City of David/Village of David

Just now as I was walking in I experienced something so familiar there was no way I could have noticed its absence: the smell of mown grass. Yep, the grass on campus finally got so long they sent someone to mow it. It's a very welcome smell.


A lot has happened since I last wrote. First, I'll just bring you back to where I left you.

The light rail station, which so exceeds Toronto's public transportation...

Julia wearing a faux headscarf on Seoren's advice about modesty at religious sites...

A frightening monster! Who shall succeed in slaying the beast?

Or add lemon to it?

The Old City by night. Some find it eerie, others peaceful. Also, kids play soccer outside the walls.

And some random stacked fruit in the morning.
Thought experiment: can a perfect sphere rest on the exact top of another perfect sphere?

The tilapia was actually the first time I've seen Valeria finish a restaurant meal and ask her neighbour for more.


The next day was relatively uneventful. In the morning I had class, and I can't remember what I did in the afternoon. But in the evening I decided to take a walk, one that didn't lead to more of the city but to less of it. Luckily, our dorms are quite close to the east edge of the city, so that wasn't hard. But I did run into the 1949 Armistice Agreement Line, which confused and worried me, so after pacing back and forth like an idiot for five minutes I avoided it and turned north.


Before too long, as the sun was slanting over the long yellow grass, I ran into a small valley where the scenery suddenly became very pastoral.

Maybe the grass isn't actually that long.

As this was the most open area I'd seen yet in Jerusalem, I decided to descend. And can you spot what that is in the lower left-hand corner?

That's right. I have christened this valley the new Shepherd's Fields.

I went down to the boy, who must have been eight or nine, and picked my way across the fields. Some of his flock were wandering away, and he just sat on his little stool and watched them with an intense glare.


"Shalom," I said. He looked at me but didn't reply at all. "Hello?" I tried. Nothing. Since this is east/Arab Jerusalem, I tried, "Salaam?" He didn't budge. So I sat and watched the flock with him for a while. They looked kind of dirty, but also lovable, those goats and sheep; it was the first time I had been so close to herd animals for so long with no one wanting me to go anywhere.


After a while, I tried again: "Shalom? Do you understand anything I'm saying?" He turned to look at me again and stared intensely, but said nothing. I tried one of the few Hebrew things I knew that would be appropriate: "Dvarimai?" I asked, meaning, "My words?" His eyebrows went up at this, very briefly, but he still didn't respond. (At first I thought he was startled by my knowing more Hebrew than "shalom", but on reflection it may also have been because I should have said "dvarai"...)


So I left my companion and went to explore the valley some more. As I walked away, some older boys came up towards him, probably his brothers, and I was worried they might think I had been threatening their brother. But they replied to my "hi" and went past.


The rest of the valley was pretty nice. I saw a horse grazing on a little slope, and that solidified it as my new favourite place in the city.

Woah! When did the Escarpment move to Israel?

When the sun was almost done setting, I went back and met Valeria for some supper. That night, looking at the lights of the city from our kitchen window, I realized I had come to love Jerusalem. And there was morning, and there was evening; the first day.


The second began with the City of David. Our professor decided to dedicate a day of class to a field trip there. Just to be clear, it's not a city; it's an archaeological site on a hill under which is buried what used to be a city. And even that was hardly a city by our standards, but more of a village. Oh, and by "city of David" they mean Jerusalem in his time, not Bethlehem. Okay, now that all the misconceptions are out of the way...

I got up early in the morning and walked. This is one of the slopes of the Mount of Olives.

I hadn't yet seen this wall of the Old City, nor the little church spire. Early morning is a good time to do so.

Nor this attractively solid corner of the wall!

The sparrow probably doesn't care what kingdoms come or go, although the King does care about the sparrow.

They have a big tacky harp at the entrance because it represents David.

This is the Kidron Valley. In David's time, there was less buildup and it was much deeper.

Those holes in the stone of the cliff are, according to my professor, entrances to ancient tombs.

View of the southern slope of the Mount of Olives bordering the Kidron.

An ancient two-storey house currently being excavated.

There's a story behind this, too. In one of these houses (there are a couple around here) there was a fire that destroyed a lot of scrolls and documents. But there were some clay seals on the documents, which the fire hardened, and thereby were discovered in the excavations. Some names on them are from the Bible, from people mentioned during the reigns of kings in Jerusalem.

Afterwards, we descended towards Hezekiah's Tunnel. On the way there were some photos of ancient finds.

It gets better...

...and better.

Hezekiah's Tunnel was built by one of the kings -- probably, and by tradition, Hezekiah -- in Jerusalem after David. The Assyrians were invading Israel, so some clever engineer built a tunnel from the Gihon Spring outside the city to the Pool of Siloam, a reservoir inside the city, and blocked off the spring, so that their water couldn't be seized during a siege. It's  amazing for their time and technology, said our professor, and his opinion was emphatically confirmed by a professional structural engineer in our class: two teams worked from opposite ends to meet in the middle, and over five hundred metres, they not only didn't miss each other but maintained a total slope of only thirty centimetres. An ancient Hebrew inscription (which our professor showed us and read to us) was found in the tunnel describing how it was made, and corroborating the Bible's account of its existence. So now it was time to descend.

Good thing they didn't have this warning in Hezekiah's time or it would have screwed up the siege plan.

We were warned not to put stuff in our pockets.

