Coming back from the other world.. Our trip to the Promise Land, Israel

(From http://www.unmondodibene.com/)
Returned. With sore feet and a pair of stigmata between the fingers.
Back from the Babel of religions, a crossroads of grudges, angry klingoniani, the Vulcans and androids armed pacified. Jerusalem.
We returned from encrustations of salt from the Dead Sea, the spa night that reconciles the body with the soul, the dawn that lights the colors of the desert.
Back from Tel Aviv, who seems to take a step, and Rimini, and will take another six to Beirut, he turned the corner and return to Palestine.
We went there for the first time, after having been there a million times, folded in the pages of Philip Roth and Nathan Englander, Abraham Yehoshua and Amos Oz. For years we searched the three Hasidim mind the words of Chaim Potok and lived in the Shtetl of Isaac Singer.
So we went there, among those who believe that Israel - rightly or wrongly - to be a Member of this world and not only the Kingdom of Heaven.
We listened to the prayers of the stones of a wall, crossed the door of the Temple Mount, which leads to the splendor of the mosques.
And dates and bought sweets from vendors Arabs.
But something we overlooked.
For the duration of this short trip, the burning question of who has been dismissed, deported, humiliated.
We chose to stay on this side of the Green Line, for this time.
We moved, not faithful to the rites of the Armenian Church, in front of the Copts of Ethiopia excited.
And we looked at without being able to formulate a precise thought, a vernerdì evening, returning from the wall of tears through the Muslim Quarter of Old City.
A long line of Hasidim with their coats flapping, round fur hats, braided sideburns and briskly among the stalls of fruit of Palestinian merchants and veiled women. How could we not ignore their mutual love? And those young men, then, nationalist yeshiva students who were screaming the songs of the Sabbath, as to defy the noisy souks in the tranquility of their arrogant race between the Wailing Wall and the Damascus Gate.
And the children, finally, the Palestinian children who mocked by bullies with small gestures of their peers with the skullcap, curly sideburns and white shirt.
This time we tracurato the other side of Israel.
Of course, we have to go back.
http://www.unmondodibene.com/

 

Travelogue In Israel: Jerusalem. First day.

At the airport in Tel Aviv come prepared for the worst. We know that our lives are they going to pieces and scour to find a trace of suspicion, a shred of evidence that cast a shadow over us of undesirability.

We arrive at the customs-style stalls essential sixties, before they have even removed the zainone Iaia, already fearful about what will happen to us. Let's look at those before us and we try to pick up their difficulties, weaknesses of their answers to pressing questions of the border police. But nothing, almost nothing we can not catch, kept at a safe distance.

In our turn we go, say goodbye politely and we send our passports.

We smile.

The young agent, apparently joined by another expert, see our photos and our faces. Over and over again. Articulates our names and then we look again. He asks us why we are entering Israel, as we will be there, where we will go and if we travel alone or in a group. Meanwhile, the two flow times the pages of our passports. Then we leave there and go away, come back, still run the pages of the passport, look at us in the face and we smile. What do you do? They are told not to put the stamp? And the Lionheart says, "if they offend us is over." And the entry stamps on passports flying dive. We did it, we are in, without even having been locked up in some safe room and stripped naked with a probe that covers the intestines.

Here we are at the arrivals. Picked up at our first ATM 1000 shekels and get out from under the sky of Israel.

Two girls, one Spanish and one in Argentina, an Italian businessman, a family of grumpy Russians and a distinguished gentleman Israel that makes us a small introduction about the city leave with us to Jerusalem on sherut: 58.40 shekels in the skull, fixed rate printed in the middle, which become indisputably arrival 60.

The driver left us in a Nablus street, Damascus Gate area, just opposite the bus station to depart for the Palestinian Territories. We have hotels in the Salah-ad-Din Street. We take the zainone Iaia, the trolley and shoulder bag, we salute the Hispanic girls who have the hotel and we walk in the old city of Damascus to the door to better orient ourselves.

We follow a long string of market stalls along the sidewalk and literally slalom through the crowd. At the Damascus Gate we go along the walls of the old town along the Suleyman and then go back in Salah-ad-Din to the Hotel Capitol, in the full charm of a little 'decadent lush East Jerusalem.

ax luggage off again. From the door of Herod, a sheltered access rather than the great Damascus Gate, we enter the Old City, Muslim Quarter side. We come across children playing soccer, walking wearily elderly and sellers rather lazy and not at all intrusive. We move aimlessly, we follow what we like in the labyrinth of the old town, until the apparition of the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock.

continuous http://www.unmondodibene.com/2011/04/diario-di-viaggio-in-Israele.html

Diary of trip to Israel: Jerusalem, the second day.

The alarm goes off early, but not early, the rest of the day yesterday was quite tiring. We dress and go down in the breakfast lounge. Seems to have passed the locusts. The room is half empty but there is a table untouched. Before we passed a group of pilgrims led by a Romanian Orthodox priest from the tawny beard we saw wandering around the corridors with his retinue of small and very quick nun.
In a minute the friendly staff room equip a table near the buffet. The breakfast is rich, more salty than sweet, lots of vegetables and fruit, yogurt, fresh cheese, a few slices of cake, toast and jam. Nothing bioches, but what is there to prepare well long day ahead.

Back to the old town, this time coming from the monumental gate of Damascus. Here we stopped for some pictures and let us go, moving some 'blind alleys in the maze. Despite the hearty breakfast we let ourselves be seduced by the delicious candy shops in the covered market along the Cardo, until the light comes from a side street that does not lead us in a street populated by cats, but very few humans.

We continue in this landscape so different from the teeming streets of the Arab quarter, realizing little by little, from the clothes and the faces of East Africa, to be entered into the territory Coptic. Nth turning point here is the first souvenir shops in a way that leads us in the sunny courtyard of the Monastery of the Ethiopian Church.

Here a group of Italians queued to enter by a door and low and narrow to ancient Ethiopian church, where a priest listens to readings of his pupil. Continuing, we arrive at another chapel, as ancient and evocative, and then out again, mysteriously landed on the front of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre.

continues:
http://www.unmondodibene.com/2011/04/diario-di-viaggio-in-israele_10.html