Uncle Travelling Matt

Flickr album of my 1997 trip

Links to other parts of the travelogue:

Sacred Pilgrimage

Secular Pilgrimage

Next part: An Introduction to Kibbutz Living

HOLY LAND

BOOK 2: SECULAR PILGRIMAGE

Around six hours after leaving the leafy precincts of St. George’s Cathedral, Thao, Tom and I found ourselves in the somewhat drearier precincts of Beersheva Bus Station. The intervening hours had not been easy. We’d packed up, lugged our bags and baby through the narrow alleyways of the Old City and then caught a taxi to Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station, a taxi that had spent far more time waiting in traffic than it had moving. Then, at the bus station, it had got really nasty. Sunday in Israel is the start of the working week and, more significantly, the day when soldiers, who have returned home for the Shabbat, make their way back to base. And in a country with universal national service – male and female – that makes for a lot of soldiers, the vast majority of whom use the national bus network to move about.

The place was rammed. As our bus drew in a crowd pressed against it. This was no place for a diminutive Asian lost amongst a crowd of burly soldiers and dangling M16s, and it was definitely no place for a baby who had a hard time of it indeed, pressed against the backs and shoulders of the men and women of one of the world’s most ruthless military machines.

Israelis are rude. Israelis are infamously rude. I once remember someone saying that one cannot call them bad-mannered because the concept of manners does not exist in the Israeli psyche. Now that may or may not be true, but to someone who comes from a culture where certain manners are engrained as sacrosanct then it comes as a shock. Back in 1997 it horrified me. I recall vividly in Tel Aviv Bus Station on either my second or third day in the country, I held open a door for someone (as one does) who proceeded to walk straight through without even acknowledging my presence. I just hope that Sufi saint Ardabili is true, for such things can scar a young Englishman.[1]

Now the Vietnamese are not renowned for exemplary manners either. Chaotic crushes, overloaded transport and short-shrift replies are run-of-the-mill in their crowded cities like Ho Chi Minh, Danang and Hanoi but even so Thao was struggling to accept this mess. “There’s a baby! There’s a baby!” she protested, garnering some sympathy amongst the female soldiers but far less than she would have received in either Vietnam or the UK. It was at that moment I think, that the Israelis dropped below even the French in her league table of nasty foreigners.[2]

The driver of the bus was also decidedly unimpressed. When the pushing got too bad he merely shut the door and refused to let anyone on. An almighty argument ensued but he stoically sat it out, suffering soldiers and babies or not. Since a love of argument rates as an Israeli quality equal to their disrespect for manners, the sitting it out lasted longer than it would have done in most countries. Eventually however, he relented, opened the door and we all filed on, hot, tired and angry.

Once moving though, things calmed down and it all became rather normal. As we sped out of Jerusalem on fine roads I was reminded of all my travels on previous visits. Israel is a country held together by its buses and despite being only slightly larger than Wales in size, Egged, the national bus company, is the second largest in the world (after Greyhound). On my previous travels I’d ridden the length and breadth of the country several times over and waited countless hours in the soulless bus stations of Haifa, Rishon-le-Zion, Jerusalem, Beersheva, Dimona, Eilat and above all, Tel Aviv, the world’s largest bus station, where I’d once spent two hours waiting for a delayed Pepi Kovatcheva with Cher’s Believe being played on loop from a nearby CD shop, searing that song into my memory as an anthem for misery. ‘Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say I really don’t think I’m strong enough…’ No, I’m not, I’m not strong enough at all. Why do you think I insisted we took the train to Jerusalem?

Egged’s red and white buses however, (well, they were red and white then, now they’re a rather naff green), are comfortable and with the plush bus stations and good roads you soon realise that the crummy towns of the West Bank and the souqs of the Old City are a world away. Modern Israel is a developed country and when one travels through it, it is hard to believe that it is the same place that one sees so often on the evening news, for there are no stone throwers, rocket launchers, wailing Palestinian mothers or watchtowers to be found, just modern housing estates, shopping centres, highways and irrigated fields. The genius of Israel is that she keeps her dark side hermetically sealed off from the vast majority of her people so that it rarely impinges on everyday life. Nowadays that is even more so with the Wall, but back in 1997 it was virtually the same; the Palestinians and their problems could have been a million miles away for all we travellers knew, yet the kibbutz that I stayed on was less than ten miles from the Gaza Strip. The only indication that this was somehow different from any other developed country were the soldiers that appeared in great numbers on every bus.

