travelwithlouis

Northern Mexico and Tucson–December 2003

2005-07-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

Northern Mexico and Tucson – December 2003

On Friday, December 12, 2003, we flew from San Francisco to Tucson, Arizona, to begin a two-week tour of the Sonoran Desert.
The next morning we boarded the bus and met our driver, Mike Rose, who was a veteran Alaskan policeman, and our guide, Eduardo Rivero from Chihuahua. (During the trip, Mike periodically regaled us with stories of his police days … 20 years on the force. Eduardo provided knowledgeable commentary and facilitated our learning experience.) After a brief tour of Tucson, we drove to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, one of the finest exhibits of American desert plants, animals, birds and fish in the world. This museum was very well planned and executed.
On 21 acres of beautifully landscaped hills, the museum has displays of over 300 animal species (including mountain lions and wolves and Haya’s favorite, Gila monsters) and 1200 plants in natural settings. As we walked the two miles of paths, lizards and other small animals scurried across before us.
After the museum, our bus carried us to the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains where we took a tram ride into a canyon that rose through vertical rock formations that looked as though they could fall at any time. We had not seen such rock formations since the river canyons of Guilin, China
I had taken the book, A Short History of Mexico by Selden Rodman with me to read as we traveled. I started reading on the first night after dinner.
Haya and I had been in Mexico before. We’ve been to Tijuana, Rosarita Beach, Ensenada, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Cozumel, and Chichen Itza, but I had not really studied much about the country except for the antiquities.
As I read this book, finishing on the last day as we flew home, I learned the tragic nature of this land. Anyone who has been to the Balkans, the Middle East, or Africa, understands that these lands have suffered war and invasion since the start of history. The bloody soil of Mexico may outdo them all. I’ve enclosed a brief history of Mexico at the end of this trip description, but it barely gives an idea of how the people of this land have suffered at the hands of each other and at the hands of Europeans.
Sunday morning our bus took us to San Xavier del Bac Mission, built in the 18th century. The Mission stands starkly alone in the Arizona desert. Its strange architecture is a mixture of Byzantine, Moorish and Mexican Indian styles and one of its two bell towers was never finished. The Mission was founded by Father Kino, a Jesuit priest who explored northern Mexico.
After the Mission, we started for the Mexican border, Nogales, where we could change dollars for pesos (about 11 pesos to the dollar) and the nine-hour trip to San Carlos on the shore of the Gulf of California (or, as its called in Mexico, the Sea of Cortez). Throughout our trip, Haya had a chance to exercise her skills at Spanish and act as an informal translator for other members of the tour. I occasionally acted as her humble assistant.
The San Carlos Plaza Hotel is a modern, seaside resort hotel about two miles from the town of San Carlos, located on what is almost a private cove. An artificial beach has been created, but much of the surrounding seaside is rocky.
Morning light allowed us to see nearby Tetakawi Mountain. The locals call it the “Goat’s Teats” because of the shape of the two slim peaks rising from the summit. We went to a pearl farm operated by the University of Monterrey, listened to a lecture on pearl cultivation, and the ladies shopped at the university store for jewelry. These pearls have an unusual, bluish color from the minerals present in the bay.
The pearls are grown from bits of mother-of-pearl implanted in the oysters by the staff. The “seeds” are made from mother-of-pearl harvested in the bay and sent to China to be cut and shaped by specialized machinery.
Haya and I have seen pearl farms in Japan and China, but this is the only one in the Western Hemisphere.
After lunch in Guymas we explored this old town on our own and then joined a two-hour Marguerita cruise around the Bahia de San Carlos. The boats were operated by “Gary’s Dive Shop.” Gary is an enterprising middle-aged American who owns the Dive Shop, a fleet of sports fishing boats, three tour boats like the one we were on, a couple of souvenir shops in the town, a meeting planning service, shuttle service and so forth. Gary’s big yellow billboards are all over town.
Gary’s crew on our boat were very liberal with the massively watered-down Marguerita’s. With so little tequila in them, a few of our fellow passengers had to convince themselves that they were “feeling the alcohol.”
The next morning started a “free day” and I took the opportunity to take a three-hour jeep ride along the coast and inland to the mountain range. From the crest of a nearby hill you can see the coast of Baja California about 90 miles across the bay.
Here, as soon as we left the resorts and were out of sight of the Club Paradiso (formerly Club Med), the desert ran down to the rocky shore of the sea. Along the deeply rutted dirt road on the other side of a small hill we came across the first of three fishing villages.
The road followed the erratic coastline and rose then plunged through the dry gully’s dug by rainy season runoff from the mountains.
On the ridges between the dry washes, the fishermen and their families had built shacks of every kind of scrap material. Shacks were made of driftwood, pieces of highway billboards, scrap lumber, crates and boxes, truck and bus bodies, old cars, old refrigerators.
One ambitious soul had a small store with a pitiful supply of canned goods.
There was no electricity, no telephone, no plumbing. Beat-up boats were pulled up onto the small scraps of beach between the huge rocks. Nets dried by hanging on the boats, rocks, or the sides of the shacks. Almost no vegetation could be seen other than a few cacti.
Half the shacks were deserted because the fisher families had abandoned them after a huge storm last fall in the hurricane season.
The folk who were left fished every day for the squid that provided their income. A four-wheel drive tank truck came down the dusty road once a day to buy the squid, which were shipped to Japan as delicacies.
Much of the Mexican population that we were to see was poor by any standard; however, these squid fishermen and their families were among the poorest.
Our Jeep ride took us away from the beach and toward the foothills and a hidden spring at the base of a cliff. The cliff was almost covered with the roots and branches of a huge old wild fig tree.
As we drove back toward the hotel, we passed some of the largest extant cactus species (the cardon cactus lives up to 200 years and reaches a height of up to 65 feet) and the ironwood tree, which can reach an age of 1500 years. The ironwood is so dense that it does not float. It is a favorite carving media for local artists.
On the trail back, we passed the ruins of a movie set that was used to make the picture “Catch 22.”
Wednesday morning we rode south through the desert to the state of Sinaloa and the town of El Fuerte (The Fort). Our accommodations were built on a 200-year-old rustic hotel with rooms of various ages surrounding a courtyard. The hotel was located next to the hilltop museum based on the fort for which the town was named.
The owners had decorated each room of the hotel with carvings, statues, and pictures from all over the world. The courtyard walls were hung with carved masks and topiary trees in large pots.
Margueritas and a concert by local musicians preceded dinner … a Mexican buffet.
As usual, our guide Eduardo Rivero made sure that Haya had vegetarian food.
After dinner, we wandered on our own into the town. In the enclosed square of the city hall, we found a teenagers’ performance of the nativity. The youngsters were in costume and the pageant included red costumed devils with horns and tails. After the show, the actors distributed candies to the children and other guests watching.
As with many of the public buildings in Mexico, the interior walls of the city municipal building were decorated with murals. The murals of Mexico are a treat. They usually describe the history of the country or the locality in vibrant action scenes and brilliant colors.
On Thursday morning we went to the Mayo Indian village of Teheuco to spend the better part of the day with our Mayo (not Mayan) hosts. The school here receives substantial support from the Grand Circle Foundation. (This was a Grand Circle tour. We had found that Grand Circle Foundation supports charities throughout the world. When you travel with them, they usually take you to a place that they support with contributions.)
The school was closed for the holidays, but we had taken a collection in the bus to buy winter clothing and shoes for some of the children. We gave this clothing to a family that had just arrived to pick up their children from the boarding school. The gifts had been intended for others who had already gone home, so these two kids were surprised and overjoyed with the winter jacket and the boots.
In the center of the village, we gathered under a wide-spreading tree at the townspeople’s meeting place. There we were entertained by a band of native stringed instruments and drums. The band played an interminable tune named “Cat without a tail.” The band then accompanied a grandfather and his grandson who danced wearing stuffed deer-head, horned headdresses. The deer-dancers invited our group of alte cockers to dance, but there were no takers.
Grand Circle always arranges meals with local people on their tour agendas. In Tehueco, Haya and I and four unattached ladies had lunch at the home of Conchita, one of the ladies of the village.
Conchita is in her mid-twenties … a 5-foot tall, chunky woman showing the results of too much starch in her diet. She was born in a village about twenty miles away and moved to Tehueco when she was married at the age of fourteen. She has a ready smile and flashing brown eyes, but the tiny lines beginning in her face bespeak the quality of life in the village. While her 12-year-old daughter brought out the family photo albums, Conchita served us Hibiscus tea. (Hibiscus tea tastes awful, but makes up for it by having no recognizable nutritional value.)
Next, she served us a vegetarian meal in her living/dining/family room. In her home there was only the one bedroom, the kitchen, and this general-purpose room. Two other dirt-floored rooms were unfinished and would be completed when needed. Conchita’s home had electricity and she had a television set and a washing machine.
Conchita’s children, a girl and boy, showed us pictures of the family and drawings that they had made.
As we sat down to the table, one of Conchita’s male in-laws came in. He spoke to me, since I was the only male guest present. He told me about going to the US illegally to find work, and how he was eventually caught and sent back. He told all this in a dry, factual manner as if it were ordinary, day-to-day life. Perhaps it is. Years ago my father’s sister sneaked illegally into the US and was thrown out when caught … but that’s another story.
Back in El Fuerte, we went to a covered Mercado … a large warehouse-like building with many small booths and vendors. In the Mercado everything from food through clothing, tools, and small furniture could be bought.
Before a Mexican buffet dinner, in the courtyard of our hotel, we had Margueritas and mariachi music and dancing. This time, the drinks were stronger.
After dinner, our guide had arranged for an unscheduled visit to a local cantina.
We walked through the village and encountered another teenagers’ activity … a nativity parade. Following a police car, a young Joseph led a burro on which Mary, holding a baby-doll Jesus, was seated. Mary waved and smiled to all the bystanders along the street. The burro was followed by costumed wise men, shepherds, and many devils. The devils ran onto the sidewalk and into and out of the watching crowd, calling, laughing and teasing.
We continued toward the cantina through the streets with sidewalks one-to-two feet above the street level (to deal with the sometimes torrential rains and no runoff sewage system). The cantina owner had made an exception for our tour group and allowed women into the bar.
Normally, the only women in a cantina are the owner’s wife and the waitresses. We pushed tables together to accommodate the group and ordered beer. The liter bottles of Tecate beer were served resting in ice in large, topless coffee cans.
Some of the local men played the jukebox. Two of them were seriously drunk and, to the accompaniment of the mariachi music they put on a performance for the gringos. One of them, wearing a fine, tan three-quarter length wool coat and matching western hat, did an impromptu strip tease, doffing the slightly torn coat and his hat to reveal a dirty laborers’ shirt and jeans. He imitated a woman, dancing “seductively” to the music and baring one breast in flashes of daring.
Early Friday morning we traveled to the train station to await the train. Each of us had a small bag containing two-days worth of travel stuff. Our main bags would go on our bus through the mountains and meet us in Chihuahua.
The El Chihuahua Pacifico Railroad passenger and freight train arrived only a half-hour late. We boarded in one car, disregarding our assigned seats. The train travels from El Fuerte to Chihuahua, but we would go only about half way, to Divisadero, the central point of the Copper Canyon.
This part of the line runs from Los Mochis (The Place of the Turtles) near Topolabampo at sea level, to Divisadero at about 9,000 feet elevation. During the trip we passed such sights as the Agua Caliente Bridge over the Fuerte River (1,637 feet long), Tunnel 86 (5,966 feet long), Chinipas Bridge over the Chinipas Rivers (335 feet high and over 1,000 feet long, La Pera Tunnel (3,047 feet long and horseshoe-shaped within the mountain), huge switchbacks ascending the mountainsides, small Indian towns built of log cabins, missions, lumber camps, more tunnels and bridges, and finally … Divisadero.
Perched on the edge of the canyon looking almost straight down to the Rio Urique 4,135 feet below, and only a hundred feet from the railroad station, is our hotel. Our train trip took almost seven hours allowing for easy adaptation to the altitude.
This rail link, finished in 1961, was the last piece of the shortest route from Kansas City to the Pacific Coast … a venture that was started 90 years before and cost 90 million dollars. (Look at a map some time. It’s hundreds of miles shorter to Topolobampo than to San Francisco.)
From the Texas border to the tiny town, and large deep-water port of Topolobampo in Sinaloa, there are 86 tunnels (including one that makes a complete circle inside a mountain) and 37 major bridges. Some of the bridges are prestressed steel and concrete, the first of their kind used in Mexico.
The project to build the rail line was difficult and resulted in companies being formed, franchises being bought, concessions granted, short lines built, and several companies going bankrupt. Finally, the Mexican Government took over the line and finished it. However, the expected trade to Topolabampo for shipping to the Orient from the central US never materialized. Topolobampo remains an unknown fishing village and the line carries mainly tourists like us.
We disembarked from the train at the Divisadero Station and carried our small bags through a hundred foot long passage between vendors’ souvenir handicraft stalls and women and children fixing burritos on steel drum stoves. Between the end of this passage and the hotel entrance, Tarahumara Indian women sat on blankets displaying for sale their carvings and baskets intricately woven of desert plants.
These women climb thousands of feet on trails and ladders from the villages along the river below to bring their wares daily to sell near the hotel. Many carried babies wrapped in their “rebozo” shawls as they climbed.
One wall of the lobby was glass and set literally on the rim of the canyon. We were lucky to be assigned a room just off the lobby in the original part of the hotel, so our “front porch” was the canyon’s edge.
(There were some minor problems with toilet flushing, which I didn’t understand since there was more than a 4,000-foot fall for the sewage; however, the staff fixed this condition quickly.)
Haya lit Sabbath candles in the fireplace in our room. Several of the other Jews on the tour joined us and were touched by the ceremony being conducted in this remote Indian village. They probably did not realize that Jews have been coming to Mexico since the Spanish discovered it. In the first migration they were fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition, which in 1492, banned the Jews from living in Spain.
On Saturday morning we visited the home of a Tarahumara shaman or medicine man. He was dressed for us in “native costume,” and I suspect that he only does this for tourists.
Outdoors, in the clear mountain air, he had set up a table in the center of a square of log benches. The table contained examples of the herbs and other paraphernalia peculiar to his trade. Peggy Sue, one of our group members, asked for some marijuana. The shaman wrapped up a small amount in a paper for her, but our guide intervened.
The shaman had a good sense of humor and was obviously more sophisticated than he pretended. (Since it was a free afternoon for us, he offered to rent horses to any who were interested.) He demonstrated diagnoses by using eggs, rubbing the whole egg over selected parts of the (mostly women’s) body, then breaking the egg into a glass and “reading” the results.
Several of our group commented on the “accuracy” of the shaman’s observations, but I noticed that he was a good student of people’s gestures, movements, comments, stance and other leading information. Besides that, in a group composed mostly of older people, everyone has “a back problem” or a “shortness of breath.”
The shaman also informed us that the hibiscus tea that he served was good for weight loss. I am not surprised.
Our bus caught up with us in Divisadero, and the next morning we started through the central highlands of the Sonoran Desert, paralleling the Sierra Madre. On the way to Chihuahua we made two stops. One stop was for lunch in Guerrero at an apple farm owned by the same family that owned the Divisadero Hotel.
The second stop was at a Mennonite Farm. Shortly after the 1910 Revolution, a group of Mennonites from Canada emigrated to Mexico. They had been upset by the Canadian government’s insistence on their children attending school and on the demand for paying taxes. They bought huge tracts of land and brought their families and culture to this highland area. Although they have gradually adopted farming technology, cars, and electricity, their way of life is still permeated with their worship services, conservative dress, use of “Platt Deutsch” language, and denial of modern “entertainment.”
For me, this was an interesting stop because I grew up in central Pennsylvania, where a large colony of Mennonites make their home. In fact, I was able to exchange a few words of greeting in “Pennsylvania Dutch” with the woman supervising their sales room.
We continued northeast to the city of Chihuahua, the capitol of the state of Chihuahua. This is a modern, rich city in which “maquiladores” have been established. Maquiladores are foreign-owned factories for assembly of products. Many large US and Japanese companies have established these assembly plants for their products. They import parts from all over the world, assemble them using cheap labor in Mexico, and ship them to Mexican and other American markets.
Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Nogales, and many other towns beside Chihuahua are hosts to these plants. The plants are modern. Employees may earn only about a dollar an hour, but the companies train their employees and offer stable employment, health care plans, child day care (most of the workers are women), and other benefits. On Mexico’s new superhighways, the huge trucks roll day and night carrying components and finished products from ports to factories to outlets.
Chihuahua has the richest economy in Mexico because of the state’s mining, lumbering, agriculture, and tourism. About 44 percent of the city’s workers are employed in services and commerce. While slums still exist, they are gradually giving way to better middle-class housing.
While Mexican salaries appear to be far below those in the US, and we found that goods sold in Wal-Mart and other large department stores are priced the same as in the US, housing is strongly subsidized and controlled by the government, so it costs far less than in other countries.
The first uprising of the 1910 Revolution took place in Chihuahua under the command of Francisco “Pancho” Villa. His home is now a museum that we were able to visit. Villa had several “wives” but only the first inherited this home in Chihuahua.
Chihuahua has many parks and monuments, a strong commercial base, good downtown shopping, good schools and “autonomous universities,” and an active nightlife. (Autonomous universities are those supported by the government, but managed by a student-elected administration.) The parks and public buildings were decorated for the holidays and many people filled the walking street in the city center.
In our free time, Haya and I could not resist going to a large department store near our hotel. It was very “American.” However, we also found in nearby streets a Mercado (a covered market) and many small locally owned shops. These large buildings were packed from the floor almost to the fifteen-foot-high ceilings with goods on display … clothing, luggage, small appliances, tools, toys, jewelry.
As we walked through, I saw a small family ahead of us … a painfully thin young man and wife, and a little girl walking beside them with another child in the father’s arms. From their clothing they appeared to be Indian farmers visiting the city. They stopped every few yards and the children gazed with wide eyes at the displays of goods. They did not buy anything. The Christmas treat for the children appeared to be just looking at the toys and other wonders of the Mercado.
In the Mercado Haya wished to look at a blouse and asked the pretty 17-year-old mestizo girl attending the stall to take it down. Haya asked in Spanish, but the girl replied in English, which she had been studying in school. Her vocabulary was limited, and she asked us about certain words, but her pronunciation was almost flawless. This charming young Chihuahuan may have a bright future if she is not trapped into a premature marriage and children.
Before we left, we bought an extra canvas bag to carry all the baskets and rebozos that we had bought in the highlands. Haya also bought a serape and a beautiful poncho with vibrant colors. The Reforma Mercado in Chihuahua made us feel at home, since it so resembled the “suk” near our home in central Jerusalem.
In the evening, we were the “guests” of a Chihuahuan family for dinner. The husband, Jorge Flores, works as a car salesman, the wife cooks and conducts dinners for Grand Circle guests, and the 18-year-old son is studying in the university with ambitions to go to a US college in the future. The son spoke colloquial US English with little or no accent. He is tall, slim and handsome.
The dinner was a very pleasant chicken dinner that contrasted starkly with the lunch we had in the Tarahumara country village. Our hosts were gracious in the tradition of old Mexico.
From Chihuahua, we left the next morning for the nine-hour drive through the desert, past El Paso, Texas, Mesilla, New Mexico, and on into Las Cruces with a stop at Stahmann’s … the world’s largest family-owned pecan farm. A few hours of visiting the tourist shops in Old Mesilla, one of the hangouts of the infamous Billy the Kid, was enough to finish our taste for souvenir shopping.
Our overnight stay in Las Cruces did not allow us time to see the town, but we did spend an hour at the rather ordinary Farm and Ranch Heritage museum as we left town in the morning.
After an overnight stay in Tucson with a farewell dinner, we were on our way to the airport and another Horizon Airlines experience.
With few exceptions, our companions on the trip were good, convivial company and the trip was set at a pace that we all could handle.
Those of you who have followed my previous writings know that I enjoy food. Perhaps it is my palate, but I find that Mexican cuisine is nothing to write about. It is either too spicy or too bland.
I think that if I return to Mexico for another tour, it will be to the Yucatan peninsula where the ruins of the Olmec and Mayan civilizations will provide more interesting sights.
Nevertheless, as we crossed the dry wash that was once the mighty Rio Grande and we passed towns with names like El Paso, Santa Teresa, Las Cruces, Cochise and Tombstone, I could once again be that small boy sitting on the floor beside my parents’ Philco radio.
In the deepest corners of my mind I could thrill to the baritone voice of the announcer repeating, “… the thundering hoof beats of his great horse, Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again!”
“Hiyoooo, Silver… Awaaay!!”
The exciting music of the William Tell Overture swells in the background and I dreamed of desert adventures.

A Brief History of Mexico

It is believed the first humans reached Central America about 15,000 years ago. The first identifiable culture, Clovis, existed around 10,000 BC. Some stone tools dating back to 9,000 BC have been found in Guatemala. Around this time, the Fourth Ice Age was drawing to a close and the climate was gradually warming up enabling humans to begin eating more plants and less meat. This change was underway around 8,000 BC.
From 8,000 BC to 2,000 BC the inhabitants of Central America gradually became more agrarian and they domesticated beans, corn, peppers, squash and other plants. During this time there was still no jungle, just savannah and grassland and some trees. Evidence indicates that a tropical jungle climate appeared in Central America only quite recently, after the Mayan civilization was well underway. Towards the end of this period, some recognizably Mayan villages appeared and pottery and ceramics appeared. Some villages had a temple.
The period from 1500 BC to 300 AD is called the "Pre-Classic" period of Mayan culture. During this period the Mayan language developed. The Mayans experienced population growth and larger towns were constructed.
Meanwhile, about 800 BC, the Olmec culture was developing in southern Mexico. The Olmec is viewed as the "mother culture" in Central America; They developed a system of writing, the long-count calendar and a complex religion. The Olmecs had a considerable influence on the fledgling Maya culture in Guatemala. The Maya adopted many of the Olmec skills and practices and developed them further. It seems that the mixture of the Olmec and Mayan cultures touched off an explosion of cultural development. Archaeologists are not sure of the cause but from 300 BC to 300 AD, the Teotihuacan culture enjoyed tremendous development in architecture, writing, and calendrics throughout Mayan lands and the population increased. The great cities of El Mirador, Kaminaljuyú, Río Azúl and Tikal all were founded during this time. Mayan cities often went to war against each other.
The Classic Period of Maya development is the 600 years from 300 AD to 900 AD. The Maya refined the long-count calendar and developed a more advanced written language. The Maya had a tendency to tear down buildings and temples and rebuild new ones over the rubble of the old. Some buildings are built on several layers of previous buildings. All of the great Mayan cities as they appear today were built during the Classic Period, over the remains of previous construction. Architecture and culture blossomed during the Classic Period. The Maya began to accurately record important events on carved stelae. Excellent examples of Mayan stelae and art can be seen at Quirigua, an easy day-trip from Rio Dulce.
Early in the Classic Period, around 400 AD, the Maya became heavily influenced by the civilization of Teotihuacan to the north. Teotihuacan was the most powerful culture in Central Mexico. Much about this relationship is unclear but it appears to have been beneficial to both civilizations because both prospered and developed at this time. Evidence also exists that there was interaction and trade between Central American cultures and European, African and Polynesian cultures -- well before the time of Columbus.
Around the year 650 AD the civilization of Teotihuacan collapsed. This collapse triggered an upset in the Mayan civilization. Apparently there was a struggle to fill the power-vacuum left by the collapse of Teotihuacan. Now free of its relationship to Teotihuacan, the Maya reached their highest levels of sophistication. Art, astronomy and religion reached new heights. The population grew and cities expanded in this era of greatest Mayan prosperity. Astronomy and arithmetics advanced and the Mayans were able to measure the orbits of celestial bodies with unprecedented accuracy. The Maya predicted the motions of Venus to a degree of precision only equaled in recent times. The Maya traded with cultures as far away as South America and the southern US. Mayan cities were much larger and more populous than any city in Europe. The Mayas greatest artistic works in pottery and jade were made during this pinnacle of Mayan development.
Looking at the grey ruins of Mayan architecture today, it is hard to imagine that they were originally painted in bright colors, red, white, yellow and green, inside and out. Certain internal chambers have been preserved and microscopic traces of paint on the stonework have enabled archaeologists to reconstruct what Tikal and other sites probably looked like.
However, this peak of Mayan development was to be short lived. By 750 AD problems arose and the collapse was underway. There are many theories about what happened. By this time, the climate was certainly changing from grassland and savannah into the tropical climate we now associate with Guatemala. Perhaps there were food shortages. In any event, the population dropped and the cities were gradually abandoned. By 830 AD construction and development had come to a halt. Some cities in Belize and Yucatan survived longer but in Guatemala the population abandoned the cities and redistributed itself into the farming villages of the highlands that we see today.
By 980 the Toltecs consolidated their hold on Northern Mexico, only to lose this area by 1200 AD to the Aztecs. By 1248, the Toltecs retreated to Yucatan and the Aztecs ruled from Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City).
In 1502, Moctezuma II took the throne of the Aztec Empire and ruled most of Mexico. In 1519, the Spanish explorer, Cortez landed at Veracruz and defeated one tribe after another until he and his technologically superior troops entered Tenochtitlan and made Moctezuma their subject.
The fact that they had horses, swords, guns, cannon, and armor provided their technological superiority. The fact that they had white skins confirmed an Aztec legend of Quetzalcoatl’s “godhood” and invincibility.
The native peoples held blood sacrifices in which hundreds … maybe thousands … were killed and they were continually at war; however, after the Spanish arrived, it was even worse.

1521 – Siege and destruction of Tenochtitlan the largest city in the world.
1522 – Alvorado leaves a trail of destruction on his way to Guatemala, defeating the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs, and the Tarascon Empire.
1540 – Montejos founds Merida and enslaves the Toltec-Mayas.
1540 – 1810 – Mexican Indians held as slaves on huge Spanish -owned ranchos. Spanish rulers take native treasures to Europe and divide the land and its riches into ranchos as big as states. Large numbers of the indigenous population die from slavery conditions and European diseases. Interbreeding creates a new force, the mestizos, who eventually revolt against Spanish rule.
1812 – Independence from Spain declared by Iturbide, who also declares himself Emperor, is crowned in 1822, and flees to European exile in 1823 (taking the treasury with him).
1834 – Santa Anna begins his dictatorship of Mexico after years of internecine wars.
1836 – The Alamo falls to Santa Anna’s troops.
1837 – Texas declares independence.
1846 – US declares war on Mexico. General Doniphan conquers New Mexico, Zachary Taylor takes Monterrey.
1847 – Kearny takes California, Wilfred Scott takes Veracruz and becomes military governor of Mexico.
1848 – With the Treaty of Hidalgo, Mexico cedes New Mexico, Arizona, and California to the US for payment of $15 million.
1857 – Jaurez “elected” president, but driven from office by rival armies one year later.
1861 – European armies invade Mexico.
1862 – General Zaragoza defeats the French at Puebla on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo).
1863- French take Mexico City and install Maximillian Hapsburg as Emperor.
1867 – Maximillian executed by revolutionaries.
1872 – Juarez dies and Diaz revolts against government.
1876 - Diaz rules a dictator.
1876 – 1910 - Indians and mestizos are literally slaves again under the large landowners and US corporations.
1910 – Francisco (Pancho) Villa and Pascual Orozco storm Cuidad Juarez and restart the revolution.
1911 – Diaz flees into exile. Madero is elected president.
1913 – Madero assassinated, Huerta becomes dictator.
1914 – Huerta defeated by Villa’s and Obregon’s armies. Villa and Zapata join forces to fight Carranza and Obregon.
1915 – Villa’s forces defeated by Obregon’s.
1920 – Carranza elected, ousted, and then assassinated.
1924 – Calles elected president (jefe maximo)..
1928 – Obregon assassinated.
1931 – Anti-clerical campaign kills Catholic priests.
1934 – Distribution of land to peasants begins under Presidente Cardenas rule.
1938 – Cardenas expropriates foreign oil company properties, risks war with US. Roosevelt and Cardenas agree to payments for oil companies.
1938 – today – relative peace except for occasional rebellions of Indian tribes in the South.