The descent...

The entry.

It was very narrow and very low, and the walk is about forty minutes in pitch black. This made for quite an amazing experience (and not only because, as our professor commented, it's the best air conditioning in Jerusalem). The water is not stagnant but keeps flowing over your feet, and the rocks under it are smooth; it's quite easy to feel your way forward, but if you stop and think about how far under the earth you are and how far from an exit -- especially with seven or eight people on either side -- it gets claustrophobic.

The light at the end of the tunnel! Brought to you by Expressions Made Literal, Inc.

The modern-day Pool of Siloam, not quite where the original one was, but still old.
These teenage Hebrew girls were very loud and obnoxious, and the tunnel carried their voices well. :/

Daredevil boy swims in the very narrow crevice Pool of Siloam! 

Daredevil boy climbs the gate!

Daredevil boy prepares to jump several feet onto rocky ground! Please don't do it, daredevil boy!
(We left before we saw what happened.)

Here we paused and the professor handed out some sheets of ancient writing and inscriptions that have been found and deciphered, and as an expert in this kind of thing he talked about the difficulties in translation, the fascinating elements of the language, and so on.

Then we went through a dry tunnel five times harder than Hezekiah's to reach the following place.

A diagram of what the city looked like during Hezekiah's time.

An ancient street or compound or something similar. You're looking through the roofs of rooms or houses.

Excavations are ongoing. Someone in our class commented that he really wanted to join them.

A mosaic on the roof of one of the structures that is mostly undamaged. Incredible!

We exited back onto the street we had entered by, and that was it for the City of David.


But that wasn't it for that day! After that, some classmates and I went in quest of the professor's recommended "best hummus in the city". At first we tried to go in via the Dung Gate, which leads to the Western Wall, but some guards told us that it was too busy, and putting our backpacks through security would be too much trouble, so could we not go today. Since it wasn't our destination, we didn't go.

The place where we entered featured this replica of the original temple menorah.

We ended up going through a residential area that was pretty nice, with lots of corners.

Finally we found the place and sat down to lunch, very much needed after a whole morning of underground hiking. The man served us five little bowls of hummus, spiced and with little pools of olive oil. We thought it was going to be ridiculously insufficient for our appetites. Then he set the plate of pitas in front of us and we began dipping and scooping and nibbling... and it was good. What set it apart from other hummuses was, I think, the fact that it was good enough to be a meal on its own -- and one of the best I had here.


I just remembered a neat thing about that lunch. It hadn't occurred to me that everyone taking a course in Biblical as opposed to modern Hebrew would have an interest in the Bible (as obvious as that should be). It turned out we were all Christians around that table, so we prayed together before we ate -- the first time I've been a part of that in Israel.


Afterwards, since I found myself in the jewellery district of the Old City, I split from the group and went to procure a Star of David my grandma wanted from Jerusalem (the real thing!). Once again I had to haggle, but this time there were more factors: I can't tell if something is actually gold; there was a competition on every side; I had to guesstimate my grandma's taste in specific appearance; I didn't have a lot of money on me; and so on.


I went to one shop and the guy told me he didn't have gold, but I should wait while he ran and got some. He brought a piece back and asked for 550 shekels (about $140).

I realized how expensive it was going to be, so I told him I needed to discuss whether it was the right one with my grandma. He interpreted this as haggling and lowered the price to 500. I realized I was only carrying about 400, so I told him I didn't have that much on me so I might as well go back. He interpreted this as haggling too and he dropped it to 450. I said I only had about 400, but I needed to talk to my grandma anyway and could he show me the direction out of the Old City. This was the biggest blow of all, and he said, "Okay, okay, my friend, 380, I give it to you now... it's my first sale of the day, special price." But since he was being unhelpful I started walking. "350!" he called. "350, my friend!"

But I still thought that was too much if I wasn't sure my grandma would like it, and moreover he had acted kind of fishily when I asked him if it was pure gold. I was feeling kind of a rush seeing how he had been manipulated and all I was doing was being honest!

I went a few shops down, to a small one, and asked if they had pure gold. The guy there said no, but the next one did. I went there, and it was a much bigger one. It had many ads saying it was real gold, and the owner said he had special authorization from the Israeli government, so I figured he probably would've been busted by now if it wasn't. So (maybe against my better judgement) I decided to buy one. I picked one out and asked to buy it.

He said, "Normally 800, but for you my friend, 600, just this once."


I told him, "No, my absolute limit for this is 350. I won't pay any more than that. I don't need it right now anyway, so if you don't want 350 I'll just go."


He hesitated. "For 550, you get it," he said. "I tell you what, it's my first sale of the day, so this is special price, just for you."


"No, it's not your first sale," I told him; "everyone says that. But thanks anyway. Now, 350 is all I'll pay."


"My friend, I can't do that, I pay 450 to get it," he said.


I replied, "That's ridiculous. Now, 350 or not?"


He finally sighed and agreed and I bought it for 350.

As he was wrapping it up, the first guy walked into his shop, saw me, grinned, and said, "So you go to my brother's shop, eh? This is my brother's shop." As I was walking away I wondered if I had really got a good price after all or if it was me who had been manipulated!


Then I headed back home. But on the way, I stopped at the Rockefeller Museum, partially because they had drinking water and partially because it was free.

The travel guides call it "an impressive building". Somehow it's hard to see it beside the towering Old City...

