I am standing in the entrance of our new house, the door is ajar and Walid and his colleagues are walking in with boxes. They are working through Ramadan meaning they won't get to eat or drink until sundown. My duty is to check off all the numbered boxes and direct Walid and the rest where to deposit their loads. The parquet is covered with tape to protect it from the moving furniture and the house smells like fresh paint. White. Everything is stark white. We hadn't really prepared for this day and we just keep telling the men to bring the boxes upstairs to avoid having to think it out clearly. The wind is blowing in the house and I am freezing. Box 2. Garage. Box 34. Upstairs. Box 120. Small bedroom. Alistair, my boyfriend, is in the next room with another Allied International man struggling to get his TV and couches to fit in the sitting room. We had already argued about where to put the furniture and I decided just to let him do his own thing. The boxes keep coming in and I am sniffling, wiping my nose on my sweatshirt, and trying to keep warm. The heat hadn't been ready so the house is cold and empty. It is the end of September and winter decided to come a couple of months early to Switzerland. Two weeks before I had turned 38. Things with Alistair weren’t going well, his father was dying, I just had a miscarriage and my work was a nightmare. I had planned to live in Switzerland two years for work and it turned into five years. I accumulated 158 boxes of “stuff” in those five years, 60 months or 1,826.25 days. The 158 boxes and this house and my life were slowly suffocating me and pinning me to the ground. I felt trapped and unhappy and needed a break.
My sister was about to start a new job in New York and was hankering for a vacation before she began her new role. When she asked me if I wanted to go with her to Israel I accepted immediately. I told Alistair I needed a vacation; I went on line and used my frequent flyer points to book a ticket to Tel Aviv.
I landed in Tel Aviv and the heat, the light and humidity enveloped me immediately. I took a cab and fumbled through some basic Hebrew words that managed to get me to the hotel where my sister was waiting for me. We were staying at the Sheraton Moriah, a supposedly luxury skyscraper hotel smack on the beach, whose lobby was full of orthodox Jews for shabbat. Orthodox women modestly dressed with their heads covered with scarves, sat beside their bearded husbands whilst their many children played around them. There were special shabbat elevators that automatically stopped at every floor so no buttons needed to be pressed. mezuzahs graced every doorway. We spent the afternoon walking along the beach until my inner thighs were chafed, taking in the smells of the Middle East—the sea, the spicy kebabs, and roasted coffee. The incredible mix of people, clothing, colors and sounds made me feel I had stepped into a movie. We walked that first night all the way to Jaffa, the old Arab town, and ate in a little restaurant serving homemade Jewish food like schnitzel, in the heart of the flea market sitting and eating on furniture that was from the flea market and up for sale. The sun set over the Mediterranean right when the megaphones fixed on the minarets started chanting isha’a, the evening prayer. I felt at home. The following day we took a private tour to Caesaria, the old Roman capital, built right on the sea with amphitheaters, baths, aqueducts and a hippodrome. The guide pointed out the ancient public toilet seats and made us sit on them and pose for a picture. We moved further along the coast to Haifa, where the Ba’hai religion built a temple and gardens spending almost 250 million dollars. Israel is definitely not lacking religions and the Ba’hai religion believes in universal tolerance and goodness but does not allow its followers to move to Israel (so there are only 200 of them in Israel). The perfectly manicured gardens start on the hills of Haifa and spiral down towards the sea. Only the Ba’hai can walk down the steps as part of their pilgrimage. We just stopped at the first gate, took a couple of pictures of the gardens and of the covered Palestinian women visiting the gardens and left. We moved onto Akko, another Arab village, with the characteristic of having been built on an old Crusader town. Supposedly Al-Jazar, the sultan nicknamed “the Butcher”, after conquering the city, decided to completely bury the Crusader city and build his Islamic city on top of it. Our guide, Raffi, kind of hinted that that is what the “muslims” tend to do—build their mosques on top of other people’s holy sites. The Crusader halls were later discovered and dug up and are intact with the stem of the fleur de lis visibly carved in the stone. A couple of Californian tourists had a hard time understanding the historic context and it was a lot to take in that Israel had a been a territory where the Phoenicians, Romans, Ottomans, and Crusaders had passed through at different times. Their history stopped roughly at 1948 and Israel’s independence. We ended the tour at the border with Lebanon in a place called Rosh Naquira. We took a cable down to the grottoes naturally formed by the break of the waves that created natural turquoise swimming pools. We checked out the border guarded by the Israelis, and the American tourist asked the solider “if there was any action”, after his wife had asked our guide if the Israelis could detect Lebanese submarines coming over the border.
