I’m sitting in the lobby of the Austrian Hospice, a short walk into Jerusalem’s Old City from Damascus Gate. I moved to the lobby from the hospice coffee shop after finishing the Dish of the Day (turkey, French fries, and green beans) along with a Taybeh beer. I left the coffee shop when it started filling up with the after-dinner crowd — a couple of tables of people speaking what I took to be Austrian, others with English, one with a family speaking Hebrew. I could have gone outside looking for a more authentic Middle Eastern dining experience, but here in the Old City, Austrian pilgrims seem about as authentic as anyone else. It’s all new to me.
I moved to the lobby because here, as in the coffee shop, there’s WiFi. Eleven of the twelve seats here are occupied, six by those of us with laptops and one using the hospice computer. This hospice itself seems like a huge, gated complex. My room is big (with three beds there’s still plenty of space), the place is clean, the food is good — I can see why two friends recommended it, and why someone else today who heard I was coming here told me I should remember to get the sachertorte. That’s on tomorrow’s agenda. I guess pilgrimages don’t have to be monastic.
There’s now someone with a laptop sitting on the floor, along with a couple of other people reading old-fashioned books.
It’s safe to say I’m the oldest person in the room, probably by at least two decades. Maybe the oldest in the hotel, for all I know, though a couple of people in the coffee shop were close. Not that that sort of thing bothers me. Maybe other people my age just stay in more expensive places.
The day took me from Beer Sheva to Jerusalem and Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, to meet with a group of people working on bridging the region’s complex gaps. I last visited here almost two years ago.
The Wall is more extensive now, more intrusive, moving here and there, cutting off neighborhoods, dividing neighbors.
The main street through Bethlehem is now blocked at both ends, the short remaining stretch almost lifeless, some signs on stores still bearing a Hebrew reminder of life before Separation.
And the Wall is coming here, too.
But most Israelis don’t have to see it. They glide right over the devastated city below.
It was good to see people working to get past separation, hopeful despite everything.
The ride back to Jerusalem turned out to be more exiting than I expected. The driver was a Palestinian Israeli, the other passengers an East Jerusalem Palestinian and a German Middle East expert. After showing our ID to the soldiers at the entrance, we drove through the Tunnel Road I photographed last time I was here — and then we lost our way and ended up (we eventually realized) in Gilo, the large Jewish settlement (on land annexed to Jerusalem after the 1967 war) atop the mountain the tunnel bores through. None of us had been there before, and one of the Palestinians commented right away on the contrast between the large tree-lined boulevards and impressive apartment buildings in Jewish Gilo and the very different situation in East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods, where (for example) residents find it impossible to get the Jerusalem municipality to plant trees or grant building permits, and whose necessary but illegal home additions are routinely demolished.
Gilo’s streets were empty — it was the beginning of Shabbat, and the neighborhoods we drove through were completely residential and silent. We drove one way, then back, then the first way again, looking for familiar landmarks, or signs, or someone we could ask for directions. Looking out over the valley toward the lights that must have been Bethlehem, I realized I had probably photographed the buildings alongside us from the other direction.
Eventually we found two women in jogging suits who told us to go in the direction we had just come from — and soon we made it out, only to get lost again before finally ending up on the road to Jerusalem. After another round of tension-relieving laughter they dropped me off at Damascus Gate. I was glad to get to get to my room and beer and WiFi. It’s been a long day.