I’m watching the Al Jazeera news channel this morning. I don’t understand most of the Arabic, but a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m watching demonstrations in both Beruit and Cairo where they are burning cheap paper drawings of the Israeli flag and chanting “Allahu akbar” (God is great) over and over again as the paper flags curl at the corners and fly away like tiny black birds.

Yesterday, I watched another demonstration in which an Israeli flag was being burned and was then used to light an American flag on fire. The two then burned together. This is symbolic of the growing worldview in the Middle East that is being indelibly burned into the social consciousness of all Arabs; that is, the U.S. giving unconditional support to Israel.

Whether or not you agree with this is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you understand how America is viewed in the Arab world.

I am not an Arab. I am not a Middle East expert or a scholar. I’m just an American who has lived and traveled in the Middle East and read a lot of books by other people who are Arabs and/or Middle East experts and scholars. While this is hardly a solid foundation for what I’m about to do here, but I’m going to take a stab at it nonetheless because being here now, in this place at this time, I’m compelled to do so. Here is what I think the Arab worldview of America is as the crisis in Lebanon deepens and moves closer and closer toward long-term intractable violence.

America supports Israel unconditionally and cares little about the lives and future of the Arabs, especially the Palestinians.

America is quick to label Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorist organizations” while the real terrorist organization in the Middle East is the Israeli military, which daily kills countless civilians.

The Israeli military is funded in large part by U.S. foreign aid; therefore, America is funding this large-scale terrorism against the Arabs as currently demonstrated by Israeli military operations in Gaza and in Lebanon.

America calls for peace, but won’t call Israel to the carpet for it’s unjust and brutal actions against civilians.

Together, America and Israel are using their military might to subdue and control the Arabs.

While Arab governments, the UN and the rest of the international community sit idly by, Hezbollah is the only organization that is attempting to defend the Lebanese people from Israeli military attacks.

Whether or not you agree with this is irrelevant. What is relevant and important is that you understand that this worldview is being created and reinforced by direct actions (as well as inactions) as the crisis in Lebanon escalates. I believe this is a critical juncture for the future of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. If the U.S. administration continues to plow forward through this crisis unconscious of the Arab worldview then they are ensuring a future in which hatred of America among everyday people here will continue to grow and the American flag will burn along with the dreams of a peaceful future.

When we arrived in Ramallah, I registered our travel itinerary online at the U.S. Department of State website. This morning, I received the following notification email from the American embassy here in Amman:

The escalation of hostilities along the Israeli and Lebanese border has prompted demonstrations in Jordan. While these have been peaceful, we nonetheless urge all Americans in Jordan to be aware of the potential for violent demonstrations. American citizens are therefore urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any demonstrations.

We haven’t witnessed any demonstrations here in Amman. People are definitely tuned into the news. Most every cab we’ve been in has the radio news on and every restaurant TV is on a news channel.

Yesterday afternoon, after having gone to the Syrian Embassy, we had lunch at Lubnani Snack (Lebanese Snack). The food was great but the atmosphere not so great. Just outside the restaurant, workers were busy constructing a massive suspension bridge.

In order to make room for the bridge, the square footage of the street-facing restaurant had to be reduced. Workers had begun this process and the front of the restaurant looked as though it had been hit by a missile. Metal and wires hung down from the ceiling. Floor tiles were broken and the front entry pillars scarred and crumbling.

One of the workers was perched precariously on lopsided scaffolding. He had a big hammer and a powersaw with a metal-cutting blade on it. He was trying to remove the metal frame that had held the awning over the front entry way. He would saw on the metal, which made a high-pitched grinding sound that cut right through your eardrums. Then he would bang away on the metal frame with a hammer. He made a lot of noise, but little progress.

Meanwhile, a large flat panel TV mounted on the wall blared out the news of continued Israeli bombing of Lebanon where more civilians had been killed. Amidst the noise and chaos of the Lebanese restaurant, we ate and watched the news of noise and chaos in Lebanon. Buildings were destroyed. People were killed. And somehow, amidst the chaos and destruction, life just continued on in Lebanon just as it did in this Lebanese restaurant.

Okay, I got a bit behind on my blog postings. I’d like to blame this on the spotty Internet connectivity I’m getting from the wireless connection 4 flights down in the apartment complex. Anyway, I’m caught up now, having gone back and done some entries chronilogically. In addition to today’s entries, I’ve gone back and added: A Passage to Petra and Floating the Dead.