We spent our last day in Tel Aviv enjoying the beach until a masturbator decided to use us as inspiration so we headed downtown where we shopped and visited the oldest Jewish neighborhood. We ended the day eating at the best falafel joint in town. We left Tel Aviv for the Dead Sea with a wonderful driver, Esteban, originally from Chile. He spoke to us in Spanish and told us he had come to Israel over 50 years ago, lived for some time in a kibbutz and eventually came to Tel Aviv. The ride to the Ein Bokek on the Dead Sea was interesting and it passed very close to the West bank. We passed farmland and then hit the desert. Bedouin camps appeared intermittently along the rode. Esteban said they were “good arabs” and paid taxes and did military service and the Israeli government had generously constructed places for them to live. My guidebook said that the Bedouins were trying to retain their nomadic life but were forced into these settlements. We finally saw the Dead Sea, a relieving spot of blue after kilometers of downhill desert to 472meters below sea level. We checked into an appalling, ugly hotel built on the sea and the lobby was filled with hundreds of middle-aged people walking around in white terry-cloth bathrobes branded “Meridien”. We went to float in the Dead Sea. The water was warm and slimy and you couldn’t help but feel like a buoy. It was hard to swim and if water got in your eye you were basically blinded and needed to be escorted out to shore. A lot of Russian tourists with big bellies, elder New York Jewish ladies and a couple of French families were floating and smearing their bodies with mud and exfoliating with salt. The mud actually had to be bought in packages in the hotel. We were happy to get out of there. The following morning, we left for Masada, another ancient Roman site boasting a fortress built on top of a mountaintop in the desert. This time we had to take a cable car up the mountain and visited the ruins on the plateau. The Romans had managed to construct palaces, baths, temples and cisterns in the middle of the desert. This site was later taken over by the Jews and is symbolic for them because they resisted a siege by the Romans and rather than succumb to them they elected 10 of their own people to massacre the whole population. We finished the tour with freshly squeezed pomegranate juice and headed towards Jerusalem. Alian, our driver, had the sweetest eyes and temperament. He waited for us to tour Masada three hours and then took us all the way to our hotel in East Jerusalem and made sure we got in safely. Most tourists stay in the Western part of the city but we wanted to see the more “Palestinian” side. We were offered drinks (freshly squeezed lemonade blended with mint) and had a delicious snack of hummus, tabouleh, olives and pita. The hotel offered political tours like trips to see the huge wall that Israelis are building today to divide the East part of the city from the West (like Berlin during the Cold War) or trips to the West Bank to see firsthand the plight of the Palestinian refugees. We decided not to go on these visits but rather focus on the positive aspects of the city this time around. Jerusalem is truly impressive. A city Judaism, Islam, and Christianity claim Holy and has contributed in making the Old City a labyrinth of churches, mosques, synagogues and a major pilgrimage site for ultra-religious people of all faiths. The born again Christians were singing and swaying, arms outstretched at the place of Jesus’ last supper, the Hassidics were decked our for shabbat with their fur cats and satin jackets in 30 degree weather with wives in wigs trailing behind with numerous kids, and the Muslims called out from loud speakers on all the Mosques to pray five times a day. What an unbelievable place. Friday is a holiday for Muslims, Saturday for the Jews and Sunday for the Christians! We took our time discovering the city. We visited the Jewish section, the Armenian, the Christian and the Arab part of the Old City. We ate at a great Moroccan restaurant, we prayed at the Western wall, we went to an Armenian mass, saw the Ethiopian Coptic church, we bought traditional Palestinian ceramics, we prayed where Mary was laid to rest, we shopped in the Arab souk midst the smell of cardamom and saffron, and on our last night we listened to Arabic music and watched our new friends dance the night away.
