Jersusalem, Old City: first impressions

I spent the morning walking around inside the walls of the Old City. It's a maze of cavernous, arched alleys, riddled with street vendors, tourists, and locals of various faiths of the Book making the daily trek to their sites of worship. The vendors seemed tense. Not so quick with jokes or smiles, but not pushy either. In front of a falafel stand, I raised my camera to a blank wall to measure the light. The boy working in the stand yelled, "No photo." I turned and looked at him, wondering what objection he could possibly have to a foreigner aiming his camera at a blank wall. The boy's face registered a small look of surprise when I spoke to him in Arabic. "Why?" I asked. "Aaschen hayq," he responded. Because.

It must get pretty annoying to work in a place that's flooded with tourists who are always snapping up shots of your daily life, which they (and I) can't help but see as exotic, fascinating, quaint. But, the Old City is a tourist area, right? Perhaps a highly spiritualized and politicized tourist area, where you can cut through the tension with a knife, but a tourist trap nonetheless. Tourists take photos — it's what we do. Get over it.

I sat on a wicker stool with a group of old men and ate a falafel under the vaulted arcade that leads up to the Dome of the Rock. I drank a cup of Arabic coffee and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I watched Muslims pass back and forth to the mosque — the second holiest site in Islam — for Friday prayers. Occasionally a Jew would pass by, only to be turned away by an Israeli soldier and armed security guard at the gate. The Dome of the Rock is reserved exclusively for Muslims on Fridays, the Muslim holy day.

I was turned away by the same guards, in fact. And not so pleasantly, either. I approached the steps, and wasn't even going to enter, and a private guard lunged up from his stool. "It's closed! Muslims only today." "Okay," I said. I stood on the step, catching a glimpse of the stunningly intricate blue and gold paintwork on the side of the mosque. "BYE!" the guard shouted at me. Immediately, the soldier chimed in, "bye bye!" He shooed me away with his hand. I stood there, transfixed, on the edge of rage. A vendor had a toy stand inches away from the soldier and guard, so I asked, "I can't stand on the steps?" "No." "What if I want to buy something from this stand?"

They begrudgingly said, "Okay." I told them that they didn't have to be so rude. They stared at me blankly. I should have asked them why they behave that way, why they would be so hostile to a foreign visitor, or anyone for that matter. It wouldn't have done any good. And maybe there's something I don't understand about why they behave that way. Whatever the reason, that type of behavior doesn't put the best face on Israel.

This Friday is a Jewish holiday called Shavuot, so the Old City was packed with orthodox on their way to the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall — the last remnant of the 2nd temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The orthodox have different styles of dress depending on where their families came from in Europe. Men wear big black hats, mostly wide-brimmed variations on the homburg and fedora, usually made of felt or velvet. But a certain group, I'm not sure which, wears giant circular fur hats that I never get tired of staring at. I know it's not nice to stare, but these things are amazing. I'm going back to the Old City this afternoon to try to get some more photos of them.

There is a checkpoint before the entrance to the Wailing Wall area. There is a metal detector and there are armed guards. Something about the presence of armed guards at the entrance to a holy area, a peaceful sanctuary, seems contradictory to me. Call me crazy, but I'm sure it's not what God intended. But where is God in all of this?

Here are some photos from today in the Old City. Look out for more soon.

Orthodox men entering the Old City through the Damascus Gate, on their way to pray at the Wailing Wall

An old man rocks back and forth as he recites the Torah in a tunnel adjacent to the Wailing Wall

Men pray at the Wailing Wall. Tables and plastic chairs are available for those who wish to sit and study Torah.

Israeli soldiers patrol the Arab quarter of the Old City near the Dome of the Rock, Wailing Wall

A woman in traditional Palestinian dress sells fresh mint in the Old City.

Most Palestinians want unity gov't — but what do their leaders want?

