this is an old ass city

ok. so, i arrived and am alive. alive, exhausted, and running on real coca cola and strong middle eastern coffee.

culture shock began in the airport in new jersey, where the special el al security man interrogated me about why and with whom i was going to israel (normal questions), and also what synagogue i belong to and whether i go to shul and what holidays i observe. at this point, i begin to sweat. "um, yeah, i go on the high holy days..."
"which are?"
"rosh hashana and yom kippur?"
"and do you celebrate at home?"
"uhh, no..." sweating more.
"do you celebrate passover?"
"yes! yes i do that." he noted my name is german jewish and i said yes, my grandparents lived in austria before the war.
"do they speak german and yiddish?"
"no, i speak spanish." a part of my brain just assumed he was still interrogating me, and not my grandparents.
"no, your grandparents."
"uh, yeah, they speak both. i think."
"and do you?"
"um, not really... i can understand a few things, like how to say someone's crazy or it's raining... schvitzing..."
he glared at me. "schvitzing means to sweat."
"oh, really? i thought id heard it used to mean a light rain..."
"no, " he said very seriously, "it means to sweat. please proceed to the ticket counter."

on the airplane, i woke out of a daze to go pee, and the first thing i saw when i stood was an orthodox jew in full coat and hat bowing and praying next to the bathroom.

i got to the hostel, which is lovely with a rooftop view of the old city, and passed out. i woke up to the call to prayer, put a scarf on my head and dragged myself out the door. eventually i came to a cafe where the proprietor fed me goat cheese and oregano "pie" and told me i was an amazing person with a calm presence and brought be that coffee on the house. then his friend came and sat next to me and told me about how because he's palestinian his children who are american citizens aren't allowed to come visit him because the israeli goverment is afraid they'll stay. his daughter was visiting from chicago and was detained for 14 days in israel before being sent back home.

upon my request he took me on a little walking tour and showed me the house where he was born. we walked out the damascus gate where arabs had set up a wild bazarre in the 6 hours since i had walked in, which is illegal but the jewish police are having shabbat today. "there are no laws here" my guide Tofik said, and a guy who overheard him laughed. later we saw a storefront that a palestinian paid 3 million dollars for the right to rent. apparently land in jerusalem is so contested that it costs this much even for a bookseller to occupy. the idea is that whoever has more people living here will win, so rich jews from new york and extended palestinian clans pay up the butt to claim a bit of space.

later i went to the western wall, because it's shabbat and people gather there at sundown. to see and touch the place i was always told is the holiest site in the world and the closest i will ever be to god was overwhelming. men on their side and women on their side grabbed each other's hands and danced in circles, while one guy drummed on a table, and others prayed out loud and others cried into their prayerbooks. some women stood on chairs looking over to the men's side, and i wished i had my camera but i left it at the hostel because i was told i wouldnt be able to use it there (a lie). there were guys from the ultraorthodox in their russian looking hats and also "the bad jew contingent" as i heard them refer to themselves later, with sports team embroidered kippas which they probably got for bar mitzvahs and never wore again. its not so often you see guys hold hands and dance together, coming from my context, it looks pretty gay.

then i tried to get back and got utterly lost in the jewish quarter and then who knows what quarter i was in when i wandered into an armenian pottery shop and the proprieter decided to tell me all about how to sexually fulfill my husband. (i wear a faux wedding ring when travelling alone.) apparently, if a man "do not throw the water in to the womans sex, he goes crazy." we had to go over the proper english vocabulary (penis, vulva, vagina ("the hole that's not the dirty place")) for him to elaborate his theories to me, which i requested because i wanted to know. he seemed taken aback when i took out my pad of paper and a pen, but notes were key.

apparently he knows a 95 year old man who has 4 women and sex every day and he's so strong and smart you'd never know his age. also, fyi, "if you take your clothes off, your husband, he not interesting, but when you have a little bit clothing your husband he's interesting." (he means, we ladies should wear sheer nighties for our husbands in order to keep them satisfied, because women are too self conscious when completely naked.) he says that the woman, she's the same as the man, she has water and needs to get rid of it. "if you take the hair off the woman, the man, he likes it, so he can smell the woman."

the whole thing was weird, and that's around the time i edged my way out of the store, but it opened my narrow mind to the idea that men demand that their women clean house still value the woman's satisfaction.

i made my way back to the hostel finally through the dark twisted streets full of jews going to shabbat dinner. i paused on the way to listen to a family pray through the window, which was beautiful.

and now i'm going to bed.