The Jerusalem syndrome


Jerusalem :: Israel

I will not bitch about Israeli customs. I will not bitch about Israel customs. I will...

Places: Jerusalem.

Coolest thing I did: Saw the Dead Sea Scrolls. Or some of them anyway.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Falafels are better in Israel than even in Lebanon. Viva life!

Ok, I lied. It took me 10 mins to get out of Jordan and walk to the Israeli border. It took 20 mins for an army of babes (due to compulsory military conscription for both sexes there are alot of very fit women with guns walking the streets of this country) to dismantle my luggage and go through my dirty underwear. These things I can understand. It then took 1.5 hours from the time I handed over my passport to the time I got a stamp. Any explaination? No. I just stood in the sun at the window and waited. Whenever I asked what was going on I got told to stand to one side. Man, was I pissed off at the other end. I think they made me wait 30 mins for every Arabic country I'd visited. Arse.

Jerusalem. So much history, most of it involving words like "bloody" and "destruction" and sometimes "religion". As home to the three biggest monothesic religions in the world, and being in a stategic crossroads between empires for a very long time, little Jeru has been destroyed by many interesting peoples. While some were good and left the people alone to do as they pleased, the owners of the big J have included Canaanites, Egyptians, Hittites, Mesopatamians, Hebrews, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Egyptians, Turks, Britans and finally Israelis. That's alot of people.

There's too much to detail, read your guidebooks. Every spot in the city has a shrine to something or other and it has to be said the Christians are the most over the top about it. Here's the church where Mary was born. Here's the one where she died. Here's the one where Mary's mum Anne was born. Here's the chruch where Jesus stubbed his big toe. It goes on and on. My favourite story is about the Church of the Holy Sepulture. It's the church the Byzantines built when they converted the Roman empire to Christianity. Constatine the emperor wanted a tour of the big event spots of Jesus' life. He was, after all, the emperor of Rome, and that means you pretty much get what you want. He sent his mum to check it out for him. The local priests didn't know where the big J had been buried and they told Mrs Constatine so. Knowing an answer like that was going to get someone thrown to the lions, she had to come up with something. She had a dream the spot was under an old Roman temple (which makes no sense because the big J was buried outside the city walls) so they did some digging. Lo and behold, they found a lot of wood. "Pieces of the true cross!" they decided. When Consta showed up he was so impressed he founded the chruch that has been there in some form ever since. A couple of hundred years ago an Greek was digging in his garden just outside the walls and found a stone tomb that had never been used. Nearby, archeologists found a hill with the shape of a skull visible on it's side, matching Golgotha in the bible (meaning place of the skull, where they nailed Big J to the Cross). The C o E recognises this place as the probable Sepulture, whereas every other Christian sect has too much riding on the original church. So illustrates how irrelevant religious tradition is. Who cares where he was burried?

I also find the Muslims claim to the Dome of the Rock pretty tenuous too. Jerusalem is never named, only that Mohamed went from the "big mosque" (mecca) to the far mosque (Jeru?) on his winged horse? Oh come on...

Anyway, say what you want about the past, the Jews are firmly in control now. I mean that as no understatement. There are police and troops on every corner practically, and thanks to the 18-22 band for conscription, most of them are boys and girls with very big guns. The entire population, from my parents age down has spent 4 years in the armed forces and retains a bloody great big firearm in their house or on their possesion. I have to look at all this and wonder how they live in this state. I don't want to get too deep into politics, but surely the current actions of the government here are going to prolong the time these people must live in this constant state of fear. The trouble is, it seems to be accepted as normal. It's quite simply terrifying.

The hostel I'm staying in (oddly enough, the Petra Hostel) is a study in Jerusalem Syndrome. This is the name given to people who come to this place and go a bit over the top religious-wise. Psychiatrists have named it it's that common. There are South Africans learning Hebrew, more devout Catholics than you can poke a stick at and a whole lot of African Jews that quite simply scare me a little. I've not had a conversation that dosen't dive into the deep end of someone's beliefs very, very quickly. While I'm all for freedom of religion, I'm a child of the Western al-la-carte style spiritualism that's so common today. Anyone who holds views that are this extreme make me uncomfortable. It's a good learning experience to watch but man, I'm quite keen to get into the secular world I've been promised in Tel Aviv.