I saw this Reuters article this morning and it reminded me of a survey I read about in a recent International Crisis Group report, titled "Gaza's Unfinished Business." The survey in the ICG report showed that 40% of Gazans had no faith in either Fatah or Hamas before the Israeli offensive, and that number has risen to 60% in the months since the offensive. The Bir Zeit survey reported in this article claims that 58% of Palestinians (from a sample of over 6,000 from Gaza + West Bank) want a unity government. They should have it — but their leadership stands in the way.

The fundamental principle of democracy — before you get into variations like representative democ., parliamentary, etc. — is, to put it roughly, "let the people decide, and give the people what they want." The will of the people should supersede political differences; in a parliamentary system, parties debate and oppose one another with the ultimate goal of achieving a political outcome that is satisfactory to as many of the "people" as possible, including underrepresented minorities.

Perhaps I am naïve, but if the will of the people is so clear in Palestine, why doesn't the leadership respect it? Both Fatah and Hamas claim to support democracy. In fact, Hamas often claims to be the only truly democratically elected government in the Middle East; the Islamic movement's supporters cannot get over the ironic rejection of Hamas' victory by the West, so keen to spread democracy, so much less keen to respect its outcomes. I am reminded of Caliban's remark to Prospero in The Tempest:

You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is I know how to curse

The sharp-tongued anti-America rhetoric that we hear from Hamas' leadership should not surprise us; we are, in so many ways, Prospero. We have given Hamas the tools to walk and talk like a democracy, and they are using their newly acquired skills to throw mud in our faces. And we should not expect anything different — our support for democracy in Palestine was always half-hearted at best, and never intended to allow for majority representation of Hamas.

But now that Hamas has the mandate in Gaza, and responsibility for 1.5 million people who are currently recovering from a catastrophic invasion, will they continue to curse us, and to curse Israel, without giving their own people what they so desperately want and need, the unity government that will be a critical step toward ending the siege and confronting the expansion of settlements in the West Bank? Will they continue to allow their resentment at being spurned by the Palestinian elite and the West to dictate the path forward? And as for Fatah, will they recognize Hamas as the coequal that they have clearly become? Or will they cling to power in the West Bank through underhanded means and deprive their own supporters of a viable political future?

What is it, really, that both Fatah and Hamas want? Do their priorities represent the people?

Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day. Today I remember every American who has ever served in the U.S. military, whether by choice or by obligation. I remember with sadness those who have died in uniform, especially those I was lucky enough to know:

Nicholas Mason
KIA 21 DEC 2004, Mosul, Iraq



David Ruhren
KIA 21 DEC 2004, Mosul, Iraq



Jonathan Forde
Died 13 AUG 2007



David Lambert
KIA 26 OCT 2007, Baghdad, Iraq



Derek Banks
KIA 14 NOV 2007, Baghdad, Iraq



Jeremiah McNeal
KIA 6 APR 2008, Baghdad, Iraq

You can read a tribute I wrote to Jeremiah McNeal when I learned of his death about this time last year here. You may also take the time to read a story I wrote for the Virginia Quarterly Review about Nick Mason, David Ruhren, and two other veterans of Charlie Co. 276th Engineer Battalion who were close to Nick and David. The VQR story, "A Few Unforeseen Things," includes video footage of interviews with the Mason family and David's mother, Sonja Ruhren. I hoped the videos and the stories could help non-military people think about what it means to serve, to lose, and to return. And I hope these stories can be memorials in their own right.

Gaza: Portraits young and old

I've taken a new interest in portraiture after spending some time with photographer Asim Rafiqui in Gaza last winter. Asim and I were working together on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can see our project page here. We each wanted to do something different than what our fellow journalists were doing in the aftermath of Israel's winter offensive against Hamas—Asim as a photographer, and I as a writer. We were working on more long-term, subjective projects, and we were interested in showing more than destruction and immediate suffering. Not to say that destruction and suffering aren't worthy subjects; rather, we knew that our peers in the foreign media were covering those aspects of Operation Cast Lead's aftermath extensively, and we knew our grant afforded us the opportunity to approach our subjects with a bit more intimacy.