The Rockefeller Museum is a fairly important archaeological collection. I was pretty much the only one there, and the attendant, apparently bored, kindly got up and suggested some sites for me to see. Of course, I went through the whole thing anyway.


Warning: if you don't much care about old stuff, this next section is going to be boring.

Signifies an Egyptian victory or trade or something?

Hieroglyphics! In the flesh! ... er, the stone!
The ones in cartouches (the enclosing circles) are usually proper names or blessings or curses.

Sweet stamp. I wonder if it's designed so that you can keep rolling the scene and it just joins at the edges?

Signet ring.

When I was right up to this guy, I was startled to discover a suspicious sense of awe welling up.

One of the very oldest skeletons we have -- hundreds of thousands of years old, I think.

People would still wear that today. I think you can find them at the crafts markets around town...

See that devious look in the eyes of the guy on the left? That means progress!

Even armed with that, I still wouldn't want to get close to a lion...

Maybe with this. Although I doubt it's a weapon.

They put jewellery around this man's head when he died. But the skull was still not beautiful enough...

...so they made these horrifically creepy facemasks that are built into the skull.

Some nightmare material for you

Swan soap dish?

Would you drink this cup?

Brilliant method of securing it. 

This is incredibly cool, although I'm not sure that die is truly random!

The artwork begins to become more sophisticated.

But the jewellery is five steps ahead of it.

Nothing beats the pig, though.

Reminds me of Deuteronomy 27:15...

It's these expressions that weird me out the most. Even more than the hand position.

This is the only picture of wood I'll show you, because even I was bored by it.

Coins are really cool, though! They been makin' 'em like this a long time.

I found the other half of Hisham's Palace! I forgot that when I went there, there was a note saying that many of the artefacts had been removed to the Rockefeller Museum. Here they were.

The faces may be more Roman, but they're no less silly.

Such a majestic piece of -- wait, what's that he's holding up?

Reminds me of Crusaders even though it predates them.

These are supposed to be the heads of Moses and Aaron. It didn't say which was which.

Lots of impressive jewellery. P.S. This is the shirt Valeria gave me for my birthday.

A scene from a lintel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

An early gargoyle. I wonder what provoked this change from the pursuit of beauty.

Oh, so now you're making complicated pottery. Must be the Iron Age.
That reminds me, I forgot to mention that (besides the last few) most of this is thousands of years old.

The ideal burial method.

Maybe more scandalous than the swan, but better balanced.

One thing that struck me about all this was how similar ancient art is to children's art.

Doesn't make it any less cool, though.

Purpose?

The garden makes it a more impressive building. The attendant particularly loved this place.

This was several feet long, which means it must have been a massive statue.

Made to commemorate the suppression of a Jewish rebellion.

A plaque nearby says that the shape of the mouth shows it's from the East.

"A mosaic on the floor of a rich, lavish mansion."

On the lid: All this work to immortalize themselves and they still couldn't... save their necks. (Sorry.)

A manger. The holes in the pillars are for tying your animal. Was Jesus born in such a one as this?

To me, the most touching was this image of the Good Shepherd.

Finally they closed, and the attendant reluctantly showed me out. But it was pretty good for an incidental stop on the way back! So then I returned home.

I also spotted this unusually massive spiniferous plant (which is for some reason what I call these).

I passed once more through the garbage road and stopped at an Arab grocery store.

It was there I discovered the bizarro-world version of Rice Krispies.

I can't remember what I did that evening.


I should mention that something unfortunate about the roommate situation is our non-overlapping schedules. Most of us have class at different times and occupy the rest of the time with adventures and experiences (or at least I do), which makes it hard to keep track of what everyone else is doing. These last two days I have very little idea what anyone else did. I apologize for not being able to tell you about their interesting lives.


To make up for this, I'll mention a delightful misconception Lyera had, which was that there was a game called Henchmen. I wracked my brain for what she was thinking of; it turned out it was Hangman. But Henchmen is not at all a bad name for it!


On Friday we didn't have class, since it's the beginning of Shabbat. So Valeria and Seoren and I decided to visit the Israel Museum's model of Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, which is supposed to be huge. We decided to also go to a small crafts market in the centre of town, and the Great Synagogue if we had time before the buses shut down.


In the morning, after dawdling around a bit over breakfast, we took the bus down to the west side of town, and got there safely. But the Israel Museum was only open for another hour and a half by the time we got there (Shabbat, it's crazy), and we didn't want to pay for the whole museum and just see the model, so we crossed the street to the Bible Lands Museum and saw their model of Jerusalem during the First Temple Period, which the clerk described as "less impressive". They didn't let us take photos, which is okay since I already have tons of pictures of old things. Even there we had to rush before they closed.


Seoren was a little peeved that their section on Iran/Persia described the people as barbaric. Valeria was highly disappointed by the model, with good reason. Oh well.


From there we had to walk to the markets in the heat, and with a pretty bad map-reader (yours truly. One thing that doesn't help is how Jerusalem is so hilly you need to take all three dimensions into account, not just two!). Nevertheless, it was quite a nice area, so we didn't mind wandering a bit. There was a park and nice buildings... fancy buildings... clean streets. I don't mind so much, but Valeria and Seoren were thrilled.

What can she be taking a picture of?

Green!!