[I visited Qunaytra, a Syrian town near the Golan Heights, many years ago. Today, I am reminded of that visit and this poem.]

Walking in Qunaytra

A graveyard of dead giants with toppled tombstones,
a land full of ghosts with voices, sharp cries of wind
cut upon 100 miles of encircling concertina wire:
this is a town of flat houses that buckled beneath
gravity and the weight of a thousand Zionist bombs.

The day I arrived, the sun sat on the ground
and we all suffered its immense heat. Our guide
smiled at the destruction, proud of how the Syrians
have preserved this martyrdom-at-the-border,
a national idol sculpted from hate, their golden calf
for worshipping broken dreams. Broken like these
homes of old where all the lights have gone out
and laughter no longer spills from the windows,
broken like this bullet-pocked hospital
where fire-scarred staircases zig-zag up
four flights of nothingness; broken like
the heart of this nobody tourist who’s tumbled
into this place like a newborn colt battling gravity
and the weight of the sun’s brightness.

Standing on the roof-top I looked out
across one million acres of burnt brown,
so unlike back home where there’s nothing
but pissing down rain year round. We go about
our lives as though nothing else has happened
except what’s happened to us. At best we’re zombies
high on Speed and seeing the world with Technicolor
tunnel-vision. But mostly our heads are selfish wounds
we lap at all day with those equally irksome tongues
yo-yoing in and out and in-and-out the mouth.

So much nothing in my heart it wanted to leap
from the hospital roof, a seemingly meager
sacrifice to the emptiness of this place.
But looking west there was finally something:
Mount Hermon, a dirt-ramp of a mountain
presiding over the mighty Golan
and looking hardly worth dieing for.
It was here, long before I was born,
two nations offered up their sacrifices
and legions of men were torn away from this life.

Napalm fell from heaven turning a thousand men
to pillars of fire, their black hair burning
like an angry forest. The Syrian generals
escaped on horseback to the tune
of jingling medals playing upon their fat breasts.
The road to Damascus lay open like a wound
while the king’s radio station declared
an empty victory and war-weary soldiers
returned to herding goats in the hills
of their ancestors.

These are the same hills where Cain slew Abel
and blood cried out from the ground to God on high.
Blood cried out to a god who allowed
this first sacrifice of a brother
murdering his brother.

And as I walked the streets of Qunaytra,
I stopped and stooped low my ear to the ground
to discover something much worse:
that same blood flows though my heart and in my body,
still crying out to a god whose boundless love
somehow allows us this timeless curse.

Today is my birthday. I am 37, which makes me either young or old depending on what side of the hill you are standing on.

Overcome with nostalgia, I wanted to have my birthday in Damascus, which is where, on this day 13 years ago, I celebrated my 24th birthday at our apartment in Damascus. At 24, there was no nostalgia–only looking forward to the future. I’m wondering now if the strong presence of nostalgia indicates that I am more on the older end of the spectrum rather than the younger end. Again, I guess that depends on how one looks at it.

We found out yesterday that there is no way we’ll get into Syria. We visited the Syrian embassy here in Amman and spoke to a lady that worked there.

“You are American citizens only?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Not Jordanian too?”

“No.”

“Then the only way you can get visa is through the Syrian embassy in Washington, D.C.”

We suspected that would be the case but wanted to find out for sure.

Apparently, you need to get your Syrian visa as far away from the Middle East as possible. Once you’re here in an Arab country, you’re screwed. On the surface this doesn’t make much sense until you understand that Syria is a heavily controlled police state that has been under a dictatorship for over 30 years. All foreign entry and travel within the country is under the watchful eye of the mukabarat (police).

We knew all this from having lived in Damascus in 1993 under the watchful eye of Hafiz al-Asad. Following his death in 2000, presidential power was ceded to his son Bashar. The face on the presidential posters and billboards all over the country have changed, but for the most part, it’s politics as usual.

This morning, I watched the official Syrian news channel on ArabSat. There was a huge demonstration in central Damascus where thousands of people holding Syrian and Palestinian flags, pickets signs with either slogans or pictures of Bashar al-Asad.

There looked to be over 10,000 people jammed into the central square and the four major streets feeding into it.

The chaos and death that has occurred this past week in Lebanon and northern Israel will pale in comparison to the tragedy that will occur if Syria becomes militarily involved in the escalating conflict, which is looking to be more and more likely.

