Julie Hayward plays footsie in Jerusalem
Sitting outside a coffee shop on Ben Yehuda Street, for the first time in 19 years, I reflect on what a roller coaster of a trip this is.
For many years I dreamt of bringing my daughter back to Israel where she was born, but due to a variety of reasons over the years, we’ve only just got back here. I used to imagine taking her around my old haunts, places I had lived, worked and played in, before she was born, and her looking on in silent awe and wonder. But instead, she gets annoyed with me if I speak the few words of Hebrew that I know, because she doesn’t know any Hebrew, so I’m not impressing her, but being annoying and she wants to explore on her own. She has spent most of the holiday up, avoiding me, she’s staying with her uncle and I’m staying in a hotel, and she wants to do her own thing, not traipse around with me.
She ignored my advice, when visiting the old city, which is predominantly Arabic, to not advertise that she has an Israeli passport, (the majority of Israelis living in Jerusalem, have never even set foot in the Old City), but my daughter has been strolling through the streets of the Old City, telling anyone who would listen, that she’s Israeli.
I suggested that she do an early morning walking tour of the city as it would be cooler, so she did a midday tour and then wondered why she got sun burnt.
There has been some high points though, I’m just trying to recall them. Waiting to meet up with my daughter outside Damascus Gate for over an hour one day, as we had planned to visit Bethlehem, gave me plenty of time to do a survey of pushchairs, or the lack of them. Not one Arabic woman that walked past had a pushchair, and were all carrying children that were too young to walk. The men sat around, many of them chain smoking – a lot of Palestinian people don’t have any work and are very restricted in where they go and what they do. Israeli soldiers regulary do stop and search checks.
When my daughter eventually turned up, we caught the bus to Bethlehem. I didn’t recognise Bethlehem, the last time I had been there, it had been the Intifada and everywhere was closed down. Now there were lots of new, well new to me, buildings and shops. I had been hoping to track down a friend who lives in Bethlehem, but without an address I didn’t have a hope in hell now Bethlehem has changed so much. After a fruitless search I had to admit defeat in trying to track down my friend from years ago.
It was great meeting up with family that we hadn’t seen for years, and there was only one or two embarrassing moments, including sitting around the table with long lost family looking at photos and one family member, Riko ,was being overly attentive to my legs. No one else was aware of the passion that was going on under the table between Riko and my legs. I tried to appear caught up in rapt attention looking at the photos whilst attempting to discreetly wrestle the humping Riko off my legs. I should probably mention that Riko’s a dog, and boy was he enamoured with my legs.
