The One Bus

I rode on the Arab bus today to the Old City. It’s one of those experiences I’ve wanted to have since I got here. We see the green and white buses zoom down the street picking up people at various locations, whether at a bus stop or not. They can been any shape or size, whether a full sized bus or a 15-passenger mini-van. They’re always packed to the rafters and have been a source of mystery to me since I’ve arrived here.

The great thing about the Arab buses are that when normal bus lines stop running on the Sabbath, they will still keep zooming past bus stops, hardly stopping to pick up by-standers. It also costs only NIS 4.20.

Halim and Tarek, two of my roommate Alice’s friends who live in the next building, took me to Humus Abu Sukri in the Arab Quarter, and I was in heaven. Delicious ground chickpeas smothered in garlic and olive oil. Add to that a side of chips, salad of spicy pickles, onions, and tomatoes, and you’ve got yourself a great lunch. It’s an invigorating, exciting experience stepping off the white and green bus, and straight into the bustle of Salahadin Street on the way to Damascus Gate. The street is living and breathing as the crowds move slowly through the bottleneck. Teenaged boys scream prices of figs, batteries, kippas, shoes in Arabic and Hebrew. It excites every sense. “Batteria, chamza shekel!” The smell of spices waft into your nostrils as you pass by shops stocked full with any spice imaginable.

Women with babies strapped to their chest bargain for house wares or clothing. I saw women wearing anything from a t-shirt and jeans to full burka with black gloves. It’s a marketplace where religious and secular literally bump into one another as the crowd squeezes through the clogged corridors en masse.

We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, something Halim does every time he goes to the Old City. Halim is an Arab Christian, a non-practicing Greek Orthodox, and Tarek is Muslim. They are two of five roommates from the next building over that have become my fast friends. Halim is from Rama, which is about 30 kilometers south of the Lebanese border. His grandfather was imprisoned in 1948 when his wife was pregnant with Halim’s father. According to Halim, he contracted a sickness from the poor conditions of the prison and died as a result from them several years later.

Tarek is from Neve Shalom, which is somewhere between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In the 1950’s, a group of Muslims and a group of Jews got together and formed a settlement where Jews and Muslims would live in peace. In order to live in this “Oasis of Peace,” one must sign a contract and agree to the terms of the settlement. It seems to have worked, the small moshav remains a place of peace and co-existence even today and is a place of hope for future reconciliation.

Everyone is affected in some way here in Israel. Hatred of government-funded Haredi, who are the ultra-orthodox Jews, constant immigration – now even from war-ravaged Georgia. Everyone here has an opinion about how Israel should be. For instance, walking through Mea Shearim, an ultra-orthodox neighborhood just north of the Old City, as a woman is always an interesting activity. There is a dress code posted on every street corner directed to any woman passing through the streets. It reads something like: Women: please do not walk through our neighborhood dressed immodestly. Cover your shoulders and your knees, etc etc. Some unlucky passersby have had to deal with a few rocks being thrown at them for dressing immodestly.

In actuality, the same goes for woman as they walk through the Arab shouk. Cover your shoulders and your knees or else face the consequence of constant stares and whistle blows. This is Jerusalem in many ways. It’s a city where you hold your breath as you turn a corner, because you never quite know what you can expect to find.

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