Sicily - July 2003

2005-07-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

Sicily – 2003

The first impression of Sicily came as the plane was circling for landing. The flight from Malta lasted just long enough to gain altitude and start the descent. I think we spent more time on the runways than in the air.
As we approached the airfield it seems as though we were flying directly at a Gibraltar-sized rock mountain with sheer cliffs towering hundreds of feet on one side.
That mountain is how most of Sicily looked except for the waterfront’s small beaches. Sicily is rough mountains and steep valleys and sheer cliffs all over. It holds some of the most dramatically beautiful scenery in the world.
The island of Sicily is roughly triangular in shape with one point only a mile and a half from Calabria at the toe of the Italian boot. Geologically the island is a continuation of the Apennine chain that runs the length of Italy. Only 14% of the land is relatively flat. Half the island is in the volcanic zone of Mt. Etna. This 10,000 foot tall mountain with its smoking vents on top dominates half the main island. There are 37 small islands that are considered a part of Sicily, but they are mostly known to local inhabitants and Italian holiday goers.
Our tour included only the main island, not the nearby Aeolian Islands.
As in Malta the week before, we were told that the average temperature should be about 80 degrees (F.) in June instead of the 95 to 100 that we experienced. It is tropical country with tropical plants and trees. Most of the native trees and plants have been stripped off the land by generations of firewood gathering, shipbuilding and bad farming methods. What is here mostly imported trees and plants with crops being limited to olives, oranges (and other citrus) and wheat. The wheat farming in the central regions, two crops a year, should all be done through contour plowing of the steep hills, but many farmers still use old methods and the soil continues to run off the hills when it rains.
Sicily has over 5 million inhabitants and more than 6 million of their descendants live in the US. Palermo and its suburbs hold about one million people.
They are descended from the original Sikels, Sicans and Elymians plus numerous invaders. In the seventh and eighth centuries BCE, the Phoenicians and Greeks settled on Sicily’s shores. Some of the most famous Greek thinkers lived here.
From 241 BCE on, the Romans came and later, the Byzantines. The Arabs came in 827 CE, then the Normans under Count Ruggerio (Roger) in 1060, the Germans came in 1194, and then the Spanish. In 1488 thousands of Albanians fled their homeland and came to Sicily to escape the Turks.
Sicily is also the home of the infamous Mafia. They have existed for centuries as a sort of middle estate between the few wealthy and the masses of poor. The country suffers from an unemployment rate between 30% and 40%, and the Mafia feeds on this. Earnings often come from “black money,” illicit, unreported jobs on which no income tax is paid.
The culture is one that emphasizes honor and pride. Many Sicilians live from loan to loan to provide their lifestyle and show off to the neighbors. Weddings are ornate and expensive. Cars have to be late models. So the problem feeds on itself and the Mafia profits.
Italy has the Euro (which was at E1.182 to the American dollar while we were there). The banks offered a much lower exchange rate and, in addition charged 12.5% for changing money. The hotels offered .75 Euros for one US dollar.
Streets lined with souvenir and trinket stalls line the roads to the entry to every tourist attraction. Most of the attractions charge an entry fee of 4.5 Euros per person. Hucksters abound on the streets. Although we did not experience any crime, it is rumored to be rampant. Often beggars accost tourists near churches on the tour route.
Given the outrageous banking practice, the poor quality and overpriced souvenirs, the exorbitant prices for hotels, food and transportation, and the continual badgering to buy goods, I could easily answer when one of our fellow tourists asked, “Where is the Mafia?”
“It’s all around us,” I responded.
Perhaps the negative feedback that I experienced from the apparent grasping surliness of those who interacted with us tourists is the result of economic desperation.
Our tour, bought on the Internet from Academic Tours in the US, was subcontracted to Jolly Hotels Tours. The chain has hotels in most major Italian cities, the larger cities of Sicily, and a few out of the country. We stayed in four so-called four star Jolly Hotels during our visit. All of them were clean and had daily linen changes.
The Palermo Jolly, with a good harbor view and a pleasant pool, was beginning to be shoddy and had two badly operating six passenger elevators to serve about three hundred guest rooms. The dining room’s food quality was far below par. However, almost next door was a beautiful park and the adjacent Botanical Gardens of Ferdinand III. Strolling under the shade of the hundreds of years old banyan trees, their thick roots dropping from the branches to spread the canopies ever further, was a welcome relief from the heat. Many Old City museums and churches were within walking distance.
In contrast to our hotel in Malta, where we were poured glasses of fresh orange juice when we arrived, in Palermo we were barely greeted by a rude desk clerk who really didn’t want to be bothered.
The Messina Jolly had only two four-passenger elevators for about three hundred guestrooms but had a very good view of the harbor.
The Syracusa Jolly had one elevator into which two people could barely squeeze. It was very run down … a potential vertical coffin for two. The doors slammed closed with a clank that had an ominously final sound.
In all three of these hotels, the room air conditioning barely worked.
The Agrigento Jolly was the best of the lot. Although the relatively new building was starting to come apart (the parquet floor in our room was coming up in patches; others complained that their plumbing didn’t work; and so on), it had very impressive grounds and pools, and the food was good. The room air conditioning could not be regulated and we nearly froze.
On the plus side, the hotel was only about a ten-minute drive from the Valley of the Temples.
Each of the Jolly Hotels had minibar refrigerators in the rooms. Invariably, these could not be adjusted and were set to approximately two degrees below room temperature. Although these were clearly tourist hotels, all the signs were in Italian and there was little concession to foreigners’ languages.
In fact, this was true throughout most of Sicily.
As we traveled about Sicily we got the impression that recent construction benefited from the Italian flair for design, but that the execution of construction was poor, and maintenance was unknown.
As our bus drove around Palermo we saw hundreds of five and six story, fairly new and massive apartment blocks. In many cases the stucco was already falling off the outside walls. No one seems to care.
For a land with such high unemployment, apartments in the city cost three hundred thousand dollars and up. Extended families must get together to set up newly married couples in a home. Otherwise, they have to live with one of the parents.
Country homes are cheaper, but apparently few care to live there but farmers.
Our tour of Sicily was led by our guide Carmello … or “Don Carmello”, as he preferred to be called (after the manner of a Mafia Don). The tour was arranged so that we had many “free time” breaks to be on our own and Carmello repeatedly instructed us to “increase the Sicilian economy.”
We had four sprightly ladies from Spain and a couple from Brazil on our tour, along with about thirty English-speakers. Our guide gave his talks in two languages. Carmello’s Spanish was excellent; however, in English he seemed to use vowels at random. As a result, I listened to both lectures … what I couldn’t understand in English was often clarified by the Spanish version.
Rarely have I felt so continually cheated … even in countries like Egypt and India where poverty abounds and beggars crowd the streets. There is at least a certain honesty in straightforward begging.
Were it not for the beauty of the land, its history, and some famous landmarks, a trip to Sicily might be wasted … but, it does have those three features.
Our trip took us by bus to the cities of Palermo, Segesta, Erice, Trapani, Cefalu, Tindari, Messina, Reggio Calabria (on the mainland) Taormina, Mount Etna, Syracusa, Agrigento, and Monreale. We traveled over a thousand miles in six days. It also felt like over a hundred miles of walking. I returned with a blister on my heel and three and half pounds lighter (thank you, Sicily, for this last bit).
The earliest inhabitants of whom there are traces lived in Sicily between 5000 and 6000 BCE. These Neolithic tribes gave way to invasions from the mainland and then, in about 700-800 BCE the Greeks started to settle the coastal harbors. The first settlement was by the Ionian Greeks in 735 BCE at Naxos. There they built a temple to Apollo and became know as Siceliots. Almost immediately after Naxos, Greeks from the colony founded at present-day Naples founded a colony in Sicily. Greeks from Corinth created the city of Syracusa, which became the dominant Greek city of the island. By the fifth century BCE, Sicily was largely a Greek island producing such kings as Dionysus, numerous authors, scientists such as Archimedes, and some of he foremost thinkers of antiquity.
Greeks fleeing a Spartan army founded Messina in 410 BCE, and then between 409 and 405 BCE the Carthaginian generals Hannibal and Himilkon captured and destroyed every city but Syracusa.
Shortly thereafter, Syracusa under the Tyrant Dionysus became the largest city in the Greek world, the city that attracted the great Plato to its court.
The Romans drove the Carthaginians from the island. In turn, the Germanic Vandals in 440 CE defeated them. Fifty years later, the Byzantine Empire drove out the Germans and took the island. By 751 CE they had become so strong that the Byzantine Patriarchate took the Church of Sicily away from the Pope.
In 827 the Arabs started their invasion of Sicily and about one hundred years later they owned the entire island. They made Palermo the capitol and, by 972 they recorded that over 300 mosques existed in the city with over 100,000 inhabitants.
Robert Guiscard and his brother, Count Roger de Hauteville (1030-1101), the sons of Tancred de Hauteville (970-1058) wandered from their home in Normandy to southern Europe in search of adventure, wealth, property, and perhaps their own kingdoms. They landed their small force in Sicily on18 May 1061, as a “peacekeeping force” at the invitation of some of the warring local emirs. By 1090 they and their Norman knights had conquered all of Sicily as well as Malta. Count Roger, by now Roger the First, promoted himself to King of Sicily.
Those pesky Vikings were at it again!!!
Those of you who have followed my travels will remember that in Istanbul I wrote about how, in the year 900, the Vikings besieged Constantinople by attacking from both the Black Sea and the Mediterranean simultaneously. By 1000 they had crossed the Atlantic and discovered America. Earlier than that, they had settled the coasts of Ireland and Scotland and the north coast of France (Normandy) still named after them. In 1066, the Norman William (Guigliemo) the Conqueror defeated Harold of England in the battle of Hastings.
The Normans became the kings of England. Norman royalty intermarried with all the royal families of Western Europe. Now here they were in 1090 as kings in Sicily and so politically powerful that they could bend the finances of the Vatican to their ambitions.
The Normans cared little for the conversion of “heathen” to Christianity. That was the concern of the Church. Roger and his family wanted wealth and power.
For hundreds of years to follow (until 1798), as knights of St. John, many of their descendants would wield great influence throughout Christendom.
Under King Roger’s reign, Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, and Greek were recognized as official languages. The Arab-Norman church architecture became the norm (to make a bad pun) for new churches and cathedrals in Sicily.
The exteriors of these cathedrals were plain, but the best artists and sculptors in Europe decorated the interiors.
In their tug of war with the Vatican for political power, the Norman princes (perhaps knowingly) created two things.
First, they had their main cathedral decorated so that the image of God himself dominated the church, rather than Christ. Under the domination of God, the images of kings and Christ had approximately equal rank. By implying that their power and authority came directly from God, the Normans established what would later be known as “the divine right of kings.”
Second, the craftsmen they use for making mosaics were primarily Arabs who followed the instructions of their European masters. Left to their own devices, the Arabs would have made the images of Christ darker-skinned and brown-haired. Under command of the Normans (Vikings) the mosaic images of Christ in the Sicilian Cathedrals are almost uniformly blond and fair-skinned, like the Normans.
In 1191, Constance, the daughter of the Norman King William II, married a German prince who managed to lose the kingdom to the king of Anjou and Aragon (brother to the French King Louis IX). So during the 13th through 17th centuries Spain ruled Sicily.
From then until Garibaldi’s landing in Marsala in 1860, the island passed from hand to hand among the dukes of Spain and France.
Garibaldi unified Italy under King Vittorio Emmanuel I, and that included Sicily. Since that time, Sicily has been a more-or-less semi-independent province of Italy. Sicilians speak their own dialect of Italian.
We visited so many sites in our week of travel and two weekends in Palermo that I will avoid a day-by-day account and try to give an impression of most of the tourist attractions, roughly in the order of towns and places we visited.
Palermo is a big, ugly city with perhaps thousands of huge apartment houses spread throughout the suburbs. The Old City, near the port and where our hotel was located, contains most of the sights worth seeing. The Old City itself, except for the few main boulevards, is rather shabby. As soon as you depart from the main streets and wander back into the residential neighborhoods, you find slums, small neighborhood shops, broken buildings, cracked sidewalks, litter and garbage, and destitute people sitting in the shade offered by the narrow streets.
In 1948, when the US Navy destroyer on which I was loafing docked in Livorno, I saw the bombed buildings there and the shabby neighborhoods. Livorno was an industrial port that had been bombed by the Allies less than four years before. Most of Livorno has been repaired or replaced years ago.
The Allies also bombed Palermo, but the bombed buildings have not been fixed. People still live in the lower floors while the higher floors are rubble.
Only the damaged churches have been restored.
As the possible invasion of Italy neared, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Justice Department made a deal with Lucky Luciano, capo de capos of the US Mafia. In exchange for convincing the Italian army not to fight in Sicily, the Justice Department would give Lucky a pass on the charges of income tax evasion, murder and so forth.
Lucky bought the deal. The Italian army surrendered Sicily without a fight.
On a few of the days we had “at liberty” in Palermo, Haya and I tried to find some of the small museums listed on the city map. We wandered the small streets and narrow alleys and dead ends that the map didn’t quite warn us about.
It was here that we found the Sicily away from the tourist hunters.
Since the Middle Ages, peddlers had been dragging or pushing their carts through the cities of Europe. From the late 1700s until the 1940s, pushcart peddlers selling all kinds of goods were a regular sight in most American cities as well.
Here in the neighborhoods the modern version of the pushcart could be found. Some were small pickup trucks. Some were three-wheeled, motorized scooters with a box and frame on the back axle. From the frame dangled samples of the goods that peddler was selling. One cart had strings and braids of garlic and onions. Another sold detergents, rubber gloves, and other cleaning supplies. They shouted their wares just as I remembered from my early childhood in New York.
I found a side street store one afternoon when I was looking for a couple of bottles of water. The store was a garage with a rolled up shutter door. Inside were two big, glass-doored refrigerators, a small counter, and stacks of six packs of soda, beer, and water.
The young lady sitting on a high stool behind the narrow counter had a baby girl on her lap. The oppressive heat had their hair hanging in sweaty curls.
As usual, I was wearing my straw hat against the sun, blue jeans and hiking boots, a shirt drenched with sweat, and a black backpack holding my camera and a few other carryables.
She started to ask me what I wanted, but before she could get it out, I smiled at the baby and said in my broken Italian, “Multi bella la Bambina!” (The baby is very pretty.)
“Grazia!” she exclaimed. And then she asked me where I came from.
“California and Israel,” I told her.
With a big smile she led me to the refrigerator, picked out the two bottles of water that I wanted, put them in the bag I asked for, and counted out the correct change from the palm full of coins that I offered her.
She charged me 60 cents for a 1.5 liter bottle as compared to the 3 Euros that I was being charged at the hotel. (In Sicily and Malta most people who can afford it drink bottled water. However, I can attest to the fact that the tap water is good, since I used ice cubes in my usual evening vodka, brushed my teeth with it, and so forth.)
We wanted to see the Museum of Marionettes, but it was closed both weekends that we were in Palermo (despite what the hotel clerk told us and the guide book had printed).
Looking for another small museum, we got confused about the street names. The painted-over sign on one building had the old street name, but the new name was not in evidence.
I looked around to ask directions.
On the corner was a tiny shop about ten feet wide that sold drinks and snacks. In front, on a sidewalk just wide enough, there was a small plastic table with a chair on either side.
In one chair was a heavy-set, short, elderly man, mostly bald, gray stubble on his cheeks, wearing dirty black pants and a wrinkled shirt with the sleeves partially rolled up. In the other chair sat an elderly woman, equally heavy and short, wrinkled, and with sparse gray stubble on her upper lip and chin. Her flabby arms stuck out of the short sleeves of a shapeless, calf-length, black dress with a pattern of tiny blue flowers.
A paper shopping bag stood on the sidewalk between her feet. She was facing the man and had both elbows on the table as she angrily harangued him about something I did not understand.
The man sat slumped with a tired expression on his face, his jowls hanging loosely, and just listened.
I walked toward them across the street … really just a few steps. The man looked up at me through bleary eyes.
As the woman stopped for breath, I raised my hand to signal that I wanted to ask a question.
The man became more alert and ask, “Prego?”
I started to say the name of the street that I was seeking … via Butera, but the woman continued her harangue as though I were not there.
I waved to the man and started to enter the shop instead to get directions from someone there.
At that, the old man exploded. In sharp Italian words with a bitter expression on his face, he retorted to the woman what I roughly translated as, “Shut up a minute! Can’t you see the Signori wants something?”
Then with a smile he turned to me and again said, “Prego?”
“Via Butera?” I asked.
He pointed down the street and motioned to the left, “A sinistra!”
“Grazia!” I thanked him.
“Prego!” He responded and smiled again. His eyes had come alive during our brief exchange.
All this time, the woman had continued shouting at him as if I were not there.
I smile back and we walked on in the direction he had shown.
Palermo is the political, cultural and economic center of Sicily, as well as the seat of an archbishopric and the university. It has Byzantine mosaics, Arabic domes, and the tombs of Norman kings and a German Emperor.
The name Palermo came from the Arabic Balerm, which was a corruption of the Greek Panormos, or Great Harbor. Before the Greeks, the Carthaginians called the city Zis and Machanat.
The monumental Palermo Cathedral was originally started in 1170 or 1171, and was consecrated in 1185. When you enter from the side door (front doors are reserved for processionals) the first thing you notice in a chapel on the left are four gigantic sarcophagi. These are carved from purple Egyptian porphyry. They stand on platforms and are about seven feet tall, about four feet wide, and about eight feet long. This purple stone was usually reserved for royalty and here it houses the remains of Roger II, Henry VI, Frederick II, and Constance (Roger II’s daughter). The feet of three of the sarcophagi are carved lions. Religious themes are carved into the other surfaces. Another two sarcophagi are placed in wall niches. They are for William I and Constance of Aragon. The Latin inscription on the tomb of Constance of Aragon, Frederick’s first wife, reads, “I, Constance, was queen of Sicily and the wife of the Emperor. Now I reside here, yours, O Frederick.”
The usual statues, carvings and paintings decorate the inside of the cathedral, but nothing distinguishes this church from others of its kind besides its size.
The second tour objective in Palermo was the chapel of the Norman Palace. The stone palace is also a sprawling edifice and the chapel is located inside the courtyard. The interior mosaics were completed in 1143 under Roger II and other kings added to them.
Here we saw the raised royal throne and behind it the mosaic of Christ, Peter, and Paul … all under the aegis of God.
In one niche holds a large stone paschal candelabra, fifteen feet tall, with carvings of Christ and King Roger. The fantastically intricate wall mosaics of the nave present the story of the Old Testament and those in the side aisles bear the story of the New Testament.
The Old City is divided into four quarters by the intersection of via Vittorio Emmanuel and via Maqueda, called the Quatro Canti, or Four Corners. A Roman architect designed this round intersection in 1608. He also designed the four concave-fronted palazzos that face it from each “corner.” In each concave palazzo front, there is a fountain at the ground level depicting one of the four seasons. On the second story there are statues of four Spanish Kings, and on the uppermost floor are statues of their female patron saints.
Each of the Old City’s quarters has churches, palazzos, business districts on the main streets and slums in the warrens of side streets.
The palazzos (palaces or mansions) were mostly built after the fifteenth century. A few stand alone, but most appear to adjoin one another in long blocks. This meant that they had no side windows unless they were at the end of a block. The design helped to provide some insulation against the torrid Sicilian summers.
Most of the exteriors were rather plain … a three story stone building with only an arched carriage entrance on the ground floor facing the street. The carriage entrance was closed with a thick wooden door into which a smaller door was cut for pedestrian entry. Fanciful brass doorknockers were typically the only decorative feature. For privacy and security, windows and balconies were on the second and third floors.
The outside was all rather severe looking. But, enter the carriage door and the palazzo became a world of its own. The square or rectangular building was composed of rooms surrounding a garden. To one side, on the ground floor were the stables and servant’s quarters. In the garden, a fountain splashed and there were bushes, flowers, and shaded stone benches. At the other side, were workrooms … the palazzo’s kitchens, laundry rooms, and so forth. If the family were wealthy enough, a three-story chapel might face the courtyard opposite the carriage entrance.
Balconies (loggia) with ornately carved railings on the top two stories were on one side or even occasionally surrounded the interior and gave entry to reception rooms, dining rooms, libraries, chapels and other living rooms on the second floor, and to bedrooms and sitting rooms on the topmost floor.
All of the decorative inventiveness missing from the building’s exterior was buried inside.
Today, some of these palazzos are wrecks, some are tenements in the slums, some are abandoned, and a few have been somewhat restored to be used as museums.
On our own one day, we found the Palazzo Abatellis Galleria Regionale della Sicilia hidden on a narrow street next door to a church in the eastern quarter, not far from the waterfront.
This palazzo was originally built in 1490 by a dignitary of the court of King Ferdinand of Spain … the same Ferdinand who financed Columbus’ voyage and drove the Jews from Spain in 1492.
From 1526 to 1943 the building was a Dominican priory. Now it is a little frequented gallery containing medieval and later art. Most of the art is distinctly Catholic in character and subject, as is most of the art in Sicily.
Aside from a marvelous collection of religious triptychs (three paneled carvings and paintings usually with the Madonna and child in the center), statues, and Moorish ceramics, the museum holds two real treasures.
First, there is a two story high wall of the old palace chapel on which is mounted a masterfully executed gesso mural painted about 1435 and originally in a citizens’ hospital. The twenty-foot wide painting, patched in some places, depicts a skeletal Death riding a skeletal horse and trampling a multitude of people from all walks of life. It is named “The Triumph of Death,” and must have been an inspiring sight to patients in the hospital.
Second, in a climate-controlled glass case there is an oil painting from 1474 by Antonella de Messina. This two-foot high by eighteen-inch wide painting, called the Annunziata, represents Mary in the act of looking up from a text she was reading on the table before her. The picture is of a beautiful young woman’s head and upper body draped in a blue scarf. One hand holds the scarf together at her chest; the other is slightly raised as if reaching forward.
At first glance, this stunning piece seemed to be a photograph. I stepped closer to the case and could see the fine brush strokes that gave a three-dimensional life to the artist’s creation. The black background, the vivid blue scarf, the shadows on the face from the light source, and the outstretched hand gave the impression that this beauty could step right off the canvas.
I have rarely seen so life-like a painting. For long moments I stood, envying Antonella’s ability to create it.
We walked back to our hotel along the Widow’s Walk. From here the sailor’s and fishermen’s wives would scan the sea for their husbands’ return. The balcony-like promenade is a raised walkway in front of a four-block long 17th century hotel faces the harbor. At one time, this hotel hosted Europe’s great, including Goethe, who apparently loved Palermo.
Our hotel in Palermo faced the harbor and the Foro Italico, a large open space by the shore, used for public events. While we were there, the city was holding a two-week long “Palermo Feste,” with booths selling food, trinkets, and art, and a highly amplified rock concert every night until two o’clock in the morning. Our room faced the Foro Italico. Unless we were exhausted from the day’s touring and sightseeing, we did not get much sleep in the two weekends we spent there.
Next to our hotel, and also visible from our balcony, were the ruins of an old palazzo. In our view were the broken windows of the upper floors, the tilted chimneys on the roof, and the dangling wrought iron balconies. One afternoon, returning to the hotel, I glimpse what appeared to be a bar inside the open front door facing the sea. I told Haya that I wanted to explore further, and we went inside.
Once inside the door, we found a modern bar. A few steps up from the bar, with no intervening walls, was a sitting room and library. A short stairway led from the library to the inner courtyard of the palazzo. The courtyard was on a higher level than the ground floor facing the sea. Apparently, the original entrance was from the Piazza della Kalsa, a square on the landward side.
A young, pretty hostess who spoke passable English took us on a short tour. The lower floors of this unmarked and partially wrecked building, known primarily to Palermo’s wealthier citizens, housed a marvelous restaurant, the Kursaal Kalhesa.
In the summer, meals were served at tables in the courtyard. In winter, meals were served in the three large rooms that were once the kitchens of the palazzo. The present kitchen was located in what had been a workroom of some kind. In the dining room the owners had restored the ovens on one wall. The tiled fronts of five ovens had square openings at chest height for the food and beneath each oven an arched fireplace for burning wood.
We asked for the menu, and were given yesterday’s menu, with the warning, “We have a new menu every day, depending on the catch of the day, what is available in the market, and our chef’s inspiration.”
I thought, “This sounds like my kind of place!” We immediately tried to make reservations for that evening for ourselves and Yudah and Eli (Haya’s brother and his wife) who were touring with us. It was our last night in Sicily and worth a special treat. We were lucky that there was one table still available at nine o’clock when the restaurant opened for dinner.
That evening, we experienced a delightful meal in the garden setting of the courtyard. At the last moment, another of our tour group, Cheryl, joined us. The restaurant graciously added another seat at our table for four. As the evening progressed, we saw every table in the courtyard filled with Italian-speaking guests. Ours was the only English-speaking table.
Touring once more, we went to Segesta. Aeneas founded Segesta, according to legend, after he fled from defeated Troy. All that is left of the civilization that founded the city in 426 BCE, is the Greek theatre in a natural hollow in the hillside and the classic Greek temple. The unfluted columns, the lifting bosses still on the foundation stones, and the lack of roof girders attest to the fact that this temple was never completed. It sits on top of a hill above a quarry from which the stone was taken.
The temple platform is about 70 feet wide and 180 feet long. It has been restored to the extent that all the columns and the lintels and peaked ends for supporting the roof are in place. In its lonely grandeur, it is thing of grace left to us from ancient Troy.
Nearby there are also the ruins of a medieval fortress on another hilltop just south of the temple.
Driving through Sicily, except for the side roads that lead to these remote attractions, we traveled on what Don Carmello calls “freeways.” Like his English vowels, something is slightly awry here, because the new highways are all toll roads. Nevertheless, in concept and design the roads are something unusual.
They tunnel through the mountains and fly high over the valleys. They curve gracefully through the air to make winding paths up the mountains where no real road has a right to exist. Concrete columns more than 200 feet high support some of the bridges. The columns and the highway gleam brightly in the Mediterranean sun.
The only thing that worries me in this earthquake-prone country is that the concrete slabs of the roadbed rest on the pillars with only about 18 inches of their ends. In 1693 there was a volcanic quake that destroyed much of Sicily’s cities and even wrecked buildings on Malta and Gozo, sixty miles away.
Having seen highway bridges collapse in the Sylmar quake of 1971 and in the San Francisco Bay Area quake of the 1989, I know what the force of these movements can do.
Next stop was Erice, a mountaintop, walled city in the interior of the island. Erice has a long history. It was founded by the Phoenicians to overlook much of Western Sicily. At about 2300 feet altitude, it looks down on farms, vineyards and orchards of the area. Originally, it was dedicated to Eryx, the mother goddess, whose name among the Carthaginians was Astarte. Her temples were the abode of the sacred prostitutes.
Three Norman gates were built into the walls of the town, and several churches were added, but the shape of the walls remains the same as it was 3,000 years ago, and the winding streets have changed but little.
At the foot of Mons Eryx, on the coast, is the town of Trapani. Under Arab rule, the Jews and Arabs had live peacefully together in this trading port. Under Saracen rule, they prospered and also, later, under Norman rule. One of the reasons for this is salt.
Salt was always a valuable commodity throughout the Mediterranean. In fact, our English word “salary” comes from the Roman word “sal” for salt. Roman soldiers were often paid in salt.
Due to the configuration of its coastline and coastal marshes, the residents of Trapani constructed large salt-drying beds similar to those that line the south of San Francisco Bay in California.
The small fishing town of Cefalu, lies down the coast and in the shadow of the huge Rocca de Cefalu, a 900-foot high rock with sheer precipices. Its distinguishing feature is another cathedral.
This one also has Arab-Norman architecture and is supposed to have been built by Roger II after he was saved from shipwreck during a storm. What really happened is that this was one of the last Muslim cities taken by the Normans to finalize their rule of Sicily. The cathedral (completed in 1267) seems disproportionately huge for the small town. Its interior is decorated with mosaics by Byzantine artists who, at the command of their masters, also showed the high place of kings in the heavenly hierarchy.
Tindari, on the road to Messina, is located on a six hundred-foot high cliff. The primary sight here is the church of the “Black Madonna.” The statue, carved in Constantinople, was brought to Tindari in the 8th or 9th century. The legend says that the ship that brought the statue ran aground and was only able to land safely after the Madonna had been brought ashore. The currents of the sea below the cliff have formed a sand bar that is now called the “Lagoon of Tindari,” and is a harbor for sailing boats.
Messina, is the most interesting and beautiful city of Sicily.
Our hotel was right on the waterfront where the small, local ferries docked. Unfortunately, our schedule did not include seeing much of the city itself. But our evening walks after dinner in the hotel showed a relatively clean and attractive downtown.
Messina is the third largest city in Sicily and an excellent port. It is also the closest point to the mainland … only across the mile and a half wide Straits of Messina from Calabria on the toe of the Italian mainland.
In the center of the harbor and directly in front of our hotel window, was a small island bearing a few buildings and a tall stone column topped by a golden statue of the Virgin. On the plinth of the statue is the Latin legend meaning, “We bless you and your city.”
These words were supposedly the opening sentence of a letter sent by Mary and carried by Paul to the Christians of the city.
Harbor traffic was continual through the day. Messina is a favorite stop for cruise liners sailing the Med. It is fascinating to watch these huge floating cities make their way into port and tie up at the docks.
Our reason for staying in Messina was to take a day trip to Calabria on the mainland. In the morning we took the ferry, a twenty-minute trip across the Straits.
The Straits have a funnel-like shape that has the unusual effect of making the current flow change direction every six hours. When it changes, there are whitecaps even if there is no wind, and small whirlpools form. The ancient Greek myth of the sea monsters Scylla and Charibdys, repeated in the Odyssey, comes from this phenomenon. Near the Italian shore Scylla seized men from their ships. Near the Sicilian shore, the whirlpool of Charibdys sucked down every sailor that came near.
In Calabria we went to the National Museum to see two of the great treasures of ancient Greece. In 1972, amateur divers discovered the remains of a Greek ship bearing statues made by the artist Phidias in the 5th century BCE.
There were four statues.
Two are in the National Museum in Rome, but the other two remain here, near where they were found.
These bronze statues, cleaned of the sea-growths of centuries, are of Greek warriors. They are naked except for that fact that originally they bore shields and carried swords. These bearded warriors stand about six feet tall and every muscle on their athletic bodies shows the painstaking detail of the molds and finishing of the artist. Over 2500 years ago Phidias and other artists had developed bronze casting techniques that rival anything we have today.
Remember that the gigantic bronze Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was cast and built by the Greek artists at nearly the same time as these statues.
Beyond the bronzes, as amazing as they were, the museum in Calabria contained one of the best (and best-annotated) collections of artifacts from the Neolithic through the Greek and Roman times. Unusual for an Italian museum, this one contained many signs with English translations.
Taormina is another mountaintop walled town. In 396 BCE Himilkon, the Carthaginian general, founded this fortress town on a cliff overlooking the coast. It’s most famous landmark today is the Greek theatre built in the 3rd century BCE. From this town we could see the smoking peak of Mount Etna in the distance.
And then, Mount Etna, at about 10,000 feet, Europe’s largest and highest volcano. Its base covers an elliptical area with a diameter of about 70 miles. It has over 270 subsidiary cracks and smaller craters in addition to the one at its peak. Greek legends located the workshops of Hephaetus, the god of the smiths, and the home of Cyclops inside this mountain. From 8000 feet, and up, there is a desert landscape, which is covered by snow for six months of the year.
The last eruption was in 1997 and it destroyed the ski lifts on the on the south side of the mountain. Our bus took us to about a 6,000-foot altitude. There is tourist center, the remains of the lift towers, many restaurants and souvenir stands, and a parking area for busses and cars. A short hike through the road cut through the lava by the power shovels and bulldozers that are still working, leads to a smaller crater and a view down the mountainside at other, more recent craters.
In 122 and 1669, eruptions buried the coastal city of Catania, only about 20 miles away from the peak. Today, Catania, which we did not have a chance to visit, is the third largest Sicilian city.
On the southeastern coast of Sicily, Syracusa was the largest and best-known city of ancient times. The Sikels and the Phoenicians settled it as long ago as 1100 BCE. For over a thousand years, despite one conqueror after another, this was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world.
Saint Paul stopped here on his way to Rome in 60 CE.
The city now contains about 120,000 citizens and has a marvelous historical legacy, we did not get to see too much. Our primary visit was to the largest ancient quarry, Latomia del Paradiso. This was the quarry from which the stone for building the ancient city was taken. It hollowed out the side of a mountain.
In this hollow, which has been made into a shady garden in modern times, there are caves and structures left by those who excavated the quarry. In addition, there is a carved cavern whose ceiling follows what was originally an underground rivulet. By following the rivulet, the original excavators were able to quarry much of the stone to build the temples of the city. What was left is an immense cavern with unusual acoustics.
Michelangelo Caravaggio named this place the “Ear of Dionysios,” when he visited here.
In the hills overlooking the central south coast of Sicily is Agrigento, the small, rural town with the most prominent ancient temple remains in Sicily.
Settlers from the Greek colony of Rhodes founded the town in 583 BCE. The town never recovered from its defeat by the Carthaginians on 409 BCE, but during its heyday the people built a series of stone temples in the classical Greek style along the ridge of a valley.
This area is now know as the “Valley of the Temples.” There are temples to Hercules, Concordia, Juno, Olympian Zeus, Castor and Pollux, Vulcan and Aesculapius.
The best preserved is the Temple of Concordia, which looks very much like the well-preserved temple in Segesta. By the time we reached the valley, it was over 95 degrees and too hot for us to make the trek. Most of us on the bus elected to go to our hotel and have a swim.
However, that evening, we all got onto the bus and slowly drove through the valley. The temples on the ridge were all lighted from below and stood out dramatically from the darkness. There was little traffic on this road. Don Carmello put a tape of the music from “Thus Spake Zarathustra” on the bus’s PA system. The stirring, thunderous music from this tape multiplied the feelings of awe that we shared in viewing the ruins.
This was perhaps the most stirring interlude of the trip.
Monreale was our last tour stop on our return to Palermo. This small village in the hills holds a cathedral whose basilica is over 320 feet long, 130 feet wide and 100 feet high. In contrast to most of the Arab-Norman architecture we had seen, some of the exterior was ornately sculptured. Again, the interior mosaics were depictions of both the Old and New Testaments, One unusual piece was an ornately sculptured column that was really a fifteen foot tall candlestick.
Long before the time we had finished our touring, our tour companion Cheryl from Australia had wearily told us, “I don’t think I can stand to see another pile of old stones and another church.”
I must admit that the number of churches and cathedrals on the tour was overbearing unless, perhaps, you are a committed Catholic.
Furthermore, after being served pasta as one course of both lunch and dinner each day, we were reaching our limits. In fact, at dinner in the hotel in Agrigento, we refused the pasta.
Understanding what we had probably experienced, the waiter smiled and said, “Basta la pasta!”
“Enough pasta,” really expressed our opinion.
Perhaps the last word should be that of the daily newspaper “La Reppublica” of June 27, 2003, two days before we left. During the last six months the dollar had dropped dramatically in value against the Euro due to the US government borrowing billions of dollars to finance the war against Iraq. Except for those who had arranged tours in advance of the dollar’s fall, most Americans were staying home. The newspaper, in a front-page article, mourned the loss of the American tourist dollar and complained that some hotels were closing their doors.
So, although we had some negative experiences, especially the unusual heat, Sicily was “one for the books.” A good part of the thanks for this goes to the unusually compatible group of people on the tour. We even had the pleasure of making new friends like Pat and Lourain (sp?) who we hope to meet again back in California.
Despite some of my disparaging remarks, I do love Italy. My patchwork Italian speech is made up of Spanish words, French words, a barely passing year of high-school Latin, hanging out with my high school chum Henry Nepi, several large projects in Milano, seeing The Godfather twice, and my undying love for Sophia Loren. Nevertheless, I seem to be able to find the places I want to see, order meals, and ask directions to the toilet.
Of course, the fact that Haya has been studying Italian for the last three years doesn’t hurt a bit.
So, until the next trip to Italy, Arrivederci!

Malta- 2003

2005-07-26T17:54:00.000-07:00

Malta –2003

Sixty miles due south of Sicily and about ninety miles east of the horn of Tunisia lie the islands of Malta, Comino and Gozo … the tiny nation of Malta.
Many geologists believe that there was once a land bridge between North Africa and Europe and that Malta and Sicily were mountain peaks that remained above the water when the bridge was inundated. In fact, the cave of Ghar Dalam contains the hundred-thousand-year-old bones of extinct animals such as dwarf elephants and hippopotami … animals that were not likely to have been able to swim to the islands.
There were also Neanderthal human teeth from about 40,000 years ago found in the same cave. Evidence indicates that these cave dwellers ultimately built huts.
Seven thousand years ago, over a thousand years before the Minoan civilization began in Crete, the Maltese erected a temple of huge megaliths (huge standing stones creating a temple of several rooms), that is the oldest such structure in the world.
The first written record of Malta comes to us from the struggle among the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Persians for dominance of the Mediterranean Sea. After a war in 470 BCE, the Greeks controlled the eastern Mediterranean and Carthage (a Phoenician colony) controlled the west, with Malta on the dividing line between the two superpowers.
Stone columns found in 1697 bear an inscription in both Carthaginian and Greek that is evidence that Carthage controlled Malta. Tracing the lineage of modern Malti (the native language of the islands, although everyone also speaks English) shows that it is derived from Phoenician influenced by the ninth century invasion of the Arabs and the eleventh century takeover by the Normans
In 218 BCE the Romans captured Malta. In 60 CE, Saint Paul and 274 other passengers were shipwrecked here as he was being transported to Rome as a prisoner. He supposedly converted the islanders and a church now stands where the home of the chief of the islands stood in Saint Paul’s time. (Paul, a Jew who was a Roman citizen, was from Tarsus and spoke a Canaanite variety of the Phoenician dialect, so he probably related easily to the Maltese who still spoke Phoenician.)
The collapse of Rome was followed by invasions of the Goths, the Vandals, the Arabs, and ultimately, in 1090, the Norman knights under Count Roger I of Sicily. Roger annexed Malta to Sicily as a Norman kingdom. A hundred years later, the Germans superceded the Normans, Then the French House of Anjou kicked out the Germans and Aragon ruled for 250 years.
When Aragon and Castille were joined by marriage at the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish Empire ruled.
From 1530 until 1789 (the French Revolution) the Knights of Saint John possessed the islands based on a grant from the king of Spain. The knights turned the islands into a fortress and even held off the forces of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1565. Their influence on the very Catholic nation of Malta is so pervasive to this day, that it is worth spending some time examining it.
The Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem was formed in 1085. From 1085 to 1309 they were also called the Hospitallers of Jerusalem. From 1309 to 1522 they were called the Knights of Rhodes. From1522 to the present they have been called the Knights of Malta. The Order was originally formed to take part in the Crusades. They were an order of monks organized to care for Christian pilgrims who fell ill on the way to the Holy Land. As pilgrims also came under attack from the Arab Infidels, they started recruiting young knights to offer protection to the pilgrims.
Documents in the Vatican trace the Order as far back is 1113, but its origins appear to be earlier.
The Vatican policy against birth control worked well enough for the peasants and farmers of Europe. After all, infant mortality was high and another set of hands to work the earth was always necessary. Where the policy failed was among the nobility and royalty. Here, daughters could always be married off to make alliances or they could be placed in a nunnery. The problem was with sons! The first could inherit the title and lands, but more than one son could be a nuisance … a contender or possible deadly rival for the top spot.
The Order became a neat answer to the problem. Knights of the Order were lay brothers who took vows of chastity. They could kill and plunder, but they couldn’t have legitimate children. Also, their testosterone could get worked off in tournaments and battles with infidels.
The Order of St. John was the perfect place for younger sons for over 700 years!
Raymond du Puy, successor to the founder, Gerard, is credited with establishing the military role of the Order. Even without an official charter, the Knights fought a number of battles. Their charter finally came about 1200, when Alfonso of Portugal drew a distinction between the lay brothers who fought and the monks who cared for the sick and provided divine service.
The Order became the strongest power in the Christian controlled Holy Land, but finally the ranks of Islam triumphed. They retreated from their headquarters at Acre to Cyprus in 1291. By this time they had extensive properties in Europe to guarantee their income. They invaded Rhodes in 1306, from which their fleet harried the Arab shipping. The rising Ottoman Empire referred to Rhodes as "that abode of the Sons of Satan.” In 1520, the Turks took Belgrade and Rhodes was next. The Christian Kings of Europe were all too busy killing each other to help the Order, so Rhodes fell to Suleiman.
With surprising charity, Suleiman allowed them to leave in good order with their possessions … even taking their cherished relic, the hand of St. John the Baptist with them.
King Charles V of Spain couldn’t bear the thought of Christendom’s strongest fighting force having no home. He offered them their choice of two properties he didn’t too much care about: Tripoli or Malta.
For seven years the knights dickered over accepting either of these as a base. Finally, out of options, they took Malta in 1530 (over the protests of the Christian inhabitants of these islands who thought that they had the word of the Pope to prevent their being passed around as possessions of Europe’s royalty). Now, owing Charles V a big favor, they helped him to fight his wars.
As a result of England’s enmity with Spain, the Order’s property in England was confiscated in 1540.
From 1551 to 1798 the Order ruled Malta and fought of the Ottoman Empire and the corsairs from Morocco and the Barbary Coast. But after the defeat of the Turks outside Vienna in 1683, they relaxed into a life of wealth and dissipation. They lost their fighting edge.
In 1798, Napoleon took Malta without a fight. The knights had become decadent in their armored fortress.
Napoleon’s troops looted the castle and churches of the Order to raise money for France’s military campaigns. Two years later the Maltese with the help of Britain and Naples forced the French out.
In 1802 the Maltese voted to become a British Crown Colony and they maintained that status on and off until they became a Republic of the British Commonwealth in 1974 and then an independent state in 1987.
From 1940 to 1943 Malta was subject to the most severe bombardment in aerial history as the Germans tried to make it unusable as a supply base and hospital for the British forces. Few signs of that severe bombing exist today. Instead, dominantly baroque architecture and building facades line the older streets while modern architecture moves into the resort areas and business districts. Most of the city, and even the villages, appear to be in good repair.
With Malta’s history, it is no wonder that the cities of the islands are filled with a mixture of architecture from the nations of Europe and North Africa.
We booked an American-sold tour of Malta and Sicily from a company called Academic Tours. Unfortunately, the tour began and ended on Saturdays. We couldn’t follow this schedule. We were finally able to arrange our arrival and departure on Sundays giving us only five days in Malta, but nine days in Sicily.
On the other hand, it meant that we had to leave home at two o’clock in the morning on Sunday and we would get home about six a.m. on Monday two weeks later.
Onward!
Valletta is the capitol and largest city of Malta, but as might be expected at the tops hills of a submerged mountain, it sits on one arm of a fjord. Across the small bays on either side of this peninsula are other towns. In fact, the shoreline of the whole island consists of rocky beaches, promontories, and fjords with houses built on the steep sides of the hills or on hilltops.
On the jutting ends of the land surrounding the two bays there are huge stone fortresses built by the Crusaders. At key points around the island there are tall stone watchtowers.
The weather at this time of the year is warm … generally in the eighties (F.). It was our luck to encounter the hottest June weather in over two hundred years. It stayed in the mid-nineties.
There are about 400,000 people in this country. They are mostly Catholics and ethnically a mixture of Norman, Arab, and Italian. Their primary income is derived from tourism, dockyards, transshipping, and fishing.
They are a very friendly people, but their families are very close-knit and private. Despite millennia of repeated invasions, they are still an island culture.
It turned out that the “tour” in Malta was a composite of local tours, each with a different guide, packaged together with a supposedly four-star hotel that would have rated a solid three stars in most of the world.
Our tour was supposed to cover most of the major sights of Malta and Gozo, but I found that they would not have time to visit the Archaeological Museum, perhaps one of the more important (to me) places to visit.
As our plane arrived we could see a land of rolling hills. Our hotel was located in the city of Sliema, which is adjacent to Valletta on the other side of a fjord. A mile-long strip of hotels and shops, called “The Strand,” faces the harbor and the docks for ferries and small boats. Many of the boats in the harbor were the traditional Maltese “luzzu,” a brightly painted fishing boat, pointed at both ends and bearing carved and painted “eyes” on either side of the prow so that the boat can find its way home.
On the other side of a small island connected by causeway to Sliema, there’s a big yacht harbor that is home to some of the most luxurious yachts in Europe … hundreds of yachts. The harbor can hold some 3,000 yachts.
For our time in Malta, our hotel included a buffet breakfast and dinner each day, so we only ate lunches out. However, the hotel restaurant was very good.
Our first day was spent exploring Valletta. The tour bus could take us only to the entry gates of the city. The narrow streets of the city permit only small delivery vans and cars to drive. The crest of a hill runs through the center of the peninsula of the city. The main streets along the length of the peninsula are about a mile long. They are Triq Ir-Repubblika … the central street with the Law Courts, the Archaeological Museum and the ruined Opera House; and Triq Il-Merkanti … the next street over where the old shops and flea market are located.
Near the entrance to the city, the Upper Barracca Gardens present a formal European appearance and a view of the Grand Harbor and the Mediterranean Sea.
It is easy to see why the Romans named the Mare Mediterrania as they did. To them and to the Greeks and Phoenicians before them this water was “the sea in the middle of the Earth.” Malta and Sicily were on the path taken by Ulysses in his wanderings after the Trojan War. After a short walk through the garden, we strolled to St. John’s Co-Cathedral.
Valletta was the first “planned city” in Europe. After the Great Siege of1565, when the Knights defended Malta from the Sulieman’s forces, they knew they would need a more defensible city and harbor. They chose the bare peninsula across the Grand Harbor and convinced the Vatican to send their architect Francesco Laparelli, to design the city. The result is that Valletta has strong walls and cliffs to defend it, straight streets along its length, and straight, narrow cross streets. The cross streets are steep … often having steps for part of their length.
At the end of Triq Ir-Repubblika is the dominating presence of Fort St. Elmo with its thick stone walls and ramparts.
From the exterior, the Conventual Church of St. John looks like a huge, bleak building with two massive, square towers dominating either side of the entrance. The building was complete in 1577 after a short four years of work. For the first 70 years, the Cathedral was a plain on the inside as on the outside … just a huge rectangular room, with four chapels on either side. On the Eastern end of the room there is a main altar in the apse. The main room is under a barrel-vaulted ceiling supported by arches. The stone arches are, in turn, supported by pilasters and buttresses and unusually thick sidewalls. (The so-called “flying buttress” as used in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was not invented until later).
Most of the smaller churches in Malta (and Malta claims to have a church for every day of the week) copy the style of St. John’s with its twin towers. What they cannot copy to any great extent is the interior as created in 1661 under the orders of Grand Master John Raphael Cotoner of the Knights of St. John and his brother Nicolas.
In remarkably bright color even to this day, the ceiling illustrates the life of John the Baptist. The pilasters, arches, walls, and ceilings of the chapels were transformed from the original plain stone into intricately carved flowers, scrolls, and angels; and then painted and gilded.
Each of the national sections of the order of St. John … called Langues … had its own chapel in a side niche. Each Langue was responsible for decorating its own chapel and altar. These altars are silver and marble with carved columns in the baroque style, four-foot-tall, silver candlesticks holding four-foot-tall candles, and paintings or statues with religious themes. Each chapel is dedicated to another saint, usually the patron saints of the Langues.
All of this is initially overwhelming. I have rarely seen so much money, skill and effort spent on a religious site outside of the Vatican’s Saint Peter’s.
And then I looked at the floor!
The entire floor is covered with mosaic panels about 30 inches wide and about five feet long. Under each panel is the tomb of a Knight of the Order. Each panel bears a dedication, and the Knight’s escutcheon embedded in a fanciful design, often portraying a skeleton or some symbol of the afterlife. One could spend days just wandering and staring at the floor.
It becomes clear that in all Christendom at one time the Knights were second only in wealth and political power to the Vatican.
(An interesting footnote is pertinent here. The Knights of St. John are often confused with the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar that exists today is the highest order of the York Rite of Freemasonry. Their web site says that there is no direct link between this order and the medieval Knights Templar
The medieval Knights Templar were founded in the 11th century and were called the Knights of the Temple because they took over the mosque built
on Mt. Moriah (Solomon's Temple Mount) to use as their headquarters. They called themselves the "Poor Soldiers of Jesus Christ."
This is ironic, because they became so wealthy that they were envied by
Phillip the Fair, of France. In 1312-1314 he used his influence with Pope Clement to trap Jacques DeMolay, the Grand Master of the Knights of the Temple and have him burned at the stake for heresy in 1314.
Then Phillip confiscated all the wealth of the Knights and abolished the Order. On May 2, 1312, Pope Clement V granted the property of the suppressed Templars to the Knights of St. John [Hospitallers].
Sometimes the Templars are confused with the Knights of St. John because both were founded near the same time and had the same mission, to protect the pilgrims.
The Knights of St. John had their headquarters at the Israeli port of Acre before they took over Rhodes.)
Our view of power of the Order was reinforced at our next stop, the Grand Master’s Palace. The Palace was completed in about 1576 and was the seat of the Order’s power and the home of the Grand Master until 1798 when the Order was ousted from Malta by Napoleon. (In 1792 Napoleon’s government seized all the Order’s property in France.) The Palace has courtyards, armories, apartments, council chambers, dining halls and so on. Since it is now the office of the President of the Republic, we could only see certain areas, just enough to let us know that it was REALLY palatial.
The last stop on our tour for the day was the “Malta Experience,” a sound and vision show on a wide screen that explained the history of Malta from the Stone Age through to current times. During World War II, Malta was Britain’s base for shipyards, munitions storage, and hospitals. For several years the Axis bombers attempted to destroy the island’s ability to be used as a base. The pictures and sound effects of the bombings, and of the citizens hiding in caves and cellars made the German tourists seated in the row behind us wince and gasp audibly.
Back at the hotel, we had time for an afternoon swim in the rooftop pool before dinner. We needed it! The temperature was in the mid-90s every day we were in Malta … typical August weather arriving in June.
Strolling in the residential neighborhoods of the city during the early evening we had time to see some of local life. The hucksters in their small open trucks or wagons selling produce on the streets reminded me of New York in the 1930s.
Many of the cars date from the 1950 and 1960s. There are few American brands.
Most of the balconies (gallerias) are enclosed by ornately carved wooden shutters or wrought-iron grillwork. Open balconies are usually decorated with clotheslines bearing skirts, shirts and so forth.
Old British Leyland and Bedford busses run regular routes through the island. Each of the busses is individually owned. Although they are painted the same colors on the outside … a bright red and yellow … the inside bears the unique handiwork of the owner and the dash and sun visor are covered with Saint’s medallions.
In this intensely Catholic country, every day is a “saint’s day,” and each neighborhood sets up decorated arches across the streets. Each village has a parade with icons and statues being carried through the main streets.
Except for Valletta, all the other towns have narrow winding streets inherited from the ancient times.
In the morning our bus headed for the inland cities of Mdina and Rabat. Mdina was the original capitol city of Malta in Roman times. It sits on a hilltop about 500 feet above sea level and from here defenders could see the signal fires from watchtowers placed strategically all around the island’s shores.
When the Arabs took the city in 570 CE, they extended the walls. Then in 1090, when Count Ruggerio (Roger) took the city with his Crusaders, he had a cathedral built within the walls to make the city fit for Christians.
The city, with its hilltop location and tall walls, reminds one of Carcason in central France. Like Carcason, it was virtually impregnable in its time. The city is far older than Roman times, and this is probably as good a place as any to talk about that.
The Phoenicians, who built Carthage and ruled Mediterranean trade, were not alone in their wanderings. The Jews followed them … in many cases as passengers or co-traders. The royalty and richer members of the Phoenician, Greek, and Roman worlds had a hunger for the good things in life. One of those good things was silk. Silk came from the Orient. The Jews from Greece and modern day Iraq were the traders and explorers who found the Orient and its most valuable commodity. They subsequently controlled the fabled Silk Route through Samarkand, the former Jewish Khazar Empire that sat astride the Black Sea, Salonika, and all the way to Malta. In a small neighborhood within the walled city of Mdina there is a walled compound. This compound bears the simple sign “The Old Jewish Silk Market” to identify it for tourists.
It was part of the Jewish Ghetto of Arab and Roman times, occupied by Jews from Greek Salonika who brought silk to the domain of the Christians.
Count Roger (about whom I’ll talk more extensively in the piece about Sicily) took Malta in 1090. He probably didn’t care about these small islands as much as about keeping the troublesome Arabs from attacking Sicily.
Now Count Roger and his Normans were among the most sophisticated military men of their age. They had available the latest technology and with the help of the Vatican they had arms, men and financing.
The idealists behind the Vatican walls spoke of Crusades to bring Christianity to the world, but the Normans were on the front lines. They were realists and wanted territory and their own kingdoms.
To satisfy the Vatican priests and missionaries, they built churches and cathedrals. The one they built in Mdina has scriptural messages in Arabic, Greek, and Latin on the walls to show the Normans’ “zeal” for conversion. But other than the official show, the Normans turned a blind eye to the populace.
Let the priests deal with conversion. The Normans were interested in wealth and that meant trade.
On one side of the walled city, they built a small gate, ostensibly for removing garbage from the city. To this day the gate is called the “Greek Gate.” It was the entrance and exit for the Greek Jews and North African Arabs who brought trade to the city and silk from the Orient.
Mdina was Malta’s seat of military, civil and ecclesiastical authority and the home of the island’s oldest families. Although the capital is now Valletto, the oldest families still retain residences in Mdina. Its narrow, crooked streets are not suitable for modern traffic. The balconies of the houses almost touch across them.
Immediately outside the walled city is the more sprawling suburb of Rabat. It is separated from Mdina only by a deep dry moat constructed by the Arabs.
When the Romans lived here, the two cities were one.
For us the main attractions were the Mdina Cathedral and the Catacombs of St. Paul.
From the square facing the cathedral you can see its entrance flanked by the usual two square towers with their clocks near the belfries. It was built in 1697, after the old church (built in the 12th century) was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1693. That quake shook most of the central Mediterranean.
The new church and attached seminary are beautifully decorated with carvings and paintings that represent the life of St. Paul.
A few blocks away, after walking through the blazing heat of the afternoon, we entered the relative cool of the catacombs built beneath a small church.
In Roman times, burial on open ground was forbidden and cremation was customary. The Jews did not believe in cremation, so they built catacombs to bury their dead. The Christians, many of them of Jewish descent, adopted this practice and also found that these underground warrens were places where they could hold their religious meetings out of sight of Roman authorities.
These tunnels and caves were in use until the arrival of the Arabs, but were rediscovered only in 1894. They underlie not only some churches, but also many homes in this and other Maltese cities.
We climbed down the stairs into the multi-roomed cavern. I could stand upright, but those 5’10” and taller had to stoop. We found grave troughs cut into the stone with stone headrests left at one end. We saw pillars holding up the ceiling and separating the graves of various families. The graves were reused when needed. The dried and insect-eaten remains of previous tenants were collected and placed into carved niches in the walls.
No bodies had been in these catacombs for years, but the musty smell made me feel that the occupants had not been long gone.
Back on the bus once more, we moved on to the village of Mosta and the Church of Santa Marija Assunta … the famous Mosta Dome, which can be seen from any high point on the island. At 40 meters in diameter (130 feet) it is the third or fourth largest unsupported church dome in the world. Larger domes are St. Peter’s in Rome, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the dome at Xewkija on Gozo (if you believe the residents of Gozo). It was finished in 1860, almost all work being done by local volunteers.
If you think that’s the miracle of the dome, think again. The dome was pierced by a Nazi bomb during World War II when the church was full of parishioners seeking shelter. The huge bomb (about three feet in diameter) came through the roof at an angle, ricocheted around the room and skidded across the floor without exploding. The scars from this bomb still show and a replica is in an anteroom of the church.
The domed interior is like lacework done in stone.
The exterior is plain, but the entrance, styled as a Greek Temple, is flanked by the traditional Maltese clock towers and belfries.
From Mosta, we finished the tour through some Botanical Gardens and then the Ta’ Qali Crafts Center that provided us with the opportunity to buy souvenirs.
The Maltese, unlike the Sicilians we saw the following week, were rather gentle about selling souvenirs to us. This was the only incident. Furthermore, the tour stops were not plagued by the souvenir stands and hawkers we saw in Sicily at every tourist site.
The next morning we were “at liberty.” It was a chance for me to see the Archaeological Museum in Valletta.
As we passed St. John’s Cathedral, several policemen were diverting the pedestrians. On one side of the square, in a cleared area before the side entrance to the Cathedral, lay a man’s body covered with a sheet. A tourist, a pilgrim, or a worshipper on his way to the church … who could tell? The feet pointed straight up, making two little tents of the covering sheet. Two policemen stood near the body, smoking and talking. We skirted the area and passed quietly onward to the Archaeological Museum.
Recently refurbished, the museum houses a unique collection of Stone Age carvings … the famous Maltese “fat ladies” are there. Stone carvings of women with huge hips, thighs, and fat legs surmounted by tiny, breastless torsos and small heads. Some of these carvings are smaller than a finger … some are more than six feet tall.
One small figurine, about five inches long, shows a “fat lady” reclining with her head resting on the wrist of one folded arm. It is remarkably preserved and the skill of this Neolithic artist just made me hold my breath.
We spent some time looking at the wares offered in the five-block-long flea market on Triq Il-Merkanti, visited the museum of medieval armor, and had a light lunch before returning to our hotel.
Later in the afternoon, we were picked up by a tour bus that took us five blocks from our hotel to the pier for a cruise of the three harbors around Valletta. The huge cliffs and walls that surround the city and fortresses on the points of other peninsulas showed that the Arabs, the Crusaders and the Knights built well. However, there are almost no sand beaches on the islands of Malta. Rocks and a few pebble beaches are where people sun themselves and swim. A twenty-foot tall breakwater at the harbor entrance provided a diving platform for three young men who jumped wildly into the water as our boat passed and our passengers cheered.
In the evening, after dinner, we walked along the Strand. From the neighborhoods behind our row of hotels the people bring plastic chairs and folding chairs. They put them near the concrete benches along the harbor walk. Families gather, the children eating ice cream sold from the van parked by the roadside and playing tag … shouting and laughing.
Elderly people join in small groups to talk end catch their breaths from the heat of the day. The sea breeze just barely cooled all of us a little bit.
The next morning our tour bus took us across the island to the north tip of Malta where a ferry took us across the narrow channel to the island of Gozo, the second largest of the three islands that compose the nation, and perhaps the most interesting to me.
Between 3600 BCE and 2500 BCE the Neolithic inhabitants of these islands built over 50 massive temples of which 33 survive in some form. The most complete are the megalithic temple at Ggantija, and the huge Hypogeum, an underground temple and burial site that replicates features of the above ground temples.
Our first stop was at the Citadel in Gozo’s main city of Victoria. It is another 17th century walled fortress located on top of the hill dominating the small island. It now houses the Justice Court, several museums and the Cathedral. The Cathedral was built on a site previously occupied by at least three churches and two pagan temples. It most distinctive feature is the trompe d’oei painting of the ceiling’s interior that fools the eye into believing that the flat ceiling is a dome. This church is the only one on our tour that charged for entry.
From here, the tour took us to lunch, which was to be followed, not by the visit to Ggantija that I expected, but to a visitor’s center that presented the history of the island. On the way to lunch we passed a promontory that overlooked the largest stone arch I have ever seen naturally carved out of the seaside cliffs. The arch is about 500 feet tall. The small bay at its foot provides a mini-harbor for local fishermen.
After lunch, I hired a taxi to take Haya and me to Ggantija while the rest of the group went to the visitor’s center. At Ggantija there were very few visitors and we had these remarkable temples almost to ourselves.
We walked down the path from the hilltop parking lot where our taxi waited for us. Low stone walls surrounded an acre or so of the temple grounds.
In the center of the grounds the two adjacent temples cover about a quarter of an acre on a hillside. Except for the yellow wildflowers and weeds, the earth around them is bare. The golden-hued stone walls are composed of large slabs, some as much as ten feet tall (above the ground) and weighing 40 to 50 tons. There are holes drilled in the stone so that wooden posts could be planted in the walls to support roofs and doorways and to provide light and ventilation to the interiors. The tallest remaining walls are over 20 feet high.
Each temple has an entryway, a central corridor, an apse with a possible altar facing the entry, and three rooms on either side of the central corridor. Each room appears top have had some altar or platform for sacrifices or offerings.
The fact that these temples are almost 6,000 years old … older than the Egyptian pyramids or England’s Stonehenge … left me unable to talk. I could only walk around, touch the walls and wonder what these buildings might have looked like when they were built; wonder what the builders might have looked like; wonder how the priests preserved the mysteries of their inner sanctums; wonder what strange gods they worshipped; what sacrifices they made.
There is a cave on the coast of Gozo named “Calypso’s Cave.” Not only St. Paul, but also Ulysses was supposed to have been here.
Although Gozo was badly damaged by the 1693 Etna volcanic quake, the ancient temples came through unscathed.
The taxi returned us to the tour in time for us to complete our own trip through the visitor center. Then it was back on the ferry and the trip across Malta to our hotel.
A dip in the pool, an evening cocktail on the hotel's roof, and we were prepared to depart for Sicily the next morning. Air Malta would take us on the half-hour flight to Palermo.
The Maltese Lira was worth US$2.85 at this time. The hotel changed money at close to the current rate and with no conversion fee. Malta hopes to join the Common Market by the end of 2003 and begin using the Euro as its currency.
If I knew then what I know now, I would not take an organized tour of Malta. I’d do it as we did Anatolia last year. Just go there and hire local tours each day.