Asim shoots black and white photos with two vintage Leica M7 cameras. He has a masterful eye for light, and he knows how to put his subjects at ease with one or two simple words and gestures. Watching Asim work with his subjects was like a live workshop. The beauty of portrait photography, I learned, is that you can put a little bit of yourself in every portrait, but you never have to put words in anyone's mouth. All you have to do is fill the frame with the humanity inches from your lens, and if you do it right, the picture says it all.

I'm not claiming I do it right yet, but I'm trying to learn. I look through my photos from Gaza and Egypt pretty often, and from Montana and Virginia too, and I never get tired of looking for new phrases in the wonderful stories that faces tell.

Here are three of the portraits I took in Gaza last winter. I'll post more soon.

Ahmed Hussein, 65, Jabalia

Gazan girlscout, Gaza City

Waaji Imsalaam, 70, Jabalia

IDF and Hamas: "opposite and complementary narratives" of winter offensive

From Amira Hass's story in Haaretz, 24 May, 2009:

Comparing Hamas and IDF accounts of the winter 2008-2009 offensive in Gaza, Amira Hass notes the following: "Fighting . . . was intensive, continuous, complex: opposite and complementary narratives of Hamas and the IDF, and both can be believed to the same extent."

"To the same extent," that is, if the extent is "not at all." The IDF says the fighting was intensive and complex in order to justify the extreme amount of damage it inflicted on civilian structures and lives. Iz Al-Din Al-Qassam fighters say the fight was heavy and long because to say otherwise is to admit that they ran away, which they did, and which they are perfectly happy to admit out of the other side of their mouths, as Hass notes in her article: "In all the organizations, and particularly Iz al-Din al-Qassam, the decision was taken not to lose fighters. Not to commit suicides."

Gazan civilians are stuck between the "opposite and complementary narratives" of Hamas and the IDF. It's a deadly, voiceless space.

Mark Regev on the issue of settlements

From the Washington Post, 24 May 2009:

"Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said there are no plans for a full settlement freeze. 'The issue of settlements is a final status issue, and until there are final status arrangements, it would not be fair to kill normal life inside existing communities,' he said."

I just get hung up on that phrase, "it would not be fair to kill normal life inside existing communities." Is that not exactly what the settlements and their concomitant security fences and checkpoints do to "existing [Palestinian] communities," that have existed for a lot longer than the settlements?

I took a tour of the security fence/separation wall about ten days ago, and it's nothing if not a mechanism to "kill normal life" and to divide communities, to cut off farmers from their lands and towns from their markets. I talked to one man who owns olive groves on the "inside" of the fence, meaning the Israeli side. He's allowed to cross to his fields during three half-hour intervals each day — at 8:00, 12:00, and 4:30 — and if he gets stuck when the fence closes for the night at 5:00 pm, he has to report to the nearest Israeli military post, where he'll probably have his permit revoked. On the way north from Ramallah, far from the security fence, we passed an olive grove that was still smoldering from an act of arson by settlers that left several acres burnt to a crisp. The farmers were there when we passed, looking on helplessly. A fire truck was parked on the highway above, unable to reach the flames.

When Mr. Regev speaks about fairness, I wonder if he thinks about the truly unfair impact of the settlements on West Bank Palestinians. I wonder if he thinks about what it might be like to walk out of your door one morning and see your grandfather's olive groves going up in smoke.

An electrified security gate on the separation fence that cuts off Palestinian land from Israeli-controlled land on the massive Ariel settlement bloc. The settlement bloc is home to some 40,000 people.

Olive groves burned by settlers north of Ramallah. In the lower left, Palestinian olive farmers look on helplessly as the flames spread below.

From the Archives: Snapshots at Giza

In December, I took my mom to the Giza Plateau to see the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx. Despite the fact that it was a really windy day, with sandstorm conditions, the Giza Plateau was jam packed with tourists and Egyptian schoolkids on field trips.Egyptians pay one pound to get into the park — roughly twenty cents — and foreigners pay about fifty pounds for each attraction, or ten dollars. It's cool that the Egyptian government tries to make Egypt's treasures financially accessible to the public; it's a lot easier than weeding corruption and nepotism out of Egyptian government and business, which might allow for a greater dispersal of wealth across social strata, which might allow for Egyptians to pay as much as anyone else to get into their parks.