The markets were, once again, more organized than you'd expect, but then again this was a relatively high-class area. There was a lot of jewellery, pottery, kitsch, and so on. Some purchases were made that I cannot name!


We began walking slowly home, towards the Old City. As we went, the streets got undeniably nicer and nicer.

Seoren described these streets as European.

They even have pseudo-English! If this were Lewis Carroll, someone would correct Alice: "Tut, tut. First one, then more -- never more, then one."

We discovered Independence Park, which may or may not be a cemetery.

Us three in front of the cemetery! All with semi-normal smiles.

They also had some giant parsley that was trying to pass itself off as trees.

Finally we emerged at Mamilla, an area which is also called -- can you guess? No, you can't. On the map it says "Kfar David", which means "Village of David". What it has to do with David I can't imagine. As for me, although I took a number of pictures there, I'm going to be minimal because this extremely posh neighbourhood held little for me.

After we passed through this (and Valeria tore herself away from some of the storefronts), we walked around a corner of the Old City to reach the light rail, which we took home. Probably we got it just in time, since it was four-something in the afternoon and nothing stays open much longer than that.

Why do the railway lines get to have all the green grass?!

But we didn't get to relax for long, because we had arranged to go to a Shabbat dinner that night. This is where the student centre hooks you up with a family doing a traditional Shabbat dinner with readings and everything, and you just show up. I did some preliminary research, and our guy seemed a little suspiciously popular and official, but off we went.

Despite the wonderful clear sunset, I had a bad feeling about it the moment we (that is, all of us but Simmon, who had gone off to Jordan with some neighbours) ran into the official group of students preparing to walk there. They were the kind of people I don't like to hang out with much in Canada, let alone in Israel. And one pro-Israel girl attached herself to our group and directed us in everything we should do. There were so many things I wanted to do on Shabbat that I wanted to do but couldn't -- when the men and women were separated, I wasn't even allowed to write a note to Valeria that said "Oy vey" -- that I think she now considers me a horrible sinner. Oy vey.


While we waited for it to begin, I talked to Seoren about his past. He and his mother came from Iran, a country he loves and loves to talk about, when he was about ten. Since then he has spent a lot of time and attention studying his origins and ancestors and culture, basically getting in touch with his roots. He cleared up a number of misconceptions I had, such as that Iran is a hot country, and that the people are generally Muslim. The way he describes it, it's a beautiful place under an unfortunate regime.


When it actually began, it was clear way too many people knew about this and were coming. A room that might have comfortably seated fifty people was used to seat about a hundred and fifty, maybe more. People were crawling under the tables to use the washroom.


It was pretty cool when the rabbi began to speak, though. He was quite a stereotypical rabbi, judging from the short time we knew him; he spoke in that somewhat mystic, somewhat pragmatic way about the Toraic tradition of Shabbat, and about the "loah" (law, with an accent). He also sang out of a Jewish hymnal (or its equivalent), and that was the coolest part. All the people in the crowd who had heard the songs before sang along, and the music, though severely unprofessional, was really cool in its spontaneity and feeling.


The food was -- well, we won't get into that. Suffice it to say I skipped on the fish paste.


Although I didn't really enjoy the night (none of us really did), one part that stood out to me was when people got to ask questions. An old Chassid stood up to quietly advertise something his synagogue was doing; a European Mormon praised the Shabbat readings and asked the rabbi what he thought the fundamental quality of the holiday is; and a local Orthodox Jew asked the rabbi whether he was allowed to dust book jackets on Shabbat and whether he had to perform a special ritual wash on a Chinese tin opener before he could use it. (He was allowed to dust and he didn't have to wash.)


"The question I think is behind our friend's question," said the rabbi, "is about the minutia of the law. But this I don't understand. To me it seems like an unusual idea, that the small parts should not matter. In the human body, each cell, doesn't it have a vast information, central to the body?" So his idea is that the DNA of the whole can be found in any of the minutiae, I thought. "I think," he said, "so many thoughts like this come from a modern reading, when we do not see the concept behind the concept."


I decided that although this was fair reasoning, if they were really seeing the concept behind the concept, they would see that it is not fulfilled by what is now irrelevant.


Then his son-in-law taught. He said, "I will share a teaching from my wife. She was saying to me, 'What if you are a businessperson, and you are preparing for a meeting, and you see your client drive up in a Lexus? You think, "Wow. This person is rich. They mean serious business." But then you see a sticker in the back window. Then what do you think? Now you know this person maybe appreciates expensive cars, but they aren't necessarily rich.' Well, my friends, this is what I wanted to teach you tonight: that we are all driving expensive cars, great, beautiful cars, but they are rentals. Whatever we have -- strength, intelligence, wisdom, and so on, -- is part of the car that is given to us for now..."


So that was the good part. I won't complain any more about the worse parts, partly because I had it easy (I didn't have to go to the washroom!). Oh, and Seoren and I met a guy from Montreal who is slowly integrating himself into Israeli culture, but who seems to be keeping his head a lot more than the first girl who met us. He was pretty cool.


That night, after we rejoined the girls and walked back, Lyera and I took the flowers I had bought her a week ago and went to give them a proper burial. There's a large hole in the parking lot outside our building, whose function we can't guess. We dropped them one by one into the hole, waving them goodbye. I think it symbolized something.

A last photo with the now-dead bouquet.

