It’s a Small World

It feels like a month instead of only 60 hours ago that we were “four good-looking devils” eating an all American meal at the Brookings Perkins. I’m not sure what we did that triggered the jolly lady walking by to refer to us as good looking devils, but apparently that’s how Heath, Seth, Zach n I strike people. Today I sat on a plastic chair on the rocky hilltop of Gibeon, Palestine and drank strong coffee lovingly cooked over a trash fire by a friendly Muslim family. Nobody called us good looking devils in English, but perhaps they did in Arabic. Here’s the whole story.

Eleven months ago we bought tickets to Israel. We had some friends who wanted to go and we offered to do the planning and whatnot and take them around here. Excellent excuse to return of course. And if we were gonna actually make it fun for them we better go early and get some stuff figured out, like where to eat and where the toilets are and where you can or cannot cross into West Bank and we won’t even get into all the Covid stuff. Our boys stayed home this time, but we had a Kenya friend, James, join us for the first 2 weeks! Talk about a grand time!

Flights were flawless and we arrived at our home in Abu Dis in time for a bite of cake and tea before bed. We’re staying behind the wall. Yes. In dangerous Palestine. So far the biggest threat has been the two kids who reeeeallly wanted a selfie with me. They were cute till they weren’t. Ok, so there may have been a bigger threat but we’ll never know. It happened just after sunset, back behind some sheep barns at the end of civilization. We were scouting the countryside for Bozez and Seneh, the two rocks Jonathan and his armor bearer passed between on their way to slaughter all those Philistines. The road had sort of petered into a rocky path and instead of Bozez and Seneh we were flanked by two tossed together sheep barns with flapping tarps. We got out and hiked a bit, dodging disgusting rubbish but no large rocks appeared. Instead we watched a truck way down in the valley on the same path we were. It was being weird. That’s all I can say. We had given up and turned back and had just reached the sheep barns when the truck came roaring around us, blocked the road and four guys leapt out. They asked if we needed anything and we assured them that we absolutely knew what we were doing and so they took off. When we got to the Main Street where we could leave town there they were waiting. They told us politely but in no uncertain tones that the way out was to the left and they followed us right to the town barrier before turning back. A threat? No idea.

Now for some chronological stuff.

Our morning started with a delicious breakfast served by our hostess Fadwa. She’s a real sweetheart. A quick stop at the supermarket got us stocked with essentials. I loved it. The hectic feel of a foreign store, the unreadable labels, the carts that have all four wheels on swivels, the strange smells. With each new encounter I have felt myself relaxing. I didn’t realize how trapped I had felt in the last two years at home sweet home.

Next came long, boring rental car swappage (new word alert) that involved lots of Jerusalem backstreets and waiting on curbs and stuff. The weather was perfect.

After a excellent lunch in Abu Ghosh we headed for the nudist springs. Oh wait, it’s actually called Hannah’s spring and it’s at the High Place near Gibeon where apparently Samuel himself is buried. Also the place where the Tabernacle was and Solomon got wisdom and all that stuff. The views from the hill are fabulous. We feasted our eyes, scrambled in ruins and told James to be quiet in the Mosque built up there:). We were standing at Hannah’s spring reading some Gibeon stuff in the Bible when two middle aged Jewish men came and said they just wanted us to know that they would be dipping naked shortly and it certainly didn’t bother them if we stayed but on the off chance it bothered us we were duly warned. We left.

From there we went to Gibeon town sight which is now just a rocky grassland on a slightly lower hill than the other. It was full of Muslim families picnicking and children running around. That all sounds innocent until you realize that this is also ruins so in the center of the area there was a huge deep cistern dug down into the rock. There was a worn out set of stairs winding down down down till you reached water. It was amazing! But I wonder if kids ever fall in?!? We were down in the cisterns when a bunch of teenagers started calling down to us and asking us everything they could think of in English. And thus it evolved that we ended up on plastic chairs drinking black, thick coffee.

Well, two plastic chairs, one for me and one for the mom of the family. The dad and son-in-law made the coffee and the rest of us chattered with Google Translate and generous hand flapping. When the fire under the coffee would get a little low they would pluck up some trash and keep it going. It was beautiful and fun. There were 8 kids and one son-in-law in the family. Mom was one year older than me. That was a touch alarming. Also alarming to me was that they poured the coffee into the thinnest plastic disposable cups ever.

We dragged back to Abu Dis around supper time and planned to come straight home. Instead we were lured in by a sweet shop sign where we ate absolutely delectable knafeh, which is cheese covered in deliciousness and sweetness and served slightly warm and stringy. Definitely a 10!!!

And now my head is starting to bob and it’s high time I slept. Jet leg hasn’t reared its ugly mug yet so for that I am grateful.