I didn't bring my big camera; instead, I brought my little tiny Nikon Coolpix that I bought about three years ago and have almost never used. Turns out the thing takes pretty cool pictures if the conditions are just right, but this one doesn't hold a candle to my original 3.2 mp Coolpix that I carried for four years, through thick and thin, before it finally conked out.

Schoolgirls hanging out alongside the Great Sphinx. I imagine the two girls on the right are making fun of the Japanese tourists taking fifty photos of the Sphinx's head.

Descending the long walkway between the Great Pyramids and the entrance to the Great Sphinx's chamber. Egyptian girls love to get decked out in super colorful outfits. It makes otherwise beige and grubby Cairo a pretty photogenic place after all.

A camel-mounted Egyptian policeman looks down on the Great Sphinx and hordes of tourists from his perch on the Giza Plateau. You can see the city of Giza in the background — it runs all the way up to the gates to the Pyramid park. The Giza Plateau is a great place to get a sense of how huge — and how polluted — Cairo actually is. You can see a brown haze of smog sprawled across the city even on days that seem clear from below.

In this last photo, I played around with Photoshop a little bit, trying to use the Duotone feature to make a nice black & white. I added some orange and it made the camel practically pop off the page, while leaving the background gray. I love playing with Duotone and Tritone, but as with so many things on Photoshop, every new tool is a blessing and a curse — there are too many options, and I waste my life trying to decide which of the four million colors to add to my black ink when no one will notice the difference, including me.

P.S. I can't figure out how to change the copyright watermark so it doesn't say copyright twice. Oh well.

Great Sentences: P.J. O'Rourke on Disneyland's HOF II

I'm going to start posting some of the great sentences I come across from time to time. Sometimes sentences are so perfect they're like poems. I'll start off this new trend with a couple of lines from P.J. O'Rourke's story in the December 2008 Atlantic, called "Future Schlock," about the disappointing corporate assault on Disney's creative output, as evidenced by the product- and brand-placement priorities in Disneyland's new House of the Future II.

O'Rourke begins by waxing nostalgic about the original House of the Future, which he visited in the fifties as a kid, and which left him spellbound and ready to race "to infinity and beyond." Unfortunately, Disney boxed up HOF I in 1967, much to O'Rourke's dismay. Here we find great sentence #1:

"Reports have it that a wrecking ball merely bounced on the sturdy polymer seed cases, and the prematurely postmodernist structure had to be sawed apart by hand. (As many a timorous would-be suicide has discovered—with viselike grip on a bridge railing—the future is harder to get rid of than you'd think)."

I for one did not see that parenthetic sledge hammer coming. And I'm still wondering where it came from.

Mr. O'Rourke is clearly a family man — appropriate since much of the essay's import has to do with the myth of the perfect family that permeated and inspired so much of pop culture from the post-war period all the way into the 1970s. O'Rourke admits that his family isn't perfect, but he never stops talking about his kids, which I find very reassuring. He also writes with a self-deprecating sense of humor that gives birth to great sentence #2, in the middle of a paragraph about "smart houses" that do all of your housework for you, like the Jetsons' house, and even pick out your wardrobe and suggest recipes based on what you place on the counter:

"And have you watched the clever manner in which convertible car tops operate? . . . If a house must be smart (and, as a man who is continually outwitted by his wife, children, and dogs, I'd really prefer that it just dummy up and mind its own beeswax), why can't it be as smart as a Pontiac Solstice?"

More great sentences soon.

Japan: Sakura Season

One Day when Alex was at work, I took off for Tsuyama to enjoy the sakura trees in full bloom around Tsuyama's castle. I was very lucky to be in Japan during late March and early April, because I got to see the whole cycle of the sakura season, and I also got to attend more than a few beer-soaked "hanami," or sakura-viewing, picnics.

