Thursday 25th February 2010
Wake up at 9.Leave at 10. Get bus to Jericho. Quite a journey. It is a strange experience going out onto the roads of the Palestinian countryside and seeing all the things that have been only words and stories come to life for fractitious moments as it whizzes past my vision. The nomadic Bedouin camps, with their corrugated roof shacks and their tiny patches of tired looking arable land (and the goats that graze upon it); Jewish settlements, always on the top of hills, packed tightly together with their characteristic red-tiled pointed roofs, and encircling security walls; my stomach churns when I see rows upon rows of tree stumps either side of the road – Palestinian olive groves that have been cut down by the Israelis. We are speeding along a 4-lane highway and the signs are in Hebrew and English, with a conspicuous abscence of Arabic. It’s a settlers route. I see one of the settlers-only bus stops that a student at the Art Academy talked about. It is bright green with Hebrew on the front. The Palestinians stand and wait a few feet away without rest or shelter. You get the impression the settlers are here and they are here to grow – new roads are being built and Hedwig, a Norwegian girl also on the exchange programme, notices a billboard advertising buying homes in the settlements.
We arrive in Jericho and it’s not sunny but it is much warmer than Ramallah and it’s humid. The West Bank is a tiny place, Jericho is only 15 miles away from Ramallah, but the temperature seems to rise by a degree a mile, and for every degree rise - or mile away from Ramallah, the land level plunges by 100 metres. As Wikipedia will tell you, Jericho is the lowest permanently inhabited site on Earth at 260 metres below sea level, and one of the oldest continuosly inhabited cities in the world at 11,000 years old. Archaeologists have dug up no less than 20 layers of ancient settlements under the city that lives and breathes today. It is more like the desert land I had come to expect from travelling in the Middle East. In view of this, we de-layer and go in search of some replenishment. We find a cafe, sit on the plastic chairs that spill out on to the street, drink Arabic coffee until the bitter dregs meet our lips, and watch as the traffic, motor, pedestrian, and pedal, passes us by.
Its as if we are in the Truman Show, the same vehicles keep going past us in both directions. Like they’ve got nothing better to do so they just drive around the centre of Jericho all day. I enjoy the idiosyncracies of the Jerichite traffic: bikes fitted out with a smaller front wheel so as to carry large crates of potatoes, trucks fitted for some reason with ornate-baluster cages, tiny school children with giant rucksacks walking in pairs, slick coaches with tinted windows and Hebrew on the front, three-doored taxis, UN cars, UN supply trucks, UN tractors, bored 20 year old men in souped-up Fiat Unos driving very slowly and staring directly at us.
Having made no plans further than taking the taxi to Jericho and seeing what happened we are a little at a loss as to what to do after the initial speedy resolve to sit and drink coffee. Zelda gets an offer from a man in a hairdresser for a tour of the city once he’s finished eating his meal, we hang around a clothes shop waiting for him, but somehow lose him in the midst of being distracted with an offer for coffee in the shop. But its no problem, the shopkeeper is at hand, offering some vague directions towards some touristy location.
We take up the directions, but decline the coffee, we’ve got to get going and see the sites, we’re tourists after all.
Everyone is welcoming us, giving us directions of questionable value, and offering coffee by the gallon.
We talk with one man who tells us that the mount of temptation where Jesus lived in a desert cave for forty days and forty nights is just up the road we’re on (this must be what you’re looking for), but its far and if we want to go his friend is offering us a lift. He gestures towards an ancient man standing behind him, who I am quite sure never breathed a word about any such offer, in fact he looked as though he had not breathed a word at all in quite some time. But nonetheless, I’m surprised as he silently obliges, and leads us to a car. We drive up towards the desert mountains and arrive at a quiet and ramshackle tourist base. We give our thanks and wave goodbye with considerable affection to our mute and ancient chauffeur as he glides back down towards town. We were lucky we got the lift, it turns out it was pretty far. There are a few other tourists nearby, and we begin to ascend the yellow stone steps that lead up to the church with them at our side. I find myself between two young monks, panting and sweating their way up, clutching on to hi-tech video cameras looped around their necks along with the more expected rosary beads.
We reach the top and a large door cut out of the mountain is opened for us. We are led through into a corridor-like cave of glossy painted doors all cut out of the mountain side. They look startingly similar to those you might get on the front of a terraced house in Islington, with their different colours, and metal door numbers. I guess the monks here are proud to call the Mount of Temptation their home.