Egged then and now

The soldiers, ah yes, the soldiers! For a young man of nineteen there is no finer sight than the soldiers who one was squeezed up against on those long journeys down to Eilat or up to Haifa. Israel is the only country in the world where all its citizens are called up to serve in the national armed forces – the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) – with males serving three years and female two (regular service), and then the men called up for a month annually until they reach forty-five (reserve service). Since the majority of the women serving are aged between eighteen and twenty then that makes for a lot of beautiful women – for Israeli girls are very beautiful – on buses in uniform. And any graduate of the UK school system will appreciate the advantages of putting beautiful women into uniforms. During my first trip when, as I said, I was but nineteen, (and no more need be said about nineteen-year old males and beautiful women), sharing a bus with a bevy of militaristic hotties was all-consuming. Even now, with a somewhat calmer libido, it is still a pleasant experience although now, as then, a pretty girl of university age can be a little off-putting if she has an M16 slewn across her lap.[3]

IDF conscripts: a formidable force

Israeli girls, like Israeli men, are astonishing in their diversity. The two main types are the fair-skinned Ashkenazi whose forefathers dwelt on the steppe and grain lands of the Russian Empire or in the shetls of Germany, Holland, France and Belgium, whilst the other main group is the Sephardim, oriental in appearance, their parents migrating from Morocco, Yemen, Iran and the Balkans. In addition to these though, there are countless others, tanned Indian Jews and black-skinned Ethiopians, all brought together, sucked into Eretz Israel from destinations as far flung as New York, Johannesburg, Buenos Aries, Goa, Sana’a, Tabriz, Antwerpen and Fez, to be united in the Promised Land under the Star of David.

Personally, I found the curvaceous, ebony-haired and aloof Sephardic girls the most attractive, which was lucky since we were sat next to two of them who took a great interest in Tom, holding him and bouncing him on their knees as they perhaps thought about embracing motherhood after they had completed their national service.

[1] ‘Asked why he never thanked anyone for doing anything, Ardabili said: “You may not be able to credit this, but if I thank them, they will feel pleased, and that amounts to the same as if they had been paid or recompensed for their trouble. If they are not thanked, there is still a possibility that they will in future be requited for their service – and such requital might be far better for them. It might come, for instance, at a time when they really need it.”

Taken from Thinkers of the East by Idries Shah, p.129

[2] French faults include not speaking English and awful toilets. Her words, not mine.

[3] Israeli soldiers have to keep their guns with them at all times by law, including when shopping, drinking coffee and travelling on the bus.

Technorati Tags: uncle travelling matt,travel,blog,israelis,israel,egged,bus travel,jerusalem,matt pointon,thao,beersheva,rude,manners,arguing,idf,female soldiers

Sunday, 20 September 2015

Holy Land: Sacred Pilgrimage: Part IX–The Lord’s Day

Greetings!

We’ve got the last part of the Sacred Pilgrimage section of the Holy Land saga this week before moving onto the secular next.

Back in real-time, I’ve been busy considering some ideas for my upcoming trip to Berlin with ex-DPRK mate Glenn. I’m thinking of exploring some abandoned Nazi barracks and defensive tunnels as well as some possible trips further afield. Thanks for all the ideas must go to Fabian, another ex-DPRK comrade which is just the right place for me to recommend to you all his photographs which include some of the finest images of the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and the old USSR going. Check them out and then read my travelogues on the places they depict.

Fabian Muir Photography

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Flickr album of my 1997 trip

Links to other parts of the travelogue:

Sacred Pilgrimage

Secular Pilgrimage

Next part: A Bus to Beersheva

The Lord’s Day

It was time for the pilgrimage to end. We had come to give thanks for a life and that thanks had been given. Now, there was another sacred journey to make, another journey of remembrance but this time a secular one, more personal, not recalling the life of a prophet or saviour, but instead my own youth. But before a line could be drawn under the religious part of this trip, there was one more act to perform. It was a Sunday after all.