This guy is a Shinto priest made out of bronze. The paddle he's holding in his hands has something to do with Shintoism, though I have no earthly idea what.



Here's a shot of the pathway leading up to Tsuyama Castle, perched atop the town on a hill surrounded by beautiful stone walls. The red lanterns are all over Japan during sakura season, and people stay late into the night eating and drinking under their subtle glow.



A cluster of sakura flowers.



High school girls gather on the steps leading up to Tsuyama Castle for lunch. Japanese school kids where uniforms all the way through high school. Whacked-out sneakers and crazy haircuts are about the extent of rebellion.



Older women like hanami too.



Like most castles in Japan, Tsuyama Castle was destroyed during the Second World War. The reconstruction is spectacular, however, and the park is a very popular place for tourists and locals.

Japan: Naoshima Art Island and Mochi Party

Alex and I went to a place called Naoshima Island on the Seto Inland Sea, unofficially known in Alex's circles as the "art island." The island has a handful of art galleries and a wealth of experimental architecture, including a series of concept houses like the one pictured above, which has a room filled with a pond that's lit up by digital numbers. An attendant in the number-pond house very politely told me that photography is not allowed in the art houses, but luckily I had already gotten my shot.

The day was rainy and cold on the art island, but Alex and I had a great time anyway. It was a very tranquil, beautiful place, water all around and even falling from the sky. The rainy weather also meant that there weren't as many tourists clogging the queues for the art houses, another plus.

A piece of drift wood hangs on the outer wall of one of the art houses, constructed of corrugated metal and containing a two-storey high replica of the Statue of Liberty as well as clear floors with thousands of random snapshots and news clippings underneath.


A portrait of Alex in front of an illuminated wall in one of the art houses, which I suppose was supposed to evoke a waterfall or something, maybe being behind a waterfall, I don't know. At any rate, I want one of these walls in my house, and I wouldn't mind having a number-pond floor either, though that might be difficult to keep clean.


Alex's friend Kapo took us out to the country one morning to make mochi with her friend Daisake's family. Daisake is a carpenter and a thoroughly proficient mochi pounder. You make mochi by hammering steamed rice to a pulp in a mortar that's dug into the stump of a tree; at least that's the traditional method. Most people now make their mochi in machines. This was the first time Daisake's family had made mochi in the traditional way in ten years. This is a picture of some chives growing in Daisake's garden. Most rural Japanese families maintain vegetable gardens, and they're constantly working their gardens in the afternoons.


Daisake (hands on the left) helps his mother (hands on the right) rip off chunks of the pounded rice. You shape the chunks into disks with your hands and then let them harden. You can also stuff the mochi with anko, a sweet paste made from beans, or any number of other things. My favorite mochi accompaniment is ground sesame seeds.


Kids dig into the left over mochi in the giant wooden mortar. Japanese kids are insufferably cute.


After we finished making the mochi, we had a good old fashioned barbecue, complete with a couple of kegs of ice cold Asahi beer (my favorite part). Daisake's family and friends all came over for the event, and we had a really, really good time, although I was ready to go to sleep at about noon because I'd already drunk about four beers (people kept filling them up when I wasn't looking, see evidence above) and was totally stuffed on fried chicken and okanomiyaki, an omelette-like dish made by Daisake's father.


One of Daisake's friends fries god knows what on a traditional Japanese barbecue. It was a little bit windy that day, and the smoke kept blowing in his face no matter which direction he turned. His kids also kept climbing on his back, but he was a good sport.

Gin Rummy!

Palestinians love to play cards, but no gambling. I went to play Hand
Rimmy (same as Gin Rummy) with my friends Thair and Yousef the other
day, and this was my first hand-- rummy! Out in one go!

Back in Gaza

I arrived back in Gaza today after an absence of about six weeks. I
have to say, it's great to be back. Here are two of my friends at my
favorite coffee shop in downtown Gaza City. On the right is Thair
Hasani, my friend who told me about the job opening at CARE. Obviously
I am very grateful to him!