On the Road - June 2003

2005-07-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

To Israel in April?

It was Thursday night, May 1, 2003. Phyllis, Gordon, Annie (Phyllis’ cousin and our friendly e-mail link), Haya, and I were sitting at a table in Tony’s Mining Company (a fine restaurant in Cornwall, PA), having a great dinner and talking over old times. It was thunder, lightning and cloudbursts outside, but I had a perfectly broiled rack of lamb on my plate and no thought for the weather. Anyway, by this time Haya and I were supposed to have been in Jerusalem for over a day.

Haya, constantly thinking of where we should have been, was not in her best mood. She had been involved in a series of discussions with Continental Airlines personnel, trying to get us on a flight to Tel Aviv.

According to the 1947 “Lodestone,” the Lebanon High School graduating class yearbook, Phyllis Adair Brightbill was the “mainstay of LHS’s activities – peppy cheerleader – honor student.” She was in the senior class play, “Ever Since Eve,” on the Lodestone staff, member of the class Senate, vice president of the school student body, cheerleader and on the girl’s varsity basketball team. I remember her as pert, vivacious, and far above me on the popularity ladder. She’s still vivacious and a bit feisty.

Gordon Gingrich, the closest person to a brother that I have, was the guy who “takes pride in acting and announcing.” He was in “Ever Since Eve,” Hi-Y, Student Manager of a sports team, Dramatic Club, varsity track, and intramural basketball. He was one of the handsomest guys in the class.

In the yearbook, I was noted as being “interested in photography and dramatics.” Also (our mutual link) in “Ever Since Eve,” Dramatic Club, Varsity Sports- Cross Country running and Track. (I’d been kicked off the school newspaper for throwing a tray of lead type at Don Bowman, one of my constant tormentors.) I should also point out that I was experienced at track as a result of running away from the guys who bullied me through grade school and junior high school.

I don’t know too much about Annie (she’s from a younger generation), but she seems to be very smart.

Haya and I had flown from San Francisco on April 21 to Newark where a limo picked us up and took us to New Haven to visit our children and grandchildren for a week. After that, we were supposed to continue our flight from Newark to Jerusalem for our annual three-month stay.

On Tuesday, April 29, at the end of our delightful visit, we received a call from Haya’s brother Judah in Israel. It seems that there might be a general strike, which would affect air travel. A call to Continental indicated; however, that they had not heard anything and the flight was still scheduled to leave on time. Gil drove us on the two hour trip to the Newark Airport Hilton, where by prearrangement, we met my sister Roz and her boyfriend, Tim. They had driven from Reading, PA to meet us for a departure dinner.

We started dinner at about 5:30, allowing us time for a leisurely repast before checking in for our 10:50 pm flight. At about 8:30, we said our goodbyes. Roz and Tim began their drive back to Reading. Haya and I and our baggage boarded a shuttle to the Continental Airlines Terminal.

Once there, I unloaded our baggage onto the curb near a porter’s stand. I noticed that the terminal was suspiciously empty. One of the porters asked, “Where are you going?”

I said, “Tel Aviv.”

He said, “You’d better check inside first.”

I went inside and was greeted by an Israeli security guard who told me that the flight had been cancelled and that I had better check in at the counter.

I decided that it would be easier for me to have Haya deal with this first-hand than for me to deal with them and then explain it to her. I went outside to stand with our bags and invited Haya to go inside and talk with the clerk. (Haya, as usual, makes all our travel arrangements.)

About twenty minutes later, Haya came out and informed me that the Histadrut, the nationwide labor union in Israel, had gone out on strike in protest against the government’s proposed tax policies. The Tel Aviv airport was shut down and there was no prediction as to the length of the strike. In the meantime, Continental had provided us with a free night’s lodging at the airport Howard Johnson hotel.

I got a cart, loaded up the luggage (the porters had disappeared) and we found a taxi to take us to the hotel about three miles away for only $20.

The next morning we went back to the Continental terminal to find out what was going on. We were told that the strike might go on for days and offered the option to fly back to San Francisco or find our own lodgings locally. After quick discussion, we decided that staying at the airport was not an attractive option. Instead, we would go to Reading and visit with Roz and see my friends.

We took the AirTrain to rent a car and bring it back to the hotel. We made a final call to Continental to make sure things hadn’t changed. Then we loaded the supposedly “mid-sized” Mitsubishi sedan full with our luggage and ourselves and, after calling and leaving a message on Roz’s answering machine, we drove off down the Route 95 turnpike toward Camden and points west. (The thieves at Howard Johnson’s parking lot charged us $15 for a half hour of parking at the hotel, even though we were guests.)

Three hours later we arrived in Wyomissing at Roz’s home and found that she was not there.

We decided to try to let everyone know where we were, so we found a pay phone and I bought a pocket full of quarters. (I walked with a limp for two days until I found a place to spend the remaining quarters.) I was unable to convince the automated phone to accept my credit card for an overseas call to Haya’s brother Judah, who was waiting for us in Jerusalem. Instead, we called our daughter Eliana, and our son Ron in California. We asked them to call Judah. Then I had an inspiration. I would find Roz at Alvernia University, where she is administrator for a senior’s program at the grad school.

Following a torturous route from the main road, I found the university and the admissions office. They helped me to contact Roz’s office where her secretary informed me that she would contact Roz, who had left to go home only fifteen minutes earlier.

We found our way back to Roz’s home, parked the car and went for a walk in the lovely Spring afternoon. Upon returning, I found that my sister’s car was now in the garage, so I knocked on the door. She had not yet had a chance to check her phone messages, so she didn’t know we were coming to visit. Her eyebrows rose in mild surprise, but she invited us in nevertheless.

Immediately we called Continental and were informed that nothing had changed, but they took Roz’s phone number to call us if anything did change. I also called Gordon and Phyllis and left messages that we were in town and would try to meet with them on Thursday evening for dinner.

After dinner with Tim and Roz, we talked to Judah and he told us that the strike was still on and that he had received our phone messages. Before retiring for Wednesday evening we called Continental one more time. There was still no news about a flight, but they told us that we could make reservations to fly to Tel Aviv on May 17.

On Thursday morning we called Judah once more and were told that the strike had been suspended until May 5. Continental then told us that there would be a 7:00 am flight to Tel Aviv. On the basis of this news, we asked them to make a reservation for us at the Howard Johnson Hotel with guaranteed late arrival. We planned to drive the two and a half hours into Newark, get a few hours sleep, and go to check in at 5:00 am Friday.

I didn’t trust their news, and so I didn’t call Gordon and Phyllis to cancel our planned meeting. Sure enough, a few hours later, we checked and Continental had failed to get landing permission for their 7:00 am flight. We cancelled our hotel reservation and I called Ginny (Gordon’s daughter) and her husband Bud to help track down Gordon. I was also able to reach Phyllis who suggested Tony’s Mining Company. We agreed to meet at 6:30. J J

As we were ready to leave to meet Gordon, we called Continental once more and were told that there was no change. It was after 5:00 when we pulled out of the driveway. We heard the phone ring and paused, but Roz called out to us that it was not Continental calling.

We drove to Gordon’s home and picked him up. Gordon drove our car to pick up Phyllis in Cornwall. As we pulled up, we could see Phyllis waiting in the window. She rushed out and told me that there was an urgent call from my sister. I jumped out of the car, called Roz and was told that Continental had called just as we pulled away and informed her that there was a flight leaving at 9:30 pm that very evening. Unfortunately, we were now and hour or more from Wyomissing where we would have to finish packing, load the car and drive two hours or more to the airport. Clearly we were not going to make it.

We went to dinner! So here we are back at the beginning of our story.

The return trip to Wyomissing after dinner was an adventure in storm driving, which did not change Haya’s lack of cheerfulness.

On Friday morning, Haya (who had been doing most of the negotiating) called Continental once again. In response to her desperate pleas about being stranded in darkest Connecticut (until I was able to catch her eye and remind her that we were in Pennsylvania), the airline offered to fly us back to San Francisco on the 3:25 pm flight so we could start the trip over again on May 11. They also told us that there just might be another flight to Israel and that we should check when we arrived at the airport.

We packed our bags, drove to Newark, checked in the car, checked for the flight to Israel (which did not exist) and then checked in for the flight to San Francisco. As we were about to go through Security I checked my pockets and found the key to the rental car. Haya went through Security and waited for me while I ran to the shuttle train, went across the airport to the car rental agency, gave back the key, and returned.

Our uneventful flight home was a relief. We arrived Friday evening … two extremely tired people. We thank our friends and relatives for putting up with our grouchiness and our impromptu visits and for being so supportive and sympathetic to us.

We are now waiting in Palo Alto to find out when we will next try to get to Israel.

Please drop in on us any time anywhere!

Jerusalem Temple Mount Tunnels -2003

2005-07-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem – Temple Mount Tunnels – 2003

Our flat is on the seventh floor above a courtyard between three buildings, but in reality, it’s on the tenth floor above the level of King George Street, Jerusalem’s main central street. This gives us a good view of much of the city and, even in the heat of the summer, there is a breeze through our apartment when we open the windows on both sides.

Below the courtyard on King George Street, every weekday from about 10 until 3, Vladimir Dvoskin plays his saxophone, clarinet and flute. So if we close the windows on the construction side to block the noise, and we open the windows onto the courtyard, we are serenaded each day. Vladimir plays jazz, pop, klezmir (Yiddish folk music), and classics. He uses tape accompaniment and delivers to our ears some of the sweetest sax and clarinet since Acker Bilk (of 1960s fame). He speaks only Russian and some Hebrew, neither of which I understand, but somehow we manage to communicate. In addition to being a street musician, Vladimir sells CDs of his music (I’ve bought a couple), and is available for parties, weddings, and funerals. I’d bet that if they had New Orleans style funeral parades here, he could belt out that old jazz as if he was born in the Deep South.

Actually, as I write this, I can hear the deep moan of his sax in a blues number. I can look out the window and see him, ten floors below, the backpack and portable tape player beside him, and the sax case open on the sidewalk with a few coins on the felt lining.

This year there is a huge, noisy construction project under way on the other side of our building the jackhammers are breaking the rock beneath the street. As we view it from our flat, three streets come together below us. Each of these narrow streets was always clogged with traffic and people were struggling to walk on the tiny sidewalks lined with shops.

Now, the City government, in its wisdom, has undertaken to install a light rail system between the City Center, below us, and various suburbs. The idea, of course, is to reduce traffic. However, in the meantime it has made things worse.

The three streets below us have been closed off and they are being converted to an outdoor plaza and walking streets. As we watch, the crews are digging to put in new sewers, phone lines, electric, and gas. Over this, the new planter boxes for trees are being installed, new light standards, cobblestone streets, a small amphitheater in a little park nearby, and a tall wall to hide a parking lot. Where the cobblestones have been laid, the shopkeepers have already moved tables onto the sidewalk and are displaying their wares.

The other day, as we were walking, we passed another construction site about five blocks away. Here they are building a huge new apartment or office building. I climbed a path beside the project so that I could look through a viewing port cut in the fence.

There sixty feet or more below, I could see heavy equipment working to excavate a deep garage. Just under the thin layer of dirt at the top, the pale, pinkish-gold Jerusalem limestone lined the entire open pit. Throughout this city in the mountains of Judea, under the hills and valleys and streets and buildings, lies an ages-old, limestone strata, thousands of feet deep. Every construction project must dig through this stone. In reward for this effort, most of the city is built from this stone that so beautifully reflects the morning and evening sunlight.

These mountains were thrust upward by the same geologic forces the created the nearby Jordan Valley and Dead Sea when the tectonic plates came together. The stones of these mountains are, in some way, the essence of Jerusalem.

The stones have been used to build and rebuild the city and its topography for almost four thousand years.

In the afternoon we went to visit the so-called Western Wall Tunnels. The Western Wall of the Temple Mount is 488 meters long. (The Eastern Wall is over 500 meters long and the North and South Walls are over 300 meters long.) We had first visited these tunnels about five years ago just a couple of days after they were first opened to the public. At that time, excavations were not as extensive, shoring of the walls was not as complete, and lighting was not as good. Nor did we have the benefit of a knowledgeable English-speaking guide. This time, we hoped to do better and see more.

The Eastern and Southern Walls face the deep Kidron Valley. The Eastern Wall stones seem to cling to the steep cliff and rise from its side. In front of the Southern Wall Herod built a plaza with steps leading to three arched gates. Inside, the steps continued up to the entrance to the Temple. Now, the Al Aksa mosque sits right on the edge of the mount above the Southern Wall. The Muslims who believed the Christian legend that the Messiah would return through the center gate blocked the gates up with rock centuries ago.

The Muslim Quarter houses, mosques, and palaces were built on the north side of the mount up against the Northern Wall. The same buildings extended southward along the Western Wall except for the last 160 meters of the Wall. A narrow road along this part separated the houses from the Wall. This narrow road was where Jews came to worship during those periods of history when they were allowed to approach.

After the 1967 Six-Day War, the Israelis widened the road and built a broad plaza for worship. This plaza extends for about 70 meters of the Wall from the last houses southward. The final stretch of the Wall, about 90 meters, is partially hidden by an access ramp leading up to the mosques on top of the Mount.

The Temple Mount and its structures are so entwined with history that it’s impossible to explain what we saw in the tunnels without talking about the past. Please stay with me. I’ll try to be brief.

Mount Moriah, the ancient Temple mount, is solid limestone (just like the rock underlying all of Jerusalem). The legends of several faiths consider this peak to be the “center of the world.” In fact, the outcropping of bare stone at the top of the mountain is thought by some to be the “Foundation Stone” upon which God built the world. It is the place where Abraham supposedly offered Isaac as a sacrifice about 4000 years ago; the place where King Solomon completed the First Temple and deposited the Ark of the Covenant in 960 BCE; where the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE; where the Second Temple was completed by returning refugees in 520 BCE; where the Hasmoneans expanded the Temple Mount in 167 BCE; where Herod expanded the Temple Mount to its present size; where Jesus preached in about 30 CE; where Emperor Hadrian destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE and erected a temple to Jupiter; where the Muslims built their mosque in 638 CE; where the Crusaders established their Templum Domini church in about 1100 CE; and where the Muslims built the Al-Aksa mosque and the Dome of the Rock in the thirteenth century.

The Hasmoneans, descendents of Judah Macabbee and his brothers, led the Jewish revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and defeated his Syrian armies. They built the Second Temple on the site of the First in 168 BCE. By that time many of the treasures and the Holy Ark of Solomon’s time had been lost to invaders.

The Hasmoneans made one other major change. They improved the water supply to the city and the Temple grounds by taking a natural chasm and making it into an aqueduct. From the hills north of the city, they dug a channel down to the foot of the north end of the Western Wall. Here they distributed the water into cisterns dug along the street facing the wall. The winding channel followed the eroded chasm made by nature, but was dug deeper. It varied from about twenty to about forty feet deep and was only about two to three feet wide. Slabs of stone were used to roof over the channel and streets and houses were built on top.

When Herod the Great expanded the Second Temple in the first century of the Common Era (CE), his architects were not satisfied with the small peak surmounted by the rebuilt First Temple. Instead, they created a broad plaza that incorporated the mountaintop by slicing off the top of the next mountain, building retaining walls of huge stone blocks and then filling behind them with massive stone arches in layers until the mountain top became a level square. Near the western side this large square they further beautified the Second Temple.

On a nearby hill, across a small valley west of the Temple, was located the City of David (now enclosed by the Old City walls). Most of the priests and royalty lived here. Huge arched bridges spanned this valley to make processions to the gates of the Temple Mount easier.

From a previous visit to the excavations, I remember that one of these huge blocks was over 44 x 14 x 11 feet in size and weigh over 600 tons (the equal of the foundation stones used to build the pyramids in Egypt). In some lengths of the base, the constructors carved and dressed the bedrock to look like huge stones had been laid there. When the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, they razed it down the level of these giant stones, which are today called the Master Course. Most of the stones we now see above this course were set when the Muslims rebuilt the walls

Beneath the Temple and supporting the level square above, were the multiple stories of arches that created rooms, cisterns, and large, pillared halls, passageways and stairways that led from the Temple to outside the mount and between rooms of the Temple. For the priests, who must have retained the long memory of the First Temple’s destruction, there must have been many passages for escaping another such disaster.

When the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE after the unsuccessful Jewish revolt, they tried to make that destruction as thorough as possible. They destroyed layer after layer of arches almost down to the Master Course. Here they built a temple to Jupiter and erected statues to the gods and of their emperors.

Fifty years after Caliph Omar conquered Jerusalem (that conquest was in 638 CE), his successor, Caliph Abd al- Malek, built the “Dome of the Rock” over the outcropping of Mount Moriah’s peak. The Muslims venerated the “foundation stone” of Mount Moriah and claimed that Mohammed had been transported to Heaven to meet the angels from this spot. The Arabs also converted a small church built by the Emperor Justinian to a mosque. This mosque is now in its third incarnation and is known as al-Aksa. In 1099, when the Crusaders invaded the Holy Land, they converted the mosque to a church. Using slave labor, they also built the stone walls and fortifications around the Old City. The Muslims, also using slaves, rebuilt it in 1187 when the drove the Crusaders out, etc.

In 1250, the Mamelukes took Jerusalem and ruled it for almost 270 years. They made Cairo their capital and even though they were supposedly loyal to the Turkish Sultan, they went their own way politically and militarily. The Mamelukes were slaves, mostly Circassian, who were converted to Islam and became military leaders. They built the strongest cavalry know in its time. In fact, although the Turks and the Ottoman Empire repeatedly tried to control them, they remained a power until they were defeated by Napoleon. Supposedly, the Mamelukes were castratos, so their lines of succession were by adopting and converting more slaves. (At least, it was a meritocracy of a sort.)

Now why would we be interested in the Mamelukes? Well, for the 270 or so years that they controlled Jerusalem, they made permanent changes. They walled the Old City including the Christian Quarter, the Armenian Quarter and the Jewish Quarter. They built defenses against everyone. They built many buildings in the City. In fact, they changed the landscape itself.

They weren’t satisfied with having the valley between the City of David and Mount Moriah. Instead, they decided that the space between should all be at the same level.

Their solution?

Just like Herod’s! The filled the valley by building layer after layer of long arches that looked from inside like long tunnels. The Temple Mount Western Wall had a long paved road at its base. This paved road had porticos on both sides with stalls and shops along the street. For the whole length of the Western Wall, the Mamelukes built their arches across the valley and then surmounted it all with houses, new streets and palaces.

Today’s Arab Quarter of the Old City, its streets, houses shops and so forth all sit on top of these ancient arches. In fact, the Plaza that faces the Western Wall and is used a synagogue is some sixty feet above the base of the wall.

With tunnels, arches, old buildings, aqueducts lying underneath, it is some miracle that the street level of the city has not caved in long ago.

Now, here we were, starting a tour that led us into the tunnels with a hundred feet or more of buildings overhead … buildings that were supported by 2000 year-old arches made without mortar … buildings and arches that had suffered more than one earthquake over the centuries.

Our tour started at the level of the Western Wall Plaza where we entered what was once the basement of a residence that still stood above us. The passage we went through is a vaulted substructure that supported the street above. Soon we entered a large vaulted hall, actually four interlocking vaults that come together. The ceiling is over thirty feet high. Here we were treated to a model of the Temple Mount that mechanically changed to illustrate the different building projects over history.

From this exhibit, we entered the tunnels dug by the archaeologists along the base of the Western Wall. These tunnels are about four feet wide and on the side opposite the wall they are reinforced with concrete pillars to prevent the collapse of the old ceilings. In one section there are the remains of Warren’s Gate. (Named after the British explorer Charles Warren who found the gate in1867.) While it is now blocked, In Muslim times, (638 to 1099) the gate was an entrance to the Temple Mount and the Muslims allowed the Jews to use the area under the gate as a synagogue. (The Jews were forbidden to go to the top of the Mount itself.)

A few yards after Warren’s Gate the tunnel is widened make a small room about ten feet square. This room is the closest point available to the “Foundation Stone” of the First Temple.

The tunnel continues, passing through arches that were filled with the accumulated dirt and silt of centuries and through cisterns and medieval structures that support the Muslim buildings above us. At this point we are more than 120 feet below the roofs of the buildings above.

Nearly half way through the tunnel we are walking on paving stones that were the original road built in Herod’s time. Soon the face of the rock starts to look different as the original bedrock rises and it was no longer necessary to lay the monumental Master Course. In fact to our right, the excavators dug out a quarry where stones were taken to build the wall. Some of the stones were still attached to the bedrock.

At the northernmost end of the Wall, there is a huge uncut rock blocking the road. Beside it, leaning against the wall, is a cut and polished paving stone that had never been used for the road. The archaeologists speculate that when Herod died, all the building stopped. The more than 18,000 men he had “drafted” to do his work, just walked away from the job.

On the other side of the uncut rock, we went through a narrow twisting entrance less than two feet wide to find that the low ceiling of the tunnel is no longer above us. Instead, twenty or more feet overhead, there are slabs of stone laid across the chasm in which we stand. The chasm itself is two to three feet wide. In some sections, the modern tunnel explorers have laid thick, clear plastic floors so that you can look down and see the actual bottom of this, the Hasmonean Water Tunnel.

Herod built the Antonia Fortress at the north end of the Wall, but it was destroyed along with the Temple. What remains is a huge vaulted cistern and a dam used to stop up the water and make it available to the fortress.

Beyond this point, a passageway has been dug to an old Roman staircase. The staircase leads upward to a modern street near the old Lion’s Gate in the Muslim Quarter of the city.

When this staircase was opened a few years ago, the Muslims rioted to prevent the tourists and Jews from using this exit to the street. To end our tour, we had to return the way we had come. This was actually a good idea, because it gave us a chance to look more closely at some of the digs.

Part of our group, the Orthodox Jews, stopped at the small room carved out near the Foundation Stone, to offer prayers.

Stepping out once more into the Plaza, I could not help but look upward again at the buildings, spires, and minarets that were built over the vaults and arches that we had just visited.

We had just walked through millennia of time.

As I thought about those layers of arches, I couldn’t help but remember a story. Stephen Hawking, the renowned cosmologist, tells a tale about a fellow cosmologist in his book "A Brief History of Time." It seems that the cosmologist’s lecture was interrupted by a little old lady who sternly informed him that the universe rested on the back of a turtle.
“Ah, yes, Madame, “ the scientist replied, “but what does the turtle rest on?”
Without hesitation, the little old lady shot back, “You can’t trick me, young man. It’s nothing but turtles all the way down.”

Jerusalem Bomb Blast- June 2003

2005-07-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Bomb Blast – June 2003

In mid-June we attended a concert of Yiddish songs by Sharon, the daughter of close friends. She is completing her course work here in Jerusalem to be a cantor … a ritual singer for synagogue services. The venue was a small library of Yiddish books and literature recovered from the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. The library is in the basement of a building. Its unpainted walls and reinforced concrete ceiling make it look like a bunker in the Warsaw ghetto of 1944. In fact, many of these books have been salvaged from the remains of the ghetto.

Sharon’s songs included the plaintive melodies we expected, but also the lively tunes that inspired Irving Berlin and the Gershwins to write the Broadway hits of the early 20th century.

A few days later, at 5 p.m. on June 11, I was working in our flat on a plan for our upcoming trip to Malta and Sicily when I heard a loud explosion from the streets below.

I ran to the window and saw the smoke rising from a bus stop two blocks away. The day before, just at this time, we had been boarding a bus at that spot on Jaffa Street, the busiest commercial street of the city.

In the streets below, men were running toward the site of the explosion. It struck me that in most countries, people would be running away. Here, where so many are trained to help in an emergency, they were on their way to lend assistance and rescue.

Many in the street were making calls on cell phones to check on their friends and family in the area.

In less than five minutes the fire truck, police and ambulances were on site, the area was cordoned off, and rescue efforts were under way. Helicopter borne television provided coverage within another five minutes. We could see that a bus had been blown up at the bus stop. The twisted wreckage was smoking. Bodies were in the street and hanging out of the wreckage.

Ground level TV coverage was on site in another ten minutes and CNN world news coverage was relaying the feed within 25 minutes of the explosion. Reporters told us that the explosion had been caused by a suicide bomber dressed in the long black coat of an Orthodox Jew. He triggered the explosives strapped to his body shortly after boarding the bus.

Reports indicated that there were 68 wounded and 17 dead from the blast. All the violence on television doesn’t prepare you for the actuality of such casualties two blocks away from your home.

Before all the ambulances pulled away, a volunteer team of Orthodox Jews was there to perform the macabre but religiously necessary task of collecting all the bits of bone and tissue to ensure them a proper burial.

An hour later, my cousin Chaim called us from his farm about fifty miles away. He wanted to make sure that we were all right.

He also reported to us bad news and good news. The bad news was that he went to a senior’s class at the university last night and, when class was over he found that his car had been stolen. It will likely wind up in a “chop-shop” where it will be broken down into resellable parts.

The good news was that his daughter, Shlomit, had just returned from Russia with an eighteen-month-old little girl that she had adopted from an orphanage. Other than a minor, treatable lung infection, the infant was in good condition. The entire family is delighted for her.

A wrecking truck loaded the demolished bus onto a flatbed trailer an hour after the blast. Workers were already boarding up the shattered storefronts. For the shards of windows extending three floors above, the jagged pieces would wait until later for repair.

Two hours after the blast the traffic was moving on Jaffa Street again. Life was back to normal, except for healing the wounded, fixing the buildings, grieving for the dead, and waiting for the retribution and the next attack.

Eire - 2002

2005-07-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

Eire – 2002
(Ireland, Erin, the Emerald Isle)

“It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”

VERSE 1:
Up to mighty London came an Irishman one day,
As the streets are paved with gold, sure ev'ryone was gay;
Singing songs of Piccadilly, Strand and Leicester Square,
'Til Paddy got excited, then he shouted to them there:-
CHORUS:
It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go;
It's a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know;
Good-bye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square,
It's a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right there.
VERSE 2:
Paddy wrote a letter to his Irish Molly O',
Saying, "Should you not receive it, write and let me know!
If I make mistakes in spelling, Molly, dear," said he,
"Remember it's the pen that's bad, don't lay the blame on me."
CHORUS:
It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go;
It's a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know;
Good-bye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square,
It's a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right there.
VERSE 3:
Molly wrote a neat reply to Irish Paddy O',
Saying, "Mike Maloney wants to marry me, and so
Leave the Strand and Piccadilly, or you'll be to blame,
For love has fairly drove me silly, hoping you're the same."
CHORUS:
It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go;
It's a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know;
Good-bye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester Square,
It's a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right there.

(These are the original words written by Jack Judge, 30 January 1912. Judge was an Irish music hall entertainer who wrote the song on a drunken bet (that he couldn’t write a new song for his show by the next evening). It was adopted by the Connaught Rangers barracked in County Tipperary as their marching song.
The song’s chorus commemorates their wish to be back in Tipperary with their sweethearts, but it also memorializes their adventures with the infamous prostitutes and bar girls of Piccadilly and Leicester Square in London. (Note for non-Brits: Leicester is pronounced as Lester.)
The Rangers were some 97% Irish. Only the top officers were British. The English landlords and their hereditary estates still had a chokehold on the Irish people. One way to make a living [read “avoid starving”] was to volunteer for the British Army. If you died in battle, your family received a monetary reward. If you were wounded in battle, you received a pension. If you survived long enough to retire, your pension was grand compared to others in Ireland. In the meantime, you could send money home to support your starving brothers and sisters.
In 1914 the Rangers went with the first Expeditionary Force to Belgium to fight the Germans. They sang this song as they marched to war.)
Ireland?
Why would anyone want to visit a country where:
a. it usually rains almost every day and 2002 is the wettest year in the last forty-five years,
b. the average temperature at midsummer is in the high fifties Fahrenheit,
c. They’ve switched to Euro currency and tourists’ costs are very expensive,
d. The traditional national dance is a combination between a jig and a tap-dance and is the result of the dancer’s shivering from the cold,
e. The Gaelic language is only distantly related to any other in the world,
f. The greatest source of national income is tourism,
g. The most popular national sport is drinking,
h. The largest company in the country (Guinness) is the largest brewer,
i. The top politicians are under fire for shady business dealings and money in big overseas accounts in the Cayman Islands,
j. Half the roads are only one-and-a-half lanes wide and the traffic runs on the wrong side of the road?

I’ll tell you why, but it will take some time.

