything we would see along the way until we reached the monuments and then our restaurant for lunch. He explained that after lunch, it would be possible to climb the 850 steps up to "the Monastery", but that it wouldn't be a suitable climb for everyone, and as free time would be limited for us because of the switch in scheduling, it would be tight to make it back to our bus at four-thirty (as he said, "The Monastery is like the cherry on top of the cake, but you don't need to feel bad when you already have the whole cake"). When Omar asked who might be interested in making the climb, only Dave and I raised our hands (which surprised no one from our group, "Dave and Krista will do it, for sure"). Soon, we arrived at Petra, and as forecasted, the weather was cool but sunny; just perfect for a hike through the sandstone canyons (I've spoken to a couple of people who visited Petra in the summertime, and the crowds and the heat sound awful to me.)
The entrance to Petra is quite wide, with one side marked out for people travelling in on foot and the other for Bedouin-led horses - as part of the agreement reached when the Bedouin were removed from the city itself, they were promised the sole rights to sell goods and provide services within Petra, so with every entrance ticket sold, visitors are entitled to either ride in or out of this mouth of Petra on a Bedouin-led horse (and while it is "free", tipping is expected). I don't know how costumey these Bedouin try to make themselves for tourists, but as it is customary for men and women to both use kohl around their eyes, more than one of these young men had a Jack Sparrow appearance, right down to puffy shirt and longish braids. While trying to attract attention and get riders, many of these young men had their horses - which were also outfitted with streaming ribbons and braids - prancing and high-stepping sideways and otherwise demonstrating their impressive horsemanship. (And note: I might have enjoyed the experience of riding back out on a Bedouin horse, but as Dave has been taking riding lessons, he balked at the idea of having someone else lead his horse.)
We walked through this wide entrance (which is where Marguerite's stall was located), and into the Siq - a narrow, curving canyon between the sandstone walls, and while this section is off-limits to horse and riders, there were intermittent Bedouin-driven carriages rattling past over the Roman-era paving stones (provided for a fee for those with mobility issues), and when we could hear the clacking rattle of hoof and wheel coming towards us, Omar would warn us to flatten ourselves against the walls; those carriages never slow down around the blind curves.
In the Siq; my most-liked picture on Facebook from this trip
Omar was a wonderful guide through here - not only pointing out details of Nabataean construction and decoration but managing the souvenir-hawkers for us - and he used just enough misdirection to make a magical surprise out of the appearance of the Treasury at the last bend of the Siq:
Also notable, we ran into our buddies Fred and Deb, whose different tour also led them to Petra on this day:
From here it was a short walk to the restaurant for an included buffet, but since Dave and I really wanted to make that climb up to the Monastery, and since the time really didn't seem to be long enough (it was now 1 o'clock, we were told it takes a full 45 minutes to climb up to and another 45 minutes to carefully come down from the Monastery, and then two hours to hike back out - not to mention seeing anything else along the way - and meet a 4:30 bus), we told Omar that we were going to skip lunch. He urged us to at least go in and grab some fruit and told us that he was going to have the bus make a second trip back at 5:15 for anyone who needed more time; we grabbed the fruit and started climbing. It is possible to hire donkeys to take you up, and a couple from our group did eventually do that so they would have time to eat and also see the Monastery, but that sounded scarier to me than using my own feet. After they take tourists to the top, Bedouin boys run the donkeys back down the steps, and again, you better get out of the way:
There are souvenir stalls all along this pathway, operated by Bedouin women, and for the most part, they would be in groups, chatting together and brewing tea over open fires, scrolling through their smartphones and impassively calling out, "Souvenirs, just a dollar, dollar souvenirs", not seeming to really care if we stopped or not (but we were on a mission and had no time for shopping anyway). The Monastery really was impressive - bigger than the Treasury and with fewer people around, it's hard to believe how tiny Dave and I look in comparison:
We spent a bit of time up there (always worried about the clock) and I will note that when we went to a cave facing the Monastery, I found it amusing that there was a young woman (Instagram model?) leaning against one side of the mouth of the cave and she was wearing a lime green velour suit with capri-length pants and no shirt (maybe nothing at all) under the jacket, spiked heels, designer sunglasses, and a silk scarf around her head, and she was affecting the perfectly blasé "don't care if that is the Petra Monastery behind me" face (with a couple of ironically apologetic smiles towards me and Dave as a young man snapped a hundred iPhone pictures of her). And while Dave's later reaction was, "What the hell was that?", I thought it was totally appropriate: she had to get to Petra and climb her 850 steps to the Monastery, presumably carrying this costume, and she earned those pictures; everybody has their thing and I'm not too judgmental about it; she looked no more a twit than I know I do when I pose with my books:
Twit, I know
From the mouth of that cave
So, we saw what we thought we had time for and then carefully descended the 850 worn and sand-covered stone steps (it was more tiring to climb up, but more treacherous going down; we did both ways much more quickly than Omar's estimate at any rate), and when we got back down to the basin, Dave and I had plenty of time to check out other caves and monuments. Dave remembered that Petra was one of the inspirations for Ape City and he christened this cave "Dr Zaius' Office":
And it became a bit of a joke to us on this trip for me to strike an adventure pose for Dave to photograph, so this is me exploring the caves, too:
After eventually meeting up with other people from our group along the hike back through the Siq, and then dashing off to see more of Petra before we'd have to leave, Dave and I made it back to the entrance area well ahead of the 4:30 bus and had the time to sit and drink a local beer on this covered patio, just as it started to drizzle:
I was utterly awestruck by Petra - incredible to me, the vision and efforts of these people, two thousand years ago, to carve these massive funerary tombs - and I can't describe how privileged I feel to have seen and touched these megaliths for myself. This is a blessed life.