I am no Middle East political expert, but based on what I do know, I believe the following scenario is possible and likely if the UN Security Council continues to be unsuccessful at brokering a cease-fire and/or neither side backs down:

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) will continue to bomb southern Lebanon where Hezbollah is most concentrated.

[According to The Daily Star, an English language newspaper in Lebanon, the Israeli military on Thursday, dropped leaflets across Lebanon warning residents to evacuate areas where Hezbollah is active. “Due to the terrorist activities carried out by Hezbollah,” the leaflets read, “the Israeli Army will continue its work within Lebanese territories for as long as it deems fit to protect Israeli citizens. For your own safety and because we do not wish to cause any more civilian deaths, you are advised to avoid all places frequented by Hezbollah. You should know that the continuation of terrorist activities against Israel will be considered a double-edged sword for you and Lebanon.”]

Hezbollah will continue to launch kyutsha rockets into northern Israel, targeting population centers in Haifa where more civilians will be killed.

The IDF will also continue to bomb airports and transportation routes (especially the highway to Damascus) in Beruit and other areas in northern Lebanon. They will continue to bomb power and communications infrastructure throughout the country. The civilian death toll will rise and more Lebanese will continue to flee Lebanon, primarily into Syria.

The IDF will carry out a ground offensive into southern Lebanon at which point Syrian troops coming across the western border near the Golan will join Hezbollah militants to fight against the IDF. The IDF will retreat to the south and west toward the Mediterranean, leaving Syrian troops and Hezbollah militants to be annihilated by Israeli naval shelling and air force sorties.

Southern Lebanon will be transformed into scorched earth and a mass grave just like what happened in the Golan Heights in 1967. Israel will occupy southern Lebanon where it will set up a security zone.

[Some will see this as Israeli aggression resulting in the taking of more Arab territory. Others will see it as Israel defending itself from terrorism. Some will see it as a tragedy, others will see it as victory.]

If the situation escalates like this, the possibility of direct military involvement by Iran (the primary supporter of Hezbollah) will become imminent. Should that occur, it will create an international security crisis and a complex political quagmire that will be difficult for all involved to navigate without sinking further into the depths of war.

I hope I am wrong about all of this. Meanwhile, here in Amman on my 37th birthday with the afternoon call to prayer coming into the room from the open window, I’m wondering what God thinks of all this mischief we’re creating here during our short time upon the earth where the glory of Man becomes buried again and again beneath a dark mound of hate and violence.

A day trip to Petra is easy: You get up at 5:00 a.m. to get ready and get to the Jett bus station in Amman by 6:30, which is when the bus leaves. There you join a bunch of other yawning and crazy tourist who think that a day trip is a good idea. If you’re lucky, you bring your children. And if you’re really lucky they’re tired and cranky and fighting before the sun has even risen.

This was us and we were on our way to Petra for the day.

The bus ride from Amman to Petra takes three hours and when Sophia complained about being cold I told her to enjoy it and remember what it felt like later in the day when we were engulfed in the desert sun. (She wouldn’t of course. And hours later, complaining of the heat, I reminded her of the cool morning. “Dad,” she said, “Stop. It doesn’t work. I was cold in the morning and now I’m hot.” So it goes.)

Kacey and I had been to Petra in 1993. While the ancient rock buildings hadn’t changed much, the town of Wadi Musa just outside the entrance had. There were easily twice as many resturants and hotels and there had been 13 years ago. There were more tourists and more tourist hustlers too. Two of them, Uthman and his brother Ahmed latched onto us like a shackle.

We had stopped at the ampitheter, which back in its prime held 4,000 guests. Today, it held only a dozen tourist, three of whom were Kacey, Sophia and Emma. I stayed on the outside to take their picture. That’s where I became surrounded by boys on donkeys, making their various sales pitches for a donkey ride. When I told them in Arabic that I didn’t need a donkey ride and that I was just waiting for my wife and children, Uthman, who was about 12, became my best friend.

He called me “Musri”, which means “Egyptian” because I used mostly Egyptian words when I spoke with him.

Uthman liked to laugh and slap hands. He spent his days riding a donkey and hustling tourists. For sure, I was just another tourist. But I was also a big white guy who talked like an Egyptian and that was pretty damn funny.