When we were planning our annual visit to Israel, we tried to take advantage of our frequent flyer miles. Our best deal was with British Air. That meant that we had to go through London, despite the ten and a half hour wait between connections. However, it also meant that we might be able to use a $300 travel credit that Haya had from British Air as a result of their fouling up her last trip. It turned out that this credit would just cover a round trip for two from London to Dublin.
Since we had never visited Ireland, this sounded just right. We booked a one-week tour with Trafalgar Tours and arranged all our flights to synchronize with the tour. In April, just before Haya left Palo Alto, we received word that Trafalgar had cancelled the tour and combined the passengers with another tour leaving later.
It would have been a nightmare to rearrange our travel schedule, so I searched the Internet for a land tour with the appropriate dates. I came up with a tour called “A Taste of Ireland” operated by CIE Tours… an 85 year old company owned by the Ireland Transit Authority the operates the buses and trains.
The change in timing meant that we would have to spend two nights in London, one night in Dublin before the tour, one night in Dublin after the tour, and then one night in England before we flew home. As travel arrangements go, this was a thoroughgoing mess.
Our first two nights in London were booked at the Holiday Inn, Kings Cross. Kings Cross is a major intersection in north London with a large bus and train terminal. I figured that the hotel should be near the terminal since the address was “1 Kings Cross Road.”
We took a bus from Heathrow airport to Kings Cross Station. Once there, I pulled out my handy map of London and looked for Kings Cross Road. With a few twists and turns around the side roads near the intersection, we found Kings Cross Road, but when I looked for the number of the building at the corner, it was 465, not “1.”
We saw a policeman walking nearby and I asked him where the Holiday Inn was located.
“Where are you from?” he asked me.
I couldn’t understand what difference that would make, but I responded, “We’re from America.”
“Oh,” he smiled, “I just have to know whether to give you instructions in yards or meters.”
“Either one will do.” I answered.
“In that case, you’ll find the hotel about 350 to 400 yards or meters in that direction,” he pointed at the curving road ahead. His was perhaps the only smile I received in London… and I still suspect that his smile was malicious.
We started walking.
Along the way we passed two places that made me laugh despite our desperate circumstances.
First there was a building bearing the sign: “The Poor School – 2 year acting degree.” I, for one, may not have had too much confidence in a degree from this school.
While I was trying to stifle my laughter, we passed the next landmark: Goodenough College on Guilford Street.
Why “Goodenough?” Why not at least “Good” or even better, “Best College?”
Such were the small pleasures that enabled us to survive the trek.
Our suitcases had wheels and we both also had carry bags, so we set out… all the while keeping an eye out for a taxi. The neighborhood was rather seedy and the first taxi we found was parked in the hotel’s driveway. Eleven blocks later we had arrived. We were sweating, drooping, and ready to drop in our tracks.
We also passed a site where a house was being demolished. In a rare exhibit of English humor, the big trench hoe that was destroying the house bore the legend, “Tumbledown Demolition Company.”
In the evening, we took just enough of a walk to determine before it started raining that the hotel was on the edge of a better area and within walking distance of Russell Square and the fabulous British Museum and British Library. At least in this case, my planning had been right. As many times as I have visited London, I had never seen the world-renown British Museum.
This was the chance.
For the next evening, we had plans to meet Bob Morgen for dinner. Some of you may remember that Bob met us for breakfast last year in Istanbul. This year we thought we might catch a show and meet him before the show for dinner.
After considering how much trouble it would be to see a show and rise early the next morning for our flight, we arranged to meet Bob at our hotel and just have dinner together. (Bob’s London home is not too far from Kings Cross.)
That allowed us the whole day to explore the British Museum. One day is only a taste. You could spend a month at the museum and not see everything.
The courtyard of the museum has, as its centerpiece, a rebuilt British Library building… a circular building about 70 feet in diameter and three stories tall. At the top is a hall for special exhibits and a cafeteria. The new top of the library serves as a support for a glass roof supported by steel girders that covers the entire square. New facades have been built onto the old museum buildings.
In the stated interests of preserving history for mankind, the British Empire mercilessly raided the treasures of all the world. In the courtyard flanking one entrance are two massive, Egyptian stone heads of Ahkenahten. I have seen the headless bodies still sitting enthroned at Luxor.
Flanking another entrance are two huge stone lions stolen from the palace at Nineveh. Near another entrance is a stone head from Easter Island.
The library has the distinction of being the study-place for some of the most eminent scholars who influenced mankind. One of the most prominent of these is Karl Marx, who wrote his books and manifestos here.
After a short look at the library, we walked up the stairs to see the special exhibit… “The Queen of Sheba.” This exhibit is jointly sponsored by Yemen, the modern country that now includes what was once Sheba. The exhibit explores the question of whether the story of Solomon and Sheba was truth or myth.
The collection includes carvings, paintings, ancient manuscripts, tomb jewelry and tools, mummies, spices, and artifacts dating back to the tenth century BCE. It tells the story of Sheba and the history of south Arabia and Abyssinia. It tells the story of Sheba’s son who became king of Abyssinia and supposedly took the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem to hide it in the desert of Northeast Africa.
Lunch at a pub near the museum was followed by exploring galleries that included displays from Britain and Europe, Egypt, the Ancient Near East. Although we concentrated on Britain and Ireland because of our next stop in the trip, we did drop by to pay our respects to the Rosetta Stone. The Stone was discovered in 1799 in the Nile Delta. It contains the same story written in both Greek and hieroglyphics. Discovery of the Stone allowed cryptographers to decipher Egyptian text.
Dinner that night with Bob Morgen allowed us to reminisce about old times and old friends and old enemies. An enjoyable visit together, although Haya may have been a bit bored.
The next morning found us taking a flight to Dublin and checking in at the Burlington Hotel to await the start of our tour. Since we arrived in early afternoon, we decided to see some places in the town that we would not visit on the tour.
The great semanticist S. I. Hayakawa once said, “The map is not the territory.”
We found that our maps gave only a vague idea of distance and our afternoon stroll extended for about six miles along the area of the Grand Canal. While walking around we found the Irish Jewish Museum, the birthplace of George Bernard Shaw, the old Jameson Distillery (and museum), the old Guinness brewery (and museum), and the Collins Barracks branch of the National Museum (which is the oldest military barracks in Europe).
We quickly discovered that everything from street signs to museum exhibit labels and sales brochures is presented in both Gaelic and English. Gaelic is taught in the grade schools, and often used in family conversations (or to prevent foreigners from understanding) but English is the language of commerce.
The museum collection here is a cultural collection from Ireland’s past. The barracks itself is a restoration of the barracks that housed the English troops of Queen Anne in the early 18th century.
This branch of the National Museum gave us a historical view of Irish country furniture, Irish silver (including many religious pieces), and Irish coins.
The Jewish museum is the work of an amateur curator and is therefore little more than a poorly catalogued collection of 19th and 20th century memorabilia. This despite the fact that the Annals of Innisfallen record the arrival of 5 Jews from over the seas in 1079, the mayor of Yougal, County Cork, in 1555 was Jewish, and the first synagogue was built about 1660 near Dublin Castle.
After this trek, we returned to dinner at the fine restaurant of the Burlington Hotel and early to bed for two exhausted people.
Our first day in Ireland gave us one of the best reasons to visit this country. The Irish must be one of the most friendly and forthcoming people in the world.
When I stood on a street corner unfolding my map of Dublin, within thirty seconds someone would be at my side asking to help me.
Staff at the museums were smiling and helpful. The curator at the Jewish museum told us the history of the collection and led us up the steps to the small old synagogue on the second floor.
What a change from the impersonal, even surly, attitude of most people in England!
After breakfast the next morning… a “full Irish breakfast” as the clerk told us… was followed by meeting our tour guide and chauffeur, Robert Lambert. (The full Irish breakfast includes, fruit, fruit juice, eggs, yoghurt, cream cheese, various breads, smoked fish, vegetables, butter, marmalades, sausages, bacon, processed meats, cheeses, and more.)
In the morning we wandered around the local neighborhood. Just after lunch we were on Robert’s bus touring the city. Our special guide for Dublin was Maura, who seemed to have an infinite knowledge of the history of Ireland and its religions, as well as having infinite patience for the weary travelers, most of whom had just arrived that morning from around the world.
This quick tour of Dublin exposed us to places we had not seen the day before. Dublin is a charming city. It’s the capitol of Ireland and 40% of Ireland’s people live within 60 miles of city center. The entire population of the country is little more than 4 million. There are probably more people of Irish descent in the US than in Ireland.
The whole country is about 150 miles east to west and about 250 miles north to south. Much of the coastline is fjords and estuaries of rivers. The constant rain caused by the Gulf Stream has worn down the mountains. Ireland’s tallest peak, in Kerry, is about 3,400 feet high.
The Gulf Stream, flowing across the Atlantic from Mexico, carries with it the warm weather and the moisture. When it approaches Europe, it first hits Ireland, then Scotland, and finally the coast of Norway where it provides Bergen with 363 days of rain each year.
As a result of the warm, wet Gulf Stream, Ireland’s temperature rarely dips to freezing and rarely rises above 75 F.
All this moisture has provided Ireland with its heritage of “40 shades of green,” I think it has also provided 40 descriptive words for precipitation.
The first signs of man that have been discovered in the Emerald Isle date to about 8,000 years ago. If you consider that the Ice Age was about 10,000 years ago, this means that humans made their way to Ireland long after the ice had receded.
There is little historical evidence predating the Celts who migrated across Europe and England in the 6th to 9th century BCE. (By the way, our guide Robert immediately told us that it is pronounced “Kelts.”) Like the Croats of southern Europe, the Celts appear to have originated in Iran, Iraq or the Caucasus, reaching England from Brittany and then moving to Ireland.
The Celts brought with them a mythology, a witchcraft of mysteries, and a religion.
Along the way, they somehow preserved the Gaelic language and created a written form displayed on ancient tombstones.
The Celts had four classes of people: the Druids or priests of their religion, the witches or medicine women, the artisans, and the commoners.
Although the Romans conquered England in Caesar’s time, they never conquered Ireland. Perhaps it wasn’t worth the trouble to the pragmatic Romans.
Ireland had no riches. Its lands were not fertile and productive. Its tribes were so divided that there were at least 150 “kings” in this small land. Every tiny tribe had a king.
Its climate was terrible!
What rational Roman would want to expend any effort to conquer Ireland?
The result was that Ireland and it’s Druids were left alone until the 5th century when the Roman Empire fell and scholarly monks retreated across Europe to hide in this distant isle. As the Dark Ages descended across Europe, the Catholic priests of Ireland concentrated on saving the written knowledge of the world and converting the Celts to Christianity.
In an unusual spirit of preserving broad knowledge, the priests preserved the writings of the ancient legends and Druidic myths.
Beyond this, they created their own heritage. They wrote and illustrated the famous “Book of Kells.” An illuminated manuscript of the New Testament, written in Latin, created in the 5th century and now kept at Trinity College in Dublin.
They also created a chain of towers and fortress across the countryside. BY the 7th and 8th centuries the Irish monks were renown across Europe for their Latin learning, writing and art. Pupils came from all of Christendom to study and to create Christian art.
By the 8th century, The monasteries had become so rich that they came to the attention of the Vikings who had been raiding the Scottish shores. The monks built round stone towers to defend themselves. Some of these towers still exist.
The Vikings established settlements at Dublin, Wexford, and Cork… all good ports for their long ships. Ultimately, they integrated with the local population, if sometimes by force.
In 1014 the famed High King Brian Boru defeated the Viking forces at the legendary Battle of Clontarf. Brian Boru died in the battle, but his fame lives on in Irish song. High Kings were elected by the Kings of the tribes. After Brian Boru’s death, the coalition of tribes fell apart again and the hundreds of tribal “kings” went back to fighting each other.
Finally one ambitious king made an alliance with the Norman’s who had invaded and conquered England in 1066. As a result, a Norman chieftain named Strongbow invaded Ireland and conquered much of the land in 1169. Ireland remained under some form of English rule until 1922.
The kings and queens of Ireland followed Henry VIII in considering the Irish to be little more than slaves since they remained Catholic after Henry created the Anglican Protestant Church. The result was that English Protestant “planters” were given large tracts of land and their populations. One such estate covered about 14,000 acres. The landlord held almost unlimited power over the Catholic serfs on the land.
Irish rebellions in 1649 and 1652 were barbarically crushed by Oliver Cromwell, who then granted the remaining free land in Ireland to Protestants.
In 1690, at the Battle of the Boyne near Dublin, the Catholic King James II of England was deposed by armies under the command of William of Orange (from Holland). Under the terms of the Treaty of Limerick, some 14,000 Irish Catholic soldiers and landowners were exiled. This event became known as the “Flight of the Wild Geese.”
New land laws were passed, leading to greater resentment of the English. The Great Rebellion of 1798, led by Wolfe Tone (incidentally, a Protestant) resulted in a loss of over 50,000 lives and more exiles.
The potato blight from 1845 to 1852 brought the Great Famine. It is estimated that over a million people died and another million emigrated from Ireland to America – driven from the land by rents that they could not afford to pay.
In the early 20th century Charles Stewart Parnell, another Protestant led a movement for “Home Rule” but could not gain unified support. The Irish themselves were divided since many were fighting in the British Army during World War I. (They were fighting for the pay and benefits… almost as mercenaries.)
In the Dublin Easter Rising of April 1916, most of the Volunteers were executed by the British.
Between 1919 and 1921, Britain and the Irish Republican Army were effectively at war in a round of violence and revenge killings. In a part of the north (six counties of Ulster), the dominant Protestant population was ready to take up arms to remain English.
Finally, in 1921, a peace treaty was signed that created the Irish Free State in the north and the Irish Dominion in the rest of the Emerald Isle. Civil war continued to rage for another two years.
Ireland declared its neutrality in 1939-45, and then finally, in 1949 declared itself an independent Republic.
All this fighting has given the Irish a heritage of legends and stories that they have expressed in lyrical songs of love, loss, and patriotism. All this Maura told us… and more.
On our quick tour of Dublin, we made two stops. The first was to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the second, Dublin Castle.
Our driver took the bus over the Grand Canal and toward the River Liffey around which the city is organized. The estuary leading to the Irish Sea made this city a natural harbor.
The old city is made up of many small, curving streets that follow the contours of the land. To make matters a bit more confusing, a street may change names many times. For example, St. Patrick’s Cathedral is located on New St. Patrick’s Street. A block further down toward the river and the street is named Nicolas Street. A block further and its called Winetavern Street. Going in the other direction, two blocks further away from the river, it becomes New Street and then Clanbrassil Street.
Legend has it that St. Patrick’s is built on the site where St. Patrick baptized his first Celtic converts, so a church has stood here since about 450 CE. The present church was originally built in 1190, but then burned and was rebuilt in the 14th century in an English style. Almost as much as it is a memorial to St. Patrick, the church is also a memorial to Jonathan Swift, the writer of Gulliver’s Travels and many other books. Swift was the Dean of the church from 1713 to 1745 and is buried in the church next to his long-time girl friend.
Down the street and toward Trinity College, we came to Dublin Castle, completed in 1220 it is some of the oldest surviving architecture in the city. For more than 700 years it was the center of British power in Ireland. Recently it’s been discovered that an old Viking fortress stood here before the castle. The castle is a huge, old, stone building containing all the kinds of rooms that a castle should have. Each room contains paintings and ancient furniture. A great throne on a platform draped in red velvet dominates the throne room.
Over one of the entry gates to the courtyard is a statue of “Justice.” In contrast to the American version, Lady Justice here is not blindfolded. Furthermore, she stands facing the palace with her back to the people of the city. As with other such statues, the Lady holds a balance scale. The scale has one pan closer to the palace and one pan closer to the street. For years, the balance was not equal… the pan closer to the palace always was heavier. You can well imagine the tales told in the pubs of Dublin about British justice.
Back at the Burlington Hotel we relaxed for an hour and then went to the Jury-Doyle Cabaret dinner show in the hotel. Tours from all over the city were gathered here in a filled dining room that must have seated about 600 people.
Service was excellent and friendly. The food was good. The Irish singing, the “Riverdance” type of jig dancing by a small troop, and a vaudeville-style comedian provided us with a real welcome to Ireland.
And, of course, one of the highlights of the evening was an Irish tenor rendition of Danny Boy.
As with most tours, our bags were collected from outside our rooms and then we boarded the bus and hour later. This tour was very civilized. Most mornings it was “bags out at 8 and asses out at 9..”
In the morning we headed southwest… our goal by evening was Killarney. (Many place names in Ireland begin with the syllable “Kill.” In Gaelic the word “Cill,” pronounced as kill, means church.)
Ireland is so small that they only recently adopted route numbers for their roads… and this to satisfy visitors. Instead of “take the M1 out of Dublin,” instructions for travel in Ireland would more likely be “take the Rathcoole road down past Naas, through Kildare and Monasterevin, bypass around Portlaoise and then jog left through Abbeyliex and south to Cashel. From there, stay on the main road through Tipperary and Mitchelstown to Cork. Go through Cork to Blarney Castle. On the other side of Blarney you take the road west to Killarney. You can’t miss it!”
That’s what we did.
All along the way, Robert told us stories of Ireland and the history of the regions and towns through which we passed. We held our breath and sucked in our guts as he maneuvered the fifty-passenger bus through streets built for donkey carts.
Just outside Cashel we stopped at a sheep farm-cum-bed-and-breakfast for tea and scones and to watch the sheepdogs work the flocks.
We sang “It’s a long way to Tipperary” with Robert as we passed through the small town of that name and we learned that it had been a British garrison town and the song came from Irish soldiers reminiscing about the girlfriends (and prostitutes) they had left behind to go and fight the Huns in France.
This country is all peat bogs in the valleys and peat mounds in the highlands. Peat is cut, blocked, and dried to form a fuel for heating homes and even, in limited cases, for generating electric power. Peat is formed by hundreds and thousands of layers of decayed vegetation pressed on each other in airless compression. It is a product of Ireland’s endless rain, but peat bogs are worthless as farmland.
On the other hand, peat bogs grow lots of grass. Sheep eat grass. Sheep make wool. Lots of sheep make lots of wool. In this climate, you need wool sweaters most of the year. Besides, lamb chops are very tasty.
We circled around Cork to avoid the traffic and pulled into a big parking lot at what could possibly be the most famous place in old Erin… Blarney Castle Park and the site of the famous Blarney Stone, the stone of eloquence.
During the trip we started to make friends with some fellow tourists. There was a honeymoon couple from Boston, the Kennedys… Jack and Jean, on their first trip outside the US (paid for by her father as a wedding present). There was a mother and daughter, Isolde and Marianne from Ghent, Belgium. There was an unmarried senior couple, Jeanette in her late seventies and Louis in his mid eighties. Louis was a fairly wealthy (according to his tales) ex-contractor from New Orleans.
At the castle we had two choices: the huge old woolen mills that had been converted into a tourist shopping trap, and the Castle itself.
Haya and I walked through the park to the castle, a well-preserved fortress with a square tower reaching ten stories high on top of a hill that overlooked the valley.
The Blarney Stone is at the top of the tower. As we climbed the battlements to the entry, Haya expressed some doubt. We had been told that the stone steps would be slippery if it was raining… and it was raining!
I answered, “I haven’t come all this way to miss the Blarney Stone.”
To my bit of eloquence, Haya answered, “You’re crazy!”
At the base of the spiral stairway leading upward, Haya said,
“If you live, I’ll meet you in one of the restaurants at the mill.”
“Tally Ho!” I cried and started to climb the 102 stone steps to the top of the tower. The stairway had a steel railing all the way up. This was very helpful. Along the way, there were diversions such as the queen’s bedroom, the dining hall, and so forth. All of these were bare stone rooms that failed to reflect the glory of former days. Even so, I could picture the rooms hung with ornate woven rugs and filled with carved wooden furniture. Narrow windows for archers lined the tower rooms and passages, so some small views of the valley below could be glimpsed.
Going up was not so bad. I was surprised. Perhaps it was because I quit smoking about eight months ago.
At the top there was a view of the whole valley. I crossed to the other side of the tower. There a professional photographer was taking pictures of tourists as they kissed the Stone. Tourists had to buy the pictures in advance when entering the castle grounds.
On the floor, a young woman was stretched out on her back. With each hand she held onto horizontal steel rods placed there for support. As she stretched over a gap between the tower and a facing defensive wall, an attendant held her hips to give her confidence. (Actually, there is no danger of slipping between the tower and the defensive abutment.) She tilted her head back as far as she could, slid forward an inch or two, and kissed the stone. After the kiss, the attendant helped her to rise.
I walked over to be the next to kiss the stone.
BUT!!!
But I took a look at the black, greasy, wet stone that had been polluted by millions of kisses and I COULDN’T DO IT!
Call me effete, but it was just too filthy!
I took pictures as evidence that I had been there and started the climb down to the base of the tower by the second stairway.
This stairway was something different!
Each step seemed to be only half the width of my foot’s length. That is, I could only place my heel solidly. The rain, and the passage of other tourists had made each step wet and slippery. The spiral staircase was half the width of the previous one, and, rather than a steel railing, the only support was a rope hawser hanging from the top of the tower on the inside of the spiral.
Hanging onto the hawser, step by careful step, I made my way down the ten floors. (I didn’t feel anything at the time, but for the next three days my thighs ached from the strain.)
Once again at ground level, I went to find Haya and have some lunch. As I crossed the parking lot, I found fellow passenger Louis wandering around. After a few words together, he appeared to recognize me and I suggested that we get some lunch. Louis had previously admitted to me that he was having short-term memory problems.
I took him to one of the buffet restaurants and we both bought lunch and waited for the ladies to find us.
Haya found us first and joined us for lunch. After lunch she disappeared for more sport shopping. (That’s shopping when you don’t buy, you just ask prices.)
Louis went to the men’s room while I watched his things. When he returned and sat opposite me, I noticed that his fly was open.
“Louis,” I said quietly, “You’re fly is open.”
Louis looked down and then reached to close his fly.
“It’s OK,” he said, “if it can’t get up, it can’t get out!”
From Blarney our bus took us through the mountain country of Kerry and finally to Killarney.
That night after dinner we visited one of the famous Irish “singing pubs” to hear Danny Boy sung again, along with many other traditional Irish songs.
The next morning was raining. Killarney had a festival with street performers, singers and jugglers this week, so we had been hoping for good weather.
I staggered out of bed. My thighs could hardly support me. For the next four days I suffered from that descent from the Blarney Stone.
First we went to the Muckross House, a huge, stately Victorian mansion now a part of the Killarney National Park. The tour called for going to the estate by open horse-drawn “jaunting cars.” Haya and I declined and went by bus. The Muckross family, members of the landed English aristocracy, owned eleven thousand acres… ELEVEN THOUSAND ACRES… here. The property includes a large lake and beautiful mountain views as well as the farms of many peasants who rented from the landlord. The peasants were not allowed to own land.
(Now, can you figure out where the term “landlord” comes from?)
Muckross House is a massive Victorian mansion three floors high and covering several thousand square feet of land. Built in 1843, the house has 20 rooms and many outbuildings for caretakers, stables, and so forth. Many rooms are decorated in the style of the mid-1800s. Every room has a fireplace. There is an elaborate “pull-cord” system that permitted the masters to ring bells located in the cellar and summon servants to any room of the house.
Next to the house is a seventy-acre park with lakes and small artisan’s shops.
The subsequent trip around the “Ring of Kerry” is simply a scenic drive around the Iveragh Peninsula southwest of Killarney that extends out into the Atlantic Ocean. North of this peninsula is the Dingle Peninsula and south is the Beara Peninsula. All three are slightly reminiscent of Norwegian fjords, but the mountains are not as high or as rough.
The scenery along the narrow roads is green, green, and more green. The Irish say that they have forty shades of green. Of course, most of them pronounce it as “farty” so you’re not quite sure what they mean. In reflection, I think they also have farty types of rain starting with a heavy humidity, through fog, light mist, medium mist, heavy mist, slight drizzle, and so forth.
Along the way we could occasionally see circle forts. Circle forts were the homesteads of the kings of Ireland.
A stone wall about ten feet high created a circled enclosure up to a hundred feet across. Inside the first wall there was usually a second wall, the exterior wall of the communal house. The final defense was an extensive underground complex of tunnels and rooms.
The Celtic kings built these fortress homes as a defense against both other Celtic kings and the Viking raiders.
This day we were lucky. There were only a few showers and the evening was mild. After dinner in Killarney we were able to wander the festival, have a few beers and listen to Irish singers’ versions of traditional songs including several renditions of Danny Boy. Lots of fun, lots of drinking, and lots of singing in the warm evening.
The next morning dawned with pouring rain and heavy fog rolling in from the Atlantic. The tour schedule could not be denied. We left for the Cliffs of Moher.
Throughout all the trip, Robert provided a commentary on the background of each place we drove through, the people, the customs, and major historical events. He alternated this patter with Irish music tapes and with Irish humor. In fact, his humor was a great insight into Ireland and the Irish temper.
For the most part, Irish humor is self-deprecating, That is, Irish tell jokes about Irish. Especially, they tell jokes about Kerrymen… people from County Kerry in the southwest. Kerrymen jokes are often like the “Little Moron” jokes of years ago in America. The jokes also reflect the poverty and primitive life that used to rule County Kerry.
“How many Kerrymen does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“What’s a lightbulb?”
When people tell jokes about their own, it tells us much about them. It’s not only the 20th century failed governance by the British that the Irish share with the Israelis and Jews, it’s also the tendency to poke fun at themselves.
Along the way the bus took a ferry across the River Shannon and we could see the estuary and the Atlantic.
Over an hour later we parked at the lot before the Cliffs of Moher. With the depth and thickness of the fog, I cannot attest that the supposedly 700 foot tall Cliffs of Moher exist. We sheltered in the gift shop at the park entrance until it was time to leave. A few foolish souls trudged up the trail to the cliff top and came back wet and disappointed.
Turning southeast we drove toward Shannon Airport in County Clare. Some of you older travelers may remember Shannon Airport as a refueling stop for planes crossing the Atlantic in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The first planes to stop for refueling there were flying boats ( the old China Clippers), then prop planes like the DC6B on which I made my first trip to Israel in 1961.
About half of the tour group was leaving to other destinations the next day from Shannon.
Throughout our trip we had seen small groups of parked “Caravans” (small mobile homes) and occasionally seen two or three parked in unfenced fields or wide shoulders of the road. These are the homes of the “Tinkers.”
Robert, who was always very careful about possible insults to anyone, told us emphatically that the Tinkers were not Gypsies… they were pure Irish. During the Great Famine the landlords dispossessed many families from their land when they couldn’t pay the rents. Many left Ireland, but some of them banded together and became itinerants. They made their living by traveling around and doing odd jobs. One such odd job was making and repairing pots and pans. The tinker would solder holes in pots. In fact, the expression “tinker’s dam” refers to the “dam” or paste that a tinker used to prevent the solder from flowing where it was not needed.
Out of desperation, and perhaps the temptations of the travelling life, some Tinkers became notorious thieves and gave this reputation to all Tinkers.
Today, Irish law requires that each city provide a parking area with running water, toilet facilities and parking spaces that can be rented by the Tinkers.
In the late afternoon, after checking into our hotel at Shannon Airport, we boarded the bus once more and went to Bunratty Castle for a dinner show.
At Blarney Castle only the tower remains relatively intact. The rest of the castle is in severe disrepair. Bunratty Castle, on the other hand, has been completely restored.
Crossing the moat, we entered the castle courtyard and climbed the steps to the courtroom. Here we were greeted by singers and musicians who gave us a welcoming piece of bread and glass of mead, a drink made from fermented honey. Next, we were led upstairs to the great hall. Along the way we passed various redecorated rooms such as the bedrooms of the local King and Queen.
The great hall was laid out with long tables and, on one side, a small stage for the performers.
The table place settings were a large napkin, a plate and a sharp, wooden handled, hunting knife. No forks or spoons were supplied. This castle was built in 1425 and the meal, the entertainment, and the ambience reflected that era closely.
We were served bread and a broth. Following that, we were served boiled beef ribs, then roast chicken and boiled potatoes, then a pudding as desert.
Throughout the meal, which lasted almost three hours, we were entertained by the madrigal singers presenting songs accompanied by the harp, violin, and fife. The singers were also our waiters and waitresses.
As we left the castle, an Irish piper with bagpipes entertained us in the courtyard.
When we returned to our hotel at about ten, it was still daylight, so we and the young newlywed Kennedys decided to go to the hotel’s pub together. (Jack Kennedy had been relying on me for the entire trip to explain small issues about traveling abroad.)
A singer playing the guitar and banjo, and his two children were the entertainment. The girl, about twelve years old, played the pennywhistle and guitar. The boy, about eleven, played the drums and guitar.
Of course, before the evening was over, they played “The Wild Colonial Boy,” “The Rose of Tralee,” and “Danny Boy.”
The Irish economy, which in comparison to older times is usually relatively robust, is suffering from the worldwide slump in tourism.
An indication of this appeared at breakfast the next morning.
As we walked into the airport hotel dining room and seated ourselves, a waitress came to take our order. I immediately recognized her and complimented her on her singing the previous evening at Bunratty Castle. She was delighted that we remembered. She had to keep two or more jobs to make a living.
Half of our original tour group elected to return to Dublin with the bus. Before we left Shannon, Robert took us back to Bunratty Castle. What we had not seen in the previous evening was that the castle was the centerpiece of a historical park. In the park was a replica of a 19th century village created from actual houses and stores that had been moved there from throughout County Clare.
The people in the houses and shops were dressed in Victorian style and could answer questions about the house and the history of the village.
As we were leaving the village, we stopped at a stonecutter’s shop. There I saw a stone plaque with the following legend carved on it: “My wife never knew I drank until I walked in sober one night.”
Two hours in the park was followed by a drive across Ireland to Dublin Airport where several of our fellow travelers left the tour.
We were dropped of at the Berkeley Court Hotel for the night. I had arranged this through the CIE Company that managed the tour. I did not know that it was perhaps the most expensive hotel in the country.
Oh, well! Despite the jokes, the Irish are not stupid.
Perhaps the most well known Irish song is Danny Boy. I, for one, have always wondered about the alternate names and alternate lyrics for the song. There have even been stories written about these and the possible origins of this haunting song.

Danny Boy

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

(If you would like to know more about the origins of this beautiful song, see the footnote below.)

So why go to Ireland?
a. The Irish are a friendly, welcoming, courteous, happy people.
b. The Irish humor does not insult anyone and has a light air. Most Irish humor is self-deprecating.
c. The music of Ireland grabs your soul and doesn’t let go. Whether it is a march or a love song or a dirge, it captivates everyone.
d. Despite every oppression, the Gaelic Irish have managed to keep their heritage.
e. Irish authors from Swift, and Shaw and James Joyce and on have given us a lyrical legacy of literature, poetry and song.
f. Where else could you hear Danny Boy sung three times in five nights?
g. Sometimes, for a short while, it stops raining.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Footnote:
The melody for Danny Boy is from an old Irish fiddler’s tune called Londonderry Air.
As Irish immigrants came to America to escape the famine, they brought the melody with them.
The story is told in Jim Hunter's The Origin of Danny Boy:
It was in Ouray, Colorado that Margaret Weatherly came into contact with of the tune in 1912. Her husband Edward had abandoned his London medical practice in 1889 and emigrated to San Francisco. It was here that he met and married Margaret Anastasia Enwright before they moved to Colorado in 1908 as part of a gold rush to that area of the United States.
One day Margaret heard gold-prospectors, believed to be from the Roe Valley, playing a beautiful tune. She immediately thought of Edward's brother, Fred, an eminent English lawyer whose spare time passion was writing song lyrics. She persuaded them to let her have a copy of the tune, which she sent to her brother-in-law in Somerset in England.
About a year before this, Australian Percy Grainger published the tune before he moved to America.
Fred Weatherly's own description of writing Danny Boy follows.
In 1912 a sister-in-law in America sent me "The Londonderry Air.” I had never heard the melody or even heard of it. By some strange oversight Moore had never put words to it, and at the time I received the MS. I did not know that anyone else had done so. It so happened that I had written in March of 1910 a song called "Danny Boy," and re-written it in 1911. By lucky chance it only required a few alterations to make it fit that beautiful melody. After my song had been accepted by a publisher I got to know that Alfred Percival Graves had written two sets of words to the same melody, "Emer's Farewell" and "Erin's Apple-blossom," and I wrote to tell him what I had done. He took up a strange attitude and said that there was no reason why I should not write a new set of words to the "Minstrel Boy," but he did not suppose I should do so! The answer of course is that Moore's words, "The Minstrel Boy" are so "perfect a fit" to the melody that I certainly should not try to compete with Moore. But beautiful as Grave's words are, they do not to my fancy suit the Londonderry air. They seem to have none of the human interest which the melody demands. I am afraid my old friend Graves did not take my explanation in the spirit which I hoped from the author of those splendid words, "Father o' Flynn." However, "Danny Boy" is accepted as an accomplished fact and is sung all over the world by Sinn Feiners and Ulstermen alike, by English as well as Irish, in America as well as in the homeland, and I am certain "Father o' Flynn" is equally popular, as it deserves to be, and its author need have no fear that I shall be so foolish as to write a new version of that song. Here are my words:

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling,
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,—
Oh, Danny boy, O Danny boy, I love you so!
But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Avè there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!

Fred E. Weatherly, K.C.
Piano and Gown
London & New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1926
pp. 277-279

Caesarea, Israel - June 2002

2005-07-26T17:24:00.000-07:00

The Aqueduct to Caesarea

About 2,000 years ago King Herod took a small fishing village on the Mediterranean coast of Israel and built it into the grand harbor city of Caesarea to honor the visit of the Roman Emperor Octavian Augustus, the heir of Julius Caesar.
The city grew to be home to from thirty to forty thousand people.
Herod, despite his evil reputation, was a consummate builder and hired the best Greco-Roman and Jewish architects and engineers. In this case, anticipating the ultimate size of the city and its importance as a port, they realized that the water supplied by the local wells would be inadequate.
Roman style building required a large water supply, not only for drinking, but for public baths, public toilets, parks and fountains, and so forth. That kind of water supply was far away in the foothills of the Carmel mountain chain.
Ultimately they found the necessary supply at the Ein Tzabarin Springs northeast of the city and they built a system that carried the water over a distance of 23 kilometers through a network of canals, tunnels, clay pipes, and aqueducts.
Our project for the day was to trace the water system from the ruins of Caesarea to the source at Ein Tzabarin Springs in the hills south of Zichron Yaakov. Our group was a tour made up of members of the “Academician’s Club” from Jerusalem. We were going to follow a path rarely seen by tourists… one only followed by archaeologists working on the digs of the water system.
Our starting point was on the beach just north of Caesarea. Along the Mediterranean coast of Israel the sands of the beaches are generally a fine powder occasionally interrupted by rocky outcroppings. Here, north of Caesarea, the beach is paralleled by a rocky ridge, mostly covered by sand. Inland from the rocky ridge the Taninim River has formed a swampy area with large lakes. This chain of lakes and swamps is about one kilometer wide and about ten kilometers long with water slowly flowing from north to south.
As late as the 20th century, this area was home to Nile crocodiles that once lived all along the south coast of the Mediterranean and as far north as southern Turkey.
Here, along this rocky ridge, Herod’s engineers built the coastal part of the aqueduct. The stone structure with elegant arches one after another reaching for the horizon. Most of this stretch of the aqueduct stands over three meters tall above the sand and slightly less than three meters wide. It is made of large stone blocks about one half meter to one meter on a side. These blocks were brought from quarries in the hills about three kilometers east.
The line of arches does not stop for any changes in the landscape. It maintains its straight line across the ridges, the gullies, and the swamplands.
The top of the aqueduct is composed of pipelines made of fired, red clay. These pipelines are covered with a “cement” and large gravel, atop which is a larger open channel. The open channel was originally carefully cemented on the bottom and sides to minimize leakage. The pipes carried drinking water; the open channel carried water for fountains and baths.
About fifty meters further inland and parallel to the high aqueduct, is another, the “low aqueduct.” This structure was built about 400 CE by the Byzantine Empire, which was consolidating its power in the Middle East even as the Western Roman Empire was falling into decline.
Archaeologists guess that parts of the Herodian aqueduct collapsed into the swamps or were overcome by earthquake. This newer aqueduct was built further inland and on more solid ground. Unlike its predecessor, this aqueduct was built like a broad wall without arches. It stands about two meters high and about two meters wide. The top, mostly broken today, consisted of a channel covered by an arched roof. The channel and roof were made of a kind of concrete mixed with fist-sized stones. The interior was plastered to prevent leakage.
This lower aqueduct connects to a dam near the present day town of Beit Hananiah. Here archaeologists are working at reconstructing the remains of the Byzantine dam and the water-powered mills that surrounded its base.
The dam is made of a huge rock wall, five meters thick and at least that tall, extending for about 200 meters. Periodically, the dam is buttressed by towers about four to five meters on a side.
The east and west ends of the dam connect to rocky ridges that enclosed the valley through which the Taninim River flowed before.
At both ends of the dam, channels had been cut in the rock and sluice gates installed. A lake of this size ensured a substantial water supply for Caesarea, which had shrunk considerably from its original Herodian population.
The Byzantines added one feature that the Greco-Roman engineers had not considered. In the rock at each end they carved many branching channels. The water directed through these channels powered water wheels and mills to grind grain. The mills, lower millstones, storage and working spaces were all carved out of the rock ridges.
Once used for the power, the water was channeled again into a collective aqueduct that led to the city.
Before the dam was built, the original aqueduct ran through this valley and probably bridged the river. The Jews and Romans were apparently more careful about the quality of the water that they drank than the later inhabitants of this land. The Byzantine occupants and later the Ottomans were content to drink the water that filled the lake. The original inhabitants ensured themselves a supply of pure spring water from the hills.
Along the way, we stopped at an unusual fish farm where the fish are carefully cultivated in indoor tanks. The reason for such care is that these are Japanese Koi, the colorful ornamental carp worth up to $600 or more each when grown to market size.
The farm competes with Japanese Koi growers for the European market and has apparently been relatively successful.
Water for the farm comes from the Taninim River flowing through the farm property.
After a generous lunch at a kibbutz near the fish farm, we headed for the hills.
The next leg of our trip took us to the inland foothills of the Carmel Range at Alona Park, a nature preserve. Here we were introduced to a group of young archaeologists and park caretakers who proudly showed us the work they had done to restore “Ancient Water, Mei Kedem in Hebrew.
This is the site of the Ein Tzabarin Springs mentioned earlier.
This springs flow out of the hillside at two levels from two different rock strata. The water is still clear and pure and it still feeds the river. However, much of it is used for modern agriculture, so the end of the river is smaller than in ancient times.
In Herodian times, the Greeks had long since invented forms of surveying and building quite elegant structures. Roman architecture and construction was inferior to that of the Greeks, but they adopted Greek technology, as did the Jews of that time. Despite that technology, think for a moment about the problem.
There were no pumps, therefore, the water must always flow downhill even if the grade (or fall) is small, it must still be downhill.
The source of the springs was in the hills, quite logically higher than the sea level at which Caesarea is located. So, overall, the water would flow downhill.
The springs represent the beginning of the Taninim River, but following the river downhill is not a very good choice because it meanders around the foothills and valleys for many kilometers. Every extra meter of distance for the aqueduct means more potential leakage, more maintenance, and more building. The straightest course would be the best.
However, taking the straightest course means that between here and Caesarea there are hills, valleys, rivers, and swamp to cross. Furthermore, you can’t see Caesarea from here. There is no “line-of-sight” to survey. Finally, there was no way to accurately measure the height of the springs above sea level so that the overall slope could be calculated.
(In one instance, at the dam site at Beit Hananiah we saw that a deep channel had been dug at one end of the dam. The channel ended unexpectedly near an Arab village south of the dam. A shallower channel had been dug later and extended to the aqueduct. One can only conjecture that the builders started out from the wrong level and then had top abandon the channel when they found it too low to feed the aqueduct.)
Aside from straightedges, there were only two instruments available to the engineers. One instrument was a table-level. This was a slab of stone about three centimeters thick and about thirty to fifty centimeters square. The slab was balanced on a stump or a pile of rocks and a line of sight was gained across the top as an approximate for the water flow. A drop of olive oil was then placed in the middle of the slab and the engineer observed in which direction the drop flowed and how fast. The slab was adjusted until the flow of the oil was slow and in the right direction. Once this sighting was fixed, assistants would place stakes all along the line of sight and mark the stakes at the correctly sighted level.
Another method used, was to create a “U”-shaped tube out of wood or horn or metal. The engineer would hang the tube, ends upright from a support or tree branch. The tube was then filled with water until the water reached the tops of both ends of the tube.
This meant that there was a “level” that could be sighted across the tube’s ends. Now, if the tube were moved so that one end was lower than the other, a few drops of water would spill out. Sighting across the ends of the tube would then indicate that the line of sight was downhill. Again, you could mark stakes to draw the line.
Both of these tools were forms of what we now call a “spirit level.”
This worked fine as long as the construction was above ground. Digging a tunnel was more difficult. In the case of Ein Tzabarin, the springs were on the other side of the hill from Caesarea.
The builders could and did observe that there was a natural flow of water underground through a layer of soft rock. Based on their knowledge of the terrain, they started to dig a tunnel at the bottom of the hill. They dug a six-kilometer tunnel horizontally into the hillside until they reached the natural springs.
How did they dig a horizontal, level tunnel underground for six kilometers?
First, they laid out the direction in which they wanted to dig overland and made markers along the way. Then, every fifty meters along the way or wherever it was necessary for measuring, they dug a shaft from the surface down to the level of the starting tunnel.
Teams of slaves climbed down the shafts on ladders and dug in the direction of the next or previous hole. They met with the teams from the other holes by listening for the other team’s hammer strokes. When all the segments were linked up, they dammed the outflow of the springs and forced the water into the tunnel.
For those of you who are inclined toward the engineering aspects, here’s a puzzle. Imagine that you are the chief engineer on this tunnel project. You have slaves to do the digging and they have the necessary tools to dig through the rock. Your problem is to maintain the slight incline of the tunnel that will allow the water to flow from the springs.
The measuring tools that you have are:
∑ a long coil of rope
∑ a rock weight for one end of the rope
∑ a pole about four meters long
∑ a spirit level of the kind discussed earlier.
It can be done. It was done! See if you can figure it out.
The completed tunnel brought water to the other side of the hill and thence to the aqueduct.
We were able to see a restored section of this tunnel. This 280-meter length is lighted and the two meter height of the smoothly arched ceiling allows people to walk through without difficulty. The flowing water is about knee high and cold.
As we walked about I found out that our guide from the local team was a young woman from Hungary. Immediately, I asked (in what remains of my childhood Hungarian) where she was born.
Since, up to that time she thought I was American, she was surprised. We started a brief conversation in Hungarian and soon other people on our tour joined us. It appeared that more than half a dozen of us had enough Hungarian origin to speak some of that strange language.
Without thinking further, she continued her descriptive speech in Hungarian. In seconds, the Israelis started to call out that they did not understand her.
She switched immediately to Hebrew, which left me lost.
However, she told me that she had an English description of the park and the spring and that she would give a copy to me after the tour.
At the end of the tour, as everyone else was leaving the grounds, I followed our guide up the hill to their office to get the written description.
Two women from our tour group saw me going up the hill and shouted to us that I was going the wrong way.
Our guide shouted back in Hebrew that it was all right.
I smiled at her and said, “They are only concerned that I’m running away with a pretty girl.”
She blushed and said, “Thank you!”
At the office, she gave me the descriptive papers and we said our good-byes in Hungarian.
Our last stop, near the highway to Tel Aviv, was a segment of the arched Roman aqueduct in which there were carved stone plaques. The one plaque carried Latin words telling that the Tenth Roman Legion dedicated this aqueduct to the Emperor Trianus Hadrianus. The second plaque was the eagle-topped crest of the Legion.
This segment of the aqueduct also had a bypass. At some time in the past a section of the aqueduct had been broken. Rather than repair it, perhaps due to the quality of the underlying soil, a semicircular new section was built around the break.
At the end of this long day, we were on the bus once more and on the road back to Jerusalem.
---

Dalmatia _ July 2002

2005-07-26T17:22:00.000-07:00

Dalmatia: Croatia and Montenegro

Our four days and four nights in ‘Dalmacija’ offered some of the most dramatic coastal scenery outside of Norway’s fjords. The stark mountains towering in some barren karst peaks to more than 3,000 feet above sea level, march to the sea. At the coast, their march continues and the peaks become islands protruding above the water. Valleys in between the peaks are bays and inlets where the stone houses of fishing villages and towns cluster. As picturesque as it is, I must admit to having some trepidation about this trip based on the history of the region. The Croats have a long-time pattern of hating everyone else.
Croatia, or, as it is called in Serbo-Croatian “Hrvatska,” is bordered on the north by Slavonia and Hungary, on the east by the Yugoslavian provinces of Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, on the south by Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, and on the west by the Adriatic Sea. If you look at a map, you’ll see that Kosovo is in the south of Bosnia-Herzegovina and east of Montenegro. The western half of the country is dominantly mountainous through a continuation of the Italian and Southern Alps.
(Incidentally, Serbo-Croatian appears to be composed entirely of consonants with vowels having been dropped in sporadically through contact with the Slavs and Hungarians. There is even a city named “Krk” that has been inhabited since prehistoric times and still has about 3,000 residents.)
There are about 4.8 million Croatians and a million of them live in Zagreb, the capitol.
Dalmatia is the southern half of the western region of Croatia that lies on the Adriatic Sea. There are 1,185 coastal islands of which 66 are inhabited.
About the history of the region, Dalmacija (or Dalmatia in the English spelling) is a part of Croatia, which is a part of the former country of Yugoslavia, which is one of the so-called “Balkan” nations of southeastern Europe.
The Balkans consist of Albania, Bulgaria, the islands of the Sea of Crete, southeastern Romania, European Turkey, and the former countries of what was Yugoslavia including Slavonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. There have rarely been extended episodes of peace in the region. In fact, the English word “Balkanize” arises from this condition.

