Catch The Jew!

by Tenenbom, Tuvia

  The cabbie tries speaking with me in Hebrew, thinking I’m a Jew, but I let him know he can’t be any further from the truth. Immediately he switches to Arabic and asks if I want to get off at “the gate.” I have no clue what gate he has in mind but I ask no questions and just say yes.

  Within minutes we reach a road in east Jerusalem and he tells me we’ve arrived. Where’s the gate? Allah surely knows, but I don’t. I walk up the road and somehow find a gate, or something like it.

  Why did the cabbie drop me before the gate? I don’t know. What I do know is this: at the gate there are cops, Israeli cops.

  “Are you a Muslim?” one of them asks.

  I am! I answer without hesitation.

  “Know the Quran?”

  Of course!

  “Show me.”

  How in the world am I supposed to show him? And why should I? But he has a gun and I don’t. So I say: Ashahdu al-la Allah illallah uAshahdu an Muhammad-ar rasulallah (I testify that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His prophet). This is a declaration of faith and according to Islamic law, if a man says this, he becomes a Muslim – in case he isn’t yet.

  This should satisfy the gun holder but the problem is that cops are no imams and religious law is not their domain. “Say the Fatiha,” he barks at me, as if I were a Jewish dog.

  It’s been a long time since I studied Islam and I don’t exactly remember it beyond the very beginning.

  I try nevertheless. I say: Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim, al-hamdu lillahi rabil alameen (in the name of Allah, the compassionate and merciful, praise be to Allah lord of the worlds).

  Should be good enough, I think. But the cop says: “Continue!”

  Who does he think he is, Allah? Why should I pray to him?

  I don’t and he talks to his colleague, discussing why I behave so strangely. They talk and talk and finally they decide: “You’re Christian. No entry.”

  But I want to pray to Allah!

  Well, they say, if I want to pray that much I should enter the mosque via the Jew and Christian entrance. But the Infidels’ entrance, I protest, closes at 11:00 a.m., in fifty-five minutes.

  The cops are not impressed. The walk is only twenty-nine minutes from here, one of them says, and he points at the road I should take.

  I look at the name of the road. Via Dolorosa.

  I am to walk the way of that old Jew, Christ.

  I walk and walk and walk. Twenty-nine minutes are soon over and no infidels’ entry in sight.

  I spot another entrance, for Muslims only, some feet away. I swear my alliance to the Prophet, loud enough for the Israeli prime minister in west Jerusalem to hear me, but the cop at the entrance is obviously deaf, yelling at me: “Fatiha!”

  Again!

  I try once more, citing the beginning of the Fatiha quickly, the way some Hasidic Jews in synagogues cite prayers when they loudly recite just the beginning of prayers, only this new cop doesn’t know Hasidic Jews. He says: “Don’t stop, continue!”

  I stare at him, as if he had just offended my most precious religious feelings.

  He looks at me, not sure what kind of creature I am, and goes to discuss the matter with his colleague in Hebrew. They discuss between themselves who I could be and decide: half Muslim, half Christian. They point the way for me. The Via Dolorosa.

  But I am a Muslim, on both sides of the family! I protest, pleading for my life the way Jesus must have pleaded for his life to the Roman rulers.

  “Show me your passport,” the cop softens up.

  I have no passport.

  “Via Dolorosa!”

  Having no choice, I continue the way of the old Jew until I reach the gate of the infidels, and finally I enter.

  I take a short breath to think a little.

  This is not South Tyrol, I say to myself. The Israelis are no Italians and the Arabs are no Tyroleans. Here the ones occupied, the Arabs, dictate to the occupiers, the Jews, that they, the Jews, must protect them, the Arabs, from their brethren, the other Jews, and from the Christians.

  I’m in the plaza. To my right is a silver building and to my left is the golden-domed building. I approach a Muslim man and ask him in Arabic which of the two is al-Aqsa. He asks me if I’m a Muslim and I say that of course I am! Russian? He asks. No, German. His eyes light up. Welcome! Al-Aqsa, he says, is the silver building and the golden one is the Dome of the Rock. The rock under the dome, I now think of what the Jewish guide told us yesterday, is where the world started.