While we were waiting for Kacey and girls to come out of the ampitheater, a middle aged man came up and began yelling at the kids. I didn’t understand what he was saying. Uthman pointed at me and yelled back. The guy left and went after some little girls who were carrying boxes of rocks and trinkets. They ran away from him giggling.

“Who is that man?” I asked.

“He’s like the police,” Uthman said.

“But not a policeman?”

“No, not a policeman.”

“I think he is a little bit crazy,” I said.

Uthman laughed and held his hand up for a slap.

Later, on our way to the monestary, Uthman would whisper, “The crazy man is behind us,” then begin laughing again.

We bargained a price for Uthman and his brother to take the girls on donkey to the monestary then back to the Khazneh, which is at the beginning of Petra.

[For more information about Petra, go to: http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/tourism6d.html]

Hiking to the monestary is easy: you only need to climb 900 crumbling steps. If you want to get some good exercise and lose some weight, I recommend doing it in during the hottest part of the day as we did. It’s definitely worth the view and the risk of heat stroke. And if you really want a workout, I suggest wearing a heavy back pack and trying to keep up with two young boys who are charging off ahead with your children on donkeys.

The girls did amazingly well. All in all we spent 7 hours in Petra before boarding the bus and heading back to Amman where we arrived home at 9:00 p.m., tired, hot and hungry.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we’re just fine.

While it would be an easy out to say that I’ve been distracted with the latest escalation of violence here, that would be a lie. I’ve just had a bad bout of apathy here in Amman where we’ve been for the past few days. We’ve fallen into limbo here. Seems everywhere we want to go is either being bombed or under the threat of being dragged into the current escalation.

I would like to believe that I know the region and the politics well enough to make informed decisions. But based on this week’s events in Lebanon, I’m doubting my insight and judgement. For example, the Israeli bombing of Beruit is not the response I expected for Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. As of this morning, the civilian death toll has reached 80 in Lebanon and 8 in northern Israel where Hezbollah has been lobbing kyutsha rockets for the past several days in response to the Isreali bombing of Beruit.

The problem with political exteremist on all sides of the complex conflicts here in the Middle East is that they will remember every wrong ever done to them when it is convenient for justifying their current actions. They’ll also forget what happened yesterday should that be convenient as well. They plow forward unconsciously and self-righteously through every situation taking advantage of each tragedy to further their cause.

Meanwhile, innocent civilians and children, people just like you and me, are killed each day–the sacrificial lambs on a bloody political chessboard where the moves are dictated by men who plow forward unconsciously and self-righteously through every situation taking advantage of each tragedy to further their cause.

You cannot drown in the Dead Sea.

Well, I suppose you could if you were really desperate. But I don’t recommend it. The water is too buoyant because of all the salt. The water is nasty too. Everything dies in this sea and turns to black sludge at the bottom that could be mistaken for something else. Visitors scoop up handfuls of this black crap and rub it on their bodies and faces.

Apparently this is good for you and has all sorts of healing effects. I rubbed my body with this black goo and must admit that it did make me feel different. I wouldn’t say that it made me feel ten years younger or 30 pounds lighter. For sure, I felt much dirtier than before application of said goo. I felt like I needed a shower. The smell made me feel like puking. Perhaps this is medicinal.

If you can’t make it to the Dead Sea, you can purchase this stinky black goo for exorbitant prices from online stores and select spas all over the world. But if you go to the Dead Sea, you go with a feeling of obligation to float in the salty water and bath your body in the black mud.

Our youngest daughter, Emma, was not so easily convinced. At six-years-old, she was wary of entering a sea called the “Dead Sea” because it must mean that people die there. After much parental coaxing, she took a couple of cautious steps into the water, but immediately retreated to the shore.

“I can feel the bones of the dead people,” she cried.

“Those aren’t bones, they’re rocks,” her mother said. “Come on silly.”

Emma walked out cautiously again to her mother’s waiting arms. While she overcame the imaginary bones beneath her feet, she could not withstand the very real burning that the salt water causes when it opens any scrape, cut or other body cavity opening.

I can attest to this. My ass was on fire as I floated in the Dead. It’s like I’d just been administered an enema of habañeros sauce.

After repeating “no pain, no gain” for a couple of minutes, I realized that I was getting no gain from the pain and should get my ass out of the warm salty water and to a cold shower.

Here’s a bit of travel advice: consult your guide book before traveling anywhere. This will likely save you time and headache. We did not do this before traveling to Jordan and had a hellish day because of it.