The church has some beautiful religious paintings and i get absorbed into observing how the the various icons have been installed – a screw here, a cabinet there, a light bulb here... I plan to document every aspect of how the things in the church are installed and hung, but I am shooed out by a monk who is locking the doors, so much for my artist research! I step out onto a balcony that juts straight out from the cliff and look out at an incredible view of Jericho and the haze of the Dead Sea in the distance. I cling on to the hand rail, dizzy from the height. Directly below me, paper-like birds are flying in and out of holes in the cliff face. The way they swoop, hover and get blown around by the updraft is quite mesmerising and I watch their movements for some minutes.
We leave the mountain, and begin to contemplate our return to the centre of Jericho, without the benefit of ancient chauffeurs. We slowly meander our way past harvested banana trees, abandoned houses, Christian coach trips stopping for lunch in the distance, photogenic broken and rusting trucks, men on mopeds practicing their limited English on Hedwig and Zelda, and children playing, slipping in and out of view between all of the above. At a road junction we come across a bored looking young boy sitting beside a tethered camel. Me and Chris haggle for a ride, and we take it in turns to be walked up and down a stretch of disused tarmac, for a couple of minutes each. I feel like a fool as I perch awkwardly upon the poor animal. So much for romantic desert camel treks. We carry on our route much like it never happened. Arrive at a modern tourist centre where a cable car takes you up to the Church of Temptation.We’re told that on the other side of the road there is the site of the ancient city, we dip our heads in, but it seems you have to pay, we decline and move on – ‘its only a bunch of ruins’. We plan to walk towards another touristy site called Hisham’s Palace but for one reason or another end up taking an alternative route through the quiet rural village roads. We come across a strange looking building complete with 30ft sign on the front listing the sponsors to whatever project the building evidently contains. Next to the sign is a man slouching in a plastic chair. He rises to meet us and we go through the ritual of saying where we are all from (London, Norway, Austria, London!). He takes us around the back of the building and unlocks a large metal door. We step a couple of feet inside. He points down a metal staircase and says proudly in broken English ‘water irrigation system’, we peer down and nod politely, though I can’t really see anything at all. Oddly the inside wall has the same 30 foot sign . It as if they blew all their money on the signs! As a matter of course he offers us some coffee but we decline with thanks, we’ve got to be on our way.
We meander a little bit further amongst the quiet of the fields and houses and it begins to rain heavily. A taxi driver slows and we ask him how much to the centre of Jericho, but he offers us a ride for free. (this hospitality is getting ridiculous!) He drops us off back in the city centre and we find a place to eat a late lunch\early dinner.
We are starving and have a feast of 3 ½ chickens, chips, a selection of dips, and mounds of complimentary pita bread all served by a friendly waiter who i forget the name of. After the meal we wander around Jericho with satisfied stomachs but once again without direction. We find ourselves in an increasingly residential area. We are attracting attention from everyone, dusk is setting in, and I am starting to feel a little self-concious and tired. Chris and Zelda are up ahead and seem to have found a large group of young boys to chat with. When me and Hedwig join up it becomes clear there was only one in the group who could actually speak English. He is a black Palestinian and is dressed up in Hip Hop clothing, with dollar signs, the cap, the sneakers, the baggy shorts, the lot. As a matter of course he invites us for coffee and this time we oblige. He cuts a path through his gang,who are laughing like hyenas, and we are led into his family home. It seems the whole family is waiting for us. There is a mother, a grandmother, a father,and a brother. The grandmother is peeling and chopping an enormous pile of beans into a bucket the size of a paddling pool; the father has just arrived and is setting up the ugile (shisha to you and me) and our friend makes us some coffee. We attempt to communicate with the family as best we can – no one it seems can speak each other’s language very well, so we mainly exchange smiles with great warmth. Muhammad talks about his love of Hip Hop, Michael Jackson and breakdancing and asks Chris if he likes rock and says that here people don’t listen to rock. Like many Palestinians, he takes great interest in Chris’ long ginger hair – Chris is led away to meet a friend who wants to shake his hand. In the mean time me, Zelda and Hedwig sit quietly with the family as the grandmother chops, and the father puffs . Now we are all tired, we express an interest to go back home and Muhammad orders a taxi but not before repeatedly offering that we stay the night. The taxi arrives the same time the mother gives us all a cup of tea but Muhammad asserts that it is really no problem at all and the taxi can wait. It is quite a struggle to stop the tea being refilled.
We shake all the family members hands and say our goodbyes and the mother tells us we are welcome back anytime.
We go back onto the streets and there are about twenty kids surrounding chris, the first Palestinian rock star! We get into the taxi with a chorus of goodbyes. Its dark and I rest my eyes a little as we glide out of Jericho and back onto the main highway, thinking how incredibly kind and helpful the citizens of Jericho had been. Turns out that the lowest and oldest city in the world, is also the friendliest.
- by Jon Lander