Bal·kan·ize or bal·kan·ize (bôl´ke-nìz˝) verb, transitive
Bal·kan·ized, Bal·kan·iz·ing, Bal·kan·iz·es
To divide (a region or territory) into small, often hostile units.
[From the political division of the Balkans in the early 20th century.]
— Bal˝kan·i·za´tion noun

Not only is conflict endemic to the region, but also the area is subject to major earthquakes. The result is that economies have suffered, education does not meet most European standards (mandatory education is limited to eighth grade), and private industry barely survives. To compound this, Albania and Yugoslavia suffered from the affects of a communist “planned economy” for almost fifty years.
These countries are poor. In fact, they are so poor that they can afford only ten months of each year and I understand that the Croatian parliament is considering giving up Tuesdays.
Dalmatia is the southern half of that arm of Croatia that lies along the Adriatic Sea from just south of Italian Trieste on the north to just south of Dubrovnik. Actually, depending on the vagaries of borders over thousand of years, you could include the northern part of Montenegro as part of Dalmatia.
Dalmatia was originally settled about 1300 BCE by the Illyrians who are considered the ancestors of the modern Albanians. Under mutual agreements, the Greeks established colonies in the area about the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. The last Illyrian kingdom collapsed in the 3rd century BCE and the Romans established a colony called Illyricum in 168 BCE. The Illyrians revolted against Rome in 6-9 CE and established two provinces, Pannonia and Dalmatia. When the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, the region became part of the Byzantine Empire.
As a part of the tumultuous Balkan region, what is now Croatia has been governed by the Byzantine Empire, independent under King Tomislav (910-928) and other kings until 1102, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Yugoslavia, Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia again, and finally independence once more in 1990.
During its long history, Dalmatia has been occupied by many peoples. Legend says that the Croats migrated from Iran to Poland in about 400 CE. There they intermingled with the Slavs.
During the 9th century CE the Croats migrated once more and this time settled in what is now Croatia. Of course, by this time, they were already treading on the toes of the waning Byzantine Empire that governed the Serbs in the region.
As if this invasive migration were not enough, the Croats came from Catholic Poland and brought their religion with them. The Serbs already in the area were part of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
In the last 1200 years they have not yet settled their differences. Thousands have died trying to decide the issue of how best to worship the “Prince of Peace.”
After WWI, Yugoslavia was pieced together as the kingdom of the Slavs, Croats, and Serbs (SCS) under an agreement of the major powers. This effectively dismantled the Austro-Hungarian Empire and took away Hungary’s access to the sea through Croatia.
Croatia joined Yugoslavia under duress. Their parliament never agreed to the treaty and the Croats have not forgotten. There were barely controlled squabbles with the neighboring Yugoslav provinces until the Nazi’s came to power in Germany and finally invaded Yugoslavia in 1941.
While it must be admitted that the first anti-fascist brigade in the former Yugoslavia was formed in Croatia, the official Croatian government took a different course. The Parliament declared an Independent State of Croatia and allied itself with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Feelings just below the surface of the majority of Croats broke free. Alliance with Italy and Germany meant that they could wreak vengeance upon the Serbs and Slavs within their borders and they could destroy the Jews and Gypsies in the country.
The Croats formed a volunteer civil army called the “Stasi” who were the equivalent of the German SS and Gestapo. They rounded up the Gypsies and Jews and turned them over to the Nazis for extermination. War crimes trials after WWII proved that in many instances the prisoners did not even make it into German hands… they were exterminated by the Croats. Serbs in the country fared little better than the Jews.
Given this recent history, you can probably understand why I had mixed feelings about visiting this country.
For the most part, the Jews who could escape from anywhere in Yugoslavia joined Tito’s Partisan movement, which established bases in the mountainous regions of the country. At the end of WWII, Croatia once again became part of Tito’s new Yugoslavia. Given their history of Nazi cooperation, they were the region least favored for government investment; however, the beauty of Dalmatia and its tolerance for nude beaches allowed it to become a major tourist attraction for Europeans.
In 1990, when Croatia tried once again to secede from Yugoslavia, they were attacked by the Serbs. For two years they fought for independence, finally winning their freedom in 1991.
The revolution destroyed their economy, which was primarily based on tourism, and after 12 years they have not yet recovered. In Dubrovnik, for example, almost every house in the old city was hit by mortar shells. Many houses in Dalmatia still stand roofless today. The economy took another hit when tourists stayed away in 1999-2001 because of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina where the Serb-dominated government attempted to cleanse Kosovo of its Muslim population.
Now that I’ve gotten the facts, and some opinions, off my chest, let’s turn to the visit.
Our afternoon flight from Ben Gurion Airport to Dubrovnik Airport near Cavtat took about 2.5 hours flying time, to which you can add another hour from Jerusalem by bus and three hours of standing in line for security and just plain waiting. Fortunately, our hotel was only a few minutes from the airport.
Our primary guide for the next few days met us at the airport and provided, in Hebrew, a brief overview of our coming tour. The guide, Leor, is a young Israeli man who has been to India and is fluent in at least Hebrew, English, Hindi, and Serbo-Croatian. During the tour we were also escorted by local guides.
I didn’t get much out of the Hebrew description… I understand only a few words… but I did get a chance to ask about picking up local guidebooks. Before we left home I was not able to find much information about Croatia on the Internet and even less about Montenegro.
We arrived at the resort hotel and gambling casino, the Hotel Croatia (Hoteli Hrvatska) in Cavtat about eight in the evening and immediately sat down to a buffet dinner. Dinners and breakfasts at the hotel are buffet style and the food is more than adequate in quantity and variety if not in gourmet quality.
In the morning we were on the bus at 8:15 and off for a three-hour drive to Korcula a small city founded by the Greeks and located on the island of Korcula, pronounced Kortchulah. Although it’s a small distance from Cavtat, it takes almost three hours because of the narrow, winding mountain roads. During the trip, our primary guide introduces our secondary guide, a local young woman who speaks English. We drove north through Dubrovnik and then past Ston onto the Peljesac peninsula to the town of Orebic. At the port of Orebic we took a local ferry out to the island.
The Peljesac peninsula surrounds a long narrow bay and is connected to the mainland at Ston. On the mainland side within the bay there is a discontinuity in the country of Croatia. A corridor less than ten kilometers wide belongs to Bosnia-Herzegovina and gives that country access to the Adriatic.
In Korcula we found a delightful village on an island that is a 30 mile-long series of mountaintops sticking up from the warm, blue sea. There are over fifty small islands in the Korcula archipelago. The town has about 3,300 inhabitants; there are about 17,000 on the whole island. The primary products are tourism, wines, olive oil, and fish.
Korcula is almost a model of Dalmatia in history. First the Illyrians then the Greeks, then the Romans, and so on. However, there were also Venetian rule from 1125-1298 and 1420-1797, Austrian rule from 1797-1805, French rule from 1805-1813, British rule from 1813-1815, again the Austrians, then the Italians from 1918-1921, then Yugoslavia, then the Germans, then the Allies, then Yugoslavia, then in 1990, Croatia. Cruising through the calm seas you can just imagine Ulysses and his crew thinking that they had found Paradise. Here’s a country where the winter never gets colder than 41 F degrees and the summer never gets hotter than 85 F with balmy Mediterranean winds to cool the traveler.
In my mind I could visualize the notorious pirates of the Adriatic hiding in the small coves and behind the islands as they attacked Greek, Roman, and other shipping.
Despite this “Balkan” history, there seems to be something different about the residents of this island. To begin, in the local Museum there is a copy of a stone tablet (the original is in the national museum in Zagreb). The tablet was carved about 400 BCE to commemorate a peace treaty between the Illyrians and the Greeks permitting the Greeks to settle on the island.
The first line of the tablet says, “Let there be happiness in the land.”
After that, the agreement is described and finally, the tablet states the penalties for breaking the agreement including, “he who breaks this agreement shall be killed and any person who kills him shall not be punished.”
It seems that the residents of Korcula keep the spirit of the agreement in mind. They are more open and friendly than most of the people we met on the mainland. Our young local guide and the waitresses at the pizzeria bantered, laughed, and joked with us.
During the Italian and German occupation, Korcula hid refugees from the Nazis in the hills and towns. Tito’s brigades hid there as well as over 700 Jews.
In 1943 the Germans, dissatisfied with Italian management of the occupation, attacked the island. Over 650 soldiers and 330 civilians died defending the island. Five months later the Allies attacked and liberated the island.
In gratitude for its valiant aid, the Tito government tried to create employment on the island by establishing shipbuilding yards there. Unfortunately, insufficient work materialized and many people emigrated. Interestingly, their target for emigration was Australia and New Zealand.
Our supplementary local guide, a bright young lady from this town, acted as a private escort for the four English-speakers on the tour. When I asked about her accent, she told me that she had learned English during a long visit to her uncle in Australia. She also confessed to me that her hair was dyed blond and laughingly showed me the dark roots.
She has a bachelor’s degree in “economics of tourism,” but is temporarily out of work due to the lack of tourists. She told me that she likes the Israelis, since they were the first tourists to come back after the war in Bosnia scared off the rest. She is working part time as a tour guide while she looks for a full time job.
Most of the old city is built on a small peninsula that juts out from the island and is only 4,000 feet from the mainland. The architecture and most of the structures are medieval Venetian. The whole old city is only a few acres in size, but it was walled and well fortified with an easily defended harbor.
Every city in Croatia has one or more bishop’s palaces. Korcula is no exception. In fact, one general comment about Croatia is the omnipresence of the Catholic Church. Each tiny village has at least one church. Each larger village has a bishop’s palace. The cities have both bishops’ palaces and cardinal’s palaces plus many churches.
It seemed to me that I have never seen a more egregious parasitism of church on the population than I saw here among these poor people struggling for livelihood. It has existed for centuries and still continues.
Korcula owes much of its tourist reputation to the fact that it is the birthplace of Marko Polo (their spelling). The house in which he was born is a ruin, but the tower still stands. Of course, at the time he was born, Polo was a Venetian citizen.
The Korculans appear to have been somewhat independent throughout history. Perhaps it’s their pirate heritage. In 1863 the War Ministry of Vienna informed the town authorities that they would no longer pay for the maintenance of the fortifications. In response, the town council pulled down all of the walls except for those on the neck of the peninsula. They also tore down three of the four defensive towers.
Lunch on our own in Korcula found us at a small pizzeria on a balcony overlooking the sea. The pizza was good, the beer was cold, and the middle-aged waitress had a great sense of humor.
It had been drizzling on and off all day. We had some more drizzle and wind on the boat back to the mainland and then on the bus trip down the peninsula to Ston (pronounced stone). In fact, we thought it would be raining too hard to see Ston.
Just our luck, a break in the rain came as we left the bus for a pee break. We got to explore the remains of the old fortifications and to walk on the walls of Ston.
Ston was noted in ancient times for its major product: salt.
The Stonians had divided their shallow bay of the Adriatic into numerous half-acre sized drying ponds. There, for thousands of years, they evaporated seawater and gathered the remaining salt. Even into modern times, this product made them the envy of other cities and the target of many opportunistic foes.
As a result, the citizens of Ston built a wall around their city. However, they did not stop at building a wall, around just the small town near the sea. They built walls up to the tops of the nearby mountains. About every hundred yards along the walls (bow shot range), they built guard towers.
The walls extended from the sea to the hilltops and then back to the sea… some five kilometers in length. Archaeologists speculate that the city never had very many citizens, but that the walls made it appear impressive to possible attackers.
Another hour or so brought us back to the hotel. After dinner we decided to case the casino. The entire casino consisted of two roulette tables, three poker/blackjack tables, and about twenty slot machines. A large sign informed us that payouts were only in Croatian currency. (By the way, the lowest Croatian unit of currency is the “lipa.” There are 100 lipas to the “kuna.” There are 8.2 kunas to the US dollar.)
One roulette table and two poker tables were open. Although the hotel was occupied primarily by about 500 German guests, almost all the players were Israelis.
I changed a small amount of money so that Haya could lose it in the slots. When she finished, we went to bed.
On the first evening at dinner, the headwaiter greeted members of our group with the Hebrew “Erev Tov,” meaning good evening. I had responded by saying good evening in Italian, “Buona Sera!” I figured that since Italy was just around the corner, so to speak, there was a chance he would know some words.
To my surprise, he not only answered in Italian, but continued the conversation. He told us that his parents were Italian and he welcomed us. Haya, who is studying Italian, enjoyed the opportunity to practice and I could follow the simple conversations as well and respond appropriately. (That way I didn’t have to give away my limited knowledge of the language.)
For the rest of our stay, whenever we entered or left the dining room, we received a special greeting… a buon giourno, a buona sera, or a buona notte and a short conversation. We also received very special service.
The next day was spent exploring Dubrovnik, which is about 40 minutes from the hotel along the winding roads. The main thing to see in Dubrovnik (which means “old oak tree”) is the walled city and its environs. The Croatian name was first recorded in 1187.
Dubrovnik, according to the local guidebook is “situated at the far south of the Republic of Croatia, from Cape Orsula in the east to Brsecine in the west. The city has 47,004 inhabitants. The average temperature in the coldest period (January) is 9 C degrees and the average in the warmest period (August) is 24.9 C. The average number of rainy days is 109 per year. Snow falls on perhaps two days a year in the mountains. The summer wind is the Mistral from the northwest. The winter wind is the Sirocco from the southeast.
The sun shines for an average of 2,629.1 hours per year.
The first settlement (Ragusium) was built on a hillside near the foot of Srd Mountain, which was divided from the mainland by a small channel. As the settlement expanded, the channel was filled in and became today’s main avenue of the old city, the Stradun.
Filling in the channel made the city into a peninsula which was then walled and fortified. A rocky cove on one side makes an inhospitable landing, while the cove on the northeast side provides a sheltered harbor. During its heyday, the harbor had a chain across the entrance. On one tower the huge stone fittings that held one end of the chain still protrude from the walls like halves of big stone doughnuts.
The main street runs roughly west to east from the main gate of the city to the harbor. Nothing from the city’s Greek or Roman history remains… this is earthquake country and the city was almost completely destroyed in 1667. The city today is basically a medieval, walled, Venetian city of old, four and five-story, stone houses with red tile roofs.
During the 1990-1991 war, most of the houses were hit by mortar shells from nearby Bosnia. The tile roofs were originally made of brown, red, and yellow mud found locally. Few of these remain intact. During the war the local tile factory was destroyed. To rebuild, they imported tiles from Italy.
Inside the old gate, which contained a portcullis, there are twisting passages to make defense easier. A second gate inside allows easier entry to the square and fountain just inside.
The early 15th century, round fountain and basin was fed by pipes from the mountain springs and the 16 waterspouts around the sides still operate.
Today the small alleys leading off the main street are filled with shops and restaurants for tourists, but it is easy to imagine the rich medieval trading city that once was Dubrovnik. For almost 200 years the Republic of Dubrovnik rivaled Venice for control of Mediterranean shipping.
At the eastern end of the Stradun, there is a square in front of the Church of Saint Blaise, the patron saint of Dubrovnik. The old palaces around the square have been converted to museums, which we visited. The wealthy trading families, the royalty of the country, and of course, the bishop and the “royalty” of the church all had palaces in the city. Most of these have been converted to museums of government offices.
One museum displays the treasures of the church in well-guarded glass cases. The treasures include finely carved golden rosary chains, gold and precious jewels made into ornaments for the statues of the saints, jeweled crowns for the statues of Jesus and the virgin and Saint Blaise, collections of coins from every period of the city’s history, gold and silver church vessels, gold and silver chased bindings for bibles, and on and on. The nearby monasteries have some of Europe’s largest and oldest libraries and collections of incunabula (books printed before 1501 CE).
In front of the church, prominently displayed in the square, is a column and a statue raised to Orlando. This is the same Orlando of operatic fame and the Roland of poetic legend (the French “Chanson du Roland”). Roland was the hero who defended Europe against the invasion of the Ottoman Empire and stopped their march at the mountains of Croatia.
We were free for the afternoon to visit museums, have lunch in the local pizzerias, and enjoy the scenery. At the end of the afternoon, we rejoined the group and visited the oldest continuously operating pharmacy in Europe (since 1317). Finally, on the third floor of a building in a narrow alley named the “via Ghetto,” in the center of the old Jewish quarter, we were led into a 15th century synagogue. This synagogue the citizens of Dubrovnik were able to preserve intact from the Nazi invasion (despite the fact that most of the Jews were either killed or hiding in the hills).
That evening, after dinner, those of us with the strength got back on the bus and returned to Dubrovnik. In the roofless remains of an old warehouse by the port, we saw a performance of the Folklorni Ansambl Lindo, the local folklore singing and dancing troupe.
The group has existed for 35 years. They have 70 dancers and musicians and present over 200 costumes from all regions of Croatia. These costumes and the songs and dances, show influences that reach from Italy to Hungary and Greece. Dubrovnik has been declared a historical site by UNESCO and the troupe is partially funded by that agency.
They only perform twice a week, but theirs is one of the best folklore presentations that I have seen. It is really toe tapping, hand-clapping music.
On the back of my entry ticket is a brief description in French. The description concludes, “Ne quittez pas Dubrovnik sans voir notre concert folklorique!”
They are so right… don’t leave Dubrovnik without seeing our folklore concert.
The next day, we were to get an early start to Montenegro.
Montenegro remains a reluctant, semi-autonomous region of the old Yugoslavia, which is dominated by Bosnia-Herzegovina. Milosovic, the ex-prime minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Yugoslavia is now on trial at The Hague as a war criminal for his acts against both Kosovo and other regions in the past.
The Montenegrans would like to forget about this association, but as an autonomous region, they are only in charge of internal affairs. Their foreign relations and defenses are conducted by Bosnia-Herzegovina.
We traveled south from Cavtat toward the airport. We had arrived in the evening, so we were in for a surprise. The airport is located at the northwestern end of a long narrow mountain valley.
Once we were in the valley, we could no longer see the coast, but driving along the mountainside we could see the full length of the valley into Montenegro. The valley is lush farmland about five miles wide and about thirty miles long. A small river runs through the center for almost the whole length. The river is fed by streams pouring from the mountains on both sides.
The valley is dotted with clumps of tall, columnar cypress trees that do not appear on the coastal side of the mountains.
We carried our passports in case they would be required at the border, but both the Croatian and Montenegrin border guards passed the tourist bus through after a short conversation with our Croatian guide. (It was the same when we returned at the end of the day.)
During the trip, our assistant guide, a Croatian woman, told us about how she and her child had hidden in a fishing village during the war for independence. They subsisted on flour that was smuggled to the village by boats (and baked into bread in a local bakery) and on milk from the village’s cows. She also told us about an attempt by the villages to send their women and children by fishing boat to refuge in Montenegro, escaping from the invading Bosnian army. The Montenegrins refuse to take them in.
It was clear to us that the old enmities remained among these people.
During our short stay I was unable to find any guidebook in English, although they had some in Italian. As a result, my information about the country is limited.
For over two hundred years Montenegro was one of the favorite vacation spots for European royalty. It has the advantage of the Dalmatian climate and its 31 kilometers of coastline includes 16 kilometers of sand beaches. This contrasts with Croatia’s pebble beaches.
Although not a qualified member of the European Union, what remains of Yugoslavia has adopted the Euro as its currency. At this time the Euro is worth about 95 cents US. This move relieved the country of the expense of minting and printing its own currency. It also made their prices appear very cheap to Europeans.
As we drove through the valley, we passed a large field in which there were stored at least a hundred small boats. These boats ranged from speedboats and pleasure craft to fishing boats. Our guide explained that these boats were stolen from Croatia by the Bosnian Army during the 1990-1991 war of independence. Negotiations were still under way to have the boats returned.
Our first stop was in the village of Ljuta at a charming restaurant named the Stari Mlini. Converted from an ancient grain mill, the restaurant stands at the confluence of two streams and the bay. Between the patios filled with tables, the streams flow to the sea. One stream, raised on an aqueduct, continues to power an old water wheel. Fish ponds provide the trout for the restaurant. The entire atmosphere is rustic. The shaded tables are cooled by a refreshing breeze.
A few miles further we came to the harbor in Kotor, one of Montenegro’s two largest coastal towns. The Greeks, who colonized the shore and islands of the Adriatic, founded Kotor about 400 BCE. Much later it became a subject of Venice.
Kotor’s location provided a distinct military and commercial advantage. Steep mountains come down to the sea on all sides. The harbor itself is inside the “Bay of Kotor,” a narrow, winding, 26-kilometer long estuary. For most of the drive, the water in this protected bay was as calm as a lake.
One of the major products of the area is oysters. Standing offshore all along the bay are the old-style frames from which chains hung to attach tiny oysters. The old frames have been replaced by the new style of nets attached to floats. These red floats are only about ten or twenty yards from the shore. The baby oysters are attached to the nets and grow there. They are harvested by simply pulling up the nets and detaching the oysters.
Our bus parked across from the old town area of the city and we walked through a local farmers’ market on the way to the city gate.
The produce in the market was decidedly inferior. Apples were the size of plums, apricots were barely larger than cherries, and most of the cherries were overripe. I did find some fresh-cut carnations and bought one for Haya.
We strolled around the harbor and noticed a big white yacht from Tulsa, Oklahoma and some cruise liners. There is a dry dock at Kotor and two large freighters occupied the available berths.
About all that is left of the “old city” is the gate, the city walls, the cobblestone paving, and a few of the stone buildings. In 1979 a major earthquake destroyed Kotor and Budva (a town about ten kilometers south) and most of the villages in the area. The area has never recovered economically, nor has reconstruction taken place on a significant scale. Wherever we traveled we saw roofless, partially collapsed, abandoned stone houses.
The few old stone buildings that are still standing are held together by steel cables that reinforce the walls. You can see the big steel anchor bars on the outside walls. Another quake will surely level these buildings.
We visited local museums and we strolled the old town at a leisurely pace.
Back on the bus, we followed the mountainside roads south to Budva, another small town that was originally a Greek colony. Along the way we saw small groups of light tan colored, big-horned mountain goats grazing on the sheer rock faces of the cliffs.
Once again on the coast, we found Budva to be a pleasant town very like Kotor, but in better condition. The 1979 quake had been centered at Kotor.
Still, it is clear that there is a severe lack of tourists due to the recent war in neighboring Kosovo. We were warmly welcomed wherever we stopped.
Because of my bouts with skin cancer, I wear a straw hat. The hat looks sort of “Western.” As I walked through a square in Budva, a man sitting at a café table called out to me.
“Hi, cowboy!”
Haya and I smiled and waved to him.
“Where are you from?” he called across the square.
“California!” I responded.
“Do you know where Ben Lomond is?” he asked.
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, my grandfather used to be sheriff of Ben Lomond,” he smiled at us.
I hesitated for a moment and then asked, “So what are you doing here?”
He laughed and said, “My grandfather had stupid children!”
We returned to the bus in the early afternoon to start our journey back to the hotel.
Our Croatian guide sneered that everything in Montenegro was more expensive than in Croatia. We didn’t find this to be true, but I must say that shopping for souvenirs in Montenegro was simple. There was nothing worth buying.
The bus wound its way over the hills back to the Bay of Kotor, however, on the return trip we used a ferry to cross a narrow neck of the bay, saving over an hour of driving.
Once back in Croatia, near the town of Cilipi where the airport is located, we crossed to the other side of the long valley. As we approached the next range of mountains we could see a road with many switchbacks climbing to the highest peak.
There are 27 switchbacks leading to the mountaintop and almost as many descending on the other side.
We started up the mountain. As we traveled up the mountain, we could see the road more clearly behind us. Several hundred feet up, we could see that below there was a kilometer-long section of the road where the curves described a huge “M.” Since the land at that point was flat, there was no need for switchbacks.
Our guide explained. At the beginning of the twentieth century the King of Croatia invited an Austro-Hungarian engineer to the country to design and build the road up the mountain.
The work took several years. During that time, the engineer spent a good deal of time at court and fell in love with the queen, Mlena.
As a poor engineer, fate dictated that his love would be unrequited. However, he found a way to express that love by designing the huge “M” into the road so that it could be seen by every traveler.
The view from the 3700-foot high peak is spectacular. In the afternoon sun we could see the entire coast from Dubrovnik to Kotor. It seemed that if the afternoon sun had not been reflecting from the Adriatic in the West, we would have been able to see to the shores of Italy.
That evening, after dinner, a group of us joined our guide for a walk down the hillside from our hotel to the harbor of Cavtat to enjoy a desert. Since the climb down the hill was a couple of hundred steps, I joined only on the promise that the hotel van would bring us back.
We found a delightful dockside café and enjoyed an hour or more of good conversation and looking at Ana, the pretty waitress.
At eleven o’clock it was time to go. Our young guide climbed the steps back to our hotel to request the van. Fifteen minutes later he returned to inform us that the van was not available.
While all of the others made ready to wearily climb back, I continued to sit at the table.
“Are you going?” the guide asked.
“No,” I said. “I am not going to walk up the hill at the end of the day and after two beers for desert. I will just stay here.”
“But it will get cool in the night,” the puzzled guide told me.
“I will ask Ana to stay with me and keep me warm,” I joked.
“Just what do you think I will be doing?” Haya asked.
“Oh, I though you were going to climb the hill with the others!”
“Not me!” Haya said. “We’ll call a taxi.”
The others from our tour departed.
“But there are no taxi’s here!” the worried guide told us.
“Let’s ask Ana!” I smiled.
A few minutes later Ana had arranged for one of her friends who had a car to pick us up and return us to the hotel for fifty kunas (about six dollars), a price I was more than willing to pay.
About thirty seconds after Ana called, a small black car pulled up. A young man jumped out and, with an elegant gesture, opened the back door for us.
To make the story short, we were in bed by the time the others finished climbing back to the hotel.
The next morning we were able to sleep in and do our packing in a leisurely fashion. We left the bags at the hotel and our guide led us down the hill to the Cavtat harbor. There we took a passenger boat to Dubrovnik.
Two things impressed me about this short boat ride. First, it took only fifteen minutes instead of the forty minutes required driving to Dubrovnik. This gave us a concrete feeling of why this coast supported seagoing peoples.
Second, the approach to the harbor from the sea showed the impressive fortifications and towers that made Dubrovnik virtually impregnable for centuries.
After landing, we were led on a tour of the old city walls and guard towers. Lots of steps and climbing were necessary since the walls surround the harbor and climb the hills near the sea.
After our walk, we took an hour’s rest and a few beers to dispel the heat. We sat on the lovely old verandah of the Bell Tower lounge, looking out over the small harbor and enjoying the sea breeze.
We had our final Croatian meal, a sort of combined lunch and dinner at about four o’clock. South of the airport and in the foothills of the long valley mentioned before, the Restaurant Konavoski Dvori sits on the banks of a river. The river tumbles over seven small waterfalls past the shaded outdoor dining area.
We had an excellent dinner. I had the roast veal while Haya had the trout.
An after-dinner walk led us through a small park and the remains of an ancient aqueduct. Then we were on our way to the airport and the flight home.
We did not have time in the itinerary to visit Dalmatia’s famous beaches, but the literature informs me that all beaches are topless and there are reserved beaches for “naturists.” I suppose we’ll have to go back to Dubrovnik.
Oh! And for all you children who are still wondering, you are right! Those beautiful white dogs with black spots, the favorites of royalty, firemen, and Disney Studios, did originate here!

Bet Shean, Israel - June 2002

2005-07-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

Bet She’an

Early in the morning, while the Jerusalem mountain air was still crisp, we climbed onto the bus and took our seats for the tour to Bet She’an (pronounced bate shay-ahn), the Harod Valley, and Mount Gilboa.
Most of the people on the tour are retired Israelis.
During these troubled times, with the Palestinian intifada, the suicide bombings, and the snipers, we expected to spend hours driving first westward toward Tel Aviv, then north around the West Bank, and then east to Afula and Bet She’an. That was not what our Israeli guide, Shmulik, has in mind. Within a few minutes after the bus pulled out, I recognize that we are headed for the Jordan River Valley… a route that would shorten the trip to about two hours, rather than four or five.
On the east side of the West Bank is a narrow strip of land along the Jordan River, dotted with Arab villages and farms, that has been settled also by Israeli farmers. This half-mile-wide strip of land parallels the Jordanian border and completes an Israeli loop around the Palestinian-held West Bank.
The main highway, Route 1, bypasses Jericho and divides just as we approach the Dead Sea. The right turn goes south along the Dead Sea through the Judean Desert to Masada and to Eilat, about a hundred miles away on the Gulf of Aqaba. The road to the left goes north through the Jordan River Valley to Bet She’an.
All the way along we have a view of the Jordanian farming villages tracing the path of the River on the other side.
During the recent troubles, this road has been closed to civilian traffic. Since the Israeli incursion into the West Bank a few weeks ago to search out terrorists, the road has been heavily patrolled by the Israeli Army.
As soon as we get to Jerusalem’s city limits, we encounter our first military roadblock and checkpoint. Concrete cubes about four feet on each edge have been placed on the highway so that traffic must weave a tight pattern and cannot speed through. Two military troop carriers with pairs of machine guns mounted on them bracket the road. Soldiers carrying automatic rifles or submachine guns peer into every vehicle and question the driver and sometimes the passengers.
Our bus, very clearly an Israeli tour bus, gets passed through with smiles from the soldiers as we wave to them. The close inspections are reserved for vehicles that meet the “profile.”
The road leads downward from Jerusalem’s 2,000 feet above sea level to the Dead Sea at more than 1,300 feet below sea level. Along the way, we encounter a few more checkpoints at critical intersections and we pass armor-clad watchtowers manned by Israeli soldiers. Past Jericho our bus swings north. On our right for most of the way we see three parallel barbed wire fences about ten feet apart, then yards of barren no man’s land before the border.
There is little traffic. Every few minutes we see a freight truck carrying produce from the valley to nearby markets, occasional Arab cars, or an Israeli armored personnel carrier.
The highway is good, the traffic meager, and we speed along with no problem.
I been on this highway before in more peaceful times, so I recognize landmarks along the way… the Greek Orthodox St. Gerasimus monastery, the road to the famous old Allenby Bridge from British occupation days, the crocodile farm.
We make a rest stop at Argaman. I’ve been here several times over the years since 1967. The date palms have grown large since the Israelis bought the land. The farmers have created a gas station and restaurant out of old railroad cars that have somehow been transported to this location. Inside the restaurant a sign reads “Strictly Kosher.” Under the screening covering the patio, the Arab neighbors have set up a stand for selling trinkets, kitchen utensils, and so forth. Two young Arab men care for the stand.
Next door there is a pottery shop selling clay pots made in the nearby Arab village.
Two personnel carriers are parked in the lot. The carriers have swivel-mounted 30 caliber machine guns on each side. The soldiers are buying drinks, relaxing in the shade of the patio, and joking with the Arab men.
Every public place that may need it now has guards. The guard here is a sixteen or seventeen year old boy from the farm. He carries an Uzi automatic rifle. If he were a year older, he’d be in the Army.
The road slowly climbs from the level of the Dead Sea to Kinnereth (the Sea of Galilee) which is about 650 feet below sea level.
We arrived at the Bet She’an National Park about 10:30.
Bet She’an is located in a small valley. The modern town was a small village the last time I visited here. It’s now a bustling small city about 11 miles as the crow flies from the city of Jenin, which has been much in the news lately as a haven for terrorists.
The tell, which is a mound built by the remains of one level of habitation upon another, has so far disclosed that people lived here for over 7,000 years.
The city is located on a broad plain fed by two rivers that guaranteed a constant supply of water for both the city and for agriculture in the surrounding fields.
Because it lies along an easy caravan route from Syria and Lebanon to Egypt, during the 13th century BCE the Egyptians created an administrative center here and built a 4,000 square foot governor’s palace. The doorposts of the palace have been found and they bear hieroglyphic inscriptions.
After the Egyptians, the Canaanites and Philistines took over. In 1012 BCE the Israelites battled the Philistines on nearby Mount Gilboa. King Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in this battle. The biblical account tells that Saul’s body was hung from the walls of Bet She’an.
Bet She’an became part of David’s kingdom, but it was always in contest. The Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III destroyed the city in 732 BCE. From then until 332 BCE the city was used for shrines of various gods.
In 701 BCE Tiglath-pileser’s son Sennacherib passed through Bet She’an on his way to the siege of Jerusalem. A siege from which he never returned.
George Gordon, Lord Byron published his poem “The Destruction of Sennacherib” in 1815. Since reading the poem in high school, I’ve always remembered the dramatic opening lines. The ruined city of Bet She’an, lying there in the heat of the summer sun, brings this poem forcefully to mind. I could see Sennacherib’s banners flying as his troops march to destroy Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green.
That the host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That the host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Has melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

In 332 Bet She’an was rebuilt under Alexander and named Nysa-Scythopolis by the Greeks. It became a Greek city-state (polis) and eventually the largest city and the capital of the ten-city alliance called the Decapolis. For almost 900 years it would bear the Greek name.
For almost 200 years it was a Greek city until the revolt of the Macabees. In 63 BCE it was conquered by Pompey and fell into Roman hands. After that it was subsequently ruled by the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Mamelukes, the Ottomans, the British Mandate, and finally, Israel.
The city center lies in a small valley between two high hills. As we found in other Greco-Roman cities that we have visited, the center of the city had a theatre (that could accommodate about 7,000 spectators), an amphitheatre, bathhouses, public lavatories, underground drainage, temples, aqueducts, fountains, paved streets, an agora (marketplace), and so forth. Residences were scattered all around the periphery of the city. It is estimated that in Roman times the city had between 40,000 and 50,000 residents.
On January 18, 749 CE, a major earthquake struck the region, The Jordan River follows a rift valley where two continental plates abut, so it is a geologically active fault area. According to a document found in the Cairo Geniza (a storage house for Hebrew sacred books that are not permitted to be destroyed), the earthquake killed thousands of people in the region near Tiberias and left Bet She’an in ruins. It was never rebuilt,
Eighty Crusader knights, under Tancred the Norman, conquered Bet She’an, Tiberias, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor. They enslaved the population and set up their own independent fiefdom with its main fortress next to the ruins of the amphitheatre of Bet She’an.
The amphitheatre is on a hill about half a mile southwest of the city center. The acropolis is on Tel Bet She’an, the hill immediately adjacent to the city center. A snake-like line of broken stone steps ascends the hill to the acropolis on which the walled Canaanite city was located. When I visited here before, I climbed that hill in the August heat so that I could have a view of the entire area. This time I passed on the climb.
One interesting note, the city had at least two public bathhouses and nearby public lavatories. The lavatories consisted of long rooms lined with narrow stone abutments that protruded from the stone walls. A user took a seat by sitting with one cheek on each of two abutments. (This contrasted with the more sophisticated toilets at Ephesus which had holes carved in the stone seats.) Water flowed constantly through the channel below the seats and there was a small curb upon which the sitter could rest his feet. Water came from a large tank above the structure. A separate fountain provided water for washing the hands.
As in most Roman cities, social life centered about the bathhouses. These contained not only the exercise rooms and the hot, warm, and cold baths, but libraries from which patrons could borrow scrolls.
The stoa, the covered walks and shops around the agora, demonstrate the wealth of Bet She’an during the Roman period. These walks were paved in beautiful mosaics. Temples and synagogues in the city were also paved with mosaics and the agora itself was paved in white limestone to contrast with the black basalt of the local area.
The Romans built a 40-foot high bridge over the nearby Harod River and on the main road to the city. Massive ramps almost fifty feet wide led up to the bridge and down the main road to the city. The Byzantines built a wall around the city.
The Crusaders built a fortress on the city’s highest place just next to the amphitheatre. They used the stones from the amphitheatre to build the fortress. From this high point, the fortress could maintain visual (and signaling) contacts with the fortresses on Mount Tabor, Belvoir, and Burj-el-Malikh. As was common for the Crusaders, they plundered other buildings for to build the fortress and its surrounding moat.
The Belvoir fortress (beautiful view, in French) was close to the Jordan River and only about 6 miles north of Bet She’an. It’s moat and massive walls allowed it to withstand attacks by Saladin’s forces for two years. In 1189 CE it was the last Crusader fortress to fall to Saladin. The defenders were so heroic that Saladin, in a gesture of respect, allowed them to keep their arms and have safe passage to Acre on the Mediterranean coast.
Israeli archaeologists and workers have spent millions of dollars during the last years to dig the ruins and the results show that it has been money well spent. Mosaics have been discovered and repaired to the extent possible. Huge columns and pillars have been remounted on their bases and now outline the course of the main avenue and the agora. The walls, channels, and internal structures of bathhouses and pubic lavatories have been excavated and partially reconstructed.
In fact, so much has changed that I found it hard to reconcile with my last visit. I seemed to remember exploring the area about ten or twelve years ago; however, when I compared notes with one of the resident archaeologists, it appears that I was last in Bet She’an about 15 years ago, before the baths and agora were excavated.
One of the best parts of the recent reconstruction is the theatre. The top two-thirds of the seating are still in rubble, but the bottom third has been cleaned up, the stage has been cleared off, and side columns stood on their pedestals. A few areas have been recreated in modern concrete to give the visitor an idea of what the original looked.
The theatre is used for occasional concerts and performances.
By the time we finished walking the city, it was about 12:30 and the sun was baking us. When you are below sea level, the temperatures rise quickly. It must have been in the 90s.
A cold beer from the kiosk near the park entrance and a rest under the trees helped to some extent.
Bet She’an was strategically located on the caravan route from Syria and Lebanon to Egypt. Among others, the Egyptians collected tolls from the caravans as they passed through.
Now, the highway that leads from the port of Haifa to the Jordan Border Crossing near Bet She’an is called the “Peace Highway.” Jordan itself has only one port to the sea, on the Gulf of Aqaba right next to the Israeli city of Eilat. With Jordan and Israel at peace with each other, freight destined for Jordan is unloaded at the port of Haifa and trucked rapidly and inexpensively to Amman.
Once back on the bus, with the air-conditioning going full blast, we continued our tour by visiting several kibbutzim (communal farms) in the area.
The first farm we visited is one of those in the Harod Valley that has invested in fish farming. For the 10-mile length of the valley, the kibbutzim have built huge fish ponds, some of them almost a mile long, in which they grow fish for the domestic and European markets. They raise carp, burrie (a perch-like fish) and other fresh water fish.
The next kibbutz we visit was one of the oldest in the area, originally settled by Italian immigrants. There we have lunch and an opportunity to buy some of the dates and the spices (parsley, paprika, dill and cilantro) that they grow and package.
One must keep in mind that the kibbutzniks are used to being in the fields at dawn to avoid the heat of the day. By one o’clock, their workday in the fields is done. They may do other kinds of work in the late afternoon or evening, but not fieldwork. As a result, an Israeli kibbutz lunch is the equal of a huge dinner in most countries.
Having done this before, I was prepared to pace myself. When we arrive, the appetizers are already on the table along with orange juice, grapefruit juice, and cold water. Chief among the appetizers is a “burekha,” a flaky pastry roll stuffed with spiced, mashed potatoes. In addition there are plates of onions, olives, pickled beets, baby corn, and other vegetables.
The next course is a spaghetti and tomato soup. This is followed by the main course which consists of a mountainous platter of roast chicken, another platter of breaded and fried chicken breast (schnitzel), and big platters of rice, cooked vegetables, and bread.
As we struggle through the main course, we realize that we still face the obstacle of desert. Desert arrives… a heaping platter of iced watermelon slices and apricot halves.
I just finish my watermelon slices when one of the ladies at the table gets up and goes to a sideboard. She returns with a basketful of chocolate chip and nut cookies and informs us that there is coffee and tea on the sideboard.
The seventy and eighty year-old ladies at my table have been eating like trenchermen. After lunch they get up and stroll casually to the door, preparing to continue the tour. I have not eaten all that much, but I barely stagger out of my chair.
The next stop is at the top of Mount Gilboa. At another time, Deborah, one of the biblical Judges, commanded her army from here to defeat the Canaanites under their king, Yavin. After her troops won the battle, Deborah sang, “In the days of Shamgar, son of Anat, in the days of Jael, caravans ceased and travelers kept to the byways to avoid the enemy here. The cities of Israel were fortified until I, Deborah, a mother of Israel, came forth.”
The biblical account says that after this battle the land was peaceful for 40 years.
Listening to Deborah’s account makes it seem as though nothing has changed in 3,000 years.
From the view point at which we stop, we can see the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee, the path of the Jordan River, a long stretch of Jordan, and the city of Jenin on a hilltop a few miles away.
Mount Gilboa reaches to about 1200 feet above sea level, so it’s well above the valley floor. The stiff breezes here are very cooling after a hot day.
David, who was to become king, lost King Saul and his son (David’s best friend Jonathan) in a battle on this mountain. In Samuel II.31.17, David sings of this loss.
“And David cried this lament over Saul and Jonathan.
“The glory of Israel has fallen. How were such heroes defeated?
“Do not publish it in Gath. Do not proclaim it in the cities of Ashkelon for fear that the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice… for fear that the uncircumcised will be delighted.”
David goes on to lay a curse on the land: “Oh, ye mountains of Gilboa, may there be no dew or rain on your fertile fields, because here were vanquished the shields of heroes… the shield of Saul.”
Perhaps after all these years the curse has been lifted. The farms on the mountain are fertile and productive.
All through this land when the fields are turned with plows artifacts of the original Israelites rise into sight.
The tour guide has told us that if it will get dark on the way back, we will go home the long way. Going through the West Bank is too risky at night. However, its about 5:30 when we leave the mountain and it doesn’t get dark until about 8:00.
He decides that we will go back through the West Bank, the way we came.
Again we make a short rest stop at Argaman. The guard this time is a petite, blond girl wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and heavy boots. She is about seventeen and her long hair hangs in a thick braid down her back. The automatic rifle slung over her shoulder seems bigger than she is, but her expression says that she takes her job very seriously.
The trip back is uneventful except for the time near Jericho when an army group consisting of a medium tank and three armored cars stops us. The barrel of the tank’s cannon is pointing at us, so the driver brings our bus to a careful stop.
After looking us over, the tank moves off the road and we proceed.
I admit to breathing a sigh of relief as we climb the mountain and pass the Army checkpoint at Jerusalem’s city limits.

Jerusalem's Russian Compound - June 2002

2005-07-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

The Russian Compound

Near the Jerusalem City Hall, about a mile or so from our flat, is the Russian Compound … known by that name since 1860 when the Russian Orthodox Church under the reign of Czar Alexander II, bought several large parcels of land.
In fact, they bought parcels of land in several places in the city, but here was where they built their Cathedral and the hostels for pilgrims from Russia.
The Cathedral sits on the highest ground of a hill looking down on the neighboring hills where the Old City and the Temple Mount are located. It’s a historic location. Here is where the Assyrians camped when they besieged Jerusalem and the First Temple in about 700 BC. Here is where the Roman Legions closed ranks when they assaulted the Second Temple in the Jewish Revolution of 70 AD.
The Cathedral itself is a gem of Russian Orthodox architecture. It’s beautiful green dome can be seen from much of the city. Passing through the small lobby and entering the front door to the nave, the visitor is immediately struck by how large the interior seems compared to the modest external appearance.
There are no chairs or benches in the nave. The floor plan of the cathedral is cruciform and there are no obstructing walls. The tall columns and arches hold up the ceilings and the dome. The arms of the “cross” lead to functional areas for services and the top of the “cross” is reserved for the altar. The balustrade across the nave separates the worshipper’s area from that reserved for the priests.
Along the sides of the room and just inside the balustrade are pedestal-mounted brass bowls filled with sand. At least one lit candle always burns, so that worshippers may light their own tapers and place them in the sand.
Each column is decorated with the picture of a saint or biblical figure in more than life size. As the eye travels upward to see the faces it naturally follows the column into the arch that it supports. There the entire ceiling comes into view. Little clouds are painted on the sky-blue background. From each cloud an angel face and two wings peep out.
The dome itself is decorated with a crucifixion scene. Below the dome, red velvet curtains set off a gold altar surrounded by statues of the saints, a life-sized crucifixion scene, and implements for conducting the religious services.
Compared to the altar platform and its decorations, the stained glass windows seem almost drab. Nevertheless the windows represent the peak of the glazier’s art in the 1860s.
Until the First World War and the subsequent Communist Revolution, Russian pilgrims flocked to this place.
Outside, across the square facing the cathedral, is a fenced-off pit. Inside the pit lies a 12-meter long, massive pillar of stone not separated from the rock from which it was carved. The column was discovered in 1071 by Crusaders and was named “the Finger of Og” after the biblical King of Bashan in Moses’ time.
To both the left and right there are the long, stone buildings that once housed the pilgrims during their stay in the city.
Each building bears above the front door the special emblem of the Russian Compound. Carved into the stone, the emblem is an oval with a cross behind it. Around the oval, the legend (in Cyrillic) spells out the words of Isaiah, “For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.” Within the oval are the large letters “X” and “P,” standing for Christ, and the Greek letters “alpha” and “omega” as it is recorded in the New Testament: “I am alpha and omega – the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.”
For years all of these buildings have been rented as offices by the Israeli government. (As noted above, city hall is right next door.) This has been a handy income for the church, since church finances suffered greatly under the Communist persecution of all religion.
The buildings around the Cathedral are not very interesting. Two blocks away, however, lies a special stone building named for Prince Sergei. It is at 13 Heleni Hamalka Street.
(As an aside, Heleni Hamalka is Hebrew for Queen Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine after whom Constantinople was named. Circa 300 AD, Helena visited the Holy Land and, through visions, identified all the holy sites in Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for example, is located on the site of Calvary … identified as such by Helena after a good night’s visions.)
The building is a compound of its own with a central courtyard accessed through an arched gateway. It is occupied by the Israeli Parks and Nature Authority and by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.
(I read an article about this place, little known to Israelis or tourists, in Archaeology Review about six months ago. I have been eager to see it since, however, lacking the article I had forgotten the name of the building. I did remember the location and I walked right to the place. – Lou)
Once past the guard at the entrance, (all public buildings and many stores and restaurants are guarded now, bags are inspected and occasionally a magnetic detector wand is passed over visitors) a garden of archaeological finds appears inside the courtyard.
This building was constructed in the late 1860s as a hostelry for nobles on their pilgrimages to Jerusalem. It was much more ornate than the other pilgrim’s quarters. The courtyard originally held the private gardens, stables and carriage houses of the visitors. Two turreted towers about ten meters tall looked out over the gardens.
The winding paths of the garden are now dotted with archaeological finds reflecting various types of wells and water-drawing methods, presses used for making olive oil, and special boards for threshing wheat and barley.
In an open office we noticed two people working and we stepped in.
Here we met pretty, pregnant, Amanda Lind (Diplomate Horticulture - Kew, as her card reads) Project Coordinator for “Community for the Environment.”
Her English accent when she spoke Hebrew prompted Haya to ask where she was from.
“Now? Now I’m from Jerusalem!” she answered in English. “I used to live in London.”
Amanda took us on a short, impromptu tour of the garden and we had a delightful visit together. At the end, we promised to return and contribute to the Society a telescope that I have been unable to use in Jerusalem because of the light pollution at night in the city.
From the Russian Compound, we wandered back toward home through some back streets and a large downtown park. A lovely walk for a beautiful Spring day.

