Jerusalem and Crankiness

I'm way cranky right now. Which is terrible, because I'm trying to blog about my really cool trip to al-Quds (AKA Jerusalem), and I'm afraid that all of this pessimism will just seep into my descriptions. The crankiness is totally stemming from the fact that this is my last week of classes in Jordan, I have no will to keep studying, and I'm finally homesick. I have to force myself to put the slightest effort into my homework and classes, and it makes me very not happy.

However, I had a fabulous weekend trip to Jerusalem! I went with a small group- just me, Alice, Stephanie, and Kevin. We stayed in East Jerusalem, which is an Arab section of the city, and our hostel was right outside the Damascus Gate, which is one of the gates leading into the walled-in Old City. Yes, we did stay in a hostel. No, it was not like the horror film (which I did not see because I'm afraid of horror films). It was actually kind of cool to be there with a bunch of other young travelers, and also with a big parrot that suddenly appeared on Saturday morning.

Getting to Israel was an adventure in itself. It involved shouting at a bunch of people in Arabic and asking them about the bus to the border, to which they all responded that there was no bus (clearly not true, since some of the other students had taken a bus to the border the previous weekend). After a lot of confusion, and being swarmed at the bus station by a horde of service taxi drivers who had no idea where we were going but wanted to take lots of our money to drive us there, we finally just decided to take the service to save time rather than search for the bus. So we did a lot more shouting about "THE NORTHERN CROSSING!!!!!", which was the border that we needed to go through, and picked a driver who assured us that he could take us there. As it turned out, he was absolutely not sure where we were going, asked us if we spoke Arabic (after we had negotiated with him in Arabic), and generally seemed to be a big mistake. Oh, and then when we got to the border, he got a ticket because he was only licensed to drive to Amman, when we had specifically told him beforehand "No, we are NOT going to Amman" multiple times, and he wanted us to pay his 10 dinar ticket.

I could go on and on about this story, which involved about 10 more minutes of confused shouting in Arabic and refusal to pay 10 extra dinar (although somehow he still kept referring to me as a "bint quayyis" and Kevin as a "rajul quayyis, which roughly means a "good girl" and a "good guy", so he still liked us), but then you'd miss the part where we got detained at the Israeli border for like an hour and a half. Because 4 American students are way more suspicious than EVERY OTHER PERSON that traveled to the border that day. And then there's the part where I asked that they NOT stamp my passport so that I could freely travel to Syria, Lebanon, and other such countries in the future, but they mixed up my passport with someone else's and decided to go ahead and stamp me. Thanks, Israel.

However, we did eventually get through, got a taxi to Jerusalem, and arrived at our hostel safe and sound. We had no actual plans for the next day, so we pretty much just woke up and started wandering. We made our way into the Old City fairly early, and it's really a great place to just wander aimlessly because you will inevitably stumble upon something important. The Old City is like a labyrinth, with all of these tunnels and twists, and it's divided into the Christian Quarter, Arab Quarter, Jewish Quarter, and Armenian Quarter. We spent the morning between the Christian and Arab Quarters, did some shopping in the tunnel stores, and accidentally came across the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was pretty fabulous.

After this we went out to the New City, which involved a failed trip to find a specific waffle restaurant and then settling for waffles at a cafe on the way (because we got lost). When we made it to the New City, we basically just walked down Ben Yehuda St, which is closed off to cars and is just lined with a bunch of cute shops. After the walking fiasco, we elected to take a taxi back to the Old City, and by some twist of fate we ended up hailing the guy who had driven us TO Jerusalem (Sifian, the most amazing/hilarious driver on Earth), and he took us back to East Jerusalem for free!

When we returned to the Old City we decided to do the Via Dolorosa (Stations of the Cross), which ended up being really cool. We got to see all of these interesting churches that were built around some of the most famous sites in Christendom (depending on if you ask the Catholics or the Orthodox, who disagree on some locations). So we saw the place where Jesus healed the paralytic, the prison where he may have been kept, the places where he fell carrying the cross, etc. The end of the Via Dolorosa is in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (which we hadn't known earlier), so we did the Stations a little out-of-order, but it was no problem. Oh, and we also got to take pictures of the Dome of the Rock because we randomly wandered into the entrance. The Dome of the Rock plaza (AKA Temple Mount area) was closed to non-Muslims on Friday, but the guard let us take pics from the gate, so that was nice.

In the evening we ventured to the Jewish Quarter and down to the Western Wall (or Wailing Wall, but I think that's really the less polite term). It was really interesting to be there right before the start of Shabbat (the Sabbath), and there was a pretty decent-sized crowd. It was a pretty awesome experience to be at such an old and important site, surrounded by praying and crying people. Even though I'm not Jewish, I could still feel the power of the place, and it was really not something that I had expected.

In general, the whole trip was much more powerful than I had expected. I kind of envisioned having an exciting cultural experience, but not so much a religious one. I think I was subconsciously assuming that because I'm not Jewish, being in Jerusalem wouldn't be as meaningful in that way. However, my explorations around all of the holy sites left me with a much greater understanding of why everyone is fighting to keep a piece of Jerusalem for themselves.

In truth, Jerusalem really does belong to all of the religions and the people who claim it- I was only there for a short time, and even I could feel that. I think that anyone who's ever been to the city would have to sense that- and if you try to claim it solely for one group, you obviously haven't experienced Jerusalem in its entirety. I mean, I'm definitely not the world's best Christian all of the time, and I struggle with my faith just like a lot of people, but to be in the places where Jesus lived and died(regardless of the argument over the specific locations) was a shockingly meaningful experience for me. In some very small way, I had my own little tie to the land. And the tie that the residents, whether they are Arab or Jewish or otherwise, have to the land is so strong that it's nearly tangible. To ignore the multiple claims on Jerusalem is ignorance in the highest degree, as far as I'm concerned, and I think my visit made me understand more of why people are willing to put their lives and everything else on the line to fight for their place in Jerusalem.

But, yes, meaningful experience aside, it was also a very fun trip with very fun people. We didn't get to spend nearly enough time there (and it was a huge freaking hassle to cross borders. I hate borders.), but I think we spent our time pretty wisely for the most part and saw a lot of really cool sites. Oh, and Sifian ended up driving us from Jerusalem back to the border as well. He sang a lot, bought us popsicles, and made sure that we had pillows to sleep on. The only real hitch we had in getting back (which wasn't so much a hitch as a hilarious occurence) was at an Israeli checkpoint maybe 10-15 minutes from the border, where they searched our bags and pulled out Kevin's notebook (purchased in Jordan), which had a picture of Israel or something with the slogan "Palestine: We Will Return!" written above it (one of the many hilarious notebooks available in Irbid). Needless to say, he was cringing and the rest of us were almost peeing our pants from laughing at him. Yeah, other than that, travel back to Jordan was pretty simple.

Pictures are coming soon, whenever the internet cooperates. ALSO: I just figured out that people have been commenting me and I haven't gotten any notice of it via email or otherwise. So sorry! My ignoring you was very unintentional.