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crazy driving in the Holy Land
Thursday, September 29 2005
setting: somewhere over Europe
Turkish is a language that bears no relationship to English. It's as similar to English as the language of a space alien. Since, however, the Turks share a planet with the English and have had contact for a thousand years, they do share a few words, mostly to do with developments that have taken place since the 18th Century. Happily, though, the alternative language in Turkey happens to be English, and bilingual signs are common in places like the Ataturk International Airport, where Gretchen and I burned through several hours waiting for a connecting flight to Tel Aviv.
Usually international airports seem very, generic and, well, international in style, and to some extent this was true of the one in Istanbul. Most of the people walking around could have been from any Mediterranean country. The numbers of Islamic women with modest atire (head scarves, burqas, etc.) wasn't much higher than one observes at JFK or Charles de Gaul. About the only demographic oddity in the airport was the notable absence of black people.
Outside, though, the landscape had a refreshing sense of alienness about it. Most of the buildings were matter-of-fact (if oddly colored), but the skyline was shot through with minarettes from countless mosques. I'd never been in an Islamic country before and, despite their superficially Disneyesque appearance, I enjoyed the vaguely creepy feeling they gave me.
There's a hotel inside the Istanbul airport where one can rent a room by the hour to pass the time during layovers. Gretchen and I sat on the comfy couches in its lobby and while she napped, I took advantage of a Linksys internet WiFi access point that had been left open (its name was "default").
Since ours was a flight to Tel Aviv, there were a couple of Hasids at the gate. One was an older man who did his entire prayer ritual right there, complete with the tying of the Tefillin around his arm and a Tallit prayer shawl over his head. Though I've had a lot of exposure to Jewish culture over the past four years, I've never actually seen this prayer ritual. As usual, observing all these complex and (ultimately) arbitrary acts done as a faith-based obligation made me tired. Why not read a good (secular) book instead? Still, I had to give the old man credit for keeping his traditions alive. Meanwhile, a baby who I took to be his grandoffspring was being relentlessly fussed over by one of the Turkish Airlines employees, a woman who, I can be 98% sure, was a Muslim.
Another consequence of this being a flight from a 98% Islamic country to Isræl was intense security. Though this makes little sense from a manpower perspective, the Istanbul airport staffs security checkpoints at each individual gate. When I went through, one of the guys noted something suspicious in my computer bag, and soon enough he was inspecting the wads of wires it contains. One of these was a homemade systems to allow for the interchange of connectors between power supplies and then there was the matter of the blob of strain-relieving silicone I'd applied to my iBook's power supply's plug. I've noticed that airport security personnel always seem a little skeptical of homemade devices (they must not be too common), but they always let me through anyway. It turned out that the Turkish security guys today were mostly concerned by the xray shadow cast by a bunch of beer bottle caps in one of my bag's many compartments.
Flying north to south across Asia Minor allowed me to see what a strange jumble of geography it is, full of lakes and improbable fjords extending far inland.
We flew over the divided island of Cyprus and, before long, landed in Tel Aviv. One of the guys behind us, a typical Isræli, if one is to believe the stereotype, immediately began talking on his cell phone. This was immediately quashed by a bunch of Turkish Airlines stewardesses, who rushed up and ordered that he stop. But even after he'd put his phone away they continued to badger him in wrongly-tensed English, demanding "What are you doing?" as if he hadn't stopped. The goal seemed to be to make him into an example and shame him. He was lucky he was in Isræl and wasn't facing the prospect of spending the night in a Turkish Prison.
Unlike, say, JFK, there are regular trains running from the Tel Aviv airport into downtown Tel Aviv, but since we'd just missed one we caught a taxi instead.
The environment around the airport had the ugly qualities of the San Fernando Valley, a semi-arid building-cluttered landscaped dotted with the occasional palm tree, all of it rendered exotic by the trilingual signage (in Hebrew, Arabic, and English). More exotic than that was the experience of being a passenger in a car driven by an Isræli jockeying on a crowded highway with other Isræli drivers. They all drive like maniacs, making instantaneous lane changes into gaps barely longer than their vehicles and following one another with bumpers only inches apart, yet somehow avoiding the chain-reaction collisions that one would expect. Such driving does have its risks, though. Nearly every car one sees on the highway older than a year or two has obvious dents or scratches, usually in the form of deep gouges along the sides. Some cars are also dented from incidents with rock-throwing Palestinian youth or the Shabbat-enforcing mega-orthodox. The police deal with so many thrown rocks that they've eschewed glass for plexiglass and mounted metal cages around all of their lights, particularly the beckoning blue one on the roof.
Gretchen and I had come to the Holy Land to attend the wedding of Dina, her longest-term friend, to Gilad, an Isræli she met a year or so ago. Dina is like Gretchen's sister, so Gretchen's entire family (including her brother's family from Pittsburgh) had flown to Isræl. We were all staying in various rooms of the Best Western Regency Hotel on Hayarkon Street near the Mediterranean beach, kitty-corner across the street from the antenna-studded American embassy.
Soon we'd all reconvened to Dina's rehearsal dinner, held at some non-Kosher Tel Aviv restaurant. My main contribution to this event was the copper pipe menorah I'd brought as a gift. It stood for the duration of the meal at my table, sparking numerous conversations. Food for the meal started haltingly, but once it got started it was a force that could not be slowed. Before long our table was sagging under the weight of big trays of spicy chicken and more varieties of pasta than I knew existed.
Gretchen spent the night with Dina having a last preteen-style sleepover, and I spent the night alone back in my hotel room. Gretchen's folks had given me a melatonin tablet to help me with my jetlag.
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