The congregation for Holy Communion at St. George’s Anglican Cathedral was not what I had expected. I’d anticipated Arab Christians or fellow Britons, but there were few of either group, (the Arabs attend an Arabic-language service later in the day), and instead American Episcopalians dominated the proceedings. They were a pleasant bunch mind, who entered into the Peace enthusiastically with heartfelt handshakes, but it wasn’t the same as the Anglican services that I’m used to. There was no cup of tea with the vicar afterwards.

And so there, in that most English of shrines, in that most international and sacred of cities, I ended my pilgrimage. It had not been so spiritually warming as some of my other sacred journeys, but it had been by far the most spiritually challenging which, in the long run, is perhaps far more important than instant gratification.

St. George’s: Holy Land or Herefordshire?

Pilgrimage in the Holy Land is not an easy task. There are the obvious difficulties, the acts of terrorism that deter so many, and the absolutely depressing and at times heart-breaking present-day political situation. Try as you might to focus on Christ or the Old Testament prophets, it is very difficult to do so when confronted by a large concrete wall built because the children of those prophets cannot bear to live side by side with one another.

And what makes it even more difficult, is that it is the religious (of both sides) that provoke the worst trouble. Baruch Goldstein and the countless Hamas suicide bombers were motivated by faith, as too were the Crusaders who murdered and pillaged through the region centuries before and the crowd who called for Christ Himself to be crucified, preferring to free a nationalistic ‘freedom-fighter’ in His stead. Once again, the words of Pascal Blaize ring in my ears, “Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.” For a man of faith on a pilgrimage, those words jar uncomfortably.

But it is not just the obvious, present-day problems that hinder the pilgrim, for even without them, the Holy Land would be a difficult place. Perhaps the biggest obstacle was the one that I encountered whilst praying the rosary on the train going to Jerusalem: there is simply too much to focus on. With Walsingham for example, there is a story, a simple, holy story on which to meditate, to focus one’s thoughts, to encounter God, but in Holy Land, there is not one story but a thousand. I journeyed thousands of miles to get there, have written fifteen thousand words on the subject and yet such crucial figures such as Elijah and Elisha, Joshua, David, Solomon, Abraham, the Twelve Disciples, John the Baptist, Paul of Tarsus, St. George and so many more either do not get a mention or are thought of only in passing. In Walsingham, one can spend days meditating on the appearance of the Virgin Mary in a dream to a noblewoman, yet in the Holy Land, where she spent most of her earthly days, she hardly gets a look in!

And of those who are talked about, the focus is not there. Most Christians, myself included, focus on the figure of Christ. This is natural, for He is the most important in our faith and thus deserves our attentions, but even with Him alone, there is so much to meditate on that it would require months to even start to do Him justice. The Nativity, Crucifixion and Resurrection I gave much thought to, but virtually none to the parables He told, His Ministry by Galilee, the Flight to Egypt, His exile in the wilderness. No, the key problem with the Holy Land is that there is just too much, too much indeed, so that instead of focus one’s head just whizzes around, overrun with it all.

But if those are the problems with the Holy Land, its strengths must also be considered. The name ‘Jerusalem’ translates as ‘City of peace’ and yet is their any city less peaceful on earth? One perhaps, and that is Hebron, just a few miles distant.

That discord however, is caused by diversity. Racism and intolerance are, I am sad to say, in many ways the natural state of man, or at least, the natural state of unenlightened man. It is only natural after all, that we should view the world with ourselves as the centre, with our values as the right ones, with our friends and family as the chosen people, with the Other being in error, a threat, to be subjugated and, at the extreme end of the spectrum, to be got rid of.

