Lost

I have a pretty good sense of direction, but there is something about this region of the world that throws that internal radar completely out of the loop. It may be something related to geographical elements - the "ocean" is to the West here. Living on the east coast for such a long number of years maybe can't make sense of this. Or, the endless undulating mountains and continuous paper-cutter settlements that dot the landscape around Jerusalem do not provide any signpost to the actual cardinal direction. Or, most likely, it is just difficult for me to wrap my head around the simple fact that Ramallah is located North of Jerusalem and Bethlehem is South. Maybe it was all those childhood religious classes that somehow made me think that Bethlehem was north of Jerusalem.

In any case, none of this helps me to navigate the circuitous, often one-way, no-turn streets of Jerusalem. And unfortunately, Jerusalem is not a place where one wants to get lost, especially if it is the Sabbath or other Jewish holy day. Yesterday, unbeknownst to me, was one of those such days. Its the season of Jewish holidays, but somehow I mixed up in my mind which days were actually the observance days. This year, the holidays also coincide with the Muslim celebrations of the end of Ramadan. I decided to profit from my 3 day holiday by going into Jerusalem to enjoy a nice walk in a park and dinner. It wasn't until I passed the walls of the old city that I realized that it was a day of religious observance. I drove into my favorite West Jerusalem neighborhood (called the German colony), which is my favorite mostly because its very secular and has a European feel to it. All the stores and restaurants were closed, there were no cars on the streets, and there were lots of families out walking. So I decided my next stop would be Jaffa street - a large, pedestrian commercial area. This is where I took a wrong turn.

I was soon passing men dressed in long black robes with tall, black hats on their heads, walking hand in hand with boys dressed as mirror images with payot hair locks. As the lone car driving slowly (in my attempt to be respectful!) down the streets, I realized I was getting dirty looks thrown my way. So, I made a few turns trying to make a quick escape, and only arrived deeper into the orthodox communities. Luckily for me, many of them put barriers up on the streets to prevent any vehicular traffic on the holidays.

At one intersection, I was faced directly with at least 100 Jewish children mulling around near the traffic barrier. I watched as several people whose appearances seemed to indicate they were tourists, approach the barriers, attempt to take photograph, and were engaged by the children in a lively dialogue. I'm not sure if the children were specifically tasked with the role of providing a double defense to the barrier against possible intrusion of outsiders. I do know that a few weeks prior, I had passed the outskirts of this same neighborhood on the main road leading to the old city, and at 8pm, very young children between the ages of 5-10 years were making a raucous on the road, shouting insults and threatening to throw stones at the passing drivers.

On the other side of the wall this morning, I was dodging Palestinian children dressed in their new, holiday clothing, flocking the streets with toy guns of all sizes - the most prized Eid (holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan) gift.

Scenes like these make it difficult for me to feel at all hopeful about attempts at peace in this region. Jerusalem and its environs is the main battlefield of this war of monotheistic religions. The fact that all sides are recruiting and inoculating the youth at such an early age to their war of beliefs does not give me any hope that generations to come will solve anything as walls of defense go up slowly in the minds of the children. Maybe our politicians need to go get lost in the streets of Jerusalem and Ramallah for a bit.