Marmaris, Turkey - July 2000

2005-07-26T17:16:00.000-07:00

Marmaris, Turkey - July 2000

One of the great advantages of living in the Mediterranean region is the proximity of all of Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa. Packaged travel deals that combine airfare, airport transportation, and hotels are very inexpensive.
After we returned from a rather exhausting two weeks in Morocco, we decided that we needed a vacation from our vacation. On the spur of the moment, we arranged a trip to one of the most delightful resorts in the area, Marmaris. Located on the south coast of Turkey, Marmaris is in the center of the ancient Lydian federation of cities.
Travel and the hotel for seven nights, with daily breakfast and buffet dinner was only $650 each.
Marmaris is located on the Bay of Marmaris on the southeast corner of Turkey and a forty minute hydrofoil ride from the Greek island of Rodhos (Rhodes). If you are looking at a map, the northernmost tip of Rodhos points almost directly at Marmaris. The climate is identical to that of the Greek islands, hot and slightly humid. In the morning, the sea breezes stir the palm trees and in the evening an offshore breeze makes dinner out by the pool very comfortable.
Our five star hotel, the Grand Azur, is right on the beach. With over 300 rooms, the hotel is, by far, the best in the city. The pool, located between the hotel and the beach in a private park, has not only the conventional swimming, but a semicircular channel of rushing water propelled by air jets and a water slide that takes you over small falls and through pools for a drop of about twenty feet into a quiet pool in the shade of the hotel.
Our room overlooked the pool and park with a view to the bay.
The town itself is built on a relatively narrow strip between the mountains and the bay. The town is about five kilometers long and includes a beautiful yacht harbor over which a sixteenth century fortress looms in protection.
The entrance to the bay from the sea is only about 500 meters wide, between tall peaks. This narrow entrance protects the bay from the waves of the sea, making it look and feel like a big lake. The cruise ships come and go across the bay as the power boats pull water skiers and parasailers through smaller traffic such as windsurfers and sailboats.
The south coast of Turkey, in common with the Greek islands, is very mountainous. For most of the coast, the mountains come right to the sea, ending in precipitous cliffs against which the water washes to create grottos and caverns. Only in the bays and estuaries can you find beaches. Except where hotels have brought in sand or fine gravel, most of the beaches are of small pebbles, rounded from the action of millions of years of tides and waves.
As in most Turkish towns of any size, there is a souk (pronounced shook), an extended area of small shops in which the streets are covered with canopies to protect from the weather. The souk in Marmaris is about five blocks long and three blocks wide. It is located right next to the harbor, conveniently for the passengers of tour ships. In the souk you can buy almost anything made any where in the world. Fake designer label clothes ... Adidas, Nike, etc. ... are very cheap. “Rolex” watches sell for ten dollars each and you can bargain to buy them for six.
Most of the stores spread a selection of their wares on benches or tables on the sidewalk to attract buyers.
The best buys are in Turkish leather. Made from lambskin, this leather is much softer and “silkier” than the Korean and Chinese leather goods that are available in the US. Haya bought a black, flared, three quarter length coat for $115 (the asking price, before a half hour of bargaining, was $400). For $65 dollars I bought a black jacket for which the store manager originally asked $200.
In addition to the souk, on Fridays there is a flea market that is held on a side street. In this market, as in US flea markets, everyone brings their goods and sets up a stall. For the one day, canvas canopies are spread over the area. The flea market is ten blocks long, ending near the harbor.
Food is plentiful, good, and cheap. A substantial lunch can be bought for four or five dollars, including a pint of the local “Efes” beer. Fruit and vegetables in the stores are marvelous in taste and appearance.
Local transportation is by “Dolmus” (pronounced dohlmoosh), white minivans that run five minutes apart on the main streets. The fare for the length of the trip, wherever you are going in town, is about forty cents. Each van has seats for eleven passengers and (illegally) standing room for up to five or six more.
The term dolmus has been used for many years to describe shared-ride transport. It means “stuffed cabbage” a favorite Turkish food. I remember riding the dolmus from place to place in Istanbul in 1967, when the cars were ancient Ford and Chevy four door sedans.
The weather is fairly predictable. From the beginning of November to the end of March is the rainy season, and it rains torrents. In fact, most of the tourist hotels close for these five months. For the rest of the year, it is warm to hot and sunny.
Most of the guests at our hotel were from Netherlands, Germany, England, Scandinavia, and Israel. I heard only one other couple speaking in American English. Predictably, attire at the poolside and the beaches was topless.
We took two short tours. Both turned out to be designed for Europeans who want to experience the beaches. ( A guide on one tour told me that they took the Europeans to the beaches. On the other hand, Americans came to see the antiquities of Turkey.)
Our first short tour was by bus from Marmaris to Fethiye, about 100 miles southwest. Because of the mountainous terrain, the trip took about three and a half hours each way. The settlement of the Turkish coast by seagoing peoples is easily explained when you see the difficulty of negotiating the rough mountains.
As a Lycian kingdom, Fethiye was known as Telemessos. It was established as a part of the Lycian federation in the fourth century BC. Possibly by Pericles of Lymyra. Earthquakes in 1856 and 1957 destroyed most of the ancient remains and the new town has covered them. Telemessos has seen the invasion of Alexander the Great, rule by Ptolemy who succeeded Alexander, invasion by the Greeks, invasion by the Romans, invasion by the Arabs, rule by the Knights of Rhodes during the Crusades, and rule by the Turks.
On the eastern cliff of the acropolis, facing the bay, are carved the funerary tombs of the family of Amynthas. The faces of the tombs are carved from the rock cliff and appear to be the fronts of temples with Ionic columns, and slanted roofs that peak at the center. A few rows of steps lead to the “portico” and to the doors carved in relief into the rock. Most of the doors to tombs are fake ... simply carvings to appear as though doors existed. The entry to the tombs was often in a more secret passage, so that robbers would not find the contents.
The royal family and their servants are buried here. Servants, often unwillingly, accompanied their deceased employers into the tomb to continue to serve them in the afterlife. I don’t know whether to call this “job security” or not.
Two generations of royalty were buried in this fashion during the brief independent existence of the Lycians. The Lycian cities: Lymyra, Antiphelios, Xanthos, Patara, Letoon, Pinara, Telemessos, Caunos and others were built on the style of their Greek settlers. Many contained amphitheaters, acropolises with temples, broad columned streets, and ports with stone quays.
After viewing the tombs, we continued to Oludeniz ... the Calm Sea. This is a stunning turquoise lagoon, almost completely closed to the sea. On the seaward side, a beach of coarse sand forms a crescent that protects the lagoon. On the lagoon side, the mountains covered with pines tower high, protecting the lagoon from winds. The beach is made of tiny pebbles, rather than sand. The water, although shallow, is cool, and the only ripples are those made by the bathers.
Our second tour was by ship and boat. The ship, the Marmaris Deniz, could carry about four hundred passengers on three decks. On this day we had over two hundred. The top deck was covered with rows of plastic lounges so that passengers could lie in the sun. The second deck contained a bar and tables and chairs along with a play area for children and the wheelhouse.
The third deck contained a huge dining hall and a short order counter. The third deck also contained a drawbridge for boarding (and also used as a diving platform when we stopped at the Dolphin Bay for a swim).
Below the third deck were kitchens, toilets, storage rooms, etc. and beneath that, the engine room and fuel bunkers.
We left the port of Marmaris about 10 AM and returned about 8:30 PM that evening. Our route took us through the “gates” of the harbor and out to sea.
The trip to Caunos took about three hours, including the Dolphin Bay stop and lunch on board.
The ship anchored in the shelter of a small island leading to the bay of Caunos. Looking over the railing, we could see seven small river boats approaching us abreast. Each boat could hold about thirty passengers seated on benches around the gunwales. Each was also shaded by a canvas canopy supported by steel pipe rails. This was a part of the Dalyan Cooperative Fleet, named for the small town that now stands where Lydian Caunos used to be.
The bay is protected from the sea by a peninsula composed of coarse sand and topped with a sparse growth of pines. This peninsula hides the bay from the sea, so what comes is unexpected. The peninsula is also the breeding ground for loggerhead turtles which lay their eggs during May and September. It is a protected area for the loggerheads.
The boats pull alongside the ship. One tries to board passengers from the ship on the windward side, but the waves are too rough. We boarded one of the boats on the leeward side without too much trouble, even though the ship and the boat seemed to be moving in different directions in an unsynchronized manner.
Safely in the boat, we started our journey into the bay. Within minutes, we were in a narrow channel surrounded by tall growths of reeds on both sides. The bay is actually an estuary containing fresh water flowing from the surrounding mountains.
It seems that having found Bogart in Morocco, I can’t shake him off. This is where Bogart and Katherine Hepburn made the award winning film “The African Queen.” Remember the scenes where Bogart is neck deep in water, pulling the boat through the endless swamp of reeds so they can reach the lake and torpedo the German ship?
The boat travels for forty minutes through a maze of winding channels. The reeds are so tall on each side that they usually block the view. An inexperienced sailor could easily be lost in this maze. We work our way gradually toward the mountain which looms over the swamp. Finally the reeds thin out and we can see the small river port and town of Dalyan.
This swamp is called Suluklu Gol (the Lake of Leeches) in Turkish.
Above Dalyan stands the sheer cliffside of Caunos and there, carved into the side of the cliff about a hundred feet above the swamp, are the tombs of the kings of Caunos. They appear to be almost a replica of the tombs we saw at Telemessos.
When the city was founded the harbor was protected from attack by means of chains that closed the harbor mouth to seagoing ships. The city shows remains of Roman baths and an amphitheater, but we could not view them from the boat.
The swamp is hot and humid. We stay only long enough to take pictures and get the guide’s explanation. This entire swamp was once a bay. About 100 BC a strong earthquake demolished the city and toppled some of the cliffs, changing the course of a river that entered the bay. Over the next hundred years or so, the bay silted up and became a reed filled swamp. This swamp became a breeding ground for mosquitoes and subsequent plagues of malaria wiped out the city.
Time to head upriver to the mud baths at the sulfur springs. We dock by ramming the prow of the boat into the riverbank and climbing over the prow to a dirt path that leads to the springs.
The mud bath is a cement pool about thirty feet square filled with sulfur laden mud. Coating one’s self with mud and allowing it to dry, then rinsing off the dried mud and soaking in the sulfur spring water, is supposed to cure arthritis, circulatory system diseases, fungal infections, high blood pressure, headaches, and the common cold (among other claims).
I did not choose to take the cure, but if you can imagine nearly two hundred people covered with mud and sliding around in a thirty foot square, to emerge and dry like alligators in the hot sun, you get the picture.
Back on the boat, we headed for the beach on Turtle Island (actually the peninsula that I mentioned earlier). The beach of tiny gray pebbles is about a hundred feet wide and gently slopes so far into the sea that I could walk out nearly 150 feet from the shore and still touch the sand with my feet. Because of the long slope, the waves are reduced almost to ripples by the time they reach the shore.
An hour on the beach and then the boats took us back to the ship for our return to Marmaris.
Marmaris is a place to which we hope to return ... perhaps even next year. This has been made more likely by my chance meeting with the hotel’s general manager, Omer Ohri.
One evening I noticed a small army of waiters and busboys clearing all the lounges and umbrellas from poolside and setting up tables. I walked over and saw one man standing placidly in the midst of this turmoil. Assuming that he was in charge, I asked him if they were setting up for a party.
He answered that they were preparing for a circumcision party of 250 guests. After we introduced ourselves, he told me that he normally doesn’t like to interfere with the usual holiday guests’ routine, but the family celebrating the circumcision was related to the hotel owner.
Muslims usually circumcise boys at the age of thirteen. However, Turkish Muslims are not so rigorous about the timing. They perform the circumcision age the ages of 9, 11, or 13. In some cases, they almost follow the Jewish practice of eight days, and perform the circumcision when the child is a week old.
The boy is usually brought to the party and ensconced in a bed. He is distracted from the pain by a constant stream of present-giving.
Omer was born in Albania and his parents emigrated to Istanbul. He spent some time in Seattle, where he owned a small business, but returned to Turkey. In fifteen minutes, he told me his life’s story. He was delighted to have an American guest at his hotel and promised that the next time I came, he would make sure that I got a special room.
He is a charming person. In fact, we found most Turks to be charming and to smile and laugh easily. Turkey is a great place to vacation. It is a bit difficult to get used to the exchange rate, which is currently 620,000 lire to the US Dollar. Everyone in Turkey is a millionaire. A good hamburger costs 2,500,000 lire.
Just one thing ... don’t drink the water. Bottled spring water is cheap (about 48 cents for a liter and a half) and safer.