The security to leave was unbelievable. It didn’t help my passport had stamps from Marrakech, Beirut, and Sharm-el-Sheik from previous vacations. I was put under maximum-security check, which took over three hours. I missed my connecting flight in Milan and spent six hours in the Milan airport. The weather was cold and the sky was cloudy. Alistair called me. He told me his father was getting worse and probably wouldn’t live until Christmas. I agreed to go with him to England the following weekend to help his mother and enjoy the last moments with his father. Then my best-friend Marzia called. We talked about our gay friends, Jim and Simon, who after12 years were breaking up. I knew something hadn’t been right and that something had happened to Jim so I probed until Marzia admitted that he had found out he was HIV positive. I was stunned and numb. With 4 more hours to kill, I cried and started shopping. I bought a new suitcase so I could roll all the Armenian ceramics I had bought, I bought a scarf at Etro, sneakers and pants from Nike, an ink recharge for my Montblanc pen and also tried to buy beautiful black leather boots from Bruno Magli but luckily they wouldn’t zip over my calves. When I finally got home with all my stuff, the house was dark and cold and I was alone. I unpacked the stuff and made a list of all the things I needed to do.
My sister was about to start a new job in New York and was hankering for a vacation before she began her new role. When she asked me if I wanted to go with her to Israel I accepted immediately. I told Alistair I needed a vacation; I went on line and used my frequent flyer points to book a ticket to Tel Aviv.
I landed in Tel Aviv and the heat, the light and humidity enveloped me immediately. I took a cab and fumbled through some basic Hebrew words that managed to get me to the hotel where my sister was waiting for me. We were staying at the Sheraton Moriah, a supposedly luxury skyscraper hotel smack on the beach, whose lobby was full of orthodox Jews for shabbat. Orthodox women modestly dressed with their heads covered with scarves, sat beside their bearded husbands whilst their many children played around them. There were special shabbat elevators that automatically stopped at every floor so no buttons needed to be pressed. mezuzahs graced every doorway. We spent the afternoon walking along the beach until my inner thighs were chafed, taking in the smells of the Middle East—the sea, the spicy kebabs, and roasted coffee. The incredible mix of people, clothing, colors and sounds made me feel I had stepped into a movie. We walked that first night all the way to Jaffa, the old Arab town, and ate in a little restaurant serving homemade Jewish food like schnitzel, in the heart of the flea market sitting and eating on furniture that was from the flea market and up for sale. The sun set over the Mediterranean right when the megaphones fixed on the minarets started chanting isha’a, the evening prayer. I felt at home. The following day we took a private tour to Caesaria, the old Roman capital, built right on the sea with amphitheaters, baths, aqueducts and a hippodrome. The guide pointed out the ancient public toilet seats and made us sit on them and pose for a picture. We moved further along the coast to Haifa, where the Ba’hai religion built a temple and gardens spending almost 250 million dollars. Israel is definitely not lacking religions and the Ba’hai religion believes in universal tolerance and goodness but does not allow its followers to move to Israel (so there are only 200 of them in Israel). The perfectly manicured gardens start on the hills of Haifa and spiral down towards the sea. Only the Ba’hai can walk down the steps as part of their pilgrimage. We just stopped at the first gate, took a couple of pictures of the gardens and of the covered Palestinian women visiting the gardens and left. We moved onto Akko, another Arab village, with the characteristic of having been built on an old Crusader town. Supposedly Al-Jazar, the sultan nicknamed “the Butcher”, after conquering the city, decided to completely bury the Crusader city and build his Islamic city on top of it. Our guide, Raffi, kind of hinted that that is what the “muslims” tend to do—build their mosques on top of other people’s holy sites. The Crusader halls were later discovered and dug up and are intact with the stem of the fleur de lis visibly carved in the stone. A couple of Californian tourists had a hard time understanding the historic context and it was a lot to take in that Israel had a been a territory where the Phoenicians, Romans, Ottomans, and Crusaders had passed through at different times. Their history stopped roughly at 1948 and Israel’s independence. We ended the tour at the border with Lebanon in a place called Rosh Naquira. We took a cable down to the grottoes naturally formed by the break of the waves that created natural turquoise swimming pools. We checked out the border guarded by the Israelis, and the American tourist asked the solider “if there was any action”, after his wife had asked our guide if the Israelis could detect Lebanese submarines coming over the border.