I've had to put into words more than once my views on the "solution" to this countries problems. Everyone wants and opinion and many won't let you just be polite and say "hey, not my bag to tell you what to do". I'm quite a big fan of states founded with no ethnic or religious grounds, because that's what I see working in Australia. This is NOT a popular view here. Everyone want's you to say either "2 state solution" or one of the sides is right and should wipe the other one off the face of the Earth. I find this later view particularly worrying coming from the Jews. Ever hear of the Nazis? What did they do to you? Egads.

Having said all this, Jerusalem is unique. I'd say, seeing as some 2/3rds of the Earths poluation have been aligned with one of the religions represented here at some part of their lives should visit it. If nothing else it gives you a first hand view of the realities on the ground all that history has brought this part of the world. Not alot of it is good.

The truth about Bedouins


Aqaba :: Jordan

Lots and lots of places starting with the word "Wadi".

Places: Damascus, Amman, Jeresh, Petra, Wadi Araba, Wadi Rum & Aqaba.

Coolest thing I did: Petra. Say no more.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The snorkeling on the Jordan side of the Red Sea is better than the diving.

The trip from Beirut to Amman via Damascus should take 4 hours. It was closer to 12 for me. After getting on a bus that was 2 hours late, being held up as a family got turfed from the bus for not having papers, being dumped in the outer reaches of Damascus and having to make my own way to the bus station I ended up having to share a taxi to Jordan. This was ok because 2 of my fellow passengers were Jordinians who helped me out, but we were stuck at the border because our other taximate, a Syrian was trying to take too much booze and alcohol into Jordan and wanted to try and sell it at the border instead of dumping it. Gah.

Amman is a big city. Jeresh has ruins. There's not a whole lot more I can say really. I did, however, managed to arrive at the start of Ramadan and that makes cities a less fun place to be in. Even if you can get food during daylight hours, you can't eat it without people calling you insensitive or spitting on you. On the upside though, the huge meal that takes place just after sunset prayers is something to behold. Most of the cafes drag rows and rows of tables out into the streets and blokes line up shoulder to shoulder to tuck into their first meal of the day. I say blokes because I didn't see any women that weren't tourists. Apparently it's more common to eat at home during Ramadan and it's only the workers and shopkeepers who can't make it back in time that eat on the street. Those and us hungry infadels.

It was on the bus from Amman to Petra that my trip started to get interesting. I met a couple of Japanese guys Keisuke & Shigeru while we were waiting for the bus, and soon were also talking to a yubbie (Young Urban Bedouin) named Ahmed. His family used to live in caves in the ruins in Petra until the goverment built them a village 15 years ago and moved them out. He offered to let us stay on his parents floor, which was cool.

Lets say something about staying with the Bedouins. From what they've told me if you are sleeping in a tent in the desert these days, you are staying with the Disneyland version of the locals. Most of them live in concrete houses with running cold water. Ahmed's family showed us great hospitality, but the conditions became cramped when the three of us were added to their already expansive family (at least 10 siblings!). His parents can't speak English, his father is partially deaf from time spent in an Iraqi jail during the Iran-Iraq war (long story), but they managed to grin at everything we said. For the cost of food we were shown a great deal of love. Ahmed's older brother also showed us a copy of National Geographic from 1998 where his mother is shown cooking bread for the photograhpers in the desert. It's nice to stay with famous people.

Petra is amazing. Even Indiana Jones movies don't prepare you for the legacy that the little known Nabeatens left here. Natural formations of sandstone in many red and yellow hues gave these arabs a plethora of soft stone to carve in. At the peak of their rule here, they carved massive stone temple and tomb fascades into the cliff faces, quite often exposing bands of contrasting colour that only adds to the effect. While much restoration work is going on, I found the tombs that had been left to the elements more amazing. The Nabeatens used to control the trade route between the Greek and Arab worlds, making them pretty big wigs in their time. They tamed the conditions by carving water resivouirs into the tops of the cliffs and designing a system of drainage that wouldn't be seen in Rome for another couple of hundred years. Pretty cool stuff. However, the Romans weren't real keen on competing powers so took over Arabia and moved the trade routes by force. The place fell into ruin until a Swiss bloke in the 1800s stumbed onto it. Then some other stuff happened and then Harrison Ford came here to play Indiana Jones. I've skipped some bits but you get the gist.