Finding Bogart - Morocco - May 2000

2005-07-26T17:13:00.000-07:00

Finding Bogart - Morocco, May 2000

I should have known that this would be a trip to remember when our Alitalia Airlines flight left an hour late for Milano... delayed for repairs. There are no direct flights from Israel to Morocco, so you have to change in Athens, Rome, Milano, or Madrid. We would make the connection, but just in time.
Our tour group of 38 people was climbing the stairs to the slightly worn McDonnell-Douglas Super 80 when I noticed that the tires were bald. On board we found that most of the rest of the planeload was an Italian tour group returning from a pilgrimage in the millennial year. The Pope had conferred a special blessing on those visiting the Holy Land this year.
The passengers in the Italian group were in their seventies and eighties and mostly women. One of the most endearing characteristics of Italians is their gregariousness. Within minutes after takeoff, they were in the aisles, moving back and forth and conducting vociferous conversations at the tops of their voices. Both men and women were short and tended to appear as though they had been loading up on pasta for the last fifty years. In fact, I doubt that any of them weighed less than three hundred pounds. Two or three of them trying to pass each other in the narrow center aisle meant that in my aisle seat I was treated to more T&A than I ever imagined.
My seat was missing the plastic cover on the arm rest. The passenger behind me found it on the floor. I was attempting to reattach it when one of the flight attendants came to my rescue.
“Let me fix that!” she said. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Oh! Grazias!” I exclaimed, handing her the plastic piece. “Are you insured?”
She smiled at me. “You cannot imagine how much insurance I carry!”
When the plane landed in Milano, the pilgrims applauded vigorously, and I saw many of the ladies cross themselves. What did they know about Alitalia that I didn’t know?
As you can guess, this really boosted my confidence level in Alitalia.
Of our four flights on the tour, every one was at least an hour late for takeoff.
A word here about language. We were booked on an Israeli tour, so I expected that the tour leader would speak Hebrew. However, I had been assured that local, English speaking guides would be hired throughout the trip. I felt that given the local guides and my smattering of French, I could get by.
The languages spoken in Morocco are primarily Berber, Arabic, French, and Spanish (in the north). Spain and France had divided Morocco into “protectorates” from the 1920s to the 1950s and had a strong influence on the culture and trade of the country.
English-speaking guides turned out to be scarce, in fact we only had such assistance for about 18 hours out of the two week trip. In Marrakech I was able to buy a guide book in English. With this I survived the trip.
Perhaps a couple of additional comments are warranted before I write about the tour.
A majority of the tour group were Israelis of Moroccan descent or born in Morocco. They were returning to visit their roots.
Today Morocco has only a few thousand Jews left, primarily in Casablanca. Prior to 1948 and the creation of Israel, there were more than 70,000 Jews living here. Folk tales say that the Jews came to Morocco in 586 BC after the fall of the Jewish kingdom and the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. Fleeing Nebuchadnezzar and his forces, the ancestors of the Moroccan Jews traveled across North Africa and settled in the Atlas Mountains.
Whether or not this is true, there is solid evidence that they settled in the Atlas Mountains over 2,000 years ago and built their own walled villages after the style of the local Berbers.
The Muslims from Arabia came as conquerors to Morocco in about 638 AD, and converted many of the Berbers (though not all) from their animistic tribal religions. The Berbers (the name comes from the Greek barbar for barbarians) were a fiercely independent and warlike peoples. They accepted the Jews and gained advantages from them (more about this later). Over time, the Jews scattered throughout the Atlas Mountains and into the desert and the coasts.
The Greeks explored and named the Atlas Mountains, but were never able to settle in the region. The Romans, in the third century, established the city of Volubilis near present day Fes (Fez in English). It was their southern-most outpost. As usual, they built of stone, brick and marble. As a result, the Roman ruins are all that remains from antiquity. The Berbers and Arabs built of sun-dried mud brick, which melted (literally) over the years.
Until the coming of the Arab Muslims, the Jews were the only literate peoples in the region. The Berber chieftains (sheiks) used them to assist in trade and as advisors. The Berber city of Rissani, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, was the terminus for the trade route that stretched from Timbuktu. The caravans took an average of 52 days to make the trip. The goods transported were salt, spices, gold, and slaves. An Italian traveler reported attending a slave auction in Rissani in 1912.
In the tenth century, a rich widow from Kairouan in Tunisia emigrated to Fes and founded the first university. The university was, naturally, primarily dedicated to Koranic studies, but it widened it’s scope with further endowments. In fact, during medieval times, Fes and the abbeys of Ireland were the primary centers of literacy and learning in the western world.
With the coming of the Arabs, the Berbers quickly learned that they could not preserve their independence so long as they were organized into extended family units and villages. They started to combine into tribes that grew ever larger under stronger sultans. Within little over two hundred years, they were strong enough to invade Spain and occupy Andalusia, which they controlled until 1492.
The Portuguese established bases at Tangier, Casablanca, Agadir, and other cities. They were not to be dislodged for two hundred years.
The sultans built walled fortresses (called kasbahs), and walled cities (called medinas). In the south, the walled family compounds were called ksour. As the sultans became stronger and their influence spread, they became more dictatorial and oppressive to their subjects. Given the Berber temperament, it can be understood that revolution and assassination were constant threats.
The sultans did not bother with literacy and only loosely followed the Koran when it was politically convenient. They used the Jews in two ways. First, they used the Jews as advisors and translators, taking advantage of Jewish literacy and their command of languages gained through trading. Second, they took the Jews under their “protection” and located them in slum settlements called mellahs, just outside the kasbah gates. The idea was that in the event of a revolution among their subjects, the Jews would get attacked first and provide an early warning to the troops in the kasbah.
Jews were not allowed to ride or even to wear shoes outside the mellah until the 1920s. (How they could tell a Jew from a Berber, I don’t know. They dressed in the same flowing robes and they have the same physical characteristics.)
Sultans and their tribes continued to dominate their own territories until the advent of Moulay Ismail, perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most bestial, united the country in 1672. He founded the Imperial City of Meknes and built 50 grand castles using slave labor imported from as far as Sudan. In fact, the black population of Morocco is descended from the survivors of the tens of thousands of slaves that Moulay Ismail imported into the country.
Moulay himself ruled for 55 years and was reputed to personally have killed thousands when he was not satisfied with their work. His reign began with the display of the heads of over 400 chiefs mounted on poles outside his kasbah.
Legends say the he carried a mace when supervising his building projects. He would ask a slave, “Could you build a better gate than this?”
If the answer was “yes,” than why hadn’t he built a better gate. If the answer was “no,” then the slave was incompetent. In either case, the slave died under the mace and his body was buried in the walls. (This is the original “Catch 22.”)
After Moulay Ismail, the country gradually reverted to internal strife and the succeeding dynasties were hard put to remain in power. In 1912 the French, by treaty, took control of most of Morocco and assumed responsibility for protecting the country and the then current monarchy.
In 1956 Morocco gained its freedom from France and Spain. While in power, the French built roads and schools and hotels and general infrastructure. The Spanish didn’t do anything in the north. As a result, France still has influence in Morocco.
When the French arrived, they freed the Jews of their bond to the sultans. Many of the Jews joined the French civil service. When over ninety percent of the Jews left the country in 1948 to 1952 to go to Israel and France, they left a vacuum that has not been filled. Morocco today has almost no middle class, only the very rich and the very poor. The present king owns 21 palaces and innumerable commercial properties.
A final preface ... in 1948, on Naval Reserve duty in the Mediterranean, my ship was in port in Casablanca. I vividly remembered the stay here and one of the reasons to take this tour was to revisit this famous city fifty-two years later.
Now, about Morocco!
We arrived at Casablanca (Aeroport Mohammed V) about midnight (there’s a three hour time change from Tel Aviv) and by the time we checked in to our hotel it was two o’clock in the morning. The Hotel Kenzi Basma is in the downtown part of the city, not more than eight blocks from the port. At one time it was an elegant hotel and it still shows traces of this, but it has sadly deteriorated. Although rated as four stars, it is really hard put to achieve two.
Our tour bus left for Afourer at 7:30, so we didn’t get much sleep.
Before leaving, we all bought bottled water. Throughout the trip we had to maintain our individual supplies of water since tap water in the country is not potable.
Morocco has four mountain ranges,
- the Rif Mountains in the north that extend to the shores of the
Mediterranean and form the southern “pillar” of the Straits of Gibraltar
- the Moyen Atlas (Middle Atlas) that runs from Marrakech
northeast to join the Rif near the Mediterranean coast
- The Haut Atlas (High Atlas) that starts on the Atlantic coast
around Agadir and runs northeast to the Sahara Desert
- the Anti Atlas that begins northeast of the city of Tan-Tan and
runs northeast until it also ends in the Sahara.
Most of our trip was spent in the Haut Atlas and Moyen Atlas ranges.
Traveling through the Moyen Atlas mountains, the roads were fairly good, two lane macadam. Our first stop was Beni-Mellal, a city of 250,000 and a market center for the oranges and olives grown in the area. There we visited a public park that was well kept, filled with lawns, ponds, trees, and playgrounds. The Oued Day (Oued, pronounced “wad” means river) flowed through the park and had been tamed to create several small waterfalls.
The real attraction for me was the sight of a kasbah located on the top of a peak near the park. From a distance, the Kasbah de Ras el Ain looked like an Arthurian castle dominating the valley below.
In Beni-Mellal, we stopped for lunch. Unable to find a restaurant that would serve our 38 people, we broke into smaller groups and wandered around. Our small group of four, Haya, Haya’s brother Judah, Elisheva (Judah’s wife), and I found a delightful restaurant and had a very good lunch. Most of the others followed the tour leader and enjoyed a disappointing midday meal.
Then we went on to Afourer and to our hotel, the Tazerkount Chems Hotel, on the edge of the town. The hotel had been built to resemble a walled kasbah, with a huge, arched gate guarding a courtyard. The walls and buildings were painted the same pink color that we had seen on all the buildings so far. We were to discover that even though new buildings in the towns were built of cinder block rather than the sun-dried mud brick of earlier days, they were coated with a stucco made from the crushed red rock found throughout the volcanic mountains mixed with lime.
Here, in a small town, was a huge tourist hotel. The pool was an 80 foot diameter circle with a pavilion in the middle and a bridge to the pavilion. There was a poolside restaurant decorated to resemble a Berber tent. There was also a poolside lounge and bar, tennis courts, and elaborate gardens. The lobby was decorated in mosaic tiles. The hotel must have had over three hundred rooms.
I spend this much time describing the hotel because it was characteristic of most of the hotels for the trip. They were built on a grand scale and most were fairly new.
The catch came fast. There was only one towel for each person in the room. I went to the front desk and asked for a towel to use at the pool. I was told that the one in the room was the only one available.
I decided that I would still take a swim and just get sun-dried.
After the swim, I showered and changed for dinner. Before dinner, I walked down to the lobby bar to get some ice for the vodka that I had brought with me. (Morocco is a Muslim country and alcohol is forbidden to Muslims. As a result, the only places where alcoholic drinks are available are tourist hotels and some tourist restaurants.)
Struggling along in my bad French, I asked for some ice to take to my room. Both bartenders told me that they had ice, but I could not have any. I finally worked out the idea that they would be happy to provide me with ice, but they had no containers that I could use and a limited supply of glasses at the bar. If I took a glass, I would have to return it immediately. With that resolved, I took a glass of Ice to our room, transferred the ice to the glass in my room, and rushed the bar’s glass back to them with a twenty cent tip to reward the bartender.
Upon seeing me mix a drink, Haya asked, “Do you think that they filter the water for the ice cubes?”
“I’m depending on the vodka to kill anything in the ice cubes,” I replied.
By the way, the dirham (pronounced dram) is the unit of currency and one dirham is worth about ten cents US.
Throughout the tour I was able to manage to obtain ice each evening and the 1.75 liter bottle of vodka that I brought from Israel was just enough to last for the trip. Apparently treating the ice cubes with vodka was sufficient to purify my drinks.
Although the hotel seemed grand, closer inspection revealed some faults. There were no hangers in the closets. The knobs on most closet doors and drawers were missing. The floodlights used to illuminate the pool and pavilion were shattered.
The light over the bathroom sink, necessary for shaving and makeup, didn’t work. We called for a replacement. A service man showed up, looked at the light, and explained in French as bad as mine and with gestures. It seems that the lights are high voltage lights that require transformers. When they built the hotel, they built the transformers into the walls. The transformers have burned out in most rooms and they can’t be replaced without breaking open the walls. The hotel management does not wish to break open the walls. Ergo, the lights don’t work and cannot be fixed.
Some investigation on my part indicated that the hotel was built in 1992 with money from the UN. It was granted on the basis of providing employment to many people in the destitute town of Afourer. Clearly, someone in the ruling classes was instrumental in this deal.
After only eight years, the hotel was falling apart. As in most third-world countries, Morocco has no concept of maintenance.
That night we had thunderstorms and strong rain. We had not expected rain at this season in what we thought was a “desert” country. As a matter of fact, rain in the mountains is frequent and water is plentiful.
Just ten days before us, a busload of tourists had been stranded for 17 hours when the road before and behind their bus was washed out by flash floods.
The morning came bright and hot.
The main road took us toward the Bin El Ouidane dam and the large lake behind it. The dams generators provide electric power and the lake provides irrigation water for a huge farming area on the high plateau. We stopped to take a short walk toward the dam and get pictures.
As we approached the best view, we were intercepted by two Army guards. They told our tour leader (in Arabic) that pictures were not permitted in this security zone. They demanded that all of us give them the film in our cameras.
A spirited discussion ensued between our tour leader, Ruthie, and the two armed guards. Finally, the guards called an officer. After another fifteen minutes of discussion, we were allowed to reboard the bus with our film intact. Ruthie told us that she had convinced the officer by telling him that he should take a look at the passengers. She had “collected” them from retirement homes in Israel for this tour and they were no threat to the security of Morocco. The officer agreed to let us go with the proviso that on Ruthie’s next tour she should return to him any pictures that we had taken of the dam.
Why would pictures of the dam constitute a security threat? This is an old monarchy whose previous king was a rather harsh dictator. Upon the death of Mohammed V in 1961, his son, the present king Hassan II, released some 40,000 political prisoners. With the huge disparity in wealth and opportunity between the rich one percent (the ruling class) and the ninety-nine percent of the peasants, potential revolution and terrorism are a constant threat.
Israelis, however, are considered friends by both classes. This is a heritage of the time when the Jews lived in Morocco and were mixed in with the rest of the population. In fact, many intermarried. Family surnames beginning with the prefix “ben” often show a person’s Jewish heritage. “Ben” means son of, and the Muslim equivalent is “ibn.”
The bus left the main road after a few kilometers and we looked out the windows onto a barely paved, one-lane macadam road hugging the edges of the cliffs with sheer drops of more than 2,000 feet and no protective railings. To complicate matters, there was occasional traffic coming toward us, herds of goats and sheep, and the odd, heavily loaded donkey. Furthermore, the rains from the night before had created small rock slides that covered parts of the road.
After an hour of driving and a distance of only ten miles, we approached the Dar Essalam restaurant at the top of the hill leading to the Cascades d’Ouzoud ... a gigantic set of falls that poured from half a dozen gaps in the mountain and fell over five hundred feet to the valley below.
We walked down a muddy path for several hundred feet. On both sides were stalls selling souvenirs and on a few flat spots there were small restaurants. There is a long path of concrete steps going down the hill, but for some reason the best view point is on the muddy trail.
We finally connected with the concrete steps and walked the rest of the way down to the valley where the roar of the falls was deafening. Usually, the falls from the mountain rivers are clear water, but today, because of the rain last night, the falls were torrents of red-brown water, splashing onto boulders and then falling again only to splash against more boulders. The air was filled with red-brown mist.
The Barbary apes, usually visible in this reserve, had taken shelter in caves from last night’s rains and were not to be seen.
On the way back up we were again assaulted by the shopkeepers and vendors. I bought a crudely hacked out ammonite shell from one vendor. It is probably a fake, as are many of the so-called fossils sold here. Throughout Morocco vendors sell carved fossils of ammonites and trilobites from the mountain quarries that, millions of years ago were the sea bottom.
Back at the Dar Essalam restaurant we were only too happy to stop for cold drinks before reboarding the bus. It took the rest of the morning (almost half a day in all) to drive the 60 odd miles to Marrakech. On the way we passed Demnate, a walled market town with a Kasbah and an old mellah. Until the 1950s, half the population was Jewish. The Sunday souk (pronounced shook) or public market is the largest in the region.
As we drove through the hills we saw little vegetation beyond scrub bushes and occasional, hardy desert trees. In the trees I noticed black creatures that appeared at first to be huge vultures. This was an illusion created by the speed of the bus and my expectation of what would be roosting in trees.
When we stopped to take a closer look, we found that the black animals in the trees were goats. They literally climbed to the highest branches to nibble at the leaves.
Only 1,500 years ago the Sahara had lakes and swamps and populations of elephants and hippopotamus. The Sahara was created by men and their goats. Goats will completely denude a landscape, even to the roots of the grass and bushes. The herds of goats left a blaze of barren land across north Africa.
Marrakech, also called El Hamrah (the Red City), is described as the jewel of the south. Youssef ibn Tachfine, a Muslim Berber from what is now Mauritania, founded Marrakech in 1060, conquered Fes in 1062, and eventually ruled Muslim Spain (Andalusia) and most of the Maghreb as far east as Algiers. (The Maghreb is the name for northwest Africa. It means “west” in Arabic.)
We toured the newer part of the city, built under the French rule, and then visited an ancient synagogue in the mellah that was being cared for by a Berber family. The caretaker told us about the history of the synagogue and of the few Jews that remained in Marrakech. Afterwards, we checked in at the Imperial Borj Hotel, another Moroccan hotel marvel.
By this time, I was starting to show symptoms of a cold that I has acquired from the person sitting and sneezing violently in the next seat on my flight from Milano to Casablanca. I couldn’t take advantage of the beautiful swimming pool. (Not to worry. Before another five days I had managed to infect about 80% of the tour members,)
Marrakech is, perhaps, the most colorful city in Morocco. In 1126, Ali ben Youssef, the son of the founder and then Sultan, brought craftsmen and architects from Cordoba in Spain and built the first seven kilometers of walls encircling the city to replace the thorn bush barricades. The walls were built of tabia, the red mud of the plains mixed with straw and strengthened with lime.
In 1184 Yacoub El Mansour, the next Sultan, built a new Kasbah and made the city a center for learning and trade. Trade included Italian and oriental cloth. El Mansour also built the great Koutoubia Mosque. By 1220, Marrakech, the Imperial city, had fallen to raiders and pillagers. The great city lasted only two centuries.
But the dynasty founded by El Mansour continued. In 1546 Ahmed El Mansour defeated the Portuguese and conquered the caravan routes all the way to Timbuktu ... the most lucrative routes in all of Africa.
In the early 1670s, Moulay Ismail, the second sultan of the Alaouite dynasty that still rules Morocco, laid waste the city in his successful campaign to unify all of Morocco. The French used Marrakech as an administrative center and today it is once again a major trading city (second only to Casablanca) with a population of almost 1.5 million.
That night we spent walking in the Place Djemaa El Fina, a square in the heart of the medina. The name means assembly of the dead, and the place is reputed to have been a place for public executions under the Sultans. Tangled small streets and alleys surround the square. The Djemaa is about the size of four football fields and is almost barren in daytime. The few cafes around the periphery are populated only by male customers, as is usual in this male-dominated society. (Although, in contrast to most other cities, we did see women riding mopeds.)
At night, roofless stalls spring up like mushrooms from the ground of the square.
Power cables network the ground and provide lighting to the stalls. A quarter of the stalls sell drinks, another quarter sell meals, and the rest sell every imaginable kind of goods from souvenirs to household items and clothing.
There are three favorite meals in the marketplace.
First, tagine. A special round pottery piece holds smoldering charcoal. Above the charcoal is a metal grill. The two-inch cubes of meat (lamb or beef) are grilled and then removed. A plate is put on the grill and the meat then placed on the plate. On top of the meat, vegetables are arranged to form a cone. Then a cone-shaped pottery lid is placed on top and the meal allowed to roast for a half hour or so.
To serve, they just remove the lid and bring the plate to your table. Each restaurant has a number of these tagine cookers going at all times.
Next, couscous. Couscous is a pasta made of flour and water. The flour is mixed with just enough water so that when worked it is formed into small grains ... smaller than rice. Then the pasta is dried and may be preserved this way for a long time. When eaten, the couscous is boiled, drained and placed on a plate with heaps of meat or vegetable stew over it.
Finally, the favorite dish in the marketplace is roasted lambs’ heads. This is “poor mens’ meat.” Everything else of the lamb has been sold by the butcher, but the heads are saved for the marketplace meals where even a beggar (well, almost) can buy a lambs’ head and stewed vegetable meal. To attract customers, there is a big tray laid out in front of the charcoal grill and there are rows of cooked heads displayed for sale. Usually, the ears are still on the heads.
If you have enjoyed Moroccan food in the US, you will find quite a difference here. The food is bland ... almost tasteless. In the US, Moroccan food is made spicier.
Again the crowd is all men except for the tourists. The men are dressed in brown or tan caftans or loose shirts and baggy pants. They wear an assortment of headdresses ... turbans, knit skullcaps, hoods.
In open spaces left on the grounds, entertainers ply the crowd for contributions. Musicians played wild Berber and Arabic tunes on drums, crude string instruments, cymbals, and wooden flutes. Singers, with or without accompaniment wailed their songs. The music seems to wind on, repeating the same few phrases forever. Dancers drummed with bare feet on the sawed-off top halves of 55 gallon oil drums. Acrobats and contortionists performed on small rugs or even on the pavement. Magicians made small objects appear and disappear from their hands. Although we did not see any, there are also reputed to be snake charmers and monkey handlers in the square.
As in any great crowd, the pickpockets also took their toll from the unwary.
We stopped in one of the permanent shops on the periphery. As in most shopping areas we visited, we were greeted with “Baruch Haba,” Hebrew for welcome (or more literally, blessed is the one who enters).Throughout Morocco we were greeted in this fashion by the Berbers and Arabs. Israelis are looked upon not only as friends, but also as good bargainers and buyers. For most merchants in Africa, the Middle East, and the Orient, bargaining is half the fun of a transaction. I saw German and English tourists pay the full price asked in some shops and be curtly dismissed after their purchase. At the same time, an Israeli who bought the same goods for a third of the price was treated to tea and departed with the proprietor’s smiles and blessing. Haya bought T-shirts and two embroidered Berber robes for about 40% of the asking price. The proprietor, upon making up the package, saw her admiring a cheap metal bracelet. He picked it up and added it to the package with no charge.
When we strolled past the same shop the next day, the proprietor called out to us and asked if we were happy with what we bought last night.
The Cafe de France and the Restaurant Argana both have rooftop restaurants overlooking the square and you can have a (non-alcoholic) beverage there and enjoy the view. The Djemaa is unique and makes Marrakech different from any other Moroccan city.
*
The next day was an extended tour of Marrakech with a local guide who spoke some strange form of English which was periodically translated into Hebrew by our tour leader. We started with a visit to the Bahia Palace built in 1894 by the brilliant grand vizier Si Ahmed Ben Moussa, better known as Bou Ahmed. He was dictatorial and cruel, in the tradition of the rulers. He began life as a black slave and became a minister to the king Moulay Hassan. When Moulay Hassan died, his son was only twelve years old. Bou Ahmed usurped power and ruled.
Bahia means “brilliance” and this castle is by all measures vulgar and overdone. It has reception halls for state visits, many apartments for wives and concubines, small gardens and pools, alcoves for private hidden visits between Ahmed and his women, and a huge harem or women’s quarter with elaborate baths.
Bou Ahmed died in 1900. When word of his death leaked out, the populace of Marrakech raided the palace and stripped It to the walls.
Our next stop began a 5.5 hour walk through the medina. First we visited a medersa (Koranic School). We were allowed to enter the Ben Youssef Medersa because it was being refurbished and not in use. The mosaics had been falling off the walls and workmen were now stripping the walls and recreating the mosaics. One workman gave a blue, ceramic, two inch wide, eight-pointed star to Haya as a gift. It had been from the old mosaic pattern.
The Medersa had been patterned after the famous Alhambra in Andalusia. A huge courtyard surrounded by buildings that housed students and teachers. The rooms were about 80 square feet in size with one small window and a wooden door. Each room housed four students. On the ground floor there is an ablutions hall and a latrine that still appeared (by its smell) to be in use.
Off the courtyard were prayer niches with arched doorways and carved ceilings showing pine cones, palms, and abstract motifs. These were once painted in vivid red, black and yellow.
From here we moved on to the crafts area of the medina where locals made everything from furniture to clothing. Much of the work was by hand under the most crude and dirty conditions. Many of the workers were children. One small boy of about six years old was bending rods of iron with a hammer. He sat in the street before the small shop and smiled at me as I watched him precisely bend each rod between his hammer and a stone he used as an anvil. Nearby, a young man was welding together pieces of ironwork with an acetylene torch, holding the iron pieces together by bracing them against a rock with his bare, callused feet.
There is no OSHA in Morocco. Neither is there any social security system. It is work, beg, steal, or starve. When the police do not chase them away, there are beggars on every street.
The Berbers are a handsome people. In their teens and early twenties they are often beautiful, but by their forties they seem old if they are still alive. Morocco has a population of about 25 million, over half of whom are under 20 years old. At the time of the country’s independence in 1956, they had 8 million. There are about 10,000 doctors in the country, located mostly in the large cities.
In the next four hours we walked through the foul smelling tanneries and leatherworkers district (leather is tanned in cow urine), the slipper makers district, the districts for ironmongers and blacksmiths, carpenters and furniture makers, dyers and weavers, jewelry makers, carpet weavers, coppersmiths, sheepskin workers, wool carders, textile makers, and apothecary sellers and herb preparers.
Many of the workers were skinny, barely clad children. Children who would have been out playing or in grade school in Israel or the US.
The narrow, filthy alleys were clogged by not only people, but small cars, bicycles, mopeds, donkeys, hand drawn carts, and “petit taxis.” There are two kinds of taxis in most cities, the tiny bright red, four door Fiats called “petit taxis,” and the white Mercedes cabs. The mostly beat-up petit taxis are very inexpensive and I saw as many as five people crowd into one of them.
Yells of “Balak” mean get out of the way, a big load is coming through. Often it was a donkey so laden as to look as though the huge load, often with a man on top, was supported only by four spindly legs and the donkey itself seemed imaginary.
Exhausted from the long walk and the heat, the smells, the sounds and the psychic pressure of so many struggling people, we returned to the hotel where I could relax with a cold glass of vodka and ice before the “Fantasia.”
An evening at the Fantasia is not to be believed. In the words of my generation, it was the ultimate in kitsch. It was “A Thousand and One Nights” in a vaguely Disneyland style with no real continuity.
The Fantasia grounds are on the outskirts of the city. Huge halls, decorated to appear like desert tents, seat at least five hundred people for dinner. Dinner is Moroccan style food ... soup, then vegetables, couscous, and lamb, with some sweet cakes and oranges for desert. While the busloads of tourists ate, Berber musicians and girl dancers with different tribal costumes played and sang as they wandered among the tables trying to collect tips by enticing the tourists to dance with them or take pictures.
The wailing and ululating sounds of the competing musicians drowned us in noise. Somehow, the waiters managed to serve everyone, but it was all the same meal at each table. Vegetarians were relegated to a separate set of tables.
Our group seemed to finish later than others and we found that most of the other groups had already gone to find seats in the stadium/theater. This was an open, rectangular field about the size of two football fields side-by-side. It was surrounded by wooden bleachers. From the way that stage props had been arranged before the show, it looked as though the best seats would be on the long sides of the rectangle. These seats were all taken.
The far end of the field was open for the performers to enter and leave.
The only open seats appeared to be those at the end near a kind of platform. We took these seats. Shortly after we were seated, the platform filled with well-dressed (suit and tie) dignitaries and the show started. By accident, we had the best seats in the house.
The pageant started with parades of Arabian horses and Berber riders in tribal costumes. Then, almost lost in the center of the field, a platform was set up and a belly dancer performed.
Riders gave us a demonstration of horsemanship, jumping on and off horses at full gallop (as in a rodeo). Then the horsemen charged across the field toward the dignitaries stand and fired their muskets into the air all at once. The noise startled everyone and many held their hands to their ears when this act was repeated three more times.
As the last rider left the field, at the far end, between two trees, the spotlights came on. There, suspended from a cable stretched between the buildings, was Ali Baba riding on a “magic carpet.” No sooner had he reached the building at the end of the cable, than the fireworks started (a la Disneyland), and we could all get onto the busses and go to our hotels.
The best performers were the horses.
For the next two days members of the tour group complained of partial hearing loss from the gunfire.
Leaving Marrakech the next morning, we stopped at the Jardin Menara (Menara Gardens). Actually, the gardens are olive groves surrounding a large pool built in 1822 by a Sultan so that he could enjoy the cool refreshing breezes with his concubines. The water in the pool is brought by aqueduct from the highest mountain in the Haut Atlas range, Jebel Toubkal, 4088 meters or about 13,500 feet high.
A final stop in Marrakech was the Koutoubia Minaret, which can be seen from almost any approach to the city. It is more than 210 feet high and was completed by Sultan Yacoub El Mansour in 1199, while the Berbers still ruled southern Spain. It took 46 years to build. The faces are inlaid with mosaic tiles and a varied pattern of window shapes and arches. This minaret is a clear demonstration of the superiority of Arab architecture while Europe was in the dark ages.
If you ever get the chance to go to Morocco there are only three cities worth visiting ... Marrakech. Fes, and Casablanca. But above all, Marrakech!
From Marrakech we traveled to Essaoura on the Atlantic coast. Half of the 90 miles was reasonably good highway, but the next half was macadam road about ten feet wide. That’s not quite wide enough for a bus to pass an oncoming car.
After noon we arrived in Essaoura ( also called Mogodur), in the fifteenth century a Portuguese fishing village and trading center. Here we visited the grave of Chaim Pinto, a great Talmudic scholar.
The rest of the group went to visit the medina and the mellah. Haya and I decided that we had had enough of medinas and mellahs for the time and we went to the port. The port in Essaoura is one of the last places in the western world where they still build large ocean-going fishing boats of wood. Several of these boats, about fifty feet long, were under construction and I took pictures.
We also visited the edges of the medina and the fish markets by the port. We saw the fourteenth century stone bulwark defenses built by the Portuguese and the old iron cannon used to defend the port.
When we rejoined the tour, we were taken to a fish restaurant by the tour leader. By this time I was convinced that the tour leader, while knowing the history of Morocco, had little idea of where to go for decent food. Many of our lunches were either gained by shopping in a local souk or skipping lunch. Those on the tour who were of Moroccan descent would buy bread and cans of sardines or tuna in the souks. Those of us who preferred better food would usually skip lunch.
In a few of the larger cities there are female waitresses and clerks, but for the most part the only women in public are the hotel housekeepers and a few shoppers. In the restaurant we seated ourselves at the low, round tables in the restaurant, gave the waiters our orders, and waited. After about ten minutes, the place started to fill with acrid smoke from the kitchen. Most of us were driven outside to seek clear air. Finally, the windows and doors were opened to clear the smoke and we returned. I didn’t have the fried fish. Instead, I ordered a plate of boiled shrimp.
The small shrimp were caught several miles offshore and brought in with barrels of clean sea water. On shore, they were boiled in the salty sea water and poured out onto big platters for serving. Except for the lack of beer, they tasted exactly like the shrimp I had enjoyed so much in Portugal in 1948.
After lunch we drove about 150 kilometers down the coast to Agadir. (Agadir is an Arabic word meaning a fortified granary or storehouse.) The drive along the rocky coast reminded us of northern California with big waves splashing foam high off the rocks. Agadir was another of the Portuguese cities from the fourteenth century. It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1960. It was so completely wrecked that most of the inhabitants were buried in the rubble and never dug up. Now it’s a modern French style town with 10 kilometers of beautiful sand beaches over a hundred yards wide. It is a major tourist resort for Europeans, especially Germans, and very reminiscent of Nice or Cannes and a major port to the center of Morocco.
Even though I was running a fever from my cold, I was, as usual, able to negotiate for ice and have my evening cocktail before dinner at the Hotel Les Almohades. A pleasant, but not very good hotel. Perhaps my experience with Moroccan hotels had, by now inured, me to their discomforts.
We were to spend two nights here and now, half way through the trip, I felt that I needed a break from my fellow tourists and from visiting another synagogue, cemetery, and mellah.
The next morning the tour departed without me. I had a leisurely breakfast and a stroll around the town. Instead of visiting the ruined Kasbah on the mountaintop ... the only building still standing after the 1960 quake, I found a delightful small zoo.
The zoo, advertised as a “bird garden,” had ostriches, peacocks, cassowaries, marrabou and several other species of birds, along with one sad looking kangaroo.
From there I wandered along the Corniche (the seaside paved walkway) to admire the stunning beach and the lack of waves. The beach is protected from the Atlantic by the curve of the bay. When the tour group returned from their excursion, Haya joined me and we walked back to find a seaside French restaurant for lunch. Agadir’s economy depends heavily on tourists from Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavia, so beer was on the menu.
Back at the hotel, we relaxed poolside and watched the Arab and Berber serving men watch the topless German and Scandinavian sun bathers. In the evening we walked along the Corniche and gazed at the fanciful “palaces” and mansions owned by King Hassan II and his friends, mostly Saudi princes. King Hassan, through one of his ancestor’s wives, is related to the Saudi royal family, and thereby traces his ancestry back to Mohammed.
Back on the bus the next morning, 28 May, we started one of our longest day drives, about 400 kilometers to Ouarzazate in the Haut Atlas range and in the direction of the Tafilalt ... one end of the Sahara Desert.
Our first stop was Taroudannt, a pink-walled city with five kilometers of walls and bastions. In one corner of the City is the old Kasbah, half of which has been rebuilt into the ornate Hotel Palais Salam. The Hotel looks like a movie set with many courtyards, alcoves and rooms. We relaxed for 20 minutes until our tour leader called us together for the long trip over the mountains to Ouarzazate.
The road over the mountains was another ten foot wide macadam mountain trail over which careful driving was mandatory. There were a few villages along the way and only two small towns, Taliouine and Tazenakht. But it’s 200 kilometers and about five hours to Ait-Benhaddou and the next toilet.
Twice along the way we have to stop. The group got out of the bus, some to stretch their legs and have a smoke, others to make use of the bushes.
The men and the women separated and moved off into the roadside bushes to empty bladders.
This is probably a good point at which to digress into the topic of toilets in Africa and the Mediterranean. The American-style toilet with it’s comfortable seat, suitable for meditation or reading, is unknown except in places that cater to American/European tourists. That means usually in hotels and a very few restaurants.
At the bottom of the scale ... going native ... is basically a hole in the ground with some sort of wall or screen to hide behind. The broad middle range of toilet facilities is dominated by the so-called “Turkish Toilet.” This device is cast iron covered with white porcelain. Facing the device, you see a four foot high concave slab about two feet wide. As your gaze moves downward, you see a two foot square bowl with a hole close to the foot of the slab. On the side of the bowl closest to you, you see two raised blocks for your feet. These are to protect you from having to step into the bowl. They also form the basis for your balancing act if you are a woman or have to perform something more serious than urinating.
For a man, with inherent directional control, peeing is not a problem. For a woman, (I have been told) it is simply a matter of throwing your skirts over your head, turning around, stepping back onto the blocks, squatting, and hoping that you have aimed properly and not pissed on your shoes. Of course, for either sex, anything of more consequence than urination can be traumatic if you were raised in the Western World and are therefore among the effete.
Carrying your own supply of tissues is mandatory.
Now, to flush the toilet. In the better facilities there may be a flush control at the top of the slab that induces a stream of water down the face of the slab and swishes around the bowl. In most facilities, there is a faucet about a foot off the ground on one side of the toilet. There is also a small bucket. You fill the bucket with water and slosh it across the toilet bowl.
In better facilities, a woman sits just outside the toilets and occasionally washes the toilet. In exchange for this service, you place one dirham in the plate.
In poorer facilities, you are on your own.
At the bottom of the scale (hole in the ground) feel yourself lucky to get out without vomiting.
While I’m interrupting the narrative, I may as well describe the roadside stops. Once in a while, we would stop at a modern-appearing gas station between cities. These stations usually have shops and a restaurant attached, so toilets are available.
When there is a restaurant, there is the necessary butcher shop alongside. In these stations, as well as in the souks, there is no refrigeration for the meat. A typical butcher shop looks like this. There is a roof providing some shade over and in front of the open air shop. In front of the counter there is a beam the width of the shop. From this beam depend large meat hooks. On the hooks there hang freshly-butchered (presumably) carcasses of lambs and occasional calves or cows. No pork, of course. This is a Muslim country. As the day wears on, the carcasses gradually shrink as pieces are sold to the restaurants or to customers. Sometimes only a leg or a half breast is left hanging. Internal organs are under a glass-topped counter, but the flies have a field day with the hanging carcasses.
In the souks, there are usually shops selling fresh vegetables and fruit located near to the butcher shops so that people can do all their daily shopping at once. With no refrigeration in homes, food shopping is a daily event.
Finally, we are getting close to Ait-Benhaddou. We can see the side and top of a mountain covered with the most exotic kasbah and agadir in Morocco. Side by side, the four-towered bastions are connected by walls of “pise” (bricks made from mud and straw, dried in the sun as in Biblical times). There are at least six of these bastions. The walls are again covered with a plaster made of red sand and lime.
The path, through alleys up the mountain, is steep and rocky. At one time, in the 16th century when the city was new, it must have been only steep, but now it is wracked with rubble. Within what is left of the walls, the steep hillside, stretching upward for about four hundred feet, is covered with the remains of houses. The only water is a spring is located at the base of the hill.
The houses are of two structural components. First, the builders excavated in to the hillside for a storage cellar and to create a level foundation for the house. Next, they constructed the walls of mud brick. At the level of the first story, they placed wood poles across the rooms. These were covered with a wattle of palm leaves, branches, and mud to build a floor for the next level. The ends of the poles protruded through the walls. The same technique was used to build the roof, only on the roofs there were vents left to allow rains to run off. A final course or two of bricks raised the walls slightly above the roof level. All this is very much like the buildings of the Pueblo Indians. On top of this last course, a small “step” structure was built every six to ten feet. This small “sign” of the Berber construction was typically made of one course of three bricks, then one course of two bricks (centered), then one brick on top. A little pyramid or tent shape.
I wondered about the four to six inch wide holes that appeared every few feet in the city walls. One guide told me that they were for earthquake protection. Another said that they were for shooting through to defend the kasbah. I figured out where the holes came from after I had a chance to climb and old wall and look into some of the holes. The holes extended all the way through the walls. They could not have been constructed that way of the mud bricks.
My analysis is that the builders of the walls needed to create a means to hold the walls together. (Similar to what the Jews did in building protective walls at Masada.) What they did was lay beams of wood across the mud bricks every few feet. The next course of bricks was built around the beams. Over the hundreds of years since the walls were built, the wood decayed, leaving holes that are now used as homes for swallows.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Ait-Benhaddou Kasbah is that it is still inhabited. In these fragments of mud houses and cellars were ragged people, donkeys, goats, and God knows what other species of life. Barefoot, barely clothed children ran around the city, begging from the tourists. Even when they did not receive anything, they smiled and waved ... hoping. They followed us wherever we went.
Whenever others were not looking, I surreptitiously slipped a coin to one of the children. I felt faced with a terrible dilemma. I didn’t have enough coins for all. How could I say no to the last one in front of all the other children?
In the narrow alleys that we climbed between the ruined houses, some residents had laid out poorly hand-crafted pieces of weaving, carving and copperwork on the stones of the street. The only reason for buying would be pity. The workmanship was crude and lacked any native artistic value.
What remains of the site is so dramatic that it has been used as a filming location for Lawrence of Arabia and Jesus of Nazareth.
Until 1964, both Jews and Berbers lived here together in squalid poverty. Now only the Berbers are left.
Twenty-six kilometers further on was Ouarzazate and our hotel for the night.
Ouarzazate, like most of the new Saharan towns, was created by the French in the 1920s as a Foreign Legion garrison and administrative center. It has changed little except for the building of hotels, since the location is a convenient jumping off point to the Sahara. In most of the Haut Atlas mountains northeast of Ouarzazate, there are no roads.
During the 1980s, Ouarzazate was booming for a short while. It was the closest town to Ait-Benhaddou, used for film locations as well as the last major town before the long barren stretch to the desert. The town even created its own film studio ... the Atlas Corporation ... now defunct.
Hotels were overbuilt during the boom and now stand either partially completed or deserted. Our hotel, the Residence Karam, is a decrepit witness to this overbuilding.
Ouarzazate has a certain spell for Moroccans. The expression “see Ouarzazate and die” is perhaps a reminder of the campaigns of the French Foreign Legion in the 1930s.
The Moroccan Army has a small garrison here and you can hear the bugle early in the morning for reveille.
The next day promised to take us through one of the most fertile valleys in the country.
The “Road of the Thousand Kasbahs” runs southeast through the valley created by the Draa River and northeast through the valley created by the Dades River. There are many small Kasbahs along our road, but the map shows many more scattered through the mountains and only accessible over camel trails or dirt roads.
The mud walls of most of the kasbahs are slowly melting from the mountain rains but the remains are a reminder of the time when every tribe controlled passage through it’s territory from the mountain peaks and demanded tribute from passing caravans. After about three hours of driving, we stop at the stunning Gorges du Todra near the town of Tinherir.
The bus drives us into the Gorge as far as possible, and we walk from there. At the Gorge, the peaceful small stream of the Ouad Dades that we step across on the stones has carved a passage about three hundred feet deep and only thirty feet wide through the solid rock of the mountain. The Gorge itself is only about 300 feet long, then widens out enough so that two small hotels have been built there.
The sides of the Gorge are so steep that they have become a favorite for European climbers. Not only are there sheer vertical faces, but almost impassable overhangs.
One of the hotels was able to provide six of us with a delightful lunch of couscous and tagine.
A short drive away was Tinerhir and our hotel, the Kenzi Bougafer ... another overbuilt palace falling apart for lack of maintenance. During the trip we will stay at three Japanese-owned Kenzi hotels. At each of these we encounter at least one busload of Japanese tourists. For many Japanese, it is difficult to understand American culture, even with the exposure to US television programming. Imagine the culture shock of Japanese tourists visiting Morocco!
It is not surprising that they stayed huddled closely in groups near their tour guide while we and the Germans seemed to be continually wandering off on our own.
*
On the morning of 30 May we got an early start. Although the whole trip to Erfoud was only about 200 kilometers, about 160 kilometers were over dirt road descending from the Atlas to that part of the Sahara called the Tafilalt. It is sometimes a heart-stopping drive. We all pray for the health of our driver and the continued good operation of the air conditioned bus.
At Erfoud we made a right turn and passed through the town. We were going five kilometers further south to see Rissani. Rissani is the origin of the Alaouite tribe from which the current king descends. To memorialize the dynasty, Hassan II has built a huge, ornately-decorated and painted, arched gate to the town. The gate spans the four-lane road and towers about fifty feet into the desert air.
Although Rissani was the terminus of the caravan routes from Timbuktu, the tribute from which made the Alaouites rich, the town today holds nothing of interest beyond the arch. After a few minutes we turn around and head for our hotel, the Kenzi Belere. It appears that the King has an interest in everything in this area. The hotel is probably one of the most ornate outside of Fes or Rabat, the capitol.
Here, on the edge of the Saraha, is one of the largest swimming pools that we will see on the entire trip.
We stopped long enough to check in and have a potty break, then, outside the hotel we found seven Landrovers waiting to take us into the desert to “see the desert sunset.”
We pile into the Landrovers, six passengers to a car plus the Berber driver. As I looked at the roof rack, I noticed that there were three bumps in the roof near the back of the car. This seemed strange, but I didn’t have time to question it. Haya and I got into the back seat along with one other passenger who was about six feet tall.
Into the Landrovers and off we went to a few kilometers north of Erfoud. There we turned right off the road and approached a small river. A dam or weir stretch across the river and women were washing cloths and rugs by pounding them with boards in the flowing water. The garments and rugs were dried by throwing them over bushes that grew near the river.
Winding between the washers, our Landrover made its way through the water and up the dirt road on the other side. We crested the river bank and then the fun began.
There is a line of electric poles heading out into the desert to provide power to a few restaurants that are close to the dunes. Other than that, there is no directional sign or specific road, although there are tracks made by the many vehicles that go to the dunes. Four wheel drive is necessary. You frequently hit pockets of soft sand that could stop an ordinary vehicle.
At the top of the river bank, the flat desert with low dunes and ravines left by the flash floods stretched out before us. Our goal was Araj Ashabi, in the desert of the Marzuga (Sahara). Araj Ashabi is one of the highest dunes (150 meters). It’s about 20 kilometers straight east in the direction of Algeria.
Once we crested the river bank, the Berber drivers were in their element. The Landrovers fanned out across the desert so that none of them were eating the dust raised by the others. Each car was followed by a plume of dust. They zigzagged by the ravines, over the hillocks, around the soft sand spots, the banners on the Landrovers streaming in the hot air.
The drivers grinned broadly and yelled from the sheer joy of driving. I could easily imagine these young men on half-wild Arabian horses.
We were just getting the hang of watching for the swerves and bumps and holding tight to any grip available, when the Landrover launched briefly into the air and came down hard. Going up was no problem, but the car came down faster than we did. The heads of those of us in the back seat hit the ceiling of the car.
Now I knew what those bumps in the roof were from!
I also hit my elbow on a strut and bled slightly, but I didn’t notice until later.
After forty minutes of wild riding, we pulled up at a small mud brick cafe near the foot of the dune that was our objective. We staggered away from our mounts and, as a group, approached the foot of the dune.
We were immediately surround by barefooted young Berber men offering to help us climb the dune. It was not long before most of the group was quite willing to pay the men to help. The reddish sand is as fine as flour. With shoes on, you sink into the sand with every step and have to pull your feet free. The heavier people sank further in than others.
The barefoot Berbers had little problem, but in several cases they had to literally drag the tourists up the dune by their arms.
I elected not to climb all the way. Clouds were moving in and we could hear the rumble of thunder and see flashes of heat lightening. It was obvious that we were not going to see a desert sunset.
I turned to go back to the cafe. The young man who had been offering to help me climb disappeared for a moment. He returned with a pouch that had been secreted behind a small rise and opened it to sell me polished ammonite and trilobite fossils. These were clearly authentic and the bargaining started as we walked back.
Within a few minutes, we had bought more fossils for gifts back home.
While waiting for the rest of the group to ascend and descend the dune, I climbed to the roof of the cafe for a better view of the area. About fifty yards from the cafe, I saw a man stacking bricks. I decide to get closer.
When I came close, I could see that there was an array of freshly made mud and straw bricks drying in the sun. Those that had already dried were being stacked by the worker. He had a number of ten-gallon cans of water with which to mix the mud for more bricks.
A rough foundation had been built on the desert floor. The new bricks were clearly intended for construction of the future building.
The flies were continually biting my arm. After chasing away a number of them, I finally noticed the blood near my elbow from my injury while driving out. The flies had scented the blood and were determined to get a taste.
The returning climbers rested in the small shade provided by the walls of the cafe. The toilet facilities were unusable, being of the worse kind.
As it grew darker, we mounted the Landrovers once more and the drivers, whooping and laughing, took us back as recklessly as they had brought us out to the dunes.
The next morning we drove north to Er Rashidia and once again found the main, two lane highway over the Haut Atlas and the Moyen Atlas ranges to Fes, over 400 kilometers north. The road was far better than those we had been traveling for several days.
Just before reaching Er Rashidia, we were startled to see a line of camels about a hundred yards from the road. At our urging, the tour leader stopped the bus and we got out. There before us was a sight from thousands of years ago.
A caravan of more than thirty camels and several donkeys was moving at a walking pace across the high desert. The drivers and their families walked beside the camels and directed them by voice. Some of the older, larger camels (and the donkeys) carried huge loads. As they moved closer to the road, we could see that the largest loads on the camels were the cloth tents of the Berber nomads. The donkeys carried food, cans of water, cooking utensils and other materials needed to live in the desert.
When the children spotted us, they started running toward us. Within minutes we were surrounded not only by children but by a few young women carry infants on their backs in a cloth sling arrangement.
Men, women and some children, wore the pointed, open-heeled slippers so common throughout the country. Some wore plastic sandals and some of the children were barefooted. The tribe also wore the black robes of the desert nomads, like the Bedouin of the Middle East.
Fortunately, one of our group had bought a bag of small candies. He handed them out to the children and young women and they laughed happily.
Throughout this time, the camels and drivers kept up a steady pace across the barren land. Soon we left, and the children had to run to catch up with the caravan.
As I saw them move off, I took a second look when I saw one young man striding along with a bicycle at his side.
Later in the morning, we passed a herd of sheep gathered around a well, and stopped for a closer look, since the well was apparently in the middle of a dry high desert. The well above ground was made of stone and cement and had cement troughs on both sides for spilling out water for the herds. Across the top was a crossbar and pulley supported by two posts. The rope over the pulley had a leather bucket on each end. Pulling up one full bucket would therefore lower the empty one into the water.
Looking down the well, I saw that it had been dug mostly through rock and was more than a hundred feet deep to the water surface.
The sheep had apparently been watered before we arrived. The two shepherds were washing their clothes and spreading them on the well wall to dry.
Fes is on a plain between the Moyen Atlas and the Rif mountains, but as we approached, we passed the last peaks of the Moyen Atlas. There, the landscape changes dramatically as we drove through Le Foret du Cedre, the Forest of Cedars and stopped briefly to look at another of the King’s palaces. This one has a ski slope in the back yard. Unfortunately, the King didn’t answer the doorbell and his guards advised us to get back on the bus. A few kilometers later we were in Ifrane, the “Switzerland” of Morocco.
Ifrane, with its Swiss chalet-style houses and university buildings, most of them bearing a stork’s nest on the roof, looks completely out of place in this country. The town has a “swan lake” populated by ducks, parks with actual evergreen trees, and a stone lion about fifteen feet long that is reputed to have been carved by an Italian prisoner.
Once inside the local cafe, however, the food is clearly Moroccan. Most of the students have to work to add to the parental money paid for their tuition. The professorial staff is primarily American and so the school has often been referred to as the “American School.” The Moroccans object to this designation and are gradually trying to replace the American staff with Moroccans.
It should be noted that the students are from the tiny middle class. The ruling class sends their children abroad for college.
Hassan II has passed laws for “mandatory education,” however, there are schools in only the larger towns and there is no school bus service. Mandatory education extends only up to the sixth grade. This is enough to permit the non-rural students to learn to read and give the bright students an appetite for more. In what is really a medieval kingdom, educating people is a big political risk.
Our hotel in Fes is the Sheraton ... grand enough in styling, although not as fancy as many of the others ... but it’s an American hotel and everything works.
Fes is the oldest Imperial City in Morocco and retains much of its medieval character through a lucky accident. There is a French-built new city, but most of Fes’ half a million people live in Fes el Bali, the old, walled medina. There, they ply their trades using techniques that disappeared over a hundred years ago in most of the world.
In fact, the workers of Fes are forbidden by law to use modern machinery.
General Lyautey, the French protectorate’s first Resident General, took the step of declaring Fes to be an historical preserve. This was not entirely benevolent. By building the new French city nearby and transferring the governmental functions from the Imperial City of Fes to Rabat, he changed the focus of the government. At the same time, he ensured that the city would decline in importance and remain backward as well as “preserved.”
Fes was founded about 792 by Moulay Idriss I, but really became the Imperial City under his son, Moulay Idriss II. The son brought in refugees from Andalusia and Kairouan in Tunisia and set the stage for Fes to become the intellectual center of North Africa. Eventually Fes became far superior to Europe in arts and sciences as the Dark Ages drove Europe into eclipse.
Upon independence, the first Sultan, Mohammed V, retained Rabat as the capital. In the mid 1950s, the medina lost its Jewish population of artisans to Israel and France. The medina has since been repopulated by rural immigrants with few of the skills developed over the ages by their predecessors.
Fes has the largest and best-kept Jewish cemetery in Morocco and was host to a long line of Rabbinical sages.
The medina in Fes is, to some extent, a poorer copy of that in Marrakech. Our walk through the medina was a bit redundant. Our local guide did, however, take us to a silver factory that was located in a mansion formerly owned by a Jewish family of silver artisans.
The manager claimed that the place had an alliance with a silver factory in Ashdod, Israel. Haya was talked into buying two trays and a teapot. I was talked into carrying them.
Nearing the end of our walk we visited an apothecary. With the scarcity of medical doctors, most Moroccans depend on an apothecary or pharmacist. There is a small pharmacy in almost every town.
The apothecary shop we visited was designed to cater to tourists. They claimed to have over 10,000 herbal preparations, lotions and perfumes. Samples of many were passed around for us to smell or rub on our arms.
One preparation that provoked comment was “Spanish fly” or cantharides. This is an ancient potion for stimulating sexual drive. It irritates the mucous membranes of the sexual organs to excite either sex. Made from crushed flies of a certain kind, it’s illegal in much of the western world.
(None of us bought the Spanish fly, but the next morning one member of the group reported catching a fly in his room and eating it with no discernible result.)
After dinner at the hotel, we went to a “nightclub” for a “folkloric performance.” The performance included a Moroccan band, a contortionist, several mediocre belly dancers (I’ve seen better at the Moroccan restaurant in San Jose), a magician, and the performance of a so-called Berber wedding.
I would have been better off to have had some extra hours of sleep at the Sheraton.
On 2 June we left Fes to visit Meknes and Rabat and finish the day in Casablanca.
Meknes, 138 kilometers west of Fes, was the Imperial City of Moulay Ismail, who I described earlier. As in every larger city, Meknes has its medina, the mellah (Jewish ghetto) just outside the palace walls and all the other features of imperial Moroccan cities. However, Moulay Ismail built on a grand scale. He built huge, underground prisons for his Christian captives. This may sound cruel, but in the heat of Morocco, the coolest places were underground. Moulay Ismail did not waste slaves unnecessarily. Near the palace you can see a field with two foot wide air holes that provided ventilation to the underground prisons.
Somewhat better were his stables. These were built above ground with ten-foot wide columns supporting the wattle roof. Four horses could be stabled on each side of a column. The stables are big enough to house 12,000 horses. Figure it out! (To this day, the king has a horse farm where he raises Arabian horses for his honor guard.)
Meknes is surrounded by an unbelievable fifteen miles of walls and battlements made of mud brick.
Leaving Meknes, we headed for Rabat, the capitol of Morocco. I am unhappy to say that our tour did not include Volubilis, built by the Romans and the source of many of the stone columns that the Berber kings appropriated to decorate their palaces.
Rabat is basically a modern city built by the French. Rabat sits at the mouth of an estuary to which four rivers contribute their waters. Before talking about Rabat, which Has few points of interest, let’s talk about Sale (pronounced Salay). Sale was founded in the eleventh century, but was little more than a village until it was sacked by the Portuguese and then resettled by Andalusian refugees in the seventeenth century. In its new form, it became an unusual power based on piracy. The city declared independence from Morocco and formed its own “republic,” one of the first in the world.
The pirates focused on merchant shipping returning to Europe from Africa, the Spanish Americas and the Far East. The feared Sallee Rovers raided as far as Plymouth in England and the Irish. Spanish, Portuguese, and French coasts. In Daniel Defoe’s book, “Robinson Crusoe” began his adventures “carry’d prisoner into Sallee, a Moorish port.”
The Sallee Rovers sold Christian captives to North Africa, many to Moulay Ismail, as slaves. Women were especially prized and sold to the harems in the Maghreb. Perhaps they were sold by the pound, since the Arabs, to this day, value heavy women.
Their kasbah was located on top of a bluff with water on two sides and nearly impregnable. The “Republic of the Bou Regreg” built their homes in the Spanish style. They traded with the English and French for arms and maintained “consulates.” Finally, Moulay Raschid, the elder brother of Moulay Ismail, took control. But he couldn’t stop the piracy, which continued until 1829. In that year the Austrian navy took revenge by shelling Rabat and other coastal towns. (They probably missed shelling Sale and the pirates laughed as the shells fell on Rabat.)
In Rabat, the country’s capitol, we briefly visited the square in front of the Kings primary residence. We watched the changing of the mounted guard. Cannon in the square date from 1188 on the Muslin calendar. Add 635 and you get the date on the Christian calendar that the cannon were cast.
Rabat, though a village for most of its long history, was a trading post for both the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. After the demise of the Carthaginians, the Romans established a trading center that lasted well beyond the collapse of the Empire.
We visited the mellah and the synagogue close to the Kasbah Odai and the gate to the medina built in the times of the Moors. The buildings of the medina, in contrast to the other medinas of the country, are painted white with blue trim. The streets of this capitol are clean beyond any that we have seen in other cities.
The road down the coast is good four-lane highway and we had a view of the rough surf breaking against the rocky shore.
After our short visit in Rabat we moved on to our hotel, the Basma, of ill repute, in Casablanca.
In the morning we started touring the city. Haya decided to take a much needed day of rest in the hotel.
Casablanca means “white house” and is derived from the Portuguese “casa branca.” This city is now the metropolitan center of Morocco and definitely the most cosmopolitan of their cities. In this city, many of the women dress in western dress. It is the largest port of the Maghreb, busier than Marseilles. Except for the medina, most of the buildings date from this century. Some are really modern.
Our first stop was the synagogue built in 1947 and remodeled in 1998. It is a gem of a synagogue, decorated in the Moroccan and Arabic styles. Most of the Jews who remain in Morocco, about 5,000, live in Casablanca.
Second, we visited the Mosque Hassan II, one of the only mosques in Morocco open to non-Muslim visitors (for an admission charge of 100 dirham). The mosque is still being completed, but was opened for worshippers in 1993. The building is so huge that you cannot take a complete picture except from the Corniche, a half mile away. Built on a spit on the rocky shoreline, the mosque cost over a billion dollars US. Despite the king owning 21 palaces, the mosque was built by “public subscription.” This is a euphemism for taxation or “non-voluntary deductions” from salaries. Even people who sent home money from overseas work had their deposits taxed through the banking system.
Despite this inequity, the people seem to be proud of the mosque.
It is impressive. The mosque can hold 20,000 men and 5,000 women worshippers (separated, of course) inside and over 100,000 in the courtyard outside. Work was started on the whole complex in 1980.
The mosque complex is built on pilings that were sunk about two hundred feet into the bedrock. Waves still drive water under the main building.
The minaret, from which the muezzins call worshippers to prayer five times a day, is over 600 feet tall, the tallest building in the country. It can be seen from anywhere in the city. Elevators carry the muezzins to the top to announce prayer times. A laser beam at the top points the way to Mecca.
Saint Peters Cathedral in Rome could easily fit inside the mosque.
Two huge panels covering the roof slide open like the Astrodome to allow worshippers to contemplate God’s sky.
One thirty foot high doorway is reserved for the King, as is a roped-off path through the marble-floored main room. The pathway, leading to the niche that points the direction of Mecca, has a shallow trough on each side through which a stream of water flows when the king attends worship here.
There is a medersa (school for Koranic studies), a museum, and a library, but none of these are yet functioning.
Our English-speaking guide spouted statistics. During this decade work proceeded around the clock. 1,400 men worked day shift and 1,100 worked at night. Marble came from Agadir, cedar wood from the Atlas mountains, granite from Trafoute in the south. Only the enormous glass chandeliers, one of which weighs over a ton, came from Italy, near Venice.
The chandeliers, some of which hang from ceilings over a hundred feet high, can be lowered electrically for cleaning.
Under the main floor of the mosque there are rooms for ablutions. Worshippers are required to wash their hands and feet before entering a mosque and to pray without shoes on. (We were required to remove our shoes to enter the mosque.) The fountains for ablutions are made of marble carved to resemble the petals of fifteen foot wide flowers.
The interior is decorated with mosaics and carved gesso columns. Gesso is a special plaster that uses eggs in its composition. The guide said that the price of eggs was so high for three years that most people could not afford to eat them.
In addition to the place for ablutions, there are toilets, Turkish style, and a large Turkish bath (baths, steam rooms, and a pool) and a Moroccan bath ( dry heat and spigots for water). Both, when completed, will offer massages to the faithful.
I asked our guide who the architect was. Somewhat shamefacedly, he told me that the architect was Michel Pinseau, a Frenchman.
The Corniche, the promenade along the coast, is reminiscent of Nice or Cannes in France. Again, we find the mansions of Saudi princes along the Corniche.
The Habous quarter, part of which was a French prison, has been converted to a fancy souk with many coffee houses.
The Bab Marrakech is the Gate to the old medina and a tall clock tower stands next to it. You can orient yourself in the medina by looking for the tower.
Four blocks from the medina is the port of Casablanca. Not too much different from the medinas in other cities, the one in Casablanca is renown as the place to buy back stolen goods.
One of my reasons for visiting Morocco was that in 1948, on active duty with the Navy, I was in port here. Last year, in 1999, I wrote a short story based in part on my experiences here.
When I reached the medina, I found that my fifty-two year old memories and orientation were relatively accurate. Standing in the Bab Marrakech, I was able to tell the tour leader where the port was located. At that point, I said good-bye to the tour and wandered off on my own for several hours.
The film “Casablanca,” starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman was completed in November 1942. It was shot completely in Hollywood. It featured the famous song, “As Time Goes By.” Just as it was released, it gained major publicity when the Allies landed some 25,000 troops under the command of General Eisenhower, on the beaches north and south of the city.
As I returned to our hotel, I passed the Hyatt Regency Hotel, located right across the street from the Bab Marrakech. Since it was a hot day, I stopped to get a beer in the Casablanca Bar.
Imagine my surprise when I literally walked into the set of “Rick’s Bar” from the movie. On one wall was a ten foot by twelve foot movie poster showing Bogart with a gun. The room was set up on several levels with a piano in the center, just like the movie set. I picked up my beer and looked around.
Unable to stop myself, I growled in a low voice, “Play it again, Sam!” Unbidden, the song went through my mind:
“You must remember this,
A kiss is still a kiss,
A sigh is still a sigh.
No matter what the future holds,
As time goes by.
Moonlight and love songs,
Never out of date.
Hearts full of sadness, jealousy and hate,
Woman needs man, and man must have his mate,
That, no one can deny.
It’s still the same old story,
A fight for love and glory,
A case of do or die.
The fundamental things apply,
As time goes by.”
The next morning was at leisure so I took Haya to see the Mosque Hassan II and the medina. Private tours, since I now knew my way around the town. Her young guide at the mosque told her that when he saved enough money he hoped to go to a university in Israel.
In the afternoon we left for Rome on another Alitalia Airlines flight. As we left the Hotel Basma to board our bus, I had a last impression of Morocco.
Sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, leaning against the hotel was a young Berber woman with a baby in her arms. She was dressed in the typical rural costume of a brown, hooded robe. She was barefooted. She held out one cupped hand, begging.
The baby started to cry. The young woman opened her robe and lifted her breast, the nipple already engorged in response to the baby’s cry. She brought the child to her breast and started nursing. Again she held out her hand to passersby.
I was boarding the bus, but I turned back. I reached into my pocket. The change that I had there would be worthless at the airport. As I started to pull the handful of coins from my pocket, a policeman stepped between me and the young woman. Roughly, he took her arm and lifted her from the sidewalk.
He spoke to her harshly, obviously telling her to move along. As they moved away a few steps, a young man who had been trying to hawk posters to us rolled up the posters and rushed to her side. Together they walked away fearfully.
As the bus drove to the airport I thought about Morocco, the young couple, and their child. When that child grows up will Morocco’s monarchy suffer the same fate as the Romanoffs in Russia? Will the bloody red flag of Communism or some other equally bloody banner appeal to those suffering under royal rule and the inequities of the class structure in Morocco? Will frustrated and deprived people turn to violence and find themselves again enslaved to the temporary benefits granted by some short-lived, would-be warlord?
Are Hassan II’s slow moves toward liberalism too little and too late? Will all of Africa and the Arab countries of the Middle East eventually collapse into horrible revolutions and massacres? Much of Africa is already in flames. Where does it go from here?
What will that poor child’s life be like? Will it have a life at all?
Instead of an eight hour layover to the connecting flight, the tour company had pity and put us into the Airport Palace Hotel overnight. While clean, the Palace, owned by Alitalia, is clearly designed for one-night stays and crew layovers. The four stars on the front of the hotel are an exaggeration if not a lie. The rooms are little more than glorified closets and it is almost impossible to get in and out of the tiny shower/tub combination.
I had a reasonably good saltimbocca dinner, but the price was exorbitant.
The next morning we flew back to Israel and home ... weary, suffering from our colds, but having the satisfaction of surviving the adventure.

Palestinian Authority - June 2000

2005-07-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

Palestinian Authority - May 2000

Five minutes drive to the east of Jerusalem the desert lies in wait like some huge beast not contented with devouring the occasional foolish tourist who thinks that he can hike through without carrying a supply of water. The land drops precipitously from the 3,000 foot heights of the city and in a forty minute drive you can be at 1,300 feet below sea level on the shores of the Dead Sea ... the lowest dry land on Earth.
Except for the hilltop settlements established by Israel at strategic points, there is nothing but the almost barren, sand-colored hills, the wadis (steep arroyos cut by millennia of winter rains, wadi means stream in Arabic) and the few small collections of black Bedouin tents surrounded by their sheep and one or two camels nibbling on the brittle stems of half-alive plants.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is headquartered in Jericho and, at this point, consists of Gaza on the Mediterranean coast and the Jericho area. As envisioned by Israel in current negotiations, the PA will ultimately consist of three discontinuous enclaves connected by corridors or tunnels. These will be Gaza, Jericho and the approach to Jerusalem and the northern area that contains the towns of Tulkarm, Nablus, and Genin. The latter two of these areas lie in what is called the West Bank of the Jordan River.
On the outskirts of Jericho the PA has built a new Intercontinental Hotel and the Oasis Casino. It is understood that Yasser Arafat has major personal holdings in the casino and that it is operated by Harrah’s of Reno and Las Vegas. Palestinians are not permitted to gamble there so it is patronized primarily by Israeli’s and a few tourists. Arafat and the PA have a vested interest in keeping the roads safe for tourists and gamblers. The roads are heavily patrolled by troop carriers loaded with PA soldiers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles.
We started early in the morning, fifty-five of us boarding our bus in Jerusalem bearing bags with water bottles and snacks as well as cameras.
Leaving the city we follow Highway 1 toward Jericho, passing by Mount Scopus crowned by the Hebrew University and the Mormon Center for Near Eastern Studies. The houses thin out ... then are gone. Every few minutes we can see, at the bottom of a wadi or halfway up a roadless hill, the rusting skeleton of a car or truck that appears to have died in a desperate attempt to escape the confines of the highway.
Our first stop is the settlement of Mitzpah Jericho (Jericho Overlook). It was created by orthodox Jews who mostly live in prefab housing. The few permanent stone buildings are schools which double as bomb shelters. From the terrace of one of the schools you can see the steep sides of Wadi Kelt and far below in the distance, the city of Jericho. This strategically placed settlement guards the road from the West Bank to Jerusalem and is one of the many settlements over which negotiations are so painfully being conducted. The PA is intent upon regaining as much of the land lost in the Six Day War of 1967 as they can. At the same time, the Israeli’s are justifiably paranoid about recreating a condition in which the passages from the West Bank are a knife pointed at the heart of the country.
The slow dance of peace and land negotiations is conducted over every square meter of territory and the Israeli’s become more paranoid with every Hezbollah rocket attack on the Lebanese border.
As we descend from Jerusalem, the road follows a short rise to Ma’aleh Adumim where there is another Israeli settlement. Ma’aleh Adumim (the Red Ascent) is marked by a hilltop crest of unusual red limestone. In Biblical times it was the border between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. There is an old Turkish police fort and the ruins of a Crusader castle that testify to the centuries in which caravans were ambushed and held hostage for ransom (called “passage taxes”) by the desert tribesmen. In fact, the Arab name for this place is the Blood Ascent.
A few kilometers further and we turn left off the four-lane main highway to the Wadi Kelt. We are headed toward the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint George. The narrow, winding macadam road takes us up a rise to the gate to the monastery. At 8:30 in the morning it is already getting warm ... too warm for most of us to brave the walk from the stone gate up the dirt trail to the isolated monastery. Instead, we opt to continue driving ahead. Our bus moves forward onto a very narrow dirt road that skirts the edges of the cliffs. Sometimes there are cliffs on both sides of the road at once. There is barely enough room for the bus to manage some of the turns and either the front or back end of the bus overhangs the cliff. Below us is the famous Wadi Kelt and we are on the ancient caravan trail between Jerusalem and Jericho.
The trail forks. A left turn would take us to the spring of Ein Kelt, the output of which flows through the wadi. In fact, the generations of monks who have inhabited this site from Byzantine times have build a system of water channels that supply the monastery.
Water from the spring moves downstream toward Jericho and the trees and bushes make a winding green path through the bottom of the wadi. About halfway up the steep hillsides, the monks have built a walking path. We see hikers following the path down toward Jericho, but our bus sticks to the main dirt trail.
The water has flowed from Ein Kelt for hundreds of thousands of years, creating a haven in the desert for both men and animals. In fact, recent finds of human bones and artifacts have been dated almost as far back as those in Olduvai Gorge in Africa.
In the days of the caravans, the 40 kilometer trip from Jericho to Jerusalem took at least two days. Ein Kelt was a stopping place before attempting the steep ascent to the tops of the mountains and the city of Jerusalem.
After several heart-stopping turns the bus finally descends into the main modern road to Jericho. We drive through the southern part of the city. Many of the people appear to be dressed poorly, but the most popular car on the road is the Mercedes. This is easily explained. Many of the cars we see have been stolen within Israel and channeled to Gaza or the PA where entire prosperous businesses have been built on the owners’ proficiency in changing serial numbers and forging new ownership papers.
After a few minutes more we are at the turnoff to the modern Israeli road that follows the Jordan River north to Tiberias and Beth Shean. We turn left onto the road and within two or three kilometers we turn right onto an almost unmarked dirt road that leads toward the Jordan. Along this road we stop at another Greek Orthodox monastery built to commemorate the place on the Jordan where Jesus was supposedly baptized by John. Actually, the monastery is a couple of kilometers away from the Jordan itself. After a brief and rather uninteresting stop, we get back on the bus and continue to follow the dirt road through desert country until we reach the crest of a small hill. Only jeeps and tanks can negotiate this road further, so we get out and hike up the hill.
From the hill we have a good view of the greenery that follows the trickle of the Jordan River through the valley. We can clearly see the hills of Jordan on the other side. At the top of the hill we find dugout emplacements where Jordanian tanks were placed prior to the Six Day War, and, in fact, the remains of one heavy battle tank are still half buried at the crest. Standing on top of the tank gives us an excellent view. As we look below, we see a jeep traveling the snaking trail through the sand. It passes below us and we can see the back loaded with boxes of fruit from a farm near the river.
Although this desert is one of the most barren in the world, geologists believe that there is a vast pool of water underground that may someday be tapped if there is peace in the region.
Throughout our trip, despite the heat, one member of our group (apparently English) wore a brown tweed sports jacket, a felt hat and a tie. Here on the crest of the hill, on the back deck of the ruined tank, he spread out a napkin and opened his lunch bag. He carefully placed his water bottle, two hard boiled eggs, a bun, and a salt shaker on the napkin. Then, apparently oblivious to the scenery, the other passengers, or the heat, he proceeded to crack and peel the eggs, salt them, and eat his lunch. Afterward, he wrapped all the scraps into the napkin and stuck it into his bag, in order not to litter the site. Only then did he peer around to see the view.
Back in the bus once more, we drive into Jericho from the Beth Shean Road. Most tour busses enter the city from the other side, nearer Jerusalem. As we enter the city limits, two PA troop carriers swing out ahead of us and escort us into the city. When our bus finally finds a parking space in the huge lot, we get out and see before us an ornate billboard announcing the “Mount of Temptation” Restaurant.
Actually, as we wander into the restaurant, we find that the large building is filled with shops ... a gigantic tourist trap. Post cards that cost twenty cents in Jerusalem are here offered for $1.80. We wind our way through the various stalls, marveling at the exaggerated prices, until we get to the stairs leading to the restaurant. At the top is a self-service cafeteria with mediocre to bad food. We select our lunch and take it to the cashier.
When we entered, we read a sign that listed the prices for each item. The cashier asks for a price at least double. Haya protests, but the cashier insists that he is charging us correctly. (Later, when we complain to the tour guide, he suggests that we were charged double because the cashier heard us speaking English.)
Unimpressed with Arab hospitality, we wander out through the stalls of the building to the parking lot where we are supposed to meet for the next event. Suddenly, I see a sign reading “Entrance to Tel Jericho. Admission: $5.00.” I was taken aback by the sign.
In 1967, and again fifteen years later, when I visited Tel Jericho, there was no admission charge to the archaeological digs. Now, the digs at the site of the oldest continuously existent city in the world ... over 8,000 years old ... are a part of a tourist complex.
I turn away from the entrance to the digs and try to gather some information. I discover that the complex was built a few years ago by an Arab multimillionaire from Hebron. The entire tourist trap now includes the Mount of Temptation Restaurant and Shopping Center, the Tel Jericho digs, an exhibition building now under construction to enclose the Spring of Elijah, and the cable gondola lift, opened less than a year ago, going up to the Greek Orthodox hermitage at Qarantal (some two kilometers up the mountain).
Qarantal is supposed to be a corruption of “quarantena,” Spanish for “a period of 40 days.” This was the length of Jesus’ seclusion in the wilderness.
The more I see, the more I am turned off by the commercialism. The Spring of Elijah has been flowing continuously for hundreds of thousands of years. Both times that I visited before, I dipped my hand into the spring to taste the cool water rising from under the mountains. Now this, too, is being enclosed in a building and will be an extension of the tourist trap.
By the time we board the cable car, I am all set to be disappointed once more.
The cable car ride, in which eight people are squeezed into each car, regardless of individual differences in weight, is not spectacular. We arrive at a site carved out of the side of the cliff, and, having no directions from our guide, start to wander around.
A sign in English, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew points out the path to the Mount of Temptation Monastery. We start walking along the trail carved out of the cliffside. Looking over the foot high wall at the edge of the trail, the cliff drops almost straight down for 1,500 feet. Proceeding over switchbacks and steep stairs over a meter wide carved from the rock of the cliff, we find the monastery. About one kilometer and 124 large steps (obviously built for penance) up the cliffside, we enter a series of buildings that have been created by building stone facades in front of caves, covering the trail with stone structures, and tunneling through the cliffs to connect the caves which are rooms of the monastery and church. Along a path that has been carved form the cliffside, a series of stone rooms with narrow doors and tiny windows were the housing for the monks.
Exhausted from the climb, we finally reach a cave close to the church where we are greeted by a young, black bearded, Greek Orthodox priest in black robes and hat.
He lectures us on the protocol of visiting the church (remove your hat even if you are an Orthodox Jew, don’t speak in a loud voice, and so forth) and then tells us the story of the place. The monastery was built in the early 1800s. It commemorates the site at which the church believes that Jesus spent 40 days in the desert and was repeatedly tempted by Satan.
Water used to be carried up the steep trails by the monks. Now a small pipeline carries water from the Israeli settlement above and an electric line also runs to the church. I am personally overjoyed to find an electric water fountain outside the church.
Water is, however always scarce in this climate. I stand next to the priest while he lectures and the limited water supply becomes very obvious. Only the dry air of the desert prevents his body odor from being overwhelming. Despite this, he is personable, knowledgeable, and (as some of the ladies point out) handsome.
The main church is a cave in which the once proud, ornate, wooden holy carvings and icons are deteriorating. Through the church and up a small flight of stairs, is an alcove containing a natural rock bench. This is the site of the Temptation where Jesus is supposed to have meditated for forty days.
After another brief lecture, we wander back toward the gondola landing. The contrast between the gondola landing, its modern technology, and its restaurants, compared to the monastery where even now monks spend three months year on contemplation, is striking.
The climb to the monastery and back in the heat is exhausting. We stop at the landing for ice creams, beer, sodas, and other means of quenching our thirst. The balcony of the landing overlooks not only the sheer drop to Jericho, but the hundreds of caves in the cliffside to which monks came to meditate and do penance.
Back down the cable and onto the bus, we headed for our last stop ... Nebi Musa.
Nebi Musa is believed by the Muslims to be the location of the tomb of Moses. We drive back on the main road to Jerusalem and turn off into the hills. Suddenly a space between hills reveals the fortress and caravanserai that is Nebi Musa. As we approach, it appears to be a set out of the old movie of the 1930s, “Beau Geste” ... a square stone fortress with high walls topped by white domes spaced around an open courtyard in the center. The caravanserai sits on top of a hill that overlooks one of the old roads from the desert to Jerusalem. It was used as an alternate stopping place for caravans, as a mosque, and as a fort.
In the years before the state of Israel was created, Nebi Musa was the place that the Arabs gathered to mount attacks on the Jews of Jerusalem
The interior fails to meet the promise of the dramatic view from outside. It is shabby and a small mosque occupies a building inside. In a room adjacent to the mosque (we have to remove our shoes to enter) is a tomb covered with ornate carpets. This is supposedly the tomb of Moses, revered both by Muslims and Jews.
After this visit, we are on our way back to Jerusalem, leaving the desert and the PA behind us, and desperately longing to take a shower.