We spent our last day in Tel Aviv enjoying the beach until a masturbator decided to use us as inspiration so we headed downtown where we shopped and visited the oldest Jewish neighborhood. We ended the day eating at the best falafel joint in town. We left Tel Aviv for the Dead Sea with a wonderful driver, Esteban, originally from Chile. He spoke to us in Spanish and told us he had come to Israel over 50 years ago, lived for some time in a kibbutz and eventually came to Tel Aviv. The ride to the Ein Bokek on the Dead Sea was interesting and it passed very close to the West bank. We passed farmland and then hit the desert. Bedouin camps appeared intermittently along the rode. Esteban said they were “good arabs” and paid taxes and did military service and the Israeli government had generously constructed places for them to live. My guidebook said that the Bedouins were trying to retain their nomadic life but were forced into these settlements. We finally saw the Dead Sea, a relieving spot of blue after kilometers of downhill desert to 472meters below sea level. We checked into an appalling, ugly hotel built on the sea and the lobby was filled with hundreds of middle-aged people walking around in white terry-cloth bathrobes branded “Meridien”. We went to float in the Dead Sea. The water was warm and slimy and you couldn’t help but feel like a buoy. It was hard to swim and if water got in your eye you were basically blinded and needed to be escorted out to shore. A lot of Russian tourists with big bellies, elder New York Jewish ladies and a couple of French families were floating and smearing their bodies with mud and exfoliating with salt. The mud actually had to be bought in packages in the hotel. We were happy to get out of there. The following morning, we left for Masada, another ancient Roman site boasting a fortress built on top of a mountaintop in the desert. This time we had to take a cable car up the mountain and visited the ruins on the plateau. The Romans had managed to construct palaces, baths, temples and cisterns in the middle of the desert. This site was later taken over by the Jews and is symbolic for them because they resisted a siege by the Romans and rather than succumb to them they elected 10 of their own people to massacre the whole population. We finished the tour with freshly squeezed pomegranate juice and headed towards Jerusalem. Alian, our driver, had the sweetest eyes and temperament. He waited for us to tour Masada three hours and then took us all the way to our hotel in East Jerusalem and made sure we got in safely. Most tourists stay in the Western part of the city but we wanted to see the more “Palestinian” side. We were offered drinks (freshly squeezed lemonade blended with mint) and had a delicious snack of hummus, tabouleh, olives and pita. The hotel offered political tours like trips to see the huge wall that Israelis are building today to divide the East part of the city from the West (like Berlin during the Cold War) or trips to the West Bank to see firsthand the plight of the Palestinian refugees. We decided not to go on these visits but rather focus on the positive aspects of the city this time around. Jerusalem is truly impressive. A city Judaism, Islam, and Christianity claim Holy and has contributed in making the Old City a labyrinth of churches, mosques, synagogues and a major pilgrimage site for ultra-religious people of all faiths. The born again Christians were singing and swaying, arms outstretched at the place of Jesus’ last supper, the Hassidics were decked our for shabbat with their fur cats and satin jackets in 30 degree weather with wives in wigs trailing behind with numerous kids, and the Muslims called out from loud speakers on all the Mosques to pray five times a day. What an unbelievable place. Friday is a holiday for Muslims, Saturday for the Jews and Sunday for the Christians! We took our time discovering the city. We visited the Jewish section, the Armenian, the Christian and the Arab part of the Old City. We ate at a great Moroccan restaurant, we prayed at the Western wall, we went to an Armenian mass, saw the Ethiopian Coptic church, we bought traditional Palestinian ceramics, we prayed where Mary was laid to rest, we shopped in the Arab souk midst the smell of cardamom and saffron, and on our last night we listened to Arabic music and watched our new friends dance the night away.
The security to leave was unbelievable. It didn’t help my passport had stamps from Marrakech, Beirut, and Sharm-el-Sheik from previous vacations. I was put under maximum-security check, which took over three hours. I missed my connecting flight in Milan and spent six hours in the Milan airport. The weather was cold and the sky was cloudy. Alistair called me. He told me his father was getting worse and probably wouldn’t live until Christmas. I agreed to go with him to England the following weekend to help his mother and enjoy the last moments with his father. Then my best-friend Marzia called. We talked about our gay friends, Jim and Simon, who after12 years were breaking up. I knew something hadn’t been right and that something had happened to Jim so I probed until Marzia admitted that he had found out he was HIV positive. I was stunned and numb. With 4 more hours to kill, I cried and started shopping. I bought a new suitcase so I could roll all the Armenian ceramics I had bought, I bought a scarf at Etro, sneakers and pants from Nike, an ink recharge for my Montblanc pen and also tried to buy beautiful black leather boots from Bruno Magli but luckily they wouldn’t zip over my calves. When I finally got home with all my stuff, the house was dark and cold and I was alone. I unpacked the stuff and made a list of all the things I needed to do.