We left Ramallah at 9:00 a.m. to go to the Allenby bridge border crossing. Our cab driver got lost in the desert and had to make a cell phone call back to the taxi office to figure out where he needed to turn to get to the Allenby bridge. When we finally arrived to Allenby at around 10 a.m., there was a long queue of buses, micro-buses and cabs. Our driver could not take us through the Israeli checkpoint there to the Jordanian border. We had to switch to an Arab-Israeli micro-bus.

We sat in the micro-bus and waited for our turn to cross.

We sat and waited for our turn.

We sat and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After about an hour, it was clear that our line wasn’t moving. What was clear, however, is that Israeli micro-buses kept arriving and being called right to the front of the line. I was seated next to Samir who was a Palestinian-American from Chicago. He was waiting there to take his sick mother, who was in the cab in front of our micro-bus, to Amman to be treated for a recent stroke she had.

Samir said that they’d been there since 7:00 a.m.

“They have a special arrangement,” he said, pointing over to the yellow and white Israeli micro-buses that passed us on the right.

Kacey, the girls and I got out and walked up to the checkpoint where the soldiers were.

“Why aren’t we moving?” Kacey asked one of the soldiers.

“You should take a taxi.”

“We are in a taxi,” Kacey said. “We have small children and there are other children on our bus. It’s hot and they’re uncomfortable. You need to move us across.”

“I’m sorry,” the soldier said. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Kacey was not convinced and persisted.

“Yes there is,” she said. “You are making a choice to allow this line through,” she said pointing to the queue of Israeli micro-buses, “and not these,” pointing now to the Palestinian line.

She was right. You could tell the soldier was slightly embarrassed by our observation of what was going on at Allenby.

“There’s nothing I can do,” he said again, then turned and left.

We went back to the bus.

Some of the Palestinian drivers were becoming agitated and were arguing with the main guy who was standing there deciding who would go next.

We waited. The girls were hungry. The Palestinian families that we were on the bus with shared the bread and cheese they had brought with them for the long wait they knew they’d have.

Another half hour passed. It was 11:00 a.m. If we didn’t get to the other side before noon. Linda, who left at 5:00 a.m. in the morning, would leave without us. That’s assuming that she wasn’t on one of the big buses queued on our left bringing the Palestinians who were brought over from the Jericho processing area. Because Linda was a West Bank Palestinian, she had to go through a different area before coming to Allenby. The Palestinians on the micro-bus with us were Arab-Israelis, probably from the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. Linda left at 5:00 hoping that would give her enough lead time to meet with us on the other side.

Kacey got out and went back up to the checkpoint to talk to the soldiers. I followed a bit later to make sure she didn’t get in an argument with the soldiers, an event that probably wouldn’t improve our situation.

As I walked up to the checkpoint, I passed the Palestinian drivers who were still standing out in the sun arguing with the head guy. It seemed as though a riot was about to start. Kacey was talking to a different soldier this time. I hung back because the soldier was a small guy and I didn’t want him to think I was coming up to intimidate him in some way. I could tell from Kacey’s hand motions and pointing that she was remaining calm during her discussion. After a bit, she turned and came back toward the buses.

“What did he say?”

“He said that the lines are treated equally,” she said. “I told him that they weren’t and it was obvious that they were giving preferential treatment to the Israeli micro-buses. He said he’d get us moving. I think he will.”

As we passed the cab at the front of the Palestinian queue, the head guy called it forward. The cab driver gave us a thumbs up as if knowing that Kacey’s conversation with the soldier broke the dead-lock on our line.

They moved some more taxis and micro-buses through. They even moved the some of the big busses filled with other Palestinians who had come over from the processing area in Jericho. Perhaps Linda was on one of those buses. We didn’t know.

Finally, at around 11:30 a.m., it was our turn. We pulled up to the gate. They checked under the micro-bus with a mirror. Then a soldier boarded and asked for passports.

When he got to us, he asked if we had a Jordanian visa.

“No, we’ll get them at the entry point,” Kacey said.

He told us to wait a minute and left the bus with our passports.

A few minutes later the head guy came on board and called me forward to the door.

“I must advise you,” he said, “that you cannot get a Jordanian visa at this crossing.”

“What?” I said. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.

Kacey came to the door too.

I gave her the bad news.