  I keep on going and walking, around the square and the surrounding areas. Looks like paradise here. Every few steps there’s a sign, in Arabic only, reminding believers that it’s forbidden to spit here. I’m not sure why there is a need for so many signs forbidding the act of spitting but I guess the locals like to spit. I don’t know. Eleven o’clock soon passes and I successfully evade the Israeli police, who by this time have cleared the area of non-believers. Slowly I make my way to pray a little – for the Arabs, the Christians and the Jews. As I reach the Dome, an Arab catches me. “Your time is over!” he yells. “Out of here!”

  And just before this guy too tells me to recite the Fatiha, I decide I’ve had enough and make a U-turn.

  I walk out, crossing pathways that are magnificent in their beauty. I realize I’m unwittingly approaching another entry to the mosque. An Arab kid, maybe six years old, stops me. “Are you Muslim?” he demands. Yep. Now I have to recite the Fatiha to a kid.

  Go get busy with Facebook, I curse him in my heart but say nothing. This is a holy city, and this kid may be a prophet. That’s the last thing I need in life, to get into a fight with a prophet.

  I keep walking till I spot a coffee shop frequented by local Muslims. I’m local too, a German Templar in the Holy City waiting for the Messiah, and until He comes I need coffee to keep my energies up.

  I drink one cup of coffee after another. Arabic coffee, let me share with you, is much better than any Starbucks, Jacobs, or any of the Italian varieties I have ever tasted.

  I drink so much coffee that, naturally, nature calls. I ask the waiter for the men’s room. “Are you Muslim?” he asks.

  Yes, I am, by Allah!

  I’m declaring my Islamic faith today more than the most devoted of Taliban in Afghanistan.

  “Go to al-Aqsa.”

  I was there but the Jewish police think that I’m only half a Muslim. They get on my nerves!

  “Show them your passport.”

  I don’t have it on me.

  “Then you have to go to the Jewish Wall.”

  I walk out of the coffee house in the direction of the Jewish Wall and I see Arabic graffiti on an Arab wall outside the coffee shop: “Soon Al-Quds will be free!”

  “Al-Quds” (meaning the holy) is Jerusalem. “Free” means free of Jews.

  And I wonder: Who’s going to protect the mosques from people like me once the Jews are out? Allah knows.

  Three little girls, maybe five years old, pass by. They’re beautiful, like little angels, and all three are dressed in a hijab. Such an early age and they are already considered a sexual temptation.

  I need a toilet and I would rather not go to churches, Jewish Walls or Arab Walls. There must be a toilet here somewhere; not all the people of this city urinate in their God’s abode.

  I’m determined to find a toilet in a non-religious place. I keep on walking till I pass a house with a man sitting outside and it looks to me as though he’s guarding it. If he’s guarding the place, I assume, it must be a nice place with a nice toilet inside.

  Simple logic, isn’t it?

  I follow a man who’s friendly to the guard, as if the man and I are of the same family, and I enter.

  ***

  No toilet yet, but a class. A sign on the wall says this is Al-Quds University. A university must have a toilet, I think, but there’s nobody I can ask about the toilet since everybody is attending a lecture.

  Well, I’ll have to sit through the lecture and I sit down. The lecture
, part of a series financed by Europeans, is quite interesting. Here I get to hear about the intifada, about the occupation, about dignity, about the Palestinian “experience of denials of their basic rights,” enthusiastically taught by Palestinian experts from Europe. During a short break in the lecture one of the teachers, a Brit, tells me that he’s actually a Palestinian, born in the Galilee. This would make you an Israeli, right? I ask. No, he says. A Brit? Neither. He lives in Britain, paid by the Europeans, and his mission is to free Palestine. But before he frees Palestine, I need a toilet.

  Have you got a toilet here, Professor?

  “Yes, go upstairs and you’ll see it.”

  Great. I go up there.

