Dennis Fox’s Weblog

I caused some minor confusion early this morning when I told the taxi driver who stopped near my hotel to take me to Amman’s Seventh Circle. He looked at my luggage, asked where I was going. When I said to take the bus to Nazareth, he seemed to think I didn’t know what I was talking about. Partly this was a language issue – his English was actually worse than my Arabic.

But even once we got past my strained pronunciation, he still didn’t believe there was a bus to Israel. He kept saying “Aqaba?” because the location I gave him is where the Aqaba bus leaves from. That’s the other bus run by Trust International. He kept asking if I was sure I didn’t want to go to one of the regular big bus stations in town instead of basically this out-of-the-way place. I insisted, showed him my Lonely Planet book, but he remained pretty doubtful.

On the way he asked where I was going in Israel, still thinking he’d steer me in the right direction. When I told him Ramallah he became very excited, said he was Palestinian. When we got to the bus station – bus storefront, more like it — the Aqaba bus was outside. He pointed that out, and I told him I was very early for my bus, which wasn’t to leave until 8:30 (the hotel desk clerk told me the taxi ride would take much longer than it did, and in any case I was up for hours by then listening to the call to prayer).

My driver insisted on getting out of the taxi to ask someone in the office if there really was a bus to Nazareth. He was surprised the answer was yes. I gave him a great tip.

In the bus station, the clerk asked for my passport, typed something into the computer, told me to wait. I ended up leaving my stuff there and walking around the neighborhood, which was another new-and-expanding development filled with chain stores (the bus station is across the street from Domino’s Pizza, next to Seattle’s Best Coffee, and down the street from VW/Porsche). I was a little constrained with my camera – there were a couple of serious-looking police strolling around, I’m not sure why – but managed to get a few photos. This one was my favorite, on a coffee shop.

Seventh Circle Uncle Sam

While I was taking photos, near Uncle Sam, a man walked over and asked where I was going (he may have been a taxi driver). When I said I was waiting for the bus to Nazareth, he was as skeptical as my earlier driver. 

As it turned out, when the bus left I was the only passenger on a big modern bus, complete with bathroom, air-conditioning, and complimentary coffee. The driver was friendly, asked where I was going, told me that he too, of course, is Palestinian. We headed out past a sea of fast-food restaurants – KFC, McDonald’s, Subway – and other indications of Jordan’s globalization. We picked up two women waiting on our way out of the city, and after a while the driver stopped and poured us our coffee. I was alone on the bus again until the border crossing, and moved back and forth from one side of the bus to the other to try to get some photos through the window.

When we arrived at the Jordanian side of the border at Sheikh Hussain Bridge, things slowed down. First a Jordanian military officer of some kind came on and looked quickly through my carry-on, too quickly to do any good. Then we pulled into the border crossing area. After a wait to pay an exit tax and meander through the duty-free shop, a dozen or more people who had arrived by taxis got on the bus to cross into Israel. At least a couple of the young couples were Israeli, and also a few older Arab women who may also have been Israeli citizens.

Once we crossed over to the Israeli border crossing complex we got off the bus again, this time with our luggage to go through customs. The driver told me then that he doesn’t take the bus into Israel, that there would be a minivan waiting for me on the other side (which would explain some of the confusion about whether there really is a “bus to Nazareth” as opposed to the border). He also told me, for the second time, not to tell the Israelis I’d be going to Ramallah – “tell them you’re going to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv….” I thanked him, told him I knew how it worked because I’d been there before.

As it turned out, customs was a breeze. When they heard the long list of places I planned to visit where I have friends and relatives — all of it true — they waved me through. X-rayed baggage but didn’t open any. Got my visa – but the woman who stamped it apparently used the wrong stamp, because when I tried to leave for the parking lot where my minivan was waiting, the next security guard looked at it and said something was missing. I had to go back inside, but there were no more surprises. 

Well, one surprise, though it shouldn’t have been, was the sight of Israeli women in body-revealing clothing. Even the two Israeli women crossing over from Jordan had more skin and shape showing than I had seen in four days in Amman, but they seemed to lose even more clothing by the time they had left the border-crossing building. And once the van went through Israeli towns, people were dressed for summer. Coming from Amman – a pretty loose place as far as I could tell, with all those lingerie stores and alcohol freely available — the sudden contrast made me think about how difficult it must be for many people in traditional societies to tolerate what the West not only takes for granted but flaunts.

The driver of the van (which again carried only me) took me quickly into Nazareth, maybe 45 minutes. Along the way I was getting more and more tired, and was glad when he offered to take me directly to my reserved room in a Christian guest house. He had never heard of this one – Nazareth is filled with them – but knew the street, a narrow uphill one somewhere in the middle of Nazareth’s confusion. The driver lives here, and I got his phone number in case I need a ride around town in the next day or two. 

Coming into Nazareth, still an Arab city, I noticed lots of signs and billboards only in Arabic, with no Hebrew or English. The Sister who showed me to my room speaks no Hebrew and some English, and seemed pleased, as most people are, when I managed to use some Arabic in response.    

And here I sit, checking my email with the guest-house wifi (a far cry from my Internet complications in Amman). And just as soon as I finish this I’ll use the shower and take a nap, and hope the temperature cools down by early evening so I can actually get outside and maneuver my way down the hill toward Nazareth city life.

As for that email I checked when I got here, there will definitely be a demonstration on Sunday related to Israel’s refusal to grant permits for the GCMHP conference. Details to follow later, or so they tell me.

The transition to Hebrew here (at the border crossing, not in the guest house or apparently in Nazareth more generally) also comes as somewhat of a shock. Of course, getting closer to the border, the bus driver was flipping radio stations and came across an Israeli one – I heard “Chag Sameach,” Happy Holiday. The two languages have a lot of similarities. More on that another time.