We took the first bus back and checked into our new hotel, the Marriott Petra, again with the airport-style security screening before we could enter, and although Omar gave us many options for going into town for dinner, Dave and I were happy to eat at the hotel's buffet; who needs to go out in the cold rain to dampen the end of such a spectacular day?
The next day we headed for the Wadi Rum Desert and Omar shared with us that his brother, who is also a tour guide, had brought a group to Petra that morning (because that tour's schedule had no flexibility to switch around their dates) and it was so foggy and drizzly that Omar's brother had to bring up pictures on his phone to show his shivering tour group what they were standing in front of. This was the day we were supposed to be at Petra, and we all felt doubly blessed. We got to the desert and transferred onto the back of 4-by-4's (which I hadn't realised would mean "ordinary Toyota pickup trucks") and started driving through the sand. We stopped at a several-stories-high sand dune in case anyone wanted to climb one ("Dave and Krista will do it!") and I think that only five of the thirteen of us climbed up (the header picture above is me and Dave at the very top).
And going back down again...
A short drive later and anyone who wanted to could proceed (for a fee) by camel from here. Naturally, Dave and I wanted to. Mounting and dismounting - as the camel rises onto its front legs, pitching you quickly backwards, and then straightens its back legs, throwing you forwards - was the only difficult part, but as I'm not used to sitting with my legs straddled out that wide, the twenty minute ride we got was really fun and plenty long enough for me.
We rode the camels to the Crack of Lawrence (where Lawrence of Arabia was based and where the movie about his life was filmed) and we ate lunch at the Bedouin camp there. (Also at this site are a compound of luxury yurts for "glamping" which are half transparent [with privacy curtains on the inside] for watching the night stars; that would be a spectacular experience.)
After we got back on the trucks to ride back to the bus, a sandstorm whipped up at the very end:
Again, we felt incredibly lucky; it was kind of interesting to experience the sandstorm (Dave and I were able to pull our hoods over our faces and laugh about it) but we wouldn't have liked it if the storm had started while we were on the camels. And the next day, as we were heading out on our bus, Omar shared with us that his luckless brother - whose tour group was on their way to Wadi Rum that day - were stuck at the side of the road because the highway leading to the desert was now snow-covered and impassable. As a matter of fact, along our route this day, we stopped at a viewing point (I think we were maybe supposed to actually visit this castle if the weather hadn't forced us to drive back and forth across Jordan to experience different areas when they were clear) for Shobak Castle - built by the Crusaders and perched atop a nearby hilltop - but the clouds were so low-hanging that Omar apologised that we weren't going to be able to see it. But suddenly, the clouds began to part, a beam of sunlight shone through the opening and illuminated the castle on the hill like a spotlight from God. As we got off the bus (into a dusting of snow) to take pictures, Omar followed behind, joking, "I don't know what you all did right but things seem to be going your way". And a couple of people told him, "You don't even know. The weather has been going our way this entire trip." Blessed.
This day we went to Madaba, "the Mosaic City", where we saw the famous ancient map of the Holy Land in the floor of St George Church. We were brought to a mosaic school in Moses Springs (which, like the diamond and olive factories in Israel, was all about their impressive marketplace), and ended our day at Mount Nebo - the site where Moses died in view of the Promised Land - and which houses the only entirely complete ancient mosaic in the world (beautifully depicting the evolution of human society from hunters and gatherers to traders). From this mount, one can apparently see all the way to Jerusalem on a clear day, but this was not a clear day - and no one could even work up a sigh of regret; a bit of fog was nothing to us who had escaped the worst of the predicted weather. We then checked in to our final hotel, the Marriott Amman. (Again, a beautiful hotel; again, high security; again, incredibly friendly and helpful staff.)