Jerusalem Day - July 2002

2005-07-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Day, 2002

From our living room windows we can see the city of Ramallah on top of the distant hills. On the other side of our flat, from the bedroom windows, we look down on King George V Street, the main street of Jerusalem. From these windows we can also see a portion of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.
Last night King George Street was closed off for a parade in honor of the annual celebration of Jerusalem Day. There were participants from many cities and regions in the country and each city or region had a float accompanied by “marchers.”
We watched the parade from our windows and simultaneously on television.
After the parade, we met at the home of some close friends for dinner. We really did not expect it, but we were greeted by two other couples that we’ve known for years. All of us are now retired. Two of the men are ex-ambassadors and one is a retired Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. The Justice, some years ago, was the chief prosecutor at the trial of Adolph Eichmann.
We spent a pleasant evening together despite the obvious tension that exists throughout the city. No one really knows when and where the next suicide bombing will happen.
This morning we went out for a stroll and found some curio shops. Within an hour, we had bought an antique folding chair with mother-of-pearl inlay. The chair was made in Syria and was designed for carrying on camelback so that it would be available for making camp when the caravan stopped.
In the late afternoon I heard loud music from the street. Normally, I hear the faint sounds of the street musicians every day, but this was clearly coming from strong loudspeakers.
I looked down from the window and saw that the street was again blocked off and another parade was starting.
As we watched, several thousand teenagers and young people with children passed down the street in the direction of the Old City.
Almost every teenager carried a large Israeli flag and waved it enthusiastically.
We turned on the television and found out that these kids had gathered from all over Israel and, in addition, there were teens from Argentina, Russia, UK, the US, and other countries.
Every few blocks apart there was a sound truck playing Israeli folk music. Near the trucks, the teens danced in big circles in the street.
I guess that Israeli parades are a bit different than those you might see in other countries. First of all, there was no military presence in the parade. Of course, there were guards along the way carrying Uzi submachine guns.
Second, no one “marches” in step. The paraders stroll, dance, run back and forth, sit on the curb waving their flags, and straggle along behind each other. The only way that we could tell that the parade was over was when the police removed the barricades and the traffic started to flow once more.
On TV, the politicians were speaking at a memorial service on the outskirts of town. The most poignant remark was given by one of the generals who noted that; “The kids we see in the army today are the grandchildren of those who took the Old City in the Six Day War of 1967. When will it end?”

Jerusalem - Jason's Tomb - July 2002

2005-07-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

Jason’s Tomb

Living in Jerusalem offers the opportunity to visit little-known spots that tourists never get to see. These sights are either too out-of-the-way, or not famous enough to encourage tour guides to lead people to them.
The district of town called Rehavia was built in the 1920s and 1930s. It was then the “toniest” place to live in Jerusalem. There are still mansions hidden away on its narrow winding streets, although many have been converted to apartment houses. Most houses and apartment buildings have small gardens and big trees. Little public “gardens” seem to pop up unexpectedly every few blocks. At least two of Israel’s Prime ministers have had homes in the district.
Rehavia begins about six blocks from our home and is located downhill from us on the side of mountain. It’s an easy walk and we take the alleys and side streets to stay away from the heavily traveled main thoroughfares. Near the middle of the district is two-block long Alfasi Street.
This time, our goal was to find the Alfasi Cave, also known as Jason’s Tomb.
The cave was found in 1956 when a contractor was digging a hole for a building foundation. It was immediately reported to the government’s archaeological authorities, which prohibited further construction.
One of the fascinating experiences of living outside the United States is the engagement with history. Unfortunately, the Native American culture of North America left little in the way of artifacts for future residents to discover. I have visited the “Indian Mounds” near Columbus, Ohio and these represent some of the largest structures north of the Anasazi pueblos in the deserts of the Southwest and, of course, the Maya, Aztec, and Inca structures of Central and South America.
In the Middle East, the cradle of civilization and, perhaps, the cradle of modern man, history can be discovered right outside your front door.
Looking for the cave among the apartment houses on Alfasi Street, we didn’t know what to expect. Would it be in a small alley? Would it be under a house that had been built around it? Would there even be a sign of its existence?
As we walked down the street I saw a pillar on which there was a brass plaque. The plaque, in Hebrew, noted the presence of the cave, but said nothing else.
Past the pillar we entered a small public garden. Lying before us was a paved courtyard about twenty feet square. Across the courtyard on the hillside stood a reconstructed Hasmonean Tomb. Beneath it, Roman styled pillars held up the entry to a rough burial cave. Except for protective wire screen to keep out visitors (other than researchers) the main room of the cave was open to view.
Let me try to describe what we were seeing.
The Hasmonean era began in the second century BCE. The Hasmonean dynasty was the descendants of the Maccabees who led the successful revolt against the Syrian Empire that remained after the division of the empire of Alexander the Great. Over time, the Hasmonean “royalty” succumbed to the pressure of the Roman Empire and became a vassal of Rome. The last of the Hasmonean line was the wife of Herod the Great. Herod was not a member of the family, but claimed royal legitimacy through the marriage.
This period was a time of great building in Israel. Herod not only rebuilt the Temple, but built several major cities (such as Caesaria on the north coast) and palaces at Herodion and Masada.
The tombs of nobility and the wealthy followed a specific fashion of construction. For religious reasons, the tombs themselves were plain rough-cut rooms or caves to which several rooms had been added. The religion, however, did not prohibit building rather impressive memorials above the tombs.
The memorial building above the tomb had obviously been reconstructed from some of its stones found lying in the area. The building itself looks like a cube about twenty feet on a side. Stone casements on the sides simulate doors and windows, but these were never really openings. They were merely for decoration.
The top of the structure is completely covered with a stone pyramid about ten feet tall. All of this is built of the famous sand-colored Jerusalem limestone.
Cave tombs had been in use for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the Middle East. The tomb itself could predate the monument by hundreds of years.
One wall of the main room of the cave below the monument lies open. The roof of the cave had been supported with steel beams and one stone pillar has been put into its original position. Pieces of another pillar lie on the cave floor, as do several pedestals. Two roughly circular holes in the walls lead to burial chambers off the main room. This indicates that this was family tomb with rock-cut burial niches cut from the walls.
On the left wall as I look into the tomb is that which brought me here. There are two simple carvings cut into the tomb wall. One is about a foot square. It shows a seagoing sailing vessel, a merchant ship of the time with its square-rigged sail raised and rudders thrust into the water.
The other carving, about three feet long and about 15 inches high, depicts a war galley with a ram at its prow. The galley has a full square sail raised, a platform on the deck behind the ram holds the figures of warriors, a keel and rudder extend into the water, and twelve oars in the water show the ship under full power.
The galley seems to be attacking the merchant ship.
There are other, less clear drawings on the walls. One is a crouching deer.
A Hebrew inscription on one wall mentions the name “Yason,” the Hebrew equivalent of Jason.
Jason, is, of course, a Greek name, but many Jews of the time were Hellenized and had both Greek and Hebrew names. Jason, in Greek mythology, was the leader of the Argonauts who went in search of the Golden Fleece.
Here is a lesson in how to blow your mind!
We are standing at the mouth of a cave that is at an elevation of about three thousand feet above sea level and about 40 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. We are looking at a scene of a war galley in a form that had existed since at least 850 BCE… Homer’s time!
There’s an inscription that mention’s Jason. Was Jason only a myth? Was there a prototype for the myth? Was the Argos a real ship? Were the Argonauts real?
Why this pictograph so far from the sea?
Was this the tomb of a Jewish sea captain? Was he the raider whose exploits are shown in the picture? Did he attack and capture merchant ships? Was Jerusalem his home? How did he, a member of a desert tribe, learn to become a sea captain? A pirate? A warrior?
Was this the tomb of a merchant? Was this the way he died… in a pirate raid that overwhelmed his ship? How was his body recovered? Did he live to be buried here and record his big moment in history?
Was this a Jewish tomb in which a Greek sea captain was buried? What relationship would lead a Jew to bury a Greek in his family’s tomb?
Or, was this the tomb of a Jewish galley slave that had escaped captivity and wished to record his story in some form?
All of these possibilities. All of these stories. What really happened?
Tomorrow we fly to Antalya. While we are there, I hope to visit the Kania caves which hold artifacts from over 25,000 years ago. I also hope to visit Termessos, a city that held out even against Alexander’s armies three hundred years BCE.

Jerusalem's Great Synagogue - July 2002

2005-07-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

Odyssey

Today, the Sabbath of Rosh Hodesh (the New Moon or the first of the month on the Hebrew calendar), we walked about six blocks from our flat to the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem for services.
The synagogue is an imposing building of sand-colored Jerusalem limestone standing about fifty feet high near the center of the city. Inside, the walls reaching to the dome are of light tan marble punctuated by stained glass windows.
Today the services were well attended … about six hundred people or more. Significantly, men of military age were few. The reservists had been called up to staff internal security while the Regular Army conducted Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank. The Army was now massed on the border of Gaza.
We don’t know what will happen next. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. The Gazan people and the militias have been forewarned. A massive Israeli military strike is unlikely because of the potential cost in civilian casualties. (The Jenin myth of more than 500 deaths has been proven false by both Israeli and Palestinian counts, but Israel is wary of the bad press.)
Today, for the holiday, the Synagogue’s men’s choir is singing.
I am not really an observant Jew and my ability to follow the services in Hebrew is almost negligible, but with the strong voices of the choir and the chanting of the cantor, I relaxed. My mind started to wander.
“How did I get here?” I wondered. Suddenly it seemed that my thoughts jumped in five directions at once.
It wasn’t just that my wife is an Israeli. (I was probably predisposed to marry someone out-of-the-ordinary for an American, and it was clear when we met that Haya loved to travel.)
But what unlikely set of circumstances would deliver a Pennsylvania farm boy to the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem?
In junior high school at the Lebanon Independent Borough’s Harrison Public School (with my long-time best buddy, Gordon), I had two teacher-mentors. Miss Heller, who taught English with a love of the language, and Mr. Funk, who taught history and geography and taught me how to dream about horizons far away. Maybe they somehow sent me here?
Maybe my high school English teacher Miss Harpel, who taught me that I could be almost anything I wanted to be … maybe it was her fault.
Perhaps it was that my parents were immigrants to America and had left their roots far away in Transylvania. (But who listens to parents until you are as old as they were when you were a kid?)
It may have been just growing up during the Second World War and hearing stories of the war and the Holocaust … hearing them from a Jewish perspective. From a perspective that might make you feel that there is no home for Jews.
You see? My thoughts are going off like firecrackers in every direction.
One of my great-grandmothers was a member of the Szekely sect, a Sabbatharian (a sect of non-Jews who held Saturday to be the Sabbath). The Szekely were a sort of minor nobility descendant from the Kahzars who had invaded the region in about 1100 AD. She converted when she married my great-grandfather because the Kaiser had ordained (in about 1850) that the Government considered all people who held Saturday to be the Sabbath as Jews.
Was the traveler’s itch that I had genetic?
On May 27, 1924, another of my great-grandfathers, then aged 72, packed a suitcase and left Transylvania to visit English-controlled Palestine. He returned home on July 12, having traveled by train, third class on a Turkish steamer, horseback, carriage, bus, and foot to Jerusalem and back.
When I think of it, 78 years ago, when he was, for those times, an old man, he made an arduous trip alone. He was an orthodox Jew, so he could not eat non-kosher meat. In his letters home, he tells how he subsisted on vegetables bought wherever he could, canned sardines, and bread.
His excuse for the trip was that it was a “pilgrimage,” but he was really more interested in the strange sights and sounds of life than in religion. At one point in his letters he talks about meeting an old friend from his village … a friend who had emigrated to Palestine. In his letter he says, “Heskel is very old. I think 79 years old. He cannot work any more and his children support him.”
He also writes of several visits to the “Wailing Wall,” now referred to as the Western Wall of the temple mount.
Suddenly it occurs to me that as I walk around the city or visit the Western Wall I may be walking where my great-grandfather walked 76 years ago.
Maybe it is in the genes.
We have made arrangements to spend five days in Antalya in southern Turkey two weeks from now. We have a couple of trips planned in Israel and we have arrangements to spend a week in Croatia, in and around Dubrovnik, in June.
I finish this writing with a vodka-on-ice in hand, looking out over the city from the windows of our flat.
Life is made up of unpredictable coincidences, chance occurrences, good decisions, bad decisions, mistakes and luck. There is an old Yiddish expression (which may have been borrowed from Confucius), “When one door closes, another opens.”
Overall, ain’t life grand?

Anatolia, Turkey - July 2002

2005-07-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

Anatolia

This has been our fourth trip to Turkey in four years. There are several reasons for this travel streak. Turkey is only an hour or so flight from Tel Aviv. It’s inexpensive… this trip included flights, five days/four nights lodging in a five-star resort hotel including breakfast and dinner for $550 for the two of us. Perhaps most of all, the country and its history are fascinating.
Turkey’s history includes inhabitation by the Neaderthals and earliest Cro-Magnon man (and woman), through the earliest civilizations, the Hittites, the early Greeks, the empire of Macedonian Alexander, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and modern Turkey on the edge of joining the European Union.
American history is an amalgam of the history of the Mediterranean. (The educated writers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution were literate in Greek, Latin, and often Hebrew.)
The Greeks spread their culture through colonization, but even Alexander, perhaps history’s greatest intuitive military mind, could not build a cohesive empire.
The Romans adopted Greek culture and built an empire by building roads that supported rapid communications. So the Romans spread the Greek culture throughout Europe and the Middle East.
Finally, the Jews introduced monotheism; and the Jewish concept of God spread throughout the Roman Empire.
At the hub of all these events was Turkey… the bridge between Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Turkey is a country of contradictions. Nowhere has this been more apparent to us than in Anatolia. (I’ll get back to this thought later.)
We booked a package (flights, airport transfers, hotel, half-board) through Flying Carpet Tours. The Sunday afternoon flight to Antalya was on Anatolia Airlines. On landing, we simply showed our Israeli passports to passport control and were waved through. Citizens of most other nations have to fill out forms and pay an entry fee. Israel is a close ally of Turkey and helps to maintain Turkey’s air force and airlines’ equipment.
Our hotel, the Club Sera Hotel, was only a twenty-minute ride from the airport and we arrived in time to unpack and get settled before dinner. We had to leave on Thursday morning, so that gave us three full days to explore the region around Antalya.
Antalya itself has a population of about 600,000, but we were told that the population more than doubles during the summer season when tourists visit and when wealthier Turks from Istanbul and Ankara come to their summer flats to escape the inland heat.
From Thrace, Istanbul, and Troy in the northwest to Cyprus off the southeast coast, the Greeks founded colonies and city-states. Modern-day Turks are a mixture of Greek, Roman, Macedonian, Caucasian, and Semitic peoples. They have a great pride in their archaeological heritage from the Greeks. (It is one point of the contradictions that they have been fighting the Greeks over possession of Cyprus for decades.)
The city of Antalya traces its history only back to the first century BCE (Before the Current Era) when Attalus II of Pergamum founded it. When the Roman Empire expanded Antalya became a part. In 130 CE, the Emperor Hadrian visited and they built him a triumphal arch. (Hadrian was an inveterate tourist and most places he visited were required to build a triumphal arch to welcome him. Many of these huge, twenty- to thirty-foot tall, often intricately carved stone arches still exist while Hadrian and the slaves who sweated to build the arches are long gone.)
After the Romans came the Byzantines. After the Byzantines came the Seljuk Turks from Konya. After the Turks came the Mongol invaders. After the Mongols came the Ottoman Empire. After World War I, the Allies parceled out pieces of the Ottoman Empire and Italy got Antalya in 1918. Finally, Ataturk’s Turkish Republican armies routed all foreigners by 1921.
Antalya lies on a bay. Half the bay has pebble beaches and the other half has high cliffs. A beautiful park-like promenade traces the edge of the cliffs and is interrupted by two waterfalls more than forty feet high. At the southeast end of the bay the Romans built a harbor nestled in a small cove of the cliffs. The Roman breakwaters still protect the ships and yachts anchored here.
On our first day, we decided to organize our own tour. We took a dolmus (a local bus named after Turkish stuffed cabbage) for the half-hour trip to Kaleici, the Old City on the harbor. Along the way we passed mile after mile of ten- and twelve-story tall apartment houses. Only the rich live in private villas.
In the downtown area we asked directions and found our way toward the unusual, 13th century, fluted minaret that stands next to a church that the sultan had converted to a mosque.
When Turks hear me speak English, they immediately ask where I come from. Invariably, I answer, “California.”
“Ah,” they answer with a smile, “America!”
As we entered Republic Square, a very nice blonde woman noticed us asking directions.
She asked if we were English. When I said “California,” she answered, “Tucson, Arizona.”
It developed that she had lived in Tucson for many years and that since retirement, she had been living several months each year in Antalya, where she was born.
She insisted on guiding us directly to the entrance of the old city.
We started down the steep, narrow streets lined with shops and coffeehouses. At every step salesmen accosted us trying to peddle their wares or entice us into their shops for porcelain, leather, metal work, jewelry, or carpets.
At first we tried to be polite, but they are experts at turning the slightest answer into a conversation and a sales pitch. Finally we were forced to stop being polite and just wave them away without responding.
The old city is made up mostly of gracious old Ottoman houses with lath and plaster walls that, after severe neglect, are being rescued. Many of these huge old homes, made to house the four wives and numerous children of the nobles and rich, are now converted to bed-and-breakfast hotels.
Finally, at the bottom of the hill, we found the neat little harbor. From there we climbed the concrete stairway to the top of the cliff on one side and found a charmingly located restaurant for lunch.
When the waiter saw us looking at the menu posted outside, he, naturally, invited us in. When he learned that I was from America, he proudly took out his wallet and showed an ID card from the US Navy exercises in which he had participated when he was in the Turkish Navy.
We had a delightful lunch. Our table was perched by the railing that overlooked the harbor below and most of the bay.
Our ex-Navy waiter took very good care of us. American tourists are fairly rare in Antalya. Most of the tourists here are German.
Speaking of our ex-Navy waiter is a good time to reflect on another of the contradictions of Turkey.
Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, was a general who took over the government in a coup after their disastrous participation in WW1. As an observer who is biased toward Western civilization, I have long admired Ataturk’s genius and the strength of his convictions. If only countries like Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria had had such leaders the world would be very different today.
Ataturk banned state support for the Muslim religion. He also forced the country to change to a Roman alphabet from Arabic, forced the schools to accept women, allowed women to wear western dress, and on and on. These were titanic changes for a country still mentally and emotionally in the fifteenth century.
Ataturk's aim was to make Turkey over from an Asian country into a European country. He felt that such a change was Turkey’s only way out of sustained poverty.
His legacy continues, but not without conflict. Turkey has more than half a dozen political parties of significant size. The country is a parliamentary democracy like Canada, Israel, England, and others. The right-of-center parties dominate the government and these parties, in turn, are strongly influenced by the military.
Ataturk used the military to remake the country. With some exceptions, every man of 20 must serve 18 months in the armed services. Only those going to college and those working overseas may delay their service. Officers are professionals and there are even about 2,000 professional women serving as officers. (Women are not required to serve.)
Turkey maintains an armed force of about 800,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and gendarmerie. It has the tenth largest standing army, the fifth largest tank force, and the ninth largest submarine fleet in the world. Turkey’s closest allies are the U.S and Israel with whom it conducts joint defense excersizes and from whom it buys weapons and fleet maintenance.
In a sense, the armed forces constitute the largest political and “educational” institution in the country. The Turkish constitution, established under Ataturk, requires the government to be strictly secular. A few years ago, fundamentalist women in college sued to be permitted to cover their heads with shawls. The Supreme Court ruled that since Turkey was secular and that the colleges were supported by government money, women were forbidden from “practicing religion” in a government institution.
Now for another contradiction.
Schooling is compulsory in Turkey only for eight years. Although the government is trying hard to build more classrooms and educate more teachers, it faces continual shortages of both.
Beginning teachers’ pay is not very good and only with seniority can a teacher get to a wage that will allow living in one of the cities. As a result, most teachers are forced to begin their careers in the villages.
The brother of Hassan, our driver, is a teacher. He lives in a village with his wife and three children. His wages are about $250 per month. In addition to his wages, he receives free housing and food. Every few years, as he gains seniority, he will be transferred to more desirable locations.
The Muslim religion is taught in public schools and in private schools. Half the population performs their religious duties with some regularity. The religious schools graduate about 50,000 imams (ministers) each year, but there are only jobs for about 2,000. The rest go on to become teachers or government workers.
As a result, fundamentalist Muslim views strongly influence the education of Turkish children. This is directly in conflict with the government’s desire to retain a secular state.
After lunch we wandered to the top of the old city and found a small museum that contained a reconstruction of an old Eastern Orthodox Christian church, an exhibit of marvelous photographs from the late 1800s, and a reconstruction of an Ottoman home.
From there we found our way back to the center of the city and picked up a dolmus back to the hotel so that we could relax with an afternoon swim.
The Hotel Club Sera is located on its own rocky cove. By building a breakwater, they created a small beach and swimming area for children. Other than this, the swimming is either in the pool or off the docks into the sea.
I found the water in the beach area to be only knee deep, the water in the sea to be too rough and cold with breakers due to the wind, and finally settled on a swim in the pool.
The hotel was originally centered around its very ornate, Las Vegas style, casino. However, gambling was outlawed here a few years ago under pressure from the religious factions. Now the casino has been converted to what is possibly the most ornate, rococo, gilded, jewelry store in the world. The store claims to have an inventory of 17,000 pieces of gold jewelry… all overpriced.
The hotel itself has acres of land, four restaurants, six bars, two nightclubs, broad lawns and terraces, and outdoor dining areas.
One nightclub has a Las Vegas style show with Russian showgirls in skimpy outfits. To avoid problems with the religious factions, the show is only put on at 12:30 a.m., after children are sure to be in bed.
Before leaving for our tour of the old city, we had investigated other tours and decided instead to hire a car and driver.
The next morning we walked over to the car rental office about a block from our hotel, picking up a liter of mineral water on the way (carrying water is essential here), and met our driver, Hassan Yildiz.
Hassan is about thirty years old and, in common with the younger generations of Turks, he looks healthy and handsome. (Just as a side comment, I find that most Turkish girls are beautiful.) During our travels together he will tell us his life story. Briefly, he was born in eastern Turkey on a farm near the Syrian border. In common with most of his family he is a relatively religious Muslim. He has one brother and several half-brothers and sisters.
When he was a teenager his father married a second wife. This was an “unofficial” marriage since Turkey only allows one “legal” wife. His mother objected and divorced his father, whereupon his father married the second wife. He doesn’t think much of his father.
Hassan was married for the first time to a Russian girl. His mother did not approve. The marriage didn’t work out because the Russian girl refused to become a religious Muslim; however, he still loves her.
His second marriage is to a Turkish woman. His mother approves of this wife and urges him to have children.
He tells us that his new wife (less than a year) doesn’t trust him. He also tells us that he has a married Turkish girlfriend and a Russian girlfriend. He loves the Russian women because they are “so white-skinned.” Apparently Turkey has quite a few Russian immigrants.
Hassan flashes us a charming smile as he tells these stories.
Before we made the arrangements for the tour, he told us that he is a good driver but he has not been trained as a guide. He keeps trying to sell us more tours, but he is very honest with us and, while we are with him, very protective of us. Whenever Haya shops, Hassan will bargain for her in Turkish. Since the prices are discussed in English or German we can follow the progress.
Once Haya asked him about his experience with foreign travel. He has never been out of the country, but sometimes thinks of it. Haya asked if there are tour packages such as the one we took to come to Turkey.
Hassan doesn’t know of any except to Egypt. (Egypt is poorer than Turkey. Packages seem to follow a sort of rule of the lowest cost… each country selling up to the next tier.)
Would he go to Israel? “Why should I go to a country where they kill Muslims?”
Despite this opinion, he shares a good time with us.
He loves to talk and waves both hands when he talks, making mountain road driving even more of an adventure for us.
Termessos is our first destination outside Antalya. On the way, we stop at the Antalya Museum so that I can pick up a guidebook. (Whenever we can, I prefer to buy a guidebook. They are usually much more reliable than the chancy histories told us by so-called guides.)
Termessos is about 35 kilometers inland from Antalya and is at an altitude of over three thousand feet on a peak of the Katrancik range. A short distance inland, most of southern Turkey is mountainous. In fact, Termessos was not built by the Greeks since they were reluctant to go far from the sea. Instead, it is believed that Termessos was built by an Anatolian people called the Solyms, who warred with the Greeks.
For centuries, the city remained independent although the surrounding country was conquered by one king after another.
Homer credits the Solyms with many heroic acts during the Trojan War. Much later, Strabo, another Greek historian tells of the inhabitants of Termessos being an independent warrior peoples. Such accounts would place the founding of the city at some time well before 800 BCE. Indeed, it appears to have been associated with the ancient Lydian kingdom until the area was taken over by the Persians in 547 BCE.
What is really interesting is that in 333 BCE, when Alexander laid siege to the city; he failed to conquer it. Antigonos, one of the three generals who inherited the Macedonian kingdom after Alexander died, finally conquered it after Alexander’s death.
Strabo says that Termessos became wealthy after their conquests in the third century BCE. At that time they became Hellenized. Then, in 189 BCE, they sided with Antiochus, the Seleucid king in the war against the Romans. Antiochus lost and the entire area became part of the Roman Empire.
Local wars came and went, but Termessos was never taken, even when they negotiated surrender and had to quarter Roman troops.
Finally, Termessos sided with the Romans in the war with Mithridates in 132 BCE. As a result, they regained their independence and the city expanded. Most of the ruins seen today are from this period.
Hadrian visited this city and they built an arch for him. The city remained prominent until the fifth century when it was finally abandoned by a people that cared more for comfort than independence.
The city at the top of the mountain fell victim to Turkey’s earthquakes over the centuries. No slaves were left to rebuild the temples and palaces that they had originally built for the warriors of Termessos.
Termessos is located near the top of Mount Guluk; just enough below the top to catch the runoff of rainwater and snow melt to fill its impressively large underground cisterns. It is literally carved out of the rock in two ways. First, the rock of the mountain was quarried to build the city. Second, many of the defensive buildings and even the cisterns incorporate the natural cliffs of the mountain as parts of the walls.
The base of Mount Guluk, where we parked the car, is already over 2,000 feet above sea level. My guidebook said that it was about two kilometers up to the ruins and about a 45-minute climb. The trail was very steep and consisted of gravel, wooden logs that had been placed as steps, quarried stones that had fallen from ruined buildings above, and rubble. Hiking up the two kilometers took us about 43 minutes during which we stopped to rest several times at the ruins of watchtowers or fortified gates. I was, I admit, a bit winded when we arrived.
(Although many tours include Termessos and there were several buses in the parking lot, Hassan told us that only about ten percent of the tourists make the climb to the top.)
Finally at the top, we found a city on what had been an artificially create plateau. The low hills and valleys now present were really the remains of ruined buildings.
Originally there was a paved road, the “King’s Road,” leading from the valley to the city center. Near the agora, the marketplace, there is an inscription bearing the names of those who contributed to building the road. Obviously, the names of the slaves who did the actual work are not on the inscription.
Inside the city gate was the gymnasium, the school for children and for sports and warriors. This building was about 300 feet long and 45 feet wide. Right next to it was the hamam, or bathhouse, which, in traditional Greek fashion, had three divisions… the calderium (steam room), the tepidarium (warm room), and the frigidarium (cool room) where the athletes and warriors relaxed.
While we are exploring, Hassan climbs up to the top of the structure and says his midday prayers.
Next was the theater that was worth the climb up the mountain. The theater was built to seat about 4,200 people, which is some indication of the size of the citizenry. (Slaves didn’t get to sit in the theater, but both men and women citizens did.)
The ruins of the amphitheater perch on the edge of a cliff. The proscenium, that area we now call the stage and the backdrop were on the cliff’s edge and the seats faced that direction. When the stone backdrop buildings at the rear of the stage existed, the audience could only see the view through windows and arches. Now, with the backdrop in ruins, from the top tier of the benches we could see through a gap in the mountains to the plain 3,000 feet below and almost see as far as Antalya and the sea.
Imagine the view from the watchtowers. You could tell if an enemy was coming for a day in advance.
Termessos followed the city plan of the Greco-Roman civitas. That is, it had all the requisite buildings: the gymnasium, the bathhouse, the agora (rectangular open marketplace) and its surrounding stoa (covered shops), the odeon (indoor theater) with walls 30 feet high and three feet thick, the water system, the drainage system, the tombs of the heroes, the temples to the various gods and goddesses, the colonnaded road, the necropolis (cemetery) and the mausoleums.
Here, in a vale hidden near the top of a mountain, was a city-state that minted its own coins and created its own form of the dominant civilization.
A city so strong that after several days of attacks and the loss of two of his commanders, Alexander the Great was forced to say, “Let me be. I still have a long way to go. I cannot permit my armies to be decimated before a falcon’s crest.”
Alexander sought revenge before he left. His troops cut down the thousands of olive trees on the hillsides that were the source of the city’s livelihood.
Our hike down was as precarious as going up. Haya was helped immensely by Hassan’s support.
Next, we had to find lunch, and we found it at a caravansary in a state park only a few kilometers away. In fact, it was close to the turnoff to our next destination, the Karain caves.
Here we found an open-air restaurant. Beside the restaurant was a nomad’s tent, used by the staff for rest breaks. A few yards away stood another structure with open sides. Inside were couches and low tables arranged for evening relaxation with drinks, coffee and smoking. Alcohol is forbidden to practicing Muslims, but it looked as if this place was set up for tour groups.
After lunch on a shaded portico overlooking the fertile farms of the valley, we drove 12 kilometers up the next mountain to the museum at Karain. The parking lot is about 2,000 feet above sea level.
We were alone when we arrived and the attendant, who had been outside washing a tractor, unlocked the museum for us and collected the entrance fee. The museum contains bones and stone tools found in the digs of the cave. Archaeologists believe that this cave was continuously inhabited for over 25,000 years.
The glass cases in the small museum held the bones and teeth of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon people, elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lions, cave bears, and other animals that had lived in the region before, during and after the Ice Age.
The attendant opened the back door of the museum and gestured us through. We stepped onto a small concrete platform and faced the hillside. No trail or path was obvious from this location.
Hassan stepped forward and called to Haya, “This way, Madame.”
The first few steps up the so-called trail informed us that this was something different from the climb at Termessos. At least, at Termessos we could walk upright. Here the trail was so steep that at many points both hands and feet were necessary for the climb. About 500 feet up we came to a rock shelf and the entrances to the cave appeared.
By this time my backpack containing our cameras and water bottles felt as though it were filled with rocks.
Karain Cave has five entrances and has been carved from the limestone by water action. Inside, stalactites form columns from ceiling to floor and the ceiling is black with the smoke of centuries of campfires.
Just inside the entrance to the main room of the cave and about nine feet above the floor, someone in the past has carved a human face in relief. The stalactite on which it is carved splits into two seeming legs about halfway down. It’s a haunting sight… the ghost of some past resident or god.
It’s easy to understand how the cave provided protection to it’s inhabitants over the millennia and how they were able to live well on the produce and hunting offered by the plains and streams below.
Excavations inside the cave have resulted in scaffolded digs going down over fifty feet.
Although Karain is one of the more fascinating places to visit, the tour buses don’t come here. The climb is too rough for most tourists. During the hour or so we spent at the cave, only one other person arrived.
Leaving Karain Cave, we headed for the well-known Duden Falls only 10 kilometers from Antalya and near to our hotel.
The Upper Duden Falls is located in a pleasant park that is a picnic favorite for Antalya residents. The Upper Falls and the Lower Falls on the coast, where the water flows over a forty-foot precipice to the sea below, are pleasant but rather ordinary. They are only well known because they are so close to Antalya that almost every tour stops at the park.
For the next day, we had been tempted to take a tour, but we found an opportunity to attend a rare concert at the Aspendos Theatre in the evening. Instead of the tour, we opted to hire Hassan and the car for another half day. This time we headed east along the coast to the ancient city of Perge.
When we arrived at the entry gate, we found that the entry prices had been raised to 15 million lire per person (about $11.00). Hassan was shocked at this price, since last year it was only 10 million lire. He started negotiating with the attendant. Finally they arrived at an agreement: Hassan would enter free as a guide, we would pay the 15 million lire entry fee for me, but we identified Haya as a teacher and therefore only required to pay 5 million lire.
Perge is a well-preserved city on a plain that was probably founded by Greek colonists after the Trojan War. In common with other Greek cities, it has a theatre, a stadium (an oval racetrack with tiered seats all around), a huge bathhouse, an acropolis (high place) with temples to the gods, and a very large agora surrounded by the columned stoa that contained the shops.
Many of the columns are still standing and many walls remain so it is easy to visualize how the city looked at its peak.
Perge is distinguished from many other cities by its thousand foot long, colonnaded main street. At one end of the street is a Temple. Under the arch of the temple is a platform bearing the reclining figure of the god Kestros: a god of streams and rivers. From a hole in the base of the platform there once flowed the water that supplied the city. Borne there by channels and aqueducts from the mountains above, the water flowed into a ground-level aqueduct that traveled down the center of the main street and fed water to the houses, public buildings, and baths along the way. At lower than ground level, channels covered with stone provided drainage for the city.
In the main street we found many women vendors from the local area. Their blankets laid out on the ground and covered with inexpensive trinkets and jewelry, they were there to trap tourists. Haya and Hassan spent some time picking out jewelry and together bargaining for the best price. Finally, they combined their selections and made a bargain for the whole lot. (Hassan said that he was buying a present for his Russian girlfriend who was supposed to visit in a few weeks.)
Although Greek in style, most of the ruins belong to the Roman era. The theatre, constructed in the second century CE, was designed to hold up to 15,000 people. The city walls, which are from the earlier Greek period, have defensive towers and a monumental stone gate.
In many instances, columns and pillars have recently been set back on their bases in an attempt to provide a better sense of what the city must have been like before it was abandoned by its people. As with Termessos, earthquakes, weather and looting have taken their toll. However, Perge, because of its easily accessible location, has probably also been used as a stone quarry. The huge blocks used to build the city must have been tempting to more modern builders.
For lunch we drove to Kursunlu Selalesi (Kursunlu Falls). Here in a beautiful wooded park, a river bursts out of the ground and creates a curtain of small waterfalls about fifty feet wide. Below the falls are pools of cool water and a jungle-like growth of trees and vines in the cool, damp air.
Near the base of the falls we found a delightful restaurant. After we enjoyed our lunch, which for me included my favorite Turkish “Efes” beer, they attempted to overcharge us. Hassan came to our rescue once again and argued with the waiter vociferously. At the end, our bill was reduced by a third.
That night a charter bus picked us up for the concert at Aspendos.
The land east of Antalya was called Pamphylia in ancient times. Aspendos lies close to 50 kilometers east of Antalya. Most of what remains are Roman ruins, but digs have identified remains as old as the Hittite Empire of at least 800 BCE.
The theatre here is a marvel. It was built by the Romans, maintained by the Byzantines and the Seljuks, and finally restored after a visit by Ataturk. It is one of the best working examples of a Greco-Roman theatre in the world. (Two others are in Israel.)
Since we arrived at night, we could not see the city, but the theatre operated as it might have 2,000 years ago. We were among the last of the approximately 15,000 people to arrive. Just after we walked in, the musicians stood, the conductor strode to the front of the stage, and the crowd applauded. We quickly found seats on the stone benches.
The Antalya Senfoni Orkestrasi and a guest tenor from Bogota, Columbia, performed a two-hour program that included works from Bach, Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Glinka, and Ravel.
For an encore, the conductor invited audience participation by clapping and singing to popular Turkish music.
It was almost 2 a.m. when we returned to our hotel, tired, but very pleased with the performance and the theatre.
The next morning we were flying home.
I shouldn’t end this piece (although it’s much longer than I thought it would be) without recounting the “Legend of the Aspendos Theatre.”
The story goes that the Emperor Aurelius said one day, “Whoever builds a gorgeous monument in this region will marry my beautiful daughter.”
Of course, this turned on every young man. Each of them tried to create an idea for a monument or hire someone to create the idea. In the meantime, the architect Zenon actually started building the Aspendos Theatre.
The Emperor had a difficult time choosing among all the monuments. One night he was sitting on the top step of the theatre trying to make a decision and he heard a voice.
“You should give your daughter’s hand to me.”
The voice was so soft, but so human that the king looked around. No one was near him. Then he looked down and saw the figure of Zenon on the stage way below.
Aurelius suddenly realized that the theatre was so well designed that even a whisper from the stage could be heard at the top step.
Naturally, there was a happy ending for Zenon.
Over the years things must have deteriorated, because our tenor used a microphone, but we enjoyed it anyway!