It’s a Small World

“Hey, don’t touch the horse.” The command, given in highly accented English, is coming from an slightly nervous Arabic boy, and he is gaining his courage mostly from his two companions. The thing is, we didn’t even want to touch the horse. He was skinny and noisy and all together sort of yuck.

The horse, boys and us were on an incredibly steep hillside in the middle of Jerusalem. Cutting between the Old City and the newer city is a deep valley called the Hinnom Valley. (Jeremiah 32:31–35) It’s mostly a National Park, but at the very end it’s obviously a pasture for random animals. Think sheep, horses and a camel. It’s also the where the ancient tomb of Annas the High Priest is allegedly located. We had explored a fair bit of the poppy splashed hillside, and while we had found plenty of tombs, we hadn’t found the one we were looking for. It’s not properly labeled on your average city map, so hence the trouble. The tombs we had found went deep into the hillside, creepy, damp places where spider webs hung thick and you had to crouch and crawl from one crypt to another, never knowing what you’d find in the next room. No bones tho.

We had about given up the search when the boys came on the scene. They had been busy burning stuff by their small herding shanty and hadn’t noticed us for a while. Apparently tourists aren’t normally wandering their hill, because they seemed quite unsure about us. But after we heeded their command to leave the horse alone, tossed some Arabic words at them and in general were non threatening, they got all friendly. We showed them a pic on the phone of the sought after tomb, and they enthusiastically agreed to bring us there. There was a quick heated argument over where it actually was, but in the end they all agreed. It was by the camel.

The camel didn’t look any friendlier than the horse, and the boys seemed a little nervous of it. He was tied to a post at the opening of the tomb. I can’t imagine what Annas would think. We asked the kids if we could go in and got a firm “no”. “If you go in, he goes in” they said, flapping their hands at the camel. Meanwhile the beast had come to check me out and I reached out to pet it while the kids gasped. Thankfully it didn’t bite. I was a bit nervous myself. Between their passable English and my halting Arabic, we had now become great friends. They were slightly horrified that we were from the USA, and immediately asked, “do you like Israel or Palestine?” To any adult, the question wouldn’t have an answer. It’s too complex. To a 10 year old boy, it’s all very black and white. I told them in English that I liked Israel, and in Arabic that I loved Palestine. They were satisfied, but one kid asked if he could quick run home and get his phone to show us something. If we would please wait, he would be very quick. Very. And so we waited there on the trash strewn hill, and watched as he rushed home, his legs just churning. Pretty soon he was back, and with a roguish grin he showed us a video. It was very short. A small dog walked past an American and Israeli flag, lifted its leg and whizzed on it. The end. It was startling and very funny.

So yes, we are back in Jerusalem, where the good still far outweighs the bad and if we had no journalists, we wouldn’t have a hot clue there was a war going on. Well, we would seriously wonder where the tourists were, but besides that, the surface is calm. Kids still play in the streets, Arabs and Jews sell their wares side by side and the security all looks extremely relaxed. Even the airport was bustling when we flew in last night. But it was mostly Israelis bustling. There wasn’t the huge groups of Babtist’s, bless their hearts, who were meeting and greeting and in general acting American. We didn’t even have to talk to customs or border police. Just whipped on out into the cool, rainy night.

We fought with the little Kia and of course with navigation, but eventually we rocked up to St Thomas guesthouse where we spent the night. Its in a church right close to the Old City, so that was a different experience. Sadly the water heater was powered by solar, and it has rained and rained in Jerusalem. Yes, a loooong day of flying and no hot water. Mere trifle, really. The heater worked, the bed was comfy and we slept like the dead.

Breakfast, such as it was, was served at 8am. The dining room was “upstairs” in the basement. It was cold things in bowls and tough as nails pitas. We ate lots cause we’re on a budget and it was free. Actually mostly because I got my cheap face lotion confiscated at the airport and had to buy some horrible expensive stuff in the airport, so now I won’t spend on anything else;).

Our goal for the day was to get the feel of the situation and also explore some new things we hadn’t seen yet. Like the water pool from King Herrods time that fed water into the old city. It’s now in a ragtag park, surrounded by barbed wire that has lots of convenient holes. There’s a plastic chair and an office chair floating in it, and it’s altogether run down and scummy. But it’s still kinda cool to actually see it, and know who built it. They used it till not that many years ago, but now it’s clearly abandoned.

And then of course there was the horse, and also Herrod Family tombs, and a tragic bewailing of the situation with our favorite shop keeper with the magnificent white cat. We were having so much fun trotting around we could hardly stop for lunch, but finally some piping hot falafel called our names and we ate it hungrily, sitting on two dirty plastic chairs.

By the time we got back to the car, my feet were fairly grumpy. Our trackers both had 34K+ steps on them, and it was time to head to Abu Dis and the West Bank for night. Back to our home away from home.