Mount Nebo
The next day, the last day of our tour, saw us travelling in the morning to Jerash - the largest, most complete Roman ruins outside of Rome itself - and once again, Dave was particularly amazed by the enormous constructions; the amphitheatre and the auditorium and the temples. When we climbed up to the Temple of Artemis, a souvenir seller asked Dave for his phone, offering to take "magic pictures". Turns out, he knew what he was doing:
Fairly magical
In the afternoon, we went to the enormous Roman theatre in the city of Amman itself, and although Omar had cautioned us against climbing up to the top of it because some morning rain had left the worn stone steps slippery, Dave and I climbed them ("on our own advisory") and were overwhelmed (and found ourselves a little wobbly) by the perspective from there. And from here, we went to the Citadel - a hilltop area with many ruins from different eras dating back four or more thousand years - and it was only really here that I was struck with the significance of what Omar had told us early on: Amman is the second-oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, dating back to eight thousand BC (only Jericho is older), and isn't that something worth experiencing? Within this complex is a small museum, and it has the oldest humanoid-shaped figurines (from 8000 BC) ever discovered, as well as a section of excavated plaster floor that's even older. Perhaps most fascinating is the view from here, overlooking the sea of white-plastered apartment buildings with that Roman theatre plunked right down in the middle. Although we stayed in a thoroughly modern and skyscrapered part of Amman's downtown, the city never lets you forget its long history.
And that was it: one more farewell dinner and a night at the hotel and Dave and I were shuttled off to the airport the next morning for an 8 am flight. And it was pouring rain, just torrential. And we couldn't believe what good luck we had had to this point; let it pour.
There were a couple of small bumps at the airport: interestingly, checked luggage was put through an xray scanner as soon as we entered the airport and the guard there tore apart Dave's bag until he found his battery-operated toothbrush; and apparently my passport hadn't been stamped when we entered Jordan (and as Omar had brought all of our passports into the border control building by himself, I had no information about why that would be so), but since I did had a valid exit visa, and since Gate 1 had a representative there to meet us and bring us through the check-in process, it all worked out.
And since we had been able to upgrade to Premium Economy, and since Dave had access to the VIP lounges for us, I'd say that everything was A-OK:
Many of the people on our tour who had been on a dozen (or two, or three) of these bucket list trips ended up saying that this had been their overall favourite. As for me, I can really only compare this to Peru, and it would be very hard to pick a favourite between Petra and Machu Picchu, because that's what the adventure portions come down to: two ancient sites, impossibly built in impossible locations, demonstrating the best of crazy-big-thinking humanity. Both of these locations overwhelmed me with the surreal feeling of stepping into a Wonderland; a not-quite-real place at the edge of possibility. I am left in awe of the people who conceived of and built both Petra and Machu Picchu, but it's the distanced awe of an outside observer.
On the other hand, walking through Jerusalem - and everywhere we went in the Holy Land - felt like tracing a path back to my own origins; it feels like a straight line can be drawn from me, through my Christian great-grandmothers and through their great-grandmothers, and all the way back to the origins of Western civilisation. I felt a deep connection to Israel - spiritually, historically, empathetically - and this led to a personalised sense of awe; I could not believe that I had the privilege to walk those Biblical paths; I felt not just awe but grace: a connection between place and spirit. I felt truly blessed and that's in a private category of experience outside of "favourites" or "bucket lists".
And to conclude, I'll go back to the song (which feels even more random and unrelated to what it has now taken me so long to recount.) On one of the earlier days of our trip, Sonja (the woman who had gone to Antarctica and ridden a donkey up to the Monastery) said to me and Dave, "You guys are so cute." I was honestly surprised. "Us?" I asked. "Yeah," she said. "You guys are always walking along side-by-side, holding hands while me and my hubby are over here and over there, each worried about getting our own pictures." And that was something I hadn't noticed but then couldn't stop noticing: It seemed like all of the couples (okay, except for that couple in their twenties) were having individual experiences - taking individual pictures - while Dave and I stuck together, took our selfies together, sat beside each other on the tour bus even when there were enough seats for everyone to have their own row (as everyone else eventually did). What it comes down to is that Dave's my best friend and there's no one I'd rather see the world with; there's nothing that he and I won't do.
I'll stop the world and melt with you You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time There's nothing you and I won't do I'll stop the world and melt with you