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“You can try,” the head guy said, “But I guarantee they won’t give you one. Not from this crossing. Then you will have paid the $150 exit tax for nothing.”

“What? A hundred and fifty bucks to leave Israel?”

“Yes. You need to go to the Sheik Hussein crossing north of here.

“How far is that?”

“About an hour, maybe hour and a half.”

Shit.

Our driver, who didn’t speak any English, was getting antsy. He wanted to get his passengers across and wanted us to either stay or go.

“It’s your decision,” the head guy said.

Kacey was crying.

I was pissed.

The girls sat in the back of the micro-bus oblivious to their parents blunder.

“I think we have to get out and go to Sheik Hussein.”

We got the girls off and unloaded all our bags right there at the checkpoint.

The driver spoke with the head guy who explained our predicament.

The driver told us to wait right here and that he would pick us up on the way back from the border crossing then take us to Sheik Hussein.

We really had no choice. We were stuck out in the desert with no other options.

We sat and waited.

The head guy apologized for our situation and offered us water.

“It’s all our fault,” I told him. While we had been waiting there, we read in our guidebook about crossing into Jordan. Out situation was right there in black and white:

“Americans need a visa to enter the country [Jordan], which can be bought on the spot everywhere except at the Allenby Bridge crossing.”

I felt as though Kacey and I should be standing side-by-side wearing matching T-shirts that said: I’M WITH STUPID→

What was already going to be a long trip had just become a lot longer. And a lot more expensive too.

The driver returned. We loaded our baggage back up and began the journey north to Sheik Hussein, which took about an hour and a half.

We had another problem too. We didn’t have enough sheckels to pay the driver and would need to cash some more travelers checks.

The driver said that was no problem and we’d figure it out at Sheik Hussein.

The drive to Sheik Hussein was pleasant. We chatted with our driver about his family and the landscape. We were passing through a large swath of land in the West Bank that West Bank Palestinians were not allowed to enter. If you find that ironic, that’s because it is. A large portion of the West Bank is closed to West Bank Palestinians, even those who have land there like Linda’s father. This area is rich in agriculture and even though it is technically Palestinian territory, there are numerous Israeli settlements, which are easy to spot because they are new and beautiful and stand out amongst the squalid tent homes of the Bedouins farming small patches of land and herding goats. There’s other indicators too such as all the road signs being in Hebrew and the Israeli flag popping up here and there along the road to Sheik Hussein. The crossing is so far north that we actually left the West Bank and entered Israel proper up by the southern end of the Sea of Galilee. Unfortunately, we would have to travel this same distance all the way south on the Jordanian side of the border to get to Amman. All in all, I calculated that our blunder would cost us 6 hours.

The checkpoint at Sheik Hussein was staffed by young Israelis in white polo shirts. They carried only radios and no machine guns. Our driver explained our situation to the guy at the checkpoint.

“You have no sheckels to pay?” he asked, looking at us as though we were wearing matching T-shirts that said: I’M WITH STUPID→

“Yes, that is correct. We have travelers’ checks and need to change money.”

“Wait here,” he said, stepping off the micro-bus and shaking his head.

He picked up the phone at the checkpoint and made a phone call. A bit later he came on the bus and told the driver he’d let him through to the terminal, but only for a little bit while we changed money.

The driver thanked him. Clearly, this was not normal, but our stupidity had created an abnormality, a glitch in the Matrix of daily life Arab and Israeli relations.

We changed money and paid our driver. Then began the process of exiting Israel. After we were done with that, we went outside to wait for the bus that would take us and the other people there across the Jordan River and to the Jordanian processing center.

The bus finally arrived and took us all across.

We got our visas on the Jordanian side. Because we were traveling to Syria, the passport agent put our stamps on a separate piece of paper as had the Israelis when we arrived at Tel Aviv. Syria does not recognize Israel as a sovereign nation. If you have an Israeli stamp in your passport or a point of entry stamp into Jordan that made it obvious you had crossed over from Israel, the Syrians would deny you entry. The irony of this was not lost on me: denying entry to Syria because you had an Israeli stamp or another country visa indicating you had come from Israel was more of a recognition of Israel than a denial of its existence.
Once we got our visas and went through the inspections, we got a service taxi for the long drive to Amman.