We were taken out to sleep under the stars in the desert of Wadi Araba. This involved 2 Bedoiuns, 2 Japanese and 1 Aussie all drunk on Arak (kind of like Turkish Raki) in a jeep. The more famous desert of Wadi Rum is more spectacular but to get to Wadi Araba you drive through some spectacular basalt mountains and then sleep on proper sand dunes, as opposed to the stoney kind Rum has. You also get the nice fact that it's very hard to get to and we had the whole place to ourselves.

After a second day in Petra (you could spend a week there easily) we hooked up with Ahmed's cousin Jafar who took us to the aforementioned Wadi Rum. He hoons around the desert like a man possessed and the fact that we'd already polished off some whiskey kind of helped his confidence. Like most Jordinians I've met, he's got a pretty lax attitude towards the Holy Month of Fasting. Due to being a bit late we jetted around the famous rock formations at top speed. These include a Sphinx, Romeo and Juliet kissing, two stone bridges and a sheer cliff where stones to build houses were cut from still showing ancient Aremaic, Hebrew and Arabic inscriptions. It's there that we watched the sun go down over the almost lunar landscape.

Due to Keisuke freezing his arse off the night before, he was not too keen to sleep out under the stars again, so Jafar took us to a "Bedouin Tent" his father's cousin ran for the tourists. There we met, well, tourists. While both the boys from Japan and the Arabs were good to me and lots of laughs, sometimes you have to converse with native English speakers just to keep your sanity. I get the feeling that these guys were paying hand over fist for the privilege of sleeping out there. Like I said, it's Bedouin Disneyland.

Later the next day we stopped off a Jafar's place in the Bedouin village on the Red Sea port of Aqaba, so he could change. Like the one in Petra, the government resettled the Bedouin in concrete houses, but these seemed a bit less shabby. Perhaps all those rich divers pay better.

Speaking of money, the understanding I came to with both our guides was obviously not extended to the Japanese guys. Whilst I came out of the whole encounter a whole lot better than if I'd had to organise all these tours and accomadation seperately, the yubbies were sure to make sure I was alone before we haggled over the cost of things. I pretty much got away with food and peterol money plus a few extra Dinars. I could see from the looks on the Japanese boys faces later on that a very valuable lesson had been learned about negotiating price before embarking on a trip. It's one thing to be offered free accomadation, but there always has to be an angle. These guys don't have other jobs so have to make their money from the tourists. How much depends on the tourist. It is definetly a sliding scale that does not favour East Asians. I found the continued overt racism a bit hard to deal with, but I have to admit I was treated like a king so I was a little more forgiving that I would normally have been. Looking back I was probably a valuable part of their scam from the start, as if I'd not gone with Ahmed in the first place I doubt the other guys would too. Still, I think what they paid for was a life lesson. And before the bill came out, they were having a ball.

Aqaba is amazing. We staying at a campsite over the road from the main dive beach and you would walk out of your hut, over the road then onto the coral. At maybe 10m offshore, the coral is good, at 20m offshore it's on par with anything I saw on the Barrier Reef. I saw so many kinds of fish, eels and even a turtle. Add to that the dropped a Russian tank (the treaded kind) down 5m 20 years ago and you have something unique. The tank is too small to swim into, but the doors have been prised open and the hatches removed. The magazines for the main guns are even still in place. The coral is starting to take over, and in another 20 years I think it will look even more bizzare.

So, I'm off into "occupied Palestine" just as soon as the Egyptians visa my passport. I've met enough people who have just come from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to put my fears at ease, but I still can't help but be a bit worried due to fact the word "bomb" gets used alot in news stories about the place. However, it would be a shame to have come all this way and not done it.