I was brought up in a small village in rural England. I was aware of the other; I saw Black people when I went on the train to Birmingham, there was a Chinese family in the takeaway in the next village and an Indian doctor who treated me, but that was it. I knew that they existed but they neither impinged on my life nor threatened me. In January 1997 I made my first visit to the Holy Land and came across the Other full on and not comfortably. I met Israelis who did not have the same concept of manners as the British do, who derided my religion as being rather silly; I met people from the Eastern Bloc who had formerly been our enemies; I worked side by side with a Dutchman, a Swiss gent, with Germans, (and remember, this was only a year after the harrowing experience of Euro ’96!). I found what it was like to hate as well as love the Other and I have been discovering it ever since but nowhere on earth is it so in your face as in the Holy Land.

My denomination, which where I come from has always been the standard, proper form of Christianity, has no place in its holiest temple whilst strange, incomprehensible churches with indecipherable writing, weird costumes and lots of incense abound; loud Americans dominate the alternative burial site and the supposedly English cathedral; the tomb of the father of both our faith and that of the Jews is in a mosque; the Temple Mount is inaccessible to both us and the Jews because the Muslims are there; I can’t even have a cup of tea in a café because someone objects to me putting milk in it! The Holy Land challenges one, lays bare one’s religious prejudices, makes one think, forces one to accommodate. It is the worst place in the world for a Fundamentalist who wants things all his own way, which is a shame, since it is full of them. The moderate, liberal route to peaceful coexistence is being forced out as indeed, it always has been. Here is the angry and vengeful God of the Old Testament and yet here also, is the very embodiment of the New Covenant, the alternative, the Lamb to the Slaughter. Remember always, as well as being to home to Joshua, Raynald of Châtillon, Yasser Arafat and Baruch Goldstein, the Holy Land is also the place where we were taught to ‘turn the other cheek’ and forgive our enemies.

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Tuesday, 15 September 2015

Holy Land: Sacred Pilgrimage: Part VIII–Further explorations of Jerusalem

Greetings!

Fame! I spend so much time writing about other people that it comes as a shock when someone writes about me in a blog. To be honest, Chris Kelly’s blog post ‘Adventure in the North East’ was about the experience of our whole party in the extreme north-east of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea but even so, some of us have got to clutch at whatever straws are there. And besides, as you can find out by reading the post, it was a pretty awesome trip.

And while we’re on the subject of blogs, I’d just like to point out this one, ‘Acid Attack Survivor Posts Important Makeup Tutorial’ by a local girl, Aleena Arfan, only 17 years old and writing pretty damn well about real issues. This, as well as the massive youth support for the new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, has given me some hope in our youngsters, who may yet prove to be a political generation in a way that those my age have sadly failed to be.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Flickr album of my 1997 trip

Links to other parts of the travelogue:

Sacred Pilgrimage

Secular Pilgrimage

Next part: The Lord’s Day

Shabbat (continued)

Getting back to the Old City, Aijaz and Sameera had places to go, Tom needed his midday nap and Thao was inclined to join him, so I continued on alone, out of the walled city and into the diplomatic district just to the north from where the British had once ruled the Palestinian Mandate and where they had left their most lasting monument.

St. George’s Anglican Cathedral is like a little piece of the English Shires transplanted into the Middle East. It is neither old nor architecturally remarkable, but I wanted to see it for it four distinct reasons. Firstly, it is, after Canterbury and York, arguably the most important Anglican shrine in the world, and I am, after all, an Anglican. Secondly, it is the most noteworthy British colonial relic in Palestine and I am, after all, British. Thirdly, Fr. Richard, our priest at St. Saviour’s Smallthorne used to play the organ there and after all, he is a great organ player and finally because it is the dwelling place of Mordechai Vanunu who is, after all, a great Israeli hero.

Mordechai Vanunu is a former nuclear technician who worked at the Negev Nuclear Research Centre where the Israeli nuclear bomb was developed.[1] A committed pacifist, in 1986 he leaked details of Israel’s nuclear programme to the British press. He was then lured to Italy by a female Mossad agent where he was drugged and kidnapped back to Israel. In a trial behind closed doors he was found guilty as a traitor and sentenced to eighteen years in gaol, eleven of which were spent in solitary confinement. During his internment he converted to Anglicanism and upon release he has lived within the confines of St. George’s save for several short prison spells due to him breaking his parole conditions. The Israeli state naturally views him as a traitor of the worst kind, but internationally he is highly respected and is seen as a man of principle. In a country where the behaviour of the present-day religious and political elites rarely breeds hope, in my opinion, Vanunu is truly a lamp on a stand, illuminating a room that can be very dark at times.

