holiday of holidays

the weekend before last my mama and i went to haifa to see family. i am proud to report that i dragged the whole family to the "holiday of holidays" downtown which is a not entirely un-hokey celebration of the convergence in december of three important holidays in the muslim, jewish, and christian traditions. or maybe it's more apt to just say - it's the only place in the world where palestinian-israeli christians and muslims, israeli jews, and santa all get together to eat kebab and wander the streets. the only place where, on saturdays in december at least, people aren't eying each other suspiciously and santa is yelling at the cops in arabic and hebrew to let through his procession of drum playing scouts and baton twirling beauties.

in the evening i went with my cousin and his friend to dalyat al carmel, a druze village close to haifa which cascades down the hillsides in small points of light. we bought trinkets and i watched the sunset color the hills in amazing shades of purple and orange. my cousin made fun of me for taking so many pictures like a tourist. his friend said to me, mock impatiently, tania - where do you live? i answered, tel aviv. ok then, he said, you're not a tourist, stop taking so many pictures.

but these and so many things are still new to me - eruptions of conflict, brief semblances of peace and co-existence, sunsets, christmas lights in storefronts and bilingual hebrew-arabic speaking santas. looking at the sunset, i thought to myself, i was born on this mountain and if i had opened my eyes the first thing i would have seen was the sea below, spreading out dizzyingly as it does from so many places in haifa. so what does it mean to belong somewhere, for somewhere to belong to you, to long for a home in a place you have never seen or not long at all for the first home you knew? i am looking, my eyes wide open. the immensity of the sea from that high above is completely quiet.

crossing jordan

last weekend i met behrangy and his friend in jordan. we wandered the new, dusty streets of amman's upscale shopping area, all but closed down on an early friday afternoon. we ate with ex-pats in a big fancy restaurant. a sign on the wall said king hussein had once eaten there, as well as chris rock. we accidentally hit up a bar full of what one might call high class hookers, dancing for men and ordering them expensive booze. i was silently horrified, behrang's friend nodded approvingly. we ate syrian and israeli chocolate in our hotel room, while watching bbc world news and egyptian soap operas.

petra was full of tourists and people selling donkey rides and cheap jewelry. the ruins of its ancient city towered in shades of pink and orange over brits and americans in red and black checkered keffiyehs. i took pictures to show to friends back home - i imagined a new line called keffiyeh casual or keffiyeh contemporary. behrang and i snuck away to the fanciest hotel in town and ordered cocktails and mezze while his friend investigated the possibility of bunking with bedouins in the caves.

the next day i rode in a shared taxi the three hours to amman, just me and about 20 curious jordanian men. no one spoke to me at first, but then at the rest stop they all gathered around and tested their best english - shooting questions like the israeli border police at allenby bridge. i lied like a champ, pretending to be on god knows what kind of break from university in america...luckily it seemed that no one was keeping track of american holidays. i wanted to tell them i was israeli to see what they'd say but i decided it wouldn't be worth it, even if only one of the 20 wasn't so into the idea.

back on the bus, the guy next to me gestured towards another who had been talking to me, and said to me very seriously, 'beware of the boy.' my heart raced a bit and i asked why, looking over at the 'boy' with green blue eyes, his hair shiny with gel, his racing red jacket too big over his narrow shoulders and his freshly shined black leather shoes, crossing one over the other. he stared back at me, right into me, like fresh off the pages of a nudey magazine, maybe just pushing 22 and already bracing for a hard life of heart breaking. the man next to me leaned in close, his breath pushing at my hair, moist and warm, 'because you're very beautiful.' my heart slowed back to normal and i leaned back in my chair, bracing for the ride into amman.