  The toilet is clean and I can use it without being asked to recite the Fatiha or put a skullcap over my head. Once done, I return to the class. There are a few professors here, plus food and drink – as much as anybody would want, all lovingly paid for by generous Europeans.

  Number of Palestinians participating in the class: two. This is the only class in the world where each student gets a number of professors just for himself.

  A painting of an olive tree is hanging on the wall, with the line: “We won’t leave.”

  A laptop and projector are used. The lecturer speaks in Arabic as slides come up in English. As with the guide to the Western Wall, technology is very important in telling a good story. There’s also a video camera here, which looks quite expensive but is not in use today. Maybe tomorrow.

  There’s no human being on the seat next me, just a book, a law book by Raja Shehadeh, which was published by the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, DC. The book’s title is Occupier’s Law: Israel and the West Bank.

  I open this American book. It was edited, it says, by the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, Switzerland. This is not a dry law book, as I had expected, but a really juicy book about Israeli brutality toward Palestinians, the maltreatment of Arab prisoners, the harassment of Palestinian students, about house demolitions and all kinds of other things that don’t go very well with coffee and baked goods.

  On the next empty chair there’s another book: The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. How did she get in here?

  With there being hardly any students, a lively discussion flares up between the guest professors, talking to each other because the two students present are not into anything, about occupation and suffering. They don’t seem very suffering to me, but what do I know. I just came in to urinate and by chance found these learned men and women.

  To add visuals to the discussion the professors have been engaged in, a projected image of ladies in hijab, plus a man, shines on the wall. If I understand correctly the intellectual talk here, the hijab-covered ladies are flaming feminists.

  And I am Mormon.

  Why the European Commission, the sponsor of this event, would fly European professors into Jerusalem to talk to each other instead of hosting them, let’s say, in South Tyrol is a big mystery to me.

  I go to the office nearby to figure out what kind of university this really is, with two students to a class. A man sits by his desk and gladly answers my questions. “The Occupation,” he says, talking of the Israelis, “is throwing Muslim residents out of their houses in east Jerusalem and putting Jews in instead.”

  When? Now?

  “All the time!”

  How many houses?

  “Many!”

  How many?

  “Everywhere.”

  How many?

  “Thirty!”

  Thirty?

  “Thirty.”

  How long have they, the occupiers, been around here? I mean, if we count from 1967, then –

  “No, from 1948!”

  He’s talking about the establishment of the State of Israel.

  Okay, 1948. Thirty houses since 1948: that’s less than half a house per year –

  “We cannot fix our own houses here, they won’t let us!”

  This place looks quite nice, and quite fixed.

  “Look up! You see the paint coming off?”

  I see. That’s the size of a half a page. Can’t you paint it over?

  “No! The Occupiers won’t let us!”

  At this point a blond girl walks in and the man loses interest in me. Immediately.

  The young beauty from Switzerland tells me she came to the area to help both Israelis and Palestinians. She is part of a Christian human rights organization, EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel), and is volunteering to be here for the next five months of her life to help Jews and Arabs.

  What are you planning to do for five months?

  “Study Arabic.”

  This lovely lady’s name is Anna Maria and she’s paying eight hundred US dollars for an intensive course in Arabic. Not only does she help Jews, but she’s also spending money on them. It might not make sense to you, but not all Swiss always make sense to the rest of us.

  I’m hungry and Professor Asma, the coordinator of the lecture series, is willing to take me to the best restaurant in the area and introduce me to authentic Palestinian food.

  On the way out I notice a PR sheet, dated yesterday, announcing that a contribution from the EU and the UN has been made to this very building in the amount of €2.4 million to “preserve Palestinian cultural heritage” and to “safeguard cultural heritage in the Old City of Jerusalem.” It adds: “The program will contribute to the development and protection of Palestinian cultural heritage,” which includes “Hammam al-Ayn and Hammam al-Shifa.”

  What is the exact nature of all these wonderful phrasings, I wonder? Asma says she’ll show me later the exact nature.