So that was Friday. I had some random reflections that night, which I'll share with you:


Driving in Israel is normally insane. On Shabbat, when everything quiets down, it gets much more insane. This is because the few people who do drive pretty much have free reign over the roads. 


In Canada, I was starting to feel hemmed in by all the space. Here, where there's something new around every corner, I feel much freer to explore.


Humility precedes friendship. (This was a confession in reference to that girl I disliked.)


I haven't yet really questioned time even though time is my cruellest master.


And I thought of asking the rabbi the meaning of this proverb (which I invented and which is almost certainly meaningless): "The distance from the knife to the plate only matters if there's any food on the table." But I decided it would be teasing.


Another night in Jerusalem.

The time had come for Saturday.


What was to take place on Saturday, you ask? Well, a tour with Abraham Hostel to Masada, Ein Gedi, and the Dead Sea, which Valeria and I had decided to go on.


We got up early in the morning.

We took a taxi to the hostel. This time they actually did take names as they herded us onto the bus. Or rather, he took names; it was just the driver this time, and there was no real tour guide. He was a pretty cool guy, with a unique accent and good things to say.


The drive to Masada passed by the Judaean Desert...

...which descends to sea level on the way to the lowest spot on land on the planet...

Cool story: I know enough Hebrew to badly translate this. "P'neh mayyim", or "surface of the water".

A guy had set up his camel here. You could pay 5 shekels to get on it and have him take a picture of you.

...and the Dead Sea's coastline...

...which is slowly receding and leaving dangerous sinkholes...

...and stranding this spa resort, which twenty years ago was built right by the beach.

And then we came to Masada. In case you don't know, it's a palace and fortress built on a mountain by Herod the Great before Jesus' time, more or less unimportant until a Jewish rebellion after Jesus' time. A small rebel army held it against a large Roman army for a long time. When it was finally taken, according to the historian Josephus, they committed mass suicide rather than accept defeat and slavery.

What it probably looked like at the time.

  

The approach to the mountain. The driver specifically warned us not to do the hike! 

The coast is all dried up...

Vertigo

You can yawn on top of a mountain.

Lyera thought it was a beautiful bird, so I captured it for all time in a photo.

The first sighting of the ruined fort!
 

Lyera opines that people back then were much more in touch with stone.

We stood here and imagined watching the Roman army mass on the plains below.

Watchtower and quarry.

Someone's room?

Someone more important's room?

The remnants of a mosaic wall.

A model of the fortress and the palaces on the slope.

From up on this little plaza, you could watch all the goings-on in this little section.

A storeroom. There were a couple dozen of these long empty rooms. They held food, weapons, etc.

The cliffs and plain. So much for two eyes to see.

Some remnants of settlements.

Lyera stayed above (as you can see) to watch the view while I descended to one of the ruined palaces.

Hm. Ruined indeed.

The mountain awed me more than any of the structures -- just the sheer height and size.

This palace did a little better.

The mountain from the lowest palace ruins.

This was what really made me hold my breath; it struck me, the massive scale of all I was perceiving.

(Bird!)

I made the foolhardy choice to run up the stairs two at a time back to the summit. I didn't slip or anything, but in the heat it wore me right out, which will be relevant later.

Lyera compared these dunes to meringue pie. I consider this deliciously apt and aptly delicious.

A stepped bath or pool. We would have loved to swim right now.

Although we couldn't guess what these cylinders were for on the floor of one of the pools.

The top of the hill from the watchtower.

This is no doubt how the sentries on duty looked.

The cubbyholes were for storing doves.

The ramp the Romans made to get up. Nice work, guys; it's still here.

Ah, so even they realized the stone wasn't that pretty and made a facade!

The Dead Sea from the hill.

And the descent.

We were lucky that we left when we did. As we approached the bus parking lot, they were just beginning to drive away without us! And we didn't even get to see all of Masada! Oh well; what we did see was magnificent.


After that we drove up to Ein Gedi ("ein" is Hebrew for "spring"), a fissure in the cliffs through which a stream flows, enabling all kinds of green things to grow and watering the ibex. (Ibexes?) It was a hiking trail, and we, especially Lyera, were tired after Masada.

Stereotypical desert shot for you!

We pondered what the purpose of these holes was, and decided that although we could probably climb up to them we would also die of exhaustion, and that wasn't appealling.

The lower waterfall. Notice how it attracts people in bathing suits.

The daunting steps leading up into the rock crevice.

At this point Lyera is asking for a break. We haven't had any lunch or anything, and it's HOT.

But see what awaits us!

And what lies behind us!

When we reached the second waterfall, we had already been climbing on very difficult steps for about ten minutes without shade, and Lyera wanted to just rest and cool her feet rather than go on hiking to things that were likely to look more or less the same. So I parted ways with her, and we arranged to meet again later, while I went on.

A little grove/tunnel that I dubbed the "Lukenian Grove" because it gave me shade.

The final waterfall.

You aren't allowed to swim in the final waterfall, also called David's Waterfall, because of the danger of rocks falling on your head. But people were standing around and looking at it, and for good reason; it was very beautiful. There was an ancient settlement here, we were told, but so far no trace of it. It turned out it was so close that I thought I should go back and encourage Lyera to finish the hike, but then I saw...

The steps to Didom Cave, whose sign I at first read as Doom Cave. It should have been named that. I decided to climb it, even though I had only half a water bottle, no hat, no sunscreen, and weariness in my legs. The view of the fissure was great.

