Day 29

Missy the Wild Child, and Ron the Rock Star ...and "It's Saddam Hussein!".

Angie called Missy this morning, who she had met on the flight to Tel Aviv. Missy is staying with her boyfriend Ron, who is apparently a rock star in Israel.

As I waited for Angie, I used a small tube of Superglue to effect repairs to the gear shift knob of the rental car. A seam remains where the rubber pieces were broken, but at least it is not as noticeable as before.

Angie emerged from the apartment and explained that we were to call Missy and Ron after we obtained our visas in Tel Aviv. We proceeded to Tel Aviv in the rental car, and I dropped off Angie at the American Embassy, as I drove around to find parking. I don't know why we stopped at the American Embassy, because to get a visa to Egypt, you have to go to the Egyptian Embassy. By the time we got there, the embassy was already closed.

We started looking for a phone to call Ron and Missy. After walking several blocks, we found a payphone, but it only accepted phone debit cards. We asked around about where to get a phone card, and eventually were directed to a magazine vendor. I bought a 20 unit phone card for 12 shekels. We went back to the payphone and Angie used one unit to call Missy. She arranged for Ron and Missy to meet us at the nearby Basel Cafe, and we went to sit and wait.

While waiting, I order a stawberry banana juice that tasted a lot like the plums we used to get off the tree at home when they were too ripe.

After 40 minutes, Ron and Missy pulled up in Ron's little car. I paid the bill and both of us hopped in the car with them. They took us to a little cafe a few blocks away. The waitress smiled as we entered, as if Ron was a regular here. In fact, Ron took time to say hello to several people in the cafe, who seemed to know him. After we sat down, Missy and Ron took charge of ordering, and we shared all the food that was brought out -- omelettes, chicken pasta salad, and some type of chicken liver pate that we spread on bread.

As we ate, Missy conveyed a story about something that happened to them on the way back from a party at 4AM two days ago. Up ahead in the road, many cars were stopped and people were getting out. Ron feared there had been an accident, and someone was hurt. But as they grew closer, they saw that everyone was looking up at something in the sky. The stopped and looked up, and saw a bright light, pulsing slowly in intensity, and moving in a way that was uncharacteristic of normal aircraft. Missy estimated its altitude at 700 meters. The light continued moving in a seemingly aimless pattern in the sky, as police cars arrived. The police didn't have any idea what it was either.

Looking through a Hebrew newspaper at our table, Ron located an article about the UFO sighting. Reportedly hundreds of people had seen it, and the Israeli Air Force knew nothing about it because it didn't show up on their radar screens.

An interesting part of the story was the individual reactions of Missy and Ron to the sight. Missy was frightened, and expressed concern for the welfare of her children. Missy has no children at the moment, but was concerned about what aliens might do to her future unborn sons and daughters. Ron, on the other hand, welcomed the sight, and would have invited them to land right down on his car if he could.

Ron's brother, Chicho, arrived at the cafe. Missy and Ron haven't know each other that long. During our visit, Ron often introduced her to friends and family. Chicho is an artist who paints large, expensive pictures in a superhero comic book style. I believe he also does something in cinematography.

After lunch, we all went outside the cafe. Chicho say goodbye and hopped on his Harley Sportster to speed off into the city. I haven't seen that many Harleys around here -- mostly scooters and dirt motorcycles.

Missy, Ron, Angie, and I walked to a nearby cafe where several pieces of Chicho's art are displayed.

We continued on a walk around the block, and repeatedly Ron would stop to say hello to someone he knew. We passed a newspaper journalist friend of his who was putting tires on a car. Later Ron told us that someone had slashed her tires. I wonder if it was about something she wrote.

After circling the block, we got in Ron's car and he drove us back to the rental car. We said goodbye around 4PM, and I thought it might be nice to continue up to Nazareth to eat dinner, then head back to Jerusalem that night. Angie's stomach wasn't feeling well, so she slept in the back seat while I drove about 2 hours to what I thought was Nazareth. After looking at the map later on, I'm not so sure.

Anyway, we got out in the middle of a little town, and searched for something to eat. In the nearby vicinity there were about 5 shwarma stands and two falafel stands. We both ordered a shwarma, and the woman had about as much trouble speaking English as we did speaking Hebrew -- which was actually a nice change. Usually it's just us that feel frustrated with the language.

After my shwarma, I bought a falafel at this stand:

The man at the counter was tossing little fried falafel balls into the pitas with a pair of tongs, almost as if he were juggling. In fact, when I bought my falafel, he tossed them so high that a couple of them hit the ceiling before falling into the pita. There were also lots of good salads to put in the pita, but he stuffed my pita so full of falafels that I couldn't squeeze much more in.

After dinner, it was dark and we started driving south. There is another highway that connects Jerusalem and Nazareth through the mountains, that looks like a more direct way than going through Tel Aviv. As we drove, we started to notice that most of the signs were no longer written in Hebrew, English, and Arabic -- but only Arabic. We also noticed the blue tag on the car in front of us. Angie said it was an Arabic tag (most tags that we've seen are yellow). Angie commented about something she had read in a book, that if for some reason you get lost and get into a heavily Arabic area, the worst thing you can do is drive around in your car, because the yellow tag stands out like a sore thumb. They might confuse you for the Jewish, who they don't like, and stone your car, or something like that. The next car tag I saw was also blue, and I said to Angie, "It looks like all these tags are blue." She replied,"No, not all of them. Just a lot of them are blue." We passed a parking lot with all blue tags. "OK...a whole lot of them."

At that point we entered the city of Jenin, where all of the people we saw were obviously Arabic, and Angie slunk down in her seat, saying something about the huge, obvious rental car stickers on the doors of our car, and how obviously out of place we were. All of the sudden, Angie yells out! "Ahhhh!!! It's Saddam Hussein!" Wide eyed, I glance around but all I see is some soldiers standing by a jeep. She points to a large poster of a man displayed up high on a pole. "It's Saddam Hussein! We're gonna die!" From that point I couldn't understand much of what Angie was saying. The man in the poster was not Saddam Hussein, but Yassar Arafat. However, it still signalled that we were probably not in a good place. The pavement ended and we began bouncing over rocks and through large mud puddles in the road. "This can't be the main highway," I said, and turned around to find out where I had missed the main road. I saw what seemed to be a larger, paved road, and turned around again to go back through the city -- much to Angie's disdain.

We followed the road for about 50 minutes, and came to a checkpoint with soldiers in the road. As I pulled up and rolled down the window, we saw they were Israeli soldiers. I asked, "Which way to Jerusalem?". He responded, "You can go either way", pointing straight ahead, and back the way we came. "Which way is the best way?", I asked. His answer, pointing ahead: "This way is Israel." Pointing back, "That way is...well, I don't know." We decided to continue on ahead through Israel.