We wake, the morning sun blazing off bright white walls of the Abu Tor apartment. I try to remind myself not to think about the middle of the night, which the dusty corners of my brain still think it is. We eat cherries and apricots from yesterday's shuk (market), peel away the spiky rose-colored skin of a lychee and sink into its white, sweet flesh. It's smooth and glistens eerily and reminds me of an eyeball, but I eat it anyway; it tastes vaguely like grape. Passionfruit's leathery peel gives way to greenish-purple seeds in yellow slime which we drink like oysters from the shell. They are tart; my mouth shrivels around them and I think of grapefruits. Everything here is almost like something I've known before.
After breakfast we walk the Promenade through the Peace Forest, stopping along the way to gaze down into the Gehenna (loosely translated, the Valley of Hell) where biblical folks once sacrificed children and piled their waste. Now, just beyond is a densely populated hillside, one of few Arab neighborhoods remaining on this side of the wall. Separated from their land and their families, they stay and wait the day when they will be extricated for no better reason than: we can. Israel doesn't want them here; they are a nuisance. Citizens of nowhere, granted no rights, no papers to escape they are simply trapped, taking up space in a city pressed tightly on either side by encroaching desert and political tension. Israel denies that it's apartheid. I wonder what else it could possibly be.
As we walk my neck prickles in the heat, the smell of sun-warmed pine needles and parched soil reminding me of the Yuha. The polished limestone underfoot gleams under the rising sun as red ants march in long strains carrying crumbs and dust and treasure. We approach a gated, razor-wired UN complex, the tall black letters dashed across every surface. Nearby, a tour group gathers for a concert on the terrace, a man's nasal voices crackling in unrefined tones across a loud speaker. He sings in Hebrew as school kids with hired armed guards lean on fences and cluster in sunhats around the show.
We climb up out of the park and cross a road, ambling our way up a small rise looking south across a bone-dry landscape. Someone has hauled mattresses and couches into a mini-arroyo. Stray cats slink between shadows and we stare into the southern valley toward Bethlehem. The Herodian, Herod's palace carved inside a conical mountain of his construction, rises oddly in terraced layers from the hilly expanse. Tomorrow we will walk there, crossing the wall into a Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, separate world.
We wind our way home to the apartment passing back through the park, rounding the bend to find two young soldiers with M-16s slung at their hips. They lounge casually on a park bench, one texting on his cell phone while the other hangs his head lazily, one foot propped up on the bench, his knee under his chin.
After breakfast we walk the Promenade through the Peace Forest, stopping along the way to gaze down into the Gehenna (loosely translated, the Valley of Hell) where biblical folks once sacrificed children and piled their waste. Now, just beyond is a densely populated hillside, one of few Arab neighborhoods remaining on this side of the wall. Separated from their land and their families, they stay and wait the day when they will be extricated for no better reason than: we can. Israel doesn't want them here; they are a nuisance. Citizens of nowhere, granted no rights, no papers to escape they are simply trapped, taking up space in a city pressed tightly on either side by encroaching desert and political tension. Israel denies that it's apartheid. I wonder what else it could possibly be.
As we walk my neck prickles in the heat, the smell of sun-warmed pine needles and parched soil reminding me of the Yuha. The polished limestone underfoot gleams under the rising sun as red ants march in long strains carrying crumbs and dust and treasure. We approach a gated, razor-wired UN complex, the tall black letters dashed across every surface. Nearby, a tour group gathers for a concert on the terrace, a man's nasal voices crackling in unrefined tones across a loud speaker. He sings in Hebrew as school kids with hired armed guards lean on fences and cluster in sunhats around the show.
We climb up out of the park and cross a road, ambling our way up a small rise looking south across a bone-dry landscape. Someone has hauled mattresses and couches into a mini-arroyo. Stray cats slink between shadows and we stare into the southern valley toward Bethlehem. The Herodian, Herod's palace carved inside a conical mountain of his construction, rises oddly in terraced layers from the hilly expanse. Tomorrow we will walk there, crossing the wall into a Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, separate world.
We wind our way home to the apartment passing back through the park, rounding the bend to find two young soldiers with M-16s slung at their hips. They lounge casually on a park bench, one texting on his cell phone while the other hangs his head lazily, one foot propped up on the bench, his knee under his chin.
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