Pretty soon, though, the steps deteriorated into little half-steps and slopes, and it became very steep on the side. The railing in this picture below was one of like three on the whole slope. The ascent got harder and harder, and more and more bare; you can see by the view that this is already pretty high up, and I was running out of time to get back.

A while after I got past the above point, I began to get worried. Every ridge yielded not the summit but a view of the summit, which of course receded with the slope (what was I expecting?). I was beginning to feel what I believe are the symptoms of heatstroke. Inside my mouth and throat felt incredibly hot, and every breath made it worse. My asthma was beginning to kick in, my legs were trembling with every step, and soon my head felt hot and dizzy. I had very little water left. So I promised myself that if the cave itself didn't appear over the next ridge, I would turn back.

It didn't. I snapped this nice picture from what was practically the summit of this ridiculous mountain, hesitated, and resigned myself to go back. It was a good decision, because the descent was difficult and dangerous; I prayed continuously for protection, because I was having trouble making sure my feet were secure. But I didn't slip the whole day down, and my water lasted me till I was back in the spring area, where I finished it. I realized I had very little time left, so I tried to jog back. When I got back on the bus, where Lyera was waiting for me with my backpack, I was dripping with sweat and my whole face felt like it was heated from the inside. But I drank a ton of water and began to feel better. When we made this stop for "the best view of the Dead Sea", I got out.

On the way to our final destination, a beach of the Dead Sea, we passed some Bedouin tents and shacks. One girl's only comment was, "MAN, that's a lot of goats!" I wish I'd taken a picture. Oh, and the driver played an unusual set of English songs. It had James Taylor's "Sailing to Philadelphia", a song my mum loves. Somehow it felt appropriate.


Finally we arrived at the beach.

 We had some ice cream and talked to the driver before going to change.

I swear, beaches everywhere look the same.

Except for the Jordanian mountains in the distance! Finally, right here and without haze!

That's the good stuff.

Swimming in the Dead Sea was weird. It was like breaking the laws of physics the first time we lay on our backs in the water. It was impossible to sink or dive. It felt kind of slimy, and sadly it stung Valeria quite a bit (women and their leg-shaving). In under half an hour the novelty wore off, which was fine because tell you not to stay too long in it. It was not refreshing, just neat; and they make you shower in freshwater afterwards.


One of my sandals fell into the Dead Sea. I think it has finished stiffening now, though.

Grass is also the same all over the world, I find.

We almost missed this bus back, too. But -- after a light French onion soup supper in the Old City and a much-haggled taxi ride ("five shekels discount for you is five shekels for me too," said the driver, winning Valeria's sympathy) -- we got back, after a very long day.


It was one of my favourite excursions so far, and a lot of it was because it was less of a tour and more being set free to explore. I really liked not having a guide and having a loose timeframe. Even the worst parts were not so bad -- as of now, God has even answered my more minor prayers not just to preserve my life but to prevent a sunburn. :p

In time for a lovely gradient sunset.

That night Simmon came back, with a cold, and told us about his time in Jordan. It was a lot of work getting through the border, especially on the way back, but he saw some amazing sites, did some amazing hiking, and took some amazing photos.

Credit: Simmon.

Now that deserves the trademark name of True Desert. When I first saw that, my reaction was, "Yeah, desert, cliffs, just like every day." But then I saw it in the context of his Facebook profile, and it came home to me how insane it is that he -- and, by analogy, I -- have come all this way to a place where we get to see sights like that all the time, set feet on such heights, and take such pictures with, as Simmon put it, "our own two hands".


Nevertheless, the fact that such a trip would take several days (of missed class), the huge expense, and the fact that it was a huge hassle to get there and stay there (even staying with a friend's family), dissuaded Lyera and me from our original plan to go there. We will live vicariously through Simmon instead. (Except for the catching a cold part.)


 Seoren wanted to see the Shepherds' Fields that night, so we went.

This odd vegetable/fruit is not the only kind. Lyera and I discovered a different one as well.
But doesn't it look like corn in a pea pod??

The valley and the adjacent highway by night.

He taught me a trick he learned from archery, to determine which eye is your primary one (apparently everyone has a dominant eye, like handedness). Pick an object at a medium distance -- maybe 20 metres -- and look at it. Now look down, make a very small triangle with your two hands, and raise it to your face. Look up and look through the triangle at the object. Close your eyes one at a time. The one you can't see the object through is not your dominant one. This is because when you think you're using both eyes to aim the view through the triangle, you're actually only using your dominant eye. Cool!

I also wrote a short poem about the day, and about how my visits to places around Jerusalem have so far astounded me more than anything in the great city itself.

...

From Masada to Jerusalem

I swam in the Dead Sea today

   I heard it was safe.

And you cannot sink, and the mud is grey

   but the water falls in rainbow spray.

At Ein Gedi the sun pursued me

   as an attacker relentlessly pursues his prey

but I did not flee:

   I prayed: Father, preserve me

      and He preserved me at Ein Gedi.

I didn't even reach the summit

   because it kept slanting from its place

and things can only be relative

   in absolute space.

Masada awed me with a mountain,

   the vastness of the scale my eyes beheld;

but will you not requite my love,

   o Jerusalem of Gold?

...

(The "rainbow" part refers to the showers they required us to wash the salt off in. They were positioned so that the water spraying off me turned into rainbows in the sun.)

