We walked back to the pilgrim house in the twilight, through the gardens, past the old
gas lamps of London now lit with electricity. We were exhausted but happy. Ron
and J and I took a bus to the hotel, got a lovely omelet near by with some folk we
had met in Amsterdam on the way over and crashed.
On Wednesday morning I took Jess and one of the girls on the pilgrimage to the park up
the street from the hotel. I walked into the park and felt my shoulders rise and my
stomach tighten in apprehension. What was I, a woman alone, escorting two young girls into
a city park. I looked around and all I saw was other women and children and a group
of young Arab girls. "Of course," I reminded myself. "This is Israel
where interpersonal violence is rare." The girls ran around while I basked in the sun
and the company of women and children. Lots of grandmothers were there with their
grands, warm indulgent grandmothers following tiny little people around. The park itself
was clearly designed for kids. Under every piece of equipment was a soft rubbery
surface to protect the kids from hard falls.
The Arab girls in their head scarves, laughed and teased each other and picked the park
flowers. Some boys came by, but there was none of the overt sexual teasing I might
have seen in a park here. There of course, the boys walk arm in arm and the girls do
too. The need for human contact that finds expression in sex in our Puritanical
culture is accepted as normal and allowable within gender there.
After the park, we took the funicular train downtown. Talk about weird. We entered
the train area--it is an underground on a cable, so it goes down by gravity and is hauled
up. We got tickets from a machine, cleared security, more young men with guns, and
waited on the perfectly level platform. The train arrived. It labors up a slope of
at least 45 degrees and it stops at the platform. My inner ear told me quite clearly
that I was standing upright, but my eyes told me I was kilted over at an odd angle.
So there I am, leaning I think in order to align with my eyes, while my brain argued it
out, watching the security guys go through the train looking for packages left.
After a while they open the doors. We step in and voila! Equilibrium again. The
train goes down two stops and we get off. I look back for one more balance
check. And I am, indeed, off balance again. Very strange but delightful in its
complexity. Eyes, ears and head all arguing about vertical.
Laughing to myself, I herded the kids and Ron off to the Hadar, the midway down part of
the city. We wandered around poking into this tiny shop and that one. Jewelry and
underwear seemed to outnumber the other kinds of shops. Fascinating. There are
department stores and even a mall over in Akka, but the shops were every so much more
interesting. I was fascinated by the underwear shops. Who needs that much
underwear??
But it did remind me of the market day in Italy. On Thursday, the travelling
market came to our village and there amid the produce and olives and bikes and tires were
tables of used bras and stockings. I used to go every Thursday, just to gawk.
I mean USED underwear? And used stockings. And such sizes!
We got a bit of bread and some cow cheese for lunch and started counting shades of red
hair. Israeli women have a fascination for red hair of every shade from pale pink to
eggplant. Mostly it is women of a certain age, but I did see younger women with
henna hair. The girls there have the best curly hair I have ever seen. Mops
and mops of corkscrew, wild, long hair of all colors. The young Israelis are
drop-dead gorgeous. We wove along the street dodging people and just walking.
After the first day, I loved it. I didn't have to say excuse me or worry about being
rude because I wanted to pass someone. They just walk and expect everyone else to do so
too. At first it felt a bit abrupt, but then I realized that that is my style
anyhow. I don't mean any rudeness, I just want to go where I am going with the least
possible fuss and interaction.
