...watch the sun set

We raced Apollo to Hebron, Tim and I traveling east over the Atlantic, and he, west over the Pacific. We made it in time to watch him set over the city. From the roof of the Excellent Center where we will be working, it was a magnificent victory. Here is how we got there:

Our metal chariot took us from Boston to London, where Tim and I sat together, excitedly. My phone went to ‘airplane mode’ as I gave a bittersweet farewell to the American soil. From Heathrow we flew to Tel Aviv, over Central Europe, the mythical Aegean and the mystical Mediterranean. I felt bad for the men who sat on either side of my two-by-four shoulders during the flight; there should be a maximum width barring me from middle seats. Once we landed and made it through suspicious  customs we finally breathed Israeli air. Warm, gentle, silky. Because Palestinian transport can only traverse Israeli roads near Jerusalem, we played quite the game of hopscotch across the Holy Land to Hebron. First, from the Ben Gurion Airport in northwest Israel, we caught a group taxi down (direction) and up (altitude) to Jerusalem. They drive here like the knitting needles of a novice: twitchy, aggressive weaving with short stops like stitch drops and, of course, some mild cursing. I was next to a petite Asian woman who sat quietly, buckled herself in immediately as if expecting trouble, and began nibbling on aromatic nuts whose scent I could not identify. She surprised us all when she blurted out Hebrew to the driver in translation for the confused Russian pilgrim. This is indeed the land of cultural blends. She, Tim and I all got off at the Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem, and she bounded away determinedly, crossing busy streets with the sonar of a bat.

Here at the Damascus Gate the Arab busses are located. Those Palestinians with the permission spend their days outside of the west bank and funnel back home from this point. We got on bus 21 to Bethlehem and waited for it to fill up a bit before departure. It cost 7.30 NIS (Shekels), which is about 2 USD (Dollars). At some point in the trip the bus stopped in a place we only recognized from the picture sent to us by our employer. Otherwise, this sandy lot on the side of an indistinct hill would have passed without cause to notice. But we hopped out, grabbed our luggage and made way to another taxi. So far there is nothing preventing us from standing out, with neon signs, as foreigners. Language, look and luggage, it all says “alien.”

Luckily, the people are kind and not out for a scam. We communicated with a couple of men to get a ride to a specific street in Hebron: Ain Sara. They knew of the place. Thank God. But how much? One charismatic man, with a smile that cratered his face, exposing smoker’s teeth unashamedly, wrote “62” in the dust on the back window of a taxi. “Give me money, my friend,” he nearly shouted. He does not know the word “please,” and it doesn’t bother me; I don’t know “please” in Arabic. Besides, Apollo threatened to leave us blinder than we already were, so we were eager to hop aboard.

In twenty minutes our driver, Mohammed, kicked us out on Ain Sara. With no cell phones, neither Mohammed, Tim nor I could call the Excellence Center for final directions to our exact location. So we collected ourselves as Mohammed sped away, looked around at many buildings and into many staring eyes and chose a direction to walk. Certainly someone would speak English or lend us their phone, we reasoned, but Fortune must’ve been angry with Apollo for she was on our side. Around one corner we walked before we looked up and saw the sign marking the Excellence Center. We made it.

After short introductions (many of the center’s employees are currently in Amman, Jordan), we were given a tour by a young man named Ayman (Like Simon without the ‘S’), which ended on the roof.

Halleluiah.

We stood up there and watched the street haze into darkness. The buildings were blocking a direct flaunt to the sun, but it was no matter. The beauty of the stone buildings rising around us, the fumes of street shops and the urban voices of vehicles and passersby were enough to steal our attention. We had no complaint when the center told us our apartment wasn’t ready to move into; we had already found home.

...read short stories

I was asked if I would miss this…the States, these familiarities, the relationships of tongue. I barely thought for a moment before abruptly stating, “No.”

How heartless.

But in my understanding of the verb “to miss” I sense regret or sadness…a great loss in the current situation that breeds longing for a former one, i.e. I miss my old job because this new one is dry; I miss my car now that it’s totaled; I miss Jennifer, the loveliest woman I knew. So my immediate answer reflected this truth: that I do not expect regret to infect my travels…and, that I am, indeed, heartless.

But few English words bear such stringent definitions, so I have thus softened, as ice cream over time or in heat. Can “to miss” mean something gentler, so that in doing so, in missing, one isn’t meandering one’s way into melancholic nostalgia, but simply sensing the loss of deep human contact? Of course. Why even ask such a question? Because that’s how words come to rest in peace and page, I suppose.

So my answer is “Yes.” I will miss you. I will sense the loss of our connection. Of course.

But this is not the first time I have done this type of traveling. Nor is it the second or third. Indeed, I have lived a peripatetic life of late. And that, ladies and gentlemen and dad, as Emily Dickinson would say, is a word to hang your hat on: peripatetic. I learned it first from one of those great and thoroughly American creations of wit and word which were so widely read in a more romantic time than this. Short Stories. In 1904, a man by the (pseudo)name of O. Henry serially penned The Furnished Room, a mysteriously beautiful story, like a lace slip over smooth skin. You should read it.

But I digress, mother. Peripatetic. It means moving often. Not staying put for too long. Like a job-hopper or modern nomad. With early years spent on planes, my young skin pinched by aged Chinese calluses, I believe my blood became peripatetic, for its lust of a certain place/time/experience/person is “fugacious as time itself” (Again, O. Henry. Fugacious: more attractive for fleeting. I hang my hat, Em).

So as I have and continue to ‘peripatet,’ I know well the rise and fall of departure and reunion, and though with no heart to store it, will know it again. This time in two days. And I will try to prolong the connection, or perhaps shrink the gap, by writing these blogs, my own short stories, in hopes you will read them and our love for one another will be kindled by a distant flame. Or succulent vocabulary, anyway.

So read them. After all, Simon does say…