Anyway, so that was the main body of the adventures. I'll go through the next two days a little quicker, because they were, shall we say, more domestic.

First Sunday, the day we call the weekend but which in Israel is "day one" (yes, literally).

When I got home from class I did a bit of research on attractions for that evening, and proposed to everyone that we go and enjoy the botanical gardens, which their phone system claimed closed "at dark". Seoren, Julia, and I headed out at about six.

The first sight after getting off the bus. At the top it says "the kosher" and at the bottom "express".

Similarly...

We wandered around for quite a while trying to find it; both the signage and an old man's directions led us astray. Finally we met a group of people also trying to get in, so we put our heads together and found it.

Because Julia thinks I don't have enough photos of me here.

Seoren thought these looked fake.

Sadly, we got there just in time for them to close. But we did accidentally run into an event that we identified first as a bar mitzvah, then a wedding, then a briss. We fled.

We are gathered here today...

So we decided to explore instead.

Must be more Israeli art.

The sun bids us farewell...

Finally we climbed on a bus that would actually stop for us (that reminds me: the way you stop a taxi here is by pointing at the ground, not giving a thumbs-up) and made our way to the city centre. Lo and behold, it was the same place Seoren, Lyera, and I had visited a few days ago! We walked through it in all its high-class-ness, and I read all the Hebrew letters that spelled English words.

While Julia posed in front of one of Israel's famous antiques.

We ended up at Mamilla, the so-called "Village of David", again. (I think my map must just be wrong.) This time, it being evening, I found it calmer. We soaked in the sights.

He had made a small fortune and he wasn't even playing. I should be a busker.

Why are there numbers on the bricks? I don't know, but it's kind of cool!

Seoren joked that they were probably trying to get back to Europe. They were actually pretty good.

Finally, an honest store!

After this, we found ourselves facing the Old City's western side. Seoren remembered that the City of David runs a lightshow in the evenings, so we decided to venture forth and find it. It was quite a long walk, and we almost got lost, but since it was mostly on the southern (deserted) side of the city, it was very peaceful and quiet.

Travelling companion aleph!

Travelling companion beth!

Is one allowed to see?

This should look familiar to you. It's the Kidron Valley from above.

We arrived at the City of David a little worn out, but very pleased with our stroll. Even Seoren, who hasn't been enjoying himself much here, thought it was a beautiful part of Jerusalem. When we got there, though, we had missed one lightshow and the next one wasn't for almost an hour, so considering our apparent cursedness in arriving at places on time, we decided to just walk around the site and then go back home.

Whoever designed this decided that an ancient streetscape would look best in purple.

A cistern. Hey, I just realized that should be the feminine of "brethren".

Finally, we ascended to the Old City in order to cut through it in the dark, which rather frightened Julia. But it only took a few failed tries to get the right street! :p

The Western Wall by night, which prefigured the next day's adventure.

Sane!

I mistook this for a Star of David...

The Old City closes down quite early, but for some reason the candy shops all stay open much later. Maybe it's because parades of children wander up its alleys, or bike down the long bazaar streets, all night. Whatever the reason, it's a unique atmosphere.

I don't think it was when we entered the dorms this time, but it was recently, anyway, that Seoren and I witnessed the only time the dorms' security has come into effect. A tall, dreadlocked guy walked through the office without showing his card, and the officer ran out and shouted at him. He shrugged and kept going, and eventually the officer ran after him and grabbed his shoulder and I think he made him show his student card. It was about 10,000% more effort put into the job than usual! Usually they're sipping mango juice and listening to Hebrew pop while surfing the Internet on their tablets.

Oh, and before we leave the topic of Julia and Seoren, I just heard Julia chastising Seoren for humming at random in the mornings, saying, "I'm too tired to hear just anything that comes out of the Mouth of Seoren." The accidental pun was too perfect.

Now for the final day I'll recount in this post... el Monday. In the morning I had class --

-- during the breaks of which I noticed this very poor spider web planning --

-- and when it was over Valeria and I planned a trip to the Old City to see a few things.

Of course, after the last few days, I was tired to begin with.

So was Lyera.

We've now about completely switched to taking the light rail to the Old City, which I both like and dislike. I like it because it saves me almost an hour of walking. I dislike it because it deprives me of almost an hour of walking. One way or another, we got there.

Usual sights.

First we went to get a chain to go with the Star of David. We went to a respectable place on Chain Street (how very appropriate) where Valeria had had great success earlier on, and indeed the owner was very nice, haggled reasonably, gave us all the time we needed, and even verified that the star I'd bought before was real gold.

Then it was off to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.

These children greeted us very cheerfully as we passed.

Pigeons don't have to go through metal detectors to get to the Western Wall.

The Temple Mount turned out to be closed after 11 a.m., so we decided to hang out at the Wall. Women aren't allowed to approach the wall with men, so Lyera photographed me.

I asked a local man if it was called a "yarmulke" or a "kippeh", a debate Valeria and I were having. He only barely understood English, but he said it was a "koteh"...

A billboard outside the wall declares that the Divine Presence always rests here.

I inserted a note with lyrics from a Rich Mullins song: "The Holy King of Israel loves me here in America."

