2008 Woodie Awards
A Traveler's Tales of the City of Zion
City at the Center of the World (part 3 of 3)
Andrew S. Lay
Issue date: 11/22/05 Section: Features
I left Tel-Aviv on the afternoon of April 7th. I was quite hung-over due to a stint of heavy drinking the night before. I wasn't exactly in the best of moods, but I tried to remain stoic.
The bus was loaded with young I.D.F. soldiers trying to get home to Jerusalem before the Sabbath hit Friday at sundown. In Israel, the buses don't run on Sabbath. In fact most Jewish businesses shut down for the day. They don't touch money, tear toilet paper, drive cars, or do any work of any kind.
The bus left the suburban sprawl of Te-Aviv for the rolling hills of farmland and mountains that lined the road to Jerusalem. We passed the fortress at Latrun where thousands of young Jewish immigrants and Zionists fresh form the halls of the holocaust in Europe died terribly trying to breach the fortress walls and capture the fortress from the Arabs in 1948.
We passed the Burma road where the young nationalist armed with shanty weapons and little training in this freshly reborn nation carved a road out of the once impassable mountains to relieve a besieged Jerusalem.
We drove up and down hills covered with trees I had never seen before. Bright green pines with white bark cut across the hills in droves, showering them with splashes of white and green. Wild flowers of red and blue and green sat intermittently between clusters of rocks. It seemed they defied nature in their stark, rugged beauty.
We made a stop halfway to Jerusalem. A young man who looked like an Arab disembarked the bus. It looked, at first, as though he had left his bag. A shot of fear burned my chest and turned my stomach inside out. I had thought that he left his bag. I stood up and did a quick search of the mans seats to be sure, the fear really driving me. Until I saw the man with his bag walk away. I waited a moment, to see if the bus would blow up. It didn't .
The bus arrived without incident at Jerusalems central bus station. I bought a blade off a Russian-Muslim and caught a taxi to the Old City.
The bus was loaded with young I.D.F. soldiers trying to get home to Jerusalem before the Sabbath hit Friday at sundown. In Israel, the buses don't run on Sabbath. In fact most Jewish businesses shut down for the day. They don't touch money, tear toilet paper, drive cars, or do any work of any kind.
The bus left the suburban sprawl of Te-Aviv for the rolling hills of farmland and mountains that lined the road to Jerusalem. We passed the fortress at Latrun where thousands of young Jewish immigrants and Zionists fresh form the halls of the holocaust in Europe died terribly trying to breach the fortress walls and capture the fortress from the Arabs in 1948.
We passed the Burma road where the young nationalist armed with shanty weapons and little training in this freshly reborn nation carved a road out of the once impassable mountains to relieve a besieged Jerusalem.
We drove up and down hills covered with trees I had never seen before. Bright green pines with white bark cut across the hills in droves, showering them with splashes of white and green. Wild flowers of red and blue and green sat intermittently between clusters of rocks. It seemed they defied nature in their stark, rugged beauty.
We made a stop halfway to Jerusalem. A young man who looked like an Arab disembarked the bus. It looked, at first, as though he had left his bag. A shot of fear burned my chest and turned my stomach inside out. I had thought that he left his bag. I stood up and did a quick search of the mans seats to be sure, the fear really driving me. Until I saw the man with his bag walk away. I waited a moment, to see if the bus would blow up. It didn't .
The bus arrived without incident at Jerusalems central bus station. I bought a blade off a Russian-Muslim and caught a taxi to the Old City.
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