singing minarets, ringing bells, garbs and old style families.
the golden cupola, the holy sepulture, long large skirts, bound bodies, forbidden contacts, white houses Lego style, the sacred and the profane.
placards in 3 very different alphabets, falafel with humos for breakfast, arab strong coffe, the shabbat when the jewish world totally stops, does not use any electrical device and not even brings anything by hands... not even answer the telephone.
religion, that seems a little true and a little a turistic and mass supermarket.
soldiers, young people, boys and girls, just 18years old whose being soldiers never can leave their own guns, that means one of those serious gun, M-16 how they call it. and thus you see them hangling around in big groups on saturday night with the barrel on their shoulders.
passport always on your pocket, check point always on view, when the view is not the wall. it s impressive, the one in berlin in comparison seems an hurdle of the hurdle-run of summer oratory. impressive security system, super capillary, super well-advance, super powerful. untouchable. unshakable. humiliating, frustrating, insane. insanenly ridiculous.
palestine, a little poor and a little quiet. relative still. warm arab welcome, difficult daily life for women whose always make some mistakes.
bethlem completely absorbed by the wall, bethlem of the nativity cave that produces its strong intense effect and bethlem of the discoteque where people go having fun like anyone else anywhere else in the world.
nablus, hideout of rebels with its old labirintc city, tension in the air, hidden eyes staring, posters of suicidal and killed martyrs every 10 cm in every wall.
the holy land of too many ideologies that are different but similar as well. the holy oxymoron.
walking on the city's wall early in the morning with apparently normal evangelical people who then say to you that when some land was given back to palestinian and some settlements evacuated, they cried, because no one could give away the land of G-d.
it is scaring, definitely.
while to see ultra-ortodox jews, whole families dad-mom-4,5,6 sons, at 5 oclock in the morning catapult themselves out from the buses, run to the western wall like king penguin with all the equipment for a long day picnic, just to gain the best place for the morning prayer, makes you think and smile and sigh.
but the holy land is beautiful too, just beautiful. in one day you can go from the lebanese border on the golan windy heights till the dead hot see, leaping hills yellow and green over and then floating all night long in saulty oily waters and getting a jordan' glimpse too.

that is, and much more........