We passed out of the Jaffa, or Beautiful, Gate. A man sitting on a chair shouted to Valeria as we passed: "Hey! I see him come here every day, always with a different woman! Germans, Russians, Americans, it doesn't matter to him! He takes them here and the next day he's with someone else!" Unable to control ourselves, we burst out laughing.


We then went to an arts and crafts lane, where, perhaps because we took a similar route to the one Julia, Seoren, and I had taken, some of the bad luck from last night must have rubbed off on us. We got there as it was finishing closing down. So we proceeded around to something I've wanted to see since I arrived in Israel: Mount Zion.

The route takes you by this excellent broad place.

The tree looks like it's curtsying.

The cats are always watching.

This was near what looked like a cemetery. Lyera opined that soldiers for thousands of years may have seen this as their last sight before their final rest.

Finally we arrived at Mount Zion itself. Some guys playing basketball in a basketball court assured us that this was in fact Mount Zion. Despite all the signs of it being a campsite.

At least the view is nice... wait, is that tree on fire?

Oh, well at least it wouldn't be the first time.

It finally managed to intrigue us concerning the ancient spiritual importance of the place when we saw these blocked-up excavations.

It was sad, to say the least, to see that the place mentioned in so many psalms as the heart of the city, and beloved by the early founders of the modern state as the pillar of the Jewish identity, was now a neglected park. We decided to move on.


We saw this spire and decided to follow it to whatever it was hiding.





When we entered a little tunnel that seemed to it, there were signs pointing to things we'd never heard of and people doing maintenance work. We must have looked a little lost, because a man approached us and offered to show us where the Tomb of David was. He led us down a dark corridor, gave me a paper yarmulke/kippeh/koteh, divided us according to our genders down the different routes, and sent us into this little room with a warning that the tomb itself was underground. He also took this ridiculous picture of me.

"Perfect, perfect," he said. And, of course, on the way out, he asked the bewildered tourists for some money for his troubles. I gave him a few shekels, since I didn't have much change on me. He got angry, stared into my wallet, and declared that I had ten shekels I could give him. I didn't, actually, so I just shrugged and we went on. As we went on, he called out, "Bye, Russian!" like it was an insult. Valeria was somewhat horrified by the experience.

A much better memorial to David.

 We resumed our search.

It led past a Greek Orthodox basilica...

...and to a closed cemetery, protected by barbed wire.

Oh. This closes early too.

So we retraced our steps, not actually as disappointed as we thought. Once again, the Old City was quieting down, and the streets were emptying. It was beautiful.

But how??

We realized we had stumbled upon the Armenian quarter.

The people are so friendly!

It is by far the prettiest and most expensive section of the Old City.

This is begging to become a Facebook profile picture.

All Armenians seem to do ceramics. We passed like seven of these.

The Citadel overlooks this beautiful corner.

We bought some items I cannot name lest I give away their identity as gifts on this street.

The vehicle ramps seem to be of lower quality, though...

Oh, and all the ceramics shops are centres, too.

At first I thought this was a shortcut to Egypt, but then Valeria pointed out the faded letter that showed it was in fact an advertisement. But for what??

We had been vaguely searching for this -- "vaguely" here means wandering peacefully in the Old City and hoping to end up there -- and decided it probably wasn't a tourist destination after all.

  

We came to a gate, so we decided to leave and go to a restaurant for supper.

I guess this is what they mean by "Jerusalem the Golden"! One of the buildings even says "golden" on it.

These trees are like a young couple, one appearing to lean against the other for support.

We ended up in ... you guessed it... the Village of David. Valeria had spotted a restaurant here when we came by on Friday, and it had been closed when we passed it on the Shabbat on the way back from the Dead Sea. So we decided to visit it today. It was, intriguingly, split into two sections: the meat section and the dairy section.

Valeria ponders the menu in consternation.

Oh! She's decided what to get! What can it be that has made her so happy?

Valeria observes that in Israel, waiters never come and ask you how your meal is.


When I was washing my hands I encountered an elderly gentleman who was at a loss about the automatic taps and their lack of a -- well, a tap. When I turned it on by waving my hand under it, he exclaimed, "Oh!" and imitated me.


For some reason he, the Tomb of David guy, and the Jaffa Gate taunter, feel bound in some way in my mind, as do the the boy who carried his bike up that church and the daredevil boy who swam in the Pool of Siloam. Maybe I'm thinking too symbolically.

Our walk back after six and a half hours and not seeing what we set out to see. It was good!

Since then I've essentially done nothing. (Well, I've done a small something but I did it since I started writing this post, and it's too late to incorporate it, so... next time!) I mostly just relaxed while writing this, minus a brief excursion to the Shepherds' Fields with Lyera. It was mostly prickly, but we did meet the shepherd boy and his brothers.

Well, that's all for now. Time to sleep. And maybe return to one of the two colonies of David another time.

P.S. speaking of ancient kings, that reminds me of my Hebrew learning. I became interested in the name "Melchizedek", because I realized I could translate at least one of the words of the original -- "malki", or "my king". The other word, "tzedek", appeared to have the root related to "righteousness". This would yield a nominal sentence of "My king is righteousness". I asked my professor about it and he said that "malki" was actually an archaic form: the genitive case, which no longer exists. It actually means "king of". Thus, his name is "King of Righteousness". Which ties in nicely with the theophany theories.

Hope that was a welcome diversion for the academics among us!

Now, goodnight, one and all, even if it it isn't night where you are.