Ein Kleiner Kaefer
Excuse Me Miss, Can I Offer You Bread
I’m a Scumbag
Feeling Good
Fistfull of Hebron
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Cafe Arrabiya
Let’s communicate here:
Crankberry Park
I am on a sugar-high. I’ve eaten too much hummus and pita. It’s a song as a result of too much consumption and decadence.
Chilling on a Herzliyya Couch
I created this song while watching a documentary on the history of the coffee bean through the ages. I don’t know what the connection might be, perhaps it’s influenced by the remembrance of drinking coffee on a cool evening in a bedouin camp. Or, really, perhaps I was just bored.
Hell in Hebron
The bus from Hebron to Bethelahem rumbled to a dead stop. In front of us, a 100 other cars, buses and semi-trucks did too. Our driver, Azzam, took a drag from his cigarette before tossing it, and unbuckled his seatbelt. We were a 200 meters from an Israeli checkpoint in the Palestinian territory of Hebron.
Time was running out for me and my travel companions: Simon and Christina. We had to be back in Jerusalem for Rabbi Yom Tov’s seminar, Possible You. We paid our 8 shekel and hopped out. I took a look around, at the fools who were waiting around with their autos. Sweating through their undergarments. I’m an American. I’ve got an American passport. I’m somewhat of a cowboy.
“Let’s walk back.”
…an M-16 pointed at my direction from the bunker. This is not Santa Monica Blvd. The Israeli soldier, probably fresh out of high school, shouted something in Arabic, thinking I sprechen. I didn’t sprechen. I got the gist of it though. Don’t move or I’ll shoot. I pulled a smile out of my ass and started to back up slowly, with my hands up, and a striking pain that naivety has it’s price. I joined the fools and waited.
“This happens all the time,” said the tall skinny man. “Everyday a Palestinian is shot or killed.”
“Everyday?”
I looked over at two women wearing hijabs. One of them held a baby in her arms. Weeks earlier, women like her had been shot. Their babies too. Sometimes just the babies.
“-no, my English is not so good. Almost everyday. Are you a journalist?”
“Sure, with Playboy Magazine,” I said ala Hunter S. Thompson.
“Do you have an assignment for me.”
“No, sorry pal. I’m freelance.”
The skinny man worked for Hebron radio, a pro-Palestian simulcast digging deep at the untold stories of a border town gone mad. His most recent assignment had been covering the peace marches held for abandoned Palestinian orphans. Read more about it here.
20-30 minutes dragged on. I watched two goats fight it out for a piece of grass. It’s quite the parable for the Israelis and Palestinians fight for pieces of land that may or may not be blessed by their respective biblical texts. God only knows.
The Israeli soldiers eased off their triggers and traffic suddently farmed out. Simon, Christina and I jumped back into our bus as it tried to leave us behind–luckly the pullups I had done three months prior paid off–I caught onto the handle bar of the door and swung in like Indiana Jones.
…then I punched a Nazi.
The 48 Ways to Wisdom
via Aish.com