We didn’t arrive until 6:00 p.m. We were hot, tired and hungry. We were frustrated too. Linda had given Kacey directions to her parent’s apartment in Amman, but the driver had problems finding it. He drove around asking people if they knew of such and such market and school that the apartment was near to. No one seemed to know. Kacey suggested that the driver call Linda at the apartment—assuming she had arrived already.

“But I have the keys to the apartment in my bag,” I said. “So even if she was here already, how would she get into the flat?”

“Maybe her aunt has a key and let her in,” Kacey said. Linda’s aunt and uncle lived downstairs in the same apartment building.

The driver called. Linda answered. She gave him directions and seemed quite confident that we were very close to the apartment and he’d get us there no problem.

Ten minutes later, we were driving around lost in the same neighborhoods we had driven through earlier. The driver tried calling Linda again, but she didn’t answer.

“She’s probably outside looking for us,” I said.

I just wanted to get out of the cab. I was sick of cab. I was sick of driving around all day.

One of the landmarks Linda had given was Jabri Restaurant. We had passed by it several times during our meandering drive through the neighborhoods.

“Let’s just get out at Jabri,” I said. “We’ll wait here and keep trying to call Linda until she goes back inside. Then we’ll have her come get us and take us to the apartment.”

“Okay,” Kacey said. “How do we say that to the driver in Arabic?”

I was tired and frustrated and really wanted out of the cab. This somehow dramatically improved my fluency in Arabic. I told the driver to take us to Jabri and we’d wait there for our friend.

We unloaded all our bags onto the sidewalk, paid the driver, then just sat for a bit before going in search of a telephone to call Linda at the apartment.

While we were sitting there, I noticed that there was a small sign on the road that said Jabri in Arabic with an arrow pointing down the road.

“Hey, look at that sign,” I said to Kacey. “It says Jabri too. Maybe there’s two or something.”

I walked down the road to check and as I was walking I saw Linda coming the other way.

Indeed there were two parts to Jabri: the main banquet part and the smaller restaurant down the street. Our driver had been driving around and around the wrong area.

We grabbed another cab and loaded up our bags for the short trip to the apartment.

It had been a long trip and I was tired and frustrated until Linda said she had just gotten there too. She had left Ramallah four hours before us. And while she had gone a much shorter distance than we had, her overall travel time was much more because she was a Palestinian. So who was I to complain? Who was I to complain?

On Tuesday, we traveled to Bethlehem to visit the Church of the Nativity and see the birthplace of Jesus. Bethlehem is not far from Ramallah, but it took an hour to get there, weaving through the back roads and villages in order to avoid the main checkpoints along the way. We did get stuck at a tiyar for about 20 minutes. Tiyar is the Arabic word for a temporary checkpoint. The permanent ones are called masoob. If you’re lucky, you only have to go through a masoob to get to where you are going. But usually, you’ll hit a tiyar or two along the way.

As we waited at the tiyar, I asked our driver, Ahmed, if it was like this most days.

“Yes, most days,” he said. Ahmed was missing fingers from his stay in an Israeli prison some years ago.

When we finally got to Bethlehem, we met up with a tour guide that one of Linda’s friends had arranged for us.

He spoke English and gave us a great tour of the church.

There were very few other tourist, and our guide told us that tourism had plummeted since the Israeli military invaded Bethlehem and the entire city was locked down with Palestinian militants trapped inside the church. Some of the windows in the main sanctuary were still broken from gunfire.

The place were Jesus was born is literally underneath the church. You go down some stairs into a crepuscular, cave-like room. The birthplace is surrounded by candles and icons. A star in the floor marks the supposed exact spot where Jesus spilled out of Mary’s womb. I didn’t get a very good view of it because there was another group that came down with us that had some very devout Christians in it who were compelled to kneel down and kiss the star again and again. While said ground kissing may have been spiritually cleansing, it was far from sanitary. Just to the right of the birthplace and down some more steps is the manager.

Unfortunately, because we left in the early afternoon and it had taken so long to get to Bethlehem from Ramallah, we only had time to see the Church of Nativity. We left to head back across the main checkpoint through the wall the Israelis are building. Here there were x-ray machines and metal detectors, similar to an airport. [For more information about the wall, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier ]

“Are we getting on an airplane?” Emma asked.

“No this is just a checkpoint.”

“Oh, it’s like an airport.”

Through the checkpoint you enter the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. From there we got on a micro-bus back to Ramallah, through narrow and winding pot-holed streets the went right along the wall until you reach Qalandiya and cross back into Ramallah.