Shorts

Even men aren’t allowed to wear shorts in public.

The call to prayer happens five times a day, but in Hebron it’s not exact. There are actual men with microphones inside the mosques doing the chanting, and they usually all go off within a five minute period. If you’re near enough to several mosques their different chants sound cacophonous, but one alone is quite beautiful. Some cities have a timed, pre-recorded call that goes from all the mosques at once.

They think it’s weird if we don’t wear socks. Simon’s feet get a lot of stares when he wears his loafers.

Wedding parties are crazy. The first one I went to was a few hundred men packed to the front of a stage dancing like crazy, with lights and foam and energy drinks (one of few Islam-approved stimulants). Us foreigners were popular. Half a dozen times a man snuck up and tried to stick his head between my legs to get me on his shoulders. I got good at clenching my knees immediately when I felt someone’s face try to force its way in. I only failed one time and had to ride bouncing above the crowd for a few minutes. But at least I wasn’t a part of the triple-stack; that looked dangerous.

The closest alcohol is in Bethlehem, because that’s where Christians live. They also operate the only disco and, purportedly, strip club.

Men will hold your hand or play with your hair while you talk. It’s kind of nice.

Abraham’s Tomb is in Hebron. It’s a large half-mosque half-synagogue that is supposedly the resting place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their wives. The Jew’s control about 60% of it, but leave 40% for the Muslims, which means some of the Patriarchs live in different sections. Even though an American-born Jewish settler massacred 29 Muslims there in 1994, Simon and I are allowed to enter both sides without a problem. (But they do always ask us our religion).

Small children beat the life out of each other, but they almost never cry, probably because the typical parental MO is ‘Ignore.’ They also entertain themselves with deflated soccer balls, sticks, burning masses of cardboard, and corn. Until they turn 14; then they play Counter Strike in the net cafes.

There are two types of street food: falafel and shwarma. This is a disappointment from Mexico, where you can pass ten different snacks on one block.

Last night Simon and I ran into the typical crew before our house. Simon ended up with the 20-something dudes, and I found myself sitting with a dozen ten-year-old girls, all holding my hand and stroking my hair and pinching my cheeks and asking me questions in Arabic. They asked me my parents’ names and what I do for work, and they kept wanting me to sing for them. I felt like a creeper, especially when a father came out of the house nearby. But he didn’t even bat an eye, just came up and shook my hand with a smile, then invited me in for coffee.

The main dish is makluba, a large platter of spiced rice, chicken, and cauliflower (or eggplant, if you’re feeling crazy). Change a couple ingredients and it’s called mansaf, and cross the border to Saudi and it’s called kapsah. But it’s still all rice and chicken.

Lebanese apparently don’t eat makluba because they’re fancy.

Arabs call a man who is controlled by his wife a “rabbit,” and a man who controls his wife a “lion.” They have a saying: Better to be a happy rabbit than a sad lion.

If you live in the States you don’t really know what a fig is.

Parents think something is wrong with their child if he doesn't like to be held by a stranger. Sometimes toddlers can be found wandering the neighborhood.

The words air, zipper, and neck are all naughty words in Arabic.

The Arabs here don’t enjoy experimenting. They don’t have a large variety of food, all the music videos are all exactly the same, and the men all dress very similarly; they don’t have bro and hipster and prep and emo, they just have Arab male. There are three types of tea: sweet black tea, sweat black tea with mint, and sweet black tea with sage.

One of our friends has a scar on his cheek. He told us that he fell on a flower when he was younger. When we asked how that could possibly have given him a permanent scar, he said “It was a Palestinian flower.”

Tel Aviv

I was excited about my first trip into Israel. Like most expats in Palestine I don’t agree with a lot of their practices towards the Palestinians, but I don’t possess a lot of the hatred or bitterness that most pro-Palestinian foreigners have. I understand there’s a difference between the actions of a government and the attitudes of the people, so I was excited to interact with the actual human beings on the other side of the wall, behind the guns.

Let me just start by saying that I still think there are good people in Israel. Smart people that want peace instead of occupation, or at least wouldn’t mind being friends with some Arabs. I might have met some of these on my trip to the coast, but Palestine seemed pretty far from the lives of most of the people I interacted with.

It took a taxi, a bus, a train, another long bus, and another taxi to get to Tel Aviv. Even during our brief pit-stop in Jerusalem I could tell that I had really entered a different country. A lot of the sights are the same – sandy flat-roofed buildings and hills, hills, hills – but the people are completely different; the smiling faces and "Welcome"s in Hebron were replaced with Western clothing style and aloof attitudes (and the occasional Hasid walking stiffly among the hipsters). We joked that even the employee working at Information was curt and unhelpful.

We got to Tel Aviv around 10:00. It is, not surprisingly, an incredibly Western city. It has the atmosphere of Tijuana, the ethnic diversity of Marseille, the hospitality of Boston, and the moral philosophy of San Francisco. Everyone is physically attractive, and after the conservative dress of the Arabs the clothing struck me as scandalous. 

We’d come to Tel Aviv to celebrate our friend Ditte’s birthday. Our group included six Danes, two Aussies, one Indian, and us Americans. After checking into our hostel we went to a crowded half-restaurant half-bar and had some hotdogs and beer, and then some free shots for the birthday. Hebron being a fairly conservative city, this was my first liquor since British Airways. A month was apparently a long enough time to forget how much I dislike it.

After the restaurant we took cabs across town to the club district and I sat and watched while my friends danced. It felt just like home and the few times I’d been to a club in the States; my friends dance and I sip beer bored and tired in the corner like an old sailor.

At around 3:00am the two Americans split and headed back to the hostel to get the best sleep of our lives.

Simon and I woke up around 8:30 to get the free Nescafe and pastry in the hostel lobby, then headed immediately for the Mediterranean, only two blocks from where we were staying. All the Danes were still sleeping off the dancing, and it seemed like the rest of the city was doing the same, because the beach was pretty empty. We waded, swam a little, and sat. From the old stone buildings of Jaffa on our left to the new hotel towers on our right, the water was the perfect blue-green that I’d seen in pictures.  Without a doubt, no contention, the beach was the best part of Tel Aviv.

We woke our friends and headed to the planed breakfast at Benedicts, an American(-ish) style restaurant where I had the only real cup of coffee in Palestine. Then, off to the gay pride parade.

Halfway through the procession of human flesh it struck me how this culture wasn’t really living up to the ideology of the original Zionists. They envisioned a Jewish state, but these weren’t really Jews; they are Europeans with Jewish grandmothers. I kept thinking "Why are you even here? What is your goal in taking Israel?" Even aside from the celebration of sexuality, the general attitude of the city doesn’t embody many of the traditions of Judaism, and here in the capitol of all places. Tel Aviv isn’t more than a Western colony in the middle of Arab territory, with no cultural contribution except a little hat some men wear. Other than that, they seem completely willing to buy into Western culture whole-sale.

And for all it's flaws and oddities, I don't hate Westernism. It just seems so out of place in Israel, the Promised Land, the source of so much cultural confrontation. If the Israeli youth aren't fighting for their own heritage, but are trading it gladly for someone else's, then what was the point of all the Jews leaving Europe? Wasn't the goal to separate themselves from the people around them, to unite themselves as a unique people group? Even more disconcerting, they still seem to maintain an attitude of proud ownership, not humble thankfulness.

Their entitled attitudes only ended up strengthening my belief that their grandparents were not the real owners of the Levant. People who are trying to prove ownership of something always need to act like they’re claiming it at every moment, while people who actual own something can feel free to share it.

After one day on the beach I was happy to get back to the hospitality of the Arabs.