The last time I was in Israel, 40 years ago, I'm pretty sure there was no Al Quds radio. It was more than a dozen years before the first Intifada. I arrived in January of 1974, just three months after the country was traumatized in the Yom Kippur war. Everywhere I went there were uniformed soldiers carrying their Uzis. Military vehicles outnumbered civilian cars on the roads. The landscape outside the big cities was dotted with Bedouin tents, their residents dressed in layer upon layer of wool clothing. Sheep and camels grazed nearby. I was warned against wandering into Arab towns and villages, though there was no prohibition against hitchhiking as a way to get around. Everyone did it. Things are different now. Last Thursday on our way from Jerusalem to Eilat we drove within spitting distance of Gaza. We turned the radio on and the first station that tuned in clearly was 102.7, Al Quds . The digital readout flashed: "Voice of Resistance." That day three young Israeli settlers had been kidnapped while hitchhiking in the West Bank. We had only passed a couple of hitchhikers over the last two weeks. Bedouin tents were few and far between now that the state had corralled about half the nomad population into makeshift villages in the Negev. Despite all these tensions, the Jordanian border near Eilat was open to tourists (Israelis only allowed with visas) like us who wanted to visit the "Lost City" of Petra (think Indiana Jones). Eilat and the Jordanian city of Aqaba sit almost side-by-side at the mouth of the Red Sea. After you show your passport about 10 times, you're on your way. In Jordan, the Bedouins still reign. Their tents are everywhere. At Petra, they hawk camel and donkey cart rides and sell trinkets. Children as young as 5 or 6 are enlisted in the enterprise. The ruins -- basically a 2000 year old city carved into canyon walls of deep red stone -- are awe-inspiring. And even though Israeli customs ripped apart my suitcase before we got on a plane in Eilat bound for Tel Aviv (just because we had been in Jordan), I'm glad we got to see the whole spectacle. I felt like I'd jumped back in time, if not 2000 years, at least 40.
1 Comment
6/17/2014 01:24:47 am
Susan,
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorSusan. Traveling again. And writing about it. ArchivesCategories
All
|