  ***

  We go to eat at a restaurant called al-Buraq. Professor Asma, as everybody can see, is not wearing a hijab. How come?

  “In the time of the Prophet women were taken advantage of by men, girls were killed, and that’s why the Quran advised women to wear the hijab ‘for your protection.’ But look at what’s happening today: If I wear the hijab over my head when I cross an Israeli checkpoint they’ll harass me. When I go like this, they won’t.”

  We look at the menu, and she tells me: “My husband, he wanted to marry another wife in addition to me. I said, ‘No!’ And now I’m divorced.”

  The menu looks good, and the professor talks a bit more:

  “At the time I thought that Israeli intellectuals of the Left accepted us, the Palestinians, but I realize now that they don’t. When I was in Germany I felt that the Germans were passionate about us, that they care about us.”

  Why do you think the Europeans help you?

  “When the Europeans come here we take them to the places where Jesus lived and where the Israelis crucified him and that’s why they support us.”

  The “Israelis” crucified Jesus? How did the Israelis get in there, two thousand years ago?

  I write down what she’s said and read it back to her, to make sure I got it right. She approves.

  We have some great kebab and Arabic coffee, and when we’ve finished she takes me to the place where the 2.4 million euros are going to be spent.

  A hamam. A Turkish bath.

  Yes.

  Earlier I was told that the Israelis don’t allow Al-Quds University to paint over a little spot on the ceiling, yet they allow them to reconstruct a hamam for millions of euros. Either the Israelis are stupid or the Arabs are liars.

  Whatever either of them is, the more interesting question is the Europeans’ motivation here. Why is it so important for the Europeans to prove that Arabs lived here, so much that they’re willing to spend millions on a hamam? Hopefully, at some point during the coming six months I’ll have an answer. Maybe, just maybe, Europeans dream of naked Arabs and so they pay for a Muslim spa.

  Meantime, the professor and I walk around and about, in a maze of beautiful rooms of the hamam that is to be reconstructed, and then she takes me to the roof of it and from there she shows me houses not far from al-Aqsa that she
says have been confiscated by the Israeli government.

  I ask her to tell me about al-Aqsa. She does: “From Kubet as-Sakhra [the Dome of the Rock] in front of us, Prophet Muhammad flew to heaven, where he met God and where God taught him what Muslim people should do, and what to pray.”

  That’s the famous Night Journey of Prophet Muhammad, how he flew from Mecca to “Masjid al-Aqsa” on a heavenly animal known as al-Buraq, and then, from there flew up to heaven to meet Allah.

  Listening to her, it all comes back to me. The Western Wall used to be called Het al-Mabka, the Weeping, or Wailing, Wall, by the local Arabs, in deference to the Jews who were crying at the sight of their destroyed Temple. With the advent of Zionism, however, the Arabs changed the wall’s name to Het al-Buraq, al-Buraq’s Wall. The story of weeping Jews was deleted from the collective memory and another story replaced it: when Muhammad flew to heaven he tied his heavenly animal to this very wall to make sure it didn’t run away.

  ***

  Another professor, Omar, shows up. Omar is a nice guy, full of warmth, very social and very personable. He’s excited today, he tells me, because a reporter of the Süddeutsche Zeitung is coming to interview him. He is sure that the German reporter will write very nicely about him, and he can’t wait for the interview to take place. He’s going to tell the German the truth, for the benefit of the German readers who are interested in the issues here.

  What is the truth? He shares it with me: the Israelis make sure that he, being a Palestinian, can’t own a house. I tell him that this is indeed horrible and I ask him to tell me more about himself. He takes a liking to me and he tells me. First and foremost, he proudly shares with me, he is not a man only of the mind but also a man of means: he owns a house in east Jerusalem, and he also owns another one in a place called Shuaffat.

  There are people who are alcoholics and there are people who are recovering alcoholics, meaning they’ve stopped drinking. I happen to be a recovering intellectual and I draw from my former self to understand this intellectual. Logically it’s impossible for a man who owns nothing also to own two houses. But “intellectually,” you can explain away everything.