Mordechai Vanunu

I never saw Mr. Vanunu within the cathedral precincts, but I did explore the church and pray for the Anglican presence in Jerusalem and worldwide. It’s a pleasant place, quiet and sacred as a church should be and, unlike most other holy sites in the region, not contested by other denominations, and so left alone to get on with things in its low-key Anglican fashion. I left feeling rejuvenated and headed for my next, more contestable point of pilgrimage.

The Garden Tomb is considered by millions of the world’s Christians to be the final resting place of Christ’s mortal remains. They reject the claims of the traditional tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre due to concerns about its location possibly not being outside of the original city walls. Whilst those concerns might perhaps be genuine, that does not mean to say that the alternative is validated, for the arguments behind the Garden Tomb’s claims are distinctly more romantic than historical.

The Garden Tomb, one of several 1^st century Jewish tombs in the vicinity, was only discovered in 1869. It gained popularity however, fourteen years later when the British Major-General Charles Gordon, (he of the Last Stand in Khartoum fame), suggested that it might be the Tomb of Christ due to a nearby rock face resembling a skull and the name ‘Golgotha’ being Hebrew for ‘The Place of the Skull’.

What Gordon may have lacked in solid archaeological evidence – virtually no historians support the claim of the Garden Tomb – he more than made up for with romantic and political appeal, for whilst the site may not actually be the Tomb of Christ, it does look rather like the Empty Tomb should do. Walking through the shady groves of the adjacent garden and coming upon the simple tomb in the rock face, one feels more able to visualise the astonishment of the women at the Resurrection than one can in the Holy Sepulchre. If one suspends the very modern belief in searching for historical veracity then the Garden Tomb is a very powerful place indeed. Unfortunately though, like virtually everywhere else in the Holy Land, politics intervene here also, although, refreshingly, for once it is not the usual Jew-Arab dichotomy.

Major-General Gordon was a staunch protestant and there was method to his identification of the Garden Tomb as the Empty Tomb, for of all the various splinters of the worldwide Christian Church, only the Protestant denominations have no custody over any of the Holy Land’s sacred sites. Take the Holy Sepulchre for example; the Orthodox are represented; the Roman Catholics are represented, so too are the Ethiopians, Copts, Armenians and even the Syriac Orthodox, a tiny yet ancient monophysite church with less than four million members, but the Protestants, who make up approximately a third of the world’s Christians, around 800 million souls, are not. However, by claiming the Garden Tomb as Christ’s true resting place, then in one fell swoop the status quo is completely changed, for now, potentially the holiest spot on earth, is firmly in Protestant hands.

And the Garden Tomb both looked and felt Protestant. Quotations from Scripture (in English!) were dotted about the garden and the shop was full of merchandise that emphasised the Old Testament connections with Christianity in the fashion so beloved by many Evangelical Protestant churches. After several days of solid Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Monophysitism, the ancient face of faith, the Protestant style came as a shock. Once again, Jerusalem had challenged me and I now understood more of the alienation felt by an Evangelical at some of the more traditional holy sites, the sacred places of his or her faith, yet dominated by churches totally alien and incomprehensible to them.

The Garden Tomb

Perhaps because of my visit to the Garden Tomb and a subconscious need to compare it with its traditional rival, I returned to the Holy Sepulchre to further explore that great and complex temple. This time I entered by a side door and found myself in an intimate Coptic chapel. Up the side of the chapel were some stairs which I climbed to then find myself in a most unexpected and strange place indeed, the roof of St. Helena’s Chapel. This was a place that Lenin had told me about and it truly was worth seeing. During the 17^th century, the Ethiopian monks of a nearby monastery had been forced to move due to an inability to pay the hefty taxes levied on them, and they had taken up residence in amongst the ruins of the great basilica of Constantine I, (the current, largely Byzantine and Crusader church is considerably smaller), in humble cells reminiscent of their African homeland. They’re still there today and thus this Middle Eastern rooftop is transformed into a little piece of Ethiopia.

Ethiopian Monastery on the rooftop of St. Helena’s Chapel

That illusion was continued in another chapel across the rooftop, upon the walls of which were hung large colourful paintings depicting the Queen of Sheba being greeted by King Solomon and other scenes from the Kebra Nagast.[2] I sat and meditated and prayed there awhile, marvelling at the different aspects that Christ’s faith has taken over the world and enjoying yet another aspect of Christianity’s wonderful kaleidoscope available to view in the Holy City, but then my curiosity was roused by a sign by the chapel door that stated ‘St. Helena’s Cistern’ and pointed down a set of narrow stone steps. Intrigued, I climbed down, into the bowels of the earth, until the narrow stone tunnel gouged out of solid rock opened out into a huge underground cavern filled with waters. I felt like Axel when he came across the Lidenbrock Sea, but in reality it was one of the great cisterns that provided Jerusalem’s inhabitants with their water for millennia, making it the very lifeblood of the city. I sat down by the cool waters and contemplated it, this lonely, silent cave under the heart of the bustling city. It was one of the most powerful places I’d encountered on the whole trip; part of the holiest church on earth, yet largely forgotten and hidden, this cavern spoke of something, different, something older than the foot worn temples above. This place was pungent with faith, but it was all somehow more earthy, primitive, more primeval, speaking of the very roots of mankind’s tenure on earth. In its silence, it shouted louder than the gaudiest and most magnificent of temples on the surface above.

[1] That Israel has the bomb has never been officially denied or admitted by the government.

[2] The Kebra Nagast (Glory of Kings) is a sacred Ethiopian text which in Ethiopian Orthodox eyes is surpassed in holiness only by the Bible. It narrates the story of how the Queen of Sheba, (named ‘Makeda’ in the text), journeys to visit King Solomon, (as in the Biblical account found in Kings I, Ch. 10), by whom she then gets pregnant, (not in the Biblical account). Upon returning to Sheba, (which is identified as being Ethiopia), she gives birth to a son, Menelik who, which he attains adulthood, returns to Jerusalem to meet his father. Solomon welcomes him and offers him his kingdom upon his death, but Menelik decides to return to Ethiopia and upon leaving, some of his followers steal the Ark of the Covenant from the Temple, (without Menelik’s knowledge it must be stressed), and take it with them to Africa where it still resides today, in the northern Ethiopian city of Axum. Critics state that the Kebra Nagast is not historical and merely Mediaeval legend, dating from the 14^th century, but it has influenced Ethiopian religion and history considerably, the last king claiming to be from Solomon’s line being Haile Selassie who was deposed by a military coup only in 1974. Furthermore, through Selassie and his resistance to Italian invasion, the Kebra Nagast influenced greatly the Black Emancipation movements in the Americas, one result being the Jamaican religion Rastafarianism whose adherents view Haile Selassie as a god and urge a return ‘home’ to the Black ‘Promised Land’ of Africa (i.e. Ethiopia), as they see the Black presence in the Americas as an exile forced on the race by slavery, similar to that of the Israelites in Egypt from whom they gain much inspiration.

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Friday, 4 September 2015

Holy Land: Sacred Pilgrimage: Part VII–Up the Mount of Olives

Greetings!

With my Scotland trip out of the way, I’ve started this week to prepare a little for Cuba. This preparation involves a Learn Spanish CD on loop in the car and reading a few books on the country. The first of these is ‘Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know’ by Julia E. Sweig who is, apparently, an academic in Washington, USA.

To be honest, as a beginner’s guide to recent Cuban history and politics I’m enjoying it and finding Ms. Sweig’s writing to be balanced and fair. She is there to inform, not persuade which, for this stage at least, is exactly what I want. So folks, for an intro to Cuba, check this book out. Also, it seems to be part of a series so maybe some of the others are worth reading too? I’ll let you know in time.

Whatever the case, I just love the photo on the front cover. Handmade flag flying proudly. Brilliant.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to other parts of the travelogue:

Sacred Pilgrimage

Secular Pilgrimage