Chapter Six - The green line and the unseasonably green expanse

After loading our luggage on the bus and dropping off our keys, not to mention getting the news that Boaz and Captain Azulai would no longer be with us, we headed to our first stop of the day: the Kinneret Cemetery. A very historical cemetery, considering it's where most of the founding fathers (and mothers) of the State of Israel are buried. Yuval gave another lecture, but thankfully this one was not military in nature. I can only take so much of that. This one was about the trials and ordeals of the individuals who founded Israel and revived Hebrew and such.

The revival of Hebrew is actually a remarkable success story. I can't give all the details here because I don't know them, but it's really quite impressive that the Biblical language was revived enough to be used for everyday communication. Of course, it's riddled with anglicisms and borrowings from other languages. You really notice that if you pick up an introductory Hebrew textbook, as I have done for unrelated reasons before.

Anyhoo, the cemetery was pretty interesting. One of our stops was at the grave of the poet Rachel (pronounced [ra-(sound of choking)el]). I don't remember all the details of her story, but she is an example of the Hebrew success story. Her native language was not Hebrew, but after a great deal of practice she was able to write Hebrew poetry. As you know, good poetry requires a wide vocabulary. Yuval tried to play one of her songs on the flute, but was not entirely successful.

The Hebrew writing on the stone says "Rachel". I can't read the smaller writing.

We stopped next at the grave of someone whose name I can't remember, and I can't read the stylized Hebrew script on the stone. Anyway, this was the composer of "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav" ("Jerusalem of Gold"), one of my favourite Hebrew songs. At one point the government was considering making that the national anthem, but they stuck with the old anthem instead. A stupid move, in my opinion, as "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav" is clearly the superior song. I'll sing it for you sometime.

Can anyone read that name? I could probably just look it up but I'm too lazy.

Our brief tour of the Kinneret cemetery concluded and we moved on to the so-called "green line", the border between Israel and the West Bank. Interestingly enough, the fence and wall you see on CNN or what have you does not actually follow the green line precisely. Since it's a security fence and not a political fence, the government can put it wherever they want.

It was mercifully nice out that day, so when we got a lecture from a woman who was slightly less foul-mouthed than Mike Ginsburg, it was outside, and our seats were not torture devices. Also we got souvenirs: maps of Israel with the green line drawn on them.

So as not to cause you to die of boredom or anger or confusion, I won't describe the political situation in too much detail here. I'll just provide this photo.

The green line. Look carefully. The gold-domed mosque on the left is on the Palestinian side. The green-domed mosque on the right is on the Israeli side.

We were just a little too close to the line for my comfort, so I was glad when this portion of the day ended. We were never in any danger, but I didn't like being at the site of so much strife. Yeah, that's right, strife.

Our next stop was the Judaean desert, which is a small patch of desert somewhat north of the main desert which spans the entire southern half of the country. The Judaean desert is the site of Jerusalem, the dead sea, our Bedouin encampment, and probably a number of other interesting things. The first one we were to see was the Bedouin camp.

But first, a treat. I will take this moment to acknowledge Oren, our magnificent Israeli bus driver. In a feat of unparalleled automotive prowess, he took the bus off road and gave us a tour of some of the higher areas of the Judaean desert. I have failed to mention up to this point how bumpy a relief map of Israel must be to adequately capture it. It is much more bumpy than, say, the pancake known as southern Ontario.

Some wildlife in the desert. The desert was much greener than it should have been, but apparently there had been a lot of rain recently.

The desert. I like this photograph.

Experimenting with the camera once again. I think this is a cool picture. It looks like the sky is exploding.

Oren parked the bus on top of a plateau upon which there were definitely no Israeli soldiers performing secret training manoeuvres. Nope, none at all, and they definitely didn't forbid us to take pictures, because they weren't there. No soldiers.

So we moved away from where the soldiers definitely weren't, to an area where we could take some pictures.

I don't know why I took this picture. This is Elena and Lisa, and the happy individual in the middle is the Shermanator. This is about as much success with women as Sherm had all trip, and not for lack of trying. Or so I choose to believe.

Me and Ilana. You will notice that I have virtually no pictures of myself not on the arm of some lovely girl.

A great group photo, except for the pile of cameras in the foreground.

After the picture-taking came the hike. This was a fairly easy hike, although Marie refused to come along because of her fear of heights. Fortunately for her navy career, she doesn't have a fear of depths. I made that joke on the way back from this hike. No one laughed. Bastards.

The hike took us to the edge of a cliff, and neither words nor photographs can describe the sheer magnitude of the gulf we found ourselves facing. Yuval dared us to throw a stone into the chasm to see how deep it was. Someone took the challenge, and the stone did not get anywhere close to the bottom before it hit the side. The side we were on, that is. It would have taken some impressive firepower to hit the middle of the chasm, let alone the other side.

It's a long way down.

Leah [lee-ah] took this photo. It's best not to think about how close to the edge I'm sitting.

I took a number of other pictures but this is getting bloated enough as it is. These are the important ones.

After a few minutes of silence, which I broke to point out an interesting rainbow to Leah, we headed back to the bus, where the army people still weren't. I made that quip about Marie not having a fear of depths. Nobody laughed.

Bastards.

We sure were busy that day. Before heading into the Bedouin encampment proper, we got up close and personal with some of the locals. The local non-humans, that is. We rode camels. There's not much to say about that, really, except that I'm less flexible than I ought to be and sitting on one of those things hurt my legs because they're so freaking wide. Yes, my legs; not another body part, pervert.

I shouldn't have looked at the camera for this one. Stupid picture.

When we had finished riding, Yuval gave an interesting lecture on the adaptations the camel has made to survive in the desert. The part I'm sure I was supposed to find most shocking was that the hump is not, in fact, where the camel stores water. It does that in one of its stomachs. The hump is a repository of fat. All animals need some fat, but the camel needs to shed heat at an extraordinary rate so it keeps the fat in one place and uses the rest of its skin surface to shed heat. Pretty cool, eh? You learn something new every day.

The Bedouin camp was strangely contradictory. On the one hand it was, well, a tent. But on the other hand, it had electric light and heat, and the bathroom was the nicest one we saw in all of Israel. Seriously.

We dropped off our stuff in the large, communal sleeping area of the tent and went to the large, communal eating area. We had been promised that our meal in the Bedouin tent would be the best one of the trip. It was somewhat oversold, but it was still very good, and it just kept coming. As a Westerner, I had a hard time getting my head around the idea that the food would not stop coming. I had to actually refuse it in order for there to be an end to the meal. It's a subtle cultural difference, but a good example of how the Western way is not the only way to do things. Anyway, as a result, I overate. It was neither the first nor the last time I would do so in Israel.

Me, Gill, and Josh in the process of overeating.

We had another bonfire at the Bedouin camp, though thankfully the worst thing going on at this one was some hookah-smoking. I've been told that hookah is not nearly as bad for you as cigarette smoking. I'm sure that's true. Nevertheless, you're still inhaling combustion products and a highly addictive drug. I rest my case. By this time our new medic and guard (both extremely mild-mannered--I wonder if they weren't scared of getting kicked off like their predecessors) had joined our merry crew. This will become important shortly, as you shall see.

Also in the Bedouin camp was a group of students, somewhat younger than us, from New Jersey, of all places. I hung around with them for a little while until they started crowding around and blocking the gosh-darned fire. I was getting cold, so I moved away to a clear area. Later on, I busted out the juggling balls I hadn't realized I packed and entertained Yuval, Steve, Leah [lay-ah], and some of the other birthrighters. I tried to teach one of them to juggle, but for the life of me I can't remember who it was. He was actually pretty good. I was impressed. Steve got a picture of me doing my thing, and I want that picture, Steve! Where is it?

Later, Leah [lee-ah] joined the crowd and espoused some feminist views on pornography, which Gill (who is majoring in something related to sexuality for his Ph.D) promptly blasted to pieces. I felt bad for Leah. Alas, Gill was totally right, so I couldn't come to Leah's defense in a chivalrous manner. It's just as well, since it's impossible to have a conversation with her without hearing about her boyfriend. I should save my chivalry for available girls.

The bonfire party broke up after a while, so I went over to where someone who I believe was Elena (her face was silhouetted against a bright electric lamp) was drawing a face in the dirt. I lay down on the ground nearby and watched the moon for a while. That's not something you can do in the winter in Canada. It was pretty cool.

Finally I decided to go to bed, and here's where my euphoric mood of the evening was shattered, by no less than four incidents, running the gamut from mildly annoying to extremely upsetting.

First, I noticed that I had foolishly placed my mattress next to where the medic and guard were planning to sleep. That in itself would not have been a problem, except that the medic had deigned to put his gun right between our respective mattresses. Well I couldn't bloody well sleep there! So I moved my mattress to a far corner, and Leah [lay-ah] laughed at me. Damn Israelis and their guns. I wrote a rant about it.

You can tell that the exhaustion was getting to me here because the last paragraph makes no sense. It seems to be missing several sentences that were probably clear in my head at the time. Never mind the emotional tone of the rant, though. I still feel just as strongly about it.

That was the first incident. The second is noted in my journal as "damn card-playing bastards". I stand by that assessment. A group of six or so birthrighters decided that they didn't want to go to bed or to be courteous to the people who were trying to sleep, so they had a very loud, raucous, annoying game of "asshole" going. Being as considerate as they were, they moved it into the dining area, which was separated from the sleeping area by a large woolen partition, and that's it. It blocked absolutely no sound. So I struggled to sleep for several hours, then finally got up and went into the dining area. I glared menacingly at the card-players until one of them asked, "Oh, can't you sleep?"

"No."

"Why?"

I stared incredulously. "Why?!"

"Were we bothering you?"

"Yeah!"

So then they went right back to playing while I struggled to comprehend this staggering lack of consideration for a fellow human being. I paced around the dining tent for a while until I had to pee. I went back into the sleeping area, where I noticed the third incident of the night. Dan, whose mattress was next to mine, was using my winter jacket as a blanket! Luckily it was not too cold out so my spring jacket was sufficient to get me to the bathroom, across the courtyard.

When I returned, the card game had broken up and the players had now decided to prank the sleeping birthrighters. I don't know when "prank" became a verb. I'm not quite sure what happened, but it resulted in Morgan, one of the damn card-playing bastards, earning the coveted Bitch of the Day title.

With all that unpleasantness behind me, I tried to get some sleep, but--what the heck?--Ben's gigantic feet (everything about Ben is gigantic--I will have more to say on that later) had usurped my mattress! Oh fuck, now where was I going to sleep?

I noticed that Josh had gotten up and moved somewhere else (probably somewhere quiet, where I ought to have moved in the first place), so I took his mattress, next to Marie. I was finally able to get a couple hours of sleep